8 Months Old

My baby has officially grown up!! Ethan turned 8 months yesterday, and is doing all sorts of amazing stuff. It's so hard to imagine that eight months ago I was labored with him for 5 hours (active labor), and my dream of having a home birth came true. I can still look back on it and say that it was the most amazing, connective, empowering experience I have ever gone through.

Okay, enough with the emotional stuff. Ethan started crawling about 1 month ago, which we knew would come a little sooner than Ava since he has someone to chase around. We are close to refusing to eat any type of baby food. It seems that he likes the texture of table food better, and if we're eating dinner he has to eat what we eat. There is no amount of persuading or coercing in the world that will make him down the pureed mush.

His newest accomplishment he discovered today. He was able to get a knee up on the fireplace, and it was all over after that. He quickly discovered how easily he could climb up onto it, and I'm sure he will attempt to conquer the stairs tomorrow.

He has three teeth (all on the bottom), and four more coming soon (all on the top). How weird!

He still thinks Ava is IT, and will follow her anywhere. He loves to have us carry him around while we chase her around the dining room table, and will laugh hysterically the entire time.

This past week he acquired his first ear infection, and Dr Mac said that he actually had a blister on his eardrum. And we thought all that crying was his teeth coming in:(

Overall, he's on the move, into everything, and we always said we were in trouble with Ethan because Ava was such a perfect baby...and it is definitely true, but I wouldn't give it up for the world. My children provide me with the kind of happiness only a mother can explain, and they amaze me everyday!!

One Week Later

So...it's been 1 week today, and unfortunately I'm still not back to normal. My ankle aches all day, and even though I can walk a lot better, if I do it puffs up like a marshmallow!! After sleeping all night the swelling improves, but by 9 or 10a.m. it looks about the same as it did the night I sprained it. This pic was taken first thing this morning before I had been up walking around on it so even though all the bruising looks nasty, it's not AS swollen.

I'm really wondering if I did break it in some way...maybe a hairline fracture or something, but I still can't justify the $100 ER co-pay just for them to tell me "Yep, it's broke. Now keep doing the same things you've been doing the last week...rest, ice, elevate." If it's really broken I don't think I would really be able to put pressure on it (which I am); however, with the swelling being just as bad as last week, and the pain still prominent, I wonder. Any thoughts?

My stupid freakin' ankle!!

Last night I went out for some quality time with my older sister Tammy. We has some dinner and drinks at this new country bar outside Raymore (it was somewhere in the middle of both of our houses. Some of you may know I have a thing for high-heeled shoes when I go out, and normally they don't bother me. I have no trouble walking or dancing in them for hours, and there's something to be said about a great pair of heels with perfect fitting jeans. However, my heels did not like me last night because about 11:00 p.m. I got up from the table to go use the restroom and twisted my right ankle.....yes, AGAIN. We finally got our new camera this week, and I figure I probably need some proof of my repeat injury since this is the second time in two months I've sprained it.

This is about thirty minutes after it happened.

800mg of Motrin and elevation overnight...

The bruising is just starting to set in, and walking was a lot easier last night when I was "under the influence". Today, walking is not an option. I can get back and forth to the bathroom and kitchen by hobbling or hopping; however, most of my day has been spent in the recliner with it elevated. Luckily this was not my weekend to work, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I will be able to work by Tuesday. Do you think I could get an ankle replacement? I think this one's had it's day!!

Middle Range Theory...ugh!

So, we all know I'm back in school full-time, and am working on my second term as of last week. So this term I have the joy of taking a class on nursing theory, specifically, Middle Range Theory. We all know that everything we do as health care practitioners somehow ties back to one of those theories that we learned about ages ago, but could really care less to ever think about again. Unfortunately, I thought that I was done covering theory in undergrad, but here I am again, and believe me when I say undergrad was definitely better. I am reading the most poorly written textbook I have ever read in my educational career, which is long running. I know this book is technically written in English, however, it seems like a foreign language.

