2006 November archive at Filtering Life

Archive for November, 2006

When Lanolin, Ice and Tylenol just aren’t enough

Published by Kelly November 28th, 2006 in Chloe Grace. 14 Comments

If my nipples had arms and hands, they’d be holding up a white flags for mercy. Chloe has hit her 3 week growth spurt with a vengeance. The 10 day spurt wasn’t so bad, a little more frequent eating, but manageable. Today I have wanted to cry. She woke up at 9:30 and has been eating every 45-60 minutes ever since. She literally has only slept 1.5 hours ALL DAY!!! She isn’t really crying, she is just ultra alert and when she wants to eat starts fussing, rooting and gnawing her own hand off. How do you say no, when her little lips are smacking away vigorously. You can’t even hold her because she just sucks your shoulder, arm, chest, hair…whatever is next to her mouth.

I am getting to the point that I just want to chop my boobs off…I can’t decide what nipple I want to sacrifice each time she starts her rally cry. Flip a coin….lefty, righty, lefty, righty…oh who cares, you both hurt equally.

I have officially named Chloe “The Barracuda” and will sing the song by HEART to her. Where is this lovely picture of breast feeding you see in books? A nice rocker, a calm baby, sweetly suckling…..this is not the scene in my home. You would think I have starved her all day….her latch is insane!

Ryan has been home the last few days getting over the remnants of his sickness and has been a HUGE help. He is doing the best he can to hold her and play with her between the ravenous feedings. I am dreading tonight. If she keeps this routine up all night I am going to be a total zombie by tomorrow and she may weigh 20 pounds. She was doing so good most days with 3 hour cycles. Oh growth spurts…I am so glad they are spaced out a little bit, give me time to recover.

the game of life

On a totally unrelated note, a love of the game of LIFE was found by me, Ryan and my brother-in-laws Joe and Dan. We have to fight the urge to not feel totally lame playing games together. I mean we are 31, 30, 28 and 25….but I have to be honest…I LOVE board games of all kind. We played until midnight and came to several conclusions:

It is good to buy stock on the numbers 4, 5, and 6.
Life Tiles are totally jacked up. I got $150,000 for saving an endangered species, while Joe only got $100,000 for curing the common cold. HELLO….you cured the common cold and you get less than me saving some animal that most people would never miss in the first place. WHAT?
It DOES NOT pay to have kids.
You can be a cop and make $100,000 a year (and not be Mark Furhman!). It’s good to be The Law!
You can skip college and be the most well off person in the game. Wait… you can do that in real life.
The spinner never works correctly!

Am I leaving anything out?

When poo attacks

Published by Kelly November 25th, 2006 in Chloe Grace and Life Changes. 16 Comments

It’s Thanksgiving season, what’s not to be thankful for? I mean I have a beautiful, healthy baby, an amazing husband, a great little house, the Christmas tree is up and I am feeling great…..wait, scratch that last one.

Let me paint a graphic picture. Those who are into reading as little bathroom humor as possible, skip this paragraph. It all begins at 2:00 am, Thanksgiving morning when Ryan randomly wakes up, looks at me all wide eyed and says with a panicked voice, “I have diarrhea!” It takes A LOT to wake Ryan up. So off to the bathroom he waddles. I then drift in and out of sleep for the next hour as Chloe is making all sorts of noises from her bassinet signaling me that within the next 30-45 minutes she will be up. (It is quite a dramatic production for her to wake up fully, so I wait and wait until her little peepers are really open.) Anyway, it is 3:00 am and I realize Ryan never got back into bed and my bladder is about to explode. My brother-in-law is in the guest room next to the bathroom, so I try to knock softly on the door and see if Ryan fell asleep on the toilet or what. Much to my surprise, he has been pooping for an hour straight. He looks pathetic on the toilet. We are VERY open about the bathroom which may shock and appall some of you. Get over it, it works for us in our marriage. I then plead with him to give me a turn because I am about to wet my pants. He tries to stand up and another round comes. I now have to take drastic measures and I run to the kitchen, grab a 12oz disposable plastic cup, come back to the bathroom and proceed to pee into the cup. I filled it up to the rim, had to stop, pour it down the sink and finish peeing. I would say I peed 14oz! We had to laugh because the scene in the bathroom was beyond gross, we were at an all time low! Our ship went down together. Poor Ryan was up the rest of the night, pooping his brains out and puking. His ultimate low was at 6:00 am when he came in the room and grabbed a new pair of boxers because he was puking and a little poo snuck out the back at that same time. Nothing like pooping your pants when you are 28! He was really SICK!!!!

