I’m a list person. I can’t even begin to tell you how long and dynamic my to-do list is.  I’m trapped in a giant game of whack-a-mole.  Brad has traveled out of state twice in the past week for work. Our cat almost died this weekend, and while ferrying him around town this morning I saved a turtle off the road, all before clocking in to the day job. The kids and I are recovering from a weekend trip to my parents’ house. Meanwhile, today I’m trying to launch a new a chore/scripture memory/meal/activity planning system for the kids, and a new daily Bible study program for myself. Not to mention the thousands of home maintenance & improvement tasks, social obligations, health matters, financial items, and other general issues to address. Whew!

Brad and I are stressed.  I was telling him this weekend that I think if we put first things first – namely, emptying our jar of all but the large spiritual rocks for starters, I imagine that God can leverage some supernatural efficiencies for us, and things will fall into place. I just need to prioritize correctly and let the rest go.  So what an encouraging verse this is. All I must do is BE a certain way while holding God’s hand through my life. Easier said than done, however… what I take away from this verse is all that is specifically NOT required: a perfect house, organization plans and lists, a quota of play dates and social events, etc. Thank You, Lord, for the encouragement today, as I was struggling to keep my head above water! Thanks for reminding me that all the “stuff” that I make so important, is really not all that important. Not that I’m ditching my lists, but it’s just nice to put them back into perspective.

I feel the need to explain this sabbatical.  Primarily, we’ve been a little busy.  To put it into perspective, let me offer the following list of events that have occurred since I last wrote:

• Subsequent children birthed: 2
• Possibility of terminal diagnoses for said children: 2
• Doctor and therapist appointments: my guess is over 100
• Nannies interviewed: 8
• Nannies employed: 3
• Homes bid upon: 8
• Homes bought: 2
• Homes refinanced: 2
• Homes rented out: 2
• Home renovation/repair projects: 15? 20?
• Multi-day power outages: 2
• Hail storms that required new roofing and skylights: 1
• Dogs lost: 1
• Dogs gained: 1
• Dogs housebroken: 1
• Children “housebroken”: 2
• Wild animals found in yard/garage/pool: ~150 hummingbirds, 2 ducks, 1 jaguarundi, 3 red tail hawk nests, 5 kite nests, 2 wren nests, numerous squirrel nests, 4 bunny nests, 2 possum nests, 1 fox, 1 turtle, 1 frog
• Trips taken: NYC, Saint Louis, Austin, California (Brad’s work), next week: Seattle (Brad’s work), next month: Yellowstone
• Social events hosted: my guess is 3-4 dozen
• Churches visited: 5-6
• Siblings married: 1
• Nieces born: 1
• Close friends and family having major life events: couple dozen
• Reorganizations/layoffs/job changes for Jessica: countless (all with Bank of America though)
• Home businesses started: 1
• Law school graduations and career changes for Brad: 1 each
• People thoroughly exhausted: 2 (plus more if you count our parents & other sitters)

Furthermore, I’ve been in a state I like to call “analysis paralysis.”  Many previous posts that I’ve written but not published have been waylaid due to technical difficulties, such as hacking of our website, computer problems, spam attacks, video/photo issues, mysteriously vanishing posts, etc.  So then my conundrum was whether to wait until I could sequentially revive and post the rapidly aging drafts, or whether just to pick up from now and move forward.  Well, I decided to hybridize my approach.  I can’t resist the urge to write what’s on my mind, so I’m going to write current stuff as time allows.

So to both of you faithful readers, thanks for holding out hope!  I’ve been a bit overwhelmed on all fronts.  However I hope to ameliorate the growing backlog and catch up with posting them over time.  I’ll have to toy with when/where/how to post updates, so bear with me.  But it feels good to be back on the map, and I hope you’ll stay tuned!

Merry Christmas from our family to yours. The Birchfields.

He now has 8 teeth, 4 on bottom and 4 on top.  He loves to grind them together and make this horrific sound, although he doesn’t do it as much as he did at first.  I guess the novelty is wearing off.

