Skit Skat Skoodle Doot

As I said in another post, we traveled to Ohio over Christmas for about a week.  Unfortunately, we forgot to bring along the charger for Jen’s breast milk pump, and it quickly ran out of battery.  Her dad has an old coffee can full of random chargers, and we tried them all in an attempt to find something that worked, but we had no luck.  At this point, the pump was completely dead and wouldn’t power on at all…frustrating, but not the end of the world.  Jen could still feed Valentina directly, it just meant nobody else could give her a bottle.

We came home and plugged the pump back in…but it still didn’t work.  Jen called their support line and they said that if you ever take the battery out it needs to go through a full 24-hour charging cycle before you can use it again.  Weird, but okay.  We left it on the charger for 24 hours.  Still no luck.  48 hours.  Nothing.  Great.

At this point Jen called them back and tried to get it replaced, but it’s well out of the warranty period and there wasn’t much they could do.  Out of the kindness of their hearts, they Engineered Happiness by sending us a new charger just to see if that did the trick.  It didn’t, but it’s a nice reflection on their customer service that they were willing to do anything at all.

I should probably mention that this is actually one of three breast pumps that we own.  Jen got this one when Gia was born 2+ years ago (and actually did get replaced under warranty one other time – Medela customer service is great).  At the same time, she was also given one by our old neighbor who no longer needed it.  That one is fairly bulky, though, the size of a small backpack, and it needs to be plugged in all the time.  Then we got our third pump when Valentina was born, and Jen keeps that one at work.  So regardless, we weren’t hurting for anything other than inconvenience by not having this pump working.

Now I figured that if it didn’t work at all, and we weren’t going to get it replaced under warranty, I might as well take it apart.  I always like to take things apart with some grand idea that I’m going to fix it, but that’s pretty much never the case.  I’m good at taking things apart, and sometimes putting them back together…but actually fixing something is usually beyond me.

I was really just hoping to find a burned out component inside that I could point to and say “well there’s your problem right there”, without actually being able to fix it.  But I opened it up, and didn’t see anything wrong.  Nothing looked or smelled burnt, no broken wires or solder joints that I could see.  Darn.

As one last ditch effort I googled “Medela pump repair”, and this video came up: https://youtu.be/0iNJRdvnycs

It’s for a different model than the one we have, but I watched it anyway.  This guy very quickly identified that it was a popped fuse on the circuit board right next to the battery input.  My circuit board looks different, but I was able to find the similar fuse and test it with the multimeter, and sure enough it was dead too.  Incredible.  The video goes into detail on the design of the circuit (which he’s sketched out in the screenshot I put at the top of this post), and it’s a terrible design.  The circuit drawing on the top of his post-it is the way it exists now, and he’s showing that if you put the batteries in backwards then it will blow the fuse and completely stop working (but at least it’s doing its job of protecting the rest of the circuitry).  The drawing at the bottom of his note is how he would have designed the circuit in a way to maintain the same protection without the single point of failure.

The pump in the video takes rechargeable AA batteries, and they easily could have been put in the wrong way.  Our pump (the Medela Freestlye) uses a different type of battery, and it’s impossible to put in backwards.  I’m guessing that was their solution to the problem rather than fix the circuit.  But my guess is that when we were trying different chargers at Jen’s parents’ house one of them had the polarity reversed from what the device expects, and that’s what popped the fuse.

Now, I don’t have any tiny fuses on hand, so I took the lazy engineer route and just soldered a wire in place to bypass the fuse.  I figure that the pump has been working long enough without blowing the fuse that it’s probably going to be safe…and we really only have to use it a few more months (the plan is until Valentina turns 1 in March).  So I’m willing to run the risk of burning out the rest of the circuitry for now.

Anyway, long story short – the pump works now, and I actually followed through on fixing something that I took apart, which is a rare event.  That’s why I’m more pleased with myself than usual.  I wish I could say that I did it all on my own, but if it weren’t for the YouTube video there’s absolutely no way I would have fixed it.  I wouldn’t have even known where to begin looking.  So big thanks to Dave from EEVBlog!

I made an informal New Year’s Resolution that I was going to start getting up earlier.  The girls wake us up early enough, but it’s not consistent.  Some days they’re both up at 6-6:30, other days they’ll sleep until 7:30.  And it’s so much easier getting everything ready for the day if I can get up before them so I have some time without a baby attached to my hip or a toddler attached to my ankles*.

