Uuuugggg

Jax has been up until 5:30 in the morning the last two nights, and it's looking like it may go that way again tonight. Emma has an ear infection. My mind is jello. Matt went back to work yesterday, so wasn't much of a help last night. He endured heavy sighs and updates from me about how I was still awake each hour though, so I'm not sure he got much more sleep either. Whoops.

Oh- and I keep breaking out in hives on my legs and now my arms. What's that all about?

On a brighter note- my parents come tomorrow. Woo hoo!

As of Late

While Matt was changing Em's diaper today she said to him, "Oh man, I had to pee so bad!" Ahhhahaha. I'm guessing she picked that one up from her water guzzling momma.


In other news...


Jackson was born a week ago today, which means...we've survived our first week! Success! And we're even relatively sane still! Since being on Zantac his sleeping has improved so much. He's a pretty content little guy, and mostly reserves his screaming for his daily blowouts. Seriously, these newborn diapers just aren't keeping it in on his scrawny lil bod.


We went to the design studio today to pick out new carpeting, laminate, and paint colors for our house. Yeeay! Since our house was an inventory house, we weren't able to pick out any of these things, so it's really nice being able to make a few changes. Oh- I got my white blinds too! I can't wait to see everything together. Hopefully we'll like it.


I'm pretty exhausted today, and really hoping that Matt and I will be able to just chill out a bit and watch a chick flick tonight. A couple nights ago, our movie night didn't turn out quite the way I was hoping. We watched The Book of Eli. Not really what I had in mind. I mean, I love weird, blood-bath movies as much as the next girl buuuut...come on now. I could handle it all of ten minutes before I realized I'd much rather read...or sleep...or do laundry. Heck, I'd even watch Man vs. Food. Tonight I pick the movie though. There's been way too much testosterone flowing through the t.v. between the World Cup and the NBA finals. I'm thinking maybe When in Rome or Dear John. Though today I saw a cute little chubby girl wearing a sequined shirt today that made me want to watch Little Miss Sunshine. :) We shall see.

My Girl

Ok I just finished nursing and looked down at my chest and for a split second thought, "AAAHHH my nipple's missing!!" Then I realized that I had just snapped up my nude-colored nursing bra.

Phew.

Anywho...

I was told several times that one of the hardest things about having a second child is dealing with all the feelings of change for the first child. We knew that we were probably going to have to deal with behavior issues and hurt feelings with the transition from only chid to big sister. What I didn't realize was that hurting your two-year old's feelings because they don't feel completely loved by you is one of the worst feelings in the world.

Overall, Emma's done a great job adjusting to this new little squirt that's in the house. Of course it helps a ton that she has lots of people around to pay attention to her, so she doesn't always notice that her parents are a little distracted. When she first came to the hospital to meet Jackson she looked like she was about to cry. She warmed up quickly though and reluctantly planted a kiss on him after some coaxing from Daddy. She even held him for a good three seconds before yelling, "All done!" and started running around the hospital room showing off for all of us. She was not going to be shown up by this little goober. She wasn't quite sure about how felt about me though. She came into bed with me a couple times but wouldn't stay long. When we got home from the hospital she wanted nothing to do with me. She spent lots of time with her daddy, but stayed away from me unless Matt made her go to me. Just stab me in the postpartum heart. Good thing for my emotional well-being her cold-shoulder only lasted a day or two.

She quickly warmed up to her little brother though. Our second day in the hospital she was much more comfortable and constantly wanted to kiss and play with "Sackson". It was the same way when he came home. She payed close attention to everything he did and kept telling us how cute he was. In fact, she wanted to touch him all the time. I mean, all the time. And push on his head. And nose. And eyes. And well, you get the point. She was very excited, which was great. Mildly annoying but great. I think she realized that she would get a reaction from mommy and daddy when she would poke and prod at him. I guess when you're two and suddenly have to share your parents' attention, you'll do what you can to keep as much of it as you can, regardless of the consequences. We've tried to balance the fine line between being gentle with her little feelings and being firm about obeying and not causing her baby brother bodily harm.

It all came to a head last night around bed time. She kept waking up fitfully and crying out for us. We just had to pop in and give her a quick pat for her to stop crying. At one point though I was with Jackson and Matt had run out for a few minutes, so Grandpa tried to calm her down. As soon as Matt went in to get her she took one look at him and her little chin started trembling and she started crying one of those sweet, pathetic cries. So we held her and cuddled her for a while. She was just so sad, and we knew she didn't even understand why. We both laid in bed with her, rubbing her head. Again, just stab me in the postpartum heart. I just wanted to keep holding her, and just make her know without any doubt how very loved she is and how that will never change, no matter how our lives change.

