You know your a parent....

You know you are a parent.....





....when the most common accessory in your wardrobe is spit up.


....when you are caught rocking without holding a newborn.


....when a date is a trip to Costco.


....when you get 5 continuous hours of sleep and its the best thing that has happened in months.


.... if you get in your car and automatically start singing "old mcdonald"


....if your favorite Christmas present was a baby stroller.


These are just a few little snippets. I will add more as they come to me.

Hello 2013

So this year I did not make any resolutions. I decided to make goals for the year. I feel they have a different meaning and people have a better mindset about goals than resolutions.

So here are my goals for 2013:

1. Finish losing the baby weight and then lose a little more. I have about 10lbs left of baby weight. Which I think is good considering Emily is 3.5 months old and the holiday season just ended.
                            - I just started a job at a local gym so now I can have more productive workouts

2. Keep my house cleaner. I am really good at finding something else to do instead of cleaning (like blogging). I want to stay on top of my cleaning so I don't have to do a ton all at once.
                           - We moved our "family room" to the basement which is really helping with keeping the house looking good. Now our front door opens to a "formal living room" which is mostly void of baby items because they have all moved downstairs.

3. Teach more classes. I was so happy when I was teaching in Fall of 2011 though I was getting close to burning out with 10 or more classes a week. I really enjoy teaching and I want to get back to regular classes.
                          - Right now I am just a sub at my gym (though I did teach a class last week). If I don't get any regular classes there I will start looking at a second gym to just teach at.

4. Enjoy Life! Life is really short and I feel I am kind of just racing through. This year is going to be really exciting watching Emily grow and I don't want to miss a thing.
                         - This weekend we spent a good amount of time just hanging out and making Emily giggle. Today she just wanted to be held. She didn't want anything but she didn't want to play either. So I just sat down and held my baby. It was a really awesome morning. 

So now I am ready for the year. Even though 13 is an unlucky number I am convinced this will be an amazingly wonderful year. 

Attack of the Ladybugs!

For the last couple months, every week or two we find a ladybug in Emily's room. Only in Emily's room. No they are not the same bug because most of the time I catch her (him?). Are ladybugs always referred to as "her". I always release the ones I catch out back. So unless the same one is coming inside (I have no idea how they are getting in) they are different bugs.

We never found these ladybugs before Emily was born. And now it is January. Don't bugs die in the winter?

There are only a few possible reasons for this to keep happening:

1. My daughter is a muggle born wizard and is unknowingly using her powers to talk to ladybugs.

2. I gave birth to the Queen of the ladybugs and they are coming to worship her.

3. She is a bug whisperer and I should be happy it is ladybugs she likes and not tarantulas.

I have decided I like #1 the best and I will be looking forward to the owl we will get when she is 11.

The holidays

Our Anniversary is always kind of shoved to the side because it is 6 days before Christmas. We are both ok with that because we rejoice and celebrate in our love everyday so we would probably not make a big deal out of it if it was any other time of the year anyway.

First visit with Santa!

This year we ordered take out and had a pajama picnic in the living room with Emily. It was fun and easy and completely us.

James and I were really excited about Christmas this year because we have Emily now. Of course she had no idea what was going on but it was really fun buying her gifts. The week before Christmas we took her to the mall to see Santa. Luckily she slept through most of the 45min wait. I thought it was a great success because she did not spit up on Santa.








I made picture Christmas cards this year. It is the first year I did picture ones. James and I don't really take pictures of ourselves so I never had any to use in previous years. I got a really cute Christmas dress for only $5 (score!) and Emily looked so cute in it. It was really hard to put on her though. Once I got the thing on and was walking down the stairs she spit up all over it. I wiped it off and decided to continue with the picture taking. The problem with taking staged photos of Emily at that age was that she could not sit up unsupported yet. (She still cant totally but is getting better. So even though I put her under the tree you could not tell if I zoomed in enough to get her face. I found the best way to get a picture was to put her in the middle of her boppy. I put a white blanket over the boppy to make a good background  The second issue I found was that she had just entered the chewing the hand phase. She also likes to suddenly move so I have tons of awesome smiley pictures where she is blurry. Slider was way better at posing so he earned a spot on the card :)

James had to work on Christmas eve so Emily and I hung around the house and cleaned bathrooms. Yep sounds exciting. Once daddy got home we had dinner (nothing fancy), watched some Christmas movies and then went to church. On the way home we drove through the neighborhoods and looked at Christmas lights. It was uneventful and wonderful at the same time. Sometimes keeping it simple is the best way to go.