He is sleeping really well.  He sleeps about 11 hours at night (7 to 6), and usually takes 3 naps during the day – a morning nap that is anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, his main nap in the early afternoon that lasts usually an hour and a half (up to 2.5 hours), and an optional late afternoon nap for another 30 minutes to hour.  Almost immediately upon being put in his crib, he will roll himself onto his tummy and gently coo for about 15 minutes until he falls asleep, occasionally crying out once or twice.  The only challenge now is that he can scoot himself backwards and jam his legs through the crib slats, which awakens him on the wrong side of the crib, so to speak.

I really feared, um I mean thought, that he’d be crawling by now, but he’s not (yay!).  He still scoots backwards and in circles.  He rocks himself forward on his tummy like he’s doing “the worm” breakdance.  He gets up onto his knees like a dog and rocks back and forth, and has even brought his left knee forward to get him closer to his toys, but he has not officially crawled yet.   I would say it’s around the corner, but since I’ve thought that for awhile, maybe not! Who knows.

He can pull himself to standing when you take him by the hands.  In fact, he LOVES to do this.  When you try to sit him down on his bottom, he fights long and hard to stay standing.  He also loves to “bouncy bouncy,” when you hold him under his arms and he immediately starts jumping up in elation.  He thinks this is really funny.

He’s able to feed himself a few puffs of Gerber cereal, though this has really been a challenge.  He’s had a great little pincher grasp (thumb and forefinger together) with both hands for several weeks now – he even impressed the developmental ped with his dexterous finger skills.  So this coupled with his hefty appetite and plethora of teeth made me think he was ready for solids. Yet for weeks, when we’d try to give him any solid food (e.g. mashed banana, broken apart Cheerios) he would get it in the middle of his tongue and begin to dry heave quite dramatically.  Alas, now he can get a few bites down without incident.  We’ll have to work on table manners (not smacking) on down the road.

He has also learned to feed himself his own bottle.  For the first few days, when he figured out that we were trying to get him to hold it himself, he would put up a fuss and start crying at the beginning of meal time.  He would even dig his little elbows back into his carseat, making it almost impossible for you to force his hands around the bottle.  But he has now embraced the concept and gladly tries to hold it himself.  Sometimes after he’s been drinking for a few minutes and the formula runs kinda low, you have to help him tump his bottle upward.  But overall he’s great at it – now when he’s hungry and his bottle comes within his reach, he immediately grabs it and stuffs it in his mouth like it may be his last opportunity to eat for a week.

He is such a sweet and happy baby.  When he’s sitting in his high chair and I’m across the kitchen, every time I look over, I see the silhouette of his fuzzy little head and these two bright blue eyes as he cranes his neck to watch me. Once we make eye contact, he smiles really big and starts making his “excited sound” (where he breathes in and out really fast through his nose like he’s huffing).  When he is sitting on the floor playing with his toys and I walk by and say hi, he gets really excited and happy then too.  ALL the ladies at church (random strangers, people we know)… they all are fascinated with watching him because he is such a bright-eyed little charmer.  He melts their hearts.  Yesterday, a row of ladies told us that Sunday after Sunday, they can’t take their eyes off of him because he is so attentive and cute.  They even told us where we sat each week.  And when he smiled at one of them, well, it was over.  She bragged to the other ladies for the next 15 minutes.

He has started going to the church nursery, but actually this is not going so well.  There are too many new things and people to see, and too many sounds and lights, for him to sleep (which is usually what he needs during church time). So, he stays awake long past his naptime, until he reaches his breaking point and starts screaming inconsolably.  But each morning we leave him, he makes it a little longer.  In fact yesterday, he was ready for a nap at 8 so we dropped him off before we even made it to communion.  Once in the nursery, he made it all the way through the rest of service, fellowship time after service, and 80% of class (all without a nap of course) before I got “buzzed” to come console him.  That’s a new record!

He seems to have a gentle spirit (except with the cat, whose hair he yanks hard as soon as he can get a pinch of it).  But… he gingerly twirls my and the nanny’s hair through his fingers when we pick him up.  He also loves to reach out and gently touch our faces with his chubby little fingers while we hold him.  He will contentedly play with his toys on the floor for quite a long
time.  Even if he’s getting bored, hungry, needs a change, etc., he will generally just make these quiet little sigh or hmmmm sounds for a good 15 minutes before getting louder.  He can sit all the way through, attentively touching the pictures and turning the pages, while we read “There’s a Wocket in my Pocket” to him at night.

