Holiday Update

Sorry for the lack of posts, but we have had a busy holiday. Two weeks ago, Jeff's parents came down for Uncle Wayne's heart surgery. Of course, they also had to see their gorgeous grandson! I am pleased to report that the surgery was a success, and they got to go home well before Christmas.

That weekend, the weekend before the Christmas weekend, we also went to two parties. On Saturday night we went to a friend's 20th birthday party. His mom and dad were really excited to meet Vinny and even us. Then on Sunday evening was the Math group holiday party, hosted by one of my colleagues at his house. His house was really interesting: it's built into the side of a big hill and it's so far up the hill that he had everybody park down at the cul-de-sac of the street, and he shuttled us up and down the hill in his minivan.

While they were here, Granny and Granddad left a carload of Christmas gifts, most of them for Vinny. In addition, Mommy and Daddy bought him some toys. So on Christmas morning Vinny really got the haul.

Unfortunately, he wasn't in top condition to appreciate it. (Well, not that an 11-week-old baby really gets what's going on anyhow...) He got his first cold, probably from a little girl at the party who was coughing everywhere. He started really coming down with it on Saturday night, when we were at the next-door neighbor's for her holiday party. Jeff took him home early while I stayed and socialized. The neighbor's daughter and son-in-law invited us over to their place for Christmas dinner, but we had to decline because Vinny was too sick.

Yes, continuing the family tradition, he was probably at his sickest on Christmas Day. But we called up Jeff's sister, who is a pharmacist, and she told us what we could give him to make him feel better. We had these decongestant nose drops but we weren't sure if we could give them to him, and if so, how much. But Rhonda told us it was okay to give him one drop in each nostril. It really made a difference, once we cleaned his nose out and then applied the decongestant drops. But the next morning I took him to the doctor anyhow. And, it was a good thing I did, because he was also coming down with his first earache. The doctor prescribed amoxicillin, so we are giving him that.

When you were a kid, do you remember taking medicine? Because I do remember taking a few things. I remember liquid actifed, and it was bitter but not too unbearable. Amoxicillin I remember as tasty good. His is this thick, pinkish-orange liquid that has to be refrigerated. It smells very strongly of that fake berry flavoring. I haven't sampled it but he seems to like it.

But I digress. In the afternoon, Dad and Marvis arrived, en route to Florida. Now that they have a stopping point here, they like to take advantage of it. We had some Mediterranean food and opened the presents they brought and the presents we gave them. They seemed pleased by their gifts. Once again, though, it was Vinny who got the biggest haul. In fact, some of the presents for Jeff and me actually turned out to be for Vinny!


On a more serious note, the holidays have long been a hard time of year for me. They remind me of the family that I will never again have, that family with whom you're supposed to share these special days. It was also after Christmas five years ago that my mother moved away, marking the date at which my family was permanently broken. There is never a good time for your parent to move out, but the fact that it occurred during what would become an extremely difficult season (made difficult by the event in question) has made this time of year even worse.

I'm not going to pretend that it was easy this year. After all, any hope I had last year of being able to at least work out some of the old family conflict is gone. But having another person to think about has helped distract me at least a little. I now have a responsibility to make Vinny's holidays happy. I owe it to him to make his holidays memorable not due to mommy's moping, but due to genuine positive family moments. I don't know that I will ever feel comfortable darkening the doorstep of my parent's house on a holiday, but perhaps I can create a comfortable holiday environment in my own home for Vinny.

What Not to Do

If you want to find a hacker to change your college grades, don't ask at a computer security website. (For some perspective on this story, see this story and its first three links.)

I love how they ask him to take pictures of squirrels, as if this somehow legitimizes his intentions. I expected the hackers' next request would be a shrubbery or something.

Adventures with Blogger

As you may have noticed, I have upgraded to Blogger Beta. Since they have now made it simpler to do so, I have been able to improve the look of my blog by adding pretty math-related pictures. Hopefully I will be able to make it even better as time goes on.

