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!

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.

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. 

The Story of Lyla

I know I'm a month late on this, but I thought I should write Lyla's birth story before I forget everything - so if you are into this sort of thing, read on. If not, feel free to stop here.

It all started on January 10th. I was 2 days past my due date, and had pretty much accepted the fact that I would most likely have to be induced. My mom and I  spent the day shopping for stuff to finish up her nursery (more on that later - like, when I actually get it finished), and then later Al and I ran a few errands and went to dinner at 5 Guys. When we got home, being the cool people that we are, we decided to finish off our Friday night watching 20/20 and playing card games with ourselves.

I had been having very mild contractions on and off for the last couple weeks, so even though I was having them that night, I didn't really think much about it. Around 10 pm I realized that I had been having even more contractions than usual, and that they seemed to be getting stronger, and were very close together.  By 11pm they were getting painful enough that I had to pause during our game of Gin Rummy and writhe around every few minutes so we decided to start timing them. Turns out they were already between 2 and 4 minutes apart, and they were definitely gaining intensity very quickly. At this point I was pretty positive that this was the real deal, but Ali was still skeptical (obviously he was not the one feeling the contractions). He took it on himself to call up the doctor and ask if we should come in with intense contractions at 2 minutes apart that had been going on for more than 2 hours (it was now midnight). I could hear the doctor just laugh at him when she told him that, yes, yes we should.

So at that point we started getting our things together to head towards the hospital. I had to stop every time I had a contraction because they were so intense, and I told Al that any desire I have ever had to go natural was gone and I wanted an epidural right then! Now, at this point I have to stop and say that if you know Al, he likes to be efficient with his time, and any time we go ANYWHERE (like, even the grocery story) he gets annoyed if I take extra time to put on make up or brush my hair, or anything like that. In this situation, you know where I was getting ready to birth our child, he just wanted to take his sweet time...and spent forever picking out movies to watch, flossing his teeth, trying to find a pack of gum, deciding what to wear...needless to say I was just a little annoyed at this point. He even stopped to take a picture of me having a contraction, how sweet.

Finally I got him out the door and to the hospital. It was already 1am when we got there, and I was very upset to find out that I could not get an epidural right then, because they wanted to monitor me for an hour to make sure I was actually progressing. I had been stuck being dilated to a 1 for the last month, and was still a 1 at my appointment the day before; when they first checked me at the hospital I was at a 2plus. So, I spent the next 1.5 hours (because it took forever for the nurse to come check me again) in the worst pain of my life. Seriously, I don't know how people ever give birth naturally, because the only way I can even come close to describing the feeling is that it was so intense I thought I was going to throw up, poop my pants, have a heart attack, and pass out all at the same time. meanwhile Al was just having the time of his life flipping through channels on the TV and telling me stories of his childhood. He really was a good support, I was just a little perturbed he didn't seem to feel bad that I was in pain, haha. 

Anyway, the nurse finally came back and checked me and I was a 3.5, and around 2:30 they got me settled into a delivery room. It was 3 am before I finally got that epidural and after that, labor was bliss! As soon as it took, they checked me and I was a 4, and the nurse said she would be back in 3 hours to make sure I was still progressing fast enough, and said that they would have to give me pitocin (which I did NOT want) if I slowed down. I probably would have battled that if it happened, but when she came back at 6am (after Al and I had gotten a solid 2.5 hours of sleep), I was at a 10 and ready to push! Needless to say she was shocked at how fast I had dilated, but they got the room ready for delivery and left me for about another hour so that the contractions could do most of the work and I wouldn't have to push as much. After that it was pretty routine: the nurses came in around 7am, I started pushing and little Lyla Ann came into the world at 9:01am! It was an amazing experience, and Al was so good through it all, once he accepted that the baby actually was going to be born that day, he held my leg and told me I was doing great the whole time I was pushing. It was so amazing to see his reaction when he saw his baby girl for the first time, I just loved it! Baby Lyla turned pink and let out a nice healthy scream as soon as she came out, and we have just been loving having her ever since!

Right before leaving for the hospital: I definitely look like I am 3 days overdue

Please note her foot here: she has the biggest feet ever! We have no clue where they came from!

Babymoon

Al and I were able to go on a cruise to the Bahamas this last month.  We have been saying we need to go on a vacation to celebrate finishing school for the last year and a half pretty much, but we never really got around to planning anything. So finally we just booked a cruise which happened to be the perfect time to go as it will be harder once we have a kid, and I barely made the cruise deadline before I was too far along to be allowed. Even though this trip was meant to celebrate graduating, it pretty much became our "babymoon" you could say.

Now, it would take me super long to write about everything that happened, so I'm just going to post a few pictures to commemorate the event. Plus I've always thought reading about other people's vacations  is boring anyway.

 Leaving Miami..and looking large

Formal Night 

We loooved kayaking and playing with prickly sea things in the clear water

There's the belly 

 24 weeks! And here you can see my blotchy face: for some reason the humidity or salt or something made my face chap horribly. I betcha wanted to know that.

