I Still Love Him.

He may scream A LOT, but at least he is still like the cutest baby ever. This is Everett at the wedding we went to this weekend.

Hard...To...Think...

.....with all the screaming.

As I write this Everett is crying away in his bouncy chair. Much like he does almost all the time he is not being held, patted, swayed....

It is lonely when the only friends I have are online, therefore I have to be at the computer to have any sort of connection with them. I never get to the computer though because my baby never lets me. Well, I can come to the computer and have my little baby sitting beside me in his bouncy chair having a fit.

Seriously..how do all you mothers out there have these cute little babies that coo and lay on the floor and kick their legs....babies that are contend to hold a rattle in their hands....or babies that will nap on there own without waking up every 20 minutes and needing to be comforted again....

So not fair.

Sometimes it is nice to be able to just go out.. Everett will fall asleep in his car seat and usually stay asleep for a few minutes in a store. Or at least if I have to hold him it doesn't seem to matter because we are out and about anyway....but in order to go out I need at least 20 minutes to myself to shower (maybe) get dressed, put minimal make-up on and get a diaper bag ready....but that takes so much effort that I may as well just give up, grab the remote and go back to the couch in my jammies with my screaming baby.

Well I suppose I have let him scream long enough I am starting to feel guilty...best be going.
Oh I would take a wonderful red faced screaming baby picture for you to go with this post but our camera is dead and finding the charger for it would require me to put the baby down and look through boxes. Sorry

When I Have Time

One day when I have spare time again I want to paint our dinning room furniture. This is the closest I can find to what I am looking for. I have not cleared this by Ryan yet though so it is probably a good thing I do not have the time to do it. I can still dream though.

Well, Everett has been asleep for a bit now and should be waking soon, guess I better get to the things I actually have to do:
dishes
laundry
*dump powdered formula down the drain
make last can of liquid formula
go buy more liquid formula
tidy the living room
pay bills
go find where I have to pay rent and do it.......

* Ryan and I decided that we could switch Everett off liquid formula and start him on powdered formula. We have two cans of it here that was sent to us from Nestle. Everett, however, thinks this is a bad idea. After screaming for 30 minutes and absolutely refusing to drink any of the powdered formula I finally broke down and made him a new bottle with liquid....to be honest I am not sure what Ryan and I were thinking. With all the tummy troubles he has been having I don't know why we would temp fate and try something new. Duh!

Introduction to Our House

Since these are the only rooms that are clean enough to take pictures of this is all I can show you. There is still plenty more unpacking and organizing to do. We have too much stuff. Between Ryan & I we probably have 200 books but we have no where to put them yet. They are in piles on the floor in our room..which we are currently sharing with Everett so it is a huge mess.

This is Everett's room. We do not have a crib yet, but will need one soon. He is quickly growing out of his bassinet.
We have a TV and PVR in Everett's room. This was so that during the many late evenings and night time feeds we could watch TV. The only problem is that since we have moved here Everett has only slept in his room for 2 nights. With the amount of fussing he is doing it is easier to just roll over and tend to him when he is in our room than climb the stairs to get to him every time. With his tummy troubles we only have so much time to get to him and soothe him before it turns into a full blown cry. One day (soon hopefully) he will be sleeping in here.
I love how organized and neat his shelf is... I am enjoying it now because I know that as soon as he is mobile it will never look this clean again. Instead it will resemble.....................

Rawley's disaster. Going into this room causes me to have a panic attack. I hate hate hate it. I have had him clean it several times, but within an hour it looks just like this again.

Lastly, here is our kitchen. It is small but clean. The cupboards, counter and fridge are all new. We have lots of cupboard space to hid things, but not much counter space to work on. What you see here...is all the counter space we have. Oh Well.

3 Months Old.

Everett was 3 months old yesterday. I cannot believe it. Where have those 3 months gone.

What To Do

I am having an extremely hard time wondering what to do about Everett's tummy troubles. I am wondering how long can this really go on?

I can manage the screaming crying baby during the day...but it would be a lot easier if i could get some sleep at night too. Everett has a really hard time burping when he is really tired and I think that is the cause of half his night time tummy problems. He wakes up just thrashing his head back and forth and moaning. He pulls his legs up and the shoots them back out and if I don't tend to him quick enough it turns into a full blown cry. It starts anywhere between 3am and 5 am and lasts until usually 8am.

