Magic meds

Poor baby has been so congested lately, she has been waking up unable to breathe. Last week (my first "single mom" week), I would get up every night between 2 and 5 with her, give her a bottle, try to suck some of it out, and put her back to sleep. She would have trouble because still she'd be congested. Then, I got a prescription for her because this had been going on about 3 weeks. No other symptoms (coughing, fever).

Well, this week she is sleeping through the night again! The past 2 nights she's slept from about 10:30 to 7 and that makes mama very happy! Last night I slept ALL NIGHT LONG. I went to sleep, and I didn't wake up till my alarm went off. I don't think that has happened since about my 4th month of pregnancy. I actually went in to make sure Jenna was still breathing before my shower. :)

I am regressing in another area. I hate leaving her at daycare. After the inital pain of leaving her there, I was OK with it for a week or so. Now I just feel guilty and I miss her and I keep telling myself she's better off getting stimulation from other babies and other people. She's building up her immunity, learning, and being exposed to people she otherwise wouldn't. I'll keep telling myself that...

Jenna likes her veggies!

Well, I don't know about all veggies, but she likes green beans. We fed her baby food for the first time yesterday--we chose green beans because we heard if you start them on fruit, they won't eat veggies. I really didn't think she would like them at all, but she loved them! Ate half the container yesterday and the other half today.

What we did not take into consideration when choosing green beans, however, is the massive amounts of projectile spew this kid produces. So all afternoon, instead of white spit-up flowing out of her mouth, it was green. Yum, Yum. We always keep bibs on her because of this problem, but usually they look relatively clean even when they're not. Yesterday, poor baby looked neglected, like we never clean her up. She went through one bib after another, prompting us to buy 6 more. Now I think her grand bib total is about 18. Now, maybe we'll only have to do laundry every 3 days instead of every 2!

There have been a lot of baby girl changes lately. She's been talking/laughing a lot, she finally acknowledges toys, she puts EVERYTHING in her mouth, and she has become mesmerized by the TV. She still doesn't roll over, but when I put her down for tummy time in front of the TV, she's more interested in it than in trying to roll over. :)

100 Things

Almost every blog I read has a "100 Things" at some point, and I realized that yesterday was my "blogiversary." So I thought why not--now would be a good time to do it. Here are my 100 things.