So I decided to start getting up at 5 so I have at least an hour to make coffee, eat breakfast, possibly workout, and get the girls’ gear ready for daycare.  Every day this week I’ve had my alarm set for 5 and 5:10 (because the FitBit silent alarm doesn’t have a snooze function).  And every day this week I’ve ignored it.  My main excuse is that Valentina has been waking up every night (she’s getting 2 new teeth).  But this morning was the worst of it, since I don’t even remember turning it off.  At least it’s better than an audible alarm, which would wake up Jen too.

Hopefully now that V’s teeth have fully cut through she’ll start sleeping through the night again and I can actually wake up on time and get things done as planned.

* In reading that line back I sound like a 1950s housewife, which isn’t the case.  The main difference is that I’m not afraid to show a little leg.

…despite the fact that my desk is covered in toys.  These guys are all currently sitting on top of my monitor.  All except Jack Skellington are courtesy of Loot Crate (which Jen got me for Christmas last year).  Jack was a standalone Christmas present this year.

 

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Valentina’s been on the verge of walking since early November.  We were all positive she’d be taking her first steps by Thanksgiving, but she’s been holding out until the new year.  She had taken a few itsy bitsy steps here and there, but this was the first time we’d seen her actually move with a purpose.  Not bad for 9 months old.  Here are two videos of both girls showing off their walking skills, and a bonus gif of Gia doing a forward roll at Little Gym.

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Ho Ho Ho!  It’s New Year’s Eve, and I’m finally getting around to posting something.  We drove to Ohio last Wednesday, and just got back late the following Tuesday.  Jen’s sister and family also came into town, so it was a little crowded in their parents’ house, but we survived and had a great time.

Wednesday we sent the kids into daycare and spent the morning packing way too much stuff, as usual.  We planned to just pick them up on our way out of town, but ended up coming back to the house briefly because we forgot something, and Gia spilled milk all over herself and needed a change of clothes.  Someday I’ll learn the lesson to keep a set of clothes accessible…they’re always packed in the suitcase, which is buried under a ton of other crap in the back of the car.

The drive was mostly uneventful.  Gia didn’t nap, but was generally happy watching shows on the iPad.  Valentina slept pretty much the whole way.

Thursday was Christmas Eve, and we spent the day hanging out with family.  Gia refused to nap, which became a consistent theme of the week.  But she fell asleep in church that night, which was a minor miracle.  Both Jen and I insisted before we went in that it’s not something she would do.

Santa came that night and ate all the cookies and drank all the millk, and Clarence (our elf on the shelf) flew back with him to the north pole.  He brought Gia a Kindle Fire Kids Edition, and Valentina some new blankets.  They actually both got new blankets, and Gia loves her zebra blanket more than the tablet.  Go figure.

Christmas Day was a bit of a problem logistically, just trying to get both girls’ schedules aligned to where we could sit and open presents.  Two naps for Valentina makes things tough.  This was also a consistent theme of the week, only made more difficult when the Arizona crew showed up that evening with their wacky two-hours-behind timezone.  But everyone had a great time, and it was a good day.

The next day (Saturday) we had Christmas Round 2 with the AZ crew, and it was a chaos of Christmas spirit.  The kids were opening things as quickly as they could, and it quickly became hard to keep track of what was what.  Wrapping paper was everywhere!  After we got through the bulk of those presents we went over to Jen’s grandma’s house for the big family get-together with all of her aunts/uncles/cousins/etc.  We did a white elephant gift exchange, and I ended up with a Santa ornament and a women’s RFID-blocking wallet.  I guilted Jen into taking a ninja knife block.  I’m too lazy at the moment to go downstairs and take a picture, but here’s a link – http://www.prezzybox.com/ninja-knife-block.aspx

Sunday was busy with more of Jen’s family coming over to visit.  Everyone loved seeing all the kids running around.

Monday was the closest thing we had to a relaxing day.  No visitors, no new food to cook (plenty of leftovers), and nowhere to go.

Tuesday should have also been relaxing, but we ended up spending most of it getting our stuff together and packed in the car.  We gave away all the presents that we brought, but took home just as much in return.  We stayed all day, and left at the kids’ bedtime.  The plan worked, and they both slept the whole way home (almost).  Gia loved the drive out of town and was excited to point out every house with Christmas lights (“I found more lights!”), but fell asleep as soon as we hit the highway and there was nothing to see.  Valentina didn’t even make it that far.

Gia slept the whole way, but Valentina screamed the last 40 minutes.  It should’ve only been the last 30, but the fog that night was so thick I didn’t know where I was on the beltway and completely missed our exit.

Overall it was a good trip, but we’re all happy to be home and back on some semblance of a normal schedule.  Gia wouldn’t nap for us at all this week, but her first day back at daycare she slept for 2.5hr.