Now what.

We have been having nanny issues the past week and unrelated to those issues our nanny has put in her notice. It is pretty disappointing. We thought we had this taken care of when we found her, we thought she would be with us for the long haul. Her and her boyfriend have decided to move to LA. Oh to be 24 and have limited ties. I guess her boyfriend is interviewing with Continental airlines and they will be living with her dad who is out there. She was kind enough to tell us early and has given us a months notice. We need to begin the hunt for someone else. Last night we met with a woman who has an in home daycare center. A friend of ours takes their daughter there. I could see it working out but really liked having someone come to our house. We will be putting adds in the local paper and the college paper to see what we can find. My mom always says that the right thing is always happening. She usually says this when the right thing is not what I was looking for.

Happy Birthday to me

Yesterday was my birthday. I was feeling a little low. I don't think it was due to my birthday because I hadn't really been thinking about it too much. We have been having issues with the nanny. Monday she called me at work and asked me to come home. The Pickle had cried all morning and she was at her wits end. Apparently he either spends his time crying or sleeping and if yesterday and last night are any indication, we need less sleep during the day. He took a 4 hour nap and another 1 hour nap yesterday and was then up and ready to go this morning at 3am. We need to put a stop to that.
So anyway the nanny seems to think that this issue will be solved if she can just feed him rice cereal. We started giving him cereal on Monday and per our friend who is a pediatrician, we were just giving it to him once a day in the evening. When I got home yesterday the nanny told us that she thinks things would go better if she could give him a serving of cereal. After discussing this with her for the past week on why we wanted to hold off, I finally just gave in. I think she needs to find out that it isn't the magic pill that will make everything fall into place again. I think the bigger issues are her not holding him when she gives him a bottle, and not necessarily engaging him in play. She sort of sets him in front of something and then goes and does other things. I'm sure that when I get home she will talk about what a great day it was. I hope this is true.
Anyway... Yesterday was my birthday. I'm pretty sure that my mom forgot about it since she didn't call until about 9:30pm. D and the pickle and I went out for dinner at the Pig Iron. They have the best corn pudding. City barbecue has better ribs, but I'm all about good corn pudding. I got an apple Ipod shuffle, case and a shirt from D and the pickle. Just what I wanted. Well, I was hoping for a video camera, but I'm saving on the side for that. All in all it was a pretty uneventful birthday.

I could get used to this...

We got back from a nice 4 day vacation on Sunday. We flew out to Avon, CO, near Vail to attend a wedding. It was quite a shinding. First off, it was at the Ritz Carlton just outside of Vail and because it was a destination wedding most evenings were planned for us. We flew out of Cleveland at 6 on Thursday and then landed in Denver and rented a car and drove to Vail. The pickle was a model traveler. D's parents did fine on the flight. Although I think that Marilyn thought she would sit in the car with me, the two of us squished in the back seat when we had to stop on the drive over to nurse the pickle. D got her out of the car for me and gave me a little space.
Thursday we had time to take the pickle for a little swim in the pool. It was kind of chilly but he didn't seem to mind at all. The room had a huge bathtub that he was into too. We could have had then draw us a specialty bath (one was a root beer float bath) for $45.00. We decided that he could deal with a good old fashioned bath drawn by his mom. That night we had a nice cook out on the patio, s'mores for dessert!
Friday D got up about 6 am to go fly fishing. The Pickle and I slept in until about 9 and made arrangements to go meet Jenny in Brekinridge. I told Marilyn that I was going to drive over about 11 and she wanted to know what the pickle would want to do while I was gone. She has not shy about showing her disappointment that I needed to take him with me because hello! Breastfed baby, needs to go where the food goes! D made it back in time to drive over with us. It is such a beautiful area, we ate outside at a cute restaurant and then sat and listened to a little of Jenny's rehearsal after lunch. The Pickle really liked the music. It was great to see Jenny again.
On the way back we got stuck in a traffic jam and found out that it was due to a little plane that crash landed on the side of the mountain. Everyone survived, but I'm sure it was pretty scary.
Friday evening all the guests at the hotel were invited to the rehearsal dinner. It was on a ranch. The food was great. There were some issues with seating which could have been solved if we split up with John and Marilyn. I would have been fine meeting some other people, but they were pretty adamant about eating together.
Saturday we wanted to take the lift up to the top of one of the ski mountains, but the pickle was getting worn out from all this vacationing and decided he needed a 3 hour nap. So we ended up going to Vail for lunch and then walking around the arts festival. I had him in my sling and everyone was commenting on how cute it was. Looks like Colorado would be an untapped market for baby slings. That evening was the wedding. The Pickle was not invited, but we were not likely to leave him with some stranger in the hotel room. We took him to the wedding, it was outside so we just stood way back. Then I took him upstairs during cocktail hour and he fell asleep. When D came up with my dinner, it must have smelled so good because he woke up and was not interested in falling back to sleep. We ended up taking him to the reception for a bit until D's mom took him upstairs. For some reason instead of putting him to sleep in our room she decided to put him on the spare bed in her room then didn't want us to take him over to our room. We just took him and he stayed asleep.
Sunday we were flying back home. We had issues getting moving in the morning and ended up missing the 45 min cut off for checking luggage. What a mess, we missed it by about 5 min. Ended up that John, Marilyn, the pickle and I checked in with carry one's only and then ran the entire Denver airport to make our flight. D stayed back to switch flights and check the luggage. He ended up with a direct flight to Columbus later that evening so everything worked out. It was a nice vacation, less stress from the in-law's than I expected. That's the last of our traveling for a while though.