Today we ventured out to swim and run some errands together as a family of four. I really liked it. Hopefully my baby girl did too.

Stickin' with it

Aaaahhhh- so I planned to write about Em and how she's doing in her big sister role, buuut I also don't want to be up until 2:00 again and Matt just asked me to watch a movie with him, which sounds really great soooo...I'll write tomorrow. But maybe a little right now. Ok, quick post to stick with the goal.

How about...the blessings of breastfeeding...

I've been having trouble with feeding Jax. He won't take from one side and it's driving me nuts. His weight dropped enough for me to have to bring him back in tomorrow, so I've ben working my tail off to make sure he's getting enough to eat. That means nursing on one side, attempting the other, pumping both sides and giving him a bottle. It's a bit time consuming. However, it's kind of like a trip to the gym. All that boob action burns the calories even faster than the Stairmaster. Last night for dinner I had spaghetti, two pieces of bread, and fruit for dinner. Then for dessert I had four chocolate covered strawberries, a huge piece of Brewster's ice cream pie, and finished off a pint of Ben & Jerry's (wow, maybe I should be embarrassed about this). Yet when I woke up in the morning and weighed myself I had still dropped three more pounds. Woo hoo!! You can't beat that!

How about an analogy?

Breastfeeding is to exercise as Chinese drywall is to ________.

Any guesses?

My full-time job.

Ahhhhahah- get it? I don't have to actually do anything to burn calories while breastfeeding like I don't have to really do anything but still make money everyday from the Chinese drywall stipend.

I'm so clever. Newborn brain schmooborn brain.

Walmart Hospital

Uuuuggg...here I am again in the wee hours of the morning, just sitting down to write. Emma's crying in bed and I forgot to give Jax his acid reflux meds before his last feeding and he's kind of a mess too. Feeding is not going so well, and my bubs feel like they might just fall right off. But contrary to how I sound right now, today was a really good day! This first week is just such a roller-coaster, and I guess it makes sense to be a little wound tight at 1:00 in the morning.

So here we go- our days in the hospital. First, maybe I should preface this with the fact that we referred to the place where I had Emma as the country club. It was just a really great hospital, and Matt's mom had warned me that it wouldn't be like that here. She was right. :) I guess the philosophy of our hospital here is to give the family their space and not interfere as much as possible. Um, okay, I suppose that's nice, except for the fact that i have a home in which we can have family time. If I'm going to be in a hospital for a couple days, it would be kind of nice to get some help so I can maybe recover and not go home feeling like I not only gave birth but also got hit by a truck as well. Maybe that's just me.

The first night I asked the nurse if I could put Jax in the nursery between feedings so I could get a little bit of uninterrupted sleep. I hadn't slept at all the night before while I was in labor and well, I did just push an 8 lb. person out of my bod. Just sayin'. The nurse told me how they really like to keep the babies with the moms as much as possible. Oh. Well, thanks for the generous dose of guilt. She came back at about 1:30 and I asked again. I know, I'm a bad mom. Jax was back at 4:00 so I did get a whopping 2 hours of sleep that first night. When the OB came in at around 8 the next morning she took one look at Matt and me and told us we looked awful. Matt explained what had happened the night before and she said that they have a tendency to make people feel guilty; they'd had many conversations about it. She would put a sign up on our door and order that he stay in the nursery for 4-6 hours. Aaaaahhh, my new hero. We felt so much better after getting some rest and were ready to face the day.

Unfortunately, we had more problems throughout the day. Whenever I asked a nurse a question her reply was always,"I don't know. I don't usually work on this floor." After hearing that from 3 different nurses I felt more like I was in Walmart than in a hospital. A little frustrating. That night I asked again if we could put Jax in the nursery between feedings so we could get more than 2.5 hours of sleep. This time the nurse's reply was that the only person in the nursery wasn't from this floor and we may not want to put him in, in case he spit up and had to be suctioned or anything. Seriously? So...what is there a 15 year-old who just took a baby-sitting course taking care of the babies or what? I thought we were in a hospital! You're telling me that the person in the nursery isn't competent to help my baby if he starts choking? Awesome! So Jax spent the night with us again and we slept an hour. ONE. HOUR.

