Hello from the Pink Eye House

So, after nine months we finally have our first sickness complete with a cold, ear infection, and pink eye. If things come in threes, then we are the empitome of that saying plus one. Did I also mention she got her first tooth! Bjheebus.(Thanks JuJu for my new favorite word!) As if the eye drops for pink eye are not bad enough, I then have to suction her nose, and put vaseline on her lips becase it split whilst in the middle of a scream fest at the doctors office on Tuesday.  I must say other than the giving of the meds, I have one of the best sleeping, and teething, babies ever. Seriously is this the face you would expect after the above description?

The past few weeks have just flown by. I have gotten serious about losing the rest of this BABY weight. I swear I looked better three weeks after giving birth than I do today almost 9 months later. Where did those months go? Sweet Baby Jesus, they went straight to my spare tire. Spending 5 weeks in Alabama over the summer was not kind to my midsection, even with working out, there no way I could turn down all that food.

So now, NINE months later I'm struggling to really get back in gear counting calories and working out hard......I have the wonderful ability to work from home four days a week, so rather than work out after work I have been getting up at 5 AM to work out at home before I start work at 7. I HATE JILLIAN MICHAELS. I can tell you that while I love working out, I do not love it at 5 AM. I get a 20 minute run in, then Jillian Michaels and her manself screams at me for the next 30 minutes. You would think the weight would be falling off since I'm still breastfeeding (we will get to that in a minute), but alas it is not. I'm seriously glad I only go into the office one day a week because them folks like to eat out.

So, now that I have shared my mission to lose 30...yes the 30 lingering lbs of the 60 I gained I fully expect everyone who reads this to hold me accountable not matter how mean I am to you about it. Let's face it, we both know I'm going to be mean. I hate dieting. Meagan I think we need to have some bitch sessions....aren't you angry too or are you off the wagon? How them new shoes doing?

On to the joys of breastfeeding.......Seriously it was joyful for about the first 4 months until my little nugget got used to being able to bite her bottle and then decided she could also bite me. W.....T.....F......that shit hurts and now with a tooth......let's just say she is clearly ready for a cheeseburger because that little 19 pound midget might as well be a great white. She made me BLEED the other night. It was like the minute I noticed her tooth she decided to put it to good use and while I still plan to go a year (I mean shit, I made it nine months and I'm no quitter) at what price? If I lose a nipple, I wonder if my insurance will pay to have it reattached? Please note, I do not find breastfeeding joyful anymore, it has it's moments, but for the most part the last few days I've been holding my breath each time she nurses praying I go with in with two and come out with two. Also, I do believe it's the reason she has not been very sick. She has been one of the least sick babies of all my friends and she is also one of the few still being breastfed.........you do the math.

Over the past few weeks I have been reading "Bringing Up Bebe" a book by Pamela Druckerman who discusses, in great detail, the differences between American parenting and French parenting. I picked the book up thinking it was going to be funny tales of these differences but what I got was a well written and throughly reserached book. I seriously wanted to take notes while I was reading as if there was going to be a test later.

Druckerman is an American who married a Brit, and they live in France. WTF...., but that is besides the point. While I am NOT a fan of the French, and let's get real who is, I was curious about this book and I must say, I fully plan to use some of these methods on Sadie Marie. I didn't continue reading it to get a new way of parenting, I tend to read things, adopt the things I like or see value in, and then completely discredit and mock the rest because after one child we all know I'm an expert.

For example, the French have this thing they call the Pause......where they don't immeidately pick up their children the moment they start crying, they give them 5-10 minutes to try to self soothe or to get distracted and play by themselves. I'm already trying to do this more. Sadie Marie fully expects to be picked up every time she starts crying and if she goes more than 5 minutes, well that is my limit. I have already found that sometimes she will only cry for a minute or two and then she's happy playing for the next 15. This is supposed teach autonomy. I get it, if they are happy playing let them play, no need to overstimulate. Some of the stories she told about parents in NYC at the park are priceless.