To the Pickle

Dear Pickle,
Today is your official 5 month birthday. It is amazing to think about how far we have come together. Remember that first night home, when dad and I thought that babies were over dressed and didn't need that much clothing? Remember how you were cold and cried 45 minutes out of every hour? Remember? Ah, that was a good time wasn't it? I know that when your Aunt Sandy and Uncle Pete came and told us that you were cold, you wondered why they let us keep you and why they didn't take you home with them, to a house where people know how to dress babies properly.

Alas, you were stuck with us. Look how far we have come! You are now sleeping in your crib the majority of the night. It is only taking us about 35 minutes, including nursing to get you down to bed at night. You no longer hate the bath, you hold your own feet up while we change your diaper, which honestly, isn't all that helpful but we appreciate the gesture. My heart melted the first time you tried to kiss back when I sent you a kiss. You must have seen the joy and amazement in our faces because all you do non stop now is blow kisses. Your gurgles and coos and screeches and grunts are your own little language that we are slowly deciphering.

You have started to be a little hard on the nanny, so if you could give that a break we would appreciate it. Your ability to roll has started to make things difficult. No longer can we set you down and leave the room and find you where we put you. You have started to pin wheel and roll so it's not a surprise to find you facing the other way and half way across the room. I am caught between wanting to keep you as you are always and the excitement of what you might do next.

A little crafting at last!

I finally got to a little bit of crafting this weekend. I got a quilt loaded into the new machine, my next goal is to get a bobbin wound and then I'm actually going to try and quilt a bit. The quilt is for my new nephew, I'm hoping it will take no time at all to bang it out on this machine.

D and I had a mini-yard sale this weekend. Both our yard and our selection is/was mini. We mad a whopping $7.00 but the real goal was just to get the stuff out of the basement. The kidney foundation will be picking it up sometime this week. It was fun to spend the whole day on the front porch. The pickle and D and I just hung out and watched the neighborhood go by. Not much happens, I can tell you that much. I spent most of my time knitting away on Mr. Dangly, a sort of Monkey pattern I found on a web page along the way. I'll have to find it so I can send in my picture of him when completed. I haven't decided if I'm keeping him yet or giving him to my niece E for her birthday. She'll be 4. I was thinking of knitting one for each of the kids and using it as their tag for Christmas. I think that by then I could get 4 done. I see each one being different colors, maybe even some clothing. But I don't want to get to far ahead of myself!

I have some onesies the I'm going to print on. I just can't decide quite what yet. My brother talked about wanting a t-shirt that said "Leave me alone. I'm local" so I was thinking about printing that for his baby. Also "I puke without warning" is always appropriate.

MIL is back from South Africa. She started in with the passive aggressive bizarre comments already. Apparently she doesn't think that the pickle should be standing. I have yet to get a clear reason out of her. He's almost 5 months old. I think she believes that wives tale about bowleg babies. She called yesterday because John came down with food poisoning. She wanted me to know all the details. He didn't want to talk about it at all. Once I told her what I thought it was she decided I needed more details. I told her to call her local health department, but she wasn't so interested in that. I'm not sure what she expected me to do!

I've received 3 CD's so far. It is so interesting to get music from someone you don't know. I have received things I would never have listened to. I love it!

It's in the mail

So the CD's are now in the mail. I know that I am a day late and I apologize. I was just going to stick them in an envelope, but realized that I need to do a little better. So it took a day to get the CD inserts together.

I got 2 more CD's in the mail yesterday. One I listened to... Whoa.. There was a lot of music on there. 30 tracks. D- is all about Napoleon Dynamite so he loved those blurbs. I haven't listened to the second one yet. I'm saving it for my SAS session this afternoon. It is cover songs. I think it will be pretty good!

After getting over that bout of food poisoning, which there is now an investigation started, I had a pretty good weekend. We had friends and family over for a cook out on Sunday. My brother and his wife came and of course baby Michael. It was a nice afternoon visiting with everyone. We invited our neighbors who live across the back ally. They are interesting people.

No crafting got done this weekend. I have set up the quilting machine, but I have not had a chance to try it out yet! So frustrating