I feel better, so much better.....

...But I'd feel even better if I could get the Doc McStuffins theme out of my head. Even while Alice is sleeping, I hum the theme songs to various Disney Jr. shows. Now mind you, we limit Alice's TV viewing time, but it's just long enough to hear Hot Dog on the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and then Mike and I are singing it well into the evening.

Alice in now 9 months old and has 6 teeth. Time goes by so fast. It's so great seeing her discover all kinds of new things. We went camping on Memorial Day weekend with Mike's parents, and even though it was mostly rainy, we had a blast. That Monday we were able to go to the beach and Alice was delighted to play in the sand. We also got to go to the playground while we were camping, but she wasn't as thrilled with that, but still had fun with Grampa and Gramma Laurie.

Alice is crawling all over the place now and has been pulling herself up and trying to walk. We are in a lot of trouble once that happens. She already gets into everything. Last weekend, we tried to bring her to the lake that my family used to have a camp on, but the water was still slightly cold. She was not happy about it and wouldn't allow me to put her in the baby float we had.

 

I'm glad summer is here. While I don't like the heat too much, I like the feeling of freedom that summer brings. So many more things that we can do with Alice, and I can do my gardening and canning again (which I'm really excited about this year). Also, I graduate with my Associates Degree next month!!! Woot!! And in August, Alice will be 1!!!!! Unbelievable.

Well, I'd like to say that I will keep up on writing here, but sometimes the time just gets away from me. Once school is over though, I'm going to TRY to get on more often... we'll see how that goes.

~Mrs. C.

Regarding the Boston Marathon 2013

There are so many things that I could say about the tragedy that occurred in Boston this week. To be honest, I don't know where to begin.

As some of you know, I live in New Hampshire. Boston is maybe an hour and a half away from me. It's so close to home this time. I know people who live there, who work there, who had family members in the marathon. When 9/11 happened, obviously I was affected. Everyone was affected. But personally I was not. I didn't know anyone there, know people who worked there, or even people visiting.

When this happened in Boston, I thought of the families there to have a fun day. To spend time with each other. And that 8 year old boy, Martin Richard, who lost his life because of some senseless act.
I think of my daughter, and the things I want to take her to and enjoy with her. And how that could all be taken away from me in one second. I think of in a few years when she goes off to school and the dangers that are now there.

But I am also very angry. I want to fight. Fight against whoever did this. And if that means living with no fear, and teaching my daughter to not be afraid -- to be cautious -- but not afraid of living. Then that's what I will do.

I will be the first to say that I worry about EVERYTHING. As soon as I put my daughter to bed at night, my brain starts going over everything that could possibly happen when I'm not right next to her. But the reality is that sometimes you can't help even if you are by their side. It's a harsh reality but it is the truth.

The other part of this whole tragedy that has stuck with me was that photo. That uncensored photo of the young man who had his legs blown off. THAT was what kept me up that night. THAT was all I could think of the next day. And then last night, I find out that he works with a friend of ours. I was relieved to hear he survived and was recovering.

It's too close to home. And it angers me that someone thinks they can do this and expect us to lie down and take it. I am in awe of the amount of people who ran towards the site to help, and the runners that kept running to hospital to give blood. These people are the heroes and the role models of the future of humanity. We need to teach our children kindness, generosity, and helping one another out. We need to teach them to work together to accomplish something. I could say more but I don't want to get political. All I want to say is that this incident happened and people worked together to help and save lives. There were no Democrats, no Republicans, no Conservatives, no Liberals. Just a community of good people doing what they thought needed to be done. I commend each and everyone of them for doing what they did and saving as many people as they could. They are the heroes.

~Mrs. C.


P.S. This is a fundraiser for the young man who lost his legs. Jeff Bauman. Please donate if you can. His medical bills I'm sure are through the roof. Every little bit helps. Please pass it around to your friends as well. Thank you.

 http://www.gofundme.com/BucksforBauman

Trying to keep up with this....

So, I want to try to update this a little more often than I have been. Once every 3 or 4 months is not going to cut it.

