Happy Valentine's Day! Warning: Lovliness not Ahead

I think I mentioned before that we were having rough week and we have been. I haven't been posting much because I haven't had anything really worthwhile to say except "Uggh". Poor William has had some poopy times as well. We are currently on day 7 of a viral stomach bug we picked up somewhere. I'll save most of the gory details for another time. Just know that on average I am dealing with 5-10 absolutely disgusting diapers per day. William SCREAMS and fights for his life during these diaper changes and has been very clingy and whiny in between. He isn't sleeping great and wakes up tired and very difficult to comfort, crying for about an hour inconsolably after every nap. For the past 6 days he has cried an average of about 6 hours a day total (previous crying= less than 30 minutes a day total). Because of the nature of the poo, laundry has become a full time job (use your imagination here). John is working a lot of overtime, which means I'm dealing with stuff mostly on my own during the day. It would be a huge understatement to say it has been a very rough week.

My Valentine's Day started at 5:35 am. William woke up screaming and crying. I left him for awhile to see if he would go back to sleep (he usually does) and I was pretty tired. I finally went to him after about 15 minutes to find he had a poopy diaper that had escaped his diaper, run down his legs and into his socks. Insert huge guilt here. I attempted to comfort him without actually touching him as there was poop everywhere and he smelled...terrible (Megan/Mom - remember that trip with Michael and the poop? It is worse smelling somehow). It became clear that the quickest and easiest way to deal with the mess was to put it all in the tub and try to scrub the human parts clean and leave the rest for later.

On a side note, William has decided he absolutely HATES bath time. He screams and cries the entire time in the tub while attempting all kinds of gymnastic tricks to climb out of the tub. If you aren't in the bathroom area, it seriously sounds like you are torturing him or abusing him in some way. We have tried a lot of things and asked for advice from many professionals (pediatrician, early childhood education specialist, my mother, other moms, etc). The ONLY way we've been able to do a partial bath in the last month is to fill buckets of water next to the tub, fill the tub with toys and let him play in the empty tub while we try to sneakily wash his parts. Unfortunately, there just isn't a way to wash his hair this way without getting water on his body. I haven't blogged much about it because we dread bath nights and keep hoping it will get better.

So, I knew it wasn't going to be popular to put him in the tub. So, at 6 am the crying/screaming turned into all out terrorized screaming. I did it as quickly as I could and scooped him out, leaving the bathroom smelling ...well, bad. [insert bad chocolate/valentine's joke here - I've been trying to come up with one all day with no success] We got dressed in new jamies and watched some Elmo and Sesame Street together.

The rest of the day was more of the same: pooping and cleaning up the poop and comforting a baby in between. Midday we took a trip to the doctor's office because of yet another yucky diaper with an interesting color:red. A gift for Valentine's day perhaps? The doctor confirmed it wasn't blood and sent a "sample" to a lab to be tested for something. The doctor also confirmed William appears to have a virus that should run its course within 7-10 days. ?!?!!WHAT?!?!?!?!?! I was not happy to hear there could 2-5 more days of this ahead.

Our valentine: Holding still and watching TV.

Distracted by the heart

Although I did a lot of grumbling about wanting a nap, I managed to pull off some chocolate covered strawberries.

Showing off his kicking. Video coming soon (John)

More kicking

William's dinner: alphabet soup

Daddy made us fondue! Our valentine's day tradition continues! It was very very very good!

Yet another skill to add to our repitoire! Climbing! Here he is standing on the hot chocolate mix to gain easier access to the cans on the second shelf. I guess it was my mistake for pushing them further back on the shelf after he dropped one on his foot. After I put the H.C. mix up higher, I caught him pulling the cooler out and standing on it. The gate at the top of the stairs was also climbed upon today. How long do you think we have before he attempts the crib?

PS It was kind of a crappy (literally) day for me, but John and I enjoyed our fondue and strawberries very much. We also both enjoyed some WINE as William hasn't nursed for 3 whole days now!

