Chowing Down (and Other Exciting Happenings)

This post is mostly about Lukas eating things...a fact that is just an outgrowth of the fact that the vast majority of photos I have taken of him lately are of him eating. Except for a few. So we'll do those first.

Last week was a little weird. Lukas started getting these little red bumps all over his belly on Tuesday or so. By Thursday, they were everywhere (I mean EVERYWHERE) and he spiked a fever, so on Friday, we went to the doctor. It was just a viral rash, not itchy, not inflamed, just spotty, but I was glad to see the spots retreating over the weekend. I don't have many good pictures of it, but here are a few from my phone.

It's hard to see, but that ruddiness in his cheeks? Yeah, that's made up of hundreds of tiny red spots. They were that thick on his tummy, rear end, legs, hands, everywhere. I'm glad they're gone now.

In other news, Lukie continues eating basically everything. There have been few times when I've given him something he really just DID NOT LIKE. Most of those things, though, he has tried later and found that he liked them. Guacamole was one. Pumpkin was another. He hated strawberries the first few times he tried them, but last night he was eating strawberry pieces as fast as I could get them into his mouth. Which is good because...

...I am taking advantage of strawberry season.

 I love strawberry season in Tennessee and it is almost over (the farmer's market sign said 7-10 days left). If there is one thing I really enjoy about this state, it's the abundance of roadside produce and the fact that it is always stocked with something that just came into season: berries, peaches, tomatoes, melon, you name it.

When I was pregnant, all I wanted to eat was fruit, and I bought truckloads of berries and peaches at the farmer's market. I'd shovel them into my mouth and head back for more. I was just informed by one of the farmers at the market last week that my favorite blueberry sellers should be there in a week or two. I'll be eating them by the handful in no time. Lukie better hope I share.

Last night, we had pasta in a roasted veggie sauce and beets roasted and then baked with goat cheese and caramelized onions. My kid trucked right through every bit of food I put in front of him. He was even smacking his lips (a new skill he has picked up in the last few weeks).

There are some fun photos of him after eating his dinner, too.

I'll include the recipe I made up for roasted veggie pasta at the end of the post. It was a great way to get Lukie eating a ton of vegetables, and a super healthy meal for Mommy and Daddy, too!

Finally, he's been playing, like really playing, a lot lately. Here's a picture of him playing peek-a-boo with his teacher at daycare:

At home, he and Daddy roughouse a lot. And his favorite game to play with me involves one of those giant orange bouncy balls you can buy at Walmart. He rolls it to me, and I grab it and fold it up in my arms and legs, kind of hiding it from him. He thinks that is hysterically funny and tries to get the ball out. But the minute he succeeds, he gives it back to me!

One last thing, and it's so awesome. Lukie was NOT a cuddly newborn. He did not like to be held tightly and he would NOT sit still. He wanted to be held, but he wanted you to walk around and show him things, never obstructing his view or limiting his movement. He was a really difficult guy to keep happy, especially once your arms and feet started hurting from holding a giant infant and walking for hours to keep him from screaming.

That seems to have changed a lot lately. He loves to be held and sometimes when we're on the bed watching a movie, he just lays his head across my lap and stays there. He melts my heart when he does that.

Peace out, everybody. Oh, and here's that recipe. It's great for any mommy trying to get her kids (or husband, though I have zero trouble getting Pete to eat vegetables) to eat some more veggies.

Roasted Vegetable Pasta
serves: 6

1 medium eggplant, top and bottom cut off and cut in fourths lengthwise
4 summer squash, cut in half and scored
4 large ripe tomatoes, cut in half and stemmed
2 large carrots, peeled and cut in half
1 large onion, skin removed and cut in half
olive oil for rubbing the veggies
3 garlic cloves
drizzle balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped
2/3 cup Parmesan cheese (could substitute feta, which would be awesome!)
12 oz. whole wheat rotini pasta, cooked al dente

Rub olive oil on all the veggies and place on a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil. Roast in oven at 400 degrees F for approximately 40 minutes, turning once, or until browning and cooked through.

Transfer all veggies to a food processor, add garlic cloves, drizzle of balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, and half the Parmesan cheese. Process until silky and smooth. Add chopped basil at the last minute.

Put pasta in a 9X13" pan and pour sauce over the top. Mix the sauce in with the pasta, and then top with the rest of the Parmesan cheese. Put in oven at 400 degrees F for 15 minutes, or until cheese browns.


