MIA

Sorry I've been MIA lately! I'm really disappointed with myself that I haven't posted anything in a week. I've been trying to get better with keeping up with this, but the past week has just been crazy busy. I normally try to write these at night after K goes to bed, but I have been coming home so exhausted that by the time she goes to sleep I am too lazy to do anything at all. Pathetic, but true. So anyways, things are slowing down again now so I am planning on getting back on track.

On top of work being busy, the little miss decided recently she wasn't a fan of sleeping. For 4 nights in a row she literally would not sleep. I could get her to bed pretty easy, but she would be up about every hour or 2 the entire night. So frustrating. Before that she had gotten pretty good at sleeping and I was getting used to getting to sleep again too. Guess, she thought it was best to keep me on my toes. Thankfully though the past couple of nights it seems that she has gotten back to her normal sleep routine. Hopefully.

Before her little sleep refusal started, Vince and I were actually talking about baby #2. No, we weren't meaning we wanted to try right this moment. BUT, we were saying we wanted our kids to be close in age, and we wouldn't mind starting again soon, and blah blah blah. Well, now after those 4 days? I think I'm back to thinking that Kaylee is going to have to wait awhile for sibling..

On a completely random note.. during my lunch break today I ran to Babies R Us to get 1 thing. Well, of course as I'm walking back to the front to check out, I start browsing the clothing section and by the time I went to actually check out my arms were full. Why does that always seem to happen to me? In my defense, they were having some good sales though and some of the stuff on clearance was just too cheap not to get! ;)

OK I'm off to a meeting, but hope everyone is having a good week so far. At least it's already halfway over!

Wee Bit Wednesday

{one} what's your guilty pleasure tv show?

Well currently there's Keeping up with the Kardasians, Bachelor Pad, The Challange, Project Runway, True Blood and of course my favorite Big Brother. Yes, I know I have way too many. My DVR is constantly full.

{two} ear piercings on men: yes or no?

NO. At least not on Vince. I don't really care about what other guys do. Vince had his pierced in high school and I was so happy when he took them out!

{three} do you have dish or comcast?

Comcast.

{four} what's your favorite current fashion trend?

 

I read the other day that navy is the "fall color" this year. Not sure if it's true, but if so I am all about it.  I like navy better than black and actually just bought a navy blazer from express the other week.  

{five} if you could learn to do anything, money not being an issue, what would it be?

I would learn to do gymnastics. Be a real gymnast, good enough for the olympics. I could do your basic tumbling when I was younger, but nothing crazy. I LOVE watching the summer olympics, I think what they can do is amazing.

{six} red or white wine?

Red. Cabernet Sauvignon is my fav... mmmm..

{seven} what type of food is your favorite?

Mexican. No doubt about it. I would eat it every day of the week if I could.

{eight} hp or mac?

Mac. I used a Mac throughout college, but then got a hp a couple of years ago. Now Vince and I want to switch and get a Mac instead. Love them.

{nine} what color is your bedroom?

The bedding is a mixture of creams, browns, and light green. The walls are a dark tanish/light brown type of color. I need to take a picture because it looks much better than it sounds ha.

{ten} what's your favorite form of exercise?

Excerise classes of any kind. I much prefer taking a class over just running on a treadmill. (not that I have much time to get the gym between work and the baby.. I need to get back into a routine asap)

Thankful Thursday

First off I am most thankful right now that it's almost the weekend. Thanks to the little miss who has decided this week that 5am is time to start the day I have been exhausted and am looking forward to relaxing this weekend!

I am also thankful for lunch dates with Vince. Now that I am back at work we've been able to get back to our occasional lunch dates which are a perfect way to break up the work day and get a little us time again :)

I know I said this already this week, but I am SO very thankful that Kaylee seems to be enjoying daycare. She has made this transition back to work a whole lot easier on her previously worried mama.

I am thankful that the window treatments we ordered for our house about a month ago are finally in and being installed tomorrow. Sleeping in a bedroom with no blinds or curtains or anything is not making it easy to ever sleep past sunrise. (yes Kaylee does sometimes let us sleep in.. just wish it was more often ha)

I am thankful that Vince is getting done work early today and going grocery shopping for me, because grocery shopping with an almost 4 month old? Not always so easy.

I am thankful it's almost fall. I do love summer time, but fall is by far my favorite time of the year.

