Oatmeal, Snow, My Birthday, and Other Things, Part Two

WARNING: THE LAST PARAGRAPH OF THIS POST IS ALL ABOUT BABY POOP. IF YOU WISH TO SKIP IT, GO AHEAD. YOU WILL NOT BE QUIZZED ON IT LATER, AND IT WON’T AFFECT YOUR GRADE IN THIS CLASS. YOU DON’T HAVE TO TAKE NOTES, AND IF YOU WISH TO PUT YOUR HEAD DOWN ON YOUR DESK WHEN THAT PART COMES, YOU MAY DO SO. HOWEVER, THE NO TEXTING RULE STILL APPLIES.

I know part two is later than I promised, and I know that you are all just sitting on the edge for your seats waiting for it! Maybe not because of the boring update part, but certainly because of the Pookie pics!

Let’s start with the snow. Mom, Samantha, and Nick came to visit us from March 25th to the 30th. Of course, here in Utah, spring doesn’t necessarily mean warm weather (I guess that’s true everywhere, though) but it rained/snowed/sleeted for more than half of their visit. The 29th was the first really decent day weather-wise, but the day before they departed, that didn’t mean much!

Then, they left, and within two days spring arrived! On Friday we were in the 60s. On Saturday, they predicted highs in the 60s, but they were wrong. Highs were in the 70s! As I drove around running errands on Saturday, the thermometer in my car, which measures the outside temperature, registered 79 degrees! Did you read that? Seventy-freaking-nine degrees! I nearly took a picture of the sunny scene and sent it to Sam and Mom along with a solid scolding for not scheduling their visit a week later.

Now, this is my third spring living in Utah, so I knew that the warm temperatures meant nothing as far as whether winter was really over. Last year our last snow was on May 24th. Ugh. But even with the back and forth weather this time of year brings, I figured it would take at least a week to go from 79 degrees to temperatures cold enough to bring snow. But no. Do you know how long it took? About TEN HOURS. Yep. At 3:00 PM Saturday it was 79 degrees. At 1:00 AM Sunday it was snowing. I wouldn’t have known that the snow started that early, except that I was awoken by a whimpering Emrick, making noise in his new room. When I went to check on him, I heard the window in his room getting pelted. I opened the blinds to see if it was raining, and instead it was snowing, with high winds blowing it all everywhere. A few hours later, when I was up again for the day… a veritable Winter Wonderland! Don’t these pics make you want to run downstairs and see if anyone bought you an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle?

 

Look how the snow got air blasted to the side of our neighbor's house.

Mom and Sam's smoking station looks even more inviting than usual.

THE NEXT THING to update you on is the fact that Emrick has started on solids. Rice cereal, green beans, and oatmeal so far. He does pretty well with all of it, but oatmeal is far and away his favorite. He opens wide and lunges his mouth forward when he sees that sticky spoon coming his way. But it’s messy:

I know Emrick looks displeased about something. I’m not sure what, but it’s not the oatmeal!

These pics are from his very first oatmeal feeding (last week). Since then, I’ve been making it thicker, not as soupy as in these pictures. But it is just as messy. Somehow it gets all over both of us. I’m sure I’ll figure out a good technique soon.

The mess I can handle, though. The poops on the other hand… Oh, the poops! Just a short while ago I changed his smelliest diaper to date. It wasn’t even a very big poop, but in odor, it rivaled an adult’s. They have also increased in frequency. When Emrick was brand new, he pooped after almost every feeding, then it slowed down to about 3 a day, which was nice, especially since the OVERNIGHT poop was the first to go. I loved that changing a poopy diaper was not the first thing I had to do in the morning. Then he slowed to one poop a day, and then he slowed to 2-3 poops a week. Well…. now that he is on solids, all this has changed. First he returned to one poop a day, then he went to two poops a day, and now, as of THIS MORNING, the overnight poop has made a triumphant return. I’m not sure when the last time I awoke with an Emrick poop ready and waiting for me first thing in the morning was, but I know it was before Christmas. Maybe even before Thanksgiving. And all of this happened really fast. He went from 2-3 poops a week to multiple daily poops in about the last 10 days! I don’t have any Poopy pics, though, only Pookie pics. I hope you’re not too disappointed. The End.

