hoggy halloween!

cute with a capital Q!

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quentin's piggy costume fit him perfectly, though the piggy hood kept falling in his face. he thoroughly enjoyed trick or treating at aunt lois' house and was good n' tuckered out by the time we got back home.

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in other news, quentin slept from 10 p.m. until 7:45 a.m. last night, making it his 3rd consecutive sleeping through the night. do i hear 4?!?!?

2 for 2 and other adhoc updates

1. quentin slept through the night again last night, from midnight to past 8 a.m. hopefully this keeps up!
2. we officially have day care. we have decided to go with the home day care i visited last week. i can finally cross one of the big 3 to-do items from my list (the other two being sell the richmond house and find a job.)
3. as far as a job goes, the HR dude from the framingham office finally called me yesterday. he has a couple of roles that he thinks would suit me. he's reaching out to those hiring managers to set up a day for me to come in and talk with them. can't cross it off the list, but that's progress!
4. i haven't blogged about it in a while because it's depressing, but my milk production issues have continued. my doctor had prescribed me something to help increase it. it worked until the prescription ran out and my supply once again dropped like a brick. it's been very frustrating and of course makes me feel like a terrible mom. i did some research and found some herbs that have been shown to increase supply. i've been taking them for about 2 weeks with no real progress. then tonight, i saw a segment on the news that said that birth control pills have caused drastic milk reduction in some nursing moms. i started taking the pill just as my milk-increasing prescription ran out. hmmmmm. guess i have a decision to make.
5. halloween tomorrow! quentin has the cutest little piggy costume. i hope it fits, but i am afraid it will be a bit too big. if so, we've got other options since i seem to have a problem - i am addicted to buying cute little animal outfits. he's got a snoopy one, 2 cow ones, and a puppy dog one too. pictures will certainly be posted after we get back from trick or treating at aunt lois' house.
6. don't think we'll get any trick or treaters due to the fact that we live in the country and on a busy-ish road. guess we'll have to eat all the candy. we definitely didn't already start eating it ;)
7. i feel very domestic. since things are about to get crazy with me going back to work, i spent this afternoon developing a 2-week rotating menu for breakfast, lunch, and dinner including shopping checklist. the beauty of it is that i will only have to go grocery shopping every two weeks - the first week's menu consists of most of the fresh stuff and the second week has more frozen or canned items. i should be able to breeze through the grocery store when i do go because my list is already made. the meals are also easy to prepare so we won't feel the need to go out to eat - just can't afford that now!
8. i'm a little late but i've got quentin's birth announcements designed. now i just need to make them. coming soon in a mailbox near you!

depressing real estate update

our @#$%^& richmond house is never going to sell. ever. we relisted with a new agent a little less than 3 weeks ago. we really like this guy - he's everything our last realtor wasn't. the new guy calls his clients at least once a week even if there's no news. we begged and pleaded with the 1st realtor to do that but weeks would go by without us hearing from him. the new guy actually does more than just list on the MLS too - he's got it in the newspaper, on websites, all kinds of stuff that the other guy never even considered. but alas a better realtor isn't really helping us. 3 weeks and we've had one lousy showing. and it was another "we want a historic house with charm" couple. seriously. it was built in 2001. what is the deal with these people. why do they even bother looking??!?!!?!?!? also not helping is that another neighbor has put their house on the market. their house is 2 doors down from us and very similar to ours, though 10 years older. they bought their house a long time ago so they will be making a ton of money no matter what it sells for. they are being super aggressive with their price so we really have no choice but to keep up with them. no luck on renting it out either so we are looking at yet another price drop. unfortunately, this is the drop that will officially put us in the red. we will lose money on this house. we haven't officially decided to drop the price yet, but we really have no choice because we can't keep this double mortgage thing up for long and with the neighbor's house listed for 15K less than ours no one will even look at ours. right now moving to boston seems like the worst decision we ever made. we may be eating ramen noodles for the rest of our lives. i hate real estate.

sleep

jeremy and i finally cleared all the junk off our bed and were actually able to sleep upstairs. we also hung up all the cool snoopy artwork in quentin's room which had been resting on his changing table. as a result, quentin had to leave the comfy confines of his pack n' play and give his crib another try. success! the boy also slept through the night for the first, and hopefully not last, time! he went down around midnight, just as his red sox were putting the finishing touches on their sweep. he didn't get up until 7:30 this morning and even then he was all smiles. he must love his room, or he's still beaming about the sox! of course he's super cranky today, but at least i got a decent night of sleep!

quentin is famous!

my hometown newspaper had an online fall photo contest. i don't think we won but quentin's photos are on their website, along with a ton of beautiful new england in the fall photos. q is in fall photo contest - part 20. if you've got some time the other photos are worth checking out too - new england is so pretty in the fall!

