Farewell to NJ

In just about 12 hours, with any luck, our plane will leave Philly and take us to sunny Puerto Rico, and those 12 hours can't come soon enough. We booked this trip about 2 months ago, but in actuallity, we've had this trip booked in our minds for over 6 months now. We always knew that we would take Kaylani to see our family in Puerto Rico somewhere between the 3 and 6 month mark. Right now, I'm sure glad we didn't wait 2 more months. It's going to be 6 days in really warm weather that we're gonna enjoy.

Having already taken Kaylani on a plane when we went to Orlando, we're much less worried about tomorrow's flight. Now, that doesn't mean that we didn't have any issues packing for the trip, but overall, I'd say we're much less worried. I'm sure we're overpacked (or will be by the time we finish tonight), but really, how many burp cloths would we have to bring to be considered overpacked? 5? 7 (which is what we have)? 15? And how many bibs would be considered overpacked? Again, we brought 7, but we really think we might be underpacked. After all, we've seen what Kaylani can do to both a burp cloth and a bib...

So the last week has been spent preparing for our trip. We bought a few new things (a cute pair of shorts, a big floppy hat, Aveeno Baby Sunscreen, a swimsuit that leaves nothing to the imagination or to the sun) and tied up a few loose things here at home and for me at work. And besides throwing the last few things into a suitcase tonight and packing her/our carry-on bag, we're left with tonight's bedtime routine.

Our bedtime routine has been pretty solid for the last week with Kaylani being asleep by 8:30pm, and out for a solid 9 hours. She would then nurse for a bit, then it's back to sleep for another 3 hours. But since we have to start out trip to the airport at 5am tomorrow, bedtime got moved up an hour. The plan was to bathe her at 6:30, nurse her at 7, and then she'll be asleep by 7:30. Tacking on 9 hours to that means she's up at 4:30, and with a quick change and some more nursing, we're out the door by 5 (with her hopefully back asleep in the car). It's 7:23pm right now, and we're already slightly off.

Bath time started at 6:30 on schedule, and we were tracking towards being finished even a little early. But Kaylani had other plans and decided to give her bath a nice farewell gift before she saw it next week. So after we finished round 1 of soap, and then round 2 of shampoo, it was brown round for Kaylani. Unlike last time, Daddy was around and could help the process along with the disinfecting, the refilling, and the re-disinfecting, but it did set us back about 10 minutes since we had to rewash her. It wasn't the biggest of deals, but hopefully those 10 minutes won't come back at us in the morning.

If you couldn't tell, I'm a bit of a time freak and like to have everything down to a schedule. I know I'm going to have to let it go now that Kaylani is here, but it's a hard thing to break for me. Speaking of time, it's time for me to wrap up. Kaylani's not quite done yet, but Daddy has baseball practice in 30 minutes (I'm an assistant coach for a Little League team...more to come on that), and still has to pack his own bag AND watch Chuck AND 24 before going to bed tonight. Not exactly sure all of that will happen, but we'll see.

So for those of you who just come here for the pictures/videos, I'm going to have nothing for you until Sunday at the latest. But for those of you who come for the posts, I'll try and keep it as daily as possible. One of my favorite parts of Orlando was sitting on the porch on a nice sunny day, drinking some coffee, and writing my blog through my Blackberry, so hopefully I'll get to do that again. Come check in, or just check through Facebook, but either way, have a great week. I know we will!

Bathing Doody

Sleeping Beauty is a cute fairy tale. It's one that I'm sure Kaylani will enjoy as she gets older and acts like (and is treated like) a Princess. Bathing Doody, however, is something drastically different, but something that Kaylani could be now. And the only relationship between Sleeping Beauty and Bathing Doody is that they are both stories that Daddy was told. Warning: Like Sleeping Beauty, Bathing Doody is a long story.

It's been 4 days since Kaylani had a bath, and she desperately needed one. We bathed her Thursday night before heading to Boston, with the intent of bathing her after the Super Bowl when we got home on Sunday. To make sure that we knew she needed a bath, Kaylani thought she'd help stress the bath point by spitting up on herself whenever she could over the last 4 days. And it wasn't just the "cute" spit up where a little bit drips out of her mouth and we wipe it up. They were the big spit ups where it either was a projectile spit up all over herself, or even worse, the kind that went straight for her neck.