Right now, I'm watching Alice sitting in her bouncer, with a blanket that she pulled up under her chin, while watching Doc McStuffins and drinking from her sippy cup. Where has the time gone. She is growing up so fast. I feel like I haven't been able to spend the type of time with her that I want. I've decided that now that she is a little older and can do more stuff, it's time to start doing some crafts with her. My goal for this week is to do a print with her feet and make it into some type of drawing...a butterfly or something. I want to get more pics of these things so that she has these when she gets older. There aren't many pics of me when I was a baby and I always wished there were more. Not to say I don't have a gazillion pics of Alice,  but I want more than just her sitting in her bouncer.

She was babbling when I took this pic. Lol.

It's been hard this winter. I've wanted to go outside with her and the weather has just not allowed that. Now that spring is around the corner, I feel like it opens a door to so many activities we can do together. We are planning to go camping with my husband's parents and brother on Memorial Day weekend. I think that will be awesome! I can't wait.

I've started "shopping" for Alice's birthday this summer. I've been looking online and saving things I find that would be great for the party. We are doing a strawberry theme. My husband calls her "Ichigo" which means strawberry in Japanese. He's been studying Japanese for about 2 1/2 years. We started calling her this when I was still pregnant with her and it stuck. We actually brought her home from the hospital in a strawberry outfit.

She wasn't happy here.

Anyway, I'm trying to get a bunch of craft ideas for little ones so that I can do more with her. If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them!

~Mrs. C.

Crawling, baby food, and teething.

Time has gotten away from me and Alice is now 7 MONTHS OLD! She's getting so big. She has recently started (somewhat) crawling and just last week, she called me "Mama" and my husband "Dada"!  I can't believe how fast time is going.

Alice is LOVING getting to try new foods. She loves just about everything except peas and bananas. She's got two bottom teeth in and is working on those pesky top ones now. We recently got her a amber teething necklace, which seems to be helping a bit. She still occasionally needs some meds, but not as often.

I'm so happy that the warm weather is just around the corner, cause we definitely need to get out and enjoy some sunshine. I can't wait to take her swimming and all that fun stuff. We are going to try to sign her up for swim lessons this summer. They have one type of class in which they teach the babies how to float and swim to safety if they fall in a pool or whatever, and I thought that was really cool. It's called Infant Swim Self Rescue.

On another topic, my job recently cut hours....like, drastically. I work as a housekeeper at a local hospital, and since I had Alice, I went to an on-call status. This was ok because I was still getting about 26-30 hours a week and got the hours I needed. Now, they have chopped all on call (per diem) hours to ZERO. Yep. So I have no income coming in. I knew this was coming, but didn't know it would be completely nothing. I went in and tried to hand in my resignation so I could work somewhere else. My boss asked me to stay. I caved and figured, "Well, if hours do come up, I can get them." So far, I've gotten nothing.

Now, 2 months ago, when I first heard that hours were going to be cut, I started planning on opening my own cleaning business. Then the rumors became more definite. Then I started working on getting it opened. Two weeks ago I got my papers in the mail saying my business was officially registered as an LLC in the state of NH. The next day, all hours were cut.

I feel like this is a sign. I don't usually base things upon "signs", but this seems to be working out more and more each day. I have hit bumps along the way, and then things just...work out. At one point, I was like, "I've used every bit of money that I saved for this, and I still need things." Then randomly, on my last paycheck, I got a bonus from when I worked full-time last year. Today I am in the process of getting my small business insurance and getting bonded. After that, I'm all set to work.

Anyway, wanted to update on everything going on. Go here to see a great video of Alice that I took the other day (she says, "Hi, Mama" in it!). And here are some pics from the past couple months...

Alice doing her best Wilford Brimley impression.

Yeah, so I had 3 months of pics to share. At least I didn't post them all. :)

~Mrs. C.

4 Months Old...

Whew...time has been going by FAST! Alice will be 4 months old next Thursday! We are getting prepared to start feeding her cereal and oatmeal... She is getting so big!

She totally cracks me up. She's got such a great personality and smiles so much. She's been sleeping through the night for just about 2 weeks now. She goes to bed around 8:30 and wakes up around 6:30-7 a.m. It's great, but sucks for me...I don't get home from work until midnight or later and getting to bed right off is sometimes difficult. Tonight, I worked late and here it is, 1:30 a.m., and I'm writing a blog entry.

