Friday, September 26, 2014

The Poop Chair

Back in the day there were some pretty cool baby things that unfortunately were decided to be "too dangerous" to sell anymore. Luckily for me, my mom decided to save one of those awesome baby walkers that are no longer made or sold because babies apparently kept going down stairs in them (don't worry I, make sure she is always far from stairs).

We have lovingly called this the "poop chair" because before Lyla was big enough to walk in it, we would just put her in there and let her play and, well, let's just say it was an instant fix whenever she was a little backed up.

Now that she figured out what it's actually for, she uses it to get into all kinds of mischief, which makes me very concerned for when she actually can walk. She can spend long amounts of time running from one side of the kitchen to the other, running into stuff, opening cupboards, making messes…it's pretty much her favorite thing ever. And for some reason she has an obsession with the dishwasher, all I have to do is open it, and she will come running. Every. Time.



Gotta love recalled toys.

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Babies Everywhere

Seems like 2014 is the year of the babies! Lyla loves her cousin Kate, she laughs and smiles and tries to grab at her whenever she is around.

And two days ago she got a brand new cousin, Olivia! She will have so many fun girl cousins to play with.

Can't wait for Lyla's next cousin to be born next month!




Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Real Life Ramblings

So it hit me the other day. I was just going about my usual business; singing a song about poop while I struggled to strap a clean diaper on my child who was trying desperately to roll away from me, and I realized: I am somebody's wife. And I have a child. When did I suddenly become a grown up?

It seems like just yesterday I was rescuing the bird I saw get hit by a car with my best friend who lived across the street in the dead of night without my parents' knowledge (the dead of night back then was 8:30 pm). But then not long after that I was in high school thinking how crazy it was I could drive, and before I knew it I was graduating and then struggling through my 5000 level college classes so I could graduate from the U. What the? Somewhere in there I met a pretty awesome guy and got married and now 3.5 years later we have a kid? Nobody ever told me how time seems to go by exponentially faster with every year and every life event. But I will say, the craziest experience so far for me has been motherhood.

When Al and I first found out we were having a baby neither of us believed it at first. In fact, I was just taking a pregnancy test for fun in an attempt to (jokingly) freak Ali out, but then the test came back positive. Al didn't believe it and tried to say the test was faulty at first (I had bought a pack of about 30 from amazon for like $8, so he didn't really believe they were legit tests), so he decided to take one as well to prove it. Well, thankfully, his prego test came back negative, and after taking three more we had to accept that we were going to be parents.

Obviously we didn't grasp exactly what being parents would entail until nine months later when little Lyla Ann came into the world. For me, the initial adjustment was much harder than expected. I remember when I got home from the hospital thinking I would never sleep again. And then people kept wanting to visit and all I wanted to do was sleep and ice my crotch (maybe tmi?) and figure out how to keep my child fed through the excruciating pain of nursing, which is not something you want the general public to see anyway. By the way, because of this I vowed to never visit anyone but immediate family within two weeks of child birth, you are welcome new parents.

Anyway, the point to all of this is that I adjusted just fine and now all of the sudden I have an eight month old, and I am doing my dream job of staying at home with my baby girl.  It is the hardest and most worthwhile thing I've ever done and it is going by way too fast. Some days I get pooped on. Some days I get mushy, slobbery food spit into my face. Some days I realize it is 4:00 and I haven't even gotten dressed yet and I couldn't tell you what I've done all day. Sometimes I realize that I have lost all shame when I find myself at the grocery store with greasy hair, no make up, wearing flip flops with socks, sweat pants, and a dirty t-shirt. Some days I wonder how in the world people make it with more than one kid, and laugh at myself when I realize that this will seem like a piece of cake when we have another kid. But when I see Lyla learn something new, or when she wants to come to me and no one else, when she manically runs around laughing in her "poop chair" (more on that to come), it makes me happier than I've ever been.

Sorry for the cheese.




Monday, September 15, 2014

Randoms

So, 8 months later, I figured I should maybe get the blog up and running again. I am not going to even try to catch up on what has happened so far this year so this post is just going to be a super random jumble of things.

First of all: once upon a time my sister sent me a couple of pictures from when I was pregnant. These are not of my proudest moments, but I figured they were worth remembering. This was during Christmas, I was nine months pregnant and swollen, and my mom decided to make everyone pajama pants.


I'm not sure why, but she decided tiger print was the best for the men of the family, sadly we did not get a picture of all the guys together, but they matched. Clearly Al enjoyed his. And, apparently, if you are prego, pajama pants have to stretch up over your belly, because it's not hot enough to already have a small heater inside of you. Bless my mom's heart, she tried so hard.

This was a week later on New Years Eve. Al said I had to hold the baby in until January 1 because of insurance reasons, so we figured 10 pm on December 31 was safe to start trying to unsettle the baby. For some reason we came up with the idea of doing a handstand to go into labor. I promise it felt like I was completely vertical. Most uncomfortable thing ever. It didn't work. 

But I did have her 11 days later so, whatever.

Anyway, here is Lyla nowadays
We love her. Don't mind the boogs, she had a cold when I took this. 
More posts to come, hopefully sooner than 8 months.