So Sunday night, turned out to be a non-bath night just because of the car ride, the Super Bowl, the lack of sleep, and everything else. Normally we would have just waited the extra night and bathed her tonight, but that's not what happened. Since Daddy's friend Steph was coming to visit (thanks for coming Steph!), Mommy thought she would make Kaylani presentable (read: not smelly) and bathe her all by herself during the day while Daddy was at work. It was very nice of Mommy to do so I thought, but it's undecided if the outcome was worth it.

Daddy called home around 5pm to see how Mommy and Kaylani were doing. Mommy didn't answer the house phone, but called right back from her cell. I innocently asked, "How are you? How's Kaylani?" And this is what I got back:

Mommy: You remember how you wondered what would happen if Kaylani pooped in the tub?
Daddy: Ummm...yes? (I said it like a question, but I remembered quite clearly since I blogged about it a few months back)
Mommy: Yeah, well I'll tell you all about it when you get home
Daddy: You bathed her by yourself?
Mommy: Yeah...she smelled funny and Steph is coming over so I thought I should bathe her. I was wrong
Daddy: So what happened?
Mommy: I'm kinda still dealing with this right now so I'll tell you when you get home.

And then she hung up. Of course, my curiosity got the best of me so I quickly wrapped up what I was doing and headed home. It was around 5:45 when I got home and I found Mommy in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on dinner (which was delicious despite the day's events) and Kaylani under her musical light up piano. I went over to Mommy and gave her a kiss, then to Kaylani and gave her a kiss (and received a beautiful smile in return). I counted to 5, and then not being able to contain myself anymore, asked Mommy what happened.

Mommy: Okay, so I was giving her a bath, and she was liking it. But do you remember last bath time how she was pushing her stomach real hard while we were bathing her?
Daddy: Yep, and we thought she was going to push poop out?
Mommy: Yeah, well today she did. She was pushing her stomach so hard and I was saying, Kaylani, relax! Just enjoy your bath! Then all of a sudden she went "uhhhhhh" and everything went brown
Daddy: She pooped? Just like that?
Mommy: Yeah, the clear water turned brown all of a sudden. Oh, and the tub was pretty full by the way, so she was literally bathing in her own poop
Daddy: So what'd you do??
Mommy: I panicked, so I picked her up real quick. Of course she wasn't done, so she pooped down her leg and into the bath some more.
Daddy: Ewwww! How'd you clean her up?
Mommy: I held her in my arm by the sink and splashed water on her and rinsed her off. Then I had to put her wrapped up in her towel on the floor so I could dump the bath tub out in our tub
Daddy: You dumped the poop in our jacuzzi tub??
Mommy: Don't even start with me. Yes, I dumped it in the tub. Then I ran a LOT of hot water over it and a LOT of soap...
Daddy: What soap? Don't tell me you used the Burt's Bees...
Mommy: Yep, that one
Daddy: What are we rich??
Mommy: Don't start. So after that, I picked her up off the floor, poor baby, and finished bathing her in the tub

And that concludes the story of Bathing Doody. I can't say I wish I was there, but in a way, I really do wish I was there. Not sure I would have done anything different, so Mommy did a great job handling on her own. And Steph, if you're reading this, hope you liked smelling Kaylani, because this all happened because of you!

The Rest Stop

Its been awhile since we've had a good poop story to tell. And its been a while since we've had to make the drive home from Boston. Funny how those 2 things would come together for us today. Funny in retrospect that is. Not so funny during....for Mommy.

It happened halfway into our journey home. It was our very first stop of the trip. In fact, it was the first time we had to stop for Kaylani this entire weekend. It started off innocently enough, with Mommy using the bathroom first. Daddy, being the responsible father that he is, thought he would help out and change her in the backseat so she would be ready to nurse once Mommy got back. Well, part responsible father and part father who wanted to get back on the road as soon as possible.

Changing a diaper in the backseat is not a comfortable thing to do. There's limited space to work with, and its slanted back so Kaylani would keep sliding back and to the right. It took a little work and adjustment, but the diaper was back on, two onesies buttoned back up (not 1, but 2), and pants were on. So far so good, but there was an odd feeling going through my mind that it wasn't quite right. The velcro from the changing mat got caught on the diaper on her way back to an upright position, but there was something out there bigger than that. Whatever it was, Daddy's turn was over, so now it was Mommys turn. Kaylani was almost through her first 10 minutes and then IT happened. This time, IT turned out to be a bit of spit up (or syrup as Cousin Alisha calls it). Well, that's what the initial IT was. IT was followed by a series of fireworks (not the big boom explosion ones, but the longer crackly/sizzly ones). A few more of those and then came the big boom explosion as a finale.

