This, that, the other

Yesterday morning Aidan had his first (and hopefully last!) visit to the Children's Hospital here in Calgary. The hospital is really beautiful and he loved looking at everything. At his Dr's appt the other day, his doctor noticed that his fat rolls at the top of his legs were not the same size on both legs. Apparently this is one of the warning signs for hip dysplasia so she wanted him to get an x-ray to make sure. I'm not too worried about it yet, but hopefully I get a call soon that everything is okay! The staff at the hospital were so nice, quite a contrast to my experiences at Foothills hospital when I've gone to visit my sister. We only waited about 5 minutes. Aidan did great, and smiled at everyone the whole time. Here are a couple of pics of him at the hospital while we waited. I wanted to take a pic of him on the x-ray table but I thought the techs wouldn't appreciate it.

That's the one comment I always get about Aidan, "He sure looks happy today" or "What a happy baby!" I used to be a tad jealous (sometimes a lot jealous, okay?) when my sister and I would be out in public and they'd say to her "Ohhh, what a cute baby", "He's just adorable!", "Look at him, he's so precious" etc etc while saying nothing to me about my baby (really, don't you think that's a tad rude?) and to this day I rarely hear, "Oh, he's so cute" when we're out but I do get a LOT of "What a happy baby" and I guess in life it's better to be happy than good looking, right? I credit one thing and one thing only to his happiness - The Schedule. Which brings me to a problem that has me slightly panicky...I've lost the book that has The Sched in it. It has I think 4 different schedules - birth to 4 months, 4 to 9 months, 9 to 12 months, and definitely another one but I forget the exact ages. I seriously base Aidan's life on The Sched and it's going to change in another 6 weeks or so....and I don't have the book to tell me what to do! Now, he doesn't always nap for as long as he's supposed to or at exactly the right times, but I definitely use this book as my guide. It was published in the 60's so I can't just go get it at Chapters, I had to order it from Amazon.com (not even Amazon.ca because for some reason Canadian Amazon wants $45 for this book so even with the shipping Amazon.com was the way to). If I don't find it soon, I will have to order another one, or else my happy baby may not be so happy. I am nothing without this book!

Okay, so enough about that. Except one last thing - I will give you a reward if you find my book for me. Okay, so actually moving on now. After the hospital fun, we went for a visit to Aunt Natasha's to see cousin Isaac. The boys got to see eachother for a few minutes, but they are pretty much opposite schedule's for nap/wake time so they didn't get to play for very long. Here's Aidan at Tash and Ryan's trying some cheerios. He's still learning how to grasp food and get it into his mouth but I think he managed to eat a few and their dog, Whisper, managed to eat a lot more.

One last pic - the weather here has been pretty bad but the other day was finally nice enough to go for a walk. Here's Aidan getting ready to go and loving his life.

That's it for now, hope everyone has a great weekend :)

On the move!

So not too long ago, Aidan started getting up on all fours and rocking. Since he has a slightly older cousin, I'd seen this move fairly recently and I knew what it meant - crawling soon! I rushed out (as in took my sweet time) to get baby proofing items so as not to have another "falling-off-the-bed" incident. He is by no means an expert at getting around, but gone are the days where I can lay him somewhere and find him in generally the same spot a few minutes later.

In other news, I got the Dr's okay to start giving him finger foods. I can't WAIT for him to feed himself, so here are a few pics of me trying to get him to do all the work while I sit back and relax. Hey, anything that makes Mom's life easier, right?

That's it for now - Aidan's playing around on the floor and I'm going to join him :)

Sharing the bad news with the world

So I can't post any pics for this post because I had to delete my hard drive and reload windows so I've lost some pictures because....my computer got a virus, a terrible terrible virus. In fact, I cleared the hard drive (took about 8 hours) and reloaded windows and somehow the virus is still there. A few months ago we paid $135 to get the virus removed and the computer fixed and, since the laptop is almost 4 years old and the screen is going I don't really feel like spending another $135 when I could just buy a new one for not too much.

So, back to exciting things about Aidan. He had his first camping trip this past weekend and he loved it. He really enjoys being outside (as most babies do) so it was no surprise that he was happy for most of the time. His favourite things - staring at the fire and listening for dirt bikes and quads so he could watch them go by. I was really impressed with his sleeping, too. He slept for over 12 hours that night, despite the partying and bike riding going on all night. Napping was another issue, but we only stayed for one night so he quickly caught up on his sleep when we got home.

That's it for now - Desperate Housewives is on and Aidan is napping so I'd better enjoy my free time....maternity leave ends before I know it!

The Dayhome Search

So, even though I don't technically have a job, I thought I should start a dayhome search for September. This is not a fun experience, for those of you that were wondering. It's kind of fun looking up dayhomes and sending out e-mails, even meeting with the moms, but the idea of leaving my son anywhere but with me makes me want to cry. So far I've met with four ladies and there was only one that I am considering. For some reason I thought all moms running dayhomes would just be awesome. And they were all "okay"......but I want someone who's even better than I am, if that's possible ;) I'm going to check out two more today, just to confirm that most of them suck, and then I'll likely go with the best of the evils......

In the back of my mind, I'm still considering serving every night so I can be home in the day. I know this isn't the best option, but I really cannot imagine leaving my little guy every single day. How do all the moms out there do it? How do you not cry the whole way to work? I guess you get used to it.

I had Aidan's photos taken so I'll share one with you.

I think this was before he started teething - he can be quite fussy lately. I've started giving him tylenol when he seems like he's in pain and it actually really seems to help. Anyone have any other teething remedies that worked for them?

