Life inside a chicken coop on the funny farm

As many of you know, Claire's nursery theme is farm animals.  Pretty obvious since we live on a farm - guess we are pretty simple people.  But it's what we live and love.  So Claire has a mess of farm animal stuff in her room as well as other stuff like monkeys and bears. 

Well this past week, Trent has been sick with a really bad head cold.  Hence, Claire and I have retreated to her her room upstairs for the entire week to try to stay away from germs.  I am not sure how big Claire's room is, but at the beginning of the week I was thinking it was a pretty good size room for her to grow up in.  By today, I feel like we are isolated in a chicken coop located on the farm!  Unfortunately, Trent's cold is not getting much better so he will be headed back to the doctor. 

So this past week, I have been sleeping in the small twin bed in Claire's room with our dog who is not happy about going from a king size bed to a twin.  He paces and turns all night.  He has back problems so that makes it worse.  So I am having to carry the dog up and down the stairs with me each time I go.  He won't just stay in one place.  He has to follow me.  Trent and I have tried shutting him in the room with Trent, but that doesn't work either.  So I have been carrying the dog up and down all week. Then he realizes he thinks he wants to be the baby again.  He wants to lay in the boppy, lay on Claire's blankets, and even get on the changing table (don't ask me why). 

Claire has spent most of the week in the swing, crib, or bouncy seat.  Her bouncy seat and little swing are the How Now Brown Cow collection from Fisher Price.  So it goes along with our funny farm theme really well.  She really loves the bouncy seat!  The swing, not so much.  She is learning.  So we are using the Rainforest swing from cousins Connor and Anna.  It swings side to side and she LOVES that.  We have yet to get the How Now Brown Cow swing like this (and yes they make one at Target!). 

So along with the bouncy seat, we have pigs and cows dangling from the entertainment bar on the front of the seat.  Can you even find Claire midst all of the farming???

Claire even tried some medicine of her own to make Daddy feel better.  I believe it worked, just not on his cold! 

So below is a picture of the nursery/funny farm/chicken coop as of this morning. One week of this isolation is killing us!  Don't judge from the picture below.  We do keep our house clean.  But from this one picture you can see what our lives have been like this week!



I made it larger so you can really see.  We will start with the dog since we have already discussed him.  He sits like this and waits because he wants to go downstairs.  This is his "stare down" mode.  He means serious business.  In front of him is one of Claire's blankets and then a brown blanket by the bed.  I have to throw blankets on the floor for him so he can try to be comfortable as I am working with Claire.  With is back, he can't jump on and off the bed like he wants to. 

Then you see my stack of books.  I have read everything there is to know about bowel movements in babies and what they are supposed to be like and how many a day, etc.  Claire's stomach is still not right.  I have already put a call into the doctor this morning to see what they think about bumping Claire up on a different less broken down formula.  We will see.  Then you kind of see the changing table with no cover on the pad.  That is because I have washed the changing pad 3 times in 2 days.  And Claire threw up all over it last night because she ate too much too fast.  So I just decided it wasn't worth putting a new one on right now.  So I was washing clothes at 2 am today.

What you don't see is Claire's bathroom that has dual purpose this week.  It's the bathroom and the kitchen.  I had to bring all of her bottle stuff up here so that I didn't have to keep running up and down (with dog in hand) to mix her bottles and everything. 

Next in this picture, you see the unmade twin bed.  It has decided it's just staying unmade until further notice.  And the foot stool that goes to the glider Trent bought us is beside the bed as a makeshift night stand for me.  Along with the pink monkey on it.  The lap top on the floor is my mom's.  I just figured out yesterday how to get our Internet set up on it so now I do have some sort of outlet to the world.  Hence this post.  I am thinking of this as an outreach.....  ;)  And in the middle of everything you see the How Now Brown Cow bouncy seat with Claire resting comfortably.  You can't even see her in it, but she's there.  Do you think all of this is affecting her?  Of course not!  She's such a good girl! 

Doesn't she just have such a "glow" about her??  A pure "shine"?  Well, that's the Aquaphor that I smeared all over her mouth this morning because her lips are getting kind of chapped.  Or maybe I am just a chap stick addict.  I don't know, you tell me!?!  ;)

But she is just as happy as a pig in you know what.  We will say mud here.  We have the jungle/rain forest music playing in the background with pig songs playing intermittently from the cute pig on her bouncy chair from Candice and Jacob (I think Trent and I love this pig more than she does!).  

So, here's to life on the farm!  We are praying Daddy gets better soon!  And that neither me nor Claire get the cold germs.  I have used a whole can of Lysol (which I despise) and a lot of Lysol wipes this week.  I have almost gone out and searched for Cavi Wipes so we could feel more sterile like at Duke. 

Have a great weekend!  At least we can see the sun shining from our window in the coop.  That's a good sign!!!!

Love,

The Scott Family

PS - I weighed Claire last night and she was back up to 9 lbs 3.5 oz.  So she is gaining again hopefully!!!