Next time I make this, I'm going to add a couple handfuls of spinach. You could substitute other veggies, too-- I think zucchini would be delicious, as would some colored peppers.

SICK and tired...but still alive!

I am so. over. this. winter.

Basically, the story in our house the last few weeks has been Lukie gets sick. Mommy gets sick. Daddy has to take care of everybody. Everybody gets better. Repeat.

The night we had Lukie's last pie party, we had lots of friends over to play Cards Against Humanity (so fun!) and eat pie. We took this awesome picture:

 

Everybody looks happy and healthy, right? WRONG. What you can't tell is that my stomach was starting to feel upset. By 9 p.m. I was shivering in bed with awful chills. By 9:30 I was...throwing up. This continued about every 45 minutes for the next 36 hours. I couldn't keep anything down, and even had to pull Lukas off nursing at least once. Pete slept on couch cushions next to the bed so he wouldn't get it from me, but could still be near if I needed help with Lukas, which I did...it was awful. I was out of work for four days with this terrible thing. I had NEVER been so sick in my entire life, and hoped it was a once-ever thing.

After I got well, Tennessee got about the biggest batch of snow I had ever seen fall here. We had something like 7 inches overnight, so we dressed Lukie up in what a friend called his "Jedi outfit" and plopped his fat little rear end in the snow!

This is what a person who has thrown up for 36 hours straight looks like after it is all over.

Happy, happy snow dog!

The next weekend, Pete and Lukie and I all went down to Asheville, NC. Lukie spent the day with Pete's friend Robyn, who played with him all day! It was 70 degrees out, so they went on a walk and Robyn put Lukie in a swing for the first time. Apparently, he was a little confused and freaked out. He had lots of fun, though, and slept the whole way home, so she must have worn him out!

Pete and I went to the Arts and Crafts conference at the Grove Park Inn. It's an annual meeting of people who are interested in the Arts and Crafts/Craftsman period of American and English art, textiles, furniture, architecture, you name it. It was pretty incredible and somebody could spend a LOT of money in the show rooms! We, however, only spent $65 on a print of the tortoise and the hare that we had loved for quite a while. Pete, when he gets the time, will make a frame for it and it's going to go in our bedroom.

We had a good week, and then on Thursday night, all hell broke loose. Lukas had a fever, and then he started puking every time I tried to feed him. He went to the doctor, who gave him a breathing treatment/nebulizer, since he also developed a wicked cough that was making him wheeze. He started feeling better...and then...Saturday night...my stomach got upset...

Long story short, it was Stomach Virus II: Revenge of the Bug, and I was sick for another 36 hours or so. I missed a play that two of my dearest friends were in, lunch with Pete's grandmother and grandfather, and work on Monday, all to lay around feeling miserable, not able to eat, not able to lift my 23-pound baby, who was teething so badly he wouldn't nurse and just cried, and trying to push fluids so that I didn't dehydrate (breastfeeding does NOT help when you're sick like this). 

So here we are. We've survived some total crap in the last few weeks. If there's a silver lining to it all, it's that it all happened BEFORE this weekend, since we're going to Cincinnati for a museums conference (Lukie's first conference! Yay for nerdy parenting!). We'll see my mom for one day, and we'll have a great time!

Catch you after our trip!

Christmas. And Christmas. And Another Christmas...and More Christmas.

I'm so far behind, but I'll try over the next few days to catch up on what Lukie and we have been doing over the past few weeks. It's been a busy few weeks of Christmases, sniffles, and travel.

Christmas Day was...nice. It's been harder than usual this year to continue having big holidays where we would usually be with our families, and have to spend them in Tennessee. We have great friends who come over to celebrate with us, and we're so lucky to have them...but it's just not the same as being able to spend time with our families.

That said, we had a nice Christmas morning. And by morning, I mean MORNING. Lukie got us up at 5 a.m. on Christmas Day. Must have been excited. :)

We opened presents-- we only bought him one major present, since he won't remember a whole lot of this particular Christmas. I had noticed that he liked the light-up toys at daycare, so we got him one of those. And an awesome hat. He was asleep again by 7 a.m., drooling on Mommy in the rocking chair.

We had friends over for lasagna and pie later in the day. Lukie was a good boy, but he was suffering from both a sinus and an eye infection that he had gotten over the weekend. We were giving him antibiotics and eye drops, but they made him so mad that he now has a serious aversion to me messing with his face in ANY way.

Poor guy was trying to play, anyway, but you could tell he didn't feel good.

