Her Royal Poopy Pants

It's been a banner week in our household. Cameron ran a fever on Tuesday so she had to stay home from school on Wednesday. She wasn't sick or anything. I think it was just a result of teething and the fever didn't reappear. I am very much looking forward to her return to school on Monday because over the past 5 days Cameron has blown out 14 diapers. Yes, you read that correctly. 14. How do I know? The number of outfits I've had to change her into. I've done laundry for her twice and still ended up with some stained onesies.

The problem is that she now sits up all the time and is crawling. So the poop has no place to go but up the back. It doesn't matter how tight I tie the diaper. I considered moving her up in diaper size but she is too small for the weight range of the next size. I have been relegated to many sniff tests throughout the day. Usually there is a pattern to her pooping but she manages to sneak a few in during the day that I've missed. The best was Saturday when I had to give her a bath because poop ended up all the way to her shoulders. Fun times.

I know many parents stress because their children don't poop that often. I have the opposite problem. Cameron is pooping 4-5 times a day. I don't think anything is wrong with her. Far from it. But at this rate I will run out of unstained onesies! Not to mention the amount of laundry I've had to do. So, has anyone else conquered this problem? And my apologies for anyone who is offended for this post about poop. What can I say? I'm a mom!

The smile of a baby who just pooped.

Cameron's first Thanksgiving

For the past few years DH and I have eschewed Thanksgiving. We live far enough away that it didn't make sense for us to travel home for the holiday. Especially with Christmas just around the corner. So I was thrilled when Amanda invited us over for her Orphan Thanksgiving. 10 friends came together to eat lots of food, drink more than was necessary and have a wonderful time.

I am thankful for wonderful family and friends to spend the holidays with. We are laying low this weekend and avoiding the holiday crowds. But I can't wait to start decorating for Christmas!

Cameron and Holden play together after dinner.

Bread in the shape of a turkey. Awesome!
Yummy food.

The dinner table is set for 10.

Cameron chases Charlie around.

Cameron decides Charlie's toy is hers.

Proof of Cameron's new ability: crawling. Sorta.

Cameron: eight months old

Dear Cameron,

Today you are eight months old. This past month has been wonderful for all of us. You are such a happy baby that it is a pleasure to be around you. We look forward to the precious hours in the evening when we can cuddle and play.

This month you have learned to sit up on your own for extended periods of time. You have also started crawling.

Your two bottom teeth are being joined by the top two. It was a lot harder this time around with interrupted sleep and crying but they have finally popped through. You love your solid food and will sit happily in your high chair munching on puffs while Mommy and Daddy get dinner ready. Your success rate at getting the food into your mouth is increasing every day. I don't think Charlie likes that because it means less snacks for him!

The weekends are so much fun for us. You love your Saturday swimming lessons and can already put your face in the water. It also helps tucker you out which gives Mommy a nice 2 or 2 1/2 hour break for your afternoon nap. I am more than happy to keep that going for as long as possible!

You laugh all the time but especially for Daddy and Charlie. We can't wait to see what you will do next!

Love,

Mommy and Daddy

Damn you, Wheel of Time!

To say that I am an avid reader is putting it mildly. My husband is a bit in awe of the number of books I've read. And re-read. I primarily read books in the Fantasy genre. Usually what that means is an author writes anywhere from 3 to 15 books in a series. And if I'm hooked then I wait eagerly for each new title in the series. Sometimes I wait for years. And I am not exaggerating.

One of my favorite series is Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. There are currently 12 books in the series: 11 and one prequel. I've read them all many times. Each book is about 600 pages so they aren't short reads. I've probably spent months of my life reading the words that Robert Jordan has written. Then three years ago he died. Yup, he died and the series hadn't been finished. However, he died of a terminal disease so he put plans in place for another author to take over the final book in the series.

Every few months over the course of the past three years I've checked in to see when the final book was coming out. I found out yesterday that it was published in late October. I was outraged. "I could have read the book weeks ago!" I told my husband. "How could I not know?" Internet fail! So while Cameron took her afternoon nap I rushed over to B&N to pick up the book. While waiting in line I read the dust jacket. The opening paragraph announced grandly that the last book is so epic that it has been split into three books. I almost starting laughing hysterically.

Argh!!!!!! So I've been laboring under the wrong assumption that the series would be concluded with this last volume. Damn you, publishers who are milking a dead man's last book! Looks like I have another 3 years before the series will actually be finished. Sigh. Good thing I can go back and re-read the other 12. That should keep me busy for a few weeks at least :-)

Teething and other challenges

Poor Cameron has been teething for the past few days. Her upper gums are swollen but no signs of teeth poking through yet so it appears as though we are in for a bit of a rough ride for the next week or so. With her bottom two teeth we saw little signs of fussiness or pain. This time around Cameron has woken up crying several times.

It would probably be less painful all around if Cameron was willing to take medication. But Cameron has decided that she doesn't want to take anything. Not motrin, not Tylenol, nothing. She clamps her mouth shut and shakes her head violently while slapping our hands away. Good times. I've tried given it to her in a multitude of ways but she doesn't want it. Anyone else have this problem?

The other challenge for us has been around eating solid food. It usually crops up during dinner. Cameron will whack her hands against the tray and many times manages to hit the spoon and coat herself and us with food. If we're lucky she will eat about a 1/4 of the jar before we give up and spend the next ten minutes cleaning up. Apparently she doesn't engage in this behavior at day care. She saves it up for us. Thanks, Cameron! Again, looking for validation and help with this issue. So please let me know if you've encountered it and managed it successfully.

