Year: 2009

OK, it’s been… a week since I’ve talked about poop? I just have to bring it up again! So we went out and bought the above items for Edda. (I should have added pureed prunes to this list, but I forgot to buy it). I wanted to say that she has a huge bowl of oatmeal with raisins for breakfast and usually has a piece of fruit with every meal, so I’m a little bit flummoxed by this constipation.

So ever since that last painful poop, we’ve replaced all her liquids with the plum juice on the very left of the photo. They call it “plum smart”, on their website, they claim it’s “clinically proven to regulate your digestion”. After 3 or 4 days of this, it hasn’t worked well. Tonight, Edda struggled on the potty again. I have to say the bright side of this is that the pooping training is going well. If you only gotta poop every three days and it’s like giving birth, it’s pretty easy to make it to the potty on time. I guess we are moving onto the fiber supplements.

Edda went to the dentist on Monday.

Vince went to the dentist today.

Edda did pretty well. I sat on the chair and Edda sat on top of me. I wrapped my legs around her legs, held her hands with my left hand and her head with my right hand. I was expecting the worst, but she did great. I really love our dentist, calm and reassuring and not at all rushed or worried about examining Edda. Everything looked good visually and for the past 2 appointments, we’ve left it at that.

Edda has never had X-rays done, but the dentist thought it was important and that we should give it a shot and we were all game, including Edda who cooperated with all six images. Turns out, she does have cavities on two adjoining back molars, one of which is pretty bad and almost at her nerve. We have work on some paperwork, but it looks like a trip to the hospital to put her under to do all this dental work. It makes me nervous, as general anesthesia is a good way to be freaked out, but I’m glad we can take our time for this, rather than wait a year or two until the whole molar is rotten and causing intense pain and scheduling emergency dental work. Sigh.

Also, I thought we were doing pretty well, brushing her teeth every night, but the dentist suggested that we add flossing to the routine. Yikes!

Vince loves the dentist. This kid is a little odd. Who the heck loves to go to the dentist? Jeremy came home early and took him today. Thank goodness, he has no cavities, which was much, much better than the 8 we found a year ago. Perhaps it’s because every spot which could have a cavity has already been filled by polymeric goop.

Before I close out the Christmas updates, I wanted to thank Jeremy for staying home all week with the kids while I worked between Christmas and New Year’s. Since I’m working so much these days, he’s been the more hands-on parent for the past year. It’s kind of nice to switch parenting roles, it gives us a balanced perspective on both being at work and being at home and what is totally annoying in each situation.

Anyways, over the week while he and the kids were stuck at home, he kept his sanity by doing this side project – Jeremy is really getting in touch with his inner engineer. What you are admiring is a set of lights for the bike – comprised of a lead acid battery, car brake lights and those garden lights which are the up-lights on trees at night.

Jeremy is much better than I am about dressing Edda up in cute outfits. Yesterday, in celebration of an outing to a friend’s house, Jeremy dug up this outfit which has french poodles riding Vespas on it! You pretty much can’t get cuter than that! I dressed Edda today, she’s wearing sweatpants and a ratty old hand me down sweater. (Not worth even showing you in a photo).

My mother gave my brother a hoodie sweatshirt for Xmas that she bought from TJMaxx or Marshall’s that had the logo of Penn State on it – the Nittany Lions. I asked my brother if I could have the sweatshirt because he’s too hip for sweatshirts and I needed one and I wore it to work today.

I was asking the only other person in the office a patent question, when he looked at me and said, “Penn State is going to get waxed tonight”. Since I have no affiliation with Penn State and I don’t follow sports, I answered “huh”? and he pointed at my sweatshirt. And then I had to explain that my mom bought it for Xmas from TJMaxx because it was a NIKE sweatshirt and nothing to do with the Nittany Lions.

On the way home from work, I spend a millisecond wondering what sport the Nittany Lions were going to lose at tonight. I decided it was basketball.

Turns out they lost the Rose Bowl tonight. (Yes! I know that the Rose Bowl is football!) I have no idea what is going on in the world.

Happy 2009!

I needed to work this whole week, including today – New Year’s Day. This is what my commute looked like at 8 am:

Yeah, pretty empty.

On a completely different topic, Edda’s been a little bit constipated the past week or so, poor girl has not been eating well for a few days and when she had a poop today, it hurt so much she cried.

Up until now, we’ve been managing the constipation by giving her at least one orange a day, sometimes we manage to get her to eat three oranges a day. This seemed to have served us well for years, whenever we noticed Edda heading over to the more constipated side, we’d be sure to give her an extra serving of oranges over the next day or two and she’d go back to normal.

Now it seems even with the oranges (we’ve been giving her Clementines – maybe they aren’t big enough? or not fiber-y enough?), she’s having a rough time. We do have an emergency bottle of Miralax in the cupboard, but I’ve never used it – I’m hesitant to try it if there is a gentler way of approaching this problem. Jeremy thinks we should add a spoonful of Metamucil to her drinks (which I understand from the Wiki page has psyllium seed husks as the active ingredient). Any ideas?

I mentioned to Jeremy last night that I’m obsessed with Beyonce’s Single Ladies video which shows three ladies dancing in 4 inch heels and skin tight, quite revealing leotards and therefore I’m a little bit embarrassed to post it to this website. It has sent Jeremy scrambling all day looking for the “best dance” video. So from what I hear, the kids and Jeremy have spent all day dancing.