TechieChic

Warning : This post is somewhat descriptive and thus is not for the weak of stomach.

Well, that was interesting. For those of you who might have missed the Facebook and Twitter updates, everyone in our entire family had a bout with a nasty stomach flu bug this past week.

It all started on Monday when we noticed that Sam was acting unusually docile and lethargic as opposed to his normally chatty, active self. All of a sudden, he started puking everything contained in his system, and I mean everything. What didn't come up went out the other end quite forcefully. We felt really bad for the poor little guy. He was so miserable and started developing a fever. As soon as we felt he could actually keep it down, we gave him some Tylenol to tackle the fever without upsetting his stomach. After that, he would mostly just cuddle with us and lay there, inactive.

Brittny took the night shift and helped little Sam get through the night, but I really started to worry the next morning when I woke up to Brittny looking miserable in the bathroom. She asked if I could watch Sam for a little while, but that little while turned into the entire day as Brittny experienced the exact same symptoms as our son. So Tuesday was spent caring for my wife and child, which I was of course willing to do, but at the same time it carried a sense of dread. Here I was, noticing a highly contagious and fairly fast-acting flu bug starting to run it's course through the family. And since I needed to take care of them, I knew it was only a matter of time before it got to me, too. I can only be grateful that this didn't take us all out of commission all at once, or else we would have been in big trouble.

Just as is traveled to Brittny from Sam over the course of a day, I was next to be hit. That Tuesday night, I got hit hard. Just like the others, I ended up vomiting everything I had in me and spending a lot of time in the bathroom, but the unfortunate side of things for me was that the major symptoms lasted through the night, so I wasn't hardly able to sleep at all, even though I really wanted to. My memory of everything is pretty foggy since I was so miserable, but my Facebook status history tells me that I was up until at least 7:30am the next morning. I finally got to sleep for a good amount of time and was feeling much better by the end of the day. Though I must admit I had to slowly transition back into eating normal foods over the next couple of days.

While I'm glad to say that our family is pretty much fully recovered from the incident, it did cause quite a disruption in our long list of things to do. I think we've all gained a greater appreciation for our generally good health as a result of this experience, and hopefully we'll have better news to report in the weeks to come.

Remember how I set a goal to update a blog once a week and specifically focusing on this blog? Guess what, hasn’t happened. Not even a little bit. Sorry, it’s been really busy lately, here’s a taste of what we’ve been doing instead –

• I built and launched this website and also this website as freelance projects. The designs were done by a guy I work with and both had relatively quick turn-around times from start to finish. I’m really excited to be able to put them on my resume though because most of the sites that I’ve built personally aren’t as reflective of my skills as I would like.
• Put together this video for Marie (Pearson) Tarbet. Marie and her brother do LDS music and this is my favorite song that they do. I also created their website for them – don’t judge the design, this is one of those sites that shows my skills as a designer (read: no designer skills), I’m in the process of a redesign right now. Marie had put this slideshow together in Powerpoint but didn’t have a good way to get it up on the web. It took a lot of back and forth just to get the right files to us but we finally got them… right as I was in the middle of all my other projects. Originally we’d thought Eric could do it but he’s been busy as well so I finally was able to take it on. It’s my first foray into video editing and I’m pleased with the results. It definitely took me way more time than it would have for Eric, but it was a fun project and although time consuming wasn’t as complicated as anticipated.
• Sleep training.  See this post for details.
• Trying to figure out where we want to be come August.  Our lease for our condo ends in August and it looks like our current path will not be taking us to China in the imminent future so we will be needing somewhere to live.  As much as we’ve loved where we’re living and our ward, we really think it’s time for us to put down roots somewhere and buy a home.  So when our lease ends here we’ll be somewhere else.  Hopefully another post in the near future will reveal where that somewhere will be
• Eric was called to be our ward mission leader and I was called to be a ward missionary.  Even though we’d each had significant callings previously (and Eric had two callings!) these callings have proved more time consuming than our other callings.  But we’re really enjoying our new callings and the work that we get to participate in.
• We’ve also been setting new family schedules and rules.  This has meant that we’re to bed earlier and up earlier (but don’t get “earlier” confused with “early”, bedtime for Sam is 10pm and for us is midnight, and we’re all supposed to be up by 10am).  It’s also limited the amount of media that we’re partaking in which has been such a blessing since it gives us more time to be a family and do other worthwhile things!
• Watching the funnest one year old on the planet grow into a rambunctious toddler.  There’s a lot to post about this though so I’m going to start a separate post about Sam so that I can get this one up before the end of the night (but I promise I’ll start the Sam post immediately so that should be coming some time this week!)
• Enjoying my new Motorola Droid!  Eric got a Droid in February and I’ve been jealous ever since.  It only took about a month (during which my phone had been failing anyways) before I gave in and needed to get one as well.  I *love* it.  It’s so great to be able to be connected to everything I need even if I’m away from the house.  This is definitely a blessing since it makes it so that I can go places with Sam without worrying that I’m going to miss an important work email or something like that. 