To illustrate his patient, uncomplaining spirit, here’s a little anecdote for you: one morning about a week ago when I went to get him up for the day, he was swimming in his own poop in the crib (our first MAJOR blowout – soiling all the way through his diaper, onesie, sheet protector, sheet, and crib pad), without making a peep.  He was face-down in it when I arrived, and he just looked up at me and smiled.  Not only did he have it in almost every orifice of his body, but he had spread it over a majority of the surface of his crib.  No telling how long he had been awake and rolling in it.  I stripped him, put him in a clean
diaper, and set him in the jumper so I could wash his sheets and draw a bath. Well, when I went to pick him up for his bath, I realized he had again pooped all over himself and the jumper.  I don’t know how his little body could’ve physically contained so much poop!!!  He must’ve excreted half his body weight. He had again completely saturated the inside and outside of his diaper, as well as the jumper seat, and was happily jumping up and down in it, getting it all over the place.  I learned my lesson – no more prunes for Levi!

Basically his developmental pediatrician visits consist of them taking a few measurements, and otherwise asking me questions and watching him play to see what his skills are.  They set out various toys and see what he can and can’t
do.  Well, they set out one toy, a little phone with a long pull-string… I don’t even know what this test was for.  Anyway, he grasped for the string instead of the bright dialpad or other larger aspects of the phone (apparently this means he passed the test).  So, the nurse put out the next toy for the next test.  Well, Levi was not ready to move on from the phone.  He really
liked that thing, and was not done playing with it.  So he ignored the new toy and kept reaching for the phone.  The nurse then moved the phone behind her back and started trying to distract Levi with the new toy.  However he just leaned over on his side and craned his neck so he could see where she had stuck that phone!  It was so cute!  She immediately said, “Wow, what great object permanence!”  He kept looking for that phone for quite a while.  So when I got home, I ordered him that same little phone from eBay.  In his own little baby way, he earned it.  :)

1) His body has now caught up with his head. Previously, you may remember that his body was somewhere around the 45th percentile, while his head was in the 75th percentile. That’s quite a large noggin’, comparatively speaking (perhaps a future chess champion?). However, we’re proud to report that now his head circumference, body length and weight now all proportionately fall somewhere in the 60th-65th percentiles.

2) Speaking of weight, he now clocks in at just over 20 pounds. At least he did a couple of weeks ago. Five more pounds, and no more baby jumper! Anyone know of a high capacity bouncy device? We did eventually kick the swing, but we might be asking too much to kick this toy too.

3) He has a new “thing” – it’s grinding his upper and lower teeth together. It makes this horrible nails-down-the-chalkboard sound, but actually seems to calm him down. Everything I’ve read said it’s no big deal – they’ll grow out of it. If not, judging from the huge gap between his two front teeth, we inevitably have substantial orthodontic bills in our future anyway.

4) He seems to be developing a slight case of separation anxiety. The sad thing? It’s in relation to the nanny. On the weekend, he’s like “Who are you, and what did you do with my Susy?” Saturdays are now not so fun in the Birchfield household. I sure hope this doesn’t last. Seriously, this might be the single most depressing development in his brief little life so far.

Wow – just when I got used to saying that Levi is 6 months old, he turned 7 months old. This means he’s now closer to one year old than not. Good thing I already bought all the supplies for his first birthday party.

So here’s what our little man’s life is about these days:

• Sprouting more teeth. His top two teeth broke through a few days ago.

• A sly grin. He’s such a flirt. He’ll do his new trick: starting with a high-pitched scream and gradually deepening his voice until it’s a loud, low, gutteral grunt. Then he’ll look at you out of the corner of his eyes and smile, obviously satisfied with himself.

• Bouncing. I now know why they call them “Bouncing Baby Boys.” As far as entertainment stations around the house, the bouncy chair is by FAR his favorite. It lasts probably 20 or 30 minutes, compared to the average 5 minutes everything else lasts. Although his exersaucer is not a bouncer, he bounces in it anyway, making a huge racket. If you hold him on your lap, he’ll start jumping up and down and making this irresistable little giggly face, so you have to indulge him in his activity.