thumb sucker

the boy hates his binky. but this week quentin discovered his thumbs. and oh boy does he love them. he switches between his left and right hands, but seems to favor his right (just like mommy!) it's really cute when he's mad - he slurps on his thumb like a madman. sometimes he can't find the thumb, so the whole fist works just fine!

stoopid. just stoopid.

gotta love america. injuries prompt baby-seat recall About 1 million baby seats sold at major U.S. retailers are being recalled after the Consumer Product Safety Commission received 28 reports of serious head injuries, including three skull fractures, after young children fell out of the seats when they were placed on tables. Improper use of the Bumbo Baby Sitter Seats, manufactured by South African company Bumbo International, could lead to serious head injuries if placed on any elevated surface. Young children could arch their backs, flip out of the seat and fall onto the floor, the agency warned Thursday. The seats were sold at Target, Wal-Mart, Sears, Kmart, Toys 'R' Us, Babies 'R' Us, USA Babies and other toy and children's stores nationwide and online from August 2003 through October 2007 for about $40. The bottom of the molded foam children's seat is round and flat with a diameter of about 15 inches and comes in yellow, blue, purple, pink, aqua and lime green. The seat has leg holes and a seat back that wraps completely around the child. The front of the seat reads "Bumbo" in raised lettering with the image of an elephant on top. The bottom of the seat has a warning label that reads: "Never use on a raised surface. Never use as a car seat or bath seat. Designed for floor level use only. Never leave your baby unattended as the seat is not designed to be totally restrictive and may not prevent release of your baby in the event of vigorous movement." The Consumer Product Safety Commission warns that consumers should never use the infant seat on a table, countertop, chair or other elevated surface. Consumers can contact Bumbo to obtain new warning label stickers and instructions at (877) 932-8626. The agency also says consumers should use the Bumbo seat at ground level but should never leave a child unattended. do we really need to recall a product to warn people about something that is already clearly stated on the product? how stupid are people? i mean, c'mon. who are these people who essentially admit to child abuse by filing a complaint??? c'mon. i guess i need to call up and get my new idiot stickers in case my brain falls out and i am tempted to do something that i am EXPLICITLY told not to do at risk of serious harm to my child.

adventures in babysitting, part deux

we last left this with us thinking we couldn't afford day care at all. i had called all the daycares in the yellow pages with no luck. but we also can't afford for me to not work. not even close. so pretty much we thought we were screwed. but then... we had a yard sale a couple of weekends ago (partially because we're trying to fit 2000+ square feet of stuff into a 1400 square foot house and partly because we need to pinch/make every penny we can to be able to keep afloat until the richmond house finally sells.) as far as yard sales go, it was pretty crappy. we had an early rush but just lookers, not a lot of buying. our richmond yard sales always went very well - people seemed to really like our stuff and wanted to buy it. not so much out here in the country. we pretty much could tell if people were going to buy anything by looking to see if they were wearing flannel. flannel-yes = no sale, flannel-no = potential sale. i overheard several times, "oh it's from ikea, no wonder it's so nice." now i love ikea but it isn't exactly the nicest stuff in the world, just nice enough for the price. but any how, i digress... this lady and her husband stopped by because they saw from the road that there was a bookcase for sale (an ikea billy, actually.) she mentioned that she runs a day care and is always looking for sturdy bookcases. our billy didn't work for what she needs because she needs permanently affixed shelves, but we got to talking about her daycare. she explained about how all day cares in massachusetts need to be licensed by the state and that there is a website where you can search for all licensed providers in a particular town. she even had openings at hers. unfortunately her location doesn't really work for us. but it opened up a whole new avenue to explore - home-based daycares. woo hoo. i played with the website a bit, but it doesn't really give much more info than the names and addresses of people with licenses. i didn't really feel comfortable just calling these people because they are listed with just their names. i have no problem calling mary's family daycare but worried about calling just mary. i was about to suck it up and just call people when i had an epiphany. craigslist. heck. i stalk craigslist for baby stuff, like 3-4 times a day. i went right to the site and saw the childcare link i had never noticed before. there were a lot of sketchy type postings - random peeps who stay at home and want to make some easy cash by watching your kid too. but a few were for legit home-based daycares that are licensed by the state. i emailed a few of them to find out if they had availability and to find out their prices. one in particular sounded perfect. it is about halfway between home and work which is awesome. if we went with something close to home, i wouldn't get into the office until after 9 and would have to leave at like 3:30 in order to make their hours. if we went with something close to my office, jeremy wouldn't be able to pick the boy up early on the days he gets out of the hospital during daylight hours. so halfway is perfect. she also has exactly one infant spot available. and she only charges $35 a day (about $700/month.) SOOO much better than $1900 a month! i went to check it out today and really liked it. she never has more than 5 kids at a time and quentin would be her only infant. her policies are all very reasonable (i.e. she doesn't charge you for the days she's on vacation - couldn't believe that some of them do!) so i think we're going to go with her. now i just need a job to go to to justify bringing the boy to daycare! also, on the way home from the daycare visit i spotted a free diaper champ alongside the road. (an aside - i don't know if people do this everywhere and i just never noticed or if it's unique to this area, but people here love to put stuff they don't want out in front of their houses so that passersby can take it.) i've been stalking craigslist and freecycle for a second diaper champ so that we could have one on each floor of the house. the ones on craigslist are always too far away to justify or too expensive for a used poopy diaper holder. but free. that's my style. a little bit of bleach and that bad boy will rock. it will pretty much complete our first floor "nursery" - i.e. his pack n' play which serves as both crib and changing table. good day! now to find a job. and sell the stupid richmond house.

