So much to say

Though I have been “on vacation” since July 20th, I’ve also been without internet most of that time, first due to home improvement and second due to changing providers. So I’ve not been able to blog updates on several important events. So I guess I’ll try and sum things up.

In the land of home improvement, much was accomplished. On the 20th we painted the living room, dining room, kitchen and hallways. On the 21st John, Stan and Jerry laid the “wood” laminate flooring the same areas. We have not yet moved all of the furniture back in, but most of it is in place. We still need to paint the new trim and baseboards and nail them up, but there just wasn’t time.

My grandmother was in ICU all of last week. She coded twice and the decision was made that if she coded again, they were going to let her go. (She has been fighting off lung cancer for 3 years now.) So Tuesday I spent the wee small hours of the morning at the hospital with John keeping Brooklynn in the lobby since I knew she’d want to eat around 3:30am. I spent time visiting her most every afternoon too. Thankfully, she has stabilized, but she is still in ICU.

Brooklynn cut two teeth last week. Her upper left canine came through on Wednesday and her lower right center tooth came through on Thursday. Incidentally, I also cut an upper canine tooth first, though bottom center teeth are most common. My mom said I actually had both of my upper canines in before any other teeth, so it was like I had fangs. Brooklynn has been a bit cranky and not sleeping as well as a result, but really she has done well. We have been in a major state of upheaval and so I am surprised she has weathered these changes as well as she has. She also made it to a sitting position from laying on her tummy all by herself on Saturday. John also said he saw her crawl on hands and knees, but I have not seen it yet. She has been army crawling for weeks and has been using one knee most of the time, but not yet used both. I am constantly amazed with how fast she changes and how quickly she learns new things.

We took our first real road-trip over the past weekend too. We were supposed to help our good friends move, and since my grandmother was doing better, we decided to go ahead and go. We drove down to Nashville on Friday, helped load up Saturday and drove with them to Louisville KY and helped unload the trucks on Sunday. Brooklynn slept much of the travel time, which was great since otherwise, naps were spotty at best. I didn’t help as much as I would have liked to since Brooklynn needed my attention more than usual due to teething and constipation. It was nice to see them and help out some though.

Brooklynn’s second bout of constipation cleared out at about 4:00 am on Saturday morning. She screamed for about 15 minutes this time, so less than last time, and there are no visible signs of damage. She then went about 4 other times that day. I have got to figure out what is blocking her up and how to stop it. She did have about 4 servings of baby food apples in the week leading up to this episode, but no other “constipating” foods. I have no other ideas….

I’m at work today and wishing I weren’t. I will be cutting back to pumping 3 times daily instead of 4. We’ll see how that goes for now and plan to cut back to twice by mid-September. I just can’t keep up this pace any longer. I’ll use my frozen milk to make up the difference lost for now. When we are through with the freezer stocks, she’ll either have to eat more food to make up for the missing calories, or take formula from a sippy cup.