Today is my birthday. We went to Tennessee for a mini-vacation to celebrate. We left Wednesday and came back Saturday. We stayed near Gatlinburg in a cabin in the mountains. Gatlinburg is a touristy town with lots of cheesy shops, shows and events. We didn’t do or go to or see any of them. We had no internet, which was nice. I was glad to have the break from normal life. We stayed in our cabin and relaxed, often napping the afternoon away. Friday we decided to venture out to go to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We took a self-guided driving tour through the mountains, mostly staying in the car since it was raining the entire time. The trip was fantastic. I didn’t want to go out every hour of the day doing touristy stuff. I wanted to relax with my husband and my son in the quiet, peaceful mountain air. And it was quiet. At night especially, it was so calm and dark. We slept like babies even though the mattress there was so hard. I had a good time, but I’m glad to be home, with Noah in his crib, and us in our bed that feels like we’re sleeping on a cloud.

I’ll post pictures later. I’m gonna go sleep on my cloud now.

Well, we had a busy day today. Sarah and Mitchell came over with their kids, and boy was my house noisy! Seven kids under 6 years old in one room = AAAAAHHHHHHH! Of course I took a couple pictures. Or 287. But I’m only going to post two, because of the super-top-secret-impossible-crazy mission we are trying to pull off. These pictures will self destruct in 10… 9… 8…

The one thing that jumps out at me is how bald my Noah is.

My readers are hilarious! Yesterday’s post elicited responses from my husband and my sister that I thought were grrrreat. They decided to try to define some of my vocabulary words. Below are some of their funniest definitions, according to me.

Nathan said…
Let’s take a crack at defining some of these crazy words, shall we.
concomitant = with comets
hyperbole = grammar thingy
malapropism = bad propane
obsequious = having too many obs
redundant = redundant

Sarah said…
gratuitous = very big tip already included on bill
hyperbole = very energized football
obsequious = some kind of squid
quixotic = fast acting toxin
surreptitious = the process of making syrup

P.S. I love Google’s new logo, based on The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Just in time for Spring!

I love vocabulary words. When I am in the habit of reading, I find myself using larger words more often. Because I was such a big reader as a child, I learned the meaning of several words from seeing them in print without ever having heard them spoken out loud. Therefore, I didn’t quite know how to pronounce them. When I finally did hear them spoken, the discrepancy between what I was hearing and what I had always imagined those words sounded like stuck with me. For instance, every time I hear the word indignant, it reminds me that I used to mistakenly pronounce it IN-duh-jent in my head. Every single time I hear it now, I can’t help thinking that, and feeling a little silly! [Side note: When asked, "What are you thinking?" a woman, unlike a man, can never truthfully say, "Nothing." In all honesty, she's probably running through a train of thought that would make her sound insane if she told you exactly what she were thinking!]

Here are some of my favorite vocabulary words. If you don’t know what they mean, feel free to visit Wiktionary!

Yes, it’s weekend update time. I didn’t blog this weekend because I was too busy enjoying it to write about it.

I didn’t have to work for four days, so of course it raced by, and I miss it. I took Noah up to Columbus on Friday to visit Sarah. Sarah and I took the babies shopping. In the middle of our shopping trip we had a rather interesting nursing session in the front seat of my car while we were sitting in a Wal-Mart parking lot. I don’t really care what people think when I am feeding my baby. It is as natural to me as someone sitting in her car giving her baby a bottle. What’s the difference? She’s feeding a hungry baby, I’m feeding a hungry baby. You can’t see anything, so just move along.

Saturday Nate, Noah and I went to Gabriel’s baptism. You can see pictures from that event in the previous post. I have some more, but none of them are amazing because of the low-light, no-flash situation I had going on. I had to shoot wide open and at ISO 800, so they are grainy, but it almost lends a “newspaper” or photojournalist feel to them. Meanwhile I’m not too crazy about event photography. I’d much rather shoot babies and children in random situations any day.

Sunday Nate and I completely overslept and missed church. Nate woke up 2 hours after the alarm was supposed to have gone off, but neither of us heard it. We keep it across the room so that we’ll have to actually get out of bed to shut it off. When he woke up, he checked to see if it was set right. The alarm was still set to “on,” and it had the right time and the right alarm time, but somehow we slept through it. Nate thinks he got up and turned it off in his sleep and then crawled back into bed.

Monday rolled around, and I called Noah’s doctor to make an appointment about his circumcision looking weird. Our appointment was Tuesday, and the doctor said the circumcision had started to form adhestions, so he had to break them. Ouch! Poor Noah. The doctor said at least it wasn’t so closed up that Noah had to be cut again, which would have been worse. He told me to be sure to put some ointment on it every day to keep it from trying to heal itself shut again.

Noah also started stooling again on his own this weekend. Since Friday he has had a dirty diaper every hour or two. Pooping with a vengeance! Needless to say, he has some killer diaper rash, so we got a prescription for more of that miracle cream they gave us right after his pull-through surgery. His bottom is just not use to poop. So Noah’s cold is completely gone, but his diaper area is raw and tender. Poor thing!

