Noah's First Pee in the Potty

Let me first say we are not yet potty training Noah.

After his bath, we let him drain the water, say "bye-bye" to it and then get him out of the tub. A couple of weeks, he started peeing in the tub sometimes. Fun. So, this weekend we went and got a potty chair for him.

Saturday night, after his bath, we finally got him to sit on the chair. Cool. Last night we had him sit on the chair before his bath - hoping to avoid pee in the bath altogether, nothing. Then after his bath, nothing. But he seemed to have fun sitting there for a minute.

Tonight, we once again put him on the chair before his bath - and he peed!! Now, we're not sure just how aware he is about this. But he does love when we clap and cheer for him.

I know kids have to be much more aware of the sensation of wetness in diapers and the urge to pee than Noah currently is. This just seemed a logical thing to do to even begin to give him the vocabulary and motions.

We'll see where it leads!

Home Sweet Home

Oh the many joys of home ownership. I much prefer it to renting, but...

We've been in our house for just over three years now. I think we bought at the right time and the right price for us, and in general. The thing I like most about the house is the layout. Lots of big rooms that are easy to navigate, the tree in the front yard and the trees lining the backyard, my desk in front of the window. I like that Noah and I can spend all day upstairs and we don't have to Noah-proof downstairs.

Things I don't like about the house, the small downstairs - therefore master - bathroom, the cheap flooring beneath the carpeting, the very bad drywall/paint job throughout the house, and the unfinished room that is our laundry/storage room.

The house cost us $50,000 less than we had budgeted. And then, because of the appraisal, we paid $20,000 less than we offered. So using government math, we've got a $20,000 to $50,000 surplus! If only.

I'd say we've put about $10,000 into the house so far. We made some improvements to the kitchen, the backyard, insulation, curtains, things like that.

This week I've got people coming to give me an estimate on cleaning the carpets, fixing our refrigerator, and trimming some trees. If we can get all three done for under $1500 I'll be happy - well, not happy, but... (When people talk about the cost of living, I'm not sure they understand that because people like plumbers and electricians and such also pay that high cost of living, they charge more for services - it's a vicious cycle.)

About a year ago, the motor that pushes the ice out of the ice maker into your glass stopped. Fine, at least it was still making ice. Then the flap that lets the ice come down into your glass warped and so frost kept building up inside the freezer (solution - a rag pushed up in there to keep that flap closed). Yesterday, we were changing out the water filter on the refrigerator and it all went wrong. So, we've lost our ice maker and our filtered drinking water. We actually priced new refrigerators today. We decided that as long as the repairs are 1/3 the cost of a new fridge or less, we'll just get this one fixed. Or, if we're feeling cheap, we'll stick with our temporary solution of a britta water thingy and ice trays.

We also know that in the spring we have to replace our deck - there are one or two rotted boards already and if we get the cold/wet winter I think we will, it'll be a replace not repair job.

So, we've talked a lot this weekend about the house, about all the things we'd love to fix, about how we're probably never going to know just how much longer we're going to live here, and how do we decide where to live next, and if it's better to sort of "duct tape" things until we're ready to move, or invest in improvements. (We'd invest more for our own comfort than for any theoretical ROI.

I keep day dreaming about a custom built house near a lake, maybe in Tennessee, maybe back in Texas. One story, huge kitchen, huge master bath, huge master bedroom, huge living room with fireplace, and two good sized other bedrooms - Noah's and guest, and bathrooms, a two-car garage and a shed. What I really hate about most houses is all the wasted space of small rooms you don't have a real use for.

Sigh. Until then...

I asked Nerdstar what one thing we could do that would make her really like the house more. She said a true master bath - with the tub and the separate enclosed stand up shower, the two sink vanity, heck, maybe even heated floors! Now, the current unfinished laundry/storage room is adjacent to our current bedroom and small bathroom. I think it would be fairly easy to take out the current tub/sink and put the washer and dryer in the bathroom, then convert the laundry to a really nice master bath/walk-in closet.

One expense built into just about any improvement to this house is having to replace the electric box - about $2,000. (I got an estimate a year or so ago.)

I'll probably get a couple of estimates in a few weeks for that project - just so we'll know.

As for money, we've been really good about building up a savings account, partly because her job is never that secure, and partly because we know we'll need money to move one day. We could do some of this stuff and then just rebuild our savings. This house wouldn't be worth taking out a HELOC for, and I'd hate to make payments and interest and stuff for these projects.

