sickness

I think I have a tendency to slack on blogging when I have no pictures to post. I feel like it adds so much more to my entry. So just to give you a heads up this is a picture-less entry. I'm pretty sure I have no recent pictures.
We have been dealing with a sick baby all week. Monday night he threw up twice. I've never seen a child that young throw up before. I discovered on monday night that Daddy does not handle puke well because I was left to clean it up while he gagged haha. I called the doctors office that night and spoke to the nurse as well as my nurse/doctor/go to person, my mom :). I got a lot of good advice and hoped for the best. Eric went to the store and go pedialyte and he was able to keep it down. He slept through the night and the next morning I started him on pedialyte for the first hour. Once he held that down I gave him some toast. I kept every meal small and we stuck to pedialyte, no formula. He did well and seemed to be feeling better. So Wednesday I put him back on formula and regular food. He seemed to do pretty well. He spit up in the morning but it didn't seem like he puked, just spit up. He did great all day. His appetite wasn't what it normally was but he seemed ok. I decided on Thursday that he was well enough for me to go to work. I didn't want to drop him off at my parents house unless I thought he was ok because I didn't want to get my nephews sick. He did ok there, had some not so pleasant bowel movements but seemed ok, just again, not as much of an apetite. This morning he woke up really early crying. I brought him into our bed and discovered that he had a lot of gas so he must have had a tummy ache. Once he calmed down I put him back in his crib but he just played and never went back to sleep. I got him up and gave him some cheerios and pears for breakfast. He did ok until he started throwing up the pears. ugh! I thought this was supposed to be a 24 hour bug! Then I found out that my nephew Dylan caught it and I feel horrible! So I have not given Eric anything more than snacks and pedialyte all day and he seems to be doing better. It seems like every day of this illness, the morning has been the worst and he gets progressively better as the day goes along. So tonight I'll give him some formula before bed and see what tomorrow brings! If this doesn't clear up by monday we are going to have to make a little trip to the doctors office.

My plan this week was to get him on milk. On monday I decided to replace his lunch time bottle with a sippy cup with milk. I quickly discovered a problem. He does not like the taste of milk. Another problem is that although he's drank out of a sippy cup here and there since he was 6 months old, he only will take a few sips out of it and throws it or puts it down. I'm not sure how I'm going to transition him to a sippy and milk, both things he doesn't particularly like but it looks like I'm going to have to go cold turkey. All I know is that it's not going to happen until he feels better! I think he senses my stress about this. I used to work with a kid who was over 2 and still drinking out of a bottle. He refused to drink out of a sippy cup no matter what kind it was. It was a nightmare. We tried cutting him off bottles but he just wouldn't drink anything all day and his mom would have to cave at night and give him a bottle just to get something in him. I hope this doesn't become me! I am a behavior therapist after all, I can handle this... right? oh boy.

This week has been quite an eventful week. Besides the baby being sick, Eric got a job! He is back working for the union for a company called Century Drywall. They actually called him which is so rare in that business. He is so excited. He started yesterday and he loves it. We hope it is a long term deal because he's working for an actual company as opposed to out of the union office (don't ask me what the difference is!). Either way, any extra money always helps!

On another note I had a job interview that went really well this week. I have been working for my old company on the south shore one day a week. It is a long day and it's a lot of travel but it's extra money which is always nice. I like this company that I interviewed with and it is a part-time after-school position. There's also potential to work on the weekends if I want. I was really excited about it at first but my mind has been spinning about it every since. I have worked for the May Institute on and off for several years. It has been a rocky road but it's become like home for me. Before working at the May I used to switch jobs all the time. I even left the May a few times and they took me back. I was settled in there for about 2 years before I got laid off. I loved my job and was devestated when I got laid off. So I was so excited to go back to work there after almost a year of being laid off. There are definitely down sides to the job. There's always the uncertainty of the stability of the company. Things are not what they used to be. I don't know what happened but the company is falling apart at the seams. However, I feel an obligation to them. I also realize that if I leave there I won't go back and that's something that's really hard to deal with. This has been a constant for me for so long I just don't want to give up. I think it's a pretty good thing for me that I want to stay but I'm pretty sure there are very few out there who agree with me. The reality is that I am in grad school and when I get out I will enter the social work field. These next couple years will be my last years working as a Behavior Therapist. So is it worth switching companies now if I plan on leaving the business in a few years? I don't know... well I do know, I want to stay at the May, I just need everyone else to understand that :). It may be a bad idea but it's what I know and am comfortable with. I can pick up extra days of work if I want to and maybe some day I'll be a senior therapist again, who knows.

So that's the Hamelin family in a nutshell this week!

11 months old and his first major injury

The baby is 11 months old. I cannot believe that he is a month away from being a year old! He unfortunately had his first "major" injury today too. We were at Eric's Aunt Karen and Uncle Rich's house. Eric's cousin Ricky is up visiting so we got to meet his two sons and spend time with the family. It was a really nice time. They have a slate coffee table in their living room. Pretty much everyone that was there had a story about how they hurt themselves one way or another on the coffee table. I was keeping an extra good eye on Eric while he play around that table. He was on his knees and he kept trying to eat the coffee table. He didn't seem to fall or anything but all the sudden he started screaming after he ate the coffee table. I picked him up and noticed that he was bleeding a lot in his mouth. I had no idea where the blood was coming from but thought that his teeth had fallen out or something. I cleaned up the blood and I thought one of his teeth was loose but he wouldn't let me touch it enough to find out. When all the blood was cleared up he calmed down and I gave him his sippy cup which he drank out of just fine and then he ate a snack just fine as well. I was able to finally look in his mouth and it looks like he just scraped his gum on the coffee table. Both teeth are intact and not loose. Few! This will be the first of many injuries I'm sure. Especially now that he is creeping along furniture and basically whatever he can stand up on.

Here are his 11 month pictures:

So the baby was flying around the house in his walker so I took a video of how quickly he was walking. He would get so mad when he couldn't walk any further and throw a tantrum. Oh boy!

I wanted to make sure I got a video of him waving. It's so cute. He's also started to understand what waving means because if you say to him "wave bye bye" without waving first, he'll generally wave. He's so smart!

busy busy busy

This past week or so has been so busy. We have been out and about spending time with friends and family and each other of course. Eric celebrated his 28th birthday. We celebrated with Papa John's pizza and cake. It was fun to have everyone over.
This past weekend we went to our friend Tim and Jen's daughter's 2nd birthday party and to a super bowl party. Eric did really well at both of these. He really likes being around other kids and playing with new toys and exploring.
Picture time...
So after Eric gets out of the tub he just wanders around nakey with just his towel on his head. It cracks me up seeing him crawling around with the towel on. I took some pictures and tried to kepe them modest!
Crawling around about to stand up next to his crib and try to get his silkie.





Ok these next pictures were taken with my cell phone so the quality isn't so great. However, when we went to Savannah's birthday party all the kids were around Savannah helping her unwrap presents. We let Eric crawl around to see what he'd do. He went right up to the kids but kind of sat back as if to say "I love being around kids but I'm going to sit back here so I don't get stepped on." He was talking away and having a blast just being part of the crowd. Check his little cute butt out :)