Brice eats oatmeal, take two

For all that did not trust that Brice liked the oatmeal, I present a short film titled, "Brice eats oatmeal, take two."

Spring has sprung!

The sun finally decided to make an appearance this weekend.  For the first time in months, it feels like spring has sprung.  Joel and I went out and splurged on a new hammock for the backyard.  We decided to build a little deck in the back corner for the hammock, a couple of chairs and perhaps a fire pit.  Here's the finished frame... we'll finish the deck next weekend:

Since the weather was so nice, we took Brice for a walk in Central Park.  Here he is listening to some musicians:
Brice and Joel enjoying the sunny weather:
Mommy showing off Brice's big boy outfit (of course, he still refuses socks):

Getting over it.

The last few weeks, I've gotten away from the writing and have simply been posting videos and photos of Brice with little status updates. Its cute and all, but today it just seems like it ain't enough. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I haven't slept in like 5 days (no joke). Perhaps it has to do with the doom and gloom that fills the news broadcasts, clutters my inbox, kicks off every meeting. Perhaps it is because even though my husband says he's close to getting his work done, I know that it is never really "finished." Whatever it is, I need to write. It always makes me feel better.

Brice has been sick for the last week and yes, I'm going to say it here, I totally blame my mother-in-law. I love Elaine and she knows it (I hope) but I'm going to start calling her Typhoid Mary. Typhoid has the unique ability to not know that she is sick until she has infected everyone in a 25 mile radius. Typhoid came to visit and now Brice has a cold - the kind of cold that fills his nose with a thick concrete-like substance and gives him a hacking cough that seriously sounds like he's been polishing off two packs a day and a fifth of bourbon. Three trips to the doctor now and no relief... for any of us.

Joel is sick now too and last night at around 9pm, he proclaimed that he was going to put himself into a NyQuil induced coma and go to bed... upstairs. So I stay downstairs with Brice because even though there's really nothing that I can do to end the nasal drip or end the cough, its a mother's right to try (and quite frankly, Joel's coughing and sneezing isn't really turning me on enough to go into the sick ward that is now our upstairs bedroom).

Brice sleeps for a bit and wakes up at midnight starving. He finishes 6 ounces with a ferocity that is as if he has not seen food in 3 days (when in reality, its only been 3 hours). He coughs for about half an hour and finally passes out on the pillow next to me. Hands over his head in the "stick em up" pose that he's so famous for. He wakes again at 3:00am. Another bottle, another wave of coughing, I use the electric nose-sucker that Joel bought in an attempt to clear him out. This leads to hysteria. Now he's coughing and crying and is so red in the face he could probably gain entrance to the Kennedy compound. And now he is totally awake. I watch the hours tick by... 4am he's playing peek-a-boo with the comforter. 5am he's showing off how he can take his binky out of his mouth with one hand while simultaneously slapping my cheek with the other. 6am the sun is coming up and he's yawning but nowhere even close to sleeping. Sigh. By 6:30 we roll out of bed and head upstairs. Joel looks terrible and he's jumping in the shower because he's got to get to work early. I barely even recall saying goodbye to him.

Brice and I lay in bed and watch and news for a bit until its about 7am. He plays with the remote, I check my blackberry. I take him in the bathroom and sit him in his jiggly chair while I shower. I sing to him while I shower to keep him entertained... this morning the playlist consists of some David Grey, All American Rejects, Jason Mraz and Brice's favorite, Somewhere Over The Rainbow. I can sing this song to him 500 times in a row and he'll always be smiling.

And I laugh. I laugh because I am so exhausted and so overwhelmed and so angry and am even a little bit lonely considering I've spent the majority of the last 24 hours having a one-sided conversation with a sick baby. But this is what its really like to be a parent...the kind of stuff that doesn't make it into those Baby Whisperer books. And my child, despite his illness, has a smile ear to ear because in his mind, I've got the voice of an angel. I brush off the exhaustion and get over it. And even now as I write it all down, it doesn't seem that bad in hindsight.

I gotta say it, writing for me will always be the best therapy. Whew.

Brice eats oatmeal and relaxes in the grass. Tough life for a baby.

First, here are some photos from the last two weeks:

For some reason, Brice looks like an angry teenager to me in this photo (clicky for larger view).

Brice loves his blue cow towel.  Brice says, "Mooooo!"

So we had a couple of firsts of the weekend.  Brice ate an entire bowl of oatmeal cereal on Sunday.   Joel and his parents actually got him started while I slept in a little and I woke up to the sound of hysterical laugher coming from our kitchen.  The oatmeal was all over Brice, the high chair, Joel, the exersaucer.  We were a mess!

The sun finally came out and after a nice walk at the beach, Brice and I played for a bit in the front yard.  We have a lot of foot traffic so we were watching the walkers, the dogs... Brice was very chatty.  At one point, I even get him on camera and it sounds like he's saying "I love you!"  Clearly he's babbling, but let me believe he's telling his dear old mother that he loves her, mkay?!?

Here's some video of both... I spliced it together for easy viewing:

Four Month Checkup!

We had Brice's four month well baby check up with Dr. Lialios today.  Once again, Brice scored an A+ from the doc.  He now weights 17lbs, 14oz and is 26.25 inches long.  He's in over the 90th percentile for both height and weight!

Dr. Lialios said he sees some swelling in Brice's gums and based on the amount of drool that we left behind on the examining table, we both agreed that teeth are probably in our near future.

The doctor also gave us a plan for starting Brice on solid food in the coming weeks... we'll see how that goes.

Also, as I've mentioned to many of you, Brice has found his voice over the last couple of days.  He's constantly babbling to us!  Here's a little video of Brice and Joel's conversation from the other night.  Turn your volume up for maximum cuteness.