Roly Poly

I had wanted to add a video here, but it's not letting me.  It's of Julia talking, sort of.  You'll just have to imagine it I'm afraid.

Julia, our little plus sized infant, has a doctor's appointment today at 8:45am to make sure she doesn't have hydrocephalus.  Which I believe is an over-sized head due to fluid build up.  We're not too concerned with it because the rest of her is just as over-sized.  Our little 3 month old now fits best in 6-12 month clothes...  I'm not saying she's fat, but I found a shoe I had been missing lodged in one of her wrinkles (for any aunts or mom's reading this, that was a joke...).  This sentence is now three days later, and everything turned out fine at the doctor's office.

I'm thinking of anything and everything I can in order to write as much as possible so that I can put a ton of pictures up.  But at the moment, I'm drawing a blank.

We'll start with Sunday.  We went to a corn-maze with our life-group.  Oddly enough, it was right in the middle of Middleton's shopping/business district.  None of us, including many other Middleton residents I've talked to, even knew a corn field was there.  There's a chance we discovered Narnia, making it difficult to promise Ben that we'll go back.

I've never been to a corn maze before.  That's kinda messed up right?  I've grown up my whole life in Wisconsin, consistently within 30 minutes of a corn field, and not once have been to a corn maze.  You'd think that at some point somebody would have taken me.  I certainly don't wish to place any blame, but I would think that anyone who had been watching me at any point in time in my childhood could have put me in a car and taken me to a corn-maze.  Anyone who could drive, so, of course I don't blame any guardians who couldn't drive, that would be silly.  Nor do I blame anyone my own age or younger.  Or anyone who wasn't taking care of me at any point in time.  I'm not sure who that leaves, but whoever that is, I blame them for not taking me to a corn-maze.  You know who you are.  Ok maybe not, I'll just tell you, it's Betsy.  Instead she took me shopping and didn't change my diaper.  Such a sad childhood I've led.

It was a good corn-maze (as far as I could tell, it's the only one I've been to...), and at each major intersection you got a clue as to which direction to take.  The majority of the life-group took their time talking and walking, but Ben, Alex (5), Jake (3) and I sprinted to each intersection, trailblazing and taking shortcuts whenever possible, because running through cornrows is fun.

Sleep, ever an issue in this household, still eludes me.  If I can find the time today, I'm going to go get a good baby gate for the stairs, which we need anyway, so that Ben can start heading to the bathroom himself in the middle of the night.  Right now, we have him well trained in staying in his room at night, which is good because many parents have trouble keeping their kid in bed.  However, it's not good that he won't even leave for the bathroom.  I wouldn't want him to do it at the moment, since the stairs are right across from the bathroom and right next to the entrance to his room, and he's very sleepy when he wakes up.  But if we get a good gate, maybe one we screw in, hopefully we can get him to just get up and go instead of yelling for daddy.

So, now three days later, I have a baby gate.  The third baby gate actually.  The first one wasn't wide enough...I didn't notice when I bought it, I thought one size fits all.  The second required mounting the hinge on the wall and sliding the door down on top of it.  I did not know this when I bought it.  The problem is that the dividing wall between the stairs and the hall comes up about 3 feet and has a board over it that comes out from the edge about one inch.  This makes it so that I can't slide the door onto the hinge.  I thought that this would be my only option though, so I tried valiantly to make it work, including sawing through 3 nails on the board that tops the dividing wall.  I knew that this would be a major pain and a pretty permanent solution, so I double checked the web for something that might be better.  There was.  So I took that one back and now have the third one that Ben will help me install this afternoon.

Just in time too, Ben slept through the night last night.

We've joined Harbor Athletic Club now, so that means I can work out if I find the time and that I can take Ben swimming.  I've been getting up at 4:45 and working about from about 5 to 5:50 or so.  It's only been 2 days, on the first day I did 6 sprints and shot some hoops and this morning I swam for about 30 minutes.  I'm hoping to make this an everyday habit.  I should be able to take Ben to the pool fairly often since the babysitting there seems to be pretty sound.  The lady I talked to is always there and is very nice and they have a rocking chair and infant swings, so I can drop Julia off and take Ben swimming for an hour or so.

Beth's been working 14 to 16 hour days again while covering for another doctor who's out on maternity leave, so we're glad the weekend is here!  Of course, it won't begin for Beth till around 8 tonight when she gets home, but that's something right!?

I forgot to mention that we also went to a farm somewhere in there.  A good thing too because I have several more pictures.

The farm belongs to a coworker of Beth's.  It was a nice little farm out in the country, a beef farm mainly.  Ben didn't want to touch the cows, and he didn't want to sit on the tractor, but he did want to play with the barn cats.  Neither of us are big cat fans, so I'm not sure where this comes from, but he loves cats.  A pity he's allergic to them (we think, but it's unconfirmed).

They had a nice little pumpkin patch and we took home 5 or 6 pumpkins; our porch is now covered with them (we got 3 from the corn maze too).