Ysa's blog

Harvey at 16 Months

I was going to try and fill in all the blanks for the months I haven't posted here about Harvey, but laziness has overruled that.

So let's pick up with where he is currently at...

Recently he has taken to eating his cardboard books.  We'reslowly taking them all away from him, even though they are his favourite toys.  Whichever books he hasn't torn into pieces, he's attempted to consume.  Eventually he'll stop doing it, and I tell him no every time I catch him at it, but for now the answer is to take it away.

He's also started getting really interactive with the tv shows he watches.  If someone says "yay" or "hurray", he'll clap for them.  Or if someone says "oops" or "oh no", he'll go "uh oh".  He's also started giggling in certain places uring funny bits.  And even though I really dislike Diego and Dora, he is beginning to respond to them when they encourage the audience to repeat a word.  No actual word comes out usually, but there is a resemblance of the correct sound.

His hair has gotten incredibly long.  To the point where I considered getting it but before the family portraits at the family Christmas.  Instead we'll just try to make it look clean and tidy for the picture (which I'm pretty sure he won't enjoy the process of taking anyway).

Recently he also passed through a rather horrifyingly draining sleep disruption.  Hours of wakefulness overnight, interspersed with hours of pure crying when we tried toplace him back in his crib (even thought he was asleep while crying).  Thankfully, the past three or four nights have been much much better.  You could almost count a couple of th enights as "slept though" for the little he was awake overnight.  I think the better sleep is a result of the bottom right 12 month molar finally making it's way through his gumline.

He now has 10 teeth. 2 molars and the 8 front ones.  He is heartily enjoying the ability to tear off pieces of mini bagels and mini croissants when eating.  He's also, quite adamantly, a carnivore.  He will almost eat us out of house and home in terms of pork or beef.  Chicken is a very close thrid in there.  I think pork is his ultimate favourite though.  And don't stand between him and raspberries and blueberries.  He gets kind of cranky if he doesn't get any (we were dry on blueberries for a while since none of the local stores carried any for weeks).

He's figured out how to get himself on and off the couch as well.  This has caused us to have to move almost everything in the living room to higher ground.  Our living room is pretty much the only room in teh house where he's rasonably safe to play in without much concern for choking hazards.  He's fallen from teh couch only a handful of times in his entire life.  And the last time it happened he managed to catch himself as he made the slow fall and was completely unhurt and giggling at the landing.  Thankfully he inherited the hard head that is on my husband's side of the family.

Our 15 month check-up showed that Harvey is continuing in his "big-boy" growth.  He's 30 pounds, 5 ounces.  And 31 and a half inches long/tall.  His head is a beautiful 49 centimeters in circumfrence.  I knew he was big, I knew any child I had would be larger in stature, but my back has been telling me that I need to re-evaluate how I pick him up.  A few weeks ago I managed to do something bad to my back, I either slept wrong or stretched wrong, or something.  But for that Saturday and Sunday I couldn't lift him at all.  Then on Monday (when Rob went back to work), it hurt every time I did.  I probably should have gone to the dr's and asked for something a bit better than Robax for getting the back to heal up.  But instead I grinned and beared it.  Even now, a month later, my back still gives me twinges of discomfort, but not nearly anything as bad as it was.  And since today is Rob's last day for 5 days (thank you christmas food drive that resutled in him getting Christmas eve off), it will help it in the healing even more.

When I mentioned in passing that picking up Harvey still hurt me after two weeks, my mother-in-law started worrying that I was having liver or kidney problems, since everyone she knew who had lingering back issues had that happen.

I have't told her it still hurts or she'd worry herself sick.

I know exactly why it still hurts sometimes, I pointed it out above.  Harvey is 30 pounds.  30 pounds that I am constantly picking up and putting down over and over and over all day.  A single attempt at shovelling didn't help (we got almost a foot of snow in 24 hours).  And stadning for an hour at the kitchen sink every couple of days isn't helping.  And the two hours I spent leabing over the kitchen table wrapping Christmas gifts didn't help.  And the 6 hours a week we spend raiding Karazan in WoW is definitely not helping (I need a much better chair).  So it will stop hurting me, but I need to make a few changes and just wait for it to heal and stop being re-hurt.

