Christmas and New Year's

Christmas

One month old

She got pretty skinny for a while

December was a crazy month for us. We took Mia home from the hospital after a day. We struggled with nursing for weeks. She lost a whole pound and we worked hard for almost three weeks to gain it back. She’s a gorgeous little chunk now, though, with beautiful squishy cheeks and fat rolls on her legs.

Making a gingerbread train. Notice Scout in the bjorn.

For the most part, she’s been a pretty agreeable little peach from the beginning, aside from the nursing issues. For the first month, all she wanted to do was eat and sleep. Seriously. When she wasn’t sleeping, she wanted to eat. All the time. When I say “all the time,” I mean like 10 hours a day. I’ve discovered there aren't very many things I can’t do while nursing. Thankfully she was skilled enough (or desperate enough) to nurse in the Baby Bjorn while I did pretty much everything.

I’ve also discovered that having two kids doesn’t double the work. It at least squares the work. Especially when one of those kids is Josh. I love that boy with all my heart, but he sure is a unique little creature and it takes no small amount of work to keep his life moving along smoothly.

Jed and Crystal have been a great help and have taken Josh a few times when I needed a hand.  We went with them to the ice slides they make every year in North Pole while YaYa was still here.

We celebrated our 7th anniversary pretty quietly with Pizza Hut. Although not the best pizza available, Pizza Hut holds a special place in our hearts as one of the only American foods we could obtain in China. It brought back some pretty awesome memories.

Mario is actually asleep here.

Christmas came and went almost as quietly as our anniversary. We kept our tradition of having Chinese food on Christmas Eve and enjoyed some fantastic wonton soup and one of our favorite Chinese staples, eggs and tomatoes. 

Wonton soup

 We also had our second annual Christmas Camping (sleeping under the Christmas tree). We actually got to do the Santa thing and set up Josh’s presents the night before. Mario constructed an awesome marble run from Grandma Leslie and Papa that Josh really enjoyed on Christmas morning. 

We spent a fun evening with Jed, Crystal & Co. for Christmas dinner. They put me in charge of desserts. We had crème brulee, homemade chocolate cream pie, homemade truffles, and a citrus custard tart. You could tell it was a Foutz affair because there was at least as much dessert as there was dinner.

The only reason we knew the New Year was being celebrated somewhere was because of the fireworks outside our windows. I think we passed out from sheer exhaustion long before midnight.

Happy holidays to us, I guess!



The dress in the pictures below and to the right (and other photos scattered through the blog) is one of a few that my great-grandmother Josephina made for me when I was born.  My mom was thoughtful enough to keep those beautiful dresses for when I had my own daughter, as well as some lovely handmade quilts from the same great-grandmother (Scout is sitting on one in this very picture).  They're in great shape and I hope I can keep them safe to give to Mia when she has her own daughter.  Thanks, Mom!

Scout's big entrance!

We sent off the end of Josh’s era as an only child with a Nanooks hockey game. I thought he might be scared by the noise and craziness, but he actually loved it. He totally got into the crowd mentality and did everything the people around us were doing.

My mom arrived the next day. Since she only had 10 days to spend with us, we decided to schedule an elective induction for Sunday, December 4th. I wanted Josh to be able to have as much adjustment time with YaYa as possible after the baby arrived, and that baby didn’t seem to be in any rush to vacate her home. We called that morning, as instructed, and were told that a few women had gone into labor overnight and there wasn’t any room for us. We were to call back in two hours, at which time they fully expected we would be able to come in. Two hours later, more women had come and we were to call back two hours later. This went on all day, every two hours being told to call back, until about 7 pm when they said we could come in. We dropped Josh off at Jed and Crystal’s and went to the hospital. After taking about an hour to get me checked in, changed, and hooked up to monitors, they said they just didn’t have room due to new arrivals during the time it took us to get there, and I needed to go home. They scheduled us again for the next day, Monday, and sent us away.

Monday morning came and we called the now-familiar front desk at the maternity ward to see if they had room. And they didn’t. I tell you, by this time I was depressed and angry and so uncomfortable I just couldn’t stand it anymore. And I wasn’t even excited about having a baby because of all the dashed hopes of weeks of never-ending contractions capped off by being sent home from the hospital once again. But I dutifully called every few hours all day until, miracle of miracles, at 4pm they told us to come on over because they had room for us! We left Josh with Jed and Crystal and headed off to have a baby.