Our little Jax has the same acid reflux problems that Em did and could not be put down at all after feeding without continuous screaming. When I finally did get him down and drift off to sleep at about 1:00, at 1:15 the nurse woke me up you get my vitals. Are you kidding me? Then again at 4:00 I fell asleep for about a half hour when another nurse came in and woke me to ask about Jax's pees and poops. Again, information that I would prefer not to give while sleeping. I was so ready to get out of there and started asking about being discharged at 7. At 4:00 they finally let us go. I was seething as I waited 45 minutes for wheelchair man to arrive to wheel me out. By the time he arrived I was trying to hold back sobs as the crazy new mother that everyone avoided looking at on the way out. Oh dear. I feel like I was pretty level-headed and they did all they could to make me crazy before I left. Thankfully the sunshine, a smoothie, and a stop at Target on the way home helped me jump off the crazy train.

The Push

I'm exhausted, sore, and coming down from about a 7.5 on the crazy scale right now, but I really, really want to meet my goal of blogging 5 times a week now that little man is here. Since our ghetto hospital didn't have Internet I'm already behind schedule, so I'm going to ignore my beckoning bed and write.

Let's head back to Thurs...

At around 11:00 Matt and I headed to bed and I started having contractions pretty regularly. I tried so hard to get some sleep but to no avail. Around 2:00 the contractions started to get more painful and closer together, so I got up to walk around. Since my water broke with Emma and I didn't have any contractions until I was induced, I wasn't really sure how all of this was going to play out. By 3:30 I realized that it was probably about time to head to the hospital, so I went in to wake my crazy-in-the-middle-of-the-night sleeping husband, who, during college, people used to wake up abruptly in the middle of the night just for a good laugh. He was pretty confused by the whole idea of me being in labor, but I eventually convinced him it was time to go...not before he asked if I was going to shower, (um, no I've had plenty of leisurely time in the last several hours being awake to shower if I wanted, thank you) if he could shower, (really?) and if I wanted to swing by Starbuck's (he just wasn't getting it, poor guy). He eventually woke up enough to get us safely to the hospital (after asking if he was allowed to run some red lights) and the whole surreal experience began. I wasn't any more dilated at that point then I was earlier in the day at my check-up, but the doctor that had seen me earlier was on call and was pretty confident of my impending delivery, so there was no question about if I should be admitted or not. Of course, I asked for my epidural right away and got it two hours later. Boo. By that time I was having the shakes and feeling like I was going to throw up at every contraction. Thankfully, the pain was relieved enough for me to rest for the next several hours though. At about 11:15 I told the nurse that my contractions were starting to get pretty painful again so she said either it's time to up your dose or push. Sure enough I was at 9.5 centimeters, so it was time to meet my baby boy! Having someone tell you that it's time to push another human being out of your body has got to be one of the weirdest experiences in the world. Offering you a large mirror to watch it happen is even weirder; I had to decline. I pushed for about a half hour with Matt in soccer drill mode, holding my legs and counting to ten. Finally the doctor said, "Look! Here he is!" to which I closed my eyes to the bloody mess of a conehead child in front of me. As I was saying, "Eeeeww gross, " I reminded myself that it was my child and I probably shouldn't close my eyes. I held my little mole right away and actually remember everything with this one, unlike the painful blur of Emma's birth. It was a pretty great delivery if I do say so myself. Though tomorrow I'm writing about our next two days in the hospital. Now that's a different story. I'll going to have to have my gripe water and tequila on hand for that.

So here we go again. Another month has gone since my last post. Shoot. I have such good intentions. Again though, I blame the Chinese drywall. My poor laptop is living out it's last days on life-support and I just can't bring myself to consistently blog in my in-laws' kitchen. I don't know why. It's kind of like trying to write in a classroom. It's possible but so much easier to get my thoughts out curled up in my own space. When Jax arrives (anytime now!) my goal is to write 5 times a week. Even if the only thing I say is, "Jax pooped and Emma's funny." Good enough for me! I originally had the lofty goal of blogging everyday, but come on now, that's like saying you're going to have sex every single day in your first year of marriage. it just ain't gonna happen, and who needs all that pressure.


The last month has been a good one. My bro and sis-in-law came down to Disney with their kids so we spent a couple days using our passes with them. Em loves "Mickey Mouse's House" and now whenever we call her goofy her response is, "Noooo, I'm Minnie Mouse!" Ahahaha. She's such a fun little girl and will make a great big sister. She says the funniest things, all of which I can't think of at the moment, of course. Good thing I'll be blogging so much more often here pretty soon. :)

Matt's brother and his wife also came down for a visit and we all headed to the beach for a relaxing Memorial Day weekend. There's something about the ocean air (and king-sized bed) that always makes me sleep well. Emma slept really well too. Probably because she just plays nonstop ALL. DAY. LONG. I don't know how often I'll be able to go without Matt after Jax is born. She's not one that's just content to play by mommy's feet in the sand. She loves getting right in the water and running sprints up and down the beach. I swear she's going to be an Olympic athlete one day.