• Eating more food. We tried to give him a Cheerio the other day, and apparently he’s not ready for that yet. He made the most offended face, held it in the middle of his tongue, and gagged quite dramatically. But he is making progress – his diet now consists of sweet peas, squash, applesauce, sweet potatoes, bananas and prunes in addition to formula and rice cereal.

• Chasing the doggies. He thinks it is really funny when his dad holds him while playing with the boys. It gets a few cackles out of Levi every time.

• Scooching. He can’t really crawl yet, but he can spin himself in circles and push himself backward.

• Sleeping like a champ. I guess he decided he was ready to sleep through the night (thank the Lord) and he has been for about a month now.  Most nights he sleeps from around 8PM until 6AM.  We’re still working on naps, but we have finally figured out a little trick. Once he goes down for a nap, we set a timer for 25 minutes, and then go wait in his room once the timer goes off. He will awake three times in a row after exactly 30.0 minutes, and you have to be in his nursery ready to pat his little bottom and lull him back to sleep all three times. Then he’ll sleep another hour or so.

• Just generally being a charmer. He now likes to play with my hair – he gingerly twirls it in between his fingers. He also likes to gently touch his hands to people’s cheeks when they hold him. When he awakes, he’ll lie contentedly in his crib, quietly cooing and sucking on his toes until he sees you, at which point his face erupts into the sweetest little smile.

• He kinda reminds me of a baby bird. He has this fuzzy hair on top of his head, his moves are spastic, his eyes are bright and curious, and he pops his little mouth open when you feed him something he likes.

• He now does the “baby banana.” He has already figured out how to arch his back until he’s roughly banana-shaped, and wriggle so that it’s very hard to hold onto him. He usually invokes this maneuver when you’re trying to get him to sleep before he’s ready, or when he’s reclining when he wants to sit up.

   

Wow, has it been six months already? As Jessica commented the other day, “our little boy is growing up fast.” Here is what Levi is up to these days:

• Sitting up on his own. As you can see above, Levi is now able to sit up for an extended period of time without any support from us or the bumbo. He’s a little wobbly at times, but is getting pretty good at figuring out how to balance himself and keep from falling over.

• Gaining weight and getting taller. At Levi’s 6-month checkup, Levi was in the 70th % for weight, 50th % for height, and 75th % for head size. Considering he was below the 10th % for height and 15th % for weight when he was born, that’s not too shabby! And as for his head, well, he’s always had a pretty big noggin. Our pediatrician continues to monitor his head size closely and is watching for any signs of macrocephaly, which is a condition where the head grows abnormally large. But so far, everything looks great.

• Growing more hair. Levi is definitely going to have a full head of hair real soon. It’s growing in pretty thick, especially in the middle, and it looks like we’ll have to cut it in the near future. I think he got this from me. My dad always had a full head of hair and ladies who cut my hair always comment on my think hair and how I’ll never go bald. It looks like Levi’s hair will be similar. As for the light brown/blondish color – we’re still puzzled where that came from.

• Eating solid foods. Well, if you call baby food a solid food, that is. Levi has been eating cereal for several weeks now. He’s still not a huge fan, but Susy (our nanny) can usually get him to eat a bowl every morning. Fruits and veggies, however, are a different story. We bought just about every variety of Gerber baby food the other day. We picked out what we thought to be the blandest one and let Levi try it. He made the most horrible faces and basically refunded everything we were able to get in his mouth. We tried several others to see if we could find one he liked but with similar results. So at this point, he’s eating mainly cereal and occasionally we’ll try a fruit or veggie.

• Throwing stuff. We think Levi is a southpaw because he loves to throw his toys with his left hand. He loves to grab, hold, and touch things with both hands, but when it comes time to get rid of something, he always uses his left arm for the job. This is what we’ve been anticipating all along. Since his stroke affected only the left side of his brain, we’ve been expecting him to utilize his left arm more (since it is controlled by the right side of the brain.) Other than that, though, he shows no signs of having any disabilities or limitations using his right side. In fact, he primarily uses his right foot for pushing off while in his bouncer.