They hooked me up to all the various monitors and started Pitocin around 6pm. Soon I was having fairly mild, regular contractions. Around 9pm my doctor came in and said since not much was happening she recommended I take an Ambien and sleep while I could and that she would come back in the morning and get things started again. We sent YaYa home to get some sleep. Apparently said Ambien didn’t agree much with our little baby, because as soon as I took it my contractions started getting serious. I really wanted to walk around and try using the hot tub this time, but the fetal monitors (which were supposed to allow me to roam the entire hospital floor and still record what they needed) stopped working every time I tried to get up and walk around. My water broke around 11pm and then ensued a couple hours of pain. By 1am I asked for an epidural and we called YaYa to come back since things were moving right along. By the time she arrived, I was settling in to the heavenly bliss of a well-done epidural. Around 3am something started to feel different and they called the doctor in. After a pretty short 5 minutes of pushing, our little girl finally arrived! She was 8 lbs 1oz and 20.5 inches long.

She was pretty calm from the beginning, and nameless for a whole day. We finally settled on Amelia, Mia for short. Amelia actually wasn't on any of our original name lists, but a few weeks before she was born, I was relaxing during Josh's nap one day and thought, “Hmm, Amelia is a good name. I'll mention it to Mario when he gets home.” Our other name contenders were Reese, Annabelle, Reagan, and Jenna, but Mia won out in the end.

My sweet little munchkins

Sleeping with YaYa

My great grandmother made this dress for me when I was born

Thankful for Northern Lights!

Fun with long exposures and glow sticks at the cabin

We've had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend and had the chance to take some pictures that really must be posted.  

The extent of our Thanksgiving "activities"

We had plans to have some friends over for dinner on Thanksgiving, but since I've been having lots of contractions, which are exacerbated when I stand up for a while, we decided to cancel and just have a quiet holiday by ourselves.  This picture pretty much sums up our day.

 

We also decided to take advantage of our last weekend sans newborn to get out.  We found a nice little cabin available not too far from home at Quartz Lake.  It's the first time we've been “camping” since Josh's leg has recovered and he really enjoyed poking into all the corners of the cabin and running around like crazy.  He wasn't thrilled about the -20 temperatures during our walk on the frozen lake, but we busted out the glow sticks when we got back and had ourselves a party!  It was a delightful evening and I'm glad we went even though I was close to throwing up a fair amount of the time and was having contractions semi-regularly.  May I also mention that it seriously SUCKS to be a girl while camping in -20 temps?  Especially since this girl is 39 weeks pregnant and had to pee more times than she'd care to remember in the middle of the night!  Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Looks like a crazy neon reindeer or something, but it's actually just Josh + glow sticks + 15 second exposure.

The up side of being awake and venturing outside frequently in the middle of the night in Alaska on a clear night is I was able to catch a decent showing of the northern lights, and with enough time to actually set up the camera and get some fun pictures!  It was quite a memorable experience to watch the green waves dance across the sky by myself at 4am.  It was, as previously mentioned, -20 something and I was in my pajamas, so the parking lot in the foreground is unfortunate, but I was unwilling to carry my camera out onto the lake at that particular point in time.  Maybe next time I'll make the effort to heat the car and drive out to a better vista.  I was also worried the lights would disappear before I could get out there and get set up since last time we saw them they went away too quickly to photograph.  That was probably the right decision this time as they only lasted about 20 minutes.  I waited another hour for them to come back, but that was all I got.  

Driving on the lake

The next morning we explored the frozen lake from the comfort of our heated car instead of on foot.  

Mario also got to try out Jed's new cross country skis for a little while.

On our way home, we noticed some strange rainbows on the horizon and got some fun pictures.  I'm no expert (and if you know what these are, I'd love to know!), but it seemed like they were part of a halo around the sun that was visible as a rainbow when it hit the mist near the ground.  By the way, these pictures were taken at 12:30pm, so the sun is at its peak here.  It wasn't actually this dark, though - that's due to the camera settings I was using to bring out the rainbows more.

A close-up of the "rainbow"

A Day in the Life of Joshua

I know I'm more in love with my son than any of you, and these “Day in the Life” blogs may not be interesting to anyone except me, but I'm going to keep writing them anyway!  I love looking back at his little quirks, especially because his obsessions change so quickly.  He's a very intense, very unique little man and I'm lucky to be his mom. 

