what a long strange trip this is

A had her first fourth of July this last weekend... not that she could tell the difference between the fourth and any other day out there. I worked in the morning and part of the afternoon. When I got home my husband decided to treat me out so off we went to eat dinner and then to get him a pair of much needed new tennis shoes. ( next pay check it will be my turn : ) Every where we went someone new was telling us how cute our baby was. I will admit that I never get tired of that. Most also asked if we were planning to take her to the fire works. Dave and I were on the fence with that one for a while, but finally opted out of the fireworks. We figured since they don't even start until after her bed time we might be flirting with danger as a lot of children her age are scared by them anyway. Let's be honest something that has the potential to be scary is bound to be a lot worse if baby is over tired. Dave hasn't ever been a real fan of fireworks on top of all of it, so he got out of it again this year.

Over all it was a very uneventful first fourth for our little one. I suppose it is just as well, as that is most likely how they will continue. Dave and I have never been people to make a big deal out of the holiday. Until our little one was born we had a tradition of going to a movie and getting the largest tub of popcorn we can. As we only go to movies once or twice a year it is a nice treat. We were not able to do that this year as A doesn't really sit quietly through a movie anymore. We have a few years before she will be a welcome addition to a movie theater. We however love watching movies with her, because she actually watches the movie and even better mimics the sounds that the characters make. It is a riot and Dave and I love to watch her.

She is becoming a toddler before our eyes. There are still the remnants of a baby there, and we enjoy them all, but one by one they fade away. She is getting braver everyday, and now cruises all around the room holding onto whatever she can get her hands on. Some days I can see the calculations going on in that little brain as she looks at something out of her reach and wonders if she will be able to get to it. She scares the crud out of me daily. I want so badly to scoop her up and keep her safe... but I have to let her take the risks, it is the only way that she will learn her limitations and expand her horizons. She amazes me as she lets go of the chair to bend down and pick something up. She appalls me as she tries to pull up on the rocker. She keeps me riveted as she pulls the table cloth to bring what she wants on the table closer.... all the while standing under it in a very precarious position. She buzzes around the house in her walker now and chases the dog and the cat in the contraption. She pulls down my laundry and she plays in it with delight. My days are seldom boring.

When I was praying to have a healthy child I swore that I wouldn't take a single second for granted. Eight months into parenthood, I am still trying very hard to fulfill that promise to myself. I try to enjoy every second. I relish even the difficult parts of parenting this child. Never in my life have I had a job that I have loved as much as being A's mommy. I take a moment every single time that I nurse this little one to thank God for her and for the ability to be able to nourish and nurture her by nursing her. I never look to the days when she can... I try only to enjoy the right now. By contrast I also try very hard not to look back the the days when she used to... as every day is something new and I do not want to miss a thing by being mired in the past. I have a beautiful wonderful child who I enjoy so entirely I cannot express it.

I do however love looking back over our older photos.... I look at the little peanut that she was and at the superchunk (Dave's nick name for her) and I am awed at how much can change in a few short months. I realized the other day that we have had A longer now than we knew we were pregnant... although not quite as long as we were pregnant. It blows my mind how much she has grown and changed. What a wild ride!

Hi ho Hi ho!

I have officially finished my first week of work. I have worked 3 days since Monday for 4 hours except for the first which was 3. Slowly but surely our household is adapting. A still has issues with me being gone, but over all we are getting the hang of it. We still spend the afternoons after I work attached at the hip ( well my hip her front =) Although I am not sure that it is much different from the days that I am home all day. A has moved into a separation anxiety that is pretty impressive. I am not allowed out of her sight with out fussiness no matter who is still with her. D is a little put out by it I think, as she is not quite so vocal about his leaving. However she is so excited when he gets back that it soothes those ruffled feathers some.

I have read that separation anxiety is a perfectly natural thing at A's age and that it just shows that she is going through the regular progression of becoming a toddler. It is heartbreaking however when she starts to cry or that little bottom lip pokes out and tears well in her eyes. I have worked so hard to take care of her every need and want for so long that not being able to give into this "need" of hers is very hard. I am sure though that it is good for her to learn not only that mommy sometimes MUST leave, and that she will come back.

D is enjoying the one on one time with A. He has said this week that he is glad that I am working so that he can make sure that A has some daddy time. I guess to an extent I have been monopolizing the care of the baby. Mostly because I have been with her all the time and so it was natural for me to just take care of the needs... Also though I think it has been easy for him to just let me take care of it all, because he certainly doesn't jump up to take care of a need before I can do so :) So I guess that we have fallen into a pattern and my working now shakes that up a little. It is good I am sure for all of us.