Adventures with Migraines

Until today, I hadn't had a migraine in a long time. I can tell you that I wasn't missing them at all. I don't get the really bad kind that debilitate you for days. What happens is that the migraine is triggered by a flash of light, such as sunlight glinting off a car mirror. I have an aura for 30 minutes, and then I get killer head pain. The aura basically makes it seem like I'm tuned to the wrong channel. The pain lasts until I sleep for a couple of hours.

I can't remember the last time I got a migraine. At one point in my life, I got a migraine every other Tuesday at 1:30 p.m. Then I lost a bunch of weight and it seems like that helped reduce the frequency of migraines. (Of course I can't be sure because there aren't two parallel universes, one in which I lost weight and one in which I didn't.)

Today I had a migraine. It was strange because it wasn't triggered by the sunlight; it was dark when I had the migraine. I walked into a store and felt really dizzy, and then I got the aura. Unfortunately, I was all alone, so I had to wait in the store until the aura lifted. Then I got to drive twenty miles home. I made it home without getting into any accidents.

I'm trying to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight, slowly but surely. I've started back at Weight Watchers. Hopefully I'll be able to lose the weight again and get rid of the migraines.

Thought from a Sleep-Deprived Mind

It occured to me that the reason it was so easy to pull an all-nighter in college was that the late teens is the age at which, historically speaking, I should have been having babies and consequently been deprived of sleep.

Adventures of a Working Mother

Sorry for the drought in posts. I returned to work beginning with a half-day on Thursday, November 30, and I haven't had much chance to stop since.

People were happy to see me back. I have spent the time trying to remember what the heck I was doing before I left. I still don't remember everything, but I'm starting to get back in the groove of things.

When I get home, I spend all my time with Vinny, because I need to get my baby fix. Then I go to bed early, because it takes longer to get enough sleep since the baby wakes up in the night. So I have very little spare time.

Thanksgiving

We had a good Thanksgiving. We were going to make our own Thanksgiving dinner but then our neighbor invited us to Thanksgiving dinner with her and her daughter, son-in-law, and their kids; and her son, visiting from Atlanta. We had been over to their place a few weeks ago for dinner, and they were pretty nice, so we accepted. I brought rolls, since, as I indicated before, I really enjoy baking rolls. The dinner was delicious, and the company was very nice.

The next-door neighbor is friends with two of my colleagues at work. Her husband was their softball coach or something like that. She's also a lawyer, and whenever we get around to it, we're going to have her make up our will.

As it turns out, it was a good thing we went over to the neighbor's, or we might not have had any turkey at all, because our turkey was still frozen as of yesterday (despite being in the fridge thawing since Monday).

Five Fun Facts

I got tagged for this meme by my sister Rachel. I'm supposed to write five things that my vast blogging audience doesn't know about me. Seeing as the majority of my audience is family, this is going to be nearly impossible. So instead I'll try for things that they knew but may have forgotten about me.

1. I have perfect pitch. No, not baseball. If you sing or play a note, I know what pitch it is. It's a fun parlor trick and comes in handy when you find yourself without a pitchpipe or other source of tuning, but mostly it's a royal pain for a variety of reasons. First of all, listening to someone singing or playing off key can be excrutiatingly painful. Secondly, it means that I am unable to read music and transpose it. So if there's a song that's too high for me, too bad; I have to sight-read it in that key or not at all. This also means that I can't play any instrument that is not tuned to the key of C, such as a clarinet or trumpet.

2. I once convinced a bunch of people that I was French. It was my freshman year of college, and I had just gotten back from France. I spoke French a lot better than I do now, and I did a really good French accent too. Whenever I would visit Jeff in his dorm across campus from where I lived (he lived on South Campus, I lived on North Campus), I would speak to the person at the desk in my faux French accent and pretend to be from France. I was masquerading as a foreigner before Borat even thought of it! But I did not incite anyone with misogynistic or anti-Semitic remarks. I was always very polite and everyone liked me. I ran into trouble though when I ran into a person that the French me knew, hanging out with a person that the American me knew.

