Letters from Pemberley

Janie has two teeth, though it is so hard to get her to show them!  I tried all day today and will try again tomorrow…

I’m not gonna lie.  The last six weeks of Janie’s life have been a little difficult.  She caught a cold the first week of CBS, then that turned into an ear infection, then she caught another cold from the other kids, oh, and she’s had two yeast infections in there.  I still haven’t been able to get her in for all her 6 month vaccines.  Oh, and she’s been teething.  In the past couple weeks, she’s been up 1-3 times a night (though that did calm down once the tooth came through).  I don’t handle sleep deprivation well.  I’ve been crabby, impatient, and exhausted (and had the worst cold I’ve had in years).  She doesn’t handle sleep deprivation well, either.  She’s been crabby, impatient, and exhausted.  She has this pained sob that tells me she’s not feeling good, then she burrows her face into her hands (which tells me she’s tired), then when I try to put her to bed, she cries.  She’s fallen asleep several times in the car on the way back from a quick trip to the grocery store or Walmart or whatever.  It’s basically been really stinky.

Fortunately, we do have a bit of something to show for it: her first tooth!  It broke through the gum on Friday, and life has been better since then.   Janie can sit up for a few seconds at a time if she wants to (sitting at the baby piano and playing it is a favorite activity), but she mostly wants to roll onto her belly and try to crawl.  She is so, so close.  The kids cheer her on, but she’s getting into enough trouble with cords and stray legos and corners of books as it is…I’m not sure I want her even more mobile!

We’ve mostly switched her into 6-9 month clothes, she’s up to eating three meals a day (4+ ounces at a time), still takes three naps, and nurses every time she wakes up, plus a dream feed.  She has really liked mango and squash, and the only thing she hasn’t been interested in was banana (though she was also sick at the time).  I’ve made about half of her babyfood and bought the other half–jars are much easier on the go or when she’s screaming to eat right away while I have another child or three pestering me in the background.

Just this weekend, she has figured out how to crawl up the one step to our entryway or our kitchen.  It takes her a while, and she squawks in frustration along the way, but you should see how proud she is when she gets up there.

I’m just now getting around to posting this update because today has been a total whirlwind.  Our van died dramatically this weekend, after everywhere was closed, so Derek wasn’t able to help me do anything other than point me to the places to call today.  I was up calling for rentals at 7:31, got ahold of the shop, got AAA to send us a tow truck, had Hertz pick us up just after 9, went down and rented a minivan, came back and showed my AAA card to the tow guy and gave him the address of our shop, ran Tommy to his homeschool sports class (he was 15 min late), went back out to pick the girls up some breakfast, came back for Lizzie’s class, brought the kids home and put the little girls down for a nap, had Derek call to tell me that they had the part and we could pick it up tonight, felt stupid for buying $60 worth of gas because I thought we’d need the rental for several days, noticed that the little girls weren’t asleep yet, decided spur of the moment to use up some of that gas driving up to Santa Barbara, called Ginny and invited Ben along, took the kids to the Natural History Museum, misjudged how long it would take to wrangle five children out of a creek and into clean clothes by myself, called Derek on the way home to say we’d be late meeting him to pick up the car, called Ginny on the way to say Ben would have to go to Simi Valley with us and I’d drop him off after we got the car, met Derek in time to get him there so he could get back to give blood, got Ben home, got the kids home, pulled out leftovers for dinner, started emailing around for help tomorrow so I can drop off the rental, and now need to get the kids ready for bed.   Deep breath.