There is another side effect of me working that I am enjoying. There is a sense of pride that I haven't felt for a time. There are people who I interact with now that see me for ME.... not mommy, not wife, not daughter.... Me the person that I am outside of all the roles that I play. It is exciting, exhilarating. It isn't as if the people around me look at me and pigeon hole me. I am much more to D than just wife. ( although to A I am really JUST mom and as of yet there isn't much room for more with her : ) The thing is that I have started to feel pigeon holed all the same. At work there are people there who see me for me. I am only a mom to them if I choose to share it. Oddly enough I do share it, but I also share book I've read, jokes, and so much more. It helps to round me out as a person. Having found a job that is so willing to work with me keeping my hours down and when I need them is exciting. I have the best of both worlds. I can work and still be for the most part a stay at home mom. The 12 hours I worked this week and the 4 I am scheduled for next will get me out of the house a little, add a small amount of extra cash, give me a little Independence, and it will still allow me to be the mommy that I need to be to my little one. I am on top of the world.

I have to admit though.... no matter how few hours I work there comes a time.... when I miss her so much I want to go home RIGHT NOW! There are moments when I am working that I wonder what the HELL I am thinking.... my little girl is at home and I am out working. It matters little that she is at home with her daddy, and that after the initial cry that she didn't really miss me. I believe that women are hard wired to feel guilt the second that they become mothers... Maybe it is the mommy hormones because I have never felt the guilt like I do now as a mommy. Funny thing is that I also felt guilty when I wasn't working for different reasons. ( If I was working we could get such and such, blah blah blah) I guess that I am just going to have to learn to live with my guilt complex and know that one way or another I am never going to do anything that would seriously hurt my little one. Life can be so complicated.

Bye bye baby bye bye!

A has started waving Bye bye! It was a process that we have been going through. First when someone would wave bye bye to her those little fingers would get to twitching and she would just stare. Then we started seeing bye bye being waved at odd times. She would wave bye bye while she was eating or while she was nursing. At first I thought that she was signaling that she wanted to nurse. We are working on some basic sign language and the sign for milk is really close to the bye bye wave. So I there for a time I was feeding her every time she would wave. I hesitate to ask what she weighs now. It finally hit me when we were leaving my parents house and she waved bye bye to Gramps and Gran after they waved to her. They were so excited.... " LOOK!! She waved bye bye" DUH! ( although I am not completely convinced that sometimes she isn't signing that she wants to nurse. So we offer it when she "Asks")

It is really exciting when she does something new like that. I must have an extremely boring life.... because I glow for hours when she has done something new. You would think that I was the one that had accomplished the new feat. But when we make a big deal she stands real tall and grins with such delighted pride that I am knocked over with love and pride. The other day when D came out of the bathroom from a shower she squealed " Ah Da" with so much excitement that I thought D was going to break down and cry right there. Parenthood is always amazing and constantly rewarding... but there are moments as parents that little in this world can compare to.

I started a job today. Thus far I have been a stay at home mom. I have loved every single second of staying home and being a mommy. There have been moments when I wondered if I was crazy, but I have never wanted to change my circumstance. D and I wanted a little extra coming in though and I needed to get out of the house a little. I left for the first time this morning. I work in the morning when D is home so that we don't need to pay for a sitter. My job is 2 blocks away so I am close to home... and best of all they are willing and able to work with me on the time constraints that I have so that I can continue to nurse my little one with out needing to pump. My new situation creates a strange combination of pride and fear in me. I am excited to be working outside the home again ( no matter how few hours) but I am terrified of leaving my little one ( no matter the fact that she will be with my husband.) They suggested that I come in for a period of 3 hours to get my feet wet. By two hours and 10 minutes I was seriously missing my little girl... By three I was damn glad that I was going home. I rushed home to find that A had suffered not a whit with me gone. I wasn't sure whether I was relieved or slightly put out. She survived the morning, however I am home now and I am not sure if we both will survive the evening. You see I cannot duck out of her sight at all.... and I cannot put her down for more than a few minutes before she is crying like her heart is broken. Perhaps a delayed case of separation anxiety. We shall have to see. At any rate I have to go. I am being informed that my time is up! MAAAAMAAAAAAA!

What a difference a day makes.

