There he is in his official Halloween costume, the world's smallest Link from Legend of Zelda! He only gets a shield since he's a little young to handle a sword. Here's a shot of the pumpkin in action:



Here's a close up with the lamp for more detail:

Yesterday our little man made a new friend: Himself! While I was holding Mr. Rattlehands up to the mirror we got another surprise: his first real giggle! Jeni had just come into the room from working in the kitchen for the event and her heart pretty much melted.



It's a short update today, just two pics. Here's Jeni knitting away at a little green tunic for Hosea for tomorrow. Who knows if we'll get it done in time? Halloween may come a few days late this year.

So Nelle and Laura (who used to be called Una) maintain that the huge root veg from the ECO box is a turnip. What sayest the interweb friends?

In any event, we cooked it up thusly:

1. Peel, cube, and roast until soft.

2. Dry roast some garlic and saute onions.

3. Puree root with garlic and onions in some veggie stock.

4. Simmer puree with coconut milk, garam masala, cayenne, chili flakes, pepper.

5. Eat delicious soup.

Matt is iffy on whether or not he liked his, but I'd be perfectly happy to make this very, very often.

"I think you're living in a state of nervous exhaustion."

Also, Hosea is now 12 lbs, 9 oz. Considering the only two ways he'll let me settle him are nursing and pacing up and down the halls on my shoulder, let's just say I long for mealtimes.

That, my friends, is the question. The truth is that things have been pretty hard for me these days. Combining school and parenting, studying and sleep deprivation, along with healthy doses of frustration, depression, and general life-weariness do not make a blog-happy Jeni. I just keep telling myself that in 6 more weeks, things will start to settle down. The fact that exams are also in 6 weeks is a little fact I'm choosing to let slide just now.

Anyway, on to more fun topics. Here are some pictures of our 6-week-old baby boy!


Here's Hosea singing songs with Matt, something which I find almost preposterously adorable on both their parts.

We've recently found this position for holding him (with inspiration from Sarah). He seems to be amenable, at least so far.


Merv came over Saturday night and watched him while Matt and I went to dinner. It seems like they both had a good time.

Also, we've started ordering our veg from East Coast Organics, a local farm. They deliver a box of organic, seasonal veggies to our doorstop.

The ECO box.


Most of the contents of the ECO box. Note skull-sized celery root and humongous dirty carrots.

And, I'm off to sleep. Sometime soon I'll write a follow up on the breastfeeding situation as it currently stands.

Do you have a blog? Do you want to receive a Fabulous Prize from the Price family? Well, here's your chance! The first 5 people who comment on this post will get a real life, actual Scottish knick-knack (or equivalent) mailed to them from Matt and Jeni before the clock strikes 2008. The catch is that you must also make this same offer on your blog to all your friends and readers. Any takers?

(By the way, we bought in to the pyramid scheme on Anastasia's blog last week, and just finally got around to putting up our end of the bargain.)

Pictures of Hosea at the end of this post! Be sure to read on!

So you may be asking yourself, "What's up with the birthday extravaganza, Matt? Wasn't your birthday back on the sixth?" Well, it was, but time gets sort of wonky when you have a kid and my birthday has kind of dragged out into a month long affair. So why do you get the extravaganza post today? Two reasons: first is that Jeni is hard at work right now baking my birthday cake to take over to Andrej and Sarah's for dinner tonight. Second is that today is the day that AJ's present, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, is getting shipped from amazon.co.uk. Hooray! This game was supposed to come out last October and was one of the top reasons I bought a DS. So I'm glad it's finally here! (And yes, we are planning on dressing Hosea as Link for Halloween.) Here's more birthday stuff:



Jeni was planning on getting me Phantom Hourglass for my birthday and had even pre-ordered it when AJ ordered it, too. A girl always ready for the unexpected, Jeni went out and picked up Hotel Dusk instead. It's sort of an interactive mystery novel, which is great since it can be played with one hand and put down at any point, both plusses when having a new baby.



Next up is the generous check sent by my grandparents. It funded these two expansions for BattleLore and a fantastic Indian dinner for ourselves and the Burnses last week. Thanks a lot!



Here Jeni's English cavalry are about to decimate my French foot soldiers. Bummer.



