My Mother and Me

It's interesting the things you recall of your mother once you become a mother yourself. My mom right now says she goes to bed around 11pm. I can't believe this and I keep thinking she's just reading the clock wrong. The mom I remember always fell asleep around 9pm, so clearly my mother must be mistaken (or on drugs - just kidding) to think she can stay awake til 11pm on a nightly basis.

Now I'm realizing that my mom probably fell asleep at 9pm because of all the things she tried to pack into her day in order to raise us kids. From the time I can remember, my mother was always up and dressed before my brother and I got out of bed. Once out of our shower, she would come into our room to ask what we wanted for breakfast. Choices were always egg, waffle, oatmeal, toast… Mom would take our orders and have breakfast ready by the time we were dressed. Then it would be off to school. At night she would make sure our homework was finished, cook dinner, and then as a family we would watch some TV, sometimes getting a snack around 8:30 with dad - either a bowl of ice cream or a bowl of cereal. Mom would always announce after cleaning up the kitchen that the "kitchen was closed".

I'm understanding some of those memories more now. Because of stress from work, my milk supply is waning. In order to get enough milk for Alli, I'm getting up now at 4:30am to pump an extra bottle. Luckily, I produce enough when I'm not working to keep her at least satisfied. And if for some reason I'm short and she cries, I have supplies because of my early morning pumping sessions. During work days, I stay up after pumping so that I can get completely ready for work and log in for at least 1/2 hour before Alli wakes up. I do this for two reasons: 1) I get paid hourly and this helps increase our income slightly and 2) I am able to put in time that I really need for the job without losing time with my family.

When I finally finish dinner dishes and bottles, I just want to say "kitchen is closed", as in, "don't you dare make any more mess in this room cause I have no energy left to clean it!" Bedtime seems to be 8:30-9:00, even though dad stays up til 10 or 11 still. Periodically I stay up with him til 10 (helping with photography stuff usually). I try to keep this at a minimum, not that I don't like staying up with my husband, but I wind up grumpy and that is a worse price to pay we've found.

The last two weeks I've done really dumb things, like forget to pack Alli's solid foods in her lunch bag for Krista's. It's not that bad - we've stocked Krista's place with rice cereal, so at least she gets that. But I always look dumbfounded when I hear that I've done something so stupid and say "I'm going for the mother of the year award". It took my husband to remind me that it's the things that go unnoticed that apply to the mother of the year award, not the stupid little oversights that happen periodically. Getting up early to pump that extra bottle, cooking breakfast to make sure the kids have something healthy to eat in the morning, working while the family sleeps so as to not miss any family time, etc. Mom, I'm sorry it took me almost 40 years to realize some of the truly awesome things you did for us growing up. So here's your mother of the year award - finally.

No Croup, Just a Cold

We had to go to the doctor's today. Alli woke up with a phlemmy cough and wheezing and mommy wanted to make sure it wasn't in her lungs. The doctor said it must drainage from the sinuses because they looked icky but the lungs were clear. We were prescribed a humidifier, Lil' Noses (saline nasal drops), and lots of boob time (which translates to make sure she's getting enough liquids!)

On a side note, they weighed Alli (clothes on and a wet diaper) and she's 16 lbs. :) Go baby girl go!

The Joy of Bath Toys

Over Christmas break, Kim and I got Alli a new bathtub. She had been using her infant tub and was quickly getting big for it. We bought her a blow-up tub over the holiday and put her in it. In her infant tub, she would splash her hands and kick her legs, really started to have fun in the tub. When we switched to the bigger one, baths became more lethargic. I figured that after a couple of days she would get used to it and start splashing again, but that didn't happen.

So weeks have gone by and I was sad that she wasn't so happy about tub time. I went into the bathroom cabinet to see what toys we had gotten from the baby shower. I found a few small ones and threw them in the tub. She grabbed at them and started chewing on them. I was happy she seemed at least interested in the toys.

Well, a few days of having toys in the tub and guess what started happening. Yes, we have water all over ourselves at bathtime. Splashes so big it goes up the wall and all over the floor and mommy while she kicks and plays with the toys. It's so fun to watch her play in the water again!!!


On a side note, no croup. She is a bit mucous-y in the nasal area, and coughs a bit here and there, but no mucous in the chest. Everyone around here is fighting a little of something, so I'm just hoping hers stays about how it is and then goes away. So far, so good.

Teething and Croup, Oy Vey!

First of all, I'd like to say that my blog posts are getting farther and farther apart. At first I thought it was because we were so busy, but when I thought about it further, I realized that Alli just isn't changing on a daily basis anymore. We have a nice little routine, and things are fairly stable, so there really isn't anything new to blog about.

Of course, I say that and then this week turned chaotic. Alli is teething. I swear I saw the teeth at one point, but then you look again and they aren't there. Krista said the same thing one day, that Alli was fussy and when she looked she could see two little white spots in the gum. But then later Alli wasn't fussy and Krista looked and there were no more white spots. Hmm...funky teeth! But it's enough to create a little discomfort for the poor girl and we have to deal with that.

