My life with Kurt, the epitome of engineer, he is the ultimate “left brained” king of spreadsheets. Aside from still wanting to play Dungeons and Dragons or some other role-playing game like Vampire he is mentally an 80-year-old curmudgeon who seems to be highly allergic to change of any kind. Oddly, we are a perfect match.
Kurt did his taxes tonight, but before he started, he informed me that he was going to find out exactly how much of a deduction our precious baby brings us. His exact words were, “Now I’ll know how much I love her, I’ll be able to quantify my love for her.” Aaahh my engineer, the walking spreadsheet…ever the adoring devoted daddy - for the right price of course.
Before I get a slew of comments and emails telling me to dump Kurt - HE WAS JOKING!
To the tune of The Beatles “Love Me Do” - Dirty Kurtie’s version goes like this:
Wipe Wipe Wipe My Poo
You know I Doo Doo’d
It stinks - Oh P - U
So Pleeeeeeease, Wipe my poo
Oh what a joy it is to drive I-5. Yesterday afternoon heading home, we were almost in an accident. The driver in the lane to our right wanted to move further right. The driver looked to his right and at the same time turned his wheel left. I pounded the palm of my hand into the center of the car steering wheel; unfortunately, the horn is located on two tiny buttons on the sides. I’m going to have to write a letter to Honda about that. Anyway, this morning Kurt and I were talking about all the construction on I-5. They’re widening the freeway in some areas, but in order to do that they have narrowed the lanes while they’re working and they have try to gently navigate the traffic from one side of the pavement to the other without making lanes end, so it feels like you’re constantly turning one way and then the other. All the lines have been redrawn so many times it’s sometimes hard to tell which ones to follow for your lane. Talk about hazards! Also, as always, we never ever see anyone actually working. Seeing a road construction worker let alone one that is actually working is as odd as seeing a live opossum. 
Even though she was wearing it yesterday, this morning Kurt noticed that Sophia will actually wear this hat. She used to hate hats, and I feared this one might be itchy to her. I suggested that maybe she tolerates it because she’s a little older. “Is that it?” Kurt asked Sophia, “Are you more mature now?” Kurt paused and then continued with, “Don’t blow bubbles it doesn’t convince me that you’ve matured.”
I’m sitting in the dining room with my back to the kitchen and Kurt is in the Kitchen.
Kurt: Don’t do that anymore.
Me: Huh? Do what anymore?
Kurt: Don’t put the cutting board in the sink anymore.
Me: Can I have a spreadsheet with your list of rules, please?
Kurt (very upset): When you put the cutting board in the sink it covers the drain and the water doesn’t drain.
Me: Why didn’t you just say that before?
Kurt: Ok how about this, (talking down to me in an effeminate voice) Let’s not put the cutting board in the sink anymore, ok?
Me: Jesus Fucking Christ! You don’t have to prance around the living room like a condescending gay man - just explain the problem! Fucking Ass.
Before the whole ER and 911 fiasco Sophia had a pretty regular bedtime and wake time. She was doing well with naps and typically only woke up once during the night. That’s all gone to shit now. I’m not actually sure if it’s the hospital visits that did it or if it’s the teething. It could be the combo. Anyway since Kurt’s been home this whole week he has told be a number of times to go to bed earlier since I wasn’t getting much sleep since Sophia had got into the new habit of waking twice during the night and remaining awake precisely at the butt-crack of pre-dawn (5:30 am), which has forced me to take a nap sometime during the day.
Last night, knowing that I would be getting up to drive Kurt to work (no use disrupting a disrupted sleep schedule to visit daddy in jail for a DUI since he’s still taking painkillers) I went to bed at nine. The darling angel had gone to bed at 6 since she was dead set against a late afternoon nap. She woke up at 11:30, then again at 2:30, and a third time at three in which she decided it was morning time. I of course stayed up - I have no choice. I rocked her, nursed her, then finally I just placed her in the spare bed and laid down beside her. I think she went back to sleep around four. I put pillows around her and went back to my own bed. At 4:50 the cat thought it would be a good idea to tell us it was almost time to get up - he was gingerly placed in the garage by yours truly. 5:30 Kurt’s alarm went off and at 6:20-ish I got to wake the baby so that we could drive Kurt to work.
We are a grumpy bunch. Kurt went to warm up the car and I followed him putting his lunch in the car so he didn’t forget. “Now the light won’t go out,” he complained. “What light?”
“The light, the light,” he says pointing to the light that comes on when we open the car door. I reached in and flipped the switch from the middle setting to the “off” position and it went off. I put it back to the middle and it was back on since I had a door open. I slammed the door and the light magically went off. It was a little like the time a few years ago when he complained that I had too many red sweaters on the drying rack I use for things I don’t want damaged in the drier. Well, my red sweaters took all the space on the rack and there was no room to hang his motorcycle T-shirts. I told him to stop buying so many red sweaters for me.