So nw that I've rambled a bit... I need to go put Harvey down for his morning nap.

More to come soon, most likely after the family Christmas gathering when stories are ripe.

Child's Play 2007

Child's Play

Donate an item from Amazon.com to a local children's charity.  Bring a spot of light to a child's dark days.

Continuing with the Harvey update

So after Crackers tried to run away in June, we've all spent a lot of time watching her.  Closely.  No one has done anything about fixing up the fences in Rob's parent's backyard to make sure she can no longer walk right through them, and she has escaped the backyard a few times since,but nothing major.

Uncle Tim

Four Generations of Drimmie Men

We had a few family get togethers this year, many more than we usually do.  It's been an oddly active summer really.  I wish we got together that many times normally, but life gets in the way so often.  My Uncle truned 50 this year, that was cause for celebration.  A few weeks before that, my cousin had twin boys (babies number 4 and 5 for her).

 

And, of course, Harvey turned one at the end of August.  It was great to get everyone together for it.  It was really too bad that it poured rain after a bit.  But we made it through.  Everyone came to our place, which is why it was too bad it rained.  Fitting all 50 people into our small home was... interesting.  But we worked it all out.  It was great to have four generations of Drimmie men gathered in one house.

Harvey Eats Birthday Cake

Harvey mauls a cousin... or two

This past weekend my brother, his wife, their four year old, their two year old and the newest 3 week old, all came up for a visit.  Joshua pounced out of the minivan (of course it's a minivan, when you have 3 kids you have to own a minivan) declaring that "we picked me up some maple syrup".  The initial reason for the trip out our way was to purchase maple syrup from the Mennonites in St. Jacobs.  Seeing us is a sort of side benefit.

Well, when Josh made it into the house, along came Harvey.  He was so excited.  So happy. His arms were spread wide...

And then he flopped right into Josh, wrapping his arms around him quite tightly.  Along with the bear hug, came grunting noises as Harvey attempted to squeeze with all his might.

Josh, of course, tried like mad to get Harvey off of him, having to rely on me to peel him off.  It was kind of odd behaviour, one I haven't seen since either.  When he next settled his sights on Emma she actually got scared of him and scrambled away.  It took her a long while of the visit before she would go anywhere near him.  Harvey has a few pounds on Emma, so it makes sense she'd be intimidated by him.

Jason, Mira, Rob and I were so busy laughing at the kids.  It was so odd, yet so funny.

Life and Work

So not that long ago I was offered an opportunity to do some documentation from home on some new software components that my previous job is doing.

I accepted.

Yesterday I popped into the office to pick up the install files and to sit and chat face to face with a contact from the Raleigh office for a general overview of the package.

Today I began the install process, but I sent off an email of questions and concerns and asked for some advice.

Boy is it ever nice to have some of your questions ignored, then 4 hours later have a missed step pointed out, that would not have been missed if the questions from earlier had actually been answered.

I did not miss that aspect of the job.

Catching up on life

It's kind of funny how easily it was to fall behind and forget to post about life's little ups and downs here.  It's been so long in fact that I now have another nephew, Harvey has passed his first birthday and I am officially a stay-at-home mom.

Rob has left his job, in search of better and more satisfying work.  Both he and I have managed to get our WoW characters (the mains of course) to level 70.  Crackers ran away and returned home to us.

In other words, life moved on at a pretty fast clip.  These days I feel like I can't fit enough activity into every minute of the day.  I want to accomplish so much in the time I have where I am conscious, but figuring out what to do never comes to the conclusion I wish it did.

I've managed to forgo attending my gym.  I have yet to lose the 30 pounds gained from pregnancy.  Which I find kind of sad.  There has been discussion with Rob's sister about joining a new gym, where there is in house daycare for Harvey.  But her husband has been talking of the change for over a year and has yet to come to the conclusion if he wants to change his gym.  And it just makes sense for he and Michelle to attend the same place.  Therefore, no commitment has been made by the rest of us (Michelle and I currently belong to the same gym, where we had been going together).  I'd stay at the one I belong to currently, but they don't offer daycare, and paying our friend to watch Harvey, on top of the gym fees, breaks the bank in terms of money sink.  So as much as I would love to stay there, I have to say bye-bye to my current gym, and seek something a little more inclusive.

