Anyone else think my cat might be a bit jealous?

Yesterday night I left Ethan sleeping in the swing downstairs while I went up for something. As I turned on the light, I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. I look over at the crib, startled, thinking to myself what the hell? I thought Ethan was downstairs? And then I noticed the movement was at the foot of the crib, not where Ethan sleeps. And I noticed something brown, something furry. Caramel was sleeping on the blankets in Ethan's crib.


I called Charlie up and asked him to bring a camera. He did and I took the above pictures. He was also completely unimpressed because, unbeknownst to me, she had been doing this the whole time Ethan and I were in Missouri with my mom and stepfather. I asked him why he let her and he basically said it was no big deal and asked why I cared. "Because that's Ethan's bed and I don't want her jumping on him and scratching him or worse, smothering him." He left, of course leaving the cat in there, and leaving me to be the bad guy by taking her out and not letting her get back in the crib. And of course this morning I found her back in the crib again. Luckily, Ethan was not in there with her. When I changed his diaper, she woke up and wanted to jump out using the changing table as a step (the same way she jumps in), and I kept telling her no, certain she would land on his head. When I had to put him in there afterward, she looked less than happy about it. She came up by his head wanting attention and I started freaking out about her scratching his head and face (he's doing that to himself enough as it is) and plucked her out of the crib. She hasn't been back in there since.

Having fellow crafters for friends is fun!

I've been wanting to be part of a Stitch and Bitch group basically since I started knitting. We had a small group in grad school but the meetings rarely were able to fit into my schedule, even though I really did enjoy going when I could. Since moving to Maryland, I've found that several of my new friends are also crafty. A couple of them learned how to knit shortly before I moved out here and I ended up teaching another one of my friends shortly after moving here. Most of them also sew (oh how I envy their skills!) as well as several other crafts, most of which are SCA geared. About a week or so ago, some friends were over and we discussed starting our on Stitch and Bitch group where we could get together and work on our needle and thread crafts. Last night we met at our house and have plans to make this a twice a month thing. Color me excited!! One friend is rediscovering knitting so we helped her work on her yarn tension and the other started working on making some SCA garb. I continued working on the celestial baby blanket. I'm about 36 rows into this blanket and I can't tell you how frustrating it can be at times. I seem to have the intarsia technique down for the most part but working on the wrong side, I tend to get the pattern backward in my head and end up not twisting where I need to twist. The rows are long enough and yarn/needles small enough that it can take me about 10 minutes to knit/purl a row. So you can imagine how frustrating it is to work 2 rows then notice the mistake, undo the rows and have to work them again. And since I hate frogging rows (just pulling them out), I basically un-knit/purl where I go back stitch by stitch which means it can take me 40 minutes to work then un-work 2 rows and be back to where I started, just in time for Ethan to wake up and start fussing. You can see why this blanket might be finished for his 5th birthday. If that's the case I think I might just save it for our potential second baby or, if that's not going to happen, a baby of a very good friend. Only someone I love a lot will get this blanket. Maybe our first grandchild? :) One thing I'm so excited about having a Stitch and Bitch group for is designating several hours a month to knitting, which means I might actually get to it more than I have been on my own accord. This means I might actually have some decent pictures for you all relatively soon. Also, having another night or 2 a month where I can get together with grown ups is always a plus.

You know you love your kid when...

When you agree to put yourself on the most insane diet ever to see if he has food allergies. We went in for his 2 month appointment on March 25th and I mentioned that he is quite a fussy baby. He cries over dirty diapers, burps, being hungry, and even the need to use his diaper. The worst is that he cries while eating. He will pull away and just cry. Sometimes it's because he has a dirty diaper and sometimes because he has to burp but quite frequently it's for no apparent reason at all. He will just pull away, cry, refuse to be soothed, then go right back to eating for a whole minute and do it all over again. More often than not it takes me an hour to get him to eat for 10 minutes. It's annoying and frustrating beyond belief. And he only does it when I nurse him. He takes the bottle just fine. But just pumping lowers your milk supply and I really don't want to switch to formula unless we have to (though some of the perks, like Charlie being able to watch him more than 3 hours are awfully tempting). My mom is convinced it's colic, since I had it and Ethan's behavior is exactly like mine was minus the projectile vomiting. I told the doctor this but she said it sounds more like a food allergy than colic and put me on an elimination diet. I had to eliminate wheat, soy, eggs and milk products from my diet for a week, bring back wheat and soy then next week, followed by eggs the following week and milk the week after that. Do you guys have any idea just how much food contains wheat and soy?! If he does have an allergy, I'm praying it's either an egg or milk allergy since you can at least go out to restaurants with those. Even marinara sauce contains soy. (My sympathies to those who have to live with or live with someone who has a wheat and/or soy allergy.)

So I called her last Friday to let her know that I was on my 6th day and there was no change in his behavior and I wanted to know if I should stick to the plan or could I just assume he did not have an allergy. The plan backfired. She said to try it for another week. So here I am on the 10th day of the freakishly awful diet and the only change to Ethan is he now has more gas than ever and he is just as fussy as always. I committed to doing this for Ethan and we bought the wheat/gluten-, soy-, egg-, and dairy-free food so I'm sticking with it til Saturday but I'm starting to agree with my mom; I think it's colic.

Part of me thinks I should just stick to it and gradually bring back those foods as planned but another part wants to call her on Friday again and discuss all this or make an appointment to do so in person. Thoughts? Suggestions? And just in case you were wondering, yes we are trying a tummy soothing medicine to help with the gas. If it's helping at all, it's very little. But just in case it is actually helping, we are continuing to give it to him, especially since he has more gas than ever right now.