Everett spent 2 nights in his own room and is back in our room. I find it just easier that way. When the pains first come on I can roll over, give him his sucky and pat his back for a bit until the cramp goes away. I can do this every 5-10 minutes for almost an hour. Then he gets in so much pain that I have to pick him up and pat his back constantly. He is still very tired and as long as I am rocking him or patting his back in a slightly elevated position he can mostly sleep through the pain, but as soon as I stop moving him or patting him he is crying again.

This means that from 3 or 5 till 8 I have to stay awake and pat pat pat rock rock rock sway sway sway. As you can imagine I do not get much sleep. About last Friday the tears started...for me... I just didn't know if i could handle it anymore. My crying woke Ryan up and he took over for a few hours before he had to go to work. Later that day I had another breakdown....I am so sleep deprived and now have a very bad cold (probably because I have little sleep)

What I don't know is is this something that Everett is just going to grow out of and if so when? Or is there maybe something actually wrong with him? The specialist we had in Abbotsford said as long as he is gaining weight he is healthy...although not happy and clearly in a lot of pain....he is still healthy.

What does that mean? There is nothing we can do for him? And how can we know for sure something is not more wrong. Is is right for a baby to be in the much pain every night? It is so frustrating.

Made With Love

Everett has received a lot of homemade gifts. Now don't get me wrong I love all his gifts. Two of my favorite being a jumper from Old Navy and a Sweater from Baby Gap......but there is something special about gifts that people make.

This is a blanket that Grandma Pat knitted. Rawley has a matching but larger one. They are so soft and wonderful.

Auntie Crystal made this quilt. It is the first one she ever made. It will be Everett's crib bedding...when he gets a crib.

This was supposed to be Everett's coming home outfit, but when he arrived 5 weeks early he was 1/2 the size of it. I think it will fit him now. He may just wear it Friday night if we go to camp fire and the camp ground. Grandma Pat also made this.
This sweater was made by Auntie Evie. It is also really soft and should fit him by winter.
This Burrito blanket was sewn by Ryan's Sister's boyfriend's mom, Helen. I love it so much. I am going to buy some more material and she is going to make us another one.
Everett thought he should model it for you so that you get the idea.

And this brings me to what I think is my all time favorite piece so far. This was also made by Helen who is an amazing quilter and has been teaching Crystal. This play mat rocks because the tags are sewn in so that you can attach toys. Everett thinks it is cool, he has already made friends with the little doggy on it.
Thank you to everyone that made us gifts. Hope I didn't leave any out.

Happy Holloween?

Tomorrow night is Halloween at Grandma's camp ground. We had a hard time figuring out what Rawley would be. It kind of snuck up on me and no one has their Halloween stuff out yet. Rawley wanted to be someone from Mario Brothers. He would have rather been one of the mushroom guys but I was not sure how I would do that.
I decided that Mario was doable.
We went to a few different second hand stores for the clothes. I made the hat and painted buttons for the yellow buttons.
Rawley tried it on today to make sure he looked like Mario.
He seemed happy with the results.
Tomorrow morning Grandma will pick him up and take him to the trailer and then he will go trick-or-treating tomorrow night.


I think he looks great.

The Truth

I love to post cute pictures of Everett and blog about his milestones. I truly do love him and think he is the cutest baby in the world. He is starting to coo and makes real baby noises. I can almost make him smile anytime I try. He is following sounds with his eyes. All these little things are so wonderful to watch.
I feel so blessed to have this wonderful beautiful cuddly little man in my life.
However, the pictures that I post on my blog and facebook of him do not really accurately depict our typical day. Or at least the larger portion of our day.

So I took these pictures to give you an idea of what my day really looks like.

I still think he is the cutest baby in the world.

The Move

Friday July 30th we picked up our U-haul and spent the day filling it. (Thank you to Julie, Melissa, Mary Ann and her boys!) Friday night we slept and Grandma's house and were back to clean the apartment Saturday morning. We planned to leave by 2:30 but did not get out of Abbotsford till about 4:40. Rawley played with his new toy the entire day. About 5 hours he played. (Thank you grandma pat)
Good-Bye snow shed.

Considering the late start I was pretty impressed we made it to Golden on the first night. Golden is pretty much in the middle of no where so everyone passing through late a night wants a room. Ryan and another guy went in to the last (and crappiest) hotel at the same time and fought for 2 rooms. Ryan won, but the rooms were nothing to brag about.