I would dearly love to see myself lose this stupid baby weight.  I'm not happy with my current body, and I so desperately want to return to where I was on the day I got married.  Which is actually about 50 pounds less than what I weigh now.  Actually... I weigh 192 now, and the day I got married I weighed around 126 or so.  That's a remarkable difference.  *Sigh* I will hopefully manage to get there before I end up having another baby.  I can barely stand myself as I am.

On to Crackers...

I love my dog.  I really do.  However, on June 23rd, I really wanted to kill her.  And by the end of the 24th, I was ready to.  The Saturday evening, we had gathered to celebrate a family birthday party.  This had to happen early because

Crackers in Profile

Rob was needed to work a stag and doe for a family friend who's wedding he was in this summer.  The plan was to eat dinner, then make our way over to the stag and doe, located near Rob's parent's house, to finish off the evening.  Since Rob had been busy setting up, we ended up with two cars at his folk's place.  In effort to simplify things, we attempted to crop a car off before the stag and doe.  While doing so, we took Harvey for a car ride (he was incredibly cranky), but left Crackers there.  Well, as background, Crackers is able to slip through the deck gates and the backyard fence at Rob's parent's place.  Well.  In her desperation at the thought of being left behind, she ran after our cars as we left to return one car home.  30 minutes later I got back (after dropping Rob off at the stag and doe, where I would later join him), and asked the obvious question, where's Crackers?

Turns out everyone thought she had gone with us.  She hadn't.  We had left around 6:30ish that Saturday evening.

So hours of crying and pavement pounding followed.  Rob's folks live a fifteen minute car ride all the way across town from us.  With a highway in between.  We made a poster.  We walked and ode bikes and drove cars up and down several blocks surrounding the house where she left.  I called the microchip people and put her as missing.  We visited the human society to see if she had been picked up.  I called a few different vets.  Nothing.

After a full 24 hours of despair, we get some hope.  We got a phone call from some guy who lived near the Schnieder's plant in town.  Apparently Crackers had sidled up near his dog on his front lawn and was chilling out and relaxing with the other dog.  He saw our number and her name on her dog tag and came in to give us a call.  As we arranged where to meet I was so incredibly happy.  I had a niggling fear that this was a setup, but I suppressed that, agreed to meet in a coffee shop parking lot.  Rob was half way through the front door when I reminded him that one of us had to stay with Harvey (who was asleep as it was 9:30ish).  So off I went.  Well Rob got a call that as the guy was on his way back out front, Crackers had bolted.  So I drove out to the guy's street.  The guy was no where to been seen, and when I called Rob back I had to get him to call the guy to ask which direction Crackers had bolted when he saw her run.

I turned and began to walk.  At this point I decided it was worth the chance to find her if we could get Rob's sister to come stay at the house while Harvey slept, and then Rob could hop on his bike and work his way toward me while we searched for her again.  The part that frightened me by that point was not that is was almost dark, nor that it would be her second night not at home, it was now we were almost to the highway, and she would have to cross it to get to our house.  Well it turned out that as I approached the Concordia Club, from the direction of Schnieder's, I met up with Rob.  We decided to stay together and head back towards the car.  As we were walking, we talked and called for her and kept looking.  Well I managed to spot her on the lawn of an apartment near the Concordia.  I called to her.  She crept forward a few feet.  I called again and she came barreling towards me.  27 hours later, I had Crackers back in my arms.

I next day I got to call the vets, take her in for a quick check to make sure she was alright, get her listed as found with all the right people and begin the task of taking the signs down.  She's watched a lot more closely when she's at Bob and Helen's now, but she has still gotten out and roamed her way around.  The amazing thing is that she was literally, less than a five minute walk from our house.  She had almost made it home.  She'd sort of had her own incredible journey.  Remarkably, without much to show for it but some slightly worn paws.