I tend to think of myself as an intelligent person that analyzes everything, and am constantly thinking about the evidence and practicality behind what I do as a LDRP nurse, and most people I work with could describe me as a sort of devil's advocate in the Birthing Center; however, they continue to support my education, and sometimes my ideas about pregnancy and birth as a whole. So to all of you who have been in contact with me the last few weeks, this class has increased my stress level and here's why"

"The paradigm debate remains unresolved. Without the emergence of a single dominant paradigm, nursing is left with multiple paradigms that are either competing or complementary or the need to develop an integrated paradigm that dialectically combines the perspectives of multiple paradigms. With this state of paradigm confusion, it would be helpful for nurse theorists to identify the paradigmatic perspective from which the theory is developed and nurse researchers to identify the paradigmatic perspective from which the research questions were posed and the research methods chosen." (Peterson & Bredow, 2009, p.14)

Peterson, S. and Bredow, T. (2009). Middle Range Theories: Application to Nursing Research (2nd ed.) (p. 4). Philedelphia: Lippincott, Williams, and Wilkins.

This paragraph was in the first chapter about 4 pages in, and if you can imagine the entire rest of the book was written in the same glorious style that makes me want to blow my head off while reading it. If any of you are able to ingest, digest, and spit back up the previous paragraph in a way that makes sense without the urge of suicide then you deserve a gold star...or possibly the Noble Peace Prize.

So, point of the story:
1) Don't go back to school for an advanced practice degree, and
2) If you do, also get a script for Zanax

No New Pics

Our camera got broken on New Year's. We're really not sure what happened, but I went to get it out of my purse and the screen was broken. Ironically, I had been begging to get a D-SLR for Christmas, and Santa must not have gotten my letter because there was no camera under the tree for me:( However, he must have really wanted me to have one because our old one did break somehow. So, i got to order my new Canon D-SLR, and it's in the mail right now. We got a great deal off e-bay on a brand new camera with all four lens's, four filters, the flash, two tripods, a bag, and a case. I am so excited to get it and start practicing my photography, which has turned into an addiction since I started blogging. They take such higher quality photos, and soon you will see some of my beginner's work!

We're on a roll! 7 Months old

Last month Ethan got his first two teeth, and is awfully proud of all his work getting them here (as you can see from all his pictures he likes to show them off). The last few days he's been really grumpy, and upon a thorough inspection of his mouth yesterday, he's getting yet another tooth right next to his bottom front right. I'm sure Aunt Val could tell us the exact name of this tooth, but to Ethan it's been the "worst tooth ever"! and he's been letting us know about it too. Thanks to Hyland's natural teething tablets, and a combination of Tylenol, Motrin, and Orajel we've been able to keep our sanity...so far. It's so frustrating when he is hurting so bad, and nothing that we do makes it any better, and of course the nurse in me just wants to make it all better and take his pain away. We knew we were a little too lucky with Ava when she would just wake up with four new teeth and we never heard a lick about it. If I remember correctly she had a whole mouthful by her first birthday. I've also heard that the younger a baby gets their teeth the more problems they have with them later in life. I'm not sure how much of this I believe, and since I still have never had a cavity I'm hoping our kids will follow in my genetic footsteps!

Ethan is also about to conquer his next major developmental milestone.....CRAWLING!! So far he has not just taking off across the floor; however, he will get up on his hands and knees, move his hands forward (like normal crawling) but instead of moving his legs forward individually, he'll drag them both forward as if he was army crawling on his belly. Just a bit ago, for the first time he got up on his hands and tippy toes, and stuck his butt way up in the air like he was making a bridge for someone to crawl under.

Overall, he's getting so big, and I can't believe it's already been 7 months. He's eating anything you'll put into his mouth (especially table food), can get from one end of the living room to another by a combination of army crawling, Ethan's style of "crawling", and rolling. He can pull himself up on things, and today we are moving the crib down to the lowest lever before he takes a long, hard dive out onto the hardwood floor. We still love nursing, and usually sleeps about 9 hours at night without having to nurse. (Yeah!!!) I'm not ready for him to grow any bigger, and since we're not sure if he is our last, I'm cherishing every minute of him as a baby.