Howie Pets A Goat, and Other Things

My new haircut: I'm trying to grow my hair out for the 900 millionth time. It's hard to see in this pic, but it actually does look pretty good for an awkward in-between phase.
Our new jogger stroller, courtesy of our neighbors Jen and Chris! I had wanted one so bad, and this practically rolled onto my doorstep! Add this to our stroller fleet, and hopefully my pathetic fitness will improve.
My herb garden- I'm so proud of my little basil plant taking off!
This is our tomato jungle- Josh and I aren't exactly "master gardeners", as it were, but there are actually some tomatoes growing in that mess.

This has been an eventful few weeks! We went to the St Louis Zoo on Tuesday afternoon and had a wonderful time. It's huge and free, so we plan on going back to catch what we missed- Howie didn't have enough energy to see everything since it was so big. He especially enjoyed petting the goats, seeing different kinds of reptiles and amphibians, and lots of other animals.

I think his clear favorite was the meercat exhibit. He couldn't get enough of the meercats. Not sure why, but he kept leading me back over there.

Howie is currently on vacation with my parents in Illinois, where he's been since Wednesday night. It has been so quiet around here!! Josh and I could barely remember a time when we didn't think about grabbing diapers, a cup and snack, and a change of clothes when going out the door. It's so easy to leave the house when you just have to grab your keys and purse. It has been weird to leave the house to do something at 8:00 PM and not think about a babysitter!! No naptimes to think about, no lunches or dinners for a hungry little person, no food getting smashed into the kitchen floor that was once on a highchair tray- we're back to the days when we can basically do whatever we want to whenever we want. Now that we have so much freedom, we can't wait to get Howie back!

A Few Comments

First of all, as we speak Howie is currently ruining our second date night attempt in a row. We had lined up trusty babysitters a couple of weeks ago (Lis and Noel, you know who you are) and got all excited, only to discover that Howie had a raging fever from teething and was miserable. Scratch first attempt. You can't leave your baby at home when things aren't quite right. Take two... tonight we had planned to leave again, lined up another set of trusty babysitters (we were going to put Howie to bed since he normally goes so early and then leave), and what happens? Howie won't go to sleep. If you've been around him at nighttime lately, you know that he's usually a sleeping champ, but of course he won't go to sleep tonight because he has that child's 6th sense that Mom and Dad are trying to leave to get away from him for a while. He keeps horsing around and whining, and I keep having the lingering thought that maybe he's hungry (see below), so I guess the babysitters are currently on hold until we cease to hear things from his room. It could be that we'll be on hold for so long that we'll scratch the second attempt- I hope not.

Here's another thing that happened tonight. For some reason we had a hard time scraping together stuff for Howie to eat for dinner. We didn't cook anything since we were supposed to be at a restaurant right now, so I fed Howie some yogurt, but he didn't seem interested in the other things we tried to give him- chicken, tomatoes, toast, crackers, cheese, etc. Finally I decided to make him a grilled cheese sandwich, but since we have no bread, I went to my neighbor's house to borrow 2 pieces of bread. I slapped it on the grill pan with some cheese and started singing a stupid song and dancing with the spatula to entertain him while it was cooking because he was completely unimpressed with the menu that was offered him and was crying. Finally the stupid sandwich was done and I scooped it off the grill pan with the spatula to let it cool, and lo and behold, I dropped the sandwich into a random pot sitting on the counter next to the stove. The problem was that the pot had water in it. I had left it soaking from cooking rice last night. So there I watched that sandwich sink under the surface with the same sinking feeling inside. I ruined a tasty grilled cheese sandwich in a freak accident. I quickly fished it out and tried to put it back on the grill pan even though the bread was so wet that I could have wrung it out... obviously that was a dumb idea. So Howie didn't get his sandwich. Instead we declared him done and said that dinner was over. Maybe that's part of why date night is swirling down the drain- Howie's still mad about that sandwich.

I guess our date nights are just jinxed. There's always take-out.

The Newest Thing in Our Lives

Drumroll, please...


Yes, that's right- I got my nose pierced!! At the encouragement (and part coercion) of my wonderful friends April and Elissa, I now have a real-life body piercing. We went together and each got a different piercing. Let me tell you, getting my nose pierced rivaled having a spinal block before my c-section in terms of pain. The kind piercing lady told me that it didn't really hurt that bad, but au contraire, my friends. It hurt so bad that my eyes started watering. Then the pain passed- it only lasted a second- and I was left with some vague nausea and a strong feeling that I was going to pass out. The piercing lady handed me a bucket of candy and told me to eat some (this is probably a common occurrence when getting a hole punched in your body) and handed me a cup of water. After a few minutes of sitting still, I was ready to go. It doesn't hurt anymore, and I've already managed to carefully blow my nose. Hope you like it!

We also hope that you like our new blog format- something different to shake things up!

We're Back, and This Time We Mean It!

Guess what, folks, the desch family now has the internet. Before, we were posting when we could. We would duck into a Panera and make the magic happen in only a couple of minutes. We would use the internet at the most random places, because we had to, but now things have changed. Be prepared to see our blog rise to a whole other league over the next few months. Now hear are some pictures, mostly of Howie, because we know that why you really come to this blog to begin with. These pics cover the last couple of months.

A Proud Parenting Moment

I put Howie in his crib for a nap on Monday afternoon, and it seemed like he was pretty lively, so I wasn't sure that he was going to fall asleep easily. I went off to read or clean up or whatever I do during his naptimes (honestly, I'm not even sure usually... I am the queen of putzing). I heard him chattering and then heard the tell-tale THUNK that is his paci falling out of his crib. When you hear the thunk, you can choose to ignore it, but until you go in there and replace that paci, Howie's not going to fall asleep and will usually make enough noise to force your hand into responding to the thunk. So I went into this room to do my thunk duty, thinking all the way that he was awfully cheery and not sounding very sleepy.