1. Moving and not selling the house is stressing me out!
2. I don't see how single parents do it.
3. I don't know if I can come up with 100 things.
4. I miss hubby when I'm not with him.
5. Sometimes I even miss him when I am with him.
6. I love my baby girl.
7. Sometimes she pisses me off, but I still love her.
8. I am always trying to lose weight, usually unsuccessfully.
9. I worry too much.
10. I try to let God take some of that worry.
11. I am very blessed.
12. Teeth issues freak me out.
13. I finally have a dentist I love.
14. I am dreading finding a new dentist in Austin.
15. I think I will come back to Houston twice a year to go.
16. I wish I could do that with our church, but that's not feasible every week+!
17. I hate Cher.
18. I mean, I really can't stand her. I convulse when I hear her voice.
19. I love Def Leppard.
20. They're my favorite band of all time. Still.
21. I love scuba diving.
22. I wish I could do it more.
23. But if I did, maybe I wouldn't love it so much.
24. I am a sitcom junkie.
25. I hate reality TV. Never watch it.
26. I love my friends & family.
27. I lived in Tokyo when I was younger.
28. I wish I could go back to visit.
29. I have really, really, really bad eyesight.
30. I can't get lasik, but even if I could, I'd be too scared.
31. I've always been scared I'd pass that to my child.
32. It bothers me when people drive under the speed limit. I don't know why, but I always seem to be in a hurry.
33. I am NOT a morning person.
34. I hate smoking more than just about anything.
35. It's the only thing I don't mind being rude about (making yucky faces).
36. I can't stand when people use apostrophies for plural words.
37. I also can't stand when people put "s" on the end of stores that don't end in s.
38. I also hate when stores have names that are misspelled on purpose ("kwik", "kountry").
39. I am always cold.
40. I will talk about very personal stuff with friends, but not on my blog.
41. I used to be depressed.
42. Now I consider myself happy.
43. I hardly ever cry.
44. I've cried more since Jenna was born than I probably have in the past 10 years.
45. I love fruit.
46. I love chocolate.
47. I don't care much for chocolate with fruit.
48. This 100 things is turning out to be more fun than I thought.
49. I work for the best company ever.
50. They are very flexible.
51. Good thing I have a good work ethic.
52. I hardly talk to anyone from high school anymore, or even college.
53. I have a Journalism degree.
54. I never wanted to be a Journalist.
55. I met hubby in college.
56. He is wonderful. I can't even express how wonderful.
57. I like to wash my car. I hate taking it somewhere to have it done.
58. I wish I could play a musical instrument. I took piano & guitar lessons when I was younger, but my mom was right--she always said when I got older, I'd wish I stuck with it.
59. I have never sung karaoke and probably never will. I love to sing in the car, only when no one can hear me. :)
60. I have an increasingly negative outlook on human nature.
61. I try not to, but it's best if I stay out of Wal Mart.
62. I hate Wal Mart.
63. But I go there anyway.
64. I don't have any tattoos.
65. I think my favorite movie is Office Space.
66. I pretty much only like to watch comedies lately.
67. Although I haven't seen a movie since before Jenna was born.
68. I really can't stand when people say "GD." It's one of the few things I will be vocal about.
69. I am intimidated by a lot, but not nearly as much as I used to be.
70. I wish I could go back to high school and not be so shy or scared of everyone.
71. I never drink coffee. Hate it.
72. I am addicted to diet coke, but I try to only drink caffeine-free. And I don't like to order it in restaurants because it's usually flat.
73. I could easily be a vegetarian. I don't like to eat much meat.
74. I hate my hair. I can never figure out what to do with it.
75. Chipotle is my favorite place to eat. I always get the veggie burrito with black beans.
76. I was a competitive swimmer for most of my youth. I lettered my freshman year of high school and wore my letter jacket EVERY DAY in my sophomore year. I must have been annoying.
77. I don't swim anymore. I did when my gym had a pool, but not now.
78. I wish I could go to the gym more, but Jenna takes a lot of time.
79. But as long as I'm wishing, I'd rather go for steep hikes or something more fun than the gym.
80. I don't like the way I feel about myself when I'm not working out regularly.
81. A couple of years, I did a half olympic triathlon and then the MS150 and a few 5Ks. I feel really out of shape now.
82. Someday I want to run a marathon.
83. I don't think I ever will. Oh, well.
84. I used to love flying, but now I don't. We traveled a lot and I got sick of it.
85. I am terrified of public speaking.
86. It stresses me out to the point of vomiting.
87. I listen to my ipod on shuffle all day at work. But most of the music is old.
88. I once told a guy I didn't like ice cream to get of a date.
89. I actually love ice cream. A whole lot. Especially coconut and mint chocolate chip.
90. Hawaii is my favorite place on the planet. I don't like to lay on the beach...I just like to explore.
91. I often imagine I am there when I'm stressed or can't sleep. It's my "happy place."
92. But I wouldn't like it as much without Jay.
93. I love mango margaritas from Del Pueblo, but not really anywhere else. I also love the Wallaby Darned from Outback. But usually I just get beer.
94. I can't think of anyone I genuinely dislike.
95. I don't like crazy daycare lady, but I don't really have a solid reason. If she wasn't watching my baby girl, I'd probably like her.
96. "Breath of Heaven" is my favorite Christmas song.
97. I love Christmas and Christmas music. We got married December 27.
98. I hate Halloween. But I'm anxious to get a cute little costume for Jenna.
99. I don't know why, but I get excited about buying school and office supplies.
100. This was a lot easier than I thought.

Life as a single mom

Now that Jay has started his job in Austin, it's just me & Jenna at home. It will just be for 3-4 weeks, until I am there full-time. But I can tell it will wear me out, and we miss him! She did not make me feel very confident about this last night when she cried from about 7-9, and then woke up at 2 screaming for a bottle. Poor baby was so congested when I got her out of her crib, I thought maybe she wasn't really hungry, but just needed to be comforted back to sleep. Nope, the bottle was the only thing that calmed her down. First, I put saline drops in her nose and tried sucking it out, but I couldn't get anything out--it was too deep. Sorry, that's gross, but it is what it is. So after she ate, she was nowhere near ready to go back to sleep. She was squirmy and whiny, and I tried again, unsuccessfully, to get some of that congestion out. When she calmed down, she was able to breathe better, but she didn't calm down much. Hey--at least there was a Three's Company marathon on. :) At 3:30, I decided it was time for her (me) to go to sleep. So even though I still hadn't gotten her to sleep, I put her in her crib and let her squrim around for a while. She eventually fell asleep, until she woke up at 6:30 for another bottle. Amazingly, she wasn't that congested when I got her up this morning. I'm going to get a humidifier and see if that helps. Has anyone had luck with this?