Oatmeal, Snow, My Birthday, and Other Things, Part One

Well, it’s been a while since we’ve had a newsy update, so I am going to attempt to cover the entire month of March, plus the first three days in April, all in one post — not that anything amazing happened, but you love us so you care… right?! Besides, stick with me here, and you’ll be rewarded with lots of Pookie pics.

 

FIRST, there was my birthday on the 6th. We went out to Carrabba’s (naturally) for a birthday dinner, and at home Marcus gave me my presents:

 

Framed pictures of us and the little one.

 

and lovely, stainless steel cookware!

 

 

 

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NEXT was Emrick’s 6-month check-up on the 22nd. They weighed him at 16 lbs, 12.5 oz, and measured his length at 25″. When I asked the doc where that length put Emrick in the percentile rankings for height, he said, “Negative 19%.”

Just kidding.

Anyway, he also received his last round of vaccinations until he is a year old. At his 9-month check-up they will prick his heel to test for anemia, but there will be no more shots until his 12-month check-up. His 2, 4, and 6 month shots were all doses of the same five (I think) vaccines. At 12 months he’s supposed to get the MMR vaccine, and that’s the big, scary one.

Emrick acted a little different at this appointment. Normally, whether he is in my arms or lying on the exam table, he is fine until he gets his shots, and then, of course, he screams until they’re over and I pick him up. But this time, he was crying as soon as I set him on the examination table to undress him. He cried during the undressing, cried during the weighing, and basically any time I put him down. Last time, he smiled at the nurse when she bent down and spoke sweetly to him. This time, his face broke into a look of mild horror, and then he screamed. Ah, Pookie! But when he was in my arms, everything was rainbows and marshmallows.

I don’t have any pics from the day of the pediatrician appointment, so I will just re-post a pic from earlier this March, ’cause it’s cute:

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ALSO, we have a couple of household projects going on. One is simply getting Emrick’s nursery together. I was dying to do this last summer, but since we knew we wanted him sleeping in our room for the first six months, all we did was choose a paint color and paint the room. Well, *I* chose the paint color and *Marcus* painted the room.

But as of Friday night, Emrick is now sleeping in the nursery. All the furniture is in there, but the decorating has not yet begun. Here is what the nursery looks like right now. You might consider it a “before” picture:

Yeah, it definitely needs some pizazz. We need a cute nursery for a cute boy. I actually already have nearly everything I want to use to decorate it, but it takes time to get everything put together, so stay tuned!

The other household project going on is that we’re moving the laundry room upstairs, and turning the downstairs half bath into a 3/4 bath, by adding a shower to it, using space from the old laundry room. Here are before shots of the half bath and the current laundry room:

The laundry room has been doubling as downstairs diaper changing station and a baby bath station (there's an unseen sink to the right).

There are a few reasons we’re moving the laundry upstairs. One is that just above the laundry room is unused “loft” space. It looks cute and seems like a great space, but it currently just serves as an echo chamber that provides all of the upstairs bedrooms with noise from the family room below.  The only time the loft actually gets used is when my dad visits and he sets up shop there with his laptop, his blackberry, his iPod, iPad, iPhone, megaphone, TV, Wii, bluetooth, PSP, iPad2, and the kitchen sink.  (For those of you who don’t know my dad, everything after “blackberry” is a joke). It’s a great location that allows him to take care of personal business, while keeping one ear open to the conversations happening below (and interjecting the occasional commentary). Sorry dad, you’ll have to find a new spot!

