The Miles Rausch Family Website

For Valentine’s Day, Ian used crayons to create valentines for his family. This was his first time using crayons, and to be honest I’m shocked he was able to put marks down. Usually at about 18 months is when the “scribbling” stage of art develops (scribbles in a circular motion.) I figured he was a while away before being able to put all of the steps together to get a mark on the paper. Sure, most of them are by chance and strategic placing of the paper and he didn’t make very MANY marks (he’s a minimalist, I think.)

First, the artist chooses a medium:

Next, he explores his color options by looking, throwing and tasting:

Finally, the artist carefully and meticulously chooses where to place his first marking:

Ian’s more of a performance artist:

Below are some myths, wives tales and anecdotes that I’m either confirming or busting based on our experience as parents so far. I know many parents who have experienced the opposite of what we have, and that’s why I italicized “our”.

Myth: Women forget how painful labor is.

Confirmed. Almost immediately.

Myth: If you don’t get hemorrhoids during pregnancy, you will get them post-delivery.

Confirmed. What a pain in the butt. (I’m hilarious.)

Myth: It takes about 6-8 weeks to recover from delivery.

Busted. Coming up to month 9 and still not declared healed, and sometimes it’s still quite painful. I wish I was kidding.

Myth: In children, everything is a phase.

Confirmed. (So far.) Some phases last months, though, and they don’t feel like just phases when you’re in the middle of it.

Myth: New parents take their baby to the doctor for every little thing.

Plausible. We don’t take him in for every little sniffle, but we take him in a lot. Because he’s sick a lot.

Myth: A sure-fire way to get a baby to sleep is to take him/her on a car ride.

Busted. Ian screamed and cried about 75% of the time he was on a car ride for the first 6 months. Even still, he often fusses when we put him in the car seat. If he’s hungry as well, then look out. But he’s gotten much better and has been known on occasion to fall asleep, if we time the trip right.

Myth: Breastfeeding is natural and easy for mom and baby.

Busted. It’s only natural because our bodies were built for it. Other than that, babies don’t come out knowing how to latch on and moms don’t always produce milk and sometimes the coordination just doesn’t work. We got lucky, and I still attribute our “success” to a few visits to a lactation consultant in the first two weeks. It’s hard work and painful and sometimes annoying. But it’s also hard work and painful to ween….so….

Myth: The weight will melt off your body if you’re breastfeeding, even with no exercise.

Busted. I believed it in that first two weeks. I lost about 10 pounds in 10 days (not including the immediate weight loss from birthing a baby). I was ecstatic. Stepping out of the bathroom and announcing that I’d lost 3 pounds since the day before yesterday. Now, almost 9 months later, I know that it wasn’t breastfeeding. It was fluid-loss from the several days following delivery. I haven’t lost any more weight since then (unless you count when I caught the flu in October)…in fact, I’ve gained a couple pounds since this summer.

Myth: You should sleep when the baby sleeps.

Confirmed. This is really great advice. But stop giving me “the look” when I say I don’t do it anymore. Because here’s the deal: I work full time, people! I cannot nap in the morning and afternoon. At night, though, I’m in bed usually within 30 minutes of Ian falling asleep. And on the weekends, I’ll occasionally take a cat nap when possible. It helps, especially on maternity leave.

Oh, and the next time someone says, “I slept like a baby”, what they mean is “I fought sleep until the bitter end and then I was fitful for much of the night,  until it was time to wake up. Then I wouldn’t open my eyes for anything but food.”

We spent our New Year’s weekend in Hawarden with my family, sans Adam, Cari and Jackson who were home over Christmas. No sickness for Ian this time, thank goodness. However, Marissa got the flu on Sunday and my parents got it early this week. We (thankfully) did not catch it. See some highlights below.

More photos can be seen here. More video can be watched here.

While it was good to see family and friends this weekend, Christmas itself for this family was not all that great. We were with the Rausches in Big Stone City from the 23rd until noon on the 25th. We did the usual Christmas things, which were good — but Ian was sick and miserable all through it. It started on Christmas Eve, late afternoon. The family had already left to prepare for Christmas Mass (they are highly involved in the music and are often lectors at church). Ian had been fitfully napping all afternoon and Miles mentioned that he felt really hot. So we took his temperature: 101.5. Bummer. We called the on-call nurse for our clinic and after a series of questions, she determined that the temperature wasn’t high enough to be a serious infection and wasn’t low enough to chock up to teething. She thought it was a GI viral thing going around (especially since I remembered he had thrown up at daycare when I picked him up on the 23rd.) She suggested doing nothing (except light clothing) but to give him tylenol or ibuprofen if it got to 102, if he seemed in pain or if he needed a little help to sleep. I was OK with this, because when I was packing, I decided Tylenol wasn’t necessary. So we didn’t have any with us.

In church, he was sleepy and lethargic and squirmed his way into an uncomfortable (for me) position and fell asleep. It was like holding a casserole dish straight out of the oven in my arms. So warm. After church we spent dinner and the evening at grandma Harriet’s. He was generally in OK spirits until a few minutes before we left. Bed time, for sure. We took his temperature at the house and it was 202.3. Since he met two of the three conditions the nurse gave, we brainstormed who might have infant medicine in town. (Big Stone is a small town and nothing would be open that late, especially on Christmas Eve or Day.) After Paula ran to a relative’s, we gave him some ibuprofen and sleep that night was OK. However, his fever would reduce for an hour or two and then spike back up past 102 by the time we could give him more medicine. We got back to Sioux Falls near 3 on Christmas Day and made our way to the Miles family gathering. We had noticed some goopy eyes throughout the day, but often times when he gets a cold, he gets a virus in his eyes which produces some matter in his eyes. I didn’t think too much of it, because of that. After about an hour at the gathering, we decided to call the on-call nurse again. She couldn’t recommend anything without an accurate temperature reading. After a series of finicky thermometers and a poopy diaper, we got his temperature taken and it was 104.5! Woah.

Only one acute care clinic was open in town on Christmas Day and it closed in a little over an hour. It was in the exact opposite corner of the city. Skipping the lobster and steak Christmas dinner, (poor Miles missed it 2 years in a row) we made it there with no problem — traffic was slim and it doesn’t take long to get around Sioux Falls anyway. After an hour wait, he was diagnosed with pink eye in both eyes and a double ear infection. There was only one pharmacy open on Christmas Day and there’s over an hour wait. Things that evening went pretty fine after that.

After a few horrific evenings of what seemed to be a baby in lots of pain, Ian is doing much better. He’s still got a week of antibiotics left, but he should be OK. We never caught the pink eye — amazing since when we first noticed the goop, we didn’t do a great job of washing our hands after wiping it away. Eek.

Some steak and lobster were dropped off at the house the next day, so we didn’t miss out this year, after all!

Below are some photos from the weekend. See more here.

Our friends, Holly and Bob of Davidson Photography, took Ian’s six month photos (but really he was almost 7 months.) They turned out great!

View the rest of the set here.