Mommy of Lauren and Jamie

haven't posted in almost two years, but had to today as I remember it was 10 years ago that I started this LJ thing. Woke up the next morning to find the world had changed.

(posted by husband Steve)

Our day was supposed to start at 5 AM when our alarm would go off. It actually started at 5:25 when Chrissie woke me up. Apparently I was stupid and set the alarm to go off at 5 PM. Good thing she was on the ball.

We showered in a big rush and got out the door at 6 AM to head for the hospital. Chrissie was admitted into a semi-private room before being sent to Labour & Delivery. We waited there for a while, and then they prepped Chrissie for her C-section and I got into scrubs. They took her into the O.R. to put the spinal block in while I waited impatiently in the hall. They finally let me in at 8:45. Keep in mind that the surgery was scheduled to start at 8:30... I was worried they had forgotten about me.



Chrissie was spread out on the table and they were swabbing her belly with that yellow-brown antiseptic gunk. I settled in by her left arm and things got under way. They put the curtain up so I couldn't see anything (thank you) and we had a good chat with the anesthesiologist. It turns out Chrissie knew him from her store and his wife is a teacher at Nick's school. Small world.

Finally it was time to get the baby out. I looked over the curtain and saw the baby's head - a glimpse of dark hair. Then they hoisted it out and I saw we had a baby boy! (at 9:06) He was fairly purple then and covered in white gunk, of course. The nurses held him up for us to see, then whisked him over to the side to clean him off a bit and wrap him up.


Then I got to hold him! He seemed pretty hefty for a newborn, especially one eight days before his due date.


My boy and I were taken out of the room while Mommy was stitched back up. We went down to the nursery for him to get weighed. He stretched out on the scale and weighed in at 9 lbs 9 ounces! No wonder he felt so heavy.


The nurse was concerned about his breathing. He seemed to be struggling a bit and she decided it would be better to send him to the neo-natal unit for observation. I went with him and they put him in an "isolette", one of those little incubator-dealies. They fed a bit of oxygen in and soon he started to look better. I decided I really should tell our parents that they had a grandson.


I found my parents and told them the story, crying a bit while I talked about the need for oxygen. Chrissie's parents Wayne and Sandra showed up with Lauren and we brought them up to date as well. I went to talk to Chrissie in the recovery room and let her know what was going on. Apparently the nurses had told her some of this already. We called a few people to let them know about the new baby and I did a bit of shuttling between the parents, Chrissie and my new son.

Once Chrissie was done in the recovery room, we went to our room. Chrissie was a little ill, unfortunately. After staying with her for a bit, I went to the neo-natal unit to visit our son. He was doing pretty well and they expected to transfer him to the regular nursery by noon or so. Our parents decided to come back in a while, and I went to have a quick snack while Chrissie slept. Our son came to visit us a few times in our room, in between shots and checkups.


We had a few visitors... my parents and Chrissie's parents. Chrissie's parents brought Nick after he was done school.






We still hadn't given him his name yet. We were torn between two names and flip-flopped between them a few times. By 3 PM or so he told us which he preferred. World, meet James Russell Boyko (Jamie), age 7 hours.

So, my big plan was to start For Real after we got back from Montreal.

On Tuesday, we went to Walmart and bought a seat to go on the big toilet (in addition to the potty we already have - one for upstairs, one for down), those Feel N Learn Pampers dealies, and about 15 more pairs of panties, so I don't have to do laundry every damn day.

I also bought M&M's and balloons for bribes.

Somewhere along the way, Lauren became irrationally afraid of the potty. Won't sit on it. AT ALL. So yesterday, we put her in panties for a bit, then took her into the bathroom trying to convince her to just SIT on the potty. Sit on the potty and you can have a balloon. PEE on the potty and you can have chocolates.

Fifteen minutes of this and we get about 1.2 seconds of sitting on the potty.

Fine, she gets a balloon. We put her panties back on and blow up her balloon. Steve is BBQing supper, so Lauren takes her balloon outside.

and as she goes to pick it up the thing
POPS

in her face, scaring the bejeezus out of her.

So now she's irrationally afraid of the potty AND balloons.

Today, after our outing to the paddling pool, we tried again. I put her in panties and tried to get her to sit on the potty. No way. Eventually she ended up peeing on the floor, which really upset her. I took her upstairs and tried to put her on the seat over the big toilet. I have never seen someone arch their back so much to avoid sitting.

As I was putting her diaper on she's crying and says, "I no like panties. I no like balloons"

So I'm thinking that it's going to be an exercise in frustration at this point. She's obviously not ready.

But in other news, she got her night-time milk in a sippy cup tonight with no squawking. By tomorrow all the bottles will be GONE and if she wants her milk, it will be in a sippy cup.

Baby steps, right? :)

And in still other news, excepting about 3 pages from towards the beginning, Lauren's First Year scrapbook is done. And she's thisclose to being 2 1/2. :)

See, here's why I don't like working til midnight. 2:49 and I'm still awake.

I didn't even get home til after 1am because we're having some sort of Planned Power Outage over night to fix the main breaker to the mall, so we had to shut everything REALLY down, and apparently there were issues that took nearly an hour.

~*~

Somebody needs to tell my boss that 18 year old girls do not make very good Supervisors. I mean like, they totally don't, or whatever, blah blah blah. No, I don't want a ride home at like 12:30am, I'm like, 18 and everything, i mean, like, what do you think would happen to me? Whatever. No, i'm NOT getting in your car, i'm WALKING!

