Underwear and Pumpkins

Ian has been asking multiple times a day to go to Grandma's house. They spent an a lot of time there this summer but hadn't been there for almost 2 months. Paul went back to PSU yesterday afternoon, and he's not planning to return until tomorrow. In light of that, today seemed like the perfect day to head to Grandma's house. In either January or next summer we'll most likely be moving farther away from them. I want to make the most of this time when we only live an hour away from each other. Paul knew he had to submit his dissertation to his 4 committee members by 11/12, but today he found out that his advisor wants the rough draft by 10/31. Yes, in just 4 days he needs to finish a draft of an at least 120 page dissertation. Wow. Please pray for him! It hasn't helped that a huge storm they've nicknamed "Frankenstorm" is headed our way. He spent precious time yesterday and today trying unsuccessfully to locate a generator so that our pump would keep working in the event of a power outage. Please pray that our basement doesn't flood. A flooded basement is never a good thing, but it would be disastrous timing in light of him needing to pretty much work around the clock between now and Wednesday.

Thursday night was not a good one for Oliver in terms of sleeping. I woke up Friday morning with a splitting headache, and over the course of the day I developed a fever. It was really hard to function yesterday. In the beginning I was handling the sleep deprivation fairly well (better than with Nadia or Ian). That is no longer the case. I am just plain exhausted. I find myself dizzy at times, and the headache won't go away no matter how many Tylenol I take, and the fever comes back at times as well. Thankfully, Oliver had a great night last night. It was by far his best night ever. He slept from 9:30pm to 11:30pm, was up for an hour, and then slept from 12:30am to 5:50am!!!! Yahoo! I woke up many times in there in part because I had an excess of milk due to my body not being used to getting that long of a break. He nursed for 70 minutes after he woke up!! I didn't bother to give him a bottle after that marathon nursing session. Oh and speaking of bottles, today was his first day of receiving a bottle (1 ounce) of formula. I have to keep telling myself "formula is not the enemy." I know my milk is "liquid gold," but it doesn't mean formula is awful. He's still mostly getting my milk. I wish this wasn't so emotional for me, but it is. It's hard. I wish I could go this "hybrid" route without any emotional hang-ups. Maybe it will just be a temporary thing. I keep telling myself "you are not a failure." Now we shall see if I actually believe those words. I am also trying to remind myself that just because we had a great night last night, that is unlikely to be the norm yet although hopefully it will eventually become the norm. I would be in seventh heaven if we only had one middle of the night feeding. I would feel a million times better if I could regularly get 7 hours of sleep each night.

Since Paul won't be around much, I decided to bring two pumpkins to Grandma's house today as I thought trying to carve two pumpkins while taking care of three little children by myself would be a bit too much. I figured that Ian would not want to scoop out any pulp or seeds as he doesn't like things that are messy, but I wasn't expecting Nadia to also be revolted by the idea. She helped a little with a spoon, but I did almost all the pulp/seed removal from both pumpkins. Pop Pop used the knife to do the carving. I thought it was so cute that he made Ian's pumpking into a pirate. That boy loves pirates!

Oliver wasn't the only one to have a big accomplishment last night. I put Ian to bed in underwear last night for the first time. I made a big deal about him being a big boy and took his diapers that he had been wearing at night to Oliver's room. He woke up dry! I am guessing he'll have an accident now and then, but it seemed like he was ready to work on being in underwear 24 hours a day.