Anyway, today we didn't buy a sleep number bed or a new refrigerator. Too bad we can't use government math and be happy about spending that money elsewhere.

We know we're lucky to have a house we like, and that we're not underwater on, we just want it a little bit better.

Odds and Ends

I put part of this on FB earlier, but on FB isn't as easy to access old things as it is on here.

Noah insists on having music playing in whatever room we're in. In his room it's his kids and dance music, in the living room it's country playlist. And that's fine. Except when he wants us to play DJ and skip songs he's not in the mood for.

Also, about a month ago he started insisting on getting up into his car seat on his own. Fantastic! My back is very happy about that. The only problem is when he decides upon getting in or out of the seat to take a detour either past his seat and onto the rest of the back seat, or even more fun, up to the driver's seat. He already loves to sit in the driver's seat and pretend to drive. Didn't know that started this early. He's pretty good with me about just getting into and out of his seat, with Nerdstar, not so much.

Somehow - we certainly can't imagine how - we're raising a complete night owl. Who also likes to eat lots of snacks before going to bed. This wouldn't be so bad, but seriously, Nerdstar and I are so damn tired and it's affecting too many other things. It doesn't seem to matter what time he gets up in the morning, how hard he plays, or how long or short his naps is. It's gonna be sad if all we do on our Vegas trip for Christmas is hand him off to Granny and Pa while we sleep all day! (I don't really want to think about dealing with the time difference.)

Some Fun

A couple of weeks ago, I saw something about our County Fair and decided to check out the website. Then I saw that there's a cute baby contest broken into two age groups and the second group is 19 - 36 months. That seems fair.

So of course we sent in the form to enter our handsome boy!! Hehehehe. It's at 2:30 - 3:00 on Saturday.

Nerdstar keeps picturing Little Miss Sunshine.

Mostly we'll be going for the snacks!

Processing A Long Day

Most importantly, Noah is still fine. We all got a decent nap in. Hopefully he'll get in bed a little earlier tonight.

So, last night we got to bed around midnight. Noah fell asleep about 10:30 (close to his normal these days) and I knew I'd have a hard time falling asleep, so I went ahead and watched Breaking Bad. (Nerdstar is not a fan.)

Our alarms went off at 5 this morning, we woke Noah up about 5:20 and were all out the door at 5:40. The procedure was at a nice little outpatient surgery place in the same building my old phlebotomy job was in. Noah woke up in a decent mood and was happy and fine. I'm sure that changed once they got him back to the procedure room and tried to put an IV in him. Apparently it took 3 tries. I am sure he was hard to do because he's so strong and hard to hold still.

We were just settling in to wait, it was only supposed to take maybe 20 minutes total. Then the ENT comes out and tells us they were unable to intubate Noah and that Noah was waking up just fine and we'd see him in a few minutes.

Back in the room with Noah, the ENT gave us a prescription to get a CT scan of Noah's trachea and upper chest. He recommended this place in the next county over. After four phone, calls I finally get the right lady on the phone and she explains the prescription needs to be re-written and faxed to her before we can make the appointment. So, we had to call the ENT office knowing he wouldn't be able to get to it because he's doing surgeries today. They finally called at 6 pm and said they'd fax it first thing in the morning.

So. It was a very long day. I won't go into the worry I had all last week and the dark thoughts. I know every parent goes through them. But I was (and Nerdstar as much) really looking forward to being done with this problem and him starting to heal and start the process of breathing more normally. We know that even when this problem is solved, we then have to move on to more aggressively address his allergy problems.

Now, instead of being on that path, we have a whole new problem that has to be solved.

We're always aware and talk about how lucky we are that Noah doesn't have the type of problems Linus or any other number of children have. But we never expected his chronic maladies - the eczema year one, the allergies/adenoid stuff this past year, and now whatever else is coming up.

Today just didn't bring the feeling of relief we were hoping for.

Surgery Update

Noah's fine. He got an IV, but when they tried to put the tube down his throat, it wouldn't go. So they had to stop before they got started. We now have to schedule a CT of his trachea (4 phone calls so far and still not done). Ugh. It could be something very simple where all they have to do is use a little balloon type thing to intubate him, or it could be something with his airway that will need correcting like his adenoids do.

Not fun. He has to be sedated for the x-ray. Then we do the follow up with the ENT doc again, then schedule whatever surgery will be necessary. So several more weeks before we're done. At least we know he does ok with anesthesia.

Noah's 2 Year Pics