it's been a while...
yeah, so, facebook has taken over my life. Most of you keep up with me through my short updates on there...in some ways, I haven't felt like there is anything worth of posting on here. In other ways I always feel like I post when I just post when I am depressed. Well, this evening is not exactly a change, but I will try to hit some high points...
Since becoming a mom my whole life surrounds doing the best for my child. More so than I anticipated. I thought I would have other thoughts about things other than parenthood more often. Not the case with me. I am almost always thinking about how I can be better to sara, what to do about this stuff or that stuff when it comes to her, etc. I would say 80% of my thoughts surround her then the other 20% is everything else. Some days I wish I could shut it off when I have some alone time. Haven't figured out how to do that, yet.
Christmas was good. It was a bit more low key than I expected. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it was very different than last year. Maybe it was because of scott's surgery and then infection that I just did not take very much time at all to prepare for Christmas. All things considered we hardly bought sara or each other much of anything. Sara definitely did not need anything from us, and we knew she was getting some big stuff from my parents and my sister. That is why I went small. I enjoy the fact that we draw names in our family now among Scott, mere, Steve, mom, dad, and me. The only thing is, I honestly miss the surprise and anticipation with opening the presents from my parents. I do not need any of the extra stuff that I could have gotten. It's just that selfish part of me misses that part. Then there is the drawing of names among scott's