A is growing in leaps and bounds right now. Every time we turn around she has learned a new skill... literally... the other day I turned around and she had gone from her tummy to sitting on her bottom. D was outside and I didn't do it so I must surmise that she did it herself. Either that or we have a remarkably skilled dog that we are just not using to her full potential. It is such an exciting time right now between the new motor skills, the new social skills, and the remarkable growth she is a new baby all over again every morning. ( which is starting earlier and earlier these days)

I was going through some of the pregnancy updates that I was sending to everyone last year awed by how life has changed. I didn't keep all of them ( the suggestion was made too late) but I kept some of them. What really hit me was that this time last year we were still waiting to get to viability and only half of the way through the pregnancy. Boggles the mind doesn't it.

Then I had a lot of dreams and a ton of fear. Today I have an 8 month old ( Sunday) little girl whose healthy birth made those dreams a reality and laid the fears of last year to rest ( although others have popped up in their place =) Last year I was doing little and wondering if I was doing to much... while longing to be active again. Now I am chasing an increasingly more mobile little girl who makes me grateful for the down moments. This time last year I was watching the scale wanting it to go up and watching my waistline enjoying the increase in its circumference. These days I am watching that scale and praying it goes down while I am actively working to whittle that circumference down. I am still trying to tell myself that Big is beautiful... but now I am talking about the bountiful baby bosom, instead of the burgeoning baby bump. Oh how life has changed.

I am not much of a fan of change. More honestly I approach it with the cautiousness of a cat on the prowl and the surliness of a bear coming out of hibernation. A has blown that away. I can no longer sit shaking my head with my arms folded and my lips pursed. I have to accept change as part of my day to day life now. Not only does my daughter change daily, but in order to keep up with her I must too. I must adjust and allow for a little flexibility in order to let my daughter grow and learn as she should.

I am not saying that this has been an easy transition for me. For instance, she loves to pull every toy that she has out of the basket I keep them in looking at them often tossing them over her shoulder, in a quest for the perfect toy to stuff into her mouth. When this first started I would dutifully pick up every toy as I moved her to another activity. I would have every block tucked into the basket and would gain great satisfaction from my clean floor. The thing is that she would be on the floor again three more times before the end of the day pulling every toy out and tossing them over her shoulder again. I would still be picking up the toys at the end of the night after she went to sleep. I feel no small amount of chagrin as I let you all know that it took me a full week to give up on the three times a day clean up. I now clean them up once... at the end of the night after she has gone to bed. Yes even I can be taught, though it took a long while for it to sink in.

Life with a child is not stationary, but it is never boring either. I never looked forward to the change before... but as she gets more mobile, begins to reason more, and becomes more independent... I am seeing the potential for a lot of fun in the adventure of change. Who would have thought that I could not only accept change... but learn to relish it. Every change in her takes us one step closer to who A will eventually become. How exhilarating, this quest into such uncharted territory. And I will go on the record right now saying " Bon adventure"

Rock-a-by.... ZZZZZZ.....

Our little missy is having a hiccough in her sleep patterns. For nearly the last week she has been waking up at about midnight ready to party just as Daddy and I are ready to snooze. She gets frustrated when we then lay with her in a darkened room trying to calm her to sleep. We have been trying everything. Only one nap... nope, two shorter naps.... uh uh, staying up later.... I don't think so I'll just delay waking up, bath before bedtime... hello I am not into sleeping, and a host of various other things. What worked last night for us was Dave and I going to bed when she just started to wake. This method convinced her that it was bedtime before she was awake enough to notice the party life. The thing is that it has to be BOTH of us.... otherwise all bets are off. ( you can add me going to bed early to the list of tactics above and add a resounding NO to the end) Dave however doesn't really have a set time to work until... he works until the work is done. That means that we sometimes have him home at 9 PM once at 3AM, and D needs some unwind time before hopping into bed. It is hard to make that work with this new issue A is having.

So as you may imagine I have been spending a large number of my evening hours trying to lull my infant to sleep, as letting her get up to play hardly seems the answer. I am getting to the point where I dread the late evening hours... She goes to sleep easy enough the first time, its just when she wakes up that we have such a hard time. She is exhausted something you can tell by the cries and the eye rubbing. And just as she is about to nod off she will jerk herself awake and start all over again with the crying. The worst part about it all is that no sooner do you think " Ah ha success!" then she is awake and crying again. Sometimes crying before she is even fully awake. It is very frustrating, especially since we haven't had these type of sleep issues in her life to date.