Our day usually starts around 6:30 when, as far as I can tell, he gets out of his toddler bed, sits in his room, and asks for one or both of us.  He hasn't tried to leave his room by himself yet, and I'm kind of dreading the day he realizes he's fully capable of walking over to the door and letting himself out anytime he feels like it.  We snuggle on the couch for a few minutes while he wakes up and then the fun begins!

Making french toast

Most days, the first thing he asks for is milk, and a close second is “Shark book?” (sounds like shaa boo or boo shaaa?  He hasn't quite gotten the syntax yet).  This boy LOVES sharks.  We regularly clean out the shark reference section at the library to satisfy his obsession.  After that, we usually move on to breakfast, which he prefers consist of pancakes or muffins (cake, as I call them), or a new favorite – cinnamon toast.  He recently discovered cinnamon sugar and nutella as condiment options, both of which he thoroughly enjoys.  He gets a kick out of helping me make the cinnamon toast (bread with butter and cinnamon sugar put under the broiler until the sugar melts), especially because he gets to eat the leftover cinnamon sugar while the bread is toasting.  He also loves to use the microwave.  I make big batches of pancakes when I have an appropriate vegetable laying around that would be good in pancakes, like squash or carrots or something, and then keep them in the freezer.  Josh loves to be in charge of opening and closing the microwave door and pushing all the buttons we need.  One morning he ate 6 pancakes (silver-dollar-sized, but still!), and I'm pretty sure he kept going just because he wanted to keep nuking them!

Since most child-centered businesses don't open until 10, we usually have a whole chunk of time to enjoy at home in the morning.  Josh splits his time fairly evenly between finger painting and playing with homemade playdough.  His finger painting pretty much consists of him choosing a color and telling me where on the paper he would like it.  I pour a dollop down and he smears it around.  The three colors he seems to request most are purple, brown, and blue.  Maybe someday we'll get to the point where he actually wants to paint things instead of just make streaks of color.  His most favorite thing to do with the playdough is make sculptures with the pieces from a Mr. Potatohead set, especially the eyes.   

Seriously?  The kid won't eat a KitKat but he'll eat salt playdough!

My little Picasso

He asked to go out - it was about -20

When we lived in Boston, we played outside every day, snow, rain or shine, and Josh loved it.  Here, though, he's not so excited to go out.  He LOVED playing in the snow here when it was still warm enough and humid enough that we could make snowballs.  Since the cold has really set in (it was -27 this morning), the snow is too dry to pack and he is no longer interested enough to endure the uncomfortable clothes and extensive preparation time, not to mention the cold.  Although he doesn't particularly want to play in the snow, he does enjoy going for walks as long as he's bundled up in his stroller. 

Because he doesn't usually want to play outside, we have found some fun things to do around town.  The public library here has a wonderful children's room with a small aquarium, a whole closet full of puzzles (a HUGE favorite – Josh will play with “puppies” for as long as I'll let him), a Lego table, and computers with kids' games.  We spend at least one morning a week at our local PetCo wandering around the aquarium section watching the fish swim.  Barnes and Noble is also one of our regular spots, not only because of the books but they also have a pretty cool train table in the kid area. 

When we're not finger painting or making sculptures with playdough, Josh has also become quite an accomplished train track-builder.  He doesn't usually drive a train on his creations, he just builds for the sake of building.  He also loves to read his books, preferably without me present.  He doesn't like me to read to him or with him, but he’ll easily spend 20 minutes sitting on the floor looking at his books by himself. 

Opening the cupboards

Making no-bake cookies, which he wouldn't eat when finished

In an effort to get him more interested in food, Josh and I cook together often.  His favorite part is to pour ingredients into the mixing bowl.  He is terrified of all of my appliances, though, so when mixing time comes around (unless it’s something we can mix with a spoon, which he enjoys) he makes himself scarce.  For some reason, his food aversions don’t always extend to food that we’re preparing.  If it’s something we’re in the middle of making, he’ll put almost anything in his mouth, including homemade playdough consisting of cornstarch, baking soda, and water!  As soon as it’s finished and an official food and no longer “dough” (which he calls anything we make together), he won’t touch it anymore.  Although getting sticky doesn’t seem to bother him while we’re cooking, when he’s done he must wash his hands immediately.  Usually when he’s done helping me, and often throughout the day, he likes to go through the kitchen and open every drawer and cupboard he can reach and then close them all. 