One of the biggest changes lately in Jenna is she has been VERY talkative! She makes all kinds of sounds when she's in her papasan or her exersaucer. Cute! The only problem is that she does most of this happy talk in the morning & during the day, when she's at daycare. Then I get her for fussy time. Sigh...

Happy 4 months, Chunky Monkey!

Jenna is 4 months old today and I can't believe she's ONLY 4 months old. It seems like we've had her a lot longer than that. But as big as she is, she's still little and I'm trying to savor her "little" time. She had her 4-month checkup Friday. She did really well with the shots--just cried for a minute or so, and I think they made her sleepy like last time. She slept all the way to Austin and never made a peep. Of course, she was in the car with Jay and I was in my car. When I drive back to Houston by myself, I'm sure she'll cry the whole way. :)

We did confirm at Jenna's appointment that she is a big girl! At about 17.3 pounds, she is above the 97th percentile for weight. I don't know how she gains so much weight with all the spitting up she does, but we don't worry about that since she obviously isn't having trouble gaining weight. :) She was in the 75th percentile for length, and only 40th for head circumference. The doctor said she's healthy and it's fine--great, even--for her to be chubby. So go, Jenna, go! And happy 4 month birthday!

Why are we going backwards?

Jenna was sleeping really well at night. For a few weeks, she would go to bed around 10:30 and wake up 6:30-7. I guess we started getting used to it too fast. Now, for about the past week, she has been waking up around 4 or 5 every morning. I hope this is just a phase and it doesn't last. I guess I will have to do some reading about this in my spare time (WHAT???). Anyone else have this experience?

Mmmm, rice cereal

My new favorite thing is feeding Jenna rice cereal. It's so fun and she does seem to like it. I'm anxious to feed her baby food, though I shouldn't be too anxious because she'll get it everywhere. She's OK with the rice cereal. I guess since she spits up ALL THE DANG TIME, we're used to her having stuff all over her. I have to do her laundry every other day because she runs out of bibs so fast. Today she went through 3 bibs and 3 outfits at daycare, just from so much spit-up! But I'm liking this video thing, so here's a clip from her first feeding.

[OK, just kidding--I can't get the stupid thing to work. And I don't want to deal with it because my $450 contacts are driving me crazy...]

Nothing exciting, but we were enjoying her reaction. She always has her fingers in her mouth, too.

I am getting a little frustrated with her daycare. I'm not too concerned since we're leaving soon anyway, but I did say something to the owner today. We just get conflicting information all the time. We get a daily log of her eating, nap, and diaper schedule. Half the time it says she didn't have any dirty diapers, but we know she did only because her poopy clothes are sent home with us in a plastic grocery bag. Then yesterday it said her first feeding was at 7:30, but I didn't drop her off until 8:15. Anyway, I told them she ate at home at 6:45. And the diaper bag had her bottles, but also someone else's bottle too. Today it said they gave her 6 ounces at the feedings, but we always give her 5. Not only to we give her 5, but we fill the bottle with 5 ozs of water and some mylicon every morning so all they have to do is mix the formula. It also said she slept from 12 to 3:50, which would be the longest nap she's ever had in her life. I don't believe that because a) she never sleeps that long, and b) because they said she started spitting up really bad around 2:00. The other thing that bothers me is that a couple of weeks ago they gave me a caricature of her when I picked her up. They had someone come in and do that. It's cute, but yesterday when I paid her tuition, they told me I had a balance of $5.50 for the caricature. What? I didn't ask for that--I didn't even know about it until they gave it to me. None of this is that big of a deal, but almost every day there is something irritating that happens. Most of it started when they got this new lady who for some reason, just rubs me the wrong way. She is the one who makes all the mistakes I've mentioned, and she's the one who scratched Jenna's face (that scab finally fell off). I've started having a harder time dropping her off again because for some reason I just don't like that lady! She's not mean or anything, so I'm not sure what my problem is with her. As for the infant schedules, it's gotten to where I don't really trust what it says, so all I can do is assume that she has eaten every 3 hours, that they change her diaper regularly, and that she sleeps when she feels like sleeping. I'll kind of be glad when we can find another place in Austin.

Random stuff & a milestone

Jenna has her 4-month doctor appointment next week! I can't believe she's that old. On the other hand, I can't believe she's only 4 months old--it seems like we've had her a lot longer. I was trying to find some pictures that were taken when she was a newborn compared to now, and we don't have many of the same poses! I thought we did, but this was the best I could come up with for now. An out-of-focus one from when she was just 2 weeks old...

