Dropping Like Flys

So I've lost 3 followers in the past few days.

I'm going to take a guess and say it's because I'm not updating very often.

We've been so busy with the move, working, taking care of a baby. I just haven't had time to update.

Can you ever forgive me?

Update on Evie: She's crawling now and it looks like she'll be pulling up any day now! I'm so excited and sad at the same time. It's only been 8 months! How can she be crawling??

She's also said the precious word I've longed to hear, "Ma ma." Of course she doesn't know what it means, but it's still a victory over "da da" adorable!

Update on me and Brian: Things are going well. We're going to counseling, but haven't been in a few weeks due to cancellations by the counselor and us for the last 2 appointments. We'll be back in that office on Tuesday though.

We're working on our communication, and of course, he's working on his stress management skills and learning to control his anxiety.

I'm happy to say, things are looking up. We're nowhere near fixed or cured, and I'm not expecting to ever be perfect, but we're headed in the right direction.

I think I'm going to take a cue from Blair and try the Dirty Day Shred, so I'm sure you all will be anticipating that with great eagerness.

I'll be posting pictures of the house soon too! We're going to be doing a little painting, so I'll post before and after pics.

We're Moving!

I know I haven't updated in awhile. Life has been crazy!

Things with Brian are slowly, but surely, getting better. We're going to counseling once a week and we're both really trying to make an effort to communicate better. We've come to the realization that communication, and anxiety, are our biggest issues. Brian and I are both strong-willed, hard-headed people. When you get 2 people like that together...my lord, is it a recipe for disaster! Luckily, we realize that we do love each other and we're willing to do what it takes to make this relationship work. I'm praying that we can get over this hurdle.

Things with Evie are better than ever! She's the happiest little baby in the world! No, seriously. I've never seen a happier baby than my baby. Maybe I'm biased (ya think?), but that girl is all smiles all the time and it melts my little heart.

I'm sure you're wondering what the title of this post means. Well...it's pretty literal. We're moving into a house. Insert a "Woo hoo!" here. We're packed to the gills in our townhouse and I'm so tired of having to try and conceal swings, exesaucers, car seats, and much, much more when company comes over. In our new house we'll have, drum roll please, AN ENTIRE ROOM dedicated to the Evie Monster's toys! I cannot wait!

Here's a pic of the house...

Our friends who live in Hawaii, that we visited a few months ago, are renting us the house. The husband was offered a permanent position to stay in Hawaii, and he happily excepted (bastards!) and they immediately thought of us to rent their house. I'm beyond excited! It's a 4 bedroom, 3 bath home, and I cannot wait to acquire every inch of that space.

Now we just have to get our townhouse rented out. Wish me luck!

6 months

It's been 6 months since my little girl made her way into this world. The day that changed my life forever. I never knew how much I could love one tiny little person. A love so strong that, in my the midst of my crumbling world, it's all I need to know in my heart that I will always be ok. I will always be strong for my baby.

This 6 month old has taught me so much about myself in such a short amount of time. I can't wait to see what I learn in the next 5 years. 10 years. 20 years. If 20 years goes by as quickly as the last 6 months...well let's just say, I'm in no rush to get to 42!

Here are the rest of her 6 month portraits. As promised.

I know that's a lot of pics, but I had to AW my little cutie!

Mother's Day

It's so crazy to think that this is my first Mother's Day and Evie will be 6 months old tomorrow!

Brian and I aren't doing very well, but seeing that little girl's face let's me know that everything will work out whether we're together or not.

Brian's mom and I took Evie to get her 6 month portraits done. I'll post them all tomorrow, but here's a little preview...

Happy Easter!

Wishing you all a happy Easter Sunday!

4 months

It's been 4 months since Evie was born. I cannot believe how fast time is flying by. She turns into a big girl a little more every day. She is sleeping in her crib now (Thank the lord!), but only until about 2 am and then she wants Mommy. I don't mind. I love snuggling with my Evie Monster. :)

Thumbs up for being 4 months old!

Happy Valentine's Day!

My shopping excursion in pictures

I went shopping today for myself and Evie. Mostly for Evie. Here's what I came home with...

Is it a fluke?

I'm sure it is. Surely, my baby can't be sleeping through the night. She has to be teasing me, right?

Yes, folks. Evie decided to sleep through the night for the first time last night. I must say, it was AMAZING! I have a feeling this will not be a trend, but hey, we're moving in the right direction.

