Two Month Check In

That's right, Luca is TWO months old!! I know it is cliched to say it, but OMG time flies. I feel that way even when I'm sitting in the nursery at 3 a.m. and he JUST. WON'T. STOP. CRYING.

So yeah - the fussiness has continued, culminating in a WONDERFUL 24 hour period within which the little guy slept a total of 4 hours. Here is a picture of me trying the Baby Bjorn to get him to sleep...

Yes, I'm on the TTC. And yes his eyes are closed, but don't let that fool you. The little monster fought sleep tooth and nail that day. Until I lost it. At ten p.m. I bawled, I yelled at J (oops) and Luca promptly fell asleep for 5 hours. I think he knew I'd hit my limit.

So here is an update on the little guy now that he is two months old:

Mood: Luca is still a fussy baby. He cries pretty consistently between the hours of 5 p.m. and 10 or 11 p.m. If I'm out of the house during the day, he is usually fine because he is sleeping, but when he wakes up, watch out! I will say that I have been seeing more happy periods recently - usually just in the morning when he wakes up and looks like this:

and then like this:

But during the rest of the day he looks like this when he wakes up:

I'm hoping that the fussiness lets up soon - I've heard three months is a magic milestone so I'm looking forward to that!! We are still using the BioGaia and I think it is helping but we still have a long way to go.

Sleeping: This is still a tricky area. Like I mentioned above, if I'm out of the house during the day he is a pretty great sleeper. A 3 hour nap in the morning and about the same in the afternoon if I'm out the whole time. However, if I try to get him to nap at home (you know, in case I want to actually do something around the house) I can only get about an hour out of him, and that is IF I can actually get him to sleep. Sometimes I try to go out to get him to sleep and then sneak back in the house with him in his car seat, but the little bugger knows when we get here and usually wakes up just as I've heated up my lunch.

At night, it ranges. We have had a few nights where the first stretch of sleep is 4 hours (twice it was 5!) but more often than not, the max he will sleep is three hours. Which is fine by me, except that he more often than not is up for 2 or so hours before he goes back down! Which is NOT okay! Mostly because once he's been up that long, he doesn't sleep much after because he gets hungry again. Ugh.  He just seems so fussy and gassy and it keeps him from settling down I think. And there was that one time that he woke up screaming bloody murder like he had a nightmare. That was scary.

Anyways - this is still a work in progress. I have been lucky in that my mom has been around for 2 weeks this month and has been taking him in the morning for me, allowing me to go back to sleep after a bad night or blog after a good one (like today!). Thanks mom!

Feeding: Breastfeeding is still a challenge for us. I've been to the lactation clinic twice and they seem to think things are fine, but I'm still feeling a considerable amount of pain. Not just during feedings but throughout the rest of the day. Which is annoying and very very uncomfortable. He is growing so the doctor wasn't concerned but I think I need to get some more help again.

Growth: Luca now weighs 11 lbs and 5 ounces and is 24 inches long, which puts him in the 50th percentile for weight gain and 75th percentile for 'height'. Not sure what those percentile things really mean but the doctor was fine with his progress. 

Health: I'd say he is still healthy! The colic/gas stuff is annoying but not indicative of a real problem (according to his doctor). His baby acne went away and he's getting chubbier which I love! 

My Recovery: I am pretty much back to normal now (thank goodness!). I still have an extra 12 lbs on me but I'm mostly okay with that. I haven't been working out or anything or dieting because well...I don't work out and I don't want to diet because I've heard that can mess with your milk production. For now, I'm just focusing on Luca and will worry about the weight later.

My pre-pregnancy jeans fit again which is nice, but I still have some extra padding around the top haha.

I am also not crying as much anymore. My tears are now connected to something real (i.e. lack of sleep) as opposed to my raging hormones. I have found that I'm on a 4 or 5 day cycle - I'm fine with the lack of sleep for the first 3 or 4 days and then I lose it. Luca usually gives me a decent night when I lose it, and then I'm back to the beginning of the cycle. I hope this is normal!!

So all in all, Luca is a great, yet challenging baby. I am so in love with him even when I get frustrated. I often beg for him to go to sleep, and then miss him once he is sleeping. I'm such a mom :-)

Looking for a Toronto Roofing Company

Friends - I need your help. We are looking for a roofing company that will come to Toronto to reshingle our roof. One that is good, reliable and trustworthy.

I mentioned earlier that our roof is still leaking into our beautiful bathroom and that rather than just patching the offending area, we are going to go for it and just re-do the whole thing.

We thought we found the right guy - we had two quotes and J liked one in particular. He came to the house, got on the roof and provided us with a very detailed quote. He followed up with a phone call, offering to answer any questions and J signed the contract.

That is when the weirdness started.

The roofer (let's call him Bob) called J the next day and asked if he could come by because he wanted to show J a few things. He took J up on to the roof and showed him a few areas that would need more extensive work in his opinion (i.e. replacing some of the roof boards). He also pointed out that we had 3 layers of shingles on the roof and that it would cost extra to take them all off.

Now this is when I started to get upset. I'm sorry - having multiple layers of shingles is pretty normal for a house like ours and removal of all three should have been included in the quote since Bob had been on our roof and had the chance to check that out.

But wait - let me read the quote....

"Removal of all roofing materials"

Sounds like it was already included, don't you think?

Anyways - Bob said he was going to bring his partner out to check on our roof so that he could let us know what the extent of the "new" repairs would be.

