Eli is eight days old. After having him with us, I can’t help but wonder…why didn’t we do this sooner?! Seriously, this is great. Eli sleeps through the night (mostly, he might wake up twice), cries softly and is adorable too! It is wonderful to see Aaron interacting with him. Oh! Eli takes a pacifier! Do you know/understand how wonderful that is?! Is he crying? Give him the pacifier? Still crying? Feed him. These two things quiet 90% of the crying that Eli does, it’s amazing!
I’m glad we had Aaron first and learned how to deal with his needs (there were lots). Eli’s baby phase is night and day with Aaron’s baby phase. Aaron had us both on our toes; Eli makes us forget we have toes.
Meri’s aunt came down from Massachussettes to help us for 10 days. She handled Aaron and all of his needs/wants and Meri and I handled Eli, not that there needed to be two of us doing that; he is so easy-going. Having her here was great! Aaron loved doing anything and everything with her.
The only bad thing that happened while she was here was that she got into a car accident when taking Aaron to Sea World this past Monday. Poor Aaron, he’s been in two accidents in about 3 years! It was Meri’s aunt’s fault. Nobody was hurt, the girl that got hit might even start watching Eli a couple of days during the week at our house when/if Meri decides to go back to work. She worked with tutoring kids for three years and is an Elementary Education major. So this might have turned out to be a “good accident”. So the bad part of the accident? $6900 worth of damage (at first glance anyway, could be more) and we’re without Meri’s car for a month, minimum! We are getting a rental car and Meri’s aunt is paying for most of that plus our insurance deductible. That was very admirable of her and it takes us out of a pinch, since we really didn’t have that kind of money to fork out since Meri just stopped working. We are picking up the car next monday and I’ll drive that thing to and from work.
Having a newborn home and Meri not having a car did present an awesome opportunity for me though. I am working from home four days this week! I really like working from home. I can wake up and come to my computer and just start working! No more commuting for an hour in the morning and then an hour at night. I just start working at 7 or 8 am and then just stop around 4 or 5.
Even with the accident while she was here, it was a huge help having Meri’s aunt here. It gave us some transition time with the two kids and an opportunity to attempt a new schedule with two kids. Aaron had tons of fun helping her cook (and she cooked A LOT!).
Meri, Eli and I are back from the hospital. Eli was born on 3/12 at 11:36am. He is 9 lbs 5 oz and 21.5 inches tall. Eli slept very good last night. Meri was pushed for about 15 minutes and Eli was born. Meri made the delivery look easy (compared to Aaron’s delivery). Below are a couple of pictures.
It’s 11:05pm right now. We are leaving here in about 10 minutes to head up to the hospital. Aaron is upstairs, sleeping in his bed. We explained to him that we won’t be here in the morning (unless Eli pops out REALLY fast!) and that if he needed anything, his aunt is downstairs. He seemed fine with that.
Meri’s goal is to have Eli out by 8am tomorrow. That would be really nice for all of us, since staying in a hospital sucks a lot.
I’m very excited now; Meri is more nervous than anything.
Some Background My son has had three allergies:
Most people thought that since he was allergic to milk, that meant he was just lactose intolerant. That assumption annoyed the hell out of Meri and bothered me a bit as well since it really seemed like people (in general) were downplaying one of Aaron’s major afflictions and it was just blatantly wrong.
This allergy had major ramifications in our lives. We had to watch EVERYTHING Aaron ate. We had a few incidents at Aaron’s school over his diet and what they were feeding him. Everybody pays attention to the peanut allergy and people go out of their way to protect children with this allergy but the same is not true of children with a milk allergy. That goes back to the thing that annoys Meri and I, generally people think that milk allergy = lactose intolerance. When you couple the milk allergy with an egg allergy, you are talking about a major limitation on what a person can eat!It seemed as if milk (casein specifically) and eggs were in every processed food item sold.
The first couple of trips to the grocery store after we learned about Aaron’s allergies were marathon 3-hour trips. Meri (who taught me all that I know regarding the allergy) read every label of everything that we would normally get. Sure enough, most of it had to be put back. It was frustrating at first. Most people find it very overwhelming when they really try to remove egg and milk from their diets. But now…
The Good News When Aaron went to his last allergist appointment, he had an allergy test. It was horrible and sucked a lot for he and I (mostly him, since he had to endure it, me a lil bit since I had to hold him). The results of the blood test were extraordinary though. Our son had allergies no longer!
This was great news for the whole family! We were skeptical though. The allergist shared our sentiment and thus ordered a blood test. Meri took Aaron to have his blood test done and we wait about two weeks and we don’t hear anything. Fast forward to this morning and Meri calls the allergists’ office and asks for the results of the blood test. They told her that all of the allergies came back negative! NEGATIVE!!
w00t! This is awesome! No more EpiPens, no more saying “boo boo belly” or “No, you can’t eat that because it’s boo boo”. When we go out to eat, we don’t just have to order him chicken fingers or pasta or french fries; he can (eventually) eat whatever is on the menu!
Aaron’s behavior and reaction Aaron was very good about knowing what was bad (“boo boo”) for him. This past weekend, we were at a neighbor’s house and Aaron was playing with their daughter. She was eating a cookie and she asked Aaron if he wanted one. He responded with “what kind is it?” (!!) and she said “chocolate chip”. He told her “No, it’s boo boo. I can’t have it.” and that was the end of the subject. He didn’t complain or have any sort of negative reaction; he just kept playing! He dealt with his allergies as well as anybody could expect him to.
Going forward Now we have the great privilege of teaching him to eat foods that used to be off-limits for him. We have to spend the next few years introducing the new foods into his diet. We can’t just take him out to pizza tonight and get him a huge glass of milk because that would tear his stomach up (since his body doesn’t know how to digest that food).
Meri started contracting last Thursday. It’s been almost a week and still, Eli is not here. We are still scheduled to be induced Tuesday (March 11) night around 6pm. Last Friday, I worked from home because I wasn’t comfortable being an hour away in case Meri did go into labor. I worked from home Monday as well…no baby, no more than a few contractions that day either. I came to work yesterday and this morning because I had a couple of meetings that I’m supposed to go to and I think my bosses weren’t too happy with me working from home more this week.
Last night, Meri really felt like she felt when she went into active labor with Aaron. Meri’s aunt is coming to help with Aaron for ten days; she will be here Tuesday morning. That will make things a lot easier while Meri is in the hospital. Aaron is officially out of school this Friday. He will be staying home with Meri and Eli until he goes to VPK in August (I think it’s August). It’s probably better that Eli wait until early next week so that we can just follow our plan of what to do with Aaron.
Right now, it’s just time to sit and wait until Eli decides it’s time to come home (or be forced out on March 11th!).
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