I am thankful that for my best friends wedding she asked 2 of us to be her maid/matrons of honor. It is much more fun planning stuff her with another person rather than just one person handling it :)

Lastly, I am EXTREMELY thankful that after a few months of ups and downs and trying all kinds of formulas and different medicines for Kaylee's colic and acid reflux issues.. we have finally found what seems to be the right thing for Miss K. She is now much more often the smiling, cooing, happy baby we always knew she was ;) 

** side note please don't judge me for formula feeding. If I hear one more person say that if I had breastfed she wouldn't be having problems, I'm going to scream. For the record I wanted to breastfeed, it just wasn't an option for us.  

My new goal

My friend Kate posted the other day about a cook-off she and her husband had with some of their friends. This made me start thinking about my cooking skills. (it also made me hungry just looking at the pictures!)

Before getting married I knew nothing about cooking. (seriously you would have been shocked at how little I knew)

So one of my major goals the first couple years of being married was learning how to cook.

So after 2 1/2 years of marriage I can now honestly say that I can cook.

I can easily follow recipes and put together a decent dinner for just Vince and I. Or I can make most of your basic meals without having to look at a cookbook. I've hosted plently of parties and had holiday dinners at my house making all of the major food items for the whole family.

BUT none of that qualifies me as being a "good" cook, more so it just shows that I know how to cook. I always comment about how my mom and my grandmom are good cooks. I swear they know how to make anything and it always comes out amazing. There's always something different to try when they make family dinners, insteead of being like me and just having the same old thing all of the time.

I want to be a good cook.

I want to learn to make all kinds of things and come up with some of my own ideas.

I know that this is something that takes time to learn to do, but I want to make this a new goal for myself. At least once a week I want to make something new and start expanding my basic cooking skills. So that maybe one day my grandkids will say what a good cook their grandmother is ;)

Now I just need to start looking for some new recipes..

no sleep + no caffeine = randomness

After almost 3 weeks of Kaylee sleeping 8-10 hours straight every night, she has all of a sudden started waking up again the past three nights and I am exhausted. So, because my mind is still half asleep and I haven't had any caffeine yet today this post is all over the place. Just a bunch of randomness that I woke up thinkng about...

******

I wish Kaylee would take naps with me. I know it's probably a good thing that she would much rather sleep in her own bed, but there are times I would love to just curl up and go to sleep with her. I've tried to wait until she is really sleepy and then lay down with her, but the moment I do her eyes immediately open and any hope I had for napping is out the window. So I've given up on that (for now, maybe it will be different when she gets older) and just let her sleep on her own, at least that way I can nap sometimes too.

I need to go shopping. I am seriously in major need of new clothes. Other than a couple of random shirts here or there or some outfits I got as gifts, I haven't bought new clothes for myself in well over a year. Now part of that is because I was pregnant this time last year, but still I think I deserve to go shopping and invest in a few new things.  Right?

Over the weekend I decided it was finally time to start getting some pictures I have taken of Kaylee printed instead of just letting them sit on my camera. My intention was to just get a few.. well after a couple of hours of sorting through them I ended up ordering over 400 prints! No joke. I didn't even know I had that many pictures. To be fair though, some are doubles because I wanted to give some to both my mom and Vince's mom, but still. That's a lot of pictures. So last night once I had them all organized I put them in albums and marked down her age or where we were next to some of them. I'm so glad I did it, I'm going to try to keep up with putting them in albums every few months at least for the first year. It's just amazing to see how much she has changed when you back through all of them :)

On Friday my baby sister will be leaving for college and officially be a Freshman at Ole Miss. (wish I could say she was going to be a HOKIE like me, but whateverrr.. haha kidding, sort of) I still can't believe she is that old already! I am SO excited for her. College was definitely an adjustment for me at first and I had to get use to being away from home, but once I did it seriously was the best 4 years of my life. I know she will love it too and it make so many amazing memories. Good luck Sammie, I love you <3

Speaking of college... yesterday Vince and I opened up Kaylee's college savings account. I know she is only a few months old, but she will be 18 before we know it and I want to make sure we have that put away for her. Vince and I were both very fortunate in that both of our parents paid for our colleges and we didn't graduate with lots of loans. We were able to pick whatever school we wanted in state or out of state and I want to be able to give that same gift to our kids one day. So, starting now I am officially savings for my kids college (and wedding one day too haha). Man, when did I get so old??? lol.

That's all I've got for today. Have a good one! :)

Getting used to Daycare (and some cute Kaylee pictures)

This is now my third week back at work and I am happy to say it's not as bad as I thought it would be. Now please don't get me wrong I would LOVE to be at home with Kaylee instead, but I had been completely dreading going back to work and now that I am back I'm surprisingly ok with it.