I can't believe Jax is going to be an outside-the-womb member of our family within the week. It's funny because I'm just starting to realize that I really don't mind being pregnant all that much. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I like it, but this pregnancy is a lot more enjoyable than my first. With Em I was a waddling hobbit that was uncomfortable ALL the time. With Jax, I mostly just waddle when it's over 95 degrees and am only uncomfortable in the middle of the night...and morning...and when I can actually feel new stretch marks forming across my belly, but that's definitely an improvement from all the time! I also just finished reading a book called A Thousand Sisters, which documents women living in Congo and all the atrocities that they have faced in villages where 90% of women have been raped and most have lost children or watched family members murdered. It's one of those perspective altering books that made me realize just how petty some of the things I worry about are, and the privilege it is to be able to extend blessings to others with all that I've been given.

Well, it's a Saturday afternoon and this preggo needs a nap.

Cinco de Ear Infectiono

Last night Matt took Em out to swing while I ran upstairs to grab her a sweatshirt. She's the type of kid that never wants to stop playing, regardless of the elements. You can almost hear the voice inside her head, "m-m-m-muust....hhhhaaavvee....f-f-f-f-f-un," chattering as she continues to play through shivering, purple lips. Before I reached the door though, they were back inside. She was laying on her daddy's shoulder and said she was cold and wanted to go in. Ah, a sure sign that something was wrong. We both thought she felt a little warm, and put her to bed early (or shall we say actually on time for once). At about 3 she woke up crying that she wanted to cuddle.

Over and over...

I finally went in gave her the pat on the back that usually calms her, but she just kept crying and trying to climb up in my arms. I went back to bed hoping that it would stop, but then I heard coughing and groggily remembered that she didn't feel good. My first thought was another ear infection, which meant that she wasn't going to get back to sleep laying down, so I went in and held her. When she still wouldn't go back to sleep I brought her to our cozy, full-sized, pregnant- bellied-plus-a-husband-and-body-pillow-bed. A genuine sleeper's paradise.

Um, no.

I think it was at about 5:30 that my tears started flowing. The night before I had to get up four times to pee, not including the time I went before going to bed and when I woke up for the morning. There wasn't much time for good sleep. And now another night of little sleep. As I laid wide awake I couldn't help but think that in a month in a half I'd be up half the night with a newborn, and well, it just made my hormones take over. Then Matt (who was also awake and going to work in a couple short hours) started rubbing my arm. Soon I felt another little hand doing the same. Poor little sick Em sat up to rub her crying mommy's arm. The tears that flowed after that were for an entirely different reason.

My doctor wasn't in this morning, so I had to bring her to someone else who suggested that I talk with my doctor about seeing a specialist. Saw that one coming. I would rather not get tubes in her ears but this is getting a little insane. It's just strange because she never had a single ear infection until December, and now she's had five. Boo. Oh, and when I gave her the latest round of medicine she kept saying she didn't wike it. It was yucky. So, I tried to give it to her quickly. Big mistake. Everything she'd eaten all day long came up in nice brown chunks all over both of us. Mmmm...nothin' says lovin' like hugging your kid and telling them it's okay that you're both bathing in vomit. The phrase "the things we do for love" takes on an entirely new element after becoming a parent.

To My (not so) Baby Girl

April 28, 2008

April 28, 2009

April 28, 2010

Dear Emma,

It's hard for me to believe that two years have passed since you came into this world. I vividly remember the day that you were born. Your daddy and I were so nervous and excited to finally meet you. It was hard to believe that you were really ours. You were so tiny, swimming in even your newborn clothes. Driving home with you from the hospital I was so nervous. I may have even made your daddy pull over to the side of the road so I could ride in the backseat to watch you. I had so much to learn (and still do!) about being a mommy.

You grew and changed so much in those first several months. I knew you were going to be spunky. Even in your first year you were silly and laughed often. You were a fun baby, but your transition from baby to toddler has been my favorite. I'm amazed by how much you've changed from your first birthday. You're no longer a baby. You're an amazing little girl. I love spending time with you, and you bring your daddy and me more joy than I even thought possible. You are so loved, baby girl. You are surrounded by people near and far that think you are so special. Even as a little two year-old you have a huge capacity to love. You're always talking about some family member, and how you want to see or call them. You love calling up a grandparent, aunt, uncle, or cousin to tell them what you're doing and to hear their voices. You also talk about your friends a lot and ask multiple times a day what they're doing.

