Eat-Sleep-Love | Maryland DC & Virginia Sleep Coach, Baby Planner, Maternity & Child Consultant

Maternity & Parenting Center

Computer Woes

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As you can see, I’m finally back to blogging after my long absence. I actually have a bunch of blogs I’ve drafted over the past few weeks that are “in the can” and set to auto-publish over the next few days. I have been going through withrdawal, lately, without my regular blog fix!

Just before Labor Day, my computer started to give me a hard time. It was repeatedly crashing and not saving documents properly. Finally, on Friday, my computer froze. I tried rebooting it, and my computer informed me it did not detect a hard drive. My heart STOPPED in that instant. My life (my work, pictures of Micah, videos, music, tax information, emails, writings, everything) are all wrapped up in this tiny little computer. And worst of all, I have been delinquent about backing up my hard drive.

After a few more tries and a restore session, my computer seemed to boot. At least I could see my files. My computer informed me there was a fatal error on my hard drive, and instructed me to backup my files, shut the computer down and get a new hard drive. I desperately tried to do a complete hard drive backup, but it kept failing. I managed to salvage all of my picture files (at least the ones that were not lost the prior three days), my outlook file, my pictures, my music, and most of my work files. It was a holiday weekend, so I could not get Dell to ship the part until Tuesday. On Wednesday, the Dell guy arrived at my house with a new hard drive.

After swapping out my hard drive (and fixing a few other things that were wrong), I was informed I would have to completely re-load all the software onto my computer. Since the move, I have no idea where my disks are. Dell had to send me fresh disks, and I was not able to start re-loading the software on my computer until Saturday. It took me most of Saturday and Sunday to get my computer up and running and restored, and Sunday afternoon I flew off to Atlanta for work.

This has been a very long week so far – meetings all day every day from 8 until 7. I did get to catch up with an old friend, but these weeks take a lot out of me. To top it all off, I’m flying to Orlando Tuesday through Thursday for another conference next week. I’m off to Minnesota and Chicago in October and Kansas in November. I’m dreading all this travel and time away from Micah :(.

Grab Happy

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A friend of mine recently said she was told to “grab happy” wherever she could get it. This was said to her in the context of her struggle with infertility, but I have to say, it really resonates with me. Life is so short, and we all spend so much time stressing and worrying. We all need to focus on trying to “grab happy” wherever we get it.

I think I need to renew my efforts to “grab happy.” I have so much happiness in my life right now – a wonderful family, a good job, and amazing friends. Sometimes, I wonder if I truly appreciate all that happiness and hold on to it. My goal is to “grab happy” in the small moments – the beautiful Micah smiles, the cute little snuggles from my dog, and the beautiful rose bush Elliot brought home on my birthday.

Today, I am posting from an airplane far above on my way back home from 4 days in Atlanta (isn’t technology wonderful?). It was a long week at the conference, and I’ve been missing the Micah man terribly. As we were going to the airport, we learned our flight home was canceled. I went through the usual emotions, but after standing in a very long line, a wonderful woman re-booked us on a flight home to an alternate airport. We are actually arriving 20 minutes earlier than planned. So, today I am grabbing happy in the thought that soon I will be on solid ground, snuggling my little man andputting him to bed.

Little Mermaid

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Sorry for the long hiatus – my computer hard drive died, and I haven’t had access in over one week! I’ve got a ton of blogs I’ve been writing, but no way to upload them. I’ll catch up over the next few days. For now, however, it’s cake time….

Here is a cake I made for my niece Paige’s birthday this past weekend. She wanted a Little Mermaid cake. I considered a bunch of different styles, but decided to use the Mattel Shimmer Princess doll and decorate around her. The mound was a strawberry cake, and the bottom layer is chocolate. I made the shells from white chocolate (using candy molds). I wanted to make a Flounder and a Sebastian out of either white chocolate or an edible image, but my printer and computer were malfunctioning and I did not have enough time to make them out of chocolate. I sprinkled some brown sugar to make sand. I also had made coral out of royal icing, but it was not dry enough to attach to the cake. So, here is the end result – not quite what I envisioned, but my niece was thrilled! Funny how I always look at these cakes and see the things that did not happen as I planned.