Christmas morning was fun. Daddy fed Emily while Mommy opened everyone presents. We kept it small and only got her a few things she needed. We also told Santa that he did not have to go very big either so he got her a Sophie giraffe. Then we made breakfast and lazed around the house the rest of the day.

Em in her jumperoo from Nana and Grandpa. She loves it but is still a little short :)

My parents and sisters arrived the next day. James had to work. That left me making Christmas dinner alone while entertaining a baby. I hosted Thanksgiving this year but I had help cooking from my mother in law and my friend Molly. So this was the first time I did it on my own. I had to adjust the timing several times because  my parents ended up driving through a blizzard. But everything turned out well and it did not take that much longer for them to get here.

All in all I think it was a great first Christmas for Emily and I look forward to even better ones as the years go on :)

First trip to the ER! AHHHH!

It happened one lovely Friday night. December 7th to be exact.

We were just hanging out snuggling before bed. Emily had spit up everywhere, which is a common occurrence here. When I changed her I only put on a onsie. I don't know why but I am glad that I did. While sitting around snuggling I started playing with her feet. I love baby feet. They are so cute and it is so fun to give them kisses.

Then I noticed it!

A hair tourniquet. Not just one but two. On two different toes. She was not upset so I was not hurting her yet. But I knew we needed to fix it right away.

Courtesy of wikipedia

Some of you are thinking. What the H is a hair tourniquet? I did not take any pictures of one on Emily because I was slightly distracted so here is the like to a wiki article about them. Here are pictures from the article. Basically it is when a thread or hair gets wrapped around a babies toe, finger and on boys even their testicles! It gets tighter and tighter until it cuts of circulation. If they are unable to get the hair or thread off they have to cut it by cutting skin and surgically removing it. If it is not caught in time the child can lose the appendage.

From wikipedia: after being surgically removed.

We caught Emily's really early and James went to work on getting them off. One fell right off but the other was more difficult. This resulted in horrible screaming and crying because as we were trying to get it off it was getting tighter. We called the pediatrician but just decided to get in the car and head to the ER.

Snuggling in between attempts to find the hair.

We were lucky in that there was no one in the ER. It was completely empty and the pediatrician called ahead for us. They all fell in love with Emily and she was doing much better now and giving everyone smiles.

They looked and looked and were unable to find the hair. So after several hours and lots of screaming, we were sent home and told if it gets worse go to Children's. They didn't want us to go back there because she would need a pediatric surgeon. It was a little disconcerting to be sent home not knowing if things were going to get better or not.

We were very hungry after all of that screaming.

The next morning. Only a little swelling :)

After a few hours of sleep we checked it and it was better so it must have fallen off. We think when it broke when James was working on it but he did not see it come off. Now even a month later you can still see a little line from where it was but I am sure it will go away at some point.

Sensitive Tummies

The weekend before Thanksgiving Emily got sick. It was easy to tell she was in pain and she was having 15-20 poopy diapers a day. Life was horrible. I tried tons of things but could not figure out what was wrong, so off to the pediatrician we went.

They fit us in immediately. They are always really good about fitting kids in but they were really worried about Emily because she was low on weight to begin with and did not want her dropping. Once there they checked a bunch of things and determined she has a milk protein allergy.

There are two ways to treat this:
- If breastfeeding the mom goes on an elimination diet. You cut out all dairy and gluten. It takes 3 weeks to start working on fixing the baby's problem. If it does not work then you need to remove more items from your diet and wait another 3 weeks and if it still does not work then you need to switch to hypoallergenic formula.
- Use hypoallergenic formula. This takes a max of 72 hours to start working.