• Getting talkative. Levi loves to jabber and make sounds. Sometimes, we’ll talk to him or ask him a question and he’ll respond with some random sounds like he’s trying to talk back to us. Also, he’s discovered how to scream in this high-pitched voice in the last few days. At first it was really cute, but now it reminds us a lot of that line in Dumb & Dumber where Jim Carrey asks, “You wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world?” It still makes us chuckle when he does it – but we also hope he grows out of it in a hurry.

• Loves his bouncer. Levi just loves spending time in his bouncer. He’ll cackle and laugh the whole time he’s in there. He’ll bounce and bounce and seem to never get bored with it. We bought an exersaucer for him the other day that has tons more toys and sound-makers than his bouncer. Levi tries and tries to make it bounce like his bouncer, but since it won’t, he gets bored with it pretty quickly.

• Sending emails. I received this email the other day. Although he hasn’t quite grasped the idea of email addresses, the internet, or even the English language, Levi definitely loves to bang on his mom’s keyboard when she is working:

From: Jessica Date: Aug 1, 2007
Subject: an email from your son

mny vk yukj b kn,
,m s ,./l.uuuuuuuuuj|K<<”

I’m a little more tired and sickly this time around, but otherwise things seem to be good. I do think it’s true that you show earlier your second time around. I’m only a little over 2 months along and am already wearing maternity gear. Even last time I started showing early, but not quite like this.

This time they’re treating me as high risk because of our history, so that means I’m guaranteed lots of sonos and specialists. Bring it on – I’m all about it. Hopefully we won’t have any placenta previa, NICU, stroke, blood clotting disorders, apnea etc., although I’d be totally okay going into labor a little early again. That was kinda nice.

Next update: as I’ve lamented in previous blogs, bedtime seems to bring a myriad of ailments for Levi. I truly believed he didn’t feel well b/c he’s still experiencing various digestive difficulties that I probably shouldn’t describe in detail. Plus, we know he’s teething, which purportedly creates a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde effect on even the most placid young one. And at the end of the day, babies are tired and don’t have much fuse (especially when they’re poor nappers, like Levi). He’s not much of a fusser so it’s totally out of character for him to cry simply because he’s upset.

Well, one night about a week ago, it got really bad. We had already dosed the poor kid up with Mylicon, Tylenol, and were about to give him a chaser of infant Orajel when Brad finally made a breakthrough discovery. He could completely resolve all of Levi’s tumult by simply leaving the nursery. In the den or media room with us, Levi’s misery was completely and mysteriously eradicated. Upon returning to the nursery, apparent pain and suffering ensued. While holding Levi in perfect calm, Brad astutely observed, “You know what I think? I think he’s mad because he doesn’t want to go to bed.” Yep. Turns out that little booger has been taking us for a ride, for no telling how long.

As Brad later commented, Levi might be sophisticated enough to manipulate his parents like the saps that we are, but he isn’t cunning enough (yet) to fake it once he gets his way, to ensure we don’t catch on. The little guy couldn’t hide his elation and contentment at the fact that he “won.” Da ha. The tide has shifted, and the score went from Levi: 427, Parents:0 to Levi: 427, Parents: 1. How pathetic that a simple victory against an infant took so long, yet yields such a sense of pride. Let me tell you – this has officially spawned a new phase in the Birchfield bedtime routine. Our precious little almost-6-month-old got his first “stern talking-to,” which actually yielded a stop to his little tantrum, at least that night.

Things are getting a little better… slowly. We haven’t fully embraced any cry-it-out methods yet, but the no-cry recommendations (and/or the passing of time) seem to be helping a bit. Like a few nights ago – he fell asleep at 9 after 30 minutes of resistance, and slept until a 4 am feeding. Then, he awoke around 6-something (which is when we always move him to his swing…. I know, you don’t even have to tell me…), but after that he slept until 8:45! That’s been his best night yet. We’ll get there.

Here he is with Nonna at Dr. Sugerman’s office (our pediatric allergist, whom we love!) on his 5-month birthday.