wicked cool

less than 15 miles from our house: blue lobster

wicked cool.

thank you, please drive thru

ok, i never understood the drive-thru phenomenon. i get it for fast food, but never really understood other drive thru lanes - the bank, the dry cleaners, etc. now that i have a 15 pound kid in a 15 pound carrier, let me say i totally get it now. i had to go to CVS to pick up a prescription and the thought of lugging quentin in there for a 10 second transaction - ugh. but they have a drive-thru. wonderful!

pumpkin farm

jeremy got home from the hospital earlier enough today that we could go out and enjoy fall in new england. we went out to a local farm to do fall-things - apples, pumpkins, etc. unfortunately the pick-your-own apples and pumpkins were done for the season, but we still enjoyed playing on the farm.

is there anything cuter than a baby in a pile of pumpkins? yes. a baby with a pumpkin hat and mittens.

meant to post this on thursday

we has quentin's ultrasound on thursday for his crooked butt crack. it took a while and he absolutely hated it, but everything checked out ok. his spine looks good so no concerns! he's just a little boy with a crooked butt crack! poor thing has a cold (unfortunate disadvantage of living with a pediatrician - exposure to everything that's going around!) he's getting regular doses of tylenol to help his pain. poor baby is coughing, sneezing, and has a booger-filled nose. good thing the lady at baby school spent 30 minutes on the topic of booger-sucking ;)

found!

you may remember back when i was 7ish months prego and packing an entire house to move 600 miles away i lost my cell phone. it was unearthed today in one of the very last boxes to be opened and unpacked. it wanted to hang out with our cordless house phones i guess, because that's the box it was in. too bad i had to buy a new one. at least i might be able to recover my contacts and phone numbers so i can call people again! so far i've only gotten like 4 people added back to my new phone! woo hoo!

adventures in babysitting

so most people get on day care lists as soon as they find out that they are pregnant, some even before that! unfortunately that wasn't an option for us since we had no idea where we would be living when the baby was born. we certainly weren't going to get on every day care list in boston, worcester, new haven, springfield, richmond, charlotteville, washington dc, and winston-salem. then even after we knew we'd be in the boston area, we really didn't know where. the boston metro area is quite expansive so we had to wait again. now that we're in our house and i have a pretty good idea where i'll be working i'm starting to call day care centers. holy cow. i've called 8 places so far:

1. costs $1924 per month
2. costs $330 per week, or $1430 per month but doesn't have a spot until may, unless they open a new infant classroom, which they might
3. there was no answer and no machine - as a parent i want to be able to get a hold of the peeps who have my kid so they're out of the running
4. doesn't accept infants
5. has no availability for infants until july or august 2008 (seriously those babies aren't even conceived yet!)
6. just got the machine, we'll see
7. doesn't accept infants
8. costs $350 per week, or $1517 per month

ugh. is day care really this expensive?!?!? seriously. all he does is sleep. i was figuring it would be in the 1000 range. yikes. any one need a nanny job?!?!?

quentin?

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nope. jeremy at quentin's age.

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this one is quentin :)

i think they're related or something.

almost done!

so close. it's a very small space (about 8' x 8') so things are crammed in rather snugly, but other than the glider everything we need is in there! just a few small things left to do - buy some frames for some of the cool vintage peanuts posters i bought on ebay and hang stuff up on the walls, buy a floor lamp to help the lighting situation, and maybe eventually sew a new pair of curtains so i can use the ones that i put up in the quilt i plan to sew (eventually, someday, probably never!)

