My how the time flies. I can’t believe that Evan is 10 months old. We had planned on taking him to a pumpkin patch today but he has a cold. Jess and I didn’t want to keep him outside in the cold weather all day so we’re staying at home where it is nice and warm and Evan can recover. Here is a quick video of Evan’s crawling and walking progress. He’s figured out how to crawl up stairs and is taking assisted baby steps. Hope you enjoy.
So much to post about these days. So Evan is almost 9 months old already…wait a second?! Has he been out longer than he’s been in?? Ah this weekend he will officially be out-o-belly for longer than in-o-belly! A huge milestone 
Yay! Let’s see, he about 20.5 lbs these days, weight gain starting to slow down now that he’s mobile. Today he finally got the hang of chewing and ate some puffs and some bread without spazzing out (that is also a huge accomplishment for us). Lately he’s really been into music and has this adorable, severely off-beat white boy bob that he does whenever he hears something remotely sounding like he should dance to it. It is one of those things he does that gives me a cute-attack every time!
We started our Musikgarten class at the Mable House last Friday. I can tell it is going to be so fun. To my surprise all the babies are about the same age, 6-11 months. We already know two of them. All boys and one girl…I think about 8 in all. For the first class we learned some new songs and games and got to play with our new sticks, shaker and scarf. All the babies were loving it, and then afterward everyone just let them roam around for a while. Everyone was especially interested in the full length floor-level mirror.
Tomorrow I get to start my sewing class – woo hoo – the end of my creativity dry spell is near!
Well, Mike finally got to see the little piece of my heart I left on Catalina Island – my favorite place in the whole world. If I was evil and named Voldemort, it would definitely be one of my horcruxes. So not only did Mike get to see this fantastic setting for just about every story I ever tell, we also got to do just about everything that we really really wanted to do (but didn’t get our hopes up for due to Mr.E)! Well, everything except take a helicopter ride! Man I want to do that so BAAAAD. We’ll just have to keep going back until it happens and I won’t complain about that 
OH OH and I FINALLY saw a BLUE WHALE!! At least that’s what my friend Kara said it was, and she’s a whale biologist, so I believer her He/she was a little blue whale and as cute as a whale’s back and flukes can be zooming by on the ferry! So here’s how the trip went:
Long Beach – 3 nights. Was supposed to hang with Kat (longtime college buddy) but her leaking car couldn’t limp the trip so we were on our own. She owes us a trip to Atlanta now 
. Took Mike and E to the Yard House where the Tole Mour tallship crew used to take me on occasion, and is also well visited by aquarium folk. I wasn’t too excited about it, but then I realized that’s b/c when I used to go there I was poor and uninterested in beer. Now that I’ve lived in Oregon, home of many delicious microbrews, I can officially call myself not only a beer lover but a severely stuck up beer snob. The Yard House had BLACK BUTTE PORTER!!! yum. Also key to loving the YH is being able to afford something that costs more than $5 to eat. Working at a kid’s camp does leave one destitute in some ways (but not in others I might add). As a special treat, when we left the YH, we saw that the Tole Mour had returned to dock and my dear friend Captain Snark was calling out orders to his new crew. I was sad to learn that he wasn’t able to go to the reunion since he was (no surprise here) working. Sounds like he’s working too hard 
That is one dedicated guy. If there are any single ocean loving sailor girls out there…this guy is your dream man. I hope he can find a way to eventually squeeze a significant other into his life next to all of his largest tallship on the west coast captaining and teaching of thousands of kids the art of sailing and loving the ocean. Big hugs Snark.
The Disaster – The night before going to the island we hung out with Craig and Czul at Czul’s parent’s house in Redondo. As is often the case while traveling with young children, parental distraction was high, and instead of going to dinner we went to the emergency room with E’s first boo boo. I only call it that, b/c that is what it miraculously ended up being… at the time it was total disaster and everyone in our family cried hard and felt awful. Dear friends that they are, C-squared accompanied us to the hospital for moral support. Evan was playing on the exam room table by the time the doc got in and he took one look in our direction and declared us worse off. Thank you thank you Neptune, baby Jesus, Mother Earth, Odin, Life Force (insert your god or power of choice here). Now he’s doing fine, not even a scar… though we are still recovering from some heckling at camp and threats to call child services.
Toyon CIMI reunion – Was wonderful to see many old friends but also frustrating to be tied down at times with Evan, who sorely needed adequate napping time and an early bedtime (and was refusing to sleep by himself in the portable bed we brought). So though I got to see my friends, I had really no time to visit with them much b/c when we weren’t taking care of Evan, we were doing stuff. For those of you unfamiliar with Toyon, here’s a link, with a good picture of camp.