 I just couldn't get over this towel animal. I still think it's adorable

 Blue water of Nassau 

And here we have a blurry picture of Al on the Red Coach bus we randomly had to take to Tampa from Miami in order to get home. Long story short we flew standby and all the flights from Miami were full for days sooooo...we got off the ship pretty much having no idea how we were going to get home. Lucky we found this bus (which btw had SUPER comfy seats and wifi, who knew?), and made our way to Tampa where we were again lucky to find there is a Marriott in the airport there. So we stayed the night and got on a flight early the next morning.

So that was our adventure! The End.

Prego Problems

         So, I actually wrote this a month or so ago, but never posted it. I was too lazy too add anything to is so I just decided to post it as is, random and all.

          I realize I have been horrible at documenting this pregnancy. Basically I’ve already forgotten what the first 12 weeks were even like, so I should maybe be a bit better. But right now I have no cute or fancy ideas on how to document what has happened so far sooo…I guess I’ll just write what’s on my mind right now which is the fact that apparently being prego makes me supppper clumsy. Like, not even my usual slightly uncoordinated self, like, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t repeat some of the things I’ve done if I’d tried. So here are a few for your reading pleasure:

         I drop things. Like, all the time. It’s almost like I just forget to close my hand around things when I grab them. A few nights ago I was making spaghetti. I thought I would take the easy way out and just use some Ragu sauce rather than actually cooking. So I got the glass jar out of my cupboard, and, can you guess what happened? Bam! Apparently I forgot to actually wrap my fingers around the jar and of course glass and bright red spaghetti sauce went EVERYWHERE on my tile floor. Needless to say it took a while to clean up. Once I was done I was still in a pretty good mood so I figured it was a sign I should probably not eat fake spaghetti sauce anyway, and I proceeded to make my own spaghetti sauce. It took another while, but once I was done I thought it turned out pretty good! I even put zucchini in it. (Actually, I put zucchini in everything nowadays because we literally have zucchini piled on all surfaces of our kitchen.) Anyway. I was all proud and dished up the extremely delicious smelling spaghetti and was about to put it on the table when….Bam! I didn’t get a good enough grip on the first plate and all the food slid off of it onto my counter, so I quickly turned to save it and…Splat! All the spaghetti on the other plate I was holding slid off and splattered all over my floor…that I just cleaned… Yeah. I was done at that point. And you know what? I thought to myself, this food is hot, and I just thoroughly cleaned the floor. So yes, yes I did just scoop it up and eat it. Judge all you want but I was NOT going to cook anything else that night.

         I no longer have a sense of where my belly is. That might sound weird. But my belly seems to have popped out almost overnight. So I will be washing the dishes and then realize that my entire shirt is soaked because I’ve been letting my stomach rest on the edge of the sink. Not only that, but the other morning I was cooking French toast, and silly me, forgetting I have this massive swell coming out of my abdomen, stood too close to the pan without even realizing it until I felt a sharp pain and figured out that I had just burned my belly on a frying pan.

         I stubbed my toe on myself yesterday. I didn’t know this was a thing, but it happened. Somehow as I was walking, I managed to stub my left toe on my right heel. I hurt a little, but I just carried right on and forgot about it. Until I looked down 10 minutes later and realized that I had blood seeping down my heel. Maybe it’s time to give the toenails a good trim?

A Low Point

As part of the remodel being done at my work, a couple weeks ago they were painting.

Background story: Last time I was exposed to paint for an extended amount of time I broke out into a horrible purple rash and, in an attempt to get rid of it, my mom made me go sit outside with these giant 80’s biking sunglasses on for an entire day. Not sure how the sunglasses were supposed to help, but I was desperate enough to try anything at that point. I guess I should mention that the next day was my very first day of high school. And sitting outside with giant 80’s biking sunglasses did not help.

With that lovely story in mind, let’s fast forward to the painting project that was happening at my work. Needless to say, sitting there sniffing paint fumes 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, I was not a happy camper. Thankfully I did not get a repeat of the horrible purple rash (though I did get a giant hive under my left eye), but I did get a nasty splitting headache every day that I sat in that smell.  Nothing worked to ventilate the smell either. I even left the door to the office building open for an entire day, but I eventually had to close it because people kept wandering in from off the street asking me to throw away stuff…or give them a job.

Anyway. One of those days I left work with a horrible headache. And I was not in a happy mood. And I needed to go to the store because we were out of bread. And I still had a giant hive under my left eye.  Reluctantly and painfully, I found a parking spot 5000 miles away from the store because it is always super crowded at 5 pm, and I drug myself inside over to the bread section, hoping to be able to just swipe some Grandma Sycamore bread and run home to my giant luv sac and some Harry Potter.  

Unfortunately, I was delayed by a girl on her phone blocking my Grandma Sycamore with both her body and her cart, and, to make it even worse, she apparently though that wearing leggings as pants is an okay thing to do. I literally stood there, hatefully analyzing every lump and bit of cottage cheese on her rear end that was accented by her slightly see-through, way-too-tight legging things that she thought were pants. The angle of her cart made it impossible for me to reach my bread, and I didn’t think I could handle human interaction without exploding. So I just stood there, glaring, while my eye-hive throbbed with loathing. I imagine I looked like some sort of rabid wild animal. I’m sure she thought that I was crazy.

Eventually she realized I was there, gave me the up-down, and left. Needless to say I snatched my bread and got out of there like the wind.