Polar Bear Plunge

Sorry this has taken so long to post. We've had a rough week. I'm not really sure what is wrong. William is just...unhappy. A lot unhappy. We're working on it and today we saw some improvement for the first time in a week. No worries, no fever, nothing else. Just a LOT of crabby.

On Saturday we went to see Jeff jump in the lake for the Polar Bear Plunge at Lake St Louis. It was a very nice day outside (58 degrees) although a little windy. Before we get to the pictures, I have to add the William did a great job! It was windy, loud and a LOT of kind of crazy people running around in a small area. John and I were on camera duty, so we had some help corralling him with. Turns out we didn't really need it as he was so overwhelmed by the noise, wind and crowd of people all he could do was stare. But, it was nice to know where he was.

Freezin' for a Reason!


Fire Rescue on call in case of emergency


Divers ready for an emergency. I thought this was a little crazy until I saw a woman run into the lake wearing a wedding dress with a train. She had a little trouble getting back out after the dress was all wet. So, I guess I can see why they are there.


Jeff, Mary and Steve waiting for the plunge to start

As part of the "Teachers Gone Wild" team, both Mary and Jeff jumped in with their WMS T Shirts on.


Jeff & Mary wore their WMS T Shirts as their costume. Some other groups went all out. Here is my favorite group: the Smurfs! From L-R: Handy, Hefty, Sleepy, and Cookie (? the chef guy?) Smurf

More smurfs! Smurfs rally: Gargamel, Smurfette, Papa Smurf

The pirates


Fred and Barney

Teachers Gone WILD! Getting ready to jump in!


The jump

Running out of the lake...


Last one out is: Jeff!

Hurry up!


All done! (or A' Da according to William)

Where does this one go in the baby book?

While I was vacuuming today, I looked over a saw William bump his blue ball with his foot. He giggled and then walked over and did it again. And again and again. I was so excited, I took some video, but you'll have to wait to see it until John it done with it (along with the birthday party pictures). By this evening, he was saying "Kick" (or the equivalent in baby gibberish) every time he did it. It appears he may have some athletic capability after all.


PS We had some one year pictures taken this week. Click here to see the proofs.

Polar Bear Plunge - Please Help "Uncle" Jeff!

We have this great, crazy friend named Jeff. He was wonderful (or crazy maybe?) enough to agree to go backpacking in the wilderness of Michigan away from all civilization with us when I was 3 months pregnant. Seriously, who agrees to that? I'm not even exaggerating either. There was probably two places on the island we camped on that had telephones and they were miles away from where we planned on being. And who has already agreed it would be awesome to spend his spring break backpacking with us again with a ONE year old baby (currently the backpacking trip is not working out, but hey! He still agreed to it). Crazy? We think so, but he has made a goal for himself. Jeff wants to raise $1000 for the Special Olympics by participating in the Polar Bear Plunge next weekend. We've decided to track his progress with the ticker in the top right side of the page. Please don't feel obligated to donate, we are just so proud of him and his goal! Although, it is a great cause and if you are feeling generous, by all means, help the guy out! We (the Heidt's) have agreed to be Jeff's official Photographer for the event next Saturday. We can't wait!

Jeff, Kelly (and William) sitting next to Lake Superior, watching the sun go down.

Jeff will even sit with us when John is wearing his camping hat...

Sorry, you'll have to turn your head for this one. Jeff didn't want me to carry the heavy stuff because of my "delicate condition". You can see here his pack weighed in at about 75 pounds. Mine = 45 pounds. John's = 65 pounds.


John and Jeff purifying water at Lane's Cove.


Jeff and John at sunset at Lane's Cove.


Jeff is a very clean person. Here he is cleaning out his tent.


Jeff holding William at 2 days old.

Jeff has also kept at us to keep on with one of our favorite pastimes: hiking. It is a lot more work with a baby, but it is still something we enjoy. Jeff keeps on calling us and inviting us to go out with them into the woods and we keep on saying yes. Enough mush. We sure do like Jeff...