There was another incident at Christmas time when his mom wanted to go to the mall to exchange the sweater I get her for the next size up. We arrived and Kurt announced that we only had fifteen minutes to spend there because he had to go pay a bill before the office closed for the day. His niece and sister wanted to shop around a bit so I suggested Kurt just leave us all at the mall while he runs his errand. “What? Do you want to spend all day here?” Umm no. He was insistent that there was only one way to do things, his way, the way that was stuck in his mighty melon head. We must all stay together and therefore we can only spend fifteen minutes in the mall. Ugg! I finally convinced him that he could go run his errand and meet us at the food court in an hour.
More recently I’ve been driving Miss Daisy eerr Mr. Kurt around and he insists I must take the route he would drive. I admit his routes are probably shorter and *maybe* faster (one can never tell in this area), but I’m the one driving and I do know where I’m going! So shut the hell up already!
Hhhhmm I think I got off on a bit of a tangent. I need a nap.
I started getting baby giggles when I attempted “singing” patty-cake. She still laughs at patty-cake, but we put a little twist in it now. More on that later.
Other things that make Sophia laugh:
Our neighbor taught us a slightly twisted version of patty-cake that Kurt and I took to immediately. We’ve had to modify it further since our child doesn’t like to cooperate when it comes to letting us move her arms for her, so we do patty-cake with her feet. Our neighbor takes care of a set of twins that are about two years old. Their mother was going through a divorce while she was pregnant and she has three other children, so our neighbors took in the twins as their “grandkids” to help out. Their version of patty-cake goes like this:
Patty-cake, Patty-cake baker’s man,
Bake me a cake as fast as you can; *Hit your self in the head (smack child in the head with her own hand or in our case foot)*
roll it, pat it *Hit yourself some more* mark it with a B,
Put it in the oven for baby and me.
Sophia finds this absolutely hysterical and giggles every time. We really need to buy a video camera and record this - mostly as evidence that she really does like it so you don’t call CPS on us.
I’ve been meaning to write this post about what makes Sophia giggle for quite some time, but due to unforeseen events I’ve put it off. I’m glad I did too, because I wouldn’t have had the chance to blog about what Kurt did today to make the doodlebug giggle. Since Kurt came home from the hospital (February 7th) I’ve had to do all the driving because of the prescription painkillers he’s on which means that Kurt now sits in the back seat with the baby (because of the car seat we have the front passenger seat is pretty much unusable while baby is rear-facing). Today I left the two of them in the car alone (I know I’m so irresponsible) while I went into the post office to check the mail. Upon my return I see a very animated Kurtie speaking into the car seat (Sophia is still a little too short to see). I open my door and hear him speaking to her in gibberish with the accent of the Swedish Chef. “Yorn desh born, der ritt de gitt der gue, Orn desh, dee born desh, de umn børk! børk! børk!” At the “Børk! børk! børk!” it’s like he pushed the giggle button. Then witty Kurt said, “And if we ate at Kentucky Fried Chicken it would be, Spork spork spork!” Again, mass giggles from doodlebug. Kurt continued with, “And daddy is a Dork dork dork!” Sophia and I agreed. She giggled even more. The freaky thing is, Kurt is like this even without the drugs.
Kurt started a Netflix account years ago, and when it was first started he encouraged me add movies to the list that I would like. I added movies that I had already seen, thought were funny, and wanted to share with Kurt like Twelve Chairs, Same Time Next Year, and In-Laws. I interspersed the movies I selected with the ones Kurt had already put on his list. I placed them every third or fourth movie. After a few weeks, I logged into our account again to see if there was anything else I might want to add and to see when I might get to see one of my movies. SOMEHOW, all of my movies were at the bottom of the list. I moved a couple of them near the top. I checked on them the next day. They were at the bottom AGAIN. I asked Kurt about it and he apparently didn’t realize that those were my picks. All he knew was that HE was not in the mood for those movies so down to the bottom they went. I stopped adding movies.
He is now on a Zombie movie kick and I’m tired of it. Every time he reads off the list of movies we have at home to choose from, I complain, so he tells me to add movies I want to see to the list. I’m not big on movies. If it were up to me we wouldn’t have a TV even though I like the History Channel and Food Network - I can live without them. So I don’t really know what to add. We have already been through all the George Carlin stand-up. A couple weeks ago I finally broke down and asked Kurt for the account name and password again and started looking for things that I think might be interesting. I started reading descriptions of various documentaries, many of which sounded interesting to me. “Don’t add that one,” he says, “I don’t want to watch that one.” Fine. I’ll add these - click click click “Don’t add nothing but a bunch of documentaries,” he says. I didn’t know he had all these rules - where are they written? *grumble* I give up!