She tells a story about a mother who is giving a play by play of their child's play, to the child, WHILE the child is physically acting out the movement. It went something like this, "Jeffery is sliding down the slide, Jeffery is swining, Jeffery is running!!!!" Are you kidding me? I bet that kid was like SHUT UP!!!!!!!! I know I'm running you idiot.
I could go on and on with examples of things I agree with and things I disagree with from this book but those are my opinions and what I found interesting is this book was NOT full of opinions. This was a legit research book that was entertaining and funny. It was jammed packed with real life experiences, research both old and new, and some opinions based on those real life experiences. On thing I did find interesting is Druckerman has the same slightly bitter taste in her mouth for the "What to Expect" books as I do. I know they are also meant to be informative, but they are mostly filled with worst case senarios that just scare the crap out of me. Maybe that is just what I took from the books, but at month seven I stopped reading "What to Expect the First Year." I don't need to read it, I'm living that shit. PS, telling your nine month old not to bite you and taking the boob away from them only pisses them off further.

I officially stopped actually nursing yesterday. I tried to "teach" Sadie Marie not to bite me but after I got bit three times just during our afternoon session.....well F that. It also makes so nervous each time I sit down to feed and let's be real, I don't need that shit. I'm going to continue to pump and perhaps nurse sometimes just in the morning,s but last night while I was giving her a bottle, she was knawing on that thing like it was a piece of beef jerky. NO THANK YOU. Bottles and sippy cups please.

Moving on.

Not only has my little nugget gotten her first tooth, but two months after she officially started crawling, she has decided she will actually use it. I'm not kidding when I say two months ago she started crawling and then she just decided she was not going to and stopped. Now she has taken off! I took several videos of her yesterday so I could show the baby daddy when he got home late last night and of course I posted them to Facebook for all to see. It's just so funny that she has got such a mind of her own, I wonder where she got it from!?!

Now that Sadie Marie is officially mobile, I gotta get this house baby proofed, ASAP. Just thinking about this reminds me of the movie Baby Mama where Tina Fey's character baby proofs her house complete with a toilet lock. I'm thinking about implementing one of these to see if the baby daddy can unlock it or if he will just pee in in the tub......I also have no doubt Sadie Marie will try to flush herself down the toilet so I better get on that.

We have a busy weekend and week ahead......This weekend we have to take her nine month photos, she goes for her nine month check up today, PARENTS NIGHT OUT tomorrow, chruch on Sunday, the baby daddy leaves for the week on Monday, and then Cici and Gigi come to town! I'm so excited for my Cunnie and Lib to get here I can barely stand it. I think this is the longest my mom has ever been without seeing Sadie Marie.

I'm anxious to see if any of the French parenting skills I plan to use actually work on my little headstrong American. Many of these parenting skills are going to be a matter of circumstance more than my abilty to inforce them. This is even pointed out by the author that it was most like easier for her to enforce these things she leared from the French because she was in France where everyone else was doing the same thing. Nonetheless, the more she moves and talks I'm sure it's only going to get more interesting so I will keep y'all posted.

Have a good weekend!

April

Hello from TEXAS!

So for those of you who don't know, I have been out of town at a conference since Sunday, which means the baby daddy has been home alone.....with Sadie Marie......for 5 days. AHHHHHHHHHH. I know what you are all thinking, WTF April WTF. Keep in mind I had this trip scheduled before Sadie Marie was even born so it's not like I sprung it on him last week. So in my preparations to get him ready to care for our daughter all alone, I made a schedule for him to follow which started out like this:

Morning Routine: When she wakes up, change her diaper.

I know, I know right, I'm treating my poor husband like he's retarded but honestly I know him and if I don't write it down it will be my fault if it does not get done and trust me, this first line was necessary.

So on went my schedule of explaining what I do everyday as I get her ready for daycare, or what to do on the only day he actually had to keep her all day, and what to do when he got home with her in the evenings. Typing all this out for him and writing it here now kinda makes it sound like he has no idea how to care for Sadie Marie, which couldn't be further from the truth, but again in an attempt to have things done my way while I was gone, I wrote everything in painstaking detail and here's how much good it did.

First let me set the scene for you: I'm in my hotel room and my co-worker is in my room waiting with me to leave for our last session yesterday.......She hears this entire conversation and is cracking up by the time we are done.

