Luca's First Halloween

I've realized why having a baby is so great.

There is nothing better than babies in animal costumes. We went to music class today and it was hilarious watching all of the little monkeys, elephants, giraffes and even parrots crawl around! Of course, Luca is the youngest and isn't crawling or sitting on his own but he looked adorable :-)

He is going to dress up again tonight so we can visit a few neighbours so I will try to get some better pics!

Happy Halloween!!

ETA: Here are a few pics of us trick or treating (i.e. walking around outside and chatting with neighbours. No, we didn't take any candy!)

I don't know why he always looks so scared...

And one with J when we got back home!

Mold* is Scary

Remember when our basement flooded? TWICE?

Um, yeah. The thing that scared us the most about the floods was mold. Sure, you may have thought I was more worried about the wallpaper that almost broke us, or possible damage to our buddy Karl, but in reality it was mold.

We didn't want to go from this:

to this:

(not our basement, but what I feared would happen)

You see, we finished the basement with Luca in mind. We were thinking of starting a family and decided that if a wee one was in our future, we needed a cozy space for him or her to play (and somewhere to have all of the baby 'stuff' everyone warned us about.

So when the flood(s) happened, our first concern was mold. We didn't want this space that was supposed to be for the benefit of our (at that point) unborn child to be riddled with a toxin that could cause health problems to the little guy.

We were lucky because the neighbour who 'caused' the floods was amazing about it, taking financial responsibility for any damage, and he understood our concern for the health of our home and didn't flinch when we told him we wanted to replace the carpet (all of it) after the first flood. We had done some research and everything we read said that if the water sits longer than 24 hours, mold will certainly grow and cause problems. After the first flood, our basement carpet sat underwater for about 48 hours before we noticed and before our neighbour notified us.

So the old carpet was pulled, massive fans were brought in and everything was dried for about a week and a half before the new carpet was reinstalled. Phew.

However, flood #2 wasn't as bad and we found the problem within a few hours so instead of replacing all of the carpet, J pulled up the wet edge and set the massive fans on it to dry it out. To calm any of my our mold fears, I wanted to treat the area with some kind of mold fighting treatment to make sure that our little guy would be healthy. I figured we could just go nuts with the bleach and be done with it.

Of course, upon doing a bit more research, we realized that a) bleach may not work the way we want it to and b) it is also not great for the baby (or this preggo mama). 

So lucky for us (again) we realized that we had been sent a sample of an eco-friendly mold-control product that would be perfect:

According to the website:

Concrobium Mold Control is an innovative, market leading product that effectively eliminates existing mold, prevents mold re-growth and eliminates musty odors with no harmful chemicals. 

It works on drywall, wood, composite wood, concrete, tile, flooring, upholstery and a bunch of other materials. Since we were worried about the trim, drywall, concrete and carpet, this seemed to be perfect for our job. According to the manufacturer: Concrobium Mold Control effectively eliminates and prevents mold with no bleach, ammonia or VOCs. Concrobium works as it dries by crushing the mold spores at the roots and leaving behind an invisible antimicrobial barrier to prevent future mold growth.

Nothing sounds sweeter to a pregnant woman with a flooded basement than "CRUSHING THE MOLD SPORES AT THE ROOTS". Seriously.

The spray had no strong smell and we felt really comfortable using it in an area that would eventually be frequented by our baby.

So there you have it. We fought the war on mold and WON :-) I will say that since having Luca, we have definitely tried to use more eco-friendly/non-toxic cleaners in the house. J is a fan of DIY cleaners, but for something like MOLD-BUSTING, I was happy to use something a little stronger (while still remaining eco-friendly).

So tell me - do you have any experience with mold? According to Holmes on Holmes, it seems like every house is riddled with it!

*Apparently, there is an ongoing debate on how to spell mold - either mold or mould. I picked mold for no other reason than it was easier to type. :-)

** As I mentioned above, we did receive a free sample of Mold Control to try out, but a) that is pretty flukey because we were sent the sample before the flood and b) the above opinion is totally my own (and J's since he did the spraying!).