So here's how it went, I put her to sleep (in her swing because she absolutely must be in the same room as me) around 7:00 pm. I "woke" her up around midnight to dreamfeed.

For those that don't know what that is, essentially, you pop a bottle in the kids mouth, while they're still sleeping, and they eat. The theory is, it will reduce nightwakings because their belly is full, but that's not why I do it. No, I do it for very selfish reasons. I do it because I know if I don't feed her at midnight, which is when I go to bed, she'll wake up an hour later and want to eat. Sorry, I'm not sleeping for an hour, and then waking up to feed her, if I don't have to.

Anyway, not the point of the story. So she ate around midnight and I put her in her sleep positioner, in between us, and next thing I know, it's 6:00 am! I was in disbelief. I really thought that we would be waiting a long time for her to STTN. Although, again I say, it's probably just a fluke. Those sneaky babies like to trick you.

Oh well. Here's hoping she continues to do it!

Sleeping Success

We had a breakthrough in the sleeping debacle last night. My friend, Lacey, has a little girl who is 5 days younger than Evie, so we made a little play date yesterday. We were talking about how her daughter, Lilly, is pretty much sleeping through the night, while Evie is still attached to my arm during the night.

I told her I was going to try and find an inclined sleep positioner because she doesn't seem to like lying flat on her back. She, being an awesome friend and my current favorite person, offered to let us use her inclined sleep positioner because Lilly didn't like it.

Armed with the secret weapon in hand, I was determined to get this child to sleep somewhere other than on me. Anywhere else but me.

We did our usual night time routine. Bath, massage, story time, and rocking. She had only eaten an hour and a half before that, and wasn't acting hungry, so I didn't feed her. I had put a heating pad on the sleep positioner and set it in her bassinet. I laid her down and hoped for the best.

I came downstairs to eat dinner with Brian, and 20 minutes later...she was awake. Ugh. I guess I should have tried to feed her anyway. She ate and then screamed for about 30 minutes because she was over-tired. She finally went to sleep around 8:30 and I had to wake her up to take her upstairs at 11:30.

I feed her, rocked her back to sleep, and stuck her in the positioner. Get this, she slept for 5 HOURS!!! Holy cow, I was amazed! I hope tonight goes the same. I'm going to feed her before laying her down though. Maybe that will do the trick!

These are the days I wish I was going back to work

Before I say what I'm about to say, just know that I love my daughter and she is my entire world...but she is driving me up the freakin' wall!

For almost 2 weeks now, she has been super fussy. It wasn't bad during the days, just at night. Well, a couple of days ago, she started getting fussy in the mornings. Today was no different.

I exclusively pump, since Evie stopped latching, and I don't pump after midnight. So when we get up in the morning, I'm extremely engorged and need to pump as soon as she's done eating. I normally swaddle her, put her in her swing, and she goes right to sleep. This has never been a problem until the last few days.

Lately, she's been super fidgety at night. I have no idea why, but it makes for a crappy night of sleep for both of us. Last night, she was up every 2 hours and was fidgety in between that. So when we woke up this morning, I figured she'd go right to sleep in her swing. WRONG! We played a game of "Spit the Paci Out". If you don't know what that game is, it's a game that entails seeing how many times Evie can spit her paci out before Mommy loses her ever-loving mind. Today...it was 10. Oh, and I forgot to mention, when you try to put the paci in, she gives you that huge gummy smile that is impossible to resist.

I hated to do it, but I had to let her fuss for a few minutes. Not cry. Fuss. I let her do that for about 2 minutes and then went over and stuck the paci in her mouth. She took it instantly and now she's snoozing peacefully in her swing.

It's days like these that I'm thankful for the person that invented coffee. Oh, and mother-in-laws who will watch your baby at a moment's notice. If only I was going to do something fun while I'm baby-less. Alas, I'm going to my office to give my 2 weeks notice to my boss. Maybe I can squeeze in a massage too? What do you think? ;-)

She's supposed to wait until she's 16 to scare mommy!

Yesterday was a rough day to say the least. Evie decided she was going to give Mommy and Daddy a good scare! Shouldn't she wait until her teenage years to make us worry?

Yesterday morning, Evie woke up around 8:30 and Brian fed her 2 oz. She normally eats between 3 and 4, but I thought maybe she just wasn't as hungry. She went right back to sleep, which she normally does, and woke up to eat again around 12:30. She ate about 1.5 oz. and started fussing, so I figured she needed to burp. I started trying to burp her and she went into full-on shrieking mode!