~*~

We went to visit my M-I-L's 11 baby kitties today. Lauren is getting very good about picking them up. She says over and over "pick up with two hands round the tummy!" She brings me one, then goes to get one for Grammie, and by that time, mine has gone, so she goes and gets me another one, and by that time, Grammie's is gone... :) It's cute to watch.

~*~

When we were in Montreal we went to Ikea. For 4 hours. And $200. Imagine the damage I could do if it wasn't 9 hours away!

~*~

We also found a Krispy Kreme. I pledge allegiance to my Tim Horton's coffee (couldn't bring myself to try the KK!) but I could be persuaded to eat one of those hot doughnuts every day for the rest of my life. Might be a good thing it's 9 hours away... :)

~*~

Note to Customers: If you get a prescription from your doctor on June 30, why not bring it to the drug store on that day? Why wait until the night before your appointment? That way we can do something about the fact that we can't get the particular vaccine your doctor wrote for. Instead, now your doctor is on vacation for a week, so we can't talk to her about why she wrote for NeisVac C meningitis vaccine instead of Menjugate. Maybe she doesn't care which one you get, maybe she does. I'm not about to guess, so you're just going to have to wait til we can talk to her.

~*~

Note to drunk/high guy who was in the store at 11:45pm: NO we WILL NOT carry you out to your van.

(yes, he asked the cosmetician)

~*~

Mmmm... Zesty Cheese Doritos...

~*~

From ginsu's quiz, I am Adam R. So you know.

Of course, in looking for the quiz, I see that it's gone from Wes' journal. Believe me, it was damn funny

~*~

Okay, that's enough. The child will be up in no less than 6 hours. (yes, she does sleep past 9 most days - jealous?)
I must try to sleep.

Yeah, i did it.

I now spend far to much time screwing around with my colour scheme. Icons are my next task.

Then - Polls. :)

I'm not used to working 4 days in a row. Sucks.

Tonight was busy because the power was off from 8:30 til about 3:30. No computers to get any labels ready.

By the time I got there at 6, we had a line up of, oh, about 150 Rx that needed to be processed thru the computer, filled and checked. On top of all the people who kept coming in and calling and everything.

We did pretty good. Didn't get it all done, but made a huge dent in it.

And now I'm officially on holidays. Not back to work til July 11. Woo.

Tomorrow is Mall Day. Must get a few last minute things for the big trip to Montreal. Then we're going to visit Crazy Cat Lady. I mean my mother in law.

She has been fostering kitties for the SPCA. She gets them for 10 days or so, just to keep them socialized til they're ready to be adopted. I think the most she had before was a mommy with 4 kittens. Today, she (crazily) agreed to look after 2 mommies and 11 four week old kittens for a month. Steve and the kids went to see them tonight, but alas, I was at work and couldn't go.

and now, i must sleep.

I am getting more and more tempted to get a paid account. Shut up Steve, I am.

I haven't done it yet, but I want to.

Besides the multitude of icons and the ability to make polls, why would i do this??

So, i've been online in one form or another for a decade. In that time I've met quite a few people from all over the world. First they were those online freaks, then they were online friends, then they were just friends. One of them even became my husband. Most of you know what I mean. Even if I haven't met a lot of you, or seen you since 1996, I still talk about my friend Tracey in Colorado or my friend Stella in Texas or my friend Lisa and her Avon Walks or whatever.

This LJ thing has brought a few different people into my life. Who knew there were cool online people that were NITZ? A few i just picked up because i saw them commenting in a bunch of my friends' journals. A few were pointed out to me by my friend Shanna in Georgia as someone who might be interesting to read.

So anyway, there was this one person I picked up a while back. sunniedaze. She was a young woman - 25 or something. married. and very sick with Cystic Fibrosis. She'd had 2 transplants and was hoping for a third and wasn't really doing all that well. I last saw her post in May, talking about how tired and weak she was feeling. I thought nothing of it, really.

But then last night I got curious and tried to find out how she was. Turns out she passed away on May6.

And it just makes me sad because I didn't know.

She's the third online Friend i've lost in this decade. I spent hours last night trying to find out more or to find an online obituary. That took a while because I didn't even know her last name.

I'm not really sure what my point is here - just that it's hard to explain to a lot of people why I'm sad about the death of someone I never met, never really had any personal contact with aside from a few LJ comment exchanges. And i can't bear to remove her or roghawk from my friends list. That would be even sadder.

For those of you not paying close attention, (and really, why would you?) we are trying to get Lauren to eat vegetables. She will eat frozen peas and corn and that is all. So, we're trying to broaden her horizons. Last night it was some sort of 'baby vegetables' mix by Green Giant.

It did not go well. So 'not well', that I, in extreme frustration, left the table and let Steve deal with her. The deal is, no vegetables, no freezies. Last night, there were no freezies.

Tonight, in a much better frame of mind, it was my turn to get her to eat. Her options? ONE cooked (frozen) carrot, or ONE slice of cucumber with dip, or no freezies.

There were no freezies. After 20-25 minutes of cajoling and threatening and trying to trick her into opening her mouth so i could jam it in, the closest I got was her licking the dip off the cucumber.

She's almost 2 1/2 and she has a temper/stubborn streak to go with her red hair.

But I will prevail. I don't know how long it will take, but I will prevail.

but say a little prayer for me when it comes time to a) potty train and 2) take her milk bottles away.

Tonight, my sweet Lauren girl, of her own volition, helped us clean up the supper table.

Yes, she only put the pot holder back in the drawer, but I still think that's impressive for a 2 year old! :)