And one from today, when she's a week shy of 4 months old.

She fills that swing up so much now! I'm anxious to see what she weighs.

We were in Austin for the weekend. We drove around looking at houses, and we toured a few model homes in new neighborhoods. I am a REALLY BAD decision maker, and it's going to wear me out having to pick a location and then find a house we like enough to put an offer on. BUT, we don't need to do that until our house sells. We have had a lot of people look at it. The first week was slow, but this past week we've had a lot more. So far we've been told there are 3 families who are very interested in it, but I think 2 of them still have to sell their house. I think the third one must not be that interested. It's only been 2 weeks though.

Before we went to Austin, some friends had a going-away get-together for us, and we decided we have the best friends in the world. Well, we already knew that but I just don't deserve the friends I have! They are so sweet. We'll have to come to Houston a lot to get our friend fix. :)

While at my parents' house, Jenna did it again! She was jumping in her jumperoo. We were all talking in the kitchen and noticed that it has been unusually quiet for a while. This is what we saw:

And we did hit a milestone yesterday. We fed Jenna her first rice cereal! She actually seemed to like it. Since we didn't get home until almost 9 pm and she was already hungry, it didn't go as smoothly as planned. She did seem to enjoy it, but just couldn't quite figure out how to get it off the spoon. I think more ended up on her face than in her mouth, but we would have been shocked if it didn't. We got the whole thing on video, and one of these days if I have more time and if I'm not as tired, I'll download part of that.

HA HA HA

Jenna has been laughing lately and we LOVE to hear it! She doesn't do it as much as we'd like, but I'm sure she will. I'm going to attempt to include a video (though the qualitiy is really bad) so you can hear her laugh.





She's definitely a good distraction from Kaiser's lack of presence. We miss him so much, but it's hard not to smile when we look at Jenna's sweet face and hear that laughter!

Bye, sweet boy

Today was (and still is) one of the hardest, most emotionally draining days of my life. We went ahead and had our beloved angel put to sleep. We knew we had to, and the longer we waited, the harder it would be. He has been the best friend, companion, and teddy bear that we ever could have asked for. The poor guy was dealt a bad hand in health, and he made a very bad decision. I already explained about the bad decision, mildly about the health, and mildy about the previous instances of aggression. What I didn't mention was how sweet he was. How he would lay his head on our laps and take a nap. How he would always put his paws on our left leg when we squatted down. How excited he got EVERY TIME we came home or every time someone knocked or rang the doorbell. How gentle he was when he took a carrot stick out of our hands (since that's the only treat he was allowed). How he wouldn't push a door open unless he could get through it without touching it (so we never worried about him getting into anything). How he would sit so good whenever we groomed brushed him. How he loved to hang his head out the car window, loved to run around at the lake, loved to chase birds and squirrels. He would always lay by my feet whenever I was on the computer. He was so, so soft. Softer than any other dog I've ever known. He always held his left ear up, even when his right ear was down.

When he was licking away my tears as I was saying goodbye to him, I thought about how I will remember him as the sweetest dog ever, but I will have to remember Speedy's face, and any future little face that will not get his teeth marks imprinted in it. I have to think of the kids who have been scared by him, and other kids (be it Jenna or anyone else) who won't be in the future. I have to remember that we spared him of all the pain he would have had to endure in the future. He no longer has to get 2 shots a day at the same time, doesn't have to be held back when he wants to play, and doesn't have to be kept inside while the other dogs are running around at the lake so he doesn't pee blood. Now he doesn't have to have the THIRD bladder surgery that he was supposed to have at any time. I have to think of all these things because I know we made the right decision and I know we're all better off.

Bye, sweet friend--we will miss you more than you'll ever know.

Bad, bad dog

First of all, Jenna was baptized this morning, and she did really well. She didn't spit up and she didn't make a peep through the whole service. She fell asleep, so that helped. :) She actually wore the same dress I wore when I was baptized as a baby! It fit her perfectly. We didn't get any good pictures, so I will have to put her back in it and take some more pictures. :)

Like I said--not a good picture, but it shows the dress. My mom has a picture of me wearing the dress as a baby, and I wish we had a scanner so I could post it.

Jenna got a jumperoo at a shower, but we just started using it yesterday. We thought she was too small or too young before, but she LOVES it! We thought we just didn't have enough stuff sitting around in our living room, so wanted to add one more toy.

She loves the jumperoo so much, in fact, that she wears herself out.