You have quite the vocabulary and talk nonstop. I mean, seriously, nonstop. The last few times that we've taken long car rides late at night your dad and I place bets on whether you'll fall asleep or just talk incessantly. My bet is always that you'll stay awake, no matter how late it is or how action-packed our day has been. I always win. You also love to pretend with your stuffed animals. I often overhear conversations that you have telling them that they need to obey mommy or daddy. Haha- I guess that's something that you hear a lot.

You're also such an active little girl. You love running and dancing and jumping (everyone is jealous of your awesome calves) and playing outside. Whenever you're on a swing you always yell, "Go higher!" and when you learn something new you say, "Watch me!" to whoever is willing to listen. One of your favorite indoor activities is coloring, which is great because you're always good at restaurants as long as you have a crayon in front of you. Your favorite thing is drawing small circles, which I think is quite advanced for your age. :) You also have developed a love for singing. Though, I'm not going to lie, I'm pretty sure you won't be making a career out of it. Girl, right now you can hardly carry a tune, but you love belting out songs with the radio and your favorite songs to sing right now are "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and "Jesus Loves Me."

Your daddy and I are so proud to be your parents and thank God all the time for the privilege of raising you. Of all the great experiences I've been able to have in this life, my favorite is being your mommy. I love you so much and look forward to seeing how much you'll grow in this next year. Just know that no matter how old you get, you will always be my baby girl.

Wuv you soooo much,

Mommy

Blame it on the dra, dra, dra, dra, dra, drywall

What happened to mid-March through mid-April? I tell ya, I think the time was stolen because it's all kind of a blur to me. So much has happened. We moved out of our house, visited with our Finnish family, became Finnish citizens, entered the last year of my twenties, and Emma, well don't even get me started on how much she's changed. In less than a week she'll be TWO, and in a month and a half we'll be the parents of TWO (I suppose technically we already are).

Last time I blogged I was on a roll, confident that I would continue my consistent writing and picture uploading. That was over a month ago. I remember writing my last post and thinking, "Tomorrow I'll put up super cute pictures of Emma's acting debut." So many tomorrows have turned into yesterdays since then.


I blame the Chinese drywall.

About a month ago, our awesome neighbor, who knows all the ins and outs of the neighborhood, told us that some houses in the neighborhood had Chinese drywall and we better get ours checked out. Since we've only been in our house a year and all this about the drywall came out before we moved into it, I wasn't too concerned. I mean, what builder was still using tainted Chinese drywall in 2008?

Um, ours was.

Matt was even less concerned than me, but I figured we would get it checked just in case.
I was told that the inspection should take about an hour, and that the inspector couldn't come out for about a week. Not the best sign. He was obviously very busy checking lots of tainted houses. When he did come, it took him all of 30 seconds to determine that we did, in fact, have the dang drywall.

Awesome!

The builder would supposedly move us out and "make it right" but not until June. It's one thing to unknowingly live in a toxic environment. It's quite another knowing we were exposing our little girl and unborn child to it. We stayed in the house one night- and then decided to get the heck outta there, whether they would pay for us to get out or not.

Thankfully, Matt's parents opened up their home to us once again. And we got our start date moved forward thanks to the power of pregnancy and connections. Supposedly, we'll be back in our house by the end of June. We'll see.

There have definitely been casualties along the way.

For instance, our Mac.
The one that we paid over $700 to have fixed.
The one that was only 2 years old.
Will we be reimbursed for that?
Nope.

My laptop.
I haven't blogged in the last month partially due to the fact that this beast is so dang slow now, and it seems like it's going to crash at any second.
I was blaming the poor craftsmanship of Dell.
Now I think the real villain is my walls.
Or the Chinese.
Or our builder.

Our brand new video camera that we just bought at Christmas.
Also dead.
We were just starting to use it more often and getting really great videos of Em.
I guess that means they also owe us all those lost memories.

Except all these electronics died in vain because if we wanted to get our house fixed, we had to sign a form releasing our builder from the responsibility of paying for these items. But really, what choice did we have? We could join one of the lawsuits...and do what in the meantime? Just let our house sit and maybe someday get fixed? Maybe someday get paid for it, maybe not? There just wasn't a whole lot of options for a family with two small children.

Today when I saw our builder advertising signs for a "secret sale" I contemplated standing next to the guy with my own sign saying that the secret was that their houses were constructed with Chinese drywall. But I didn't. Today at least. But I'm definitely keeping my options open...