I didn't know what was wrong, so I tried giving her the bottle again. She kept screaming. Tried burping again. Kept screaming. This went on for almost an hour. I finally started rocking her and she fell asleep around 1:30 pm. Brian and I took her upstairs to lay down with her.

Around 2:00 pm, she started fussing, so I thought she was probably hungry since she didn't eat much. I tried giving her the bottle and the screaming started again. I knew she was gassy, but she just couldn't get it out. She was screaming like she was in so much pain, so I started crying with her. My poor baby was in pain and there was nothing I could do for her. She would not calm down, so we decided to call the pediatrician to see if we could get her in to be checked out. We made a 3:30 pm appointment and off we went.

She fell asleep on the way to the pedi, and was fine, at first, when they woke her up to weigh her. They checked her resting heart rate and it was 184/bpm. They said this was a little high, especially, since she was calm. About 5 minutes later, she started screaming again. I tried feeding her to no avail. The doctor didn't know what was wrong. I kept telling them I thought it was a combination of gas and being over-tired since she couldn't sleep through the pain.

Finally, the pedi decided to send her over to the ER for a work-up. Right about that time, Evie started farting. After she got a few good farts out, she was back to her old self. That poor little girl just needed to fart!

We still went over to the ER to make sure her vitals were ok, and they were. They sent us home and told us to pick up Mylicon drops on the way. We gave her the drops last night and she passed the eff out. Hallelujah! She slept from 7:30 pm to 11:00 pm, ate, and went back to sleep until 5:15 am, ate, back to sleep until 8:00 am.

Today, she has been a perfect angel. Although, she's been sleeping all day, only waking to eat. She can do whatever she wants though. I'm just glad she's ok. She did gives us a good scare though!

I just like to smile. Smiling's my favorite!

I've been trying to catch a smile on camera for the past week. My failed attempt to catch one of video can be seen in a post below. Instead of smiling, she gave me a great video to show to all her future boyfriends in effort to embarrass her.

She was wide awake yesterday morning, which is unusual, so I busted at the tutu and camera hoping to capture that beautiful, gummy smile. Mission Accomplished.

At first she was sad...

Then came the smiles!

That smile melts my heart! :-)

Silver white winters that melt into springs...

Yeah, that probably won't be happening anytime soon. With the high being 1 today, it's the coldest it's been all winter. This 5 inches of snow we got the other night isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Brian and I bought Evie a bear snow suit from Old Navy and have been dying to take her out to see her first snow. Not that she even knows what it is or what's going on. I mean, really, what else can we do besides hold her and take pictures? So we bundled her up yesterday and took her out for some snowtime fun.

Well, last night sucked

I knew I would jinx myself when I made a post on the bump yesterday about Evie sleeping all the time.

She woke up around 4:00 pm yesterday and she was up for the normal 4-5 hours. Well, 9 o'clock rolls around, which is normally her bed time, and she gets really fussy. Great. She's over-tired. I rock her and she falls asleep for about 30 minutes, so I try putting her in her swing. Screaming ensues. Pick her up and try rocking her again. Her eyes get really heavy, but they just won't shut. I get her drowsy again. Put her in the swing. What happens next, can you guess? If you said, "screaming ensues" you would be correct. Come on down and claim your prize!

This went on for the next hour. I finally took her upstairs, with the seahorse, and rocked her to sleep. I had to pump in an hour, so I didn't want to fall asleep with her like I normally do. So I laid her in her bassinet. Yeah. She stayed in there for about 20 minutes. Then...more screaming. I tried feeding her, rocking her, etc. She would stop screaming, but she was incredibly fussing.

She finally fell asleep for good at 1:00 am. She woke up to eat at 4:30 am, then 6:00 am, then 7:30 am. Needless to say, it was a rough night last night. She's sleeping in her swing right now, peacefully I might add. We shall see how tonight goes.

::crosses fingers that Evie calms the eff down and goes to sleep tonight::

Evie Rosenblatt

Is it wrong that my new favorite pastime is making up Jewish old man names for my daughter?

Now, before anyone gets offended, Evie Rose is a quarter Jewish...not too shabby (Adam Sandler fans, anyone?) Seriously though, Brian's father is Jewish and he thinks it's hilarious!