Didn't stop him from eating some tasty bananas and yogurt, though!

I worked the rest of the week, but then on Saturday, we drove to Illinois. I had been dreading the drive to Illinois for months, knowing that it was going to be really hard to get a keep a 6-month-old happy for that long in the car. I have to say, though, that Lukie took the whole drive so well. We left at 5 a.m. and he slept until almost 7. We stopped at a Cracker Barrel to eat and wiggle around a bit, and then I entertained Lukie in the car for another hour or so until he fell asleep again. We made it to Cincinnati by mid-morning and hung out with some of Pete's friends for a few hours, wearing him out and getting a nice visit in at the same time. Kiddo slept a good part of the way to Indianapolis, then fussed at me until Champaign, and then slept the rest of the way home. I was really proud of how well he did-- no major melt-downs the entire way to Illinois!

We had family Christmas with my folks and brother on Sunday, and then had a gigantic family party at my Aunt Julie's. It was so fun and Lukie took the whole thing in stride. He was wonder-baby. He didn't barely cry once at Julie's house. He just spent the whole time playing with his aunt, uncles, cousins, and Grammy Noel.

We hung out with some of my high school friends on Monday...boy was that a trip. I can't believe how far we've all come!

On Tuesday, we drove up to Pete's parents' house, where Lukas met his cousin Eleanor for the first time. Eleanor is just a few weeks older than Lukas. Their meeting was pretty fun!

He got some fun new toys, books, and clothes, including a pretty awesome walrus sweatshirt. I also took a picture of Lukie, Pete, and Pete's dad, Paul. I think there's some definite family resemblance there...especially in the eyebrows and forehead.

We were able to visit Pete's friend Clint, too, and Lukie got a chance to watch the fish in Clint's saltwater aquarium. He wanted to grab the clownfish so badly...watch what happens when they come into the bottom left-hand corner of the video.

We went back to my parents' place as planned on Friday, but on Saturday morning, we couldn't ignore the fact that there was a pretty awful storm bearing down on Illinois. We decided last-minute to drive to Tennessee that day. It was a pretty rough trip, since Lukie was reaching the end of his tolerance for both new environments and car time. He cried more than a quarter of the trip, but he slept from about 10 p.m. to 1 a.m., when we finally got home.

We're glad we left early, given how nasty that storm has turned out in Illinois. Lukie is teething something fierce, and has been pretty crabby lately, but we're glad to have a little time at home with him before I go back to work on Wednesday.

In the midst of all of that, Lukie turned 6 months old on January 3rd. Expect a 6-month-old birthday post pretty soon (and here's a teaser: we recreated one of Pete's childhood pictures over vacation, and the results are AWESOME).

Here are a few more awesome Christmas pictures of Lukie.

Happy Holidays, everybody!

Under the Weather...Part II...?

Oh, my goodness. The things I have to tell you all this week...

To start things off...Pete had a stomach virus last week. He was super nauseated, running a fever, had the chills and then the sweats...all the things you associate with a nasty stomach bug, he had them. He slept on the couch for a couple of nights, and I single-Mommy'd it with Lukie so that Pete wouldn't get either of us sick. I brought him wonton soup and ginger ale one night while he curled up on the couch, and took time off work one evening so that I could do the daycare pick-up so that he wouldn't have to try to drive or go into the daycare where all the little babies are.

He was not a happy camper, but thankfully, it was gone in about 36 hours. He's been pretty much right as rain, ever since.  We had a nice Thanksgiving with Pete's friend Rachel, and then had our friend Suzi over on Friday for a leftovers party. She watched Lukie while we put up the Christmas tree. That's actually where the video of him falling asleep that I posted on Monday came from. We had a good weekend hanging out at the house and spending family time!

Lukie tried sweet potatoes and actually decided he liked them! Yay!

For once, more food ended up in his belly than on his forehead.

AND, he spent a lot of time playing with his new favorite toy: his toes.

What. A. Chunk.

Cut to Monday afternoon. I was at work, and I started getting some stomach pains that felt like intense cramping in my upper abdomen, right under my ribs. I kind of ignored it, assuming it was just something I ate, and headed home on Monday evening. Monday night, the belly ache kept me up from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m., which was SO frustrating since Lukas was (miracle of miracles) actually sleeping right then. I got up Tuesday still having the pains.