We are looking forward to the six days of vacation I’m getting for my birthday. We’re going to stay in a cabin in Tennessee for three nights, and I can’t wait! We’re leaving one week from today! Nate already got me some other awesome presents for my birthday, too. I got a new memory card for my camera, two photography books I had on my Amazon wish list, and a remote shutter release. All that plus a vacation? Best birthday ever!

We were so glad to be able to attend Gabriel’s baptism yesterday. I got to stand right up front for the action since I was part of the paparazzi [or should I say mamarazzi?]. Here are a couple of shots I took during the ceremony.

Gabriel being blessed by the priest.

Gabriel receiving the Sacrament of Baptism.

God bless you on your baptism, little Gabriel!

I was thinking how it is weird that the same increment of time – say, five minutes – can feel so differently from one day to the next. Five minutes passes by so quickly when it is that last five minutes before you have to drive to work, that last five minutes of lying in bed with your son, watching his chest rise and fall quietly as he sleeps. Five minutes can also feel infinitely long, like when your baby has a fever, and you have to hold a thermometer under his arm for five long, squirmy minutes.

A matter of months can feel so different, too. One year you get married and find yourself pregnant six weeks after the honeymoon. Those months stretch on, like your ever-expanding waistline, until you feel like you will explode. Will the baby ever come? Will the pain of labor last forever? And then, in a rush of blood, sweat and tears, he does come. And the next months pass in a blur, until one day you find yourself watching a baby with two teeth laugh at you while he sits up without your help. You blink, and he’s pulling himself across the floor on his belly to get to a toy. Blink. What did I miss?

My baby is a blond-haired, blue-eyed wonder. I have to stop blinking…

Noah is 7 months old. Or – in other words – 12,397 pics.

Old enough to think playing in a cardboard box is the Greatest!

Cardboard box = hillbilly playpen

I found these pictures on the point and shoot camera today when I was taking pictures of my kitchen. Noah has a lot of fun with daddy while mommy is asleep!

Sarah started a post train about kitchens. Here’s mine.

I don’t have a lot of good to say about my kitchen. The floor is covered in gray brown carpet (carpet in a kitchen is the stupidest idea ever), the walls are dark wood paneling (gag me), and the counter top is a putrid faded turquoise color with rust spots and random stains on it. If I had looked at just the kitchen, we would not be living here. But the rest of the house drew me in, mostly because it is so huge compared to my old apartment and there is a TON of natural light here, which I love.

This is the barnyard-style door to our backyard. It’s one of those doors where you can open half of it at a time. My house has a lot of “character.” There’s also an old water pump just outside this door.

My knives. We received this as a wedding gift, and they started getting rusty about a week after our honeymmoon. Bleh.

My spice rack, also a wedding gift. I like it a lot.

My favorite appliance… This gift is the reason I got married. LOL I wish I had time to use it more often.

Microwave cart. It’s cute.

The stove top is built into the counter. Notice the hideous crooked fan on the back wall? See the ugly wood paneling?

The fridge, built for someone much shorter than Nate. We stick baby pictures and art from our nieces on it. Isabella needs to send us a picture for our fridge.

This freezer happily stores frozen fish fillets, broccoli, french fries, three ice cube trays, lots of hot dogs, and about 22 gallons of frozen breastmilk.

Our fridge. It mostly holds staples like milk, eggs and butter, plus condiments and beer. And of course baby items like an opened container of pureed carrots, baby grape juice, and Pedialyte.

Fruits and veggies. It’s a must to have oranges, apples and a head of lettuce in our house.

My pantry. I don’t know how there can be so much food in here, and yet I can never find anything worth eating for lunch…

And there’s my kitchen.

To the man “Joseph” who left a comment on yesterday’s blog…

I have no other way of getting in touch with you because your blogger profile is not public, and you didn’t leave an email address or website for me to look you up. To answer your question, Noah had his surgery on December 9, 2008, and I posted several blog updates from the hospital while we were there. You can read those posts at:

http://leahjent.blogspot.com/search/label/surgery

If you have other specific questions, you can send me an email or leave your email address in a comment, and I will be glad to answer anything I can.

About Noah’s surgery, I will say this: It was not a magic cure-all to make him a “normal” boy. Any time he gets sick, we have to analyze it from an HD perspective. Any time he throws up, we have to check to see if it’s green (bile). We check his stomach for distension every day. We watch his stools to make sure he is passing them, what frequency, what amount, what color, what smell… He is still in danger of developing enterocolitis, as are all children with HD, whether pre- or post-surgery. All that being said, Noah is doing very well. He’s now 7 months old, and since his surgery, we are irrigating him “as needed,” which so far has ended up being about once or twice a month. Whenever he gets distended, we usually irrigate him for a few days afterward to clear his colon out really well. We reassess the situation on a day-by-day basis and play it by ear. We have learned to become in tune to our son’s body and his needs, and we react according to his needs for that particular day.

I hope this answers some of your questions, and if you have any more, please contact me and leave me a way to get back with you!

Thanks and good luck with Joey’s appointments and surgery.

Leah Jent