Everett slept most of the first day in the car so I was worried about his night. He did okay, 3:30am he woke up and didn't want to sleep much more though. Hello coffee and energy drinks...(for me not him)

Rawley standing beside the Columbia River in Kicking Horse Pass. We made it about 20 minutes out of Golden before Everett wanted to eat.

Bridge over the Columbia River that we could see from the rest area. Won't be seeing thing like this in Manitoba.

Good-Bye mountains.

We stopped for lunch in Calgary where Everett was up for a couple hours. He ate, he pooped, he cooed....then when we got back in the car he fell asleep. He was an excellent traveller.

The second night we didn't travel late into the night. We promised Rawley we would stop around dinner, have a nice meal and go swimming at our hotel. Once we decided where we were going to stop for the night we called ahead and made reservations at a Super 8. Rawley played in the pool for a long time. Everett even dipped his feet in the pool and then sat with me at the hot tub for a while.

We were up early and on our way Monday thinking we would make it to Brandon in time for dinner.

Saskatchewan is not as flat as people joke about. For the first 3 hours it was beautiful rolling hills.

Gassing up in Maple Creek.

Wind turbines in Saskatchewan.

Most towns now have grain terminals instead of the old grain elevators. This is the one in Reed Lake.

Salt Mines.

Old grain elevator in Moose Jaw.

and in Sintaluta.

Uncle Brian and dad were following us in the truck when we lost sight of them. It had happened before when we had sped up and they had dawdled along enjoying the scenery....but this time we got a phone call a few minutes later. The U-Haul blew a tire just west of Wolsley. Once we doubled back and met them we realized they just blew the tread off, but what a process to get someone to come fix it. It starts by calling U-Hauls 1-800 number in the states. Then they try to locate you and find a shop to go help. The could not find Wolsley on their map. Nor could they pronounce Saskatchewan or Regina.

After 3 hours of waiting we sent Uncle Brain, Dad and Rawley on their way in the car and Ryan, Everett & I waited the other 2 hours for Fountain Tire to show up. It was getting late so instead of continuing on we headed back to Regina and stayed at the Ramada (paid for by U-Haul).

This is the storm we drove through on the way back to Regina. There was so much rain you could barely see, plus the sun was shinning so bright from the other side it was almost blinding. That was our 5th storm of the day.

Everett got to eat while travelling in the truck, since he was right between us and we could reach him. This made for fast travel because we only had to stop to burp him.

At the Ramada Everett got his own queen sized bed AND four huge pillows. Spoiled little man.

Tuesday morning we hit the road and made it to Brandon by 1pm. This is the grain Elevator between Alexander and Brandon... We were almost home.

Our truck was packed tight. We even had to leave our couch behind. It was quite a job to try to get the door open without everything falling out.

Over all the trip went well. We saw a bear just before Kamloops and 3 Antelope in Alberta. Other than that is was a lot of dead things on the highway. Everett was a great traveller, Rawley also did very well. We are here and our house looks like a moving truck threw up in it. Sooooo...who wants to come help me unpack and organize everything?

Good-Bye

We saw great grandma & grandpa on Wednesday night and then we stayed there on Friday night as all our house was packed in the back of the truck. They both got to see Everett wide awake and happy. I am so happy I got these photos of them together. These are pictures to treasure for sure. Next week I will get them printed off and in the mail so grandma & grandpa can treasure them as well.

Saying good bye to grandma & grandpa was the hardest thing about moving. I know that we have a special relationship with them and I am going to miss it. Other people I can communicate with on the Internet and they can come visit. G & G don't do the Internet, don't fly and can barely hear on the phone.

Grandma broke down crying in the morning when we hugged good-bye. She gave us her blessing and told us she understood why we had to move but that she was sure going to miss us and our boys. I know that of the grandchildren we were the ones that spent the most time with them so worry that they are going to be lonely. That means any other grandkids reading this: it is your job to step up and go visit. Grandma & Grandpa won't be around forever. A quick visit from family really makes their day.

I plan to write letters often and send pictures with each letter.

Everett also got some great cuddles with Papa.

Before we left Everett got to meet his second cousin (i think) Spencer. They are about 2 months apart but less than a pound difference between them. Spencer is skinnier but longer. They were so cute together. I was nice to hold a cute newborn again. Too bad we won't see him again until he is huge.

We will truly miss all our family but are excited for our new adventures here in Brandon. Next blog I will write about our trip. We get Internet at our place Tuesday morning so I won't have to invade mom & dad's house any more.