In addition

I need to add a few things to our weekend update. Valentines day was pretty sweet with Simon sleeping until 8am. Jaime actually woke up before him! (not me- dead to the world)
We decided to go out for an early brunch to a place that we've never been but clearly should go on such a day. Venus in Berkeley. It was here that Simon showed us that he is clearly a Fitch-Jenett by going right for the good stuff. The little man was let loose with a pat of butter and probably ate at least 1/3 of it. That's a lot of butter for such a little man, especially one that doesn't really eat things by mouth. Of course we left the camera at home so you'll just have to take my word for it. Jaime and I figure that if he needs to eat high calorie foods why mess with the compound foods. We're just going right for the FAT.
Once the little man was down for the evening Jaime and I whipped up a most traditional Valentine's day dinner. Jaime splurged with our Whole Foods gift certificate and got 4 spectacular cheeses, some strawberries which later met their end in melted chocolate, and of course the quintessential Valentine's day Hor's Deuvre Fish sticks with Ketchup. Aaaah yes, laugh if you will but to our sleep deprived, still stressed out selves it was the best meal ever.
On Monday we'd had a great day planned with some friends from our birth class but alas cold and flu season is having it's way with their little one so with great sadness we scrapped our plans (another blog entry about that another time) and went for an early morning dog walk wondering what the day had in store.
Like a bolt of lightning it came to us. Palo Alto. We hadn't seen Mamaw D in days and it had been a lot longer since we'd seen the Aunties (Kris and Judy). With one phone call and a fast pack of some edibles we headed south.
What a lovely visit. Simon was simply thrilled to see every body and shared his love equally spending some great lap time with everybody. He was so frikkin' happy.
I know that the little man will have his fair share of man-time. Jaime and I are committed to it. AND he sure does love spending time with that triumvirate of wise and wonderful women. (yeah I used the word triumvirate).
Even the puppy Barron was feeling the love. It was a delightful visit. Simon was also absolutely entranced with the rain as we drove home, the sound of it against the roof of the car, the dripping down the window, the wind blowing things around....he's into all of it.

Love to all

LF

Weekend Update

Had a really nice 3 day weekend. We have now experienced what happens when the G-tube button gets pulled out. Less scary than expected. On Sunday Laura was getting Simon out of the car seat and the tube caught on the car seat. Simon let out a yelp, Laura yelled "Oh shit" and I tried to keep everyone calm. Simon was actually fine, Laura was a bit rattled and I ran to wash my hands to help. Really, Laura just pushed it back in. It was really quite simple. And gross. EW!

Simon has been crazy happy this weekend. We went out to eat a few times and Simon was THRIILLED. We need an Occupational Therapy fund to take Simon out to eat :-) Still no real eating but definitely playing with food.

He's been sleeping so much better. Like, from 7:30 pm to 7:30 am with *maybe* a squawk in the middle. Sometimes not even that. LOVING IT.

I (Jaime) had a hard couple of days over the weekend emotionally. Not sure what it's all about but some of it was just feeling old feelings I never got around to and some of it was feeling isolated socially.

I think now that the dust has settled, we both have a little more room for the hard feelings. I think I definitely stuffed some things while we had those crazy few weeks of Laura having her surgery and then Simon having his surgery. I was playing it uber cool, like "this is all no big deal and I'm not scared and it's really not that insane, so please, don't YOU freak out" when really I was terrified something horrible was going to happen to Laura. Also to Simon, but more so to Laura- going through her having to go into surgery, stressing about taking work off and taking care of Simon all just felt a little too much like when she had her head injury and I didn't have her there to help me through something really scary and hard. It sucked.

The "fake it 'till you make it" tactic is pretty effective for some things, but it's an old coping mechanism of that doesn't work very well. Not with things of this magnitude and not at this phase in my life. So...now trying to feel all the feelings I couldn't make room for in those few weeks. A word of advice- it's a lot harder to feel them later, so if you ever have to pick, just get it over with.

In really, really great and amazing news- friends of ours who have been trying to have a baby for over 5 years and who recently got approved as foster-adopt parents GOT A BABY! A very special newborn baby named Deshaun Moses now has a very, very loving home with two incredible Moms. YEA!!!!

Here's our little man being super cute with Auntie Alicia.