Eight days a week...

*quick apology for the formatting- the spacing/fonts are all messed up. It's driving me crazy but every time I try to fix it, it just makes it worse so I'm leaving it alone now!!*


I mentioned quite a while ago that I wanted to do a "typical day" post. So here you go. I will admit that around noon, the day went to crap and I considered picking another day that was more normal. But, well, that's life. And this post is about typical life.

5:30- Jade starts making noises. I groan and roll over. Chuck turns the monitor off. I turn it on 5 minutes later: silence. Yay.

6:00- My alarm goes off. I ask Chuck if he minds if I go downstairs. He says no. We confirm that he is "in charge" until 6:30. I head downstairs and hear Jade waking up as I walk down the stairs. She used to sleep until 7. Not sure what is going on. I make my breakfast and sit down with my Bible. I find that I am a much better mom/person if I get this alone time before interacting with anyone else.

Yummy breakfast with tea.

6:30- I head upstairs, get Jade from Chuck, and he goes to take a shower. Jade nurses for about 30 minutes, confirming that she is very tired... she never nurses for that long anymore. I decide that I'll go for an early morning run and see if she'll fall asleep.

7:15- Jade and I head out for our run. We got home around 8 and she's still awake. Oh well. I give her breakfast, which lately is the only meal that I can be sure she will eat. She loves eggs and sausage! But today, she didn't eat everything at breakfast for the first time ever. Poor kid is having some allergy issues and I think it's effecting her sleep AND her eating. No good.

Her breakfast- sausage, eggs, and english muffin with apple sauce. Today she only ate about half,
but she normally cleans house!

9:00- I clean up breakfast, and then attempt to convince Jade it will be fun to play by herself in her 

room and jump in the shower. She fusses the whole time, but no screaming which is good. 

9:40- We head out the house to go to Costco. When I get there, she is passed out. Normally when she falls asleep in the car, she wakes up when we stop, but not this time. I sit in the backseat and play games on my phone for about 20 minutes until she wakes up.

Sleeping HARD in the car!

11:00- I decide in the checkout line that we will be eating Costco food for lunch- Jade gets a hot dog and eats about half of it, which is better than she's been doing. We head home- on the way I stop by a friend's house and dropped off the stuff for the college ministry I had picked up. When I get home, 10 minutes later, Jade's asleep. Which essentially assures nap failure.

12:00- We play in her room for a bit, then I turn the lights off, close the curtains and blinds, and nurse her for a bit. This begins the hour from hell. We are transitioning from two naps to one and up until yesterday it was going well. Not so much anymore. Today, every time I tried to put her down she freaked out and screamed uncontrollably. I went back in periodically and never could get her calmed down. Finally I gave up and laid down with her as a last ditch effort. This used to ALWAYS work but doesn't normally anymore. I suppose it did today- but she only slept about 30 minutes and woke up extremely grumpy.

Playing in her room before her nap.

Such a happy kid after her "nap"

All better.

2:00ish- I throw diapers in the washer, get Jade's clothes out of the dryer and go upstairs to put them away. Then we head to the post office and grocery store. It's pretty close by so I try to walk when I don't have to get to much stuff. I put her in the stroller (as opposed to wearing her) so that I'll have somewhere to put the groceries. I walk by the chiropractor office and decide to stop in to make an appointment because I keep forgetting to call. I got lucky and they were able to take us right then! I always feel better after an adjustment. Jade also had some issues with her neck... the doc said that he thinks this will help her body handle the allergies- she was all stopped up apparently.

She wants to throw the clean clothes on the floor!

3:00- We get home and play outside for a bit. The neighbor gets her son from the bus stop around 3:30 and we usually go over and chat with them for a while. Jade crawls around, eats dirt, etc. Anything to keep her occupied.

On a mission!

Playing with her bucket.

Dirt is fun!

 4:00- She crawls over to me, lays her head down on my lap and starts rubbing her eyes. There is no way she's going to make it until seven. We head inside about 15 minutes later and I go ahead and give her a bath since she's disgusting from dumping dirt from her bucket onto her head.

So tired she's not really enjoying bath time. 

It's not too bad though!

4:45- Bath is over. I get her dinner ready and go ahead and feed her. I feel crazy for putting her to bed this early, but she is obviously exhausted and she's gotten to the "overtired" point and I think going to bed early will actually help things. At least I hope so!

5:15- Put her in bed and pray she stays there :) I go downstairs and eat my dinner sitting in front of the tv, then clean up the kitchen. Chuck should be home soon-ish.

