Videos - Uh Oh and Walking

Couple of videos for your vieiwng pleasure. First one is Uh Oh and second is a little bit of walking. As usual, please excuse my annoying mommy voice.

Everything That's Old Is New Again

When M was a little tiny baby I bought him a great floor gym at IKEA. 

Here he is playing with it. 

(You can thank me for the gratuitous chunky thigh shot later.)

When he started sitting up and really didn't play with it anymore, I let a friend borrow it for her son who is a couple of months younger than M. 

She recently returned it and M has really been loving playing with it.  One reason I bought it is that I thought that it would be a good transitional toy, since there are things on top and on the sides that could be played with once babe started standing up.  He's done all of those things, but has also used it as a push toy, and likes to fling it over to hear the big crash it makes.  That is usually when I take it away from him.  Hopefully we can keep it in one piece for the next Maedel baby to play with, but if Mitchell has his way it may not make it that long!

The open mouth "I'm Excited" face

I stared this post a few weeks ago and then forgot about it.  I finally bought the bullet and went out and got him a walking toy this past weekend.  I put it together Saturday and while he enjoys it, he still seems to prefer this one!

Pig Pen

Have you met our son, Pig Pen?

Last Thursday when I picked M up from school, I sent John the following text:

"M is quite possibly the filthiest he's ever been this afternoon" and John of course, responded with a request for me to take some pictures (he had a ball game so M was going to be long clean and asleep by the time he got home).

So here are some of those pictures:

He's so dirty, he looks like he has a 5 o'clock shadow!

Not pictured here: filthy hands, arms, legs and dirt from playing outside in his neck!

For good measure, he also smeared hummus in his hair at dinner time.

Needless to say, the bath water that evening left a ring around the tub!

Uh-Oh

Uh-Oh is Mitchell's new favorite "word".  He just jabbers it over and over and over.  He says it when he is going to do something he knows he's not supposed to, but also just in general, so I don't know that he's quite figured out the context yet.  Sometimes he gets out of order and says "Oh Uh", which is also pretty cute.

Dixie is the other thing he can say pretty well.  It's not that distinct, but you can definitely make it out that it's what he's saying.  A friend was over at the house Sunday and Mitchell clearly said it and even she was able to know that's what he was trying to say.  It's probably becuase I yell/say her name at least 100 times a day.  It's no wonder that the dog's name would be one of his first words.  It's also very cute - if you ask him "Where's Dixie?", he'll start looking around until he finds her.  Adorable.

I need to try to get video of both of these things...but that's not really what this post is about.  Could  have fooled, ya, huh?

**********************

My "Uh Oh" moment came yesterday when I had a call from daycare "suggesting" that I come pick Mitchell up and take him to the doctor.  They told me he woke up from his nap with his eyes all crusted over and very puffy.  I was honestly really put out because I'm so slammed at work right now and I asked them if I needed to come get him or they just wanted me to be aware of the situation.  They quickly clarified that I needed to come get him.

When I got there, I saw why they wanted me to get him out of there:

And they told me that this was way better than it was when he first woke up.  They were clearly afraid it was pinkeye, and I cannot say I blame them.  The photo doesn't really do it justice, and this was after we'd left the doctor's office and were back at my office.  I had tried to wipe him up a little bit, but wasn't going to be able to get him really clean without a good wet washcloth.

Anyway, according to the doctor, his ear that was infected last week is still very angry looking, so she's already had the referral nurse call to schedule us an appointment with an ENT.  Looks like we may be getting tubes here pretty soon.  If it gets him some relief, I am all for it.  As I was pouring out what was left of the previous antibiotic and readying his dose of the new one we're supposed to start (hoping the 3rd time is a charm), I gave thanks for generics.  We have poured out a lot of medicine lately. :(

Mama On The Go - Not a Happy Ending

I had to go out of town for work earlier in the week.  It was much harder on me to be away from the boy this time around than the last one, but that's probably got mostly to do with the business vs. pleasure factor!

John expressed the desire to keep Mitchell by himself while I was gone to my conference, and after much preparation on my part, I flew off to Chicago for a few days of adult interaction, cocktail parties, sleep, and no laundry/washing/cooking/cleaning.  It was sort of heavenly, except for the work part.  The one glitch while I was there came when I couldn't check into my room until about 5:00 p.m. (no clean rooms until then) and had to lock myself in a public bathroom to pump.  Standing up.  Oy.

John had a much rougher time - Mitchell ended up running a fever at school on Monday, which meant he had to be picked up and held out of school for at least Tuesday, or until his fever broke.  The pediatrician diagnosed another ear infection and prescribed another round of antibiotics (we weren't even done with the previous round and I think that puts the count up to 5 now, so clearly we've got an ENT visit in our future, but I'll leave that for another post).  John handled it all like a champ and his mom was so sweet to come down and watch Mitchell on Tuesday so that John could get some work done.  He did a fabulous job and while he has always appreciated what I do as a mother, I think this time alone with the babe has given him a newfound respect for all the days and nights I fly solo when he's working.  I was really proud of him, and I think he and Mitchell had some great bonding time too.

*****************************
Fast forward to when it was time for us to board our flight to return, and to make a long story short, we missed our flight due to gate change issues and by the time we found out about it, our seats had been given away.  Let me just insert here that we'd been checked in for over 2 hours and at the gate that was printed on our boarding passes for over an hour.  However, sometime during that period the gate changed, and the ONLY annoucement that was made at our "original" gate was to annouce that it was final boarding call at the other gate, and by the time we got there we were not allowed on the flight.  My boss and I both had words with the gate agent, but after much wrangling it was apparent to us that we weren't getting to Chattanoga by plane that evening.

We flew into an airport about 2 hours away and rented a car to come home.  Once we got to the airport, I went in to return the rental car and collect my bags, only to find the airline counter all locked up for the night (the perils of living in a city with only a teeny tiny airport).

**Warning:  This section of the post may not be for everyone's taste.**
  It would have been no big deal, except for the roughly 60 ounces of breastmilk that I had stored safely in my bag.  I had done extensive research on whether to check or to carry on, and after much deliberation on my part, I decided to check.  I had a fridge in my hotel room, so I kept all my milk in the fridge until the very last minute, and then wrapped it very well and then packed a cooler with gel packs and put it in my suitcase, along with my pump.  All told, had everything gone as planned, the milk would have been out of the fridge for no longer than 6 hours and it was going to be chilled that entire time.

I should have known not to expect for everything to go smoothly.  As it was, I had to retrive my bag the next day and throw all of that milk that I'd worked so hard to keep away.  But not before taking a picture.  I know, I know...stupid to torture myself in that way, but I just couldn't help myself:

And to add insult to injury, my boy was already alseep when I got home.  Needless to say, I was really eager for him to wake up the next morning.  Someone remind me not to go anywhere again for a while!