3. I have this recurring dream about owning a historical site. Every so often, I dream about this historical home I inherited from someone-or-another. I don't actually own a historical site, but in this dream I have inherited the former home of an obscure poet. There's some sort of a trust that runs the historical site and I don't have to do anything but own the place. In addition to giving tours, they periodically host special weekends like "Christmas with Obscure Poet," depicting how he celebrated Christmas or whatever. The last time I had this dream, I was explaining to my sister Laura that I inherited this historical house. I had invited her along to the special Christmas celebration with me. I got free admission since I owned the place. I have no idea why I have this dream.

4.When I was a kid, I used to pick my nose at night and wipe it on the back of my headboard. This caused the headboard to become kind of crusty. When my parents got divorced, my mom took my bedroom furniture. I take a certain passive-aggressive delight in knowing that (at least according to my scouts' reports) the headboard is still booger-encrusted. Yes, that was gross. That's why I haven't exactly broadcast this humorous tidbit.

5. I love to bake rolls. It is one of my favorite activities. I especially enjoy dividing the dough into parts. I think this is my inner mathematician.

Now I'm supposed to tag others to do this meme. Well, of course I'm going to tag Ginger and Jeff. And anybody else who wants to do it. Post a link to it here, or if you'd like, do your list in the comments section.

Adventures with Baby

We went to Kentucky this weekend so that Vinny could meet even more family. The original plan was to take him to see my maternal grandmother, who just turned 98. But then my dad brought his mother over from Evansville, and we decided to spend Sunday afternoon with Jeff's family, who all gathered at Rhonda and family's house in Lexington. Also, my dad's sister Rosemary was passing through on her way to Evansville so she also got a chance to meet Vinny.

We packed our car full of baby stuff and headed for Lexington on Friday afternoon. (I think that the amount of luggage a person requires is inversely proportional to age.) That evening we had dinner with Dad and Marvis and Grandma Mary (the grandmother from Evansville). The next morning we went to see Grandma (the one we had planned to visit in the first place). She was delighted to meet Vinny. I knew that she really enjoys babies, so I was not surprised. She has some short-term memory problems so she kept asking over and over who was his father and whether he helped with the baby. But she soon became convinced, based on Jeff's stature, that he took good care of the baby. (Don't ask about the logic. I don't know.)

We got a nice picture of Vinny and his two great-grandmas. We also got a four generations picture: Vinny, me, my dad, and his mom. I'm not sure how many pictures were taken this past weekend, but all those pictures lined up end-to-end could quite possibly stretch from here to Lexington and back.

Rosemary arrived in time for dinner. She was happy to meet her new grand-nephew too. His Grandma and Grandpa couldn't get enough of him either. Marvis just loves babies and babies love her too. I think Vinny might prefer staying with her instead of his mean parents. (Someday we will need a break from being parents, and we will pawn him off on his unsuspecting grandparents for a day or two.)

On Sunday afternoon we saw the other side of the family, including the elusive Aunt Ginger and Uncle John. Granny and Granddad also made the trip down from Louisville to see the newest member of the family. Granny and Aunt Ginger were fighting over who got to hold him. (Okay, that is an exaggeration.)

Vinny is one lucky little boy to have so many relatives who love him so much. The world would be a better place if every baby were as loved.

Update

Well, as it turns out, Vinny indeed has a big head. A big, healthy head, full of "ze little gray cells," to quote Poirot. Or, if there is something wrong, it's not serious enough that they kept us at the hospital.

This weekend we are going to head up to Lexington. My grandmother just turned 98, and I wanted her to meet her youngest great-grandchild. Her mother lived to be over 100, but you never know when it will be the last chance to see her, so even though it's a royal pain to travel with a baby, we're going to go up there and see her. At least it's a three-hour drive, instead of a cross-country plane trip or something!

Then on Sunday, we will have a get-together with all of Jeff's family. If all goes as planned, Jeff's parents, his brother and sister-in-law, his sister and brother-in-law, and two nephews will all be there too. It will be the first time the family has all gotten together since Jeff's brother and sister-in-law's wedding three years ago.