It was a little loud, so Mommy held her up for inspection. A tiny spot was on the back of her pants, but that was enough for Daddy to record a Code Brown. And when the pants came off, it was immediately clear why there was a Code Brown. And that reason was Daddy. Apparently if the diaper is a bit sideways, the coverage isn't as good as if it was on correctly. Oh, and where Daddy describes it as "a bit sideways," Mommy would describe it as "one of her butt cheeks was completely out!" Anyways, when you combine lower coverage with firework type poops, you get a Code Brown.

So Mommy had to change Kaylani again, but this time, she had to remove 2 poop stained onesies, the diaper that bore the brunt of the incident, and do all of this from the uncomfortness of the backseat of our car. After using the majority of our wipes (we had 5 remaining for 3 hours of driving which luckily we ended up not having to use), putting on a brand new outfit, and wiping down the changing mat, we were back in business. Of course, with all the excitement, Kaylani took twice as long to finish nursing as normal, so we stayed at the rest stop for a solid 45 minutes. So much for a quick trip home. Oh, and it was snowing again by the way so we hit traffic the rest of the way too.

All in all, our first trip to Boston consisted of 11 hours of driving time, 13 hours in a car, 165 people at a restaurant, 1 Code Brown, and a whole lot of fun. Kaylani behaved better then we could have imagined during both car rides. So well in fact that the 45 minute poop stop was well worth it since she spent the other 7 hours in the car sleeping. To help you remember/experience it, here are some pictures we took over the last 3 days. Enjoy!

Excuse me Daddy, but there's a doody in my tub

Back in the summer of 2001, I worked at Roseland Waterpark in Canandaigua, NY. I managed the Admissions department (and also doubled as resident computer geek/DBA). One of my most vivid memories was the day we got our first "Code Brown" in the wave pool. Apparently there was a floating piece of poop in the wave pool, which caused us to shut it down and chlorinate the heck out of it. That, of course, led to several angry customers coming back to the Admissions department demanding their money back. My favorite was "Sir, your pool is infected with e-coli. I would never go in there again. Now, I would like a free season pass please." Sometimes I miss being in customer service. Most times, I do not.

Tonight, 7.5 years later, I experienced deja vu, except this time, no one complained except me. Well, no one verbally complained. To Kaylani's credit, she did attempt to warn Mommy and Daddy by crying during bath time (which is unusual since she does tend to enjoy it), but we thought it might have been due to the fact that she was awaken from her 3 hour nap with a bath instead of nursing.

Oddly enough, during bath time, I actually thought that it was pretty amazing that this was her fourth bath with us and we had yet to experience a "Code Brown" or even a "Code Yellow." Mommy was quick to point out that we would never even know if we had a "Code Yellow", but either way, this was definitely our first "Code Brown" in the tub. Luckily for us, we had yet to clean the responsible area, and we had just dumped the water to do so, so she was not subjected to sitting in her own filth for long. All in all, I'd say there was minimum exposure and that the containment team handled the situation quite well.

But the question that now lingers in my head is, what would we have done if that happened at the beginning of bath time? Do we have to sterilize the tub real well, or can we dump the water, wipe up the residue, and keep plugging along? Is the Head-t0-Toe wash strong enough to overpower the lasting effects of poop? As with all Johnson's Baby products, it does claim to be "gentle and mild", two characteristics that don't sound like they have a chance against floating doody.

And unlike the Wave Pool incident, Kaylani's poop isn't exactly solid. Actually, the only way I would use "solid" in the description of her poop is if I added "opposite of" in front of it. Well all I know is that tonight's bath finished in Mommy and Daddy's arms under the faucet, and that seemed just fine. But if this happens again a bit earlier, I guess I'll have to decide if I should light the bath on fire to disinfect it before I continue, or perhaps just throw it out and bathe her in a bucket.

Anyways, today did not go off according to our initial plan (shocking!), so I don't have any Christmas pictures for you yet. However, I do have some pictures from the last 3 days to share, and Mommy and Daddy are planning on starting the tree tonight so we can take pictures tomorrow with Kaylani. And now, I'm going to see if Kaylani will go to sleep a bit early so that Mommy and Daddy can work on the tree before our normal 10pm bedtime. Wish me luck, and if you've got any advice on how to handle "Code Brown", let me know!