Finally, I got a few cards. This one is from Bianca "Which One is the Pointy End Again" and Andrew "Here, Let Me Wash Those Knives for You, Dear" Geblin, which illustrates some improper baby washing technique. Another card from my aunt Marcia and uncle Dick, contains timely and pointed commentary on the state of the US dollar:






So thanks everyone for the great birthday stuff. Thanks also to Russ and Emily who watched Hosea on my birthday proper so Jeni and I could go out for dinner. I apologize if I left anyone out. Now, on with the Hosea show!



Breastfeeding has been going well. We try to use that little froggy rattle to keep Hosea's hands occupied while eating with mixed success.



Here's one of Hosea's favorite games, a little pastime we've dubbed "Mr. Rattle-Hands."



Here's a pic of Hosea in a bamboo nappy. It may not look very different from the last nappy pic at first glance, but look and see how fluffy this one is. Bamboo is pretty awesome. It's really eco friendly, really soft, and really absorbent.

And for good measure, here's the little guy just being cute:

So, here's the update. We haven't given up the breastfeeding ghost quite yet; we're giving it one last go. We both know that we could certainly make it work if we put in the time and effort required, but we just happen to be running out of both. To achieve our goal, to bottle feed expressed breast milk while Jeni's away and breastfeed while she's home, we really should have gotten Hosea's breastfeeding skills established in the weeks before Jeni went back to school. Unfortunately, for a whole load of reasons, that didn't happen. We're now trying to get him to be satisfied feeding from the breast at night and bottle during the day when he's become accustomed to feeding solely from the bottle. It's going to be an uphill battle and we have it in us to do one last push, but perhaps not more than that.

The central difficulty in this whole experience is that Hosea has refused to play by the book. His habits and desires don't correspond to what all the breastfeeding advice says to expect from your baby. As an example: most breastfeeding advice warns against "nipple confusion." Nipple confusion is characterized not so much by confusion per say, but by a baby's preference for the bottle over the breast. Hosea, although he fed primarily off a bottle for so long, offers little resistance to taking the breast. Instead, his problems have included frantic and erratic breathing while eating, chomping down unexpectedly, and generally destroying Jeni's nipples.

Anyway, at this point the plan is for Jeni to feed Hosea whenever she's home. We'll continue on as long as Jeni can. If she gets to the point where pain or frustration forces her to stop feeding again we'll reevaluate our plan, but at that point I think we'll be pre-disposed to calling it quits.

I am very, very close to giving up breastfeeding. Yes, I know how much better breastmilk is for the baby; yes, I know that perseverance is the key and blah blah. Let me tell you (aka whine to you) about my problems. Since Hosea was born, I have had (in order)

Tongue-tie on Hosea
Low milk supply
Cracked nipples
Breast refusal
Cracked nipples again
Thrush (probably)
Mysterious unexplained searing extreme pain in both breasts (Maybe this)
Hosea's strong clampdown bite reflex

Also, I am back in classes since week before last. Yay, except it means that (especially when I start acting like a real student and not rushing home at every opportunity) I will be gone from 7:30 in the morning until about 5:30 in the evening. Is it even possible that Hosea (who already has Major Feeding Issues) could learn to breastfeed from 4 or so feeds a day? I've been doing almost exclusively breastfeeding for the last several days and he has, by our estimation, actually gotten worse at eating. What would happen to the poor guy if I started offering him the breast only at night?

I don't know, y'all. I called the lactation consultant (who I've already seen 2x and who told me both times that his latch looks great and that he'll start getting the hang of it "any day now"), so hopefully she'll ring me back in the next day or so. I had to stop nursing tonight, since the pain in both my breasts was making me cry. I'll see how I feel tomorrow after class.

Blech. This is not helping me feel like less of a failure.

{/whiny pity party}

Does anyone know what to do when one has, say, cracked nipples AND thrush? It seems like the treatments for the two contraindicate each other, since cracked nipples are all about moist healing, but Candida thrives in moist, warm environments.


Also, any tips for pain relief, particularly for the thrush pain? Yikes.


Thanks!

It's been a month of Hosea! I know that my last post was a little too heavy on the words and light on the pictures, so this time I promise not to go for more than three sentences without a pic. Look, it's time already!