New Car

I'd been looking for a new (to me) car, because Gundar the 1990 Volvo has become a petulant teenager and once again believes that he'll start when he dang well feels like it rather than every time we want him to. Instead of trying to get him repaired, we decided to just get another car.

It didn't need to be a very big or luxurious car like the new Impala we have for the babymobile; it just needed to get me from point A to point B and back (i.e. home to work). I decided that I didn't need to have a brand new car, but it would be strategic to get a car three years old or less, because it could still have some warranty left.

We found a good car on the internet: a 2005 Beetle with less than 5000 miles, at a dealership. On Sunday we went to testdrive it. It was really nice: a 5-speed stick shift, silver (not my favorite color; silver is just "shiny gray" and I hate gray), surprisingly roomy for such a small car. Even Jeff could fit in it comfortably.

So on Monday we went to our bank and got a car loan (a blank check, preapproved up to a certain amount). Then we went to the dealership and bought the car. We parked it near the dealership before going on to the hospital to see Uncle Wayne (who was finally in a recovery room and got to meet Vinny). After our visit, I drove the new car home while Jeff drove the other car.

I had missed driving a stick shift. With all the hills here, it is much more fun to drive than it was to drive Ingrid the 1982 Volvo around flat Illinois. I am so looking forward to coasting down hills and enjoying physics in action!

On Sucking, Part II

First of all I wanted to thank everybody for the supportive comments. I have decided to discontinue any regular attempts to breastfeed, but to continue pumping for him at least until I return to work at the end of the month. I am able to pump enough for one meal each day, so I feel good that at least he's getting that much breastmilk.

If circumstances had been different, I probably could have gotten breastfeeding to work. In particular, if he hadn't stopped breathing at that lactation consultation, I think the problem would have been resolved right then and there. I think that hospital stay really messed us up, because I was too upset and afraid to continue attempting to breastfeed while in the hospital. Also, if I had known then what I know now about proper latching and what it's supposed to feel like, I think that would have helped too. Next time (if there is one!), things will work out better.

Since I have to work (I'm not saying that out of disappointment -- I like my job and I make four times what Jeff could ever make), Vinny is going to be mostly bottlefed anyhow. Oh sure, there's a difference in the ingredients of breastmilk and formula, but at the same time one of the main advantages of breastfeeding -- the variability of caloric content based on how hard he sucks (i.e. hindmilk from a long feeding session, the more watery stuff for a light snack) -- will not apply even if he is drinking breastmilk out of the bottle, by virtue of the fact that it's a bottle.

Given Vinny's genes, we are concerned about obesity but we are being careful not to immediately offer a bottle the first time he cries -- we change his diaper, or hold him upright (he suffers from a bad case of reflux), or try other things unless it's obvious that he's hungry.

I kind of like the fact that I don't have to be the only person to feed him. Jeff has been feeding him primarily, but others have also gotten a chance to do so, and I think they kind of enjoy the experience. For a while I was trying to pump religiously every two hours (except at night) but that was driving me crazy because I was literally spending a quarter of my time doing that and I was sick of it. So instead I have resolved to pump enough to produce at least four ounces per day -- something I can do in three or four pumpings.

Something else that was driving me crazy was that I was told that I couldn't drive for six weeks. I don't know if that's a real prohibition, or if it was because the nurse who was debriefing me for my discharge from the hospital thought I'd had a c-section, but it was making me feel extremely depressed, like I was living in Saudi Arabia or something (especially because when we went out, I was always sitting in the back seat with Vinny). After talking to several people, including the speech-language pathologist who was working with Vinny, I decided that either that was an instruction that applied only to a c-section or the patriarchy was trying to keep me down, because there was no logical reason that I should be prohibited from driving. So I've started driving again. Mostly the prohibition from driving was what was making me nuts; now that I feel like I can drive, I have no real desire to drive anywhere. I did drive once on an errand with Jeff and Vinny in the back, but when Jeff offered for me to go alone on an errand, I declined because I didn't mind staying home. Just knowing that I can get out if I want to was freeing enough for me.

