my boring update

I realize everyone reads my blog because they want to stay updated on Trent and BBJ, but let's all take a moment out of our busy lives to throw me a pity party real quick. Towards the end of last week I found myself waking up to get ready for work with a very sore jaw. This pain did not last very long - maybe an hour or so - so i automatically thought I was grinding my teeth really hard in my sleep. It hurt so bad when I would wake up that I went as far as to try to purchase a mouth guard over the weekend.

Saturday morning I woke up at 4am with this sore jaw. I found it very difficult to sleep so I went to the living room to watch tv (distraction). I ended up slipping in and out of sleep until 8:30-ish. Once I got up for the day, the pain did not go away like I expected it to. It wasn't as bad as it had been at 4am, but it was still there. Saturday night I was laying in the bed watching tv when the pain got worse. At this point I realize it's not being caused by me grinding my teeth at all. It must be from a bad tooth. Sunday morning, same thing - I was up around 3:30am in pain, and the discomfort hung around all day.

Everybody say it with me: "awwwwwwwwwwwwww"

I knew i'd be calling my dentist first thing Monday morning. Downer: dentist doesn't even open until 10am, ugh. So Monday morning (today) I woke up feeling great. I slept great, i felt great, i was thrilled. I decided I was still going to call the dentist and see what he had to say. Well, it gets to be around 9am and what happens?? my jaw starts hurting again.

"ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh"

I call the dentist at 10, they ask me to come in at 10:30. done deal. I go in hoping the dentist will say "your pain is clearly being caused by _______". No such luck. He tells me: It could be this, it could be that.

"uuuuuggggggghhhh"

I call my OB/GYN to make sure it's ok for them to take an x-ray. The x-ray reveals very little. Mr. Dentist and I decide to go ahead and give the one tooth a root canal. If that doesn't ease my pain there is a tooth he can re-fill, and another that I have scheduled to have filled in January. He doesn't think the cavity or the filling is causing the pain im experiencing, but it's possible.

So, back to the root canal. He doesn't have time until WEDNESDAY!!!!!! That's fine if the pain goes away, but right this second my face is throbbing. Granted, the pain is probably 85% in my head (no pun intended) since I'm sitting here thinking about the possibility of being in pain for the rest of my life (irrational? perhaps).

Since he can't see me until Wednesday he wanted to write me a prescription for pain medication. You're probably thinking "oh, well at least you get relief until then". But don't forget, im pregnant! Pregnant women aren't allowed to take just any medicine. I'm not even allowed to take Dayquil, i highly doubt im allowed to take this pain killer.

I shouldn't freak out just yet - I put a call in to my GYN about the prescription. Maybe she will tell me it's perfectly safe. We'll see.

I could spend another ten minutes going on and on about how I have to pay for basically the entire procedure out of pocket since I've already reached my dental limit for the year...and how my benefits renew in January (yup, a mere 17 days from now) but I can't wait that long because of the pain i'm in. But I won't bore you.

Needless to say, today has not been a good day. I'm at work trying to stay positive and distracted (if I want to be distracted I probably shouldn't be blogging about it, but whatever) but it's hard. I hate everything about the dentist and I hate any pain associated with anything dental. I HOPE HOPE HOPE my children have good strong healthy teeth forever!!!!

Party's over. Thanks for coming.

random updates

I feel like I haven't been blogging much at all lately. To be perfectly honest with you, I do most of my blogging while im at work and i've been in a big work-funk lately, so I just haven't had the motivation to sit and write about the things and people I love. Sorry!

I have, however, been actively trying to get a good video clip to post on my blog. Trent is really into giving High 5's right now and I want to share that with everyone, but every time i get the camera out, Trents mission changes from giving high-fives to getting the camera in his possession. He's actually been doing high-fives for a while now. Kevin started teaching him several months ago. It's so cute!

Trent still has only 4 teeth - but I really think he's about to cut his 5th (but i've been saying that for a couple months now, so....)

He has mastered the art of pulling himself up, and he has even dared to let go a couple times. Standing unassisted is very very rare and it never lasts longer than a second (in fact, Kevin has yet to witness it).

Trent is really into "walking" too - the kind of walking where you hold his hands and walk along with him.

He is obsessed with food!!!! We used to be able to give him a bottle while Kevin and I ate our dinner. If it wasn't time for a bottle we could feed him a jar of food while the other parent ate real food. Now, if Trent sees our food, he wants it. Because of this we have started to remove any and all jarred food from his diet all together. I'm glad that phase is over.

We have also started to wean him from formula. We've been adding one ounce of cows milk to his bottles each day. He will be on 100% cows milk by the end of this weekend. We are EXTREMELY glad the formula phase is almost over (it's inconvenient, it stinks, its messy)!! And even more thankful that he appears to have no milk allergies (or any food allergies for that matter).

I was going to blog about how he now eats the bubbles in his bath - but he only did it during the one bath a couple weeks ago. It was so cute, he kept gathering more bubbles on his hand and shoving them in his mouth, then he'd have a santa-like beard & mustache. very cute.

I'm sure there are other updates that I'm just not thinking about, but thats everything that came to mind!