Diving – Mike and I both got to trade off boat diving, he went to “the crane” and experienced the kelp forest for the first time (and declared it as cool as I described) and I got to go to Ship Rock, an incredible dive on the west end of the island. Mike also got to do a night dive with Craig and play with an octopus for the first time! We even got to dive together in the bay (saw a giant pipe fish!) because one alumna’s mom offered to babysit for us! I was shocked that someone would be willing to give up their short time to take care of a stranger’s baby, but she was so eager…her daughter said it made her weekend! She was so sweet and we found her dancing with Evan on the dive deck upon our return from the water.
Hiking – On our last day I took Mike and Evan on the canyon loop, a hike out and back from Toyon. I was really chomping at the bit to see any evidence of the big fire of 2007. Much to my joy, the island has recovered quite well! Even the endangered ironwoods were growing back! As a special treat we got to see quite a few bison, which I almost never saw on that hike the hundreds of times I did it with kids when I worked there. The biggest surprise was the giant metal grid erected across the base of the canyon to prevent flash flood damage from debris coming down after big storms. The residents in camp were joking about starting a new Jurassic Park back there; it really did look like it was keeping dinosaurs out (oh the fun I would have had with that one and the elementary schoolers….kids will believe anything you tell them – can’t you see me rubbing my hands together…heh heh). Anywho…to all of you guys that went, it was soooo good to see you even if we didn’t get to hang/chat/catch up as much as I would’ve liked! A big ginormous thank you to Buttercup, Sasha, Mish and all the other planners…it was wonderful…thanks so much. And also a huge thank you to Katie and Dave for driving us to Avalon and meeting us for dinner at Mr. Ning’s! Wish there was more time Oh and please someone tell MJ thanks for taking the divers out on the Disco! What a treat!!
Avalon - We spent two days in town and I felt weird being a tourist and not an islander. We found a great little hotel off the beaten path, the El Terrado Terrace, if anyone ever wants to stay there, great rooms, great service, close to the main drag, but not a great view from the balcony (someone’s dirty yard filled with cat food cans??). It was comparatively cheap since we got a buy one night, get one half-off deal. Our main goal for town was diving the dive park at the Casino which we got to do twice! I found a babysitter through the community church and she took care of Evan while we spent the afternoon exploring the park. I even saw some stuff I’d never seen before. The highlights: the Jacques Cousteau plaque, lots of eels, shrimp hiding in a cave, sheep head sparring, feeding an abalone that yanked a piece of kelp right out of my hand, a giant kelp fish harassing the senorita fish to be cleaned, and of course tons of Garibaldi.
It was a great trip, but by the end of the week we were definitely ready to be home. A month of rocking Evan to sleep with bad ears put us at a disadvantage with him sleeping well for the trip and half-way through he was in bed with us demanding his pacifier every five minutes. Needless to say he was driving us nuts, so when we got home he was in for a shock. It was to the crib (aka baby jail) for him. Poor guy, he was all into having us cater to his every little whimper all night long for a week Not so much anymore champ! Now we just have to survive our short trip to New York to visit Mike while he’s there for the UN. Very excited for that, since I have never seen that part of the country! Will post on that next week!
I’ve been trying to capture these images for a while. Finally got the chance! I’ve already bombarded facebook with Evan recently, so I thought I’d make these special to our blog. Wanted to go to a festival today, but it’s stormy…so just playin’ around.
Ok, so I originally had this as a sidenote on my last post and then decided to make it a post in its own right. That’s how obsessed I am with this subject (typical ENFP). I am always interested in the whole personality type subject and hearing about what type other people I know end up being and whether or not they think it really describes them or not.
I recently got re-interested in this since facebook put up an app on that subject. It’s kind of like having your fortune read…so if you like that kind of thing….take this test to see what you are (facebook surprised me and actually got the same result, so it must not be that bad of a test) and then read about your type here (the best place on the web I’ve found on this subject). Consider yourself lucky if I haven’t hounded you personally on this subject, it is one of my favorites! Let me know what you discover about yourself or if you think it’s all a bunch of hooey!
