She can do it!

Well the little one is growing and changing! On Monday (2/26) she rolled over for the first time from back to tummy! She has been able to roll from her tummy to back for a while, but chooses not too usually. But Monday night she rolled the other way! And she did it again yesterday!

She also spent the night in her own room for the first time last night. No, I didn’t sleep well. She woke up once at midnight and was crying. I tried to talk to her and soothe her but it wasn’t working. So, I gave her a bottle and she drank 4oz and went back to sleep and slept until 6:30am! That is a whole half an hour later than normal. So, we are going to try it again tonight.

Hubby and I meanwhile are both sick. We felt horrible yesterday so we went to the doctors. He treated both of us as if we had a sinus infection. After 24 hours of antibiotics I feel a LOT better. Hubby doesn’t yet, all though he seems better to me.

That was the main reason we moved the little one to her room. With us blowing our noses all night long, and sneezing and coughing, she wasn’t sleeping well either. So, I guess that was my cue that it was time to move her. I missed her terribly. I am just used to being able to look at her anytime I want. Which, I still can on the monitor, but it’s just not the same. I can’t believe she is almost 6 months old! This morning when she got up, she was all smiles. She usually is, unless she is sick. She is just a happy baby! She is so cute. At least I think so, but I am a little biased.

Poor, Poor baby

Well, we were back at the Pediatrician’s office on Wednesday. The baby just kept getting worse. When she woke up Wednesday she was just miserable. So, she and I went mid-morning and saw her regular doc who informed me that she had RSV, bronchitis and an ear infection. Great…. So, I picked up a prescription of antibiotics for her on the way back to the office and she got her first dose as soon as possible. She was out of day care all week. There’s $210 down the drain. I sure wish you didn’t have to pay when they are out sick, but what are you going to do?

We ended up having to alternate pedialite and formula about every 2 hours in order to get fluids in her. She just didn’t want to eat! The doctor said she wasn’t worried about calories; she just wanted her to drink. She also wasn’t eating solids at all.

She is finally doing better. She still has a slight runny nose and a cough, but it’s a large improvement from where she used to be. Now Hubby is feeling rotten. I have been fighting getting sick the last few days as well. Tonight my nose is starting to run.

Finally tonight I tried feeding her solids. We went for straight baby food tonight, and we tried something new. I gave her sweet potatoes. She literally sucked them off the spoon and swallowed them right away! She thought that was the best! I really don’t think she likes the texture of the oatmeal and rice cereal. But, it’s something she has got to eat.

Well, I am off to bed. I worked at WnW today and I am tired. That job wears me out! Plus it doesn’t help that the baby woke us up at 5:30am coughing and didn’t want to go back to sleep.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

I forgot to mention last entry that Hubby turned in all his Home Depot gift certificates he received for his birthday and Christmas for a snow blower, and it was 20% off! Of course it will probably be 7 years before we have another winter like this one. And now it probably won’t snow for 2 years now that we have it. Wait, I take that back. We got a gas snow blower and we don’t have any gas yet, so it will probably snow a ton and we won’t be able to get to the gas station to get gas. They are predicting snow for Saturday so I told Hubby he had better get gas before then. If he does, we will be prepared. Of course that means we will probably only get a dusting of snow.

Also, the baby’s 5 month pictures are now up on her pics page. Or at least the link to follow in on her pics page. Enjoy!

Poor Baby

Well, life has been busy here. I am essentially working full time now. I am working 32 hours a week, 16 at WnW and 16 at SH. But the good news is that the baby is only in daycare for 2 & ½ days a week.

I mentioned before about the sick kids in her class, and I knew it was only a matter of time until it hit her. Well, time was hit at 2:30am Sunday morning. She had been really congested sounding all week. Saturday night I gave her a bath, and I always steam up her bathroom when I do that so it’s warm. I had gotten a little carried away on the steaming, so it was like a fog bank rolled into her bathroom. It was hard to see her in the tub! (Okay that is a LITTLE exaggeration…) Anyway, I think that loosened up all the crud. That night after I put her to bed, I was listening to her on the monitor and I kept saying to Hubby “she doesn’t sound good.” She just started sounding like things were starting to shake loose. Sure enough, she woke us up at 2:30am with a cough that sounded awful. So, I got up with her and rocked her until 4am. I tried putting her back on her pillow once, but that didn’t work. At 4am, Hubby took her and we went downstairs. I slept on the couch and he slept in the recliner with her. As long as she is tummy to tummy with us on an inclined position, she can get enough drainage that she sleeps pretty well.