Family Visit, Daycare and Weaning

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Elliot’s brother Steven, his wife Jodi and our niece Stephanie arrived here on Sunday afternoon. Micah showed off his skills, bonded with the three of them, and Elliot grilled chicken for dinner. Elliot had to work at Wolf Trap on Sunday night, so I hung out with his family while he was gone. Micah did not nap well Sunday afternoon, so he was ready to go to sleep around 7:15. He went down quickly and easily, and we all sat around watching him on the monitor. When Elliot arrived home, we enjoyed dessert with everyone. We then played a boisterous game of cards – Jodi loves the game “May I,” so the four of us sat around playing for a few hours.
On Monday morning, Micah woke up bright and early. He had his breakfast, played for a bit, then went down for his nap. When he woke up, he said goodbye to Steven, Jodi and Stephanie, and we bundled him off to his first day at the new daycare around 11:30! Elliot walked him over there, dropped off his stuff, and did the initial check-in process. He then met the rest of us at the Original Pancake House – one of my favorite breakfast/brunch spots! After brunch, Elliot’s family packed up their things and left for home. It was a nice visit, although a bit short. I felt terrible that they drove all that way for only a few short hours of Micah time.
We picked Micah up from daycare at 5:30, and he seemed to have a great day. We were pleased with his caretakers, and he was in a good mood. Our only challenge: Micah would not take a nap at daycare. Not really a surprise – there is so much going on there! Hopefully, it will get better with time.
On Monday night, the ladies from my playgroup took me out to celebrate my birthday. It was a nice dinner at Clydes on Tower Oaks, and we had a great time catching up. I cannot believe how the summer has just flown by.
We sent Micah back to daycare again today. This time, I dropped him off. He cried a bit when I put him down, crawled over to me, started whining “Mama” and put his arms up to be held. He was so cute. I think he was just in a clingy mood today. When I finally left, he was smiling and playing with a toy while Carla (his primary caretaker) held him.
As of this weekend, Micah is officially weaned – or at least he is no longer nursing. He actually decided to wean himself on Saturday – he refused to nurse both Saturday and Sunday, so we are all finished. He is still getting 1/2 breast milk and 1/2 formula, and will for the next few weeks until we run out. I am hoping to start playing with sippy cups again – hopefully we can get him to drop the bottle and take his milk by sippy cup.

What happens at Grammy and Goppy’s….

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So much is changing so quickly. Micah had his first overnight at Grammy and Goppy’s house Saturday night! Saturday was a good day – I went to meet a friend for lunch while Elliot took Micah out to services, and then we all went to a birthday party for Merrick at the Germantown Water Park later that afternoon. Micah got wet, crawled around and had a great time.
We then went to my parents’ house, dropped Micah off, and took off for dinner. We had reservations at The Melting Pot, and it was delicious! We ordered a cheese course (spinach artichoke cheese), we shared the vegetarian entree, and we split a chocolate course (we ordered the Chocolate Cookies & Cream Dream). On our way home from dinner, we stopped at Target – we needed to pick up a few things for the house. We bought these “paper rope” baskets for under the coffee table two weeks ago, but, unfortunately, we only picked up 2. We’ve been searching for a third one ever since. Well, as we were perusing the aisles, we noticed that they had a new shipment of the paper rope baskets in a different color – a dark chocolate brown (the ones we had were a “natural” color – kind of a light wood look). We decided we’d rather have three baskets, so we bought 3 new ones in dark brown and decided we would return the other two. Perfect! We got home late (almost midnight) and spent the rest of the evening relaxing and groaning from eating too much food.
This morning, I still woke up at 7:00 am, but I was able to lounge in bed for a bit before I got started on my day. I took the dog on a leisurely walk around 8:00 am, then started cleaning the house because Elliot’s brother Steve, Jodi and their youngest daughter Stephanie are coming down to visit today. Elliot finally got up around 10:00 (it took a cattle prod to get him awake), and we spent the next 1 1/2 hours sorting stuff and putting things away. I feel like we finally made some progress on the basement!
We then headed up to my condo – we needed to drop off a few things there for donation and make a list of all the things we need to finish so that we can put it on the market after Labor Day. We were there about 20 minutes or so, then drove over to my parents’ house. Micah was wide awake, dressed and playing upstairs with my mother. He was SOOO happy to see me – he lit up with a huge smile, started waving and wiggling – so hard that he knocked himself over! It was SOOO cute. I took him in my arms, gave him a huge hug and a kiss, then finished giving him his bottle. We fed him lunch and started to head home. We stopped by Target on the way back to return the other baskets, and arrived home just in time for Micah to take his afternoon nap. Hopefully, he’ll sleep until our company arrives.