Based on my blog posts from February first no one would ever suspect that my weekend wouldn’t go as I planned. Saturday was supposed to be the day I purchased and brought home a glider chair for the nursery. Sunday was supposed to be a day we spent with friends eating snack foods and watching the Super Bowl (mostly the commercials). It was going to be the first time we brought all the infants together and I was hoping to take a picture of the FIVE of them. That’s right four of us (one person had twins) were pregnant all due within weeks of each other. At a whopping four months, Sophia was going to be the oldest of the infants. I was going to have Kurt and Sophia wear the matching shirts I got them for Kurt’s birthday. It was a joke gift based on the commercial for the movie “Meet the Robinsons” from last years Super Bowl. It’s a shirt with a picture of the dinosaur on the front and the words, “I Have A Big Head…and Little Arms” on the back.
Instead, Saturday we went out for Mexican food for lunch then went shopping for the glider chair. That took a lot longer than I thought it would and the place didn’t even had the one we pick in stock, so driving around in two vehicles (one that can haul the kid in a car seat and the other that can fit a chair in it) had been a total waste of gas. We did purchase a chair, so that went well. We just won’t get to use it for a couple weeks.
Kurt went shopping for the ingredients needed to make something to take to the Super Bowl party the next day and brought home something to make for dinner that night. Kurt had been having back pains that alternated back and forth to stomach pains since after lunch. When we got home he tried to use a heat pad on his back, then tried an ice pack, all the while lecturing me on how to care for pains like the ones he has. He had similar pains to there about three or four times since July. This was the first time the heat it/ice it tricks weren’t working, but Kurt was still able to ingest two “cheese” injected bratwurst he bought for dinner. I put poor Sophia to bed at her usual time. She didn’t get much sleep since we were going from store to store all day. I rubbed Kurt’s back. It never really helps, but he requests it all the time. As I’m writing this I’m thinking about all the times he has asked if I can feel how tense that spot is on his back and my answer was always the same, “no”. It’s always the same spot just under his right shoulder blade. We both always attributed that pain to the way he sits at his computer at work all day long and the fact that he uses his right hand to use the mouse – of course that spot would hurt being all hunched over with his arm extended to the mouse all day long.
Kurt had taken some Advil at least once that day, but that also wasn’t working. This seemed a lot worse than his usual. It bothered me that none of the usual stuff was working, but I still didn’t think it was something serious. I suggested that I could drive him to the ER. “No, no” he said, “you just put the baby to bed.” I told him the baby can recover from a lack of sleep.
We made it to the ER at about 10pm. I stayed in the waiting room trying to keep the baby quiet while Kurt went through triage. I walked around and found a quiet area. I looked up towards Kurt to see him holding a bag with brown stuff in it and asking, “Where should I put this”. Those bits of info didn’t fully connect in my brain until later. Kurt was still talking to the nurses at triage when someone from the back called his name. Kurt walked past me and I stayed in place nursing the baby to keep her quiet. I thought it would just be a few minutes an order for painkillers and we’d be out of there. My biggest concern at this point was – How am I going to get Kurt to make a follow-up appointment with our doctor after the ER just gives him painkillers without finding anything?
An hour and a half later I went up to triage to ask if I could go back to Kurt and see what’s going on. I made it to him just in time to watch him fill another bag with brown vomit. The had already done an EKG to make sure his heart was ok and an Ex-Ray to make sure his back was all in line and he didn’t have any broken ribs from sitting at a computer for eight hours a day at work or watching TV at home. Kurt was now waiting to be wheeled in for a CAT Scan. An hour later we were waiting for results which took another hour, then they tried an ultrasound. Kurtie had about six or seven very visible gallstones. They gave Kurt some painkillers and a referral to a surgeon. They told him he should see the surgeon within five to seven days. We got home around three in the morning.