6:15- Chuck gets home and we hang out until the roof guy gets to the house.

7:00- We have a guy come out to give us an estimate on replacing our roof. The joys of home ownership!

8:00- He leaves- yay! We watch TV, talk a bit, and I head to bed around 9:30. Chuck normally stays up, then falls asleep on the couch and joins me in bed sometime after midnight :)

So that's it- that was my day! In a sense, I feel like I accomplished nothing. I didn't vacuum anything today, which means extra tomorrow. But hey, sometimes that's just the way things happen...

Mama's going on a trip!

Tomorrow morning, myself and the other women from my church are loading up and going to Richmond for a conference. This will be the first time I've left Jade for more than about 4 hours and I'm super nervous! Yes, I know she will be fine. But that doesn't mean I'm not nervous!

We'll be gone from early tomorrow morning until about 5 pm on Saturday. Chuck was able to take off work tomorrow so that he can stay home with Jade, so that certainly made the decision to go easier.

BUT, it just hit me today that I'm going to have to pump in public places. Don't know why I was thinking I would be able to pump in my hotel room, but that just won't be possible with the conference schedule. And I'm not sure why, but this terrifies me. I've never pumped anywhere but my house. As a stay at home mama with a kid who took a bottle, I just haven't needed to pump anywhere else. So yeah. I'm not excited about that.

But I am excited about the trip. So pray for me... that I will grow in my relationship with God and with the other women at my church. And pray for Chuck and Jade :)

I just realized that 1. I haven't posted an update on the laundry room and 2. I haven't taken any pictures of my kid lately.

So I will get on that. Promise.

First word!

So it's pathetic that I'm posting this from my phone, but it's better than nothing. My laptop is upstairs and I am too lazy to go get it. How's that for honesty?

But I've been putting this post off for a few days already, so I figure this is better than nothing!

Tuesday, Jade pointed at Belle, looked at me, and said "doggy" plain as day. She's been saying it for a while, but it was just part of random babble and never when looking at (or even around) the dogs.

But when she pointed... Well yeah, I declare it. First word = doggy.

And because a post without pictures is boring- here's a couple from my phone.



Playing with the dogs leashes in the driveway.



I love her little legs!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Laundry room: week one

It is amazing how quickly these guys work. This week, they have cut off and capped our old pipes, put pipes in where the new washer is going to be, bricked in the exterior door, put the new dryer vent in, removed all the walls, added insulation, and I'm sure many other things I know nothing about.

Everything has been approved by the city- one day, we had the electrical inspection, plumbing inspection, and mechanical inspection.

This weekend, they put up the new drywall. We have some more electrical work to do- we're going to take out the light fixture on the ceiling and put up 2 instead. After that's done, the tiling will begin and then the cabinets!

Here are some updated pictures (obviously, these were taken before the drywall was added):

Looking into the room from the kitchen.

Where the washer used to be.

Where the washer used to be- no more mold!

View of the room when you're looking into the kitchen.

Where the new washer and dryer are going.

The door to the garage.

11 months!

Miss Jade was 11 months on Monday. Her birthday presents are piling up in our house, invitations have been picked out, and party is basically planned. I cannot believe that she is this close to being one.

This month has been interesting. In some ways, I don't feel like a whole lot has changed, but then I realize that she really has learned quite a bit of stuff.

I put together a "photo album" for her with 5 pictures in it. One of Chuck and I, one of Zoe, and one of both sets of grandparents (sorry Belle, couldn't find a good picture!). She loves to look at the book and has slowly started figuring out what to do when I say "where is daddy?". Sometimes she just grins and stares at his picture, but sometimes she points to it. Because we've been working on pointing so much, she's starting pointing a lot. I can't always figure out what she's point at though. Or even if she's pointing at anything. Sometimes she just stares at her finger.

She now has 4 teeth... two on top and two on bottom. Other than when we were dealing with that 4th tooth breaking through, her sleep has been amazing. She's only waking up once a night... or not at all. I admit that there were days that I thought this would never come. 

She's started making some new noises while babbling... most of them I can't even repeat, but she's "talking" all the time. She still hasn't actually said "dada" to Chuck. Some days, it worries me that she's a bit "behind" but most of the time I just try not to think about it. I know that every kid is different and develops at their own pace. She'll talk eventually, I'm sure.