I think it's mainly due to the fact that she has been doing SO good at daycare. I was really nervous about leaving her there all day long, and cried like a baby the first day I dropped her off (which was a tad embarassing, but oh well). Thankfully though each day has gotten a little bit easier.

We looked into all kinds of different daycare options while I was pregnant and ended up choosing to go with a family friend who has an in-home daycare where she watches about 4-6 kids depending on the day. She will only take one infant at a time (so we met with her awhile ago to make sure to hold the spot) and then she has one 1 year old and the others are between 2-5. She watched Vince's nephew for a couple of years when he was younger and her daughter works for my mother-in-law so we know the family and know that she will take good care of our baby while we are working. 

I love that when I go to pick her up I can hear her talking or laughing while watching the older kids play. Kaylee is the youngest baby there and from what I have heard from a couple of the other moms is that the other kids argue over who gets to play with her during the day. I like knowing that she isn't just sitting there starring at a wall or something and is actually being entertained and played with. (plus the lady who is watching her has been great and doesn't mind that I am a crazy mom and call all the time just to check on her haha) So far I have never gone to pick her up and found her crying or upset at all and that is a huge relief to me. Plus it gives me something to look forward to every single day when I know I will get a huge smile from her when she first sees me :)

I also have to admit that it is kind of nice getting out of the house and just being with adults some too. Again, I obviously miss her a ton every day and would love to be with her, but I am working I'm just grateful that she is doing well and being taken care of by someone I trust.

That's really all I have to say about that, for now at least haha... but I also wanted to share a couple of cute pictures I took of the little lady this weekend ;)

Happy Monday!

TGIF!

It's FINALLY Friday! This week has seemed to really drag on for some reason and I am SO looking forwarded to finally having a weekend with nothing to do! (It's the first time in awhile for us!)

Vince works tonight so it will just be me and my favorite little lady hanging out all night. Then tomororw we are going to stay at home just the 3 of us and have a relaxing night in. Sounds like the perfect weekend to me ;) I want to try a new recipe for dinner, just need to look through some of my cookbooks and find one first! haha I also assume we are probably going to spend most of the night watching LOST. We never watched it while it was airing, but then last year bought season 1 randomly and started watching it. Since then we have been hooked.  We are on season 4 now and I always get excited to finally have time to sit down and watch it with Vince.

Anyways, I hope you all had a good week and enjoy the weekend! Happy Friday :)

Fast Forward

So now that I have finally posted about Kaylee's birth, lets fast forward a few months.

I think the easiest and fastest way to catch you up is to just show you in pictures. SO here is a little recap of Kaylee's first 3 months ;)

I can't believe how quickly she has grown and just completely changed from the little bitty newborn she was!

First family picture 5.6.11

My little peanut ;)

Ty meeting Kaylee for the first time.. OMG look how TINY she was!!

I seriously forgot how much hair she used to have... hope it grows back in soon! haha

First trip to St. Louis to visit my family at 3 weeks old

First starting to try to smile at 5 weeks

6 weeks and cute as can be ;)

2 months old and getting sick of taking pictures already lol

10 weeks old and losing lots of hair

First beach trip at 12 weeks

Dinner with Daddy at 3 months <3

Kaylee's Christening 8.7.11 (13 weeks old)

3 Generations

And that should just about catch you up! I have really enjoyed being able to stay home with my baby girl the past 3 months. I am back to work now and trying to balance working full time and being a mom. So far it's going pretty good, but more on that later.

Hope you enjoyed the little photo recap, I can't believe my baby will already be 14 weeks old this Friday! Where does the time go??

Kaylee's Birth Story (part 2)

(check here for part 1)

At 3:15am I had just fallen asleep and then all of a sudden the monitors started beeping and flashing and then lights get turned on and 4 nurses came running in the room. One nurse got the Dr on the phone, 2 were checking all of the monitors and print outs, and the 3rd kept making me move and from side to side. My nurse at least kept rubbing my arm and telling me everything would be ok, but no one would actually tell Vince or I what was going.

I sat there freaking out, holding his hand and barely breathing waiting for someone to tell us something. After what seemed like forever, but was probably less than 2 minutes, I heard the nurse on the phone with the Doctor say they would start prepping me for a c-section immediately. My eyes instantly filled with tears I just turned and looked at Vince and right as he started to ask the nurse what was happening all of the beeping stopped.

Things got calm and quiet again.

The nurse talked to the Dr some more and then hung up. Finally my nurse turned to me and said apparently my baby girl didn't like the epidural and it had caused her heart rate to drop from 160 to 60 and they thought they were going to have to do an emergency c-section, but all of sudden she calmed down and her heart rate went back up. The nurse said she would be coming in every 15 minutes until the morning just to adjust the monitors and make sure she was still doing ok.