We had his one-month checkup on Tuesday, and it went well. He has reflux so the doctor gave us a prescription for some medication to deal with that. Vinny now weighs over ten pounds, so he is still right about average on the growth charts, except for his head, which has grown more rapidly than the rest of his body. So just in case there is something wrong, the doctor ordered a head ultrasound for next week, which will probably show that nothing is wrong. Personally, I just think it's his enormous brain. But I am glad that even though I am unable to feed him in the way that I wanted, he is thriving. Ultimately, that is what is the most important.

Math Update

I realize that lately, there hasn't been much on this blog about math. Instead it's been mostly "Vinny this, Vinny that." It's enough to make you think this blog should be entitled "Adventures with Vinny" instead of "Adventures in Applied Math."

To those who are reading this just for the math, I apologize. It's just that since I'm on leave from work and caring for a newborn, I don't get many opportunities to think about math. Here's what I got for you:

• There were 288 cranberries in the bag of cranberries I used to make two loaves of my world-renowned cranberry bread: one for Aunt Mary, and one for the neighbors who invited us over for dinner last night.
  
• We are looking to buy a new used car, for me to drive to work every day, because Gundar the 1990 Volvo has once again decided to act like a recalcitrant teenager and not start unless he feels like it. I have been looking at the government vehicle crash-test ratings website, and it is totally cool. Look up your own car in it and see how safe your ride is. I've also looked at several different websites that give you used car values, and I find myself wondering how they do their computations. You can get divergent values for the same car on different websites.
  
• I realized recently that I "visualize" numbers primarily through sound. I wonder if other people do that too. If so, this explains the math/music link.
  
• I count everything, even the number of times I pat Vinny on the back when burping him. I also make things rhythmic, like I pat him three times for every rock of the chair (six times in one period [back and forth] of the chair). Or four sets of eight pats, followed by four sets of three strokes of rubbing, repeated until he burps. Hopefully I am instilling in him both a sense of rhythm and a sense of math.
  

Baby Vinny Meets More Family

On Thursday, Vinny got to meet more family for the first time. Jeff's Aunt Mary, cousin D.W., cousin-in-law Christy, and their kids were in town. Unfortunately, it was not for a happy reason: Uncle Wayne (Mary's husband) is in the hospital after having had two very serious heart attacks in a short period of time. He'll have to stay in the hospital for at least another week, and then come back for heart surgery in another month.

But Vinny was his usual charming self and I think his presence helped take Aunt Mary's mind off Uncle Wayne's very serious condition. Of course she didn't forget about him but Vinny gave her something else to think about.

Last night we saw them again, this time going out to dinner. Jeff and I treated them to one of our favorite local restaurants. I bribed the waiter to give me the check by promising him a generous tip. He complied and so did I.

The Cutest Little Vampire

We took the cutest little vampire out trick-or-treating around the neighborhood last night. He was a big hit with all the neighbors. He fell asleep after the first or second house or so, so he was especially well-behaved and darling while asleep. He charmed a bunch of neighbor girls who were out trick-or-treating, too. (I guess I'm a real parent now because when they saw us come home from the hospital with Vinny, I stressed to them how it's nice to coo at a baby from afar, but having one is painful and should not be attempted until you're in a place financially and emotionally to support a new life.)

Anyhow, thanks to Vinny, I managed to score a lot of candy, some of which he will eat vicariously, no doubt.

On Sucking

There are two things in life that it's a good thing that they suck: vacuum cleaners and babies. Thanks to Dad and Marvis, we have a sucking vacuum cleaner. But unfortunately, our baby doesn't suck.

Well, to clarify, he does suck, it's just that he doesn't do it properly, and he has trouble coordinating sucking with swallowing and breathing. This could be why he stopped breathing two weeks ago. So yesterday, we had an appointment with a speech-language pathologist to assess his sucking abilities.

This problem with sucking is why he has had trouble breastfeeding. He doesn't latch on properly, and then he basically chomps on my nipple instead of using his tongue to stretch the nipple/areola in his mouth and get the milk out. He wants to place his tongue over the nipple instead of underneath, where it belongs.

