Gracefully slow falling

Best. Mother's Day. Present. Ever.

Alixa Eve Hegewald-Winn has been on this planet for nearly 1,312 weeks, but the one that just past was one of her hardest. Wow, you might wonder, what could be so bad as to rank a week in the bottom .076 percentile? The answer lies in genetic defects. Everyone has certain genetic problems that manifest themselves in various ways and at various times during one’s life. Jarom has a number of genetic defects, from kidneys that are destined to fail to an abnormally low hairline to an inability to be wrong. These are challenges that he has either learned to deal with, or in the case of the kidneys, is counting on the medical community to overcome for him. Alixa’s genetic defects are no better or worse, simply different. She has red hair, is physically unable to use an “inside voice”, and would be unable to select her husband out of a lineup without some sort of optical aid. It is this last double-helixical flaw that is the cause of her recent consternation. For as long as he has known her, Jarom has been trying to convince Alixa to get Lasik surgery. You see, Jarom is blessed with good vision, and can’t fathom why anyone would want to deal with the constant annoyance of wearing glasses and putting on contact lenses and running out of the stupid saline solution and WHERE DID I PUT MY *%$#!&@ING GLASSES!?! He assumed that Lix would be excited to have lasers shot into her eye to fix her vision, but she seemed entirely uninterested. Every year when it came time to get her eyes checked and her contact prescription renewed he would practically beg her to go get a free consultation and see how much the surgery would cost, but she never would. Until last week. I guess she had finally had enough. So she went to her free consult and scheduled the laser. The catch was that she couldn’t wear her contacts during the 7 days before the procedure, so she had to wear her glasses all day, every day, all week long. By Thursday it had gotten so bad that she threatened Jarom’s life if he were to change his mind and tell her they could no longer afford it, because then all of her trials and tribulations would have been in vain.

Kenna sometimes likes to bug Jenna the same way Nate bugs Jarom

She is not a fan of grass and will go to great lengths to avoid stepping on it

In an effort to raise her spirits Jarom’s parents came down for the weekend to celebrate mother’s day. They arrived Friday around noon, just in time to grab a bite to eat and head out to play a round of golf on one of the most beautiful spring days you could dream up. Jarom and Nate teamed up to narrowly defeat Lix and Bruce by a single hole. Based on the hostility and trash talking, there will likely be a rematch, though I can’t imagine a different result. On Saturday morning Jarom drove Jenna over to Nate and Kenz’s house where Gramma had agreed to watch her, and then they headed to the surgery center. The whole process took about two hours from start to finish, and the actual lasering only lasted 15 or 20 minutes. Jarom had been hoping for something like the last starfighter, but it was rather boring to watch. Afterwards Lix got to wear these really dark sunglasses and walk around like a blind person. For about six hours her eyes burned and were very tired, but then it all kind of just goes away. And now she has 20/20 vision in one eye and 20/15 in the other, and can even see what time it is in the middle of the night without putting on her glasses. She is thrilled with the results, with a few minor exceptions. She isn’t allowed to wear makeup for a week, and she isn’t supposed to do much swimming, which is unfortunate because we will soon be in the Hawaiian Islands.

Mother’s day was great, and Alixa enjoyed all of her presents. She got some cards, some JellyBellys, several thousand dollars worth of eye surgery, some brand new fancy-pants sunglasses to protect the several thousand dollars worth of eye surgery, and a super cute frame with a picture of her daughter and a little foam handprint. It is only her first mother’s day of many, but she sure loves being a mom and taking care of Jenna and watching her grow and learn and figure stuff out. Speaking of that, we got some pictures from Kenz that span the past few months, and it is pretty weird to look at photos of Jenna from a few months ago. It is hard to believe how different she can look in just a month or two.

Jenna and Kenna, from February to May

Upward Mobility

Things have really changed around the Winn house in the last few weeks, and I’m not just talking about Alixa’s continued weight loss. Jenna has gone from being a sedentary, easy-to-take-care-of, pleasant baby to a mobile, curious, get-into-things-and-cause-problems nightmare. Her transformation began slowly, as she learned to crawl but would only utilize that talent in short bursts to get things that she wanted, like a wallet or a binky or a cellphone. But last weekend we got some more visitors. This time it was Jason and Annie and their three smallfries. The youngest of those three is Luke, Jenna’s older cousin by five days. Luke has been crawling since the age of 2 weeks, give or take a few days, so he is pretty much a pro. And he thought it would just be heee-larious to show Jenna how to capitalize on her movement by getting into everything. In return she taught him how to sit up, a skill he now uses to watch his favorite shows.

Jenna, getting into stuff and not taking her nap

Jarom has been working a lot of odd hours the past few weeks, including the occasional overnight shift. It has been a good experience and he is learning a ton on the job, but it has caused some marital strife to seep into the home. You see, Alixa is under the impression that if Jarom isn’t at work, he is at her disposal. Ordinarily this is not a problem, but sometimes he gets sleepy and wants to take a nap if he was up all night working. She either doesn’t understand this or simply doesn’t care. But the end is in sight and soon enough he will be back to a regular 8-5 workday.