By 3:30am she turned the lights out again and told me to get some rest. Yea, like that was going to happen with her having to come in every 15 minutes.

I just laid there and shut my eyes and kind of dozed on and off and told Vince to lay back down and try to sleep for a few hours. I figured at least one of us should have some kind of sleep that night. So from 3:30 - 6:15am my nurse came in and out and Kaylee continued to do well the rest of the time. At some point during the time I started feeling really sick to my stomach so they gave me some nausea medicine, and I could feel a couple small cramps but nothing even worth mentioning.

At 6:15am the Dr came into the room. I was laying there half asleep and Vince was completely passed out still. She said she was just going to check me and then would get the nurse to start the pitocin. She checked and then looked at me and asked how I was feeling. I told her I felt ok, just tired and she said "well you may want to try to get some energy because I can see your baby's head and it's time to start pushing".

Umm.. WHAT?! I thought I was going to be here ALL day before having to start pushing. I was shocked! The Dr actually said she was just as surprised as I was. I yelled over at Vince to hurry up and wake up! The poor guy was so out of it at first. To be honest it was so unexpected and quick I think we were both not quite sure what was going on. 

The Dr quickly put a gown on over her clothes and paged to get another nurse in there to help once Kaylee was out. At 3:30am the room was set-up for delivery and she told my nurse to have me do a practice push. As soon as I did, the Dr (across the room) started yelling "no, no, stop!!" apparently my practice push almost pushed the baby out haha.

So the Doctor came over and sat down, the nurse stood to her right encouraging me to push and Vince stood to my left rubbing my back. I  held my own legs pushed for 3 contractions and then on the 4th she was out and laying on my chest. It was amazing, fast, surreal. It honestly felt like a whirlwind. I was still half asleep at 6:15 and by 6:46am I was holding my beautiful 6lb 15oz baby girl. Vince cut the cord and I took a minute just to stare at her.

It was by the far the best moment of my life.

The nurse then took her to weigh her and clean her up while the Dr helped finish everything with me. I honestly don't remember much about that part, I was too busy just staring across the room at Kaylee.

I was extremely lucky and didn't end up needing any stitches or anything like that, so by the time they were done with Kaylee I was all cleaned up too. The nurse then wrapped her and handed her to Vince. There are no words to describe what it felt like seeing him hold our daughter for the first time.

So that's our story. The whole experience was completely different than I had originally thought it would be, but it was amazing. I wouldn't change anything about it. Vince was wonderful the whole time. He stayed the next couple of nights at the hospital with Kaylee and I and then on Sunday (which was also Mother's Day) we got to take our baby girl home for the first time <3

Kaylee's Birth Story (Part 1)

I know it's well overdue, but better late than never.

I had all intentions of writing this as one post, but after I realized how long it was I think it's better that I split it up a little. So tomorrow I will put up the rest of the story.

***

I had my last doctors appointment on a Wednesday at 40wks and 5 days and was still having ZERO progress. So when the doctor said I could either wait another week and see how it goes or I could go in that Thursday night and get induced Friday morning I immediately said yes! I was so over waiting.

So the plan was to go in on Thursday night and have cervidil put in just to help get things moving a little bit before they started the actual induction with pitocin on Friday morning. I was supposed to have the night in the hospital to just relax and rest up for the next day.

Well apparently Miss Kaylee didn't agree with that plan...

I checked into the hospital on Thursday night at 8pm. By 10pm the Dr was there and checked me once more before putting in the cervidil. I was still at a zero. So, she put in the cervidil but said it would probably only help me get to a 1 before the morning and I should be prepared to have a long day on Friday.

At that point I was just so excited (and nervous) to finally be having my baby the next day that I could barely sit still. Vince and I stayed up till about midnight just hanging out and talking with our nurse. Who by the way was AMAZING! Her and Vince actually knew each other, she was his neighbor growing up. I had never met her before, but I seriously fell in love with her immediately and couldn't have imagined having a different nurse. I was so grateful that I didn't have to switch nurses and she was with me throughout the whole process.

OK so anyways back to the story.. At about midnight I decided I should probably try to get some sleep since the Dr had said she would be back around 6am. Right as I went to move a little to get comfortable I felt a little leak. I just kind of stopped and sat there for a second and Vince asked me what was wrong, I told him I wasn't sure if my water had just broke or if I had peed myself. Which I honestly had never done before, but it wasn't a gush of water like I had expected and the leak stopped so I was so confused! Vince kept telling me to page the nurse and ask her to check, but I was so embarrassed that I wasn't sure what it was that I didn't want to ask yet. After 5 minutes of just sitting there I finally gave in and paged her.