So I have been unable to provide him with the food he needs to grow. I do pump breastmilk for him, but that supplies maybe a quarter of his needs if I'm lucky on a good day. Thank goodness for formula.

We are working on his sucking and the SLP gave us some exercises to do with him to improve his sucking, such as holding his chin as he sucks. The hardest part is getting him to latch on properly, and then to maintain that latch. Theoretically speaking, once he figures out how to suck properly, the large amount of food he gets from it will be its own reward and he will learn in a single trial to keep doing it that way. In the meantime, we have to keep vigilant and take him off when he starts chewing again, and then reattach.


For some time I felt like I sucked as a mother. I couldn't breastfeed my own child, even though I wanted to, and a variety of other things made me feel guilty too. Talking to Rhonda really helped, as did learning more about just what the problem is. It's not me, it's really him. But it's just a developmental issue that we should be able to resolve.

I felt really guilty because I wanted my baby to have the best. And they say breastfeeding is best. "Babies are born to breastfeed." Et cetera. Even my mom, for all her shortcomings, breastfed me. So what was wrong with me that I couldn't do this simple thing for my son?

I also got into the old pattern of what I call "apocalyptic thinking," that is, thinking that any mistake will lead to imminent doom and destruction. For example, if we fed him with a bottle once, he would forget what a breast was for and then I'd never be able to breastfeed him. (In reality, he still remembers what a breast is for and tries to feed, still incorrectly.) Or he wouldn't get the right nutrition from formula and he'd grow up with problems. (In reality, his daddy was formula fed and turned out just fine.) And I even went so far as to think if there was a nuclear war or something, he would die because we wouldn't be able to get formula, whereas if I could breastfeed him, he would have a better chance of survival! (That was the ultimate in apocalyptic thinking, and made me realize how ridiculous I was being.)

It took me a while to work through the feelings of inadequacy but I realized that I need to set my goal as a mother at the same level as my goal as a professional. I'll never be the best mother in the world, but what I need to shoot for is being the best second-rate mother in the world. I'm going to give him the best that I can give him, and that will be more than enough. I know that I will screw up with him in my own special way, but I just need to be accepting of myself and my imperfections. He will have his issues with me and I need to be able to accept myself enough to be open to the fact that I make mistakes, and secure enough to know that I am still a good parent despite the inevitable mistakes.

Aunts

Over the past week or so, two more of Vinny's aunts have come to see him.

Last week Aunt Rhonda (Jeff's sister) came for a few days. Vinny took to her right away. She should be called "comfy Aunt Rhonda," because she would hold him in such a comfortable way that he would fall asleep.

She also helped me a lot, with some advice and pointers from her experience as a mom. She had some of the same troubles that I've been having, in particular, with nursing. So, I think that means I can blame it on Jeff's genes instead of my own inadequacies. :)

Then on Monday, glamorous Aunt Laura (my sister) came for a visit. She left this morning. Vinny took well to her too, although she's not quite as comfy as Aunt Rhonda, but no matter. In addition to helping us with Vinny, we also sent Laura up on the roof to glue back down some shingles that had been damaged by the neighbor kid's errant arrow. (It is a tradition to make Laura go on the roof when she visits. Last time she was here, she cleaned our gutters.)

On Wednesday, we went on a little road trip to the Smokies and saw all the changing colors. It was really beautiful, although riding in a car and being sleep-deprived resulted in me examining the inside of my eyelids more than I would have liked. But it was really good to get out of the house. A little day trip like that was just what I needed. It really lifted my spirits.

New Things in Life

There are other new things in our lives besides Vinny.

• Microwave. Our microwave, which we'd had for more than 8 years, started emitting arcs of electricity instead of microwaves. So we bought a new one. We got the 2006 equivalent of our old one, which was pretty fancy at the time. This one is pretty cool and has special buttons for cooking all kinds of different things. I ordered it online, but when it arrived it had a huge dent in it. So I sent it back and they sent us a new one, this time without a dent in it.
  