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i had forgotten about some of the cool snoopy stuff we collected. the mobile above his crib is the same exact one my mom had over my crib :)

score!

i have been stalking craigslist for baby stuff - clothes, stuff to finish off what we need, etc. - since we are poor and paying two mortgages. specifically i have been looking for a high chair, the next size car seat, and a glider & ottoman. all big ticket items. these things are offered all the time. but i'm picky. i want the exact stuff we registered for - the eddie bauer high chair, the britax marathon, and a white glider with matching ottoman. not as easy to come by, especially not close to home so i can pick up easily AND at a price i am willing to pay. finally today someone was offering a glider & ottoman in the next town over. the cushions look a little rough but i can cover those with some of the snoopy fabric i have. and the best part - $20. score!

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of course it won't fit in quentin's shoebox of a room, but i can put it in our room or the guest room or something!

stripes!!!!

the stripes are done! the stripes are done! so much work for such little stripes. jeremy did an AWESOME job measuring, marking, taping, and painting these 4 stripes. they look so simple, but a lot of hard work went into them. now to finish the nursery!

before the tape was pulled

quentin checking on the progress

pulling the tape

all done!

a glimpse of what the finished product will look like

pack n' play all through the night!

the little doodle slept the entire night on his back in the pack n' play with minimal fussing! up until now, he's only been willing to sleep in his car seat or his swings. granted he woke up more times last night than he has been recently, but that's ok. maybe we'll get him in his crib by the end of the week when i expect his nursery, including stripes to be complete!

2 month check-up

i took quentin to his new pediatrician today for his two month check-up. poor thing - this is the first time they get shots. but he did get 3 super-cool snoopy band-aids to cover his wounds. today he weighed in at 13 pounds and 11 ounces and measured 23 inches. he's a big boy! his head is a little flat on the right side because he favors that side. we need to get him transitioned into his crib and encourage him to turn his head to the left more often. i put him down in the pack n' play an hour and a half ago. he's still awake but not screaming. maybe he's learning to love crib-like structures. poor little guy also has to go get an ultrasound next week because he has a crooked butt crack. jeremy can explain all the medical mumbo jumbo but essentially it could be a sign of dysplasia. or he could just have a crooked butt crack. i'm voting for crooked butt crack, but better safe than sorry!

the word of the day is... progress

now that quentin's crib is set up, we've tried to get him to sleep in it. the first time, we put him in at 1 a.m. both jeremy and i needed to get up early the next day so we only could take 45 minutes of screaming before we took him out and put him in his swing so we could sleep. i put him in his crib again this morning while i cleaned up after changing a really foul diaper. again he was not happy and i caved after 15 minutes of screaming. well, this evening after he ate, we put him down in his pack n' play. he screamed for a while but has been sound asleep for 2 hours! progress! we're also making progress on the stripes in his room. jeremy is diligently taping off a set of horizontal stripes across the top of the whole room. we're hoping to get it painted this week. also hoping to go to IKEA on thursday when jeremy gets out of work to buy the shelf for quentin's room. once that's in there, we can finally put away all his stuff (which is right now in a massive pile, clogging up our landing and preventing further progress of our master bedroom organization. we are currently sleeping in the guest room, which is quite a step up from where we've been sleeping for the past month - on the couch in the living room. it is a very comfortable couch!) also making considerable progress unpacking and setting up the rooms in the new house. all the furniture is in place. many rooms are almost done. the bathroom upstairs in completely done - it even has art hanging on the walls! we have set a lofty goal of having a huge tag sale in 2 weeks, which means i need to sort through every single box before then to determine what stays and what goes. need to sell a lot of stuff so we can continue to pay for two houses. speaking of... hopefully there will be progress on the sale of the richmond house soon. our contract with our realtor ended today (woo hoo - big cyber clink of champagne glasses!) so we will be re-listing with another agent just as soon as we can find one who will list it for sale and for rent at the same time. that way we can go with whatever happens first, lessening the financial hemorrhaging we're doing now with the two mortgages. we've been waiting for this day for 4 months, ever since we realized that our agent wasn't really trying (see the open house not listed in the newspaper incident.) we get that the real estate market sucks right now. that's why you have to try. but anyway, no need to get myself all worked up. we're done with him! focus on the progress, kiwi. more progress on the job front. some folks from the richmond office have friends in the framingham office and told me to let them know if they could help. i called in those favors and have been put in contact with some folks from the office up here to discuss potential roles here. woo hoo! and finally, now that my printer is set up and functioning, i have created my big-ass to-do list to work off of. anyone who knows me really well knows my love of lists & spreadsheets, and my even greater love of checking things off of lists. it's been killing me to work off of hand-written lists because they get so messy. the current to-do list is 4 pages long with pages set up to print landscape, three columns per page, single-spaced, 10-point font. i.e. big-ass, thoroughly thorough list. love it. now i can truly get stuff done!