First up is our pic of two profoundly attractive Prices. They have to stay within easy reach of the fire blanket because they're so hot. Look, that was only two sentences!




Here's the little man in his little cowboy jammies. Well, I shouldn't really say 'little man' since he's already over 11 pounds!!! Look, I did another one in just two sentences!



This is a common sight: Hosea zonked out in your arms only to wake up and fuss when you put him down. How is it that he sleeps for 20 hours a day and I sleep for three? Man, if I saved up all these extra sentences I'm not using I could write a novel!



Me and him. Dang, just one sentence! Obligatory extra extra sentence!



And finally, a one month birthday dance from the Frankenfish himself. Shake-shake-shake, shake-shake-shake, shake your baby! Shake your baby!

Well, that's the end. If you're interested in reading some more sentences, a lot more sentences, about the trials and tribulations of parenting, head over to my personal blog, macandawe.blogspot.com, where I just put up a post going into more detail of the last few days with Hosea. Happy birthday Hosea!

Happy birthday, my sweet!

Go over to Matt's to wish him a good 27th. Yay!

Tonight Hosea breastfed (for 10 minutes on each side) for the first time in more than 10 days. Woohoo! We're trying to train him so that he bottle feeds when I'm at school and breastfeeds when I'm home. I'll let you know how it goes.


Also, our list of nicknames for him seems to span most of the phylogenetic tree. Slug, clam, kipper, shark, duck, dinosaur, etc. Is this strange?

Today marks 21 days that we have successfully kept Hosea alive. Yippee! He now weighs over 10 pounds (wow) and is getting bigger by the second. He's been pretty screamy some nights, which is trying, but he's definitely thriving.

One thing I wanted to comment on was the success we've had with cloth nappies (diapers). I was a little skeptical at first, but now I'm a huge fan. Here's how it works:

1. Take one baby and place it on a changing table. Remove dirty nappy and wipe bum clean. We used water at first, but now we use a blend of chamomile, honey, sweet almond oil, and lavender that takes about 5 minutes to make and keeps him nappy rash-free (and good-smelling!)

2. Place cloth nappy (we have flat old-fashioned ones and pre-folds) onto baby after folding in the appropriate manner. We use flushable liners to separate the poop from the cloth part. Use a Snappi (greatest invention since chicken!) to attach the nappy to the baby.


3. Place a cover over the nappy to keep baby dry. We'd like to use those colorfull, pretty wool ones, but they cost beaucoup bucks, so plain white PUL it is.



4. Voila! Clean happy baby in 2 minutes. Adorable hand-decorated Nessie onesie optional, but highly desirable.



Cloth nappies are especially great if, say, your baby has the habit of soaking through four nappies in under an hour. With disposables, I'd be tempted to not change him for fear of filling up landfill space at an alarming rate, but with cloth, into the bucket they go to get thrown in the wash. And, if nothing else, Hosea has some mad whizzing skillz.

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Something I've noticed is how often you do things that, to the outside observer, probably look pretty bizarre and occasionally must look downright cruel. Burping, for example, can get pretty vigorous with a hard-to-wind baby. Also, the chin support for the lap-sitting burp position looks, well, interesting. (Okay, so the hand behind the neck was added for emphasis, but you get the idea.)



Feeding in general causes Hosea to contort in some incredible positions. I call this one "Neck Snapped".



It's okay, though, he still gets some intense cuddling at the end of the day (or, um, very very early the next day).






Hosea says: Do you mind, guys? Me and my dad are having some quality time, here.

I'm still not back in classes, though I'm feeling better every day. I made the walk to the bus stop and back today, which is a good sign, and I spent the day at a coffee shop going through pharmacology notes.

Keep praying for us, guys. Though many of the day-to-day things are getting easier, having a screaming colicky baby is exhausting, both physically and emotionally. We both spend a lot of time saying "what do I do now?" with him, especially with feeding time, where he still has some issues. He gets his tongue-tie fixed tomorrow, so maybe that will help. But we are both frustrated at feedings which occur every 2-4 hours, take at least an hour and a half and almost always involve some manner of crying, screeching, and spit-up. Sigh.