Natural Yogurt and Weetabix

I was a doofus last night. I went to town to meet up with a friend for coffee. Yes, I brought a bottle of sterile water, but no, I failed to bring FORMULA! Ugh! And I only brought one jar of food. But the beauty of Jake growing up, is that he can start eating people food now. So I bought a pear cinnamon muffin and let him have crumbly bits (cringe for the sugar, I know). But I figured that wouldn't be enough to get him home, so we grabbed some Yoplait natural yogurt (full fat milk, low sugar content) and a package of Weetabix (kind of like Shredded Wheat, but flaky and turns to mush really easily... great for babies). On the LUAS home, I cracked open both packages, crushed some Weetabix into the yogurt and started feeding the baby.

Not long after I noticed a smell wafting up from the baby. Ugh! Jake! Again! We had JUST changed his nappy (I'm in Ireland now so I use nappy instead of diaper). The whole way home, I'm feeding Jake and smelling his nasty poo. I was really nervous it'd leak out of his nappy, but as this was a metro full enough of people who wouldn't want to witness a Jake Toxic Poo (JTP). So there was not much I could do but hope the JTP wouldn't leak and we'd make it home to change him before disaster struck.

We're about 3/4's of the way home when Jake has had enough yogurt, so I pass the pot over to Rob. Jake's starting to get snarky (closin in on bed time) so I start tickling him to make him giggle. As I'm doing that, Rob says, 'Jen, are you sure you didn't smell this?' and he holds up the pot of yogurt. I take it back and lean over for a big sniff. Sure enough, I got a nosefull of JTP! Apparently JTP's smell exactly like natural yogurt! Who knew!

I remember watching a Brainiac episode a few years ago where blindfolded mother's identified their babies stinky nappies by smell only. I totally understand that now that I'm a mom. But I didn't expect his poo to smell like a real food!

So any one else out there have a baby with foody smelling poo? Just curious.

Back in the Dub

Well, Jacob and I successfully made it back to Dublin all by ourselves. Well, that's not quite true. While this WAS my first trip with Jake without daddy or a friend by our sides, I can't say I was totally by myself. There was the law student from Columbia University who helped me get Jake and our luggage on and off the Syracuse to La Guardia flight. Then the Hasidic Jewish family that were God-sends from La Guardia to Philadelphia. This was followed by Mikey and her husband who helped me on the plane to Dublin, Kimmy who helped me off, the Boston student coming to learn in Dublin for a semester who helped me get in and out of my seat to use the loo, and Nils (my friend Joy's husband and father to Jake's first girlfriend Zelia) who picked us up and got us up to the apartment! So no, I was never by myself.

I was really impressed by how people from all walks of life chose to lend a hand to help out a mom travelling with her son alone. It's a testimony to the human spirit that we aren't all THAT bad. In fact, we all have some redeeming qualities and I am so extremely grateful for everyone's help.

On a totally fat person note... the US Air seats on the flight from Philly to Dublin were pretty good. The armrests all went up, including the one on the aisle! Sweet.

Yellow Tulip Smile

Just wanted to show off my mom a bit, and her yellow tulip smile.

While preparing for mom's wake and funeral, I did some research on flowers and their meanings. The meaning of yellow tulips is 'there is sunshine in your smile.' Well, the one thing everyone says about mom is that her smile is amazing. So I now think of it as a yellow tulip smile.

Been a long while

Hi y'all,

Sorry I haven't posted in quite a long time, but I have very good reasons. In November, I headed to New Orleans for a convention. My parents came to watch the baby. During this time, mom got sick and we took her to the hospital (she was being treated for ovarian/peritoneal cancer). Long story short, I drove back to NY with her and dad and decided to stay home until after Christmas. After a couple other hospital visits, mom was told she had a puncture in her bowel and if they did surgery, she had less than a 50% chance of surviving due to her reduced blood pressure. Also, there was no treatment that was working, so doing a surgery like this was not necessarily recommended, since she'd just have to do it over and over. So she took the alternative option and decided to have the time to say goodbye to her family and close friends. Mom passed away on December 21, 2009 at 11:55 am. I have spent the past couple months upkeeping her caringbridge blog, and ignoring this one. (www.caringbridge.org/visit/jojo44)

So now the storm has calmed, for the most part. I'm still in NY with dad and Jacob, but will be heading back to Dublin on Wednesday. Unfortunately, all the work I had done to be more comfortable in that bulkhead row has been in vain... I've gained it all back and then some.... partially the trip to New Orleans, partially the holidays and partially mom's illness. I'm starting to feel my own mortality, now having lost my mother way too young. I worry for Jake, that he will lose either myself or Rob too young too.... but for us because we are too overweight. I hope that Rob and I can use this to get our arses in gear and get healthy. We'd like to sometime in the near future start planning for Jake's sibling, but it'll be a difficult road if I don't get at least some of this weight off first.