I have to laugh, when she woke us up that morning at 2:30am, Hubby and I just looked at each other completely dumbfounded. Neither of us had any clue what to do! She is just so young it’s not like we can run to Walgreen’s and get some decongestant and cough medicine for her! I said, ‘should I call the pediatrician?’ He said ‘not at 2:30am!’ So, we just winged it. I called our friends at 8am the next morning (or earlier, I am not sure, but I knew they would be up with 2 young kids also) and she gave me tips on what to do.

I had thankfully taken that day off from WnW as it was a BIG day for me. It was the Daytona 500!!! So, it worked out really well since I had been up since 2:30am. We all spent the day in our PJ’s. I would take her up to the bathroom and ‘steam her’ as we call it. Her appetite had really decreased, but her disposition was still really good. She would still smile at us.

Overnight was another story. We tried putting her on her pillow again. She was sound asleep tummy to tummy on Hubby, so we put her down. Within minutes she was coughing so hard she woke up and then started crying. Oh, and she has laryngitis so bad, it’s really sad sounding when she cries. So, he took her and slept in the recliner. We brought down another humidifier, so there are 2 running in our family room plus the one on our furnace. Our family room feels like a tropical rainforest! No need to worry about getting shocked in that room!

I had to get up at 3:30am as I got to be interview by the news again. The news contacted WnW about doing a story on dog safety in cars. I guess I have been delegated store spokesperson. So, they called me Friday and asked me to do the live spot on the morning news. So, I was at the store by 4:45am to set things up. I had 3 or 4 live spots on the news. Of course Bristol was with me and he was the star. There will also be a little blurb on the evening news as well. I love doing things like that. Dog safety is an important thing! And it gets WnW some free press. I was at the store until around 7am.

Once I got home the baby had just woken up and eaten her first bottle. Her appetite had really decreased and her disposition had changed. She was no longer the happy go lucky baby, she is now the ‘I feel like crud and I am going to tell you about it’ baby. So, we called the pediatrician’s office as soon as they opened, and we were in to see them at 11:30am. The doctor said it’s just a bad cold. (JUST a bad cold, try living with her!) He told us to keep doing everything we were doing and that’s all we could do. Hubby said to me after the doctor left ‘see, don’t you feel good knowing we were all ready doing all the right things?’ I said, ‘yes, but that’s because we are good parents!’ J

Anyway, her 3 bottles she has had so far today have been awful. She has only eaten 2 oz. each time and that is just not enough. I think I am going to go get some pedialite and see if we can’t get more fluid in her. She is finally napping in her swing, but about every 15 minutes she has a coughing fit. I feel so bad for her, I wish there was more we could do. I guess she isn’t going back to daycare for a little while. I want her to be REALLY close to being over this so we don’t just continue to pass it around! All though I am sure it will come around again anyway. But if I can prolong it any by keeping her out, well then so be it!

Well, I guess I better run to Walgreen’s!

Snow Removal

Here we are a month and a half past the first blizzard, and the city is outside right now with 3 Caterpillar things and dump trucks clearing up the snow. They brought in 3 different size heavy equipment pieces, and of course I don’t know what they are called. I think 1 large front end loader, 1 smaller front end loader and the other thing has a blade in the middle of the machine that they can put down and scrap the street or sidewalk. They broke it all up, got it in a pile at the end of the street and are loading it into dump trucks. They have filled 2 dump trucks so far that I have seen. Who knows what they are going to do with it. Dump it somewhere to melt? And of course its right in front of the house and the baby’s room is right up front as well and she is trying to nap. I can hear the machines through the monitor, they are so loud. But it looks like they are almost done. The baby is restlessly sleeping right now.

Speaking of the baby she MAY be fighting her first cold. She has sounded unusually congested the last 2 days and this morning she was coughing a bit. I wouldn’t be surprised as there were a few other infants at day care who were really sick, and I couldn’t believe they let those kids be there! But I guess what can you do? I hope that as a daycare that if a kid really is too sick that they will send them home. However, the kids were there sick so I won’t be surprised if ours gets it. We have been running the humidifiers non-stop and I am going to bring our large one up from the basement. We had a whole house humidifier put on our heating system a few years ago, so we put our large humidifier away at that time. But I just want to boost the humidity a little bit more to help keep her sinuses moist to help fight off anything possible. I use saline in her nose twice a day as well.

She is really changing fast now! She is starting to be okay with her oatmeal, she will open her mouth for it, but she still doesn’t like the taste. I think soon we will need to try baby food. She is also laughing a lot more now. She used to only laugh when we were interacting with her. Now she is starting to laugh without us interacting with her. Two nights ago she was watching the dogs play. Maggie stopped and looked at her and she laughed! Last night we had her in her command center while we ate dinner and she was laughing to herself, it was so cute! Hubby said yesterday she was squealing when he was playing with her on the floor.