Brian and I sit around and see who can come up with the best name and profession for her. It's just hard not to think of "Howard Feingold, MD. Damn glad to meet ya." when you see this hair!

It's the hair that started it all. She has more hair on the back of her head than the top, and it's longer. Which gives her the appearance of a balding old man. Brian started calling her Don Rickels and it just kept going from there.

So far, I'm winning the "Best Jewish Old Man Name" contest with "Morty Rosenblatt, Tax Attorney". We've also got Harry Weinstein, Henry Finkelstein, and Elliott Rosenburg.

Geez, I need a hobby, huh?

Asked for a smile, got something else

Watch for the hilariousness of this video around the 1:05 mark.

Sleeping Arrangements

Why won't my child sleep anywhere but with me?

I swear, at this rate, she'll be sleeping with us until she's 30! She's been this way since birth. She will only sleep in bed with me. She will nap in her swing if she is swaddled, but when the sun goes down, only mama will do.

We're leaving for Hawaii in less than 60 days and she's staying with the grandparents. I would feel terrible if she wasn't able to sleep alone by then. Also, having her bed-share with anyone, besides us, makes me nervous. Brian's mom did not seem too thrilled when I informed her of the sleeping arrangement we have going on now.

I just spent about an hour walking back and forth to her room to put her paci back in. We were trying out the crib and it just wasn't working. She would fall asleep to the soothing sounds of Margot, her soothe and glow seahorse, only to be awakened as soon as it turned off. Then screaming ensues. Dammit.




Dear Evie,

WTF? Be a good girl and go to sleep somewhere other than right in mommy's face, mkay? Also, please don't scream bloody murder and then smile when I walk in the room. It's very frustrating and hard to be mad at you. Thanks in advance.

Love,
Mommy

Love at first sight.

Is it bad that my first baby blog post was about me?

I thought it was, so I decided to make my second post baby related. This will be, sort of, an introduction.

I got my BFP on March 10, 2009. I was completely shocked and surprised. Most of all, scared. Brian and I weren't planning on having a baby quite so soon, but we were excited! Since I was not planning to get pregnant, I had no idea what was in store for me, so I went out and bought the bible (aka. What to Expect...) I knew pregnancy lasted for 9 months, but seeing that "40 weeks" written out just made it seem like an eternity. I was going to be pregnant for 40 weeks?!

But, the weeks went by and it became more real. I was going to be someone's mother in just a few short months. We changed our whole lives in those months. We moved, from our loft in the city, to a townhouse in the suburbs. Instead of a spending our Saturdays hungover from the night before, we were up at 9:00 am and headed to Babies R Us. I sold my 2 door hatchback and bought an SUV. Our second bedroom was not for guests, but for this tiny baby that was growing, ever-so-quickly, inside of me.

From the beginning, I just had this feeling that she was going to be a girl. Brian tried to warn me that his sister was the first girl, on his father's side, in over 100 years. In other words, he was skeptical that we would ever have a girl, let alone having a girl the first time. Still, I was 100% sure that she was a girl. At our 20 week ultrasound, it was confirmed that she was, in fact, a girl. We were thrilled! Brian had always imagined having a Daddy's girl. We knew, before we even knew that sex, that if we had a girl we wanted to name her Evelyn. Evie for short. We just thought Evie was the cutest name for a little girl and Evelyn was very pretty for an adult. Although, she will probably never go by Evelyn in this house.

And so, the weeks flew by, and before I knew it, 40 weeks was here...and I had no baby. I went to my OB appointment on my due date, only to be told that I was barely dilated. I bawled the whole way home and was preparing myself to be pregnant for at least another week. I got home, took a nap, got up and took a shower. After the shower, I was drying my hair, and felt a big gush of fluid. I didn't think that it could be my water breaking, but every time I walked more came out. After I soaked 2 pairs of underwear, I knew it was time to head to Labor and Delivery.

Labor was not fun. I was GBS positive and had needles and tubes galore stuck in me. My epidural had worn off some by the time I started pushing, so that was pretty much the most painful thing I've ever experienced. It was all worth it though. After an hour and 15 minutes of pushing, Evelyn Rose was born. She weighed 6 lbs. 15 oz. and was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I never knew I could love someone so much. She is my whole world and I have no clue how I ever lived without her.

Brian and I are so in love with her. It's crazy how much she's grown in the past 8 weeks. She's starting to coo and smile. That smile just melts my heart. I can't wait to watch her grow and learn even more.