Here's our conversation:

Me: What are you doing, where are you?

Him: I'm going to Babies R Us.

Me: WHY? Where is Sadie Marie?

Him: She's in the car with me, she's sleeping. I'm going to get level three nipples for our bottles. We have needed them for a while now. I have to go to Babies R Us because Target no longer carries Born Free bottles or nipples, Wal-Mart does not have them and when I first called Babies R Us, they told me they were out, but then they found them so was going home, but I turned around. I wasted like 15 mintues doing that.

Me: Oh sweet baby Jesus. What brought on this decision?

Him: Well, she has been annoyed with the bottles and gets tired of sucking and so Susan (our sitter) suggested we move her up to level three.

Me: Oh OK, so here's why you didn't need to go today. Number 1: it's not that serious. I'm still breastfeeding and the level of milk flow does not change there. She's just lazy and it could have waited until this weekend. Number two: you have to sterilze those before you can use them. Number three: You may have created a monster for yourself tonight if she's going to get a good hour of sleep at 7 PM and her bedtime is 8. Number four: this was NOT in the schedule.

Him: Oh I know I have to sterilize them....so how do I do that?

Me:.......SHIV.

So, as you can see it did me a lot of good to type, color coat, and go to Kinkos to print a 4 page schedule for him to follow.

Luckily for him, Sadie Marie is apparently much kinder than her mother because she still went to sleep for him with no crying last night. Evil child, she is making it so easy for him he actually asked me what I thought was so hard.......I think he might actually be considering adding a second baby to the mix after these EASY five days he has had.

For those of you who did not see the picture, above is my child at day care. She has a cheerio on her forehead. AWESOME. If her cheeks get any fatter we are going to have to build her a new door so she can fit through. I swear she has to have about 50 cheerios stuffed in there and can we also talk about her little fat fingers for just a minute. They look like vienna sausages. I LOVE it. I cannot wait to use THIS picture when she starts dating, which will be when she turns 21. Maybe longer if the baby daddy has any say.

So while I have been away I have been pumping my brains out in an attempt to continue my mission to breastfeed feed for a year and all I can say is WTF. I have been getting more pumped out while in TX a good 1500 miles from my child than I do when I'm home and she's two miles up the street at daycare. I took everything I had to pour all this milk out while I have been there and I went back and forth on whether to ship it home or not but decided that since I had a big enough stock pile at home to feed a small tribe of children for a year I should just get over it and save myself the trouble and pour it out. I'm sure all the cleaning ladies are like WTF is all this shit and why has this lady been washing bottles in her hotel room sink with her shampoo?

I mean are you kidding me, the stuff below was from a 5 minute pumping session at 4 PM yesterday when I usually only get about 3 ounces by that time of the afternoon. SEVEN ounces. SEVEN!!!!!!!!!!!!! Are you kidding me. I should be selling this stuff, although this batch is probably riddled with alcohol. One good thing about the NAACO conference, they assure you have plenty of booze each night to get you through these neverending days of educational event planning sessions.

Y'all like my little set up, my drying rack is freaking wash cloth. I clearly did not think this through and yep that's my brush hanging out on my drying rack. I guess it's a good thing I didn't want to ship this home. WTF.

So as I get ready for my final day of constant pumping, I'm kinda nervous to go home and have to start feeding Sadie Marie again. She's going to be like, "Are you kidding me? Where is that plastic nipple that squirts this shit down my throat so fast I almost choke. Stupid level three nipples. I told the baby daddy if he made this harder for me I was going to KEEL him. His heart was in the right place but SHIV.

So I must depart for now, I have a little more conference jazz left in me for today with our final educational session and the closing and then we have the rest of the day off. I think I will walk around the UT campus, which is directly across the street from my hotel, in my Alabama National Championship shirt from 2009 and see if I can get some reaction from the UT kiddos. I was almost stoned to death last night at the bar, but then we had some good banter about what a sissy Colt McCoy was, so I think they are still scarred. We shall see!

Love y'all!

Sadie Marie is EIGHT Months Old!

April