She actually still isn't signing back to us either, which is another thing that would worry me if I chose to think about it. She has a few times, and she definitely knows what the signs mean, so I figure she's just taking her sweet time signing back. It shouldn't surprise me... she's been on her own schedule since the day she was born.

She's walking with her walker wagon better than ever, but still rarely lets go of anything and sits down the second she does. It's a controlled sit, not a fall, so she's definitely getting stronger... but still isn't standing on her own. At this point, she could start walking tomorrow or at 13 months, I have no idea. She'll walk when she makes up her mind that she wants to.

She has actually started eating a bit less and getting a little more picky. I used to be able to throw everything on her tray at once and she would just eat it all. Now, I have to put veggies and meat first and give her fruit as a dessert or all she'll eat is the fruit and everything else gets thrown on the floor. She loves all fruits. Other than that, her favorite's are Mexican food (staying true to her heritage) and pancakes.

I was giving her dairy (yay!) and there was no screaming, but then I noticed that it does seem to be upsetting her stomach. I'm gonna cut it back out for a couple days and see if that fixes the problem or not. 

She's still wearing 6-9 months clothes (with room to grow) from Carter's and 6-12 month stuff from Gymboree and Old Navy. I really think it'll fit her most of the summer, but we'll have to move her to the next size at the end of the summer. Her shoes (Robeez... the best) are 3-6 months. Her little feet are apparently tiny.

I gave her cheerios to keep her from eating her sticker.

She's growing up so fast and I cannot wait to see what we have in store for us! I have a feeling this girl is going to keep us on our toes!

Laundry room: before

This morning at 7:15, two scruffy looking dudes rang the doorbell to the house, wanting to come inside to rip out the walls to my laundry room.

Normally, something like this would bother me, but today it made me happy! FINALLY- I'm going to have a laundry room with the washer and dryer on the SAME wall, no mold, and no leaking water.

Here are some before pictures:

The normal state of things. As you can see, there is the dryer on the left wall.
The washer is to my right in this picture. The door to my left is going away.

The washer, stuck behind the brick stairs.

It was hard to get a good picture of this, but there are the leaking pipes,
complete with mold crawling up the wall.

Some mold and water damage on the other side of the washer.

The brick stairs. Notice the nasty floor- this happens because water leaks from the pipes
and then comes up through the floor, so it's never completely dry.

The project is supposed to be done April 15th. We're getting a new washer and dryer, new floors, cabinets, a closet where the washer currently sits and the brick stairs covered with something that looks better than brick. I cannot wait!

*Jade is 11 months old today- that post will come soon!

Just one of those days...

This morning, Jade and I loaded up and headed to MOPS. It was a good meeting. The theme was "our favorite things" and all of the leaders buy some of their favorite things to give as prizes to the group. Everyone won 2 different "bigger" items and they gave out a TON of smaller items. Enough to fill up a plastic sack. Coupons to different local businesses, a magic eraser, clorox pens, tide stain stuff, silly straws, etc etc. It was a lot of fun.

When I picked Jade up, they said she hadn't been fussy at all, so that was a really good thing to hear. I'm not feeling great today, so knowing that Jade is having a good day makes things easier on me.

Then we got home. There should have been a sign on the door.

At least I would have had a warning. 

At first, I didn't know what was wrong. There was some vomit on the floor in the dining room (the first room I walk into) and Zoe looked a bit... lethargic. But that's happened before. But then I continued walking through the house. And the smell hit me. I walked into the bedroom upstairs. Belle's bed was covered in some sort of brown... substance. I am not sure from which end of the dog this substance emerged from. 

Belle was curled up on Zoe's bed (because why would she stay on hers after spewing substance everywhere?) looking like Zoe's partner in crime. That is when I knew that this was not just a little problem. 

I then followed the smell into the room we have dubbed "the rocketship room". And there it was. 

While Jade and I were enjoying ourselves at MOPS, the dogs were also enjoying themselves. 

On a tube of Desitin. 

The diaper rash cream. 

That contains 30% zinc. 

Uh oh. 

I called the vet. They instructed me to call poison control. I then talked to poison control for 20 minutes. While feeding my child lunch and putting her down for a nap. Jade was quite confused as to why I didn't put the phone down while I was reading her story. 

It was determined that the dogs would be ok. I'm sure that should have made me happy. At the time, it did not. 

With Jade asleep and Pepcid shoved down each of my dog's throats and all access to food and water blocked, there was only one thing left to do. 

Clean up the house. 

I counted 15 piles. Yes, you read that correctly. Fifteen. 

Just one of those days...