Dave and I are getting tired; very very tired, and frustrated; very very frustrated. We are starting to wonder if we will ever get back to our regular life again. Whats worse is that she appears to be adjusting her own schedule to allow for these evening attacks. She has started sleeping later in the morning. When I started waking her up rather than letting her sleep.... she just took a longer nap. Still I am working to change this little habit as frantically as I can. I just am not sure that there is anything that we haven't tried yet. ARGH! Meanwhile the lullabies that I am singing are only serving to put me to sleep.

The better to eat you with my dear......

A has cut her third tooth and a fourth is on the way. She now has teeth on the top too. How exciting... how scary... how positively wonderful. Daddy was playing on the floor with her on Sat when he noticed it. I don't know how we could have missed the sucker but it is already cut through and ready for her to start chomping with. Not that any one can see it. She has been so busy running her tongue over it that you can't get close... and when you try she clamps shut. It is officially no longer safe to let the kid chew on your fingers... my father found that one out the other day. As he was shrieking in pain A was looking at him calmly with an expression that plainly said " what's the big deal, wuss."
Our visit to the Docs on Thurs of last week gave us a bit of info that I had suspected but was not entirely happy with. Our little A has had a "cold" off and on for the last month because she suffers from hay fever. Doc said that she was not sick but that nose, throat, ears, and lungs all sounded terribly irritated. He also said that the 100+ temps that I had been seeing were because while not sick she is not well and that is how her body responds to the irritation. He also said that there was nothing that we could do to treat except for the allergy meds that she already takes to control her eczema. If it gets real bad we can add in another time per day that she gets it. But that for me will be a last resort because it makes her sleepy and grouchy. I for one like my little girl's smile not only that but I really like to spend my time with her when she is not out cold. So we will just have to suffer through the allergies and know that sooner or later they will get better.
Doc told me that really eczema, hay fever, and asthma are not all different illnesses or issues, but rather different aspects of the same. He is not surprised that we are dealing with hay fever... and won't be if it turns into asthma at some point. I am not so willing to look at it that way. I do not want my little one to have asthma. It can be debilitating and keeps a lot of kids from being active parts of the world around them. So we are praying really hard that it won't go that route, while also aggressively treating the eczema breakouts so that it doesn't go much further. Keep your fingers crossed and say a prayer if you pray.
The thing about our little princess is that even with teething while suffering from hay fever we have not had a cross word out of her. She still has a smile for nearly everyone. Dr. was amazed by how well behaved she was when he was examining her. He kept calling her his Irish beauty. Nearly every one we meet tells us how beautiful she is. I know that all parents are convinced that they have a beautiful child, but I really think that we have one of the prettiest. Not to mention the happiest and the nicest and the smartest and the.... well I don't want to get carried away and start to look like I am bragging on her or anything. But she is singing my song.... and she does it in such a sweet way.... gotta go.

Long time no write....

I must apologize for how remiss I have been in my duties of letting everyone know how our little princess is growing and changing.... Our little princess has been ill and it has been keeping me on my toes.

A has been dealing with a case of the sniffles since mother's day off and on. Every time that it got bad enough that Dave and I would be ready to cart her off to the Doc's office... she would get better and we would opt out. It seems that it is going around and this case of the sniffles has put my brother my mother and my father on antibiotics. This last week I myself fell prey to this nasty little bug... and had to go to the doc.... where I was told that I have what sounds to be pneumonia and sinusitis, although she didn't bother to take a chest x-ray because she was putting me on meds anyways. The whole household has been suffering with me as I cannot be in a lay down position for more than five minutes before I am coughing like a maniac. So they gave me a cough medicine with codeine... which would be wonderful if I didn't have to get up with an active 7 month old baby at 8 every morning...

I had thought that I might want to bring A in just in case due to the fact that I am sick... and then she got a fever that matched mine ( 101 and some pocket change.) So we are off to see the wizard tomorrow to get her little butt on an antibiotic or be told that she is not in need of one. Either way I will know as a mommy that I have had this checked out. She is not terribly ill and in fact aside from the fever seems in good health. The sniffles have abated for the most part (right now) Perhaps we will go in tomorrow and she will make a liar of me.

With her off and on sick though I have been a little busy. I sure look forward to the day that she can wipe and blow her own nose.... LOL. One nice little side effect is that all of the sinus pressure cleared out the clogged tear duct. So we don't hear " what's wrong with her eye" any more. Some days it would look like someone smacked her in the eye. So we are certainly thankful for that. The "cure" for it if it didn't clear up on its own is a nasty little procedure that I wanted nothing to do with. ( Dave made me promise that we wouldn't do it when he heard about it.... as if I was even considering it. )

At any rate I do apologize for how neglectful I have been. I will try to be better in the following weeks.