Lix has been quite a workhorse of late, finishing up her crown molding project in both the living room and dining room, and it looks great. Jarom has imposed a 30-day hiatus from other projects, so that the house can catch its breath. Next on the list is a paint job for the dining room and new vanities for the upstairs bathrooms.

Lix gave Jenna a ponytail. Jenna took it out, and then looked a little like Ace Ventura

Other than that it is a lot of silly baby stories around here. Alixa is becoming more and more of a mom, and has even started using the diaper bag as her “purse.” She was walking out the door the other day, leaving Jarom and Jenna behind and she had it draped over her shoulder. Jarom figured it was just habit, so he reminded her that she wasn’t taking the kidlet. After she told him it was her purse, he laughed and laughed, and made her feel very self-conscious about it.



Jenna amazes her parents every day with how smart she is, and seems to absorb everything around her. She is great at doing tricks, and can clap on command, give hugs and kisses, and Jarom’s personal favorite, play her “belly drum” anytime her bare midriff is exposed. Yesterday she surprised us with a new trick. Jarom has a putter and a golf ball that he often plays around with while watching TV. Jenna has apparently observed this and figured out that the two things go together, because whenever you give her the ball she will crawl to get the putter and then hit the ball with it. It amazed Jarom that she had made that connection and it is also pretty cute. He was lucky enough to get a decent video of it. Hope you like it.

Real Crawling

Some people said Jenna's last crawling video was not real crawling. Well, we

have been working on it, and its still a bit wobbly, but here you go. Jenna's "real"

crawling.

Pooday

This post is about poo. You have been warned...

Thursday morning started out like any other day in the Winn household. Jarom got up early and went to work, and Jenna and I got up around 8:00. We played for a little while, and then Jenna ate some breakfast. Then we played a little bit more and I decided, rather foolishly, that I would give Jenna a bath a bit early because we both weren’t feeling well, and I was hoping she would take a nap early so that I could also take a nap. We both have been suffering from colds lately, and I take any opportunity I can to sleep. Anyway, I usually wait until after Jenna’s morning poo to put her in the tub because it is just a good segue, but today I wasn’t thinking and put her in early. As I have mentioned before, Jenna is on a very regular schedule, and this includes all aspects of her life, including her poo schedule. So, I put Jenna in the tub and she is having a grand old time splashing and making a general mess of the bathroom when she gets real quiet and her face turns purple like she is pushing real hard. This alone is sign enough that she is working on something and then I see little bubbles coming up from her bum. I think, oh crap, she is pooing in the tub again. I hate cleaning poo out of the tub because it is so annoying to clean and disinfect everything. So I try to distract her so I can at least get her out of the tub but no such luck. Little floaters have already appeared. So I pull her out real quick, drain the water and put a diaper on her so she can finish her business. After she was all dressed for the day, I went back to clean up the mess. I pulled out all the poo and disinfected everything and I thought I was done. So I walk back to Jenna’s room to play with her when I noticed something didn’t feel right on my toe. Well, I guess I must have dropped a piece, or Jenna had a dangler or something, because there was poo on my big toe and I hadn’t noticed and tracked it all down my brand new white carpet. I was so ticked and by this point Jenna is getting fussy. So I shove a binky in her mouth and start to clean up the hallway too. Well I get it done and think about how my day had been super eventful and it wasn’t even 9 am yet. But it was done and I continued on with the rest of my day and everything went normal again…

Until around 3 in the afternoon when I caught Jenna doing her purple face grunting thing again. So I picked her up and went to her room to change yet another poopy diaper. Well, this one was a bit runny, so it went up her back. I didn’t notice it had gone up her back and I laid her on her changing table, which has a cute little cover for the pad. It got poo all over the pad and all over her clothes. I don’t know if any of you have ever tried to take care of a poo up the back diaper by yourself, but it is hard. You have to juggle the baby, getting the clothes off without getting poo everywhere, get the diaper off, and wipe, all without letting anything poopy touch anything else. Anyway, I failed miserably. So I get everything off, but now I have poop all over my hands and a poopy diaper that didn’t stay in the diaper to dispose of and poo on the changing table and I didn’t know where to put the baby while I was taking care of all this. Oh, and I hadn’t put a new diaper on Jenna yet, because I had poo all over my hands. So I stand her up holding on to some furniture while I wash my hands. I had just finished when I hear something wet hitting the brand new white carpet. That’s right, Jenna had peed all over. That one was my fault for not putting the diaper on her, but I really had poo everywhere. So, I put a diaper on her, get everything cleaned up and took a deep breath. It’s a good thing she is so stinkin’ cute, otherwise I would not love her anymore.