Making cinnamon rolls

He was a great helper until we got out the brown sugar - then he just ate sugar the rest of the time!

Josh’s current favorite movies are Toy Story, Madgascar, and most recently Happy Feet.  He doesn’t get to watch movies very often, but he asks all the time.  He knows it’s kind of a special thing, so when he’s going to ask, he puts on his very best little smile, clasps his hands, and asks “Woody?” or “Fish Nemo?” or just “Watch?  Please?”  It gets hard to say no sometimes because he asks so very adorably, and because I know I’ll get to hear his quite rare little giggle while he’s watching.  His favorite part of Toy Story, strangely, is when Buzz and Woody argue.  It makes him crack right up and it’s one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen.  He also loves, of course, when the shark pops out of the toy box with Woody’s hat on and says “Hi, I’m Woody!  Howdy howdy howdy howdy.”  He has also recently become fascinated with seeing pictures of himself.  Anytime I get out the laptop when he’s awake, he comes running over and asks to see pictures of “Josh?”  Until last week, anytime he saw the computer he asked to see “shark movie,” by which he means National Geographic videos of sharks on YouTube.  When he’s having a particularly hard day or there’s something I absolutely need to get done while he’s awake, watching shark videos on YouTube will keep him occupied indefinitely.  I find it interesting that although watching Marlin and Dory argue on Finding Nemo scares him, watching videos of real sharks attacking things doesn’t faze him in the least.

When Mario gets home from work shortly after 5, we eat dinner.  This is a very fluid concept for Josh and we’re still working on finding a good system to help him expand his extremely limited food repertoire.  

Drawing - another favorite.  It's actually not unusual for him to wear the Mr. Potatohead glasses for a while.  Funny kid!

In the evening, sometimes Josh and I bake something, or we’ll resort to finger painting or playdough for a while, but one of our favorite activities is to play with glow sticks.  Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of our glow stick parties, but we all have a great time playing with the lights off.  We also play with flash lights and get out all of his toys that have lights.  Sometimes we even play with glow sticks on weekend mornings since the sun doesn’t come up until well after 9am these days.  We’ve also had glow stick baths, which is a lot of fun too. 

After we’ve done all we can to wear the little guy out, we tuck him into bed and hope we don’t see him until the next morning.  We’ve had a lot of sleeping issues lately where he’ll wake up anytime between midnight and 2 am and not go back to sleep for 3-5 hours.  He usually just lies in his bed and cries for us every 15-20 minutes.  I would actually prefer it if he would just yell and wear himself out so he could go back to sleep, but it seems he’s just genuinely not tired.  And the times that we have let him “cry it out” after he’s been asking for us for an hour or so, he’s cried so hard he throws up.  We’ve started giving him a bedtime snack and fortified milk right before bed thinking that maybe he was waking up because he was hungry, but even with a good dinner and his milk he has still been up all night a few times.  Hopefully we can get this figured out by the time this baby gets here, because I don’t think any of us will survive more than a couple nights like that!  One particular morning after he woke up at 2 am and never went back to sleep, he was so tired by 9 am that he fell stone cold asleep in the middle of getting his diaper changed.

Speaking of a baby arriving, I’ve been having contractions . . . lots and lots of contractions.  Last weekend I had regular ones between 5 and 15 minutes apart for eight hours, and the same but for less time a couple nights before and since then.  It’s a little nerve-wracking to wonder pretty much every night if I’m actually going in to labor, but it’s also nice that these seem to be just false labor since Mom doesn’t get here for a week and a half and this little girl needs to hold her little horses until then!  I finally got around to taking a belly picture – this is at 38 weeks.  It’s so different than with the first one.  With Josh, we had everything we needed weeks in advance and took belly pictures every month, and then I was induced a week after his due date.  This time, I feel like we’re not ready for her at all and she may come any day!  I guess that’s why I’ve been trying to get all these posts done, because I feel like if I don’t do it now it will get lost in the mayhem of a new baby and I’ll never get around to it. 

Hopefully the next blog will be about our new arrival!