One thing I learned about my type is that although it is relatively rare (5% of the general population), it is a type which is attracted to certain careers and also a type that tends to seek others out and glom onto one another…therefore, it turns out not suprisingly that many of my closest friends are also ENFP or very similar. Many, I feel sure, are also the opposite of my type because that is also attractive (opposites attract sort of thing), but that turns out harder to prove b/c it takes a great deal of convincing to get that type to take the test Other ENFPs and similars are eager and willing to do it All very amusing!
BTW, that test is not the official type sorter test, but it seems to be a reliable one and it’s free and you don’t have to sign up to a website to take it, which is why I picked it.
So E is still returning to his old self after bad cold, which means 50% chance of complete wake-up for me. Overnight last night he woke up at 4:30am and went right back to sleep. But, now that I’m accustomed to getting up I couldn’t get back to sleep and after staring at the clock for an hour I finally got up and made some coffee. I don’t mind this much since I’ve discovered I can pretty much function on 5-6 hours of sleep relatively well and I enjoy having some time to myself to write in this blog, catch up on reading everyone else’s or piddling around on the internet. It’s quite relaxing really. Evan has woken up a few more times since then, but has gone back to sleep…I don’t see how he can hear me in here (our office space/closet is separated from his crib by a thin wall) but I wonder if he can. I think he’s just a light sleeper like me; I really hope he won’t have to live with a lifetime of sporadic insomnia as I have. Luckily, mine comes and goes and is more upsetting at certain times than others.
Anyway, to get to the point of this blog post…Since my personality type requires (and I do mean requires) me to always have a list of projects/goals/interests of the month in mind and eventually that list gets too big for my brain, and I have to write it down somewhere…I thought I would do it here. Of course, that doesn’t mean anything actually gets fully finished (here is a portrait of an ENFP personality). So here are some things going on in my life right now.
1. Learn about how to invest money so we don’t have our savings sitting around not doing anything. I’ve always read financial self-help books that talk about how great life will be if you put away and save, hopefully earning that 10% interest. Recently went to a meeting on money with my mom’s club and it re-inspired me to find that elusive 10% somewhere…we are trying!
2. Learn how to sew. I always watch the classes at The Mable House to see if there’s one I want to take. They have all kinds of great classes from photography to pottery to Spanish. I asked for a sewing machine for Christmas last year even though I don’t have a clue how to use it (temporary bout of domesticity induced by pregnancy?), so I was elated to find a “learn how to use your sewing machine” class at the arts center! Yay! This will satisfy both my need for a creative outlet and my craving for a project/learning something new bug. Since we’ve had our house up for sale and I had to pack up my art table, I’ve been feeling especially deprived, so I’m really excited. (Thank you to Jo and Lisa for making this possible, since I needed a babysitter for 3 of the classes).
3. Going to music classes with Evan. Also at the Mable House, Evan and I will be playing for 1/2 hour every week with all kinds of musical instruments and some new baby friends. I know he’s going to love it since he loves turning everything into a drum, and he recently starting “dancing” to music (bobbing up and down with a silly grin on his face).
4. Possibly getting to go to New York finally? I regret not going when one of my best friend’s lived up there. Mike is going for the UN this year so if I get a cheap ticket last minute, I might be able to finally see what’s north of D.C., a part of the country to which I’ve never been. I would only have a few days, but I plan on seeing Central Park, the Met and hopefully getting out to the Statue of Liberty. If anyone has any suggestions for must-sees on such a short time (few days at most) let me know. Evan will certainly be a well-traveled man by the time he is year old!
That’s all the big stuff I can think of right now.
Just a quick update on Evan and medicine for colds (oh jeez, the landscapers are REALLY loud outside! please don’t wake Evan!! Grrrrr…). So Evan’s pedi said absolutely NO on benadryl for a cold, even though he already prescribed it to Evan for hives once before. He made it sound like if I gave it to him, Evan would croak and that it doesn’t work anyway. It really scared me. But at my family’s insistence, I contacted Evan’s ENT, who put in his ear tubes and saw him last week when the cold from hell started. I got a call from his nurse yesterday morning….”Definitely give him benadryl!! We don’t want him suffering when he’s trying to recover from surgery!” GAH! So, are you sure? “Yes he has five kids himself, he understands who Evan is…how old he is…all the stuff about cold meds…blah blah blah.” WHOOPEEE! Yay! So the night before last, when he woke up in the middle of the night, I gave him less than the full dose for his weight and w/in 45mins he was breathing easier and slept the rest of the night!! Of course I didn’t b/c I was so worried even still! Last night he didn’t wake up, so didn’t need any meds, and even slept 12 1/2 hours straight (he did wake up but was able to go back to sleep)!! So I think we are on the downward slope with this cold thank goodness! And with less than a week to go before our California trip! Hopefully he will start sleeping better now that his tubes are in and we don’t have to worry about constant ear pain!