So that was her running away...

more to follow once we get Harvey into bed (he's just arrived at our door from an evening spent with his grandparents).

Harvey 9 month well-baby checkup

Well, it's come and gone.  Harvey is now 9 months old.  So much has happened in the past three months of life.

He's cruising around the living room like a pro (cruising is the stage in between walking and crawling where kids use their hands and walk along the sides of furniture and such).  He can also boogie pretty quickly when he crawls.

No teeth yet.  Our pediatrician said if there's no teeth by 15 months, then we'll talk (he had a son who didn't have any until then).  There's nothing we can do but wait and hope some come through soon.

Harvey is 23.8 pounds and 28 inches long.  According to our pediatrician, he's the size of most one year olds.  Which would explain why my arms and back are always sore.  He's a big boy!

He's experimenting with lots of sounds, which is great.  He really hates having his nose wiped.  He's almost graduated out of his duckie bathtub into the regular one (we really should upgrade him as he's too big for the duckie).

He's so big that having the rear facing car seat is a real pain in the butt.  However, it's law to have them in it until a year or when they are over 20 pounds.  The longer he is rear facing the better.  However, I'd really like to be able to sit in the front seat somewhat comfortably again (Chrysler Neon, Chrysler Caravan, Toyota Corolla and Toyota Camry all need their front seats moved all the way up to fit the car seat in rear facing so it's really uncomfortable to sit in the front passenger seat).  We'll see how it goes.  It may get changed around really soon.

I've noticed Harvey doing some free balancing in his crib.  He'll let go of the sides and try ti stand for quite a while, the longest I've seen is about 10 seconds.  I'm not really rushing him for the walking on his own stage.  There's way too much more baby proofing that needs to be done first!

His favourite foods right now include strawberries, blueberries and raspberries.  He loves the strawberry yogurt I give him (the Activa stuff).  And he still gets the iron fortified cereal once a day almost.  He's also still on the vitamin and iron packed formula (at least 3 bottles a day, if not 6).  He's not so big a fan of proteins yet.  We've tried cheese, chicken, pork, ground beef in tomato sauce with cheese tortelini, sandwhich meats.  He'll go for some of them occasionally.  He really loved the BBQ'd chicken and ribs (we pulled the pork off of the bone).  The sandwhich meat is hit or miss.  He doesn't really get a lot of veggies.  I haven't been able to figure out a way to cook sweet potatos or other veggies so that he'll eat them.  But I'm not worried, after all he's still getting everything he needs from the formula.

He's also figured out ways to open drawers.  We have a rather large tv unit with two really big drawers under it.  One drawer contains most of his toys.  Well he knows it, and pulls it open to pull out a toy or two. He hasn't learned that he can shut it yet, and unfortunately shut it on his fingers this morning.

His napping schedule is semi consistant.  He goes for a nap between 9:30 and 10:30 every morning.  Unless we've all slept in, and then his naps get all messed up.  He never gets to sleep past noon, otherwise his naps are too long and he doesn't do the afternoon one, then bedtime is messed up.  His afternoon nap can fall anywhere between 2 and 3.  It can also last between 30 minutes and two hours.  I wish it was more consistent, but it seems no matter how I try to tire him, 30 minutes can often recharge him completely.  The past few days the afternoon nap has been going for over an hour, which is lovely.

When he's tired he gets cranky.  Any time he drops to sitting form standing he gets whiny.  Or if he gets himself somewhere he doesn't want to be, he gets cranky.  It's always a good sign he needs some quiet time being snuggled, a warm bottle and a nap.

He's got his very own swing hanging in the backyard now.  And he loves it.

 

Harvey on his Swing

QotD: What A Character

Who is your favorite video game character? 
Submitted by Korgoth.  

It's a toss up between Link or Super Mario.

Vox Hunt: Chaotic

Show us chaos. 
Submitted by Natalie. 

Harvey @ The Park

QotD: Search Me

How well does your name Google? Who are you up against? (Celebrities, etc.)
Submitted by Matt Blank.

Well my Husband is search result #2 for my name.  In fact, it's his vox blog that comes up.  Otherwise I'm on page, like, 20 of the search results.