  However, one of the best things about my new phone is that it’s been easier to take more photos and videos of Sam during the day.  Unfortunately I had some settings wrong or something so the focus has been really off.  So sorry that these are really low quality pictures but hopefully you can enjoy them anyway.  They’re all located in a photo album on Picasa that you can get to by clicking below
  

  Samuel

  Cute pictures of Sam

Anyways, sorry for the lack of posts of late, but at least you hopefully now understand what’s been keeping us so busy!  If you can’t get enough of us there are other places we tend to update when we don’t have enough time to write posts here.  You can check out our posts on my family’s highs and lows blog or follow Eric or Sam or me on Twitter.  Or become a fan of Sam on Facebook or read Eric’s tech blog or Brittny’s personal blog.  Even when we’re not updating here, there’s generally still a fair amount to read about what we’re doing

To read the comic strips in this post just click on them to enlarge them. I've noticed that since becoming a parent Baby Blues has become my favorite comic strip...
I started to write about our adventures in sleep training in another post and realized that it really deserved a post all to itself. This doesn't really pick up where our last post on sleep training left off. So let me give a brief rundown of what's happened with sleep training since then.

• After our sleep training efforts in October and November things got better for a little while. And then Thanksgiving and Christmas came and between all the travelling, shoppping, projects and general upheaval that comes during that time of year sleep  went by the wayside. In the end Sam was still sleeping in our bed, but getting bigger and squirmier by the day.
• We suffered through a lot of sleep deprivation for the next couple of months before we'd had enough, we finally bought Sam his own bed and decided it was time for him to sleep there. We decided to get him a queen sized memory foam mattress because Wal-mart had a great deal on them (and we know how we feel about memory foam) and we figured that a queen sized mattress would give us a good place to put guests when they come, as well as give us the flexibility to sleep on his bed with him if when needed.

Since then we've slowly transitioned him to sleeping in his own bed, although it was a battle at first.  But it didn't take too long for him to get used to a different bed so long as mom was there too.  We tried a few nights of the Ferber method, but after a few nights of crying he didn't really get much better about sleeping on his own, and I just felt miserable about leaving my baby to cry, so that went by the wayside.  Plus, he got sick in the middle of it, which meant it was put on hold.

A month or so ago I decided that the next major step was to cut Sam off from nighttime feedings, but allow him to be cuddled, or held or whatever he wanted so long as he was in his bed and not being nursed. That was a HUGE step for us, and didn't take as long as I'd feared it might. Of course, it still meant that I was in bed with him all night and not getting the best sleep, but at least Eric had our bed to himself and getting decent sleep at night. One for three right?  Plus, not being an all night bar definitely made it so that I could sleep much better, and encouraged Sam to be better about eating solids and other food during the day.

After we got out of night time feedings we started working on him sleeping alone at night. We've gotten strict about his bedtime and bedtime routine which has helped a TON. Around 9 or 10pm we change Sam's diaper, put him in pajamas, read him Good Night Moon, read scriptures as a family and then he gets nursed to sleep. Once he's asleep I lay him down in his own bed, and most nights it seems like he's so far gone at that point that I could just throw him into his bed from the doorway and he'd still stay asleep! Ok, so that's a bit of an overstatement, but he generally is so deeply asleep that laying him down on his own isn't a problem (this in and of itself is a major change, I haven't really been able to just lay him down on his own since he was born without a revolt). He'll usually stay asleep on his own from 1-3 hours before waking up, but it's usually a quick pat on the back or a snuggle to get him to sleep again. Then another couple of hours on his own before he cries and I have to come in.

The experience at this point is very varied. Sometimes he is super ticked and won't calm down for an hour or so, and sometimes it just takes some cuddling to get him back to sleep. A few nights ago after an hour of trying me trying to convince him to sleep, and him trying to convince me to nurse him (which I obviously wasn't going to give into), Sam pushed me out of his bed and proceeded to guide me down the hall, into the kitchen and up to the fridge. When I opened the fridge he pointed to his sippy cup which I gave him. He then snuggled down with me on the rocking chair content to drink some juice and fell back to sleep. If only I'd known that he was really *thirsty* and not just looking for comfort I could have had him to sleep much earlier! Oh well. Anyways, I almost always end up sleeping in his bed with him for the rest of the night at this point, but I don't mind that too much. He'll wake up usually around 5 or 6am hungry, so we'll go out to the front room and lay on the couch and I'll nurse him and then we'll get a couple more hours of sleep out on the couch together.
I do have to say though that we've had a couple of nights this week where Sam slept through his middle of the night wake up and slept all the way through until 5 or 6!  He's also been teething this week, poor kid, so I think his waking up also coincided with when his tylenol wore off.