I started feeling nauseous by breakfast time, but I thought it was because I hardly got any sleep. Once we got to his parents house for Thanksgiving dinner my worst fears were confirmed…I was sick too! I barely got my lunch down before I was in their bathroom throwing up. We promptly left and went back home. My mind was racing with the responsibility of taking care of myself and taking care of Chloe, not getting dehydrated, not getting her sick….I wanted to cry!!! I just wanted to crawl into bed for like 8 hours but I couldn’t. Once I got home, it was all over for me. Ryan said it is like cutting both ends of a cookie dough roll and squeezing the middle. That about says it all! I will spare the blow by blow…but we all managed to finally get in bed and nap for 3 hours which helped a bit. Ryan felt much better that night, I saw a difference by Friday afternoon and today we are all feeling MUCH better. Praise the Lord, Chloe has managed to stay healthy. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday…super bummer that we had to spend what would have been a glorious afternoon of glutiny over a toilet.

The high point of this weekend was spending time with my brother-in-laws Joe and Sam. Joe came in clutch again by hooking us up with some sweet pictures of Chloe (what…more pictures of Chloe!) and our new family. Here are some of my favorites…click here to see the rest.

LOVE THIS SHOT…This will be blown up and framed!

I think she is confusing my lips with something else! Hmmmmmmm……

Hey green eyes, what’s shakin?

Joe said this looks like a cover shot for a mom magazine like “Redbook”….let’s hope not!

And the circle of life is complete…our little Symba child!

The exploitation of my child continues

Published by Kelly November 21st, 2006 in Chloe Grace and Uncategorized. 11 Comments

These first two pics are for you Joy! For those of you who love the simplicity of the humor in Nacho Libre, you will love the little pants that came with the video. They fit like a glove…NOT! I had to make sure she had a full belly and was content before trying to put these little pants on.
“I am , I am….I am I am….”

To continue our movie theme post. These next two pictures remind me of a line in Dumb and Dumber. “Look at the butt on that…..yeah (s)he must work out!”
Oh Chloe, how I love those thigh rumples…they are my absolute favorite feature on her..next to her big elf eyes! These thighs are so kissable!!!!

Yet another onesie creation by mom. How cute is she? I ask you….

Today she leaped to a new developmental front. She pushed up on her own and turned her head side to side. I mean is she a genius or what. Ryan claims his sperm is just that strong. I was a clapping fool at this feat and of course, had to capture it on film. How obnoxious am I getting with these pictures. Who is this new Kelly?

and finally, the classic “deer in the headlights” photo. I have a million of these…but this one is from Tuesday…which is much different than Mondays I need to get a grip.

I think I have to take these cute pictures of her during the day because our nights are so crazy. She was up from 3-5am last night. She even cried a few times. I had a mini-breakdown at 4:30am not knowing what she wanted. No position would calm her or settle her. UGH…where is Chloe from week one…bring her back! I do have a sling. I got it on Sunday. Today I put her in it today to try and settle her down. She actually took a one hour nap in it while I folded laundry. I tried to put her down in the bassinet twice, in the sling, but she awoke immediately…RATS! She fell asleep in the sling again 2 hours later and this time I snuck her into the bassinet where she is still sleeping 2 hours later! We have had a MUCH better day today. I even have real clothes on and make-up, did laundry, dishes and made the beds. WOW, I am a new woman. Now if only we could get over this middle of the night hump…..send a prayer up for us!