She turned 5 months old yesterday! We made it through the 4^th month! The 4^th month had me worried. Reflux is supposed to peak during that time, as is the risk of SIDS. I know we are not out of the woods with either things, but I feel better being into the 5^th month now. We are napping her in her crib, even though her room gets warm during the day, we can keep it to mid 70’s. And at night she is still in our room. My goal is to move her within the month to her room. She is ready and would be fine, but I am not sure I am ready.

I worked this weekend and it was CRAZY! We broke our record of number of washes in one day. Our old record was 107, and on Saturday we did 109! WHEW, I was TIRED and SORE when I got home that night. And then yesterday (Sunday) we did 108! We are open from 9am-7pm on Saturday and on Sunday we are open 10am-5pm. So, Saturday we averaged 10.9 washes an hour, Sunday it was 15.43 washes an hour! No wonder I slept like a log last night.

Well the baby needs attention, so off I go!

First week of day care

Well, I have gone back to work part time. I took the baby on Tuesday for her first day of day care. I told them I would be spending the day. But by the time we got to the middle of the day and she went down for a nap, I figured I was ok heading out. So I picked up lunch for Hubby and myself and headed to work for a few hours.

Wednesday I didn’t work. It was a Buddy day. First thing in the morning we took him to his eye doctor appointment. We found out that he is indeed blind, as we suspected, and that he needs to have both eyes removed and artificial ones inserted. Of course this is going to cost a lot of money, and we just paid for the major surgery on his leg. So, the surgery is going to have to wait a little bit, plus his leg needs time to heal a bit more.

Speaking of his leg, he is still non-weight bearing on it, so I also took him to a rehab appointment that day. Yes, now-a-days they even have rehab for dogs! The lady wanted me to get him re-checked by our vet because he was still not putting weight on it. So, I did that today and he has a fracture in it, a complication of surgery. It looks like next step is a splint. We go tomorrow to see the specialist again.

Today I worked again. We took the baby to day care this morning, and then headed to work. I missed her terribly all day, and I only called and checked on her once. Okay, and our friends checked on her for me too when they dropped off their daughter. We picked her up about 5pm and she was all smiles. There is Ms. Nancy and Ms. Kay in her room and I think both of them are great. I think they are so perfectly suited for their jobs! They are both very quiet spoken and when they do speak they both have calming voices. The baby really likes Ms. Nancy, when we were getting ready to go she kept staring at her and smiling.

We came home, hung out a bit, tried to feed her some cereal (she still doesn’t like it) and then she had a bath and went to bed. She was so tired, she fell asleep eating, that's something she just doesn’t do! So, she went to bed early.

She is going to go back to day care for a while tomorrow. I haven’t gotten my hours in yet for the week since I was running around with Buddy today. And it will make running around with Buddy easier tomorrow as well.

Well, it’s time to move laundry, unload and re-load the dishwasher and watch Grey’s Anatomy!

Cold!!!

Well, I did it; I signed the baby up for day care. Of course, now due to some other factors, I am strongly considering not going back to work there. I am supposed to take her for her first day on Tuesday, so I need to make some decisions fast.

Last Sunday Hubby and I went out and ran errands and it ended up interfering with the baby’s afternoon nap. I swear, since then, the kid is still off. She doesn’t want to sleep, and when I do finally get her to sleep I am lucky if I get a 45 minute nap out of her, which means I get nothing done. And she has decided that waking up at 5:30am is a good time to get up. Ugh, I am starting to suffer from lack of sleep.

I am also having eye issues. One of my eyes seems to not be draining. So I am always wiping tears out of it. I went to the eye doctor today who said that there may be a mild infection in there but he doesn’t see anything. He wants me to try washing my eye lashes twice a day and warm compresses at night to see if it will clear up. If it doesn’t clear up in a few days we will try antibiotics next.

Well, it snowed, again. It was really light fluffy stuff, and we got about 2-3 inches of it. I need to remember to get a push broom so I can clear off the driveway easily when we get this snow. The next round is supposed to move in tonight. With the next round is supposed to be COLD temperatures. The high tomorrow is supposed to be 6 degrees! (That is -14.4 degrees in Celsius for my international readers). Brrrr…. The good news is that I don’t have anywhere to go tomorrow, so I can stay home and warm with the baby! Maybe I can squeeze in making some muffins tomorrow. We shall see how naps go.

Well, if I want to get my dishwasher unloaded I have to go and do it now. The baby has been asleep for about 20 minutes all ready!