The pain got way worse on Tuesday, and by the afternoon I was starting to wonder what was going on. I'd be sitting, not doing anything particularly strenuous, and wave upon wave of abdominal pain would sweep over me. It would generally feel like it was going through all the way to my back, and there were times when I got the chills from it and had a hard time breathing. I started getting a little worried, and told Pete that if it didn't get better, I would need to go to the doctor on Wednesday.

Long story short, it didn't get better...in fact, Tuesday night was worse than Wednesday. Tuesday evening, Suzi and Jamie came over to have dinner with us for Lukie's birthday, and while I was getting all the food ready, I'd double-over from a stomach cramp so severe it would keep me from breathing right. We had fun, though, even though I was pretty uncomfortable. 

As a short aside, I can't believe it's been five months since Lukie came along. It's been a rough few months-- sometimes I feel like I have terrible luck, as things just keep sort of HAPPENING, but I'm thankful for our big, fat, healthy, MOSTLY happy guy. Here are his birthday dinner pics. I'm going to shoot his white-onesie pics this evening, so we'll do a comparison in the next post.

Back to the story of my stomach...The pain stuck with me all Tuesday night, and in some ways got worse. Pressure hurt on my stomach, which meant that carrying Lukie around hurt...and bouncing him at night to get him back to sleep after a night-waking was impossible. Lukie had a bad night, too, and Pete ended up taking him downstairs at 4 a.m. so I could get some sleep. I woke up and made a doctor's appointment for 9 a.m., calling in sick to work.

The first doctor thought it was probably a hernia, and said that it was totally possible given that I had just had a baby 5 months ago. He sent me for an x-ray, and made an appointment with the general surgeon who specializes in gastroenterology. I got the x-ray, and because I of course hadn't brought my pump with me, I went to the daycare to feed Lukie since I was getting uncomfortable. I also ran home to pump because I had time and didn't know what was in store for me that afternoon.

The gastroenterologist thought it might be appendicitis or my gall bladder, and he ordered a CT scan to make sure nothing was inflamed in my abdomen...so I went to get that set up, drank some ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE liquid they use to highlight places where blood is flowing in the abdomen (while dry-heaving in the lobby trying to get it down), ran home to pump again (because I'm an idiot and didn't bring the pump a second time), and then came back in to get the CT scan done. They told me not to eat or drink anything after 12 a.m. last night in case I had to have surgery this morning.

Last night, I actually maybe felt a little better, and this morning I headed to the doctor. Organs looked good: no inflammation in my appendix, gall bladder, or pancras... but apparently, I had some pretty inflamed and enlarged lymph nodes which means...da-da-da-daaaa....stomach infection. Most likely a virus. Most likely the exact. same. one. that Pete had, just affecting me differently. BLARGH!!!!

AND, Lukie went to the doctor this morning because he had been fussing at the bottle at daycare and being a generally unhappy dude the last few days. I was worried about an ear infection, but his ears looked perfect and he was acting like a jolly old guy this morning...so...he probably had the bug and was getting over it, too. And his gums are inflamed, so the doctor thinks he will probably cut a tooth in the next couple of days. AND he weighs 20 lbs. 2 oz. now. There's a 2-year-old at the daycare who weighs that much.  The doc says Lukie looks like a super healthy kid.

So that's the saga of my stomach. I'm at home, taking it easy today, with mild stomach pain but NOTHING like it was on Tuesday. If they go away and I don't have any more pains tonight, I might go to work tomorrow. If I still have gut cramps, I might stay home to protect my co-workers from what is apparently a NASTY bug. 

I'm super relieved I don't have to have surgery. I was panicking, trying to figure out how to feed Lukas while I had surgery and was in recovery. I have enough milk saved up in the freezer for about a day, but that's it. Maybe I need to work on my emergency stash a bit more!

Here are some super cute pics of Lukas to end the post. We've had a heck of a week, and I'm sorry there was so much writing in this post and not enough baby pictures, but the next one will be chock full of them, since I'll post all the comparative pictures of his previous birthdays!

Chewing on EVERYTHING...

 You can actually see his hair here. All those long, dark pieces are from when he was born. They're about 3 inches long now. He has this blonde peach fuzz all over his head, and it is actually quite thick, but it's so light you can't see it in most pictures. I think we'll have a blonde kid before it's all said and done...but until then, he's got crazy hair. I keep thinking I'll cut it, at least what Pete calls his "rooster tail," which is a long piece right on the back of his head, but it's so funny I have a hard time parting with it...

Getting his first lesson in hand planes from Daddy...

Seriously. Chewing on EVERYTHING.