But, no only is Alli going through the teething discomfort, but Tyler came down with Croup. Yikes! By the time symptoms show, Alli has already been exposed. So we kept her going to Krista's anyway and we are waiting to see if she develops a cough. What a week. So far, no cough, so we'll just keep our fingers crossed on that one.

The Week of Poop

This week Alli started something really fun. She poops sometime between 7:10 and 7:25 so we *have* to change her before loading her into the carseat to go to Krista-Care. There's only one problem with that schedule though...the poop keeps shooting right up her back so cleanup takes forever!!! Because she sits when she plays, the poop just goes up. Now, if you realize this is what probably happened before laying her down on the changing table, you can shove a wipe down the top of her diaper, then lay her down and the poop doesn't squirt out all over her back. But for some reason this week, she poops and then winds up on her back playing, so when we go to pick her up it's already EVERYWHERE!!!

Tuesday's poop was so bad that she wound up getting a bath before we could leave for Krista-Care. I mean, when I kept finding little patches under her arm, foot, etc, I decided that a full bath was going to be the only way to get rid of all of it.

Every morning this week we've had to wash out poop from an outfit and find a different one. The washing machine has been on double-duty washing all this crap (literally crap!).

We even tried a different brand of diapers to see if we could contain the poop. This morning I put her into a Huggies brand diaper (and one size bigger even) because Huggies has a little elastic at the top to keep everything in. Alli was sitting playing with her toys while I was in the office working. I then decided to put her laundry away from the day before so I picked her up to bring her into her room. She was laying on her back at this point. Ooops. Poop had already leaked out through the top and was all over her shirt. I must say, at least it was *less* poop than what would have come out with the Pampers. But yikes! I'll be happy when this phase is over. :D

Daddy's Assistant

Before Alli was born, I was always Kim's assistant during photography shoots. Well, now Alli is here and we didn't think that would work as well. But with Alli being so casual about everything, she has fit right in to the assistant work. Check out some of these "behind the scenes" pictures from different photo shoots over the Christmas break:

Just Cause I Haven't Blogged In A While...

All is well around this household. Alli continues to be a charmer. :) We've increased her solids to twice a day. She still feeds herself, but daddy and I still have to put the food on the spoon. Tonight I tried to give her some vegetable pasta to see if she would feed herself something like that. She played with it, so we put some in her mouth so that she would see that she could eat it. She started gumming it, and I thought "cool". And then she started choking and turning red. Darn! Don't be alarmed, we got the food out of her mouth and went back to just the pureed stuff. I try to give her more "whole foods" periodically, to see if she's ready. So far, it always results in her choking, us scraping food out, and then her crying. I feel bad, but I want to try. We don't try very often though...

Tonight I also tried another new thing. I usually thicken any jarred baby food with some rice cereal, mostly because Alli feeds herself and it's usually easier if it's a thicker consistency. Well, tonight the food had some bananas in it and so it had a sorta thick consistency to it already. I decided I would just give it to her straight. Yeah, bad idea. Not only was it all down her chin, but it seeped under the bib and got on her jammies. Oh well. More to clean, but we're pretty used to that. :)

Today she was supposed to go in for a vaccination (Hib) because we are catching her up on that series. However, the other night she ran a fever. We don't know what caused it, but it only occurred the one night (and no teeth showed up). I figured we can wait a week for the vaccination - no sense in taking any chances.

So that's about it. Alli's turning 8 months old next week. Hopefully we'll get some good pictures of her and get them posted. We've been so busy with photo shoots lately that our family shoots have taken a back burner.

If you haven't noticed, on the sidebar of the blog I've added something called "Peanut's Fans" and it's a way for our family to find out who reads this blog. If you follow this blog, please let us know by adding your name there. :)

My Nest Is The Best!

So, I realize my last post was over a week ago. So much going on with vacation!!! My last posted stated that Alli cried when she would wake up. Well, that's over with. I did set an alarm to be there when she woke up, and I think that helped a little. After a couple of days of being there when she woke up, she started realizing that this wasn't such a bad place. In fact, she's kinda liking it now.

This morning the alarm went off at 6:30. I dragged myself out of bed, feeling like it was the middle of the night and slowly made it down to her room. When I got inside, I noticed Lamby wasn't hanging along the side of the crib. (Lamby is this lamb blanket. Picture a bear-skin rug, now think of the same thing but looking like a lamb. It's really cute.) Anyway, she had pulled Lamby down and was playing with it and Monkey (a stuffed monkey wearing a Medtronics t-shirt). When I walked up, she looked at me with this big toothless grin and I knew we had it made. Who knew how long she had been awake, quiet and playing.

The truth is, now I have no clue how long she sleeps for naps. I can put her down, not hear a peep, and then check on her 30 minutes later only to find her playing with Lamby and Monkey. (Yes, I know, very original names!!) I've tried taking them out of the crib and then putting them back in once she's asleep, but then she's crying until she finally decides to fall asleep, which by the way, is about 30 minutes later... So I haven't figured out the best thing to do about this, but at least she's laying down and playing very quietly. Does that count as rest time???

I think she really likes the crib, especially since she has her animal friends to keep her company.