The week before Emily got sick she went on a nursing strike. I was still pumping (I even was getting up in the middle of the night when she was sleeping to pump) but for some reason my supply dropped dramatically a few days after her strike started. Due to this she was only getting about a quarter breastmilk and I was driving myself crazy trying to pump as much as possible and run on absolutely no more sleep than an hour and a half at a time, sometimes less (due to her being awake and when I needed to pump).

This made the decision easy (well at least I thought it did). We switched to complete formula. Within hours I saw an improvement. That did not make the idea of losing my breastfeeding experience or the knowledge that breastmilk is best any easier. It took me a while but I now know that I am doing what is best for Emily. That does not stop people from making comments. Most of them are harmless but about 3 weeks ago I had a women stop me at the store when I was looking at the formula. She then informed me that breastfeeding was best. First I was stunned. I could not believe she was saying this to me. But I whipped out my best southern lady bitchy voice (that is right I was raised in the south and I know how to bitch you out like a lady). My response: "Why bless your heart. Thank you so much". She was slightly confused but wondered off and left me alone. I have no idea why people and society think they have the right to tell me how to feed my baby or what I should be doing with my ta-tas. Last time I checked they belong to me.

A few weeks into the new formula we noticed Emily was developing re-flux  She never had re-flux before and it was progressively getting worse. She normally changes her outfit 4-7 times a day and I have to change mine at least 2 times. She was also showing signs of pain. So back to the doctor we went. She got a prescription and the pain is now gone but the spit up is just as bad. Oh well as long as she is not in pain then we can deal with the rest.

The best part about switching to this formula is that she is now growing like crazy. In the first two weeks on it she gained 2.5 lbs and went from just out of newborn clothes to 3-6mo. She was always small in the 30th percentile and now is normal at 50th. Yay!

Christmas craft fail!

So back in October I started planing all the fun holiday things I wanted to do. Of course pinterest was a major inspiration. My problem with pinterest is that I don't have as much talent as I think I do.

I found this really cute first Christmas ornament where you use the baby's foot print. This is what it looked like. Here is the link to the original page.
 

I planned on changing it somewhat. My plan was to not put paint on the inside and to use glitter snow inside. Then have Emily's footprint with "Emily 2012" written in green. I also purchased red ribbon for the top.

I then had the brilliant idea that I should make one for all the different branches of the family and have these be gifts from Emily.

So with this in mind I went to Michaels and purchased all the materials. I bought 2 packs of clear glass ornaments, red paint, a paint pen, red ribbon and a pack of glitter snow.

My in-laws were spending Thanksgiving with us and I wanted all of their presents done before then so I could just send them home with them. (trying to avoid the post office). I also realized there was not going to be away for me to get her footprint on the ornaments by myself. I needed to enlist my husband to help.

That is easier said than done.

He procrastinated until the night before they were to arrive...

It was not pretty. There was paint everywhere and Emily was screaming like she was going to die. James decided it was not physically possible to make these. Then I started crying because I was sleep deprived and I really wanted to have these (also because I am a girl).

Emily's Footprint (3mo)

My response: "but I saw it on Pinterest, It has to be possible"

So I put it all away deciding I was a failure.

The next week my grandparents visited and I told my very crafty grandmother about the project. Grammie knows everything right? Well she does so we got to work on getting these footprints.

Again it was a huge mess. Paint everywhere. Screaming baby. But we were successful in getting some paint on ornaments. Unfortunately most of the footprints looked like they belonged to aliens. Most were missing toes and some had too many, all but one was 2 times as long as her actual foot.

I scraped the gift idea. But there was one perfect ornament (well as close to perfect as I was ever going to get). I decided this one was mine. But life happened and I kept putting off finishing.

Finally after much complaining from my husband (the supplies were sitting on the table for most of December) I completed the project. On Christmas Eve I wrote Emily's name and 2012 on the ornaments (I wrote on all of them just in case I messed up, knowing me that was entirely possible). The day after Christmas I put the snow in.

Putting snow in an ornament is harder than it sounds. Obviously you think, funnel. Well glitter snow clogs funnels. In the process I got snow all over my dinning room, the kitchen and the bathroom. I also somehow inhaled snow. Yep, it was not a good experience. I hacked and coughed for the rest of the day. But now I have a beautiful ornament