A random montage

Published by Kelly November 20th, 2006 in Chloe Grace and Life in General. 15 Comments

So I am half-way there to being married again…at least officially in the eyes of others. My engagement band is a 1/4 of a size smaller than my wedding band, so it may be another few days or weeks before I can squeeze that baby on. I have a lovely muffin-top look to my finger now. Like a chic wearing “too tight” of jeans. Oh well! I say it fits!

So long nails….short and plain for now!

Ryan went up in the attic yesterday and pulled down all the Christmas decorations I bought last year. The day after Christmas, Candace and I went running around to Target, Michaels, and Walmart scavenging the sales. I made out like crazy with some BEAUTIFUL decorations, all matchy-matchy! Literally, I added up what it would have cost me if I had bought them full price and I would have spent over $400, but walked away spending $150. The only thing we need is a tree. There is half of me that is psyched to decorate and then the other half of me that is dreading the work. So here it all sits, right in my living room taunting me! I can’t stand things out of place, so just the fact I have boxes in the living room will motivate me shortly.

So Chloe is morphing into a more “normal” baby who is getting up every 2.5-3 hours a night. It was too good to be true! Today about killed me, we were up a ton last night and this morning when we got up at 9:30 she would NOT sleep until 3:30! That is insane. She was up for almost 6 hours straight. She dozed off for a few minutes a couple times but would not stay asleep. She finally took a 3 hour nap and I was right beside her. My back was killing me from holding her all day and I was SOOOOO tired. Well here are more pictures of our beloved. I am going to call her Cybil with all the expressions she fires off within seconds. Our little schizo!

She was passing gas with this face…as if you couldn’t guess by her face.

This is the smile that will be my kryptonite

This was just a fluke, cool shot I got.

A few firsts for Chloe

Published by Kelly November 17th, 2006 in Adventures in Pregnancy. 11 Comments

Chloe will never remember the trauma of her first sponge bath, but we documented it last week for her memory book.
It didn’t start out too bad being stripped down, but once we added some water she was not happy!

She was not having it. The second time we did the sponge bath she did better and the third time even less crying. That literally is the only time we have heard her cry. If I were naked and wet in a house with wood floors and drafts, I would probably cry too.

Today during our awake “play time” I decided to pull out the floor gym and see how she liked it. She did really good, just stared at everything intently for about 30 minutes. It was really cute. At this point, it is hard to know how to “play” with her to keep her awake. I read it is normal for them to just stare with blank expressions as they are training the 12 muscles around the eye to focus. I love it when she just randomly starts smiling at me or some inanimate object. She has the CUTEST dimples on both sides of her mouth that about melt my heart. That is all mommy, I had dimples but somewhere along the way, lost one. Not sure how you loose a dimple…but dang if I didn’t. So here she is in all her floor gym glory….

A double dose of cuteness!!!! She doesn’t understand how adorable she is yet.

So there is your Chloe picture fix for the weekend. She is sleeping through the best movie “Elf” right now. I have been trying to get her up for hours and she just isn’ t having it. She slept for 6.5 hours last night and I would LOVE for that to be a repeat performance tonight… unfortunately she is in nap heaven. She is missing Buddy the Elf and all the great one liners. Just a few of my favorite:

“You sit on a throne of lies. You smell like beef and cheese, you don’t smell like Santa.”
“Smiling is my favorite…let’s make work your favorite.”
“Not now arctic puffin!”
“OOOOHHHH a finger prick, that’s cold.”
“My finger has a heartbeat.”
“Can I listen to your necklace?”
“Syrup in coffee, why didn’t I think of that?”
“Is there sugar in syrup…then YES.”
Too many to type. This is a must see every Thanksgiving season to get me ready for Christmas. Ugh…Christmas is only 6 weeks away. Can someone send us a money tree? Anyone?