The new normal

I think of myself as a very habitual person. I get up around the same time every day (yes, I do miss the pre-baby weekend snooze fests), have a consistent morning and evening routine and generally know what is going to happen at any given point during the day. And I like it that way. Consistency is my friend. So you can imagine that I had some trepidation about how a baby was going to change everything. Good news! Yes, my life changed but it quickly settled into a new routine that has changed slightly as Cameron has grown.

• Sleeping through the night. While sometimes it feels like just yesterday I was up 2-3 times a night to feed Cameron it's actually been a good stretch of time that she has been sleeping 11-12 hours a night. Pure bliss. The only problem? I'm completely used to it and I jealously guard my sleep. Does Cameron have a cold? Crap! Now she might wake up which means either DH or I are up. Teething? Looks like it's time for some Tylenol. Yes, I am not afraid to provide OTC drugs if that means I get to sleep uninterrupted.
  
• Errands are short and sweet. No longer can I run out for hours on end to do errands or get a manicure on the weekend. Now it is a matter of fitting tasks in between naps for external errands and during naps for home maintenance. I have found myself ordering clothes online because I don't have time to browse through the mall looking for that perfect outfit. I guess I'll have to leverage the Internet for my Christmas purchases too.
  
• I shop for Cameron, not me. Even last weekend when I went out because I needed a new work outfit for the 3 days of meetings I have this week I ended up buying a couple of things for Cameron, not me. It's just so much easier to find stuff for her! And infant girl clothing is so cute, isn't it?


• Evenings are family time. I have about 30 minutes to myself when I arrive home from work assuming Cameron takes a third nap and DH is still working. Usually I spend the time doing lots of different things but sometimes I completely veg out. Once 5:30 rolls around, however, it is all about Cameron until she goes to bed at 7 PM. Then DH and I have dinner and watch something on TV. If we are adventurous we might watch a movie. Yes, we really are that exciting!

At almost 8 months in, things are good and pretty easy. So, what do I have to look forward to as Cameron starts becoming more mobile and she gets older? How have you adjusted the the new normal?

Who needs to win the lottery when you can just die instead?

It's official. DH and I are insured. Apparently if either of us dies while engaging in a felony all bets are off but they didn't say anything about murdering the other person. Bwah ha ha ha ha. Of course if I kill DH, who will rake all of the leaves? I'm better off waiting until the Spring.

The whole process to get term life insurance was kind of a pain in the ass. Sure, we could have gone through an Internet site and spent less time but DH wanted to start with MetLife who is our current P&C and Home Insurance provider. MetLife referred us to an independent firm in Charlotte a few miles from our house. DH placed the initial call, got some numbers and we went down to meet with the financial advisor. "Financial advisor?" you might be asking. Yes, which is probably why the process took far longer than it should have.

DH told me that the guy he spoke with was young so I wasn't surprised when a young man came out to greet us when we arrived. By the way, this was a Friday so I was attired in jeans and a sweatshirt. Hey, I enjoy working from home on Fridays so there was no way I was going to dress up to spend far too much money for a "just in case" situation. After we settled into the conference room an older man entered and introduced himself as Bill. He was the "big guns" and the person we ended up dealing with for the rest of the process. We never saw the young man again. He made such an impression I can't even remember his name.

Would you be shocked if I told you I finally had to cut our meeting short after 90 minutes because I had a conference call I needed to be on? Yes, apparently it takes 90 minutes to convince Bill that no, we really do just want term life insurance. No, we aren't interested in learning more about the financial advice and products you offer. Let's just see how this goes first (and by the way, not great so far!). No, just term life insurance. We aren't interested in Whole Life or Universal Life right now. OK, it's been an hour. Can we go ahead an put some numbers up now?

DH loves that I tend to be the more assertive person in these meetings. As someone who sits on hours of meetings every day I try not to beat around the bush. Give me the information, identify the follow up and move on. Bill finally took some information from us and plugged it into the MetLife online tool. It was a complete waste of time because he generated the same numbers that DH got over the phone from Young Man. Basically what it boiled down to was the numbers depend on our test results and smoker status. I quit smoking two years ago but DH was more like 18 months so he was falling under the "less than 2 years" category.

Upon the recommendation from Bill we decided to request quotes from two providers. Part of the application process required that Bill and Young Man verbally ask us questions and write down our responses. I'm not really sure why that was required but insurance is still one of those laggards related to technology and process improvement. I would think at this point that there would be some kind of universal application that could be sent to dozens of firms at one time. But I guess there are enough differences in what firms look for in order to calculate their rates that every application must be completed separately. 30 minutes later we escaped and scheduled an appointment for a nurse to come and take blood and urine samples. Wow, that woman was efficient! She was at our house for maybe 20 minutes and had just as much paperwork to fill out as Bill.

Two weeks later we had received our reports back from the two providers. Everything looked good numbers-wise. DH's cholesterol levels were much better than anticipated which was a nice surprise. We trekked back into Bill's office to receive the final numbers and figure out next steps. The numbers actually looked really good from one provider and were about 20% higher for the other. Not surprisingly DH's rates were much higher than mine. Apparently women are cheaper to insure because we live longer. Because we are just going with term we decided to go with the cheaper option. Bill then started talking about annual vs. monthly payments. He told us, "I know that there isn't a big savings but..." I interrupted him, "Well, amortized over the lifetime of the loan it is quite substantial." That kind of shut him up and he didn't try to push us any more on other products. I love it when I can pull out my MBA knowledge. I rarely get to use the financial aspects of my degree in my daily work life.

DH is going in today to drop off the check and we will have completed one of life's major milestones: getting life insurance. How did your experience compare to ours? Did you just get term insurance or did you mix it with other products?