• He has already sprouted his two bottom teeth! I saw them for the first time at that allergist visit on his 5-month birthday. He had been slobbering to beat the band, and was really cranky (for him, which still isn’t very cranky) for a few days prior. My mom said that she had noticed that his gums were really red earlier in the week. So when they took his temperature, he was running a very slight fever and I mentioned that I thought he was about to start teething. I pressed on his gums a little to make them feel better, and lo and behold, felt two little hard things. I looked to discover that his little teeth had already poked right through!
• At the advice of two pediatricians and the allergist, we’ve officially abandoned breastfeeding. Dr. Sugerman thinks Levi may have a soy intolerance. Since switching to formula, things have been better, but I’m still not convinced he’s 100% there. I think I’m going to take him to a pediatric GI specialist just to see what they can tell us.
• We have all but confirmed Brad’s (and therefore most likely Levi’s as well) Factor V Leiden blood clotting disorder, which is probably the cause for Levi’s intrauterine stroke. We see the hematologist first thing next month to get more info.
• Levi’s still not such a good sleeper. He sleeps from about 7 PM to about 6 AM, but wakes up maybe 5-8 times in there. He goes down fine, but has trouble staying asleep. He also takes about 4 naps a day, but for no more than 30 minutes each. We’ve already read Babywise, Baby Whisperer, What To Expect the First Year, and several other books, and now we’re reading the No-Cry Sleep Solution and Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child in hopes that they’ll shed some light. I can’t tell you how old this is getting.
• Levi LOVES his bouncy chair. He just bounces and bounces in that thing. He looks really cute in it, with his beaming little round face, giggles and wide open smile, and fuzzy hair.
• I’m not sure if this is normal or not, but he’s developed quite the penchant for flapping his arms like a bird. Aggressively. He lifts his little arms and repeatedly punches himself in the gut with gusto.
• He weighs about 18 pounds now. We got his length and head circumference measurements at the allergist’s office too, but they didn’t quite register with me because they were in centimeters.
• He can still roll over, but more by virtue of throwing his large noggin around than purposefully and coordinatedly “rolling over.” He doesn’t do it often, but occasionally will in order to see what toys are dangling over his head.
• He loves to make raspberry sounds. The more drool slobbering down his chin, the better.
• Already we can tell that he is such a boy. He sits in his bouncy chair, pummels the heck out of the dangly toys, and cackles in amusement at how funny he thinks that is.



• He absolutely loves the dogs and cat. He reaches out to pet them, watches them in quiet amazement, and talks to them. Sushi is getting more curious about Levi lately, and seems to be more comfortable in getting close enough to sniff or even touch the boy on occasion. The dogs really love him too. Poor mutts. They have no idea what they’re in for.
• He is such a flirt. He will sit there and do something funny, and then when we laugh at him, he will smile real big and do it more. He’s very engaging. He will sit there and watch you from anywhere he can – across the kitchen, in the other room, or right next to you. He loves to give big ole smiles to random strangers at church and when we’re out shopping. When you wave hello, he seems to struggle to lift his hand to imitate you. I’m not sure if that’s what he’s doing, but that’s what it seems like he’s trying to do – but just doesn’t quite have the coordination for it yet. My mom, Brad’s mom, and I have all noticed this independently of each other, so maybe it’s really what he’s doing. One time, he did the little hand thing on his own, and my mom waved back to him, and he just cracked up laughing.
• He LOVES to “ride the horsey” on his daddy’s knee. He will just laugh and laugh. I have got to get that on video one of these days so you can see how utterly cute it is.
• He hates to recline. He wants to sit up and check out all the action. If you put him down in his carseat or hold him sitting back in your lap, he will struggle and strain pulling up with his little head until you prop him up. It doesn’t matter how tired he is – he just doesn’t want to lean back for some reason.
• He’s starting to “skooch.” If you put him down on his tummy, next thing you know he’s at a 90-degree angle (or more) to where he started. I have this bad feeling like he’s going to start crawling soon.
• He’s really into grabbing things. He grabs things with both hands, passes them from hand to hand, and grabs two toys, one in each hand. He loves to put them in his mouth, but he’s not a big chewer though. Normally just a second or two in the mouth, and then it’s back out so he can look at it.
• He’s starting to repeat words he hears a lot. Right now, that’s primarily “hi” and “Mom.” He has no idea what they mean, or that he’s saying words, but he does a good job faking it!

 

Here we are at my parents’ house for Brad’s first father’s day.