Don't forget that you can ask me any questions you may have. Sometimes it's hard for me to come up with new topics on my own :-)

Trent's first sick day

Daycare called me at 11:30 yesterday asking me to come pick up Trent because he threw up. I guess its protocol: if a child vomits they must be picked up. No biggie. I'll use any excuse to leave work! Since I don't have much vacation time left for the year, I was happy to be able to charge my time off yesterday as "sick time".

I picked Trent up and he was off and on fussy the whole way home (which is only 6-7 minutes). He had thrown up his entire bottle at daycare, so when we got home he was pretty hungry. I nursed him until he was content then I observed him with caution as he played. He was rolling around on his belly (something that I imagine would aggravate the belly if he were sick) and acting totally normal. An hour or so later I fed him some broccoli then he took a nap. When he woke up I took his temperature - on the lower end of 'normal' - then we took Maggie for a walk around the block. No vomiting the rest of the day.

When Kevin got home I hoped on the Internet and found out vomiting often goes hand-in-hand with teething. And guess what. Trent is cutting his first upper tooth.

I'm no doctor but I am convinced Trent was/is not sick - he's simply teething.

He's been a fairly healthy baby since birth. A couple runny noses here and there but nothing pediatrician-worthy.

teeth and eyes

Trent currently has his 2 bottom teeth. I keep checking his gums to see if he is cutting his upper teeth, but so far we're in the clear. Click on the picture below to get a close up of his bottom chompers.



Apparently, all (or most) babies are born with blue eyes. A baby's eyes can stay blue for several months after birth....in fact, it could take up to 9 months for the eye color to change. This is because it takes some time for melanin to fully develop in the iris. Trent is almost 8 months old but his eyes are still a stunning blue!!

Teething update

We noticed Trent's first tooth breaking thru his gums on May 24th. He didn't act any different so we thought we got lucky - maybe Trent was going to be one of those babies who are unphased by teething. Wrong. Trent was miserable all evening Monday and ALL DAY LONG on Tuesday. Luckily for us he continued to sleep through the night, but I still felt so bad for the poor guy. We gave him some tylenol a couple times and offered him teethers & frozen rags, but those thing only soothed him for a couple minutes. On Tues. night i gave him a nice cool bath, read him a book, then Kevin and I played with him on a the floor for a while. All that distraction seemed to help A LOT. He was very calm and very happy for those couple hours! I'm not sure if it's that first tooth that is giving him problems (why didn't he have any problems with it when it first broke thru?) or if it's the second tooth that TRYING to come thru that's giving him the problems...either way, i hope it ends soon, for his sake!

It's so weird to see him smile now. Sometimes I am able to see his little white half-tooth and it just looks so......well, normal (i guess. I mean, people are supposed to have teeth when they smile). It's just so much fun watching him evolve!!!

And on the breastfeeding front - yeah he bit me the other day. He was nursing away and I was focused on the tv when all of a sudden.....ouchy! You know how it sometimes take a second for your brain to get the signal that something painful just happened to you? well, that's how it was for me. I'm supposed to tell him firmly "no biting" (or something similar) whenever he bites, so he knows i mean business, but I was so caught off guard that I just stared at him. He was already un-latched by the time i realized what had just happened so I felt bad "scolding" him. It's like spanking a dog for peeing on the floor 2 hours ago. You just aren't supposed to do that. You have to do it right when it happens. He didn't draw blood or anything, and the pain only lasted for a minute or so, so I consider myself lucky.

milestones

We had a feeling Trent has been teething for a little while now but being new to the whole baby thing, we really didn't know what teething *looked* like. We heard stories of excessive drooling, chewing on things, and waking up in the middle of the night howling in pain. The pediatrician informed us that Trent is in an "oral phase" right now, which is another reason why Trent would be putting everything in his mouth and drooling. And boy has he been drooling lately!! I felt Trent's gums last week and noticed they felt flatter and harder so I continued to check them daily just in case something was happening. I even told Kevin I thought teeth were going to pop thru any day now. So tonight we were at a BBQ and I put my finger in his mouth and TA DA! I felt teeny tiny rigid spikes poking thru his gums. When I looked (which wasn't easy, as he's really into sticking his tongue out right now) i saw the beginnings of a tooth popping through. I was/am very excited!

Another milestone (or maybe not?)- sleeping on tummy. With all the rolling around Trent has been doing he learned that he actually likes sleeping on his belly. I guess it started last week soemtime. Kevin or I check on Trent and 75% of the time he's on his belly with his butt in the air and his ankles crossed. It's adorable.

This next bit isn't exactly a milestone, but it's funny/gross. Yesterday we were at a friends house for a BBQ. They had a couple kiddie pools set up for the kids in attendance so we decided to put Trent in his swimsuit and see if he liked the water. He didn't like it at first but warmed up to it in no time. He was just sitting then when "pttttttt" (or however you spell the sound of poop) there was baby poop spreading from Trent. Yup, the only little boy at the party managed to gross all the girls out and make them have to get out of the pool. Kevin emptied the pool and then we tag-teamed the task of changing our very very very poopy baby. It was......well, funny.

He certainly isn't afraid of dogs...no matter how big or small