When I told her she laughed and said she would check, but it probably wasn't my water breaking since I had just been checked and wasn't progressing yet. Well turns out it was my water! After she tested it and said that's what it was she left me stand up to go to the bathroom and right as I did I finally had the "gush" I had been expecting. (which by the way I am SO glad it happened at the hospital and not at home! lol)

OK so at this point it was like 12:30am and the nurse called the Dr to let her know my water had broke. The issue was that since I had the cervidil still in they couldn't check me to see if I was progressing anymore without taking it out and they didn't want to take it out just to find out I was still at a zero. The Dr said my water breaking had nothing to do with the cervidil it probably would have happened regardless and it didn't mean I was actually progressing yet. So since I was still feeling completely fine (the monitor was showing small contractions, but nothing I could even feel) they said to just go to sleep and they would check me again when she came back in the morning to take the cervidil out.

Sounded good to me, but again Kaylee had her own plans.

I fell asleep for maybe 10 minutes after the nurse left the room and then woke up to very strong contraction. It completely caught me off guard since moments before I wasn't feeling anything. Sometime over the next 30 minutes my contractions went from nothing to full on back to back contractions. The nurse came in without me even paging her because she said she had been watching them on the monitor and wanted to come make sure I was doing ok. At this point they were anywhere from 30-60 seconds apart. I felt like I barely had time to catch my breath in between. (I want to take a second out of the story to just say that my entire pregnancy I read all kinds of blogs and books about how contractions would feel and was so worried I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between false labor and real labor.. well let me just tell you, when it's real labor YOU KNOW. There is no mistaking it.) The nurse offered to give me some kind of pain medicine, but anytime I take pain meds I feel kind of out of it and I HATE that feeling so I told her no.

The nurse then called the Doctor again and she told her to take out the cervidil and check me. I had progressed to a 2. A freaking 2. I know I should have been happy to finally be making progress, but from the pain of the contractions I could have sworn I would have at least been a 4 at that point! The Doctor suggested that since I was still progressing slowly I should go ahead and get the epidural so that I could relax and sleep the rest of the night. I wanted to wait a little bit longer (which now I honestly can't remember what my point to waiting was?). The nurse said to just page her whenever I was ready and she would call the anesthesiologist. So at 1am we turned down the lights and I laid there trying to just relax and breathe through the contractions. By 2:30am I was over it. With them coming back to back like that, I gave up and had the nurse call for the epidural. I have a lot of respect for women who choose to go 100% natural, I couldn't do it.

Apparently it was a slow night at the hospital because within 15 minutes the anesthesiologist was there. I really didn't think getting the epidural was that bad. The worst part was just trying to sit completely still, since my contractions weren't far enough for the Dr to do it in between them. By 3am I was starting to feel MUCH better.

I thought I could finally at least relax for a few hours and get some sleep.

Wrong again.

(This is getting way too long, so I will post part 2 tomorrow!)

Back to blogging...

Kaylee will be 3 months on Saturday. I have blogged ONCE since she was born. Major FAIL.

I seriously feel like she was just born. Where did the time go?? 

Knowing I would be going back to work soon I have spent the last 3 months at home cherishing every minute I could with my baby girl. While she was sleeping I was either keeping up with my job from home or sleeping too. Other than using my work laptop, I don't think I turned on my personal computer more than a couple of times the entire time. (I did use my phone to keep up to date with twitter and facebook.. I couldn't completely cut out social media haha) SO before I realized it, it had been quite a long time since I had even opened my own blog.

I debated for a little bit on whether to just delete the blog at this point or get back to it. The reason I decided to start it up again is because now more than ever I want to use it to keep track of everything. Kaylee is growing SO fast and changing every single day and I don't want to miss any of it. I want to be able to look back on all of these memories (the good and the bad haha) and remember what it was like when she was just a baby... because I am already learning that they really do grow too fast ;)

My life has changed completely in 3 short months so it only seems right that my blog should change too. I am renaming it "Life with Miss K" and focusing on all of the joys and challenges (because there are plenty of those too!) that go along with trying to balance my family life, work, friends, and everything in between.

Here are a couple of pictures of Kaylee at 2 months (I'll post new ones when I take 3 month pictures):

**I don't plan on recapping everything from the past few months, but there are a couple of things I want to write about while they are still fresh in my mind, like her birth story.. so I apologize in advance for a couple of old stories!