Naps are a totally different battle and we really haven't figured out how to work through those. He naps great if I let him sleep on my lap - for about 3 hours some days! This isn't a terrible solution since I can get work done on the computer - although I think "work" usually ends up being "facebook" since with Sam on my lap it's difficult to get into a good position to type - but it doesn't allow me to have any time to myself to get things like dishes done. So we're really working on naptime being on his own in his bed. Unfortunately if he doesn't nap well during the day, he doesn't sleep well at night so it's been a balancing act. This is of course how we ended up with him falling asleep mid-macaroni and cheese in his high chair as shown in Eric's last post :) I'm still working on being strict about him napping in his bed, but most days he just walks out of his room all tired and cranky and just wanting a hug within 15 minutes of me laying him down. It's really hard to resist a baby that is cute and wants to cuddle. Oh well one step at a time :)
So, in the end, we've still got some work to do but we've come a long way.  Thank you so much to everyone who's been praying for us, it is very appreciated and we've definitely felt the effects of your prayers!

For anyone who is interested I found this article about sleep training right after we had started to apply a similar methodology. It was a great article, and I especially liked his idea of deciding what 7 hours of sleep you were most concerned about getting and focusing on those hours and being super attentive to the baby the rest of the time. That has been the principle that I think has helped me most in sleep training. Rather than expecting Sam to sleep for hours on end on his own, deciding that he doesn't get fed from 10pm - 5am and then being more lenient at other times has helped us to have more realistic expectations.

It's been awhile since either of us have posted an update on the blog, so while we've been pretty good at adding pictures and videos to Sam's facebook page, we're long overdue for a general family update. And don't worry if you are not a user of the facebook ;), pictures are posted here as well.

Sam is getting so smart in so many ways! It is really fascinating to see how his mind soaks up knowledge like a sham-wow. Take sign language for example. A few months ago we made an effort to teach him basic signs like "more", "milk", and "bye-bye". He didn't seem to take to it too well so we let it drop for the time being, but just in this past month, he out-of-the-blue starts using all these signs that we had shown him before.

His dexterity and spacial reasoning have increased dramatically, as well. It's kind of sad to notice how quickly he has been able to reach all the things we thought were high enough away. We've had to revamp our baby-proofing process, especially since he discovered where his mom keeps her chocolate stash!

The only downside as of late has been his sleep-training process. While he takes all of his naps on his own now, he still has a hard time sleeping through the night. Sometimes he gets so little sleep during the night that he has to make up for it in random places during the day.
But he is such a fun little guy, copying everything he sees his parents doing. He usually hangs out with me in the morning before I go into work so we can spend some time together, and one of the last things he sees me do before I leave the house is put on my shoes. The other day I come into the family room because I realized my shoes were missing, and then I see this:
We sure do love this little guy and all the funny things he does! He's learning to say words and do actions like waving and saying "Aye!", which serves as both his greeting and farewell gesture ("Hi" and "Bye"). We also really enjoy his word for food that he wants to eat or is currently enjoying: "MMMMmmm!"
Our regular family life hasn't been extremely exciting, but we're still getting out and having fun. We finally took advantage of my sister Dianne's Christmas Gift to us and went to see Fiddler on the Roof at the Hale Center Theater in Salt Lake City. Given that Brittny was in Young Ambassadors for four years, you'd think she would have seen this show by now, but surprisingly she hadn't! And of course since it's about a fiddler (and it's a really great show), we had to go see that one. It was a lot of fun. Thanks Dianne!

And the first week of April brought LDS General Conference and by extension, a mission reunion! Sadly, this was the first mission reunion we attended where the number of attendees actually shrank instead of growing. Last time, we took up the whole chapel with all the people that were around here, but as people graduate and move on to other areas of life, it makes it that much harder to get together. I used to get all the members of my Taidong district together for dinner either before or after the reunion. We were a very close district in the mission, but this time around, only my buddy Vance and I were able to get together.

But it's okay, life is supposed to keep changing for us. I found the General conference messages to be truly inspiring. We watched it up at Brittny's grandparents house, and while it was fun to be with family, the noise and little kids running around made it particularly difficult to focus on the TV. So instead, I picked up the Internet stream through my laptop (and at times my new phone) and used noise-isolating earphones. I also participated in the online commentary through twitter, which was exciting in a sense because we were able to become the 4th most popular subject on all of Twitter during conference. It feels like a neat way to share more about the Gospel.

So that concludes the highlights of the past month, I hope I wasn't too boring!

You may have noticed in Sam's birthday post that his hair was getting a little bit on the long side. I had been resisting cutting it for a long time because it was SO cute. Especially because it would go every which way and he looked like a little Einstein. Plus, baby hair is so soft! I was having a hard time resigning myself to the fact that our little Sam was growing up and needed to have a big boy haircut.

Well, Taylor and Ryan returned our hair clippers and Eric convinced me it was finally time. So on Friday after Sam's birthday we took the plunge. And of course we documented with pictures for your enjoyment...
Before - you can see how his hair was going over his ears. He'd have had a hard time going to the BYU Testing Center...
Getting his hair cut was a team effort. Taylor held him, I did the cutting, and Eric filmed the process. Sam thought it was great to have so much attention and hammed it up for the camera :P
Sam wouldn't stay still for a good after shot, but you can see a quick glimpse of him as he's on his way to other things.

Aww, my little baby is all grown up. Ok, so not really, he's only one, but it is amazing how much older he looks even with just a little bit of a haircut.