That is definitely a rare occurance for her to fall asleep while playing, but I just had to grab the camera. :)

Jenna loves her bath time, but I always think she's so cute when she's wrapped in her towel afterwards. I had to get a picture of her in her favorite towel...actually, it's MY favorite towel because it's thick enough to dry her off. Most of those baby towels are soooooo thin!

OK, now why the title about the bad, bad dog? After the baptism this morning, we came back to our house with family a couple of friends and had lunch. Everything was fine until our dog BIT OUR FRIEND'S KID. (Cindy, again I am soooooooooo sorry) I'm not talking about a little playful nip, but enough to draw blood. To give a little history, our dog is the sweetest dog ever, but he has always been aggressive with kids. I was thinking he had never actually bitten a kid before, but really, upon further discussion, we remembered that he has. It's always been in a situation when we was trying to play and more or less scared the kid but didn't cause any damage. What happens is that he sees kids playing at his level, and he tries to play with them the same way he tries to play with other dogs. Sometimes though, I think he isn't really playing as much as he is defending something (though I'm not sure what it is that he's defending). Today, poor kid was just playing and being a kid, minding his own business, when the stupid dog lunged at him, barked, and nipped his face. He wasn't as phased as most kids would be, and his parents were too nice about it, but we felt so bad and this cannot EVER happen again. It should have never happened to begin with. Usually we leave him outside when there are kids in the house, but we can't have a dog that bites kids. We just can't--it's unacceptable. For the time-being, it would be easy to keep him away from kids--we'd simply put him outside when they're over. Right now, he has absolutely no problems with Jenna, but soon she will be crawling, walking, and doing things that provoke him. We used to think by the time that happened, he would be used to her and wouldn't do anything. Now, we're not so sure. So, this is where we run into the question of what to do about this. Given our dog's health history and current health maintenance, no one in their right mind would ever take him. So either we keep him away from kids and wait until the day he bites Jenna, or we put him down now. Anyone who knows us knows how much we love him--he has been our baby for 6 1/2 years! But the reality is he is not getting better about the kids thing. In fact, it's almost as if he's gotten worse. I have never seen a dog who is otherwise so sweet become so aggressive around kids. It's always in a crowd too, because he seems to like to be in the center of a crowd. So, what do we do? We talked about the possibility of some type of training that may help. The way he is though, I don't know that it would. We have pretty much accepted the fact that we will have to put him down some day. He is too sick to live a long life. We already know he has bladder stones again and will need surgery. So all this combined makes it clear in our heads that we should put him down. In our hearts it's a different story. We have a problem here...what to do.

Sleeeeeepy

I came home from the gym last night to this...

That's pretty much how I felt all day. Jenna sleeps really well at night, but she makes a lot of noise. Sometimes she sounds like she's about to wake up, sometimes for 30 minutes to an hour, and I am awake whenever she does that. I want to stop using the monitor, but I'm too scared!

We have de-cluttered to make our house show-ready at any time, but so far only one person has looked at it. Supposedly someone else came by, but we're not sure if they did or not because there was nothing from a realtor indicating that anyone had been in. Even though we've boxed VERY FEW things up just to de-clutter, we haven't started packing at all. I don't have much motivation since we don't know when the house will sell and we don't know where we're moving! I mean, we know what city but for the first couple of weeks we'll be with my parents. I doubt we'll pack until we actually sell the house. At first we'll just take what we need, and keep everything else here instead of in storage. This house-selling thing is going to stress me out!

I always say how big Jenna is, but I don't know how much she actually weighs. I think the scale thing where we take the difference with one of us holding her and then not holding her is crap. We tried it a few more times, and it's different every time. Of course, I don't need to know how much she weighs to know that little miss piglet is definitely getting enough to eat!

I mean, look at that thigh roll! She looks so happy though--I love it.

In unrelated news, I had to go to the eye doctor yesterday and order new contacts, as I do every year. This time I stretched it to a year and a half--longer than I ever have. My total for the eye exam and contacts was $454. No, that's not a mistake. $454. I am so blind that my contacts cost that much. I can't even get disposables and I'm not a candidate for lasik. Of course, if I was I'd be too afraid to do it anyway, but seriously--who else in the WORLD pays that much for contact lenses???

Sadness part 2

The first day I dropped Jenna off at daycare was definitely the worst, but today she looked at me like "What, you're leaving me?" She hasn't done that before. It was the first time she has shown recognition or expression in her eyes like that. It broke my heart a little, but until she cries when I leave her, it'll be OK.