Luca's 4 Month Check-in

Happy Monday everyone!! I hope you had a great weekend :-)

As I mentioned last week, our little Luca is now a whopping 4 months old!! Can you believe it? I know I can't!

I thought I'd update everyone on his progress - the photos this month aren't great because I took them indoors but I will try to get some better ones this week if he is ever awake long enough to get dressed and get outside (more on that below!).

Mood: Luca's mood has definitely improved over the past month. He spends more time sleeping, but when he is awake, he is definitely smiling more, giving us the odd laugh and babbling.

Ignore my annoying baby talk - I tried to edit it out but was unable to. Ah well.

He is a total boy - he loves it when we make fart funny sounds with our mouths so J and I are constantly doing that because hey - we'll do anything to get him to smile!  His mood can change quickly (maybe that is the Gemini in him) when he is tired so we have to stay right on top of that. Miss it by more than a few minutes and Luca will definitely let us know he isn't pleased!

Sleep: As I've mentioned, we have been working on Luca's sleep because we realized that he was MISERABLE when he was tired and it seemed like he was always over tired. When he gets tired, he gets pink rimmed eyes, arches his back and gets cranky. Here he is showing off his strong neck and his pink eyes.

I will do a full post on his sleep stuff in the coming few weeks but know that he is doing well and sleeping about 16-17 hours a day. Which is great for Luca but makes it tough for me to get anything done.

Feeding: We finally worked out our breastfeeding issues and I am happy to report it no longer hurts! He still takes his sweet time but it no longer feels like I'm being stabbed every time he eats. And that, my friends, is a good thing.

Growth: He now weighs a whopping 13 lbs and 6 ounces which puts him in the 50th percentile for weight (which is where he has been since the beginning). At 25 inches he is a tall skinny kid, but if he ends up like his parents, that will change (sorry buddy, you are destined to be average :-).

So happy four months little man!! I love you and all of your faces :-)

Hope you keep getting happier and growing bigger!

Lockdown

Hi friends! Sorry for the hiatus - I know it has been a while ("since September" as my mom reminded me). I've been on a bit of a self imposed lockdown these past few weeks in an attempt to improve the Luca "situation" so unfortunately haven't had much to talk about.

What kind of lockdown? The kind where Luca and I stay home everyday and just focus on sleeping and eating and making that the priority to see if it would make a difference in his mood so that the smiles would increase and the screaming would decrease. (yes - super long sentence)

And you know what? IT WORKED.

I am going to hold off on telling you all the details for a bit longer but we worked with a super fantastic woman who encouraged us along the way, believing that Luca did have some smiles in there and that we could help him be happier.

And happier he is!

With this newfound happiness, Luca even started talking a bit! I'm working on getting him to say "ma ma" but he pretty much just laughs at me.

With our new happier baby, J and I actually got out last weekend to celebrate our 4th wedding anniversary at Union on Ossington. My parents babysat for us (with our new happy baby, this is now possible!) and Luca was fantastic for them (he didn't wake up the whole time!).

It was so nice to get out of the house and spend a few hours with J alone. Not that we don't love spending time with Luca but he doesn't appreciate the same restaurants as us. Go figure. Plus we have now turned into parents so if he were there, we would spend the whole time sticking our tongue out at him and making fart noises to make him laugh. Not quite Ossington-appropriate.

Luca and I also tried going for a walk between naps and it lasted all of ten minutes. First up, he puked. Huge. On my wool sweater. 25 seconds into the walk. Must have been excited or something. Post-puke, we tried again and he started falling asleep almost immediately. As I've been working on him napping in his crib, I couldn't let that happen so I spent the whole walk singing silly songs and poking him to keep him awake.

Anyhoo, that's about it for now! I have started thinking about a few home projects so that is good for my sanity. I'm thinking it is time to finally complete our master bedroom. It's been all of 3 years now haha. Oops.

4 month update on Luca forthcoming!