Actually, I think I need to give some background for you to fully appreciate the weight of this particular paci replacing trip. Howie went to the physical therapy evaluation last Thursday, and the therapist did several different tests with him. First Howie thought Kate (the therapist) was pretty cool with her slick toys, but as time went on, his opinion of her severely deteriorated. Anyway, we got through the different tests and Kate said that many of his skills were at the level of a 7 month old, and he had a couple of skills at the level of an 11 month old, so in some areas he's pretty behind. Howie was much better extending his back and leg muscles than flexing his trunk muscles, which can explain why he never learned how to sit up when he was lying down and also has never crawled, which requires a lot of flexion. Anyway, that's the basic story. She sent us home with lots of exercises to work on, and we're going to meet with her every other week (Howie will be thrilled). So we've spent a good bit of time since then working with Howie, and by Sunday he had already learned how to push himself into sitting up from lying down flat!! We were so proud and excited for him- now he's able to have more control and doesn't have to rely on us quite as much. Next stop is crawling... we've got a long way to go...

Anyway, back to the paci thunk... I went back to his room, cracked the door so I could see what he was doing before he saw me, and he was STANDING IN HIS CRIB!! That was the first time I had ever seen him do that!! I was sooooo happy for him. He was very happy for himself, too. He was just standing there jabbering and started laughing when he saw me. Since then he's been standing in his crib during naptime and hasn't yet figured out how to lay back down, but the disrupted naptimes are actually wonderful- I'm so thankful that he's passed this milestone. Hooray for Howie!! Hopefully we'll have news of more progress soon!

Finger Update

It looks like two of my fingers are rotting. I think I have eczema pretty bad on both of my ring fingers (random), and it really looks like they're rotting and falling off. It's pretty gross. I can't straighten them anymore and one of them usually has some part that's open and burning. Yuck.

Shady Medicine

We took Howie to this random doctor yesterday afternoon... it's a very long and complicated story, but the basic idea is that the pediatrician that we picked doesn't accept our medical plan, but we're switching onto another medical plan that he does accept. The problem is that Howie is going tomorrow for a physical therapy evaluation (which I'll explain in a minute) and in order for our insurance to pay for the evaluation, he had to be seen by a doctor that accepts our current insurance and have him/her agree that Howie should have the evaluation. Basically a total pain in the butt, but saved us some money.

We set out to find this doctor's office, which wasn't too far from our apartment. As we turned onto the street that the office was on, there was this weird building with cobalt blue siding and one car parked out front. I was thinking, "Surely this isn't the doctor's office...", but to my surprise, it WAS! The only bright, bright blue doctor's office I've ever seen. And with one car parked outside. A little shady from the get-go. Then we walk in. The office had all this dark wood paneling, which is obviously depressing, and smelled vaguely of poo. Never a good thing when walking into a medical establishment. On one door was a sign that read "H.L.S. Hauling, Inc.", which happened to be the doctor's initials. Housing your hauling business in with your medical practice? Odd. We walked into the waiting room past the hauling door to get Howie signed in, and the decor in there was even more disturbing. We're talking blue-gray carpet on the walls, people. And random Christmas trees and a marble statue in the middle of this planter box. And still the vague poo smell. By this point I was nearly ready to bolt. Then I started noticing the strange artwork on the walls. I'm telling you, this was the strangest thing I've ever seen. Josh and I both had the eery feeling that this was the office of a drug dealer, or something. We went through with the paper work, me giving the littlest amount of information possible since we were switching to the other pediatrician anyway, and began to wait for the doctor. Josh and I had a Coke bottle with us, and Howie is somewhat obsessed with bottles. He loves carrying them around while we walk with him. So he was toting his Coke bottle and chattering away, when out walked this wizened old man in a lab coat (leading me to the bright conclusion that he was indeed the doctor we had come to see), who chastised us for letting Howie hold that bottle and told us to take it away from him immediately. I could not believe that this was the doctor. He was very, very old. At first I thought he was joking about the Coke, and I said, "Oh, he's not drinking it!" Then I thought everyone would have a good laugh and we would think, "Well, this guy's decor is really weird, but at least he's got a sense of humor." But oh no, that was not to be. He said, "That doesn't matter. If he would drop it..." and then just kind of mumbled something I couldn't understand and shuffled off. By this point Josh and I were REALLY ready to bolt. I told Josh under no circumstances did I want this doctor to hold Howie- there was just something really shady about the whole operation. The nurse (who was very friendly) called our name a couple of minutes later, weighed Howie, and asked why we had come to see the doctor. We launched into the long, complicated story, and then were ushered back to a room to wait to see the doctor. He came in a couple of minutes later, asked what we needed, how old Howie was, and what kind of delays we were seeing. Then he motioned for us to follow him, which we did, out to the reception desk where one of his nurses wrote and signed the prescription for us to get the evaluation. So we got what we came for, but were greatly disturbed in the process that this person was practicing medicine and was covered by our insurance...

Anyway, we're taking Howie in for an evaluation because he's behind in some gross motor skills- everyone who sees him says that he'll be walking really soon because he loves walking if he can hold onto someone's index finger, but he skipped some really crucial things before this, like learning how to sit up from a lying down position and pulling up- he can only do that under really limited contexts. So we're taking him in. And insurance will pay for it, thanks to that creepy trip to the doc yesterday.