Toys?

I have been trying to think of what kind of toys Jenna would like, and I'm kind of out. She just has her little stuffed animals and things to chew on now, but there's got to be some sort of bigger toy to keep her occupied. Anyone have any suggestions?

We have a hand-me-down music table thing that I thought she would really enjoy, but unfortunately it doesn't work. It looks like it would be fun for her--she could stand at it and press the buttons to make different sounds. Maybe we'll get her something like that. I just don't want to get something that she has no interest in, so I'd rather get suggestions from people who have kids who actually like & use them.

The only thing I can think of now is a swing that we can hang from a tree. I think she'd love that--her favorite thing now is "horsey" so she likes to be active!

Our first ER scare

Last night started out normal. Jay got home from work, we were getting dinner & playing with Jenna. We ate, then Jay was washing dishes (yes, this is sometimes normal) and I was watching Jenna play on the floor. She was sitting on a blanket with a few toys around, like she frequently does. She reached for a pacifier and started to put it in her mouth, but then she fell forward and landed on it. She started crying, and when I went to pick her up, I thought she was just scared and would be fine.

Then I saw the blood. Lots of blood. It was pooled at the bottom of her mouth and was running down her chin. I took her in the kitchen and we tried looking at it, but couldn't tell where it was coming from. We were trying to blot with a cloth, but it just kept coming and coming. She was wailing and it was freaking us out. We were seriously about to take her to the emergency room because we had no idea where all that blood was coming from. We were all kind of hysterical. Then it slowed, and her screaming calmed a little. We tried to get her to suck on her cold teether, but she didn't want to--it seemed to hurt her. A minute or 2 later, the bleeding seemed to stop completely. Then we could see that the cut was on her gum line, where her top teeth will eventually come in. I was trying to calm her while her crying subsided, but then I was crying, and I think it made it worse for her! I just felt so bad and I realized that this is the first of many, many injuries and each time it will probably hurt me more than it hurts her.

So while I was trying to stop MYSELF from crying, Jay walked her around and calmed her down. After that, she seemed fine. We took her to the grocery store and she slept for most of it, but when she woke up, we let her sit in her grocery cart cover. She loved it! She was smiling and laughing, and later when she had her food & bottle, she seemed fine. Like I said--just the first of many...

Home Sweet Home

We went on our trip, and we were sooooooo glad to come home and see our baby girl! I missed her so much, but I still had a good, relaxing time. I SWEAR that little monkey changed while we were gone, even after I told her not to! Her hair seems longer, she seems bigger, and she seems more like a little person and less like a baby.

I don't think she is going to crawl. She is much more interested in standing. She loves to explore around on the floor and do her sitting/scooting/rolling maneuver, but she always tries to stand, and not crawl. I guess she may be one of those babies who never crawls--just goes straight to walking.

Talk about relaxing--we were practically bored on our vacation! It was nice for us to spend time together. We ate and drank A LOT...I really think my jeans were tighter on the flights home than they were on the flights there. I say flights because we had 3 each way. Loooong days. We did go hiking a couple of times up to the top of some peaks that were within walking distance of the resort. It was very nice, and the views were awesome. It was great to get some exercise too, because the rest of the time we were laying around in the pool or by the beach, looking at sunsets like this. :)

Yup, I took that picture one evening while we were lounging on the beach, sipping pineapple juice & coconut rum...

Our house is great. We are done painting, until we get to the kitchen and our bedroom. For the moment, we can just live. Not constantly be doing, doing, doing. We still have things to put away and we haven't put anything on the walls yet, but it's nice to have a normal routine. Jenna even helps us!

This Friday we have Jay's company Christmas party to go to, and I already don't want to. Not that I don't want to go--I just don't want to leave Jenna again. She changes hourly! I don't want to miss any of it. I like to spend our evenings together. But, it's only a few hours. It's not like we're leaving her for 5 days or anything!!!

I hate 'em

Telemarketers. I had forgotten how much I hate them. We didn't have a home phone in our previous house in Houston. We had gotten rid of it a couple of years ago when we became so dependent on our cell phones. We wondered why we were paying an extra bill every month when all we really used it for was to answer calls from solicitors. When we moved into this house, we got a home phone only because we had to have it for DSL. It was cheaper to get a home phone line with DSL than it was to get roadrunner, and we didn't want to have to deal with Time Warner anyway. Well, we've only had it hooked up for a week and every time it rings, I know it's a solicitor. My parents are the only other people who have the number, well, and Jenna's daycare. I only answer it because it may be one of them, but it's always someone who has some "great offer" for me. It is so irritating!!! I am considering just paying for this phone line and not even having a phone.

I was actually thinking this afternoon about not going on our trip. Just canceling the whole darn thing. But it will be nice for Jay & I to spend all that time together. It won't happen again for a long time and it would be stupid of us to not go.

How am I possibly going to do this?

How am I going to spend 3 1/2 days in the Caribbean with my husband, eating and drinking whenever, whatever, and however much we want? How are we going to sleep late in the morning (when we're not diving), take naps if we want to, and go to sleep whenever we want? How are we going to scuba dive, go on tropical excursions, hang out on the beach, and go shopping? How are we going to do this WITHOUT OUR PRECIOUS GIRL?

We are leaving her for 5 days!!!! The day after tomorrow! Not only are we leaving her for 5 days, but we're leaving her for her first Thanksgiving. We are leaving her the day after she turns 7 months old. She will only be 7 months old for one month, so we are going to miss almost a fourth of her whole 7th month! It makes me sick. We have had this trip planned since before she was born, but I didn't know then how hard it would be to leave her. 5 days is not very long, but in baby time it could mean missing a whole lot. I miss her every day before it's time to pick her up from daycare. How am I going to last 5 days?