Oh, I wanted to give an update on my workout progress. I've done 4 days of level 2, which is WAAAAY harder than level 1. I took one day off (well, I've taken 2 days off in the past 2 weeks) but I'm finding it harder to stay motivated because the workout is such a killer I'd just rather not do it. I really pushed myself on day 3 and it was the closest to tears I'd ever been while working out. So day 4 I did the modified moves (barely)....I'm just not seeing any progress with this level and not finding it any easier even though I've done it 4 times. I guess I should just give up ;)

Bad Mother Post

So you know how moms (irresponsible ones, that is) have stories about how their children fell down the stairs, fell out of their car seats, etc when they were babies? Every time I heard one of those stories my thoughts were, "How can you admit that to people? How could you let that happen? How could you be so careless?" Well, on Sunday, I became one of those mothers.

Since Aidan was born, I have been changing him on the floor. I rarely leave him unattended for more than a few moments, and I thought I knew how to do all the "right" things to keep my son safe.

On Sunday, I was putting away my laundry and Aidan was happily watching from my bed. Now, I know Aidan can roll, but his feet were facing the edge of the bed and he would have had to turn his body 90 degrees and THEN roll to fall off the bed. Apparently I underestimated the speed with which he can move. I smiled at him and turned to put some clothes in the dresser. In that split second of turning, I heard the loudest thud that's ever been made, followed by the loudest wail Aidan has ever cried.

I turned around, and Aidan was not on the bed! Danielle (my sister) came running upstairs, thinking the thud had been a dresser or something falling on Aidan, it was that loud. He was on the floor, on his back...at least he hadn't landed face first (I think that would be worse?). I picked him up and tried to console him. Danielle found the number for health link, a 24 hour number that lets you talk to nurses who will assess non-emergency situations. I immediately nursed Aidan, since this usually calms him down and it was time to eat anyway. While I was on hold, I started wondering if I should call 911. It felt like I was on hold forEVER. When I finally got through, about 12 minutes later, Aidan had finished eating and was happy - babbling and smiling. The nurse asked me a few assessment questions and determined Aidan was probably fine, but that I should check on him every 30 minutes to make sure he was alive (that's not actually what she said).

Aidan had a doctor's appointment on Tuesday and my doctor told me about how she, as a doctor, had to bring her 9 month old to the children's hospital after she had fallen down the stairs. This made me feel somewhat better, but I still feel like a pretty bad mom. There was no need for me to have Aidan on the bed. I wish I had just had him on the floor. I really thought only terrible moms let their children fall, and maybe that makes me a terrible mom, but I actually think it can happen waaaaaaaay faster than most people think so be careful, mommas!

And, of course, to complete the blog - a picture of Aidan with pants on his head.

Quick (or not so quick?) Update

Random - so being home a lot, some days I end up watching more TV than I usually would. Sometimes I watch The Doctors, even though I occasionally disagree with some things they say. Yesterday I had the TV on Cosmo when The Bachelor came on. Where have I been, I never knew Dr Travis was a bachelor a few years ago.....it really made me look at him differently. If I had a job, maybe I wouldn't be putting any thought into this at all.....

So I'm on day 8 of Jillian's 30 Day Shred and it's definitely getting way easier. I'm ready for level 2 (there are 3 levels) but I'm going to do level 1 for 2 more days so that I'm doing 10 days of each. My body feels stronger and my endurance is up so I'm definitely glad I'm doing it! And it's such a short (yet high intensity) workout that I can squeeze it in while Aidan naps and still have time to shower. I'm loving it.

So we discovered the cause of Aidan's nightly screams - he has a mild ear infection (as well as teething). For all you mommies not "in the know" (like me) apparently after babies get a cold they are likely to get an ear infection so beware! I broke out the humidifier again and that seems to be helping a lot as well as tylenol. I hope it clears up on its own. Aidan is back to 12 hour sleeps and Mommy is loving it.

I think that's it for updates. Here are a few recent pictures.

Going to watch Daddy and Aunt Linda play baseball (it actually didn't go so well, he got pretty fussy)

Wearing my raccoon hat from Grandma.

Trying to use a spoon myself but putting the wrong end in my mouth.

Playing with Mommy :)

Having dinner at Montanas with Mom, Dad, and Aunt Danielle (he was pretty good for the beginning but, as you can tell by the soother, he got fussy towards the end)

Physical Journey

So I've posted before about how I joined a Mommy and Baby fitness class. This class jump-started my desire to workout even more and I am now doing Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred. I had my class on Monday and on Tuesday I did Tae bo (a Billy Blanks DVD we have). My sister Danielle has been staying with me, and she told me she had this Jillian Michael's workout DVD that she wanted to start. It's only 20 minutes (well, it's actually a bit more with the warm up and cool down) so I thought, "how hard can it be?"

I decided to try it Wednesday. Let me tell you, I realized that I am REALLY out of shape after just the warm-up. As the warm-up ended, and she said "We're ready to begin" I was like "BEGIN!?!? Haven't we started already?" and I definitely thought I was going to pass out a time or two. The second day, Thursday, was definitely easier but I've still felt like crying towards the end pretty much every day.

So you're supposed to do this video for 30 days straight. I'm on day 5 and I have to say I already feel so much better. The video is so short that I know I can squeeze it in during Aidan's morning nap, but I sweat and feel like it's the best workout I've ever had. When I think back to myself running on the elliptical and going for walks, thinking that was "exercise", I was kidding myself. I can't wait to see how I look after 30 days. Only 25 more to go!

Anyone out there have an exercise video to recommend? I think I'm going to stick with this one because it's such a good total workout (it combines cardio, weights, and ab exercises) but if anyone has had a great experience with getting back into shape I'd love to hear how you did it.

I was considering posting a "before" pic of myself but....I think you guys can just picture a flabby tummy and cellulite-filled tush for yourselves ;)