• Clothes washer. The day we got home from the hospital, our washer decided it was the right time to break down. The repairman declared it "totalled" so we bought a new one. Our new washer is the same brand and matching model to the dryer. It's a really nice washer, and quite an improvement over the old one. One nice feature is that it has an optional extra rinse cycle, which they recommend using for baby clothes. The only "problem" is that the washer is white and the dryer is bisque. But I don't really care about the color. I'm just glad to have clean clothing.
  
• Dining room decor. The previous owners of our house had... interesting... tastes in decor, to put it diplomatically. They had painted the dining room with the "faux bistro" look -- painted fake bricks on the walls, one wallcovered completely with these bricks, and other walls attempting to look like the bricks were sticking out of plaster... yes, very ugly. Anyhow, we figured it was so garish that a million layers of paint wouldn't cover it up, so we'd bought some wallpaper to cover it up. But, the wallpaper hanging went awry, so instead we decided to paint the room and use the border from that wallpaper. Unfortunately, the color we picked out of that border to paint the wall was too ugly so we instead ordered a new border and new paint. We went with a sunflower border and off-white paint above the border and shamrock green at the bottom. We finished painting the dining room before leaving for the hospital but hadn't gotten a chance to put up the border. Dad and Marvis put it up after we got back from the hospital. The dining room looks great now!
  
• Vacuum cleaner. In Illinois, we had a central vacuum system. We had hoped to install one here, but it looks a little too complicated for us to do ourselves. So we had meant to buy a vacuum cleaner but just hadn't gotten there yet. Dad and Marvis decided that they didn't want their newest grandchild living in filth and squalor, so they bought us a vacuum cleaner. I haven't yet used it myself, but it seems to work pretty well. (They also bought their grandson a very nice new dresser.)
  
• Decorations. As a surprise for me, Jeff, Dad, and Marvis conspired to decorate the house when we brought Vinny home from the hospital. They put up streamers, balloons, tropical fish streamers, and posters of Elvis in the living room. The baloons have deflated a bit but the rest of the decorations are still up.
  

A Bit of a Scare

We had a bit of a scare on Thursday. We went to see Pat, the lactation nurse at the hospital, for help on nursing Vinny. As it turns out, he just likes to chew instead of actually suck, which explains why I am so sore. Anyhow, while we were there and Pat was trying to get him to suck correctly, Vinny stopped breathing and turned gray. Pat noticed; for some reason I totally missed it, and she whisked him out of the room and into the nursery for some oxygen. Thank goodness he started breathing again, but we still had to go to the children's hospital. I got to ride in the ambulance with him. It was interesting to ride in an ambulance but I have to say it was not an experience I was all that interested in having. Jeff and Rachel drove to the hospital in our car.

We stayed at the hospital until they let us go at around noon today. During that time, we stayed in a hospital room with our poor baby and he was all hooked up to a bunch of machines. They had to make sure that he didn't have an infection (such as Strep B), so they gave him a catheter to get some urine (pure torture for both Vinny and his parents!), took a blood sample, and even took a spinal tap. Thank goodness for us that we weren't there when they did the spinal tap, but I am so sorry that he had to endure that pain all by himself. They put an IV in his head, where the best vein was, to administer some antibiotics. But he hated that IV and tried to pull it out, so they had to move it to his left hand. He looked a little bit like a member of the Borg or something with that IV in his head.

Aunt Rachel (my sister) had been staying with us for the week, and she was a big help while we were in the hospital. She regularly brought us stuff from home, and provided a lot of moral support. And yesterday, Granny and Granddad (Jeff's parents) came to see their grandson. Granny couldn't get enough of Vinny. I was really glad that she was there to snuggle with him and give him some lovin'. By that point I was so frazzled that it was hard to do much.

After all those tests, they figured out that he didn't have an infection, and they let us take him home. Aunt Rachel, Granny, and Granddad all left at about the same time in the afternoon. In the evening, just before the sunset, we took Vinny out on a little jaunt around the neighborhood. Everyone we saw was smitten by his adorable little face. That's to be expected, I suppose, when you have the cutest little baby in the world!

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