On the day Bob and his partner were to stop by, Bob called J and said his truck broke down and he couldn't make it, but that he EXPLAINED what our roof was like to him and that it would cost an additional 10K to fix it. 

Haha.

Needless to say, we decided to part ways with Bob. We didn't feel confident in him and were worried that the final bill would look nothing like the original quote.

So that is why I'm looking for recommendations. If you (or a friend or relative of yours) had had a roof reshingled and were happy enough to recommend them, please do!! 

(PS - gosh I am starting to HATE renovations!!)

(PPS Luca's two month pics are up tomorrow - more fun than roofers!)

Mom Moment

While sitting at the Tim Hortons this afternoon, moving the stroller back and forth praying that Luca would finally go to sleep, I looked at a mark on my finger and thought....

Is that mustard or is that poop?

Hope you are having a good weekend!

Guess What?!

Luca is currently napping. At home. And it has been an hour already! AND I showered! And am now blogging! NO WAY!!

As you can probably tell from my crappy lack of blogging lately, this parenting thing is TOUGH! As I told you about earlier, we have been going through a bit of a rough patch with little Luca who for weeks just never seemed to be happy. Ever.

The little guy cried and screamed and cried some more. Sleep? No thank you, he said. I tried everything - sleeping on me, in the crib, in the swing, in the bed. Nothing worked consistently or for long and I was at the end of my rope. I was snapping at J, crying at almost nothing. The worst was when I went to the doctor - both my OB and the pediatrician asked "and how are YOU doing" and I cried. Of course they were concerned about post partum depression but I was certain that wasn't it.

I was just tired and overwhelmed. Until I blogged about it. It was so nice to hear that I wasn't alone in my frustrations. I was surrounded by other moms with fussy babies who had lived to tell the tale, even if there were tears along the way!

Anyhoo - a few commenters suggested a natural pro-biotic supplement called Bio-Gaia and I asked Luca's doctor about it and she said to go for it, so we did. After one particularly bad night and even worse morning, I broke down and spent some $30 on the smallest bottle of liquid drops ever.

I was skeptical but honestly, I think they have made a difference!!! We have been giving Luca the drops for about 6 days now and we have had 3 good days in a row! Naps, periods of happy and awake time, decent sleeping at night. It is amazing.

And now - a photo-bomb!

Couldn't keep his eyes open at the park.

Went to Yogurty's! So good! 

I work out :-)

Okay - so look at the picture above. Is it just me or is that the beginning of a super sweet dimple on my little guy's cheek? I'm constantly on a dimple search but I'm not sure if I'm seeing things :-)

Hopefully it won't be a week till my next post :-)

Things I Haven't Told You Yet

I know - the frequency of my posting is abysmal. I'd like to think I have a good reason but really, I should be able to get to the computer once in a while for reasons other than watching all of Heroes or Game of Thrones while I feed Luca at night.

Anyhoo - I thought I'd let you guys know about some stuff going on at my house (yes, gasp, my house and not my child!).

1. We have very very bad luck (as does my neighbour). 

When Luca was about 3 weeks old, and he had just entered the screaming phase, we heard a knock on our door. J answered as I had a friend over, and when he came back into the family room, I could tell by the look on his face that something was not right. He looked something like this:

Not good. When I asked him what happened, he told me that the knock on our door was from our neighbour. Our very sheepish neighbour, telling J to check our basement because his washer broke and he had water in his basement.

Yes, this is the same neighbour whose hot water tank burst and flooded our basement causing us to have to rip up our brand new carpet, take apart our Ikea couch and basically re-finish our basement. At least this time he came right over so that we could deal with it quickly.

I will tell you - last thing we wanted with a new baby was to deal with this again. There wasn't as much water, but we still had to take apart the couch, move it out of the way, pull up the edge of the carpet and dry everything out. It wasn't as  intense as the first flood, but it still required a lot of work and inconvenience for us (especially J who had to drive up to his parents' house to borrow their industrial fan. Again.).

So yeah - we had a second water incident in our new basement thanks to our neighbours. Upside is that these are the neighbours that we really like and they did feel really badly about it.

2. We Are Getting a New Roof

Yep - I'm not kidding. We are getting a new roof.

Remember how we renovated and put in a brand new bathroom? And shortly after we finished said renovation, we noticed some water damage in the brand new bathroom ceiling?

Well it got worse.

Last week's big storm caused this:

Yup - our bathroom ceiling developed a blister. Filled with water. It was gross and sad at the same time.  To be honest, we knew this was coming. We knew that there were areas of our roof that were near the end, and we were holding out until we really needed to do something. When I saw that blister, I realized that time had arrived. Drywall damage is one thing to fix, but if that water went further and hit the chandelier electrical box, I can only imagine how bad it get.

So J called around and we got a few quotes and in about 2 weeks, we will be getting a brand new roof. Strangely enough, I'm quite excited about it! Sure, it isn't a sexy renovation, but it will be nice not stressing every time it rains and crossing my fingers as I climb the stairs after a storm, hoping that the bathroom will be intact.

Once the new roof is up I will give you more info about who we hired and what shingles we chose etc.

So that is that - even though it seems like all we are dealing with is a super cute and often fussy/sleepless infant, we have some other fun house stuff going on!! YAY.

Just to end this on a happy note, I will say that Luca gave me a big gummy smile yesterday!! I will try to catch it and take a pic, but it was pretty sweet :-)

See ya!