Diaper Acrobatics

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We have a new sport now – we call it “Diaper Acrobatics.” Changing Micah’s diaper is really an acrobatics routine now – he rolls, flips, grabs, sits, stands, and climbs – it is amazing we ever manage to GET the diaper on him at all! He also spends most of it shrieking if you try to pin him down. I’m SOOO ready for potty training – I’m just not ready for Micah to be that grown up. Tell me this diaper acrobatics is a phase – that he’ll get more cooperative once he settles into this moving thing, right?

Everybody loves to share

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Micah and Nugget are becoming great friends – they love to share things like food and toys. Really, neither one of them seems to understand that they each have different toys and food. Micah is always stealing Nugget’s alligator and frog, Nugget is always trying to steal Micah’s food, and today she made off with Elmo. She growled and shook him as Elmo cried out “Hahahaha!” and “Elmo loves it!” Micah found this too funny and laughed and laughed. When he finally regained possession of Elmo, he, too, put Elmo in his mouth. I have a feeling the dog and Micah will be swapping spit many times in the next few years. Does it make me a bad mom that I just don’t have the energy to be disgusted by this anymore?

Yes, baby, I’m here!

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There are some moments I wish I could freeze in time – or somehow take a snapshot to forever hold on to the memory. Do you ever have those moments – ones that just tug at your heart strings, but yet are so simple and impossible to truly capture with a picture. There are times when I wish I was an artist – perhaps I would sketch the images when they are fresh in my head. Bedtime tonight was one of those moments – well, three of those moments.
The evening was a typical night – we gave him his bath, he played with his ducky and only attempted to climb out of the bath tub two times. We really do need to start bathing him in the upstairs bath tub! Elliot took Micah upstairs after bath time. He put on Micah’s pajamas, read him a story and gave him his bottle. Micah was sleepy, so Elliot put Micah in his crib…and the crying began. Usually, Micah either rolls right over and falls asleep, or he rolls around the crib a bit restless (but trying to sleep), or he is happy and chats with his toys until he falls asleep. We waited a minute to see what would happen, but it was obvious that Micah needed a bit more cuddling before bed time.
I walked in, picked him up and sat with him on the glider. As we rocked together, Micah sucked his thumb and nestled in close to my chest. I held him with one hand on his head, gently stroking his hair, and the other arm wrapped around his body with my hand fanned out rubbing his back and tush. This was moment number one. I just love those moments when Micah snuggles. Within minutes, Micah was sound asleep, gently snoring.
I carefully stood up, slowly moved to the crib and gently lay Micah on the mattress. I slowly inched my way towards the door…and the wailing began again! I walked back to the crib and reached in to touch Micah. He immediately quieted down, took my hand and started smiling. Micah just wanted me to be close – moment number two. I rubbed his back and he slowly relaxed and put his head down. I gently worked my way back to the chair and sat down again, hoping that just having my presence in the room would be sufficient. Micah fussed for a moment until he realized he could play peak-a-boo with me through the crib.
After several rounds of peek-a-boo, I decided that it was time to try and sing Micah to sleep. I started with You Are My Sunshine and then I moved on to The Rose. Within moments, Micah was quiet, lying still and sucking his thumb. (As an aside – is anyone else picky about grammar? It drives me crazy when people misuse the words “lay” and “lie” or “then” and “than” or “accept” and “except.” Not to mention when people misspell definitely – there is no “a” people! I admit it – if you blog and I’m reading it, I am noticing your grammatical and spelling errors. When I review my OWN blog posts, typos, missing words and failure to use parallel grammatical structure drive me bonkers. I even try to avoid ending sentences in prepositions, and it drives me crazy that I have allowed contractions to sneak into my blog posts. And yes, Dad, you did actually catch a typo once before I had a chance to correct it! But I digress.)
This time, once Micah was quietly nestled in, I decided to be smart – I thought I would wait a bit longer to ensure he was fast asleep. Micah’s room is quite small – the glider is in the back corner of Micah’s room and runs perpendicular to his crib (forming an “L” shape). The ottoman sits in front of the glider just next to his crib. While I waited for Micah to fall asleep, I sat back in the glider, closed my eyes and slowly started to drift off myself. And then, it happened – moment number three. I noticed this very faint whisper of a tickle by my feet, and when I opened my eyes, there was Micah’s little arm sticking out through the slats of his crib reaching out to touch my toe. He just needed to know that I was still there. I pointed my toes towards him so that his hand could brush up against my foot, as if to say “yes, baby, I’m here.” He slowly started to fall asleep, intermittently checking for me. It took another fifteen minutes, but he finally fell into that deep sleep that allowed me to quietly creep out of his room.
What I want to remember tonight is that there is a little boy upstairs who is just comforted by my mere presence – reaching out of a crib to brush my toe brings him a world of comfort. How incredible is that? I hope he knows how full my heart is with love for him, and that I am filled with joy just knowing he is there, too.