By the way, we will be there 3 1/2 days, but gone for 5. 2 layovers each way. Ugggh.

We have a free trip to the Caribbean at an all-inclusive resort. This is a good thing, right? Then why am I dreading it???? OK, I'll think of it this way. Hubby & I will be spending quality time together. Time that we don't get to spend here. Jenna will not remember that we left her for her first Thanksgiving. She won't remember that we left her for 5 days, and she will get to spend quality time with Gramma & Grampa. I'm going to keep telling myself that, because otherwise I will cry the whole time we're gone and I will feel guilty the rest of my life!

In house news, it's coming along great. We have about 85% of everything unpacked and put away. The garage is still a mess and there are things here & there we aren't sure what to do with. Nothing is on the walls yet, but we have painted the living room, dining room (aka, Jenna's playroom), hallway, and Jenna's room. I got letters to spell out her name, and I'll paint them & hang them on the wall. I haven't figured out exactly what else to do yet. Maybe paint butterflies around them. I need to put some frogs in there somehow too. Here's our drooly girl in her pack & play, which has been great when she's in the mood to be in it. :)












I haven't gotten around to taking pictures of the house yet, but I'll do that at some point. I should have taken pictures of us working on it. Oh, well, too late. I'll do that when we do the bigger projects. I did take some "before" pictures.

Jenna is such a big girl! She is not crawling yet, much to my surprise. For weeks, she has been rocking on all fours and scooting backwards. She is constanly rolling around, sitting up, getting in position to crawl, and then rolling back to sitting. I am just sure she will start crawling while we are away. :( She has a bottom tooth that has cut through the gum! You can feel it, and see it but it's not really sticking past the gum yet. It's very hard to get a picture of. I'm sure her other bottom tooth will come through any time, too. Probably while we are gone. We're going to freakin' come back from this trip and she'll have 2 teeth, she'll be eating cheerios, she'll be crawling, and she'll probably be driving too!

Moving Day!!!

I can't believe November 9 is finally here. We close on our house this afternoon, and get to move into our OWN house once again! It's here! It's here! We've got a busy evening and a BUSY weekend ahead of us! It would be better if I didn't have those horrible cold and wasn't hacking up green stuff and didn't sound like E.T. when I talked, or if I had slept AT ALL last night, but whatever--closing day is here!

Blog-worthy sighting

Hubby was driving home from work yesterday, and he got mad at some guy in a black Escalade who waited until the last minute to merge before the lane ends. Don't we all hate that. He was in the lane to the left, so he wasn't the one who got cut off, but he was next to the guy and looked over to kind of give the evil eye, only to find that it was Lance Armstrong! Here's the difference between men & women...or maybe normal people and me. :)
Me: I can't believe you saw Lance Armstrong!
J: Well, he lives here.
Me: So do a million other people, but you don't see all of them! He's hardly ever even here.
J: It's not like I talked to him or anything--he was in his car.

He seemed pretty unphased by it, yet I thought it was exciting enough to blog about. I did, however, resist the urge to post anything about Britney & Kevin, giving the admittedly false impression that I don't care. Yes, it's true, I have a pathetic interest in celebrity lives, though to my credit, I have never bought a tabloid magazine!

I hate football

Sorry, but I do. I just don't care. I've tried to care. I've tried learning about it, being interested in teams, learning which players play for which teams--I even tried fantasy football once, just so I would be forced to care. But, I still didn't. My family sits around watching these games, getting all into them, yelling at the TV. I just don't get it. I know I'm probably the only in the world who is not a football fan, and I'm OK with that. I can sit in a room with the TV on a football game and read a book. It doesn't even have to be a good book! I won't even hear what's going on because I care so little that the sound just goes over my head. My family is in the living room now watching football, and Jenna's asleep. I don't have a book, and we all know how much time can be wasted online...

Choices

Life has way too many choices. What kind of toothpaste do I want? What do I want to make for dinner? What house do we want? What color paint should we use for the living room? The bedrooms? What doctors should we use? Do we want roadrunner or DSL? Cable or satellite? Verizon or T-Mobile or Sprint or Cingular, blah blah? And of course...should we get flu shots or not? Well, I already got mine today and made an appointment for Jenna next week. So I guess you could say I put on my big girl pants and made a decision. Of course, the hard part is actually taking her in for it...

Oh, I'm not complaining about all these choices--if not for the choices, we'd be stuck with the same boring stuff as everyone else. Everyone and everything would look the same, we'd be eating the same stuff, driving the same car, working the same job...well, you get the picture. These choices start VERY early though, and I'm faced with the realization that as Jenna grows, we'll be faced with more & more of them. Since I'm already a bad decision maker, having to make decisions for 2 people will be even harder! Right now Jenna is faced with the difficult infant choices of what toy to play with, whether to eat her food or if she likes it, whether to go to sleep when she's supposed to, whether to sit & play or try to crawl, and of course it never ends. But soon enough, she'll be faced with wanting to watch TV, wanting to eat pizza instead of chicken, wanting to buy everything she sees in the toy store, and wanting to stay up "just a few more minutes." These are choices I'll have to make for her, and she won't like it! Probably anyone reading this now who has older kids (older than...say 1, that is), is laughing, thinking I have no idea. Well, I don't! But I have made the decision that when faced with these mundane choices, I will make the best ones to the best of my ability, and I guess that's a start. :)