So the loft is getting transformed into a laundry room, which will make the space functional and help block out the downstairs noise. And with the original laundry room directly below, the plumbing is easy to sort out. Also, as mentioned before, moving the laundry upstairs will give us room to add a shower to the current half bath. Our motive for doing that is to make the downstairs “bonus room” more usable/marketable as a bedroom. Without a place to bathe on the main floor, that’s hard to do. There is a lot of room for bedrooms and bathrooms in the unfinished basement, but we don’t know when we’ll get around to that, and that’s a much bigger, more expensive undertaking than moving the laundry upstairs. Marcus would have to hire out most of the work for finishing the basement, whereas with moving the laundry room, he is doing everything himself. I know! What a handy guy! After telling a couple of people what we were doing, and having them respond with faint surprise that Marcus wasn’t hiring someone else to do it, I said to Marcus, “People seem to think this is hard to do. IS it hard?” and Marcus responded, “For a normal person.” 😛

As for what we will do with the remaining space in the old laundry room, we will basically use it as a janitor’s closet (I’m the janitor). There’s no good place currently to keep the mops, brooms, and vacuum cleaner, so right now they usually get “stored” basically in the last place they were used. There’s a broom leaning up against the pantry door as we speak! Oh, the travesty! But the janitor’s closet is just gravy; it’s not our motive for moving the laundry.

This is what Marcus has done so far:

 

That's a pocket door to the left. A pocket door is the only thing that made sense for the space.

 

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SORRY! I was going to talk about oatmeal and snow in this post, too, but it’s already too long, and I need a break, so I will post part two of this March Newsletter later today.

I hope every one is having a happy Sunday!

Apparently playing Wii makes you look silly… who knew?

Submitted for approval by the Emrick Groupies Association…



Happy Half-Birthday, Pooks!

Emrick is 6 months, also .5 years, also 181 days, also 25 weeks and 6 days old today! Can you believe it? Our little Pookie is growing up so fast. And he gets noticeably stronger and more coordinated every week. He is not quite crawling yet, but he has learned to scoot on his belly (though sometimes he forgets he knows how to do this), and he rotates like a pro! I think crawling is not too far away. When he is on the floor and a toy is just out of reach, he gets pretty ticked off! He kicks his legs and lets out a deep, guttural yell. And then he either pushes himself forward on his belly, or more amusingly, puts his forehead on the floor, lifts his hips high in the air and comes down again, somehow winding up closer to the toy. It looks like a break-dance move!

A few weeks ago we made a family trip to Ikea. Before leaving, we visited the “As is” section, where we found that darling little chair Emrick is sitting in. The merchandise in the as-is section usually has mild to moderate damage, but this chair did not have a single flaw that we could find. Maybe it’s missing something, like a cushion perhaps? I don’t know, but it’s super cute and at $4.99 it proved to be an irresistible purchase. I know Emrick is a little small for it now, but by the time he’s a year (or two)  old, I’ll bet he’ll be getting into that chair all by himself. Just like a real boy! In the meantime, we’re just practicing. Yesterday is the first time I put him in that chair, and at first he just looked curious, like in the two pictures above.

But then he quickly became indifferent and moved from there to being visibly… un-thrilled.

Emrick weighs 16.5 pounds and is 24.5 inches long. He has brown hair with blue eyes. He likes binkies, tickles, and long walks on the beach.

Come on, Pookie. Give us a smile…

That’s our boy! We love you, Emrick Braden Sorensen. Here’s to the next 100 half-birthdays we hope to spend with you!

With kisses and squeezes,

Mom and Dad

The Ides of March

 

Caesar Emrick is a bit worried. Someone told him to beware the ides of March!

So now he has to be very watchful. He's got one eye out to his left...

... another to his right...

...and both eyes straight ahead!

~sigh~... It's such a hard life! Nobody understands the plight of the powerful!

But who would want to betray me? And on the eve of my 6-month birthday no less!

Aww... Buck up, little caesar!

You're too cute to betray! No brute is going to get to YOU!

But go ahead and keep one eye over your shoulder... Just in case.

Happy Baby Mix

Here’s a quick video of our favorite little boy doing our favorite things.

P.S. You know it’s time to do baby laundry when it’s March and you’re using the Thanksgiving  pajamas 🙂

 



 

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