Kurt was up every twenty minutes belching up stomach acid. The baby only slept for four hours and then was up for the day. Kurt stayed upstairs in the master bedroom for most of the day and I brought food and drinks to him. Sophia went down for a nap and I thought I’d take advantage of that time to get some sleep myself, but that wasn’t happening. I called a friend to help me out with the baby because her naps are usually pretty short – not the case on this day, but I had no way of knowing that. My friend and I chatted all day while I occasionally ran up to check on Kurt. He wasn’t looking well but with the painkillers, he seemed better than the previous night. Late in the afternoon that began to change the pain started getting worse and Kurt became nauseous and was throwing up. At one point he came downstairs and I told him he literally looked GREEN! He was only taking the minimum dosage of his painkillers and intended to take a higher dose when the time came. Laying in bed he seriously look like a corpse. His skin looked grey. At six I run upstairs when I heard him puking again. He was sitting on the bathroom floor and couldn’t get back up. I tried to help him, but he was in too much pain. I asked him if wanted me to call 911. Stubborn Kurtie was focused on making it back to the bed. Yelling out in pain, he forced himself to stand. I made him sit on the side of the bed closest to the bathroom, which wasn’t his usual side, while I ran to the other side and pushed pillows behind him to lean on. At that point it hurt for him to sit up and to lay flat. I told him I was going to call 911. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s probably a good idea.” Great, so glad I finally get your permission. *eye roll*
(to be continued…)
Sophia’s four-month birthday was on Friday (hence the Baby Squeezins: Diaper of the Month post). At four months, this kid has great control of her head now. She can lift it up to look around weather she’s on her back or stomach, but she absolutely refuses to use her arms while on her tummy to do the half push up (oh I hope she’s not going to be like her dad - more on this at the end of this post). If I hold her hands she can repeatedly push herself from a sitting to standing position and she can also stand for longer periods of time while just holding our fingers. A couple weeks ago I bought her the new set of rattles and within the last week she has figured out that if she can’t reach them with her hands she can use her feet to bring it up to her hands. On Monday I had her propped up with the Boppy pillow and a blanket behind her in such a way that she was sitting up straight. I’ve only seen her do this once, but she actually leaned forward to the point of bending herself in half to reach for a rattle and then she actually pushed herself back to the sitting position. She still has to be propped up to sit, but never the less I was impressed that she got herself back into that position.
Tuesday Sophia had her four-month check-up. She is thirteen pounds, thirteen ounces, and twenty-five inches tall/long. Poor baby received two shots in each leg plus one oral vaccine. Her tiny little left leg now has two welts. 
The shots on the right leg didn’t swell up like the left. The doctor said we can start her on solid food anytime. He said to start with a very thin consistency cereal first, specifically rice because it’s the one thing that doesn’t cause any kind of bad reactions. She has really been eyeballing our food for the last couple of weeks, so we’ll give sold foods a shot this weekend if I can make it to the store. The doctor said to stick to baby cereals for a while then alternate with fruits and vegetables. Try each new thing for a week before adding another new item, and no eggs or meats for a while.
On Tuesday I pulled out her doorway bouncy jump toy thing. As you can tell I have no idea what to call it, but I knew little Miss Kicks-a-lot would love it.
She doesn’t like the “stationary entertainer” *eye roll* that I pulled out of the garage on Wednesday very much, but she’ll tolerate the not-a-walker for a while. She figured out how to make the yellow squeaky (by her left arm in the picture) work and she was very pleased with herself. She hit it about three times before getting board and moving on to something else.
Sophia has been able to spin herself around in the crib since she was about two months old. More recently she learned to push herself away from the edge of her bassinet/playpen/crib with her legs while she is on her back. I’ve been placing her on her tummy after diaper changes to put her pants on and while I walk away to wash my hands for the past few weeks. On Wednesday I put her on her tummy to put on her pants as usual and she spit up. I rotated her in a way that her face wouldn’t be in the spit-up if she put her head back down, but I still positioned in a way that she can watch her crib mobile while I went to wash my hands. While I was gone I heard much fussing and screaming emitting from her general direction. After finishing I went back to see that she had her legs under her body in a crawling stance and her arms spread out flat on her mattress with her head down and up against the side of the crib. She had basically done a lower body half crawl with her face sliding through her spit-up. Her hair on that side was all wet - eeeww! 
Apparently when her father was a toddler he had an aversion to using his arms as well. His family lovingly dubbed baby Kurtie “Unicorn boy” because when he would trip or otherwise begin to fall he NEVER put his arms out to prevent his head from hitting the floor. The child had a permanent bruise in the middle of his forehead.
I was going to post about Sophia and her crying or maybe her cuteness, but after last night I just have to rant about our furnace. It’s been a month since the first time our furnace first started failing. It’s old and we have to keep resetting the circuit breaker. Kurt called someone to come fix it and the guy asked Kurt if he’s at all handy then told him to tighten or replace the circuit breaker. Last weekend Kurt tried to do just that but found that the main in the circuit breaker box, which as far as we know is supposed to shut off everything, only shuts off the lights. Neither one of up is up for a little electrical shock in just replacing the one breaker without the main turning them all off first, so we’re still dealing with the problem. Last night it cut out again and it was COLD!!!