Speaking of California…if you are wondering…we are going to visit Catalina Island and go to a staff reunion at the kid’s marine science camp I used to work at. You can check it out here: CIMI. This place, the job I did there, the kids I worked for, and the people I worked with all add up to one of the most memorable and wonderful times of my life! It is truly my favorite place on Earth. I CANNOT WAIT to see some of my friends from there since a lot of them are going and more than anything share this place that I talk about all the time with Mike. It really is something he needs to experience to fully know me and I can’t wait to show it to him! Hopefully we can get one of the current instructors to do some babysitting for us so I can go diving with Mike and show him the kelp forests…the best place underwater there is! We are also going to stay on the island in Avalon for two nights after the reunion so he can see the town and maybe the dive park there too. To top it off, we’ll get to see one of my best friend’s Kat, who is driving down from Las Vegas to meet us in L.A. the day before we leave for Catalina…what a great trip! So exciting!
Well I hear babbling from the room next door, so I better go
So Evan’s worst trouble (besides the reflux that lasted about 5 1/2 months) has been ear infections, starting at 6 months, he’s had two doubles and two singles, nearly back to back. So we had about 1/2 a month of good sleeping! I know….yadda yadda yadda, it could be a lot worse! Definitely I know that, and am profoundly grateful for a happy-and-healthy-during-the-day Evan (seriously, he’s like Jekyll-Hyde Junior)! Anyway, the docs all convinced us to go ahead and get ear tubes now since he’s had such trouble over the summer, and it’s only going to get worse when fall rolls around. Also b/c we’ll be flying to California soon. The actual colds that caused the ear infections haven’t been too bad, up until this monster set up camp. Poor Evan has spent the last three nights yelling for 2-3 hours at a time (all while being walked/rocked etc.) until finally, he is so exhausted he goes back to sleep and sleeps through his snorting and coughing. He is really miserable The worst problem seems to be a cough which he didn’t have the other times he’s been sick. Now I think I have a very small taste of what it must be like to have a colicky baby and boy those parents have it so rough…they should all win medals for survival and patience!
We went to the doctor hoping for a prescription since the nurse said if it was keeping him awake, then we should come in. I thought that meant “yes, we can help you.” Umm, no. More like a well spent $25 copay having the doctor say, “yep it’s a cold alright…have fun.” Great. Spanks a lot. Luckily, going to the doc wasn’t a total loss. We did find out that two days after Evan got his tubes in, his double ear infection is finito! So yay for that or we’d really be in trouble right now.
So yes its true…all the research I did online looking for cold remedies for babies and finding that there are none (now) was confirmed by the pediatrician who said he didn’t have any prescription remedies either. How abSURD is it, that the part of our population that has the most trouble with colds has no medical relief whatsoever?! Apparently that is thanks to a few parents who misused what drugs were out there so none of us can use them (at least that’s one thing I read, the other is that the drugs simply don’t work on infants – but I think that is what they decided to tell people to keep them from trying it). Wonderful.
Anyway, I asked for help from friends on facebook and got the usual suggestions, all of which were helpful (thanks for that) and mostly already tried. My sister and sis-n-law both said we should get a prescription. So is my doc just conservative or what? Anyone else got help from their pedi’s recently for a cold? Just wondering if there really is stuff out there, but he just wants us to suffer for some odd reason? All I know is that when I have a cold, all I want to do is sleep and take medicine. If there wasn’t any medicine, and I couldn’t sleep, I’d be screaming in someone’s ear too.
We arrived at the hospital at 6am and got checked on without any issues. Evan was up at 4am this morning but is taking a nap now. Won’t be long until we get started. Will update soon.
7:40am
Evan is in the operating room now. Everyone has been really friendly and very reassuring about our MH concerns. In fact, Evan was scheduled as the first procedure of the day so all the machines were clean and free of any possibly problem drugs for MH.
8:50am
Evan’s procedure was successful and without any complications. It only took about 15 minutes with another 5 minutes or so for observation. He returned about 7:50am. Dr. Sutton said Evan had another double ear infection and he drained all the fluid out before putting the tubes in. I really hope the tubes work so he doesn’t get infections nearly as often (4 in 3 months). Evan has been doing great through the entire process. He is trying to sleep between temp and bp checks.
Jess and Evan waiting in the pre-op room.