And Today,

And the weather today? It snowed of course.

When it Rains, It Pours...

When it rains, it pours around here. If you've been keeping up, you know that we got almost 8 inches of snow here last Friday in what is the biggest snow in years around here. Crazy, I know. Well, the weekend was wet and slushy, but nothing out of the ordinary for us. Until Sunday. Sunday we were sitting in our living room pretending to make plans for the rest of the day when a flash of light caught our eyes. Why yes, snowstorm on Friday and a thunderstorm on Sunday. In fact, on my way to the grocery store to pick up a few items for the Heidt Threesome NOTSuper Bowl UNparty (TM), it even hailed for several minutes on us. I thought that was wild until this week. Yesterday I got both of us (William and myself) up and out the door to go to the Y. To my surprise, the bank sign read 75 degrees. And it felt like 75 degrees. If I would have know that, I would have probably skipped the Y and taken the baby for a walk outside.

But, today is the best of all. It started raining this morning sometime. A light sprinkle that went off and on all morning/afternoon until right after I put William down for a nap at 3pm. Then, we had a ton of thunder/lightening and hail, again. This time for closer to fifteen minutes (by my inaccurate timing).


Shortly after the hail started, I went to see what was happening. Here is what I saw:

Here is our deck. It was snow free this morning...now we have hail!

This was taken right after the first photo, only with the flash so you can see the hail streaking down (and why the photo is so dark).

While I was watching the hail coming down, I heard a funny dripping noise coming from our lovely fireplace. I checked around and couldn't figure out where it was coming from and called John with my joyous news. Tonight, we did some more investigating and it appears we have a leak. John confirmed our suspicions with the discovery of wet insulation in our attic. Shortly after John reappeared from spelunking in the attic, I went into the laundry room to finish up a load of diapers I started earlier in the evening. It smelled VERY clean in the laundry room, and although I do keep a spotless home on all occasions, it wasn't the smell I was expecting. Turns out, the laundry detergent I had resting on the back of the washer slipped and fell behind the washer/dryer when the washer went through the spin cycle. The cap on the detergent was not tightly fastened (of course) and then spilled all over the floor behind the washer and dryer. Just what we felt like doing tonight! Pulling the washer and dryer out and cleaning behind them! Yippee!

What, you are here for pictures of the baby?
Here are some pictures from this weekend!

William with his "B" (his word, not mine) looking out the window. It might be hard to see him at first because of the camouflage he is wearing...look closely! Thanks to godmother Jessica for his cute new shirt with dinosaur camouflage!

Here is one of our hobbies: Putting items in the recycling that DON'T belong (example: blanket) and pulling out things that DO belong (example: the entire Sunday paper, each page carefully separated)

Reaching in for more stuff. This recycling container now has a new home after I found 57 of his 100 new blocks in it on Sunday afternoon.

Can't reach? Tip the whole thing over!

Pretend to only want one tiny piece of paper when anyone is looking. They won't take the recycling away from you if all you want is this one tiny piece of paper to play with...

PS Cabinet doors have arrived! Staining, etc will begin shortly. Pictures to follow.
PPS John reminds me that we are upon the one year anniversary of the great flood of 2007.
Which I apparently didn't write about in the blog last year. During the installation of plumbing in the basement, we flooded our laundry room and cleaned most of our ductwork in the process. It all turned out okay, but it was a little stressful at the time.

Charts, As Promised

It is probably best to look at the chart expanded as it will be easiest to see. There are lines on the chart to indicate all of the different percentile ranges (3%-95%) of growth. William's line is dark blue with dots on it located near the top of the charts. This spreadsheet is based on the CDC's data gathered from where ever it is they get their numbers. Anyway, it is the standard chart used by pediatricians to track growth in children.

PS For all you geeks out there, I created this spreadsheet myself using the data from the CDC. If you want a copy, please send an e mail plus $5468741638685 to us and we'll hook you up. Or just the e mail. William's data will cost you extra.