I don’t know why he swallowed the spoon

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Do you remember that children’s song “There was an old woman who swallowed a fly, I don’t know why she swallowed the fly. Perhaps she’ll die.” Looking back at the lyrics (and so many lyrics to children’s songs), it is rather inappropriate for young children. Nevertheless, I could not get the song out of my head at dinner on Tuesday night.
We took my parents out for a dinner at Zaytinya (one of our favorite Middle Eastern restaurants) for Restaurant Week. The restaurant serves only “Mezze” portions (small tasting/appetizer sized portions) and they had a 5 course special for Restaurant Week. We each ordered a different option on the menu for each course, and we had 20 dishes to share between the four of us! The food was delicious.
During the meal, I fed Micah his dinner. When he was all finished, I let him have the spoon – I figured it would keep him busy and entertained. What I did not expect was to spend the remainder of the night trying to confiscate the spoon back from him. Every time he had the spoon, he shoved it all the way back into his throat and tried to swallow it! Needless to say, it kept making him choke – not that he stopped doing it over and over again or allowed me to take it away from him.
I guess the low point of the meal was picking up my car from the valet. Apparently, he decided to park it on the street (and we payed $11 for that courtesy) and he got a ticket. He handed it to me and told me it was my problem. We contacted the restaurant and they offered us a free meal and offered to cover the ticket. We are appealing it first, but we’ll see about whether we take them up on their offer to cover the ticket.
Micah is officially a crawling MACHINE these days. Army style, on all fours – it really doesn’t matter much to him. He pushes back to a sit, he chases the dog, he follows me around the house – he is just adorable. He gets into everything now, and he is constantly wanting to stand (and he keeps trying to walk, which worries me). We are working on childproofing the house, but we still have a way to go.

You say it’s your birthday….

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Today was my birthday! It has been a great weekend – I couldn’t ask for a better birthday celebration. We took Micah to visit my grandmother on Saturday, and they had such a good time. He smiled and showed off his crawling skills and stood up. I think she understood he was her great grandson (hard to tell as she suffers from dementia), but she kept saying how gorgeous he was and what a sweet baby he is, so in that moment, I think we brought her a bit of joy. What else could we want?
Saturday evening was just a quiet night at home. Elliot spent most of it baking me a birthday cake while I hid in the other room, and at midnight he surprised me with a tiny little chocolate peanut butter cake with a candle in it! He also gave me my gift – an ipod touch! I’m so excited to start using it.
On Sunday, Micah slept until 8:30. Naturally, he refused to nap, so at 10:45, we packed up and went to my parents’ house for brunch. Jeremy, Paige and Peyton came down to join us, and we had a DELICIOUS brunch! My mom made a french toast casserole, and we had bagels and cream cheese and lox. She made a yummy chocolate roll to top it all off. Micah was a bit cranky because his napping schedule was off, so he crashed in the car on our way back home. We were able to transfer him to the crib, and he napped for about an hour. My mom came over around 6:30 to babysit, and off we went for a wonderful dinner at Jaleo (a tapas restaurant) with some friends. Elliot brought a cake – a chocolate cake, with dulce de leche filling and chocolate icing. He even wrote happy birthday on it! He is getting much better at decorating cakes.
So now I’m sitting here, stuffed with cake and food. I am re-starting my diet on September 1, so I better enjoy this next week!