I'm very excited for the holidays this year. Having Alice has made me enjoy the season like I did when I was younger. I'm looking forward to creating new family traditions and involving her in the old ones. Her face completely lit up when she saw the Christmas tree the first time. She didn't know what to think!

Anyway, since it is so late, I'm going to keep this short, but I wanted to update since I haven't done so in quite a while.

Here are some recent pictures.

 

 Happy Holidays!!

~Mrs. C.

Picture update.

Alice has been keeping me busy!!!! Today, since I am very sleep deprived and have only had the chance to have 1 cup of coffee, I'm going to just do a picture update. The first five pics are from the first month and the rest are more recent. The Halloween ones are from today. I did a photo shoot in our living room. Enjoy! :)

~Mrs. C.

She's here!!!!

So, haven't had much of a chance to update this but I will start by saying that Alice Olivia was born August 20, 2012 at 9:39 p.m. weighing 7 lbs. 11 oz. and was 19 3/4 inches long.

Now, going back to the beginning of the story...

Sunday, August 19th, I wake up in the morning and get up to use the restroom, which is where I noticed I was bleeding. I realized I was in the beginning of labor and went to wake up my husband. I don't think I've ever seen him get out of bed that fast.

I called the doctors office and they said to wait until the contractions were about 5 minutes apart. So we waited......and waited.....and around 2:30 p.m. we headed down to the hospital. They hooked me up to the monitor and checked me out and said that I was still only about 1 cm dilated and maybe 75% effaced. My blood pressure was high so they decided to keep me overnight, especially since I was getting induced in the morning. So they gave me some meds to help me sleep and that was the last night I slept.

The next morning my contractions had gotten MUCH stronger and when they checked me at around 11:30 a.m. they said that I was 4 cm dilated and 100% effaced. They decided it was time to move me to one of the labor rooms. When I stood up and walked to the room, it threw me into full blown active labor. By the time I got into the bed, I was in tears, begging for the epidural. I had the worst back labor and was on the verge of blacking out. Finally, around 3:30p.m., I got the epidural and the doctor gave me Pitocin because my contractions were very irregular. I was able to sleep through the rest of the labor until it was time to push. I slept for about 3 hours and woke up when the doctor came in to check me and told me I was fully dilated and effaced. I waited a little longer to labor down before we started pushing.

My husband stood next to me the whole time and then he suggested watching in the mirror. I really didn't want to, but he said it might motivate me. I decided to try and as soon as I saw that image, the first thing I thought was "Get this kid outta me!". So, yeah, I guess it did motivate me. With two pushes her head came out (and she was screaming already, I might add). One more push and she was out. It was amazing. Definitely a life changing experience and I'm so glad she is with us now (even though I'm soooo tired).

The first few days was really hard because she wouldn't stop screaming. And she wanted to eat constantly. I'm breastfeeding and I was feeding her non-stop. I was on the verge of tears. We called the hospital and they told us that she was just cluster feeding and that it was normal. We had an appt. with the pediatrician on the 3rd day and when they weighed her, she had gone from 7 lbs. 11 oz. to 6 lbs. 5 oz. It was then that we realized that she was not cluster feeding. She was starving because my milk had not come in.

The doctor told us to supplement with formula and come back in 5 days. The day after the appt., a visiting nurse came to the house and weighed her and said she had already gained 5 oz. back. We were so happy. What I was not happy about was the lack of information the hospital had actually given me. Apparently, while I was at the hospital, the lactation consultant there had made note that I did not have a lot of glandular tissue and could possibly not have the milk ducts to exclusively breastfeed. Had they told me this, it could have saved a lot of issues with Alice losing weight and could have caused a lot more issues had we not seen the doctor when we did.

We ended up going back to the doctors this past week and Alice is now up to 7 lbs. We have an appt. on Wednesday and we are hoping she will be back up to her birth weight by then. She is doing so much better with the supplementing. I'm still having issues with having enough milk but it has come in and she's at least getting some.

I can't believe that tomorrow she will be 2 weeks old already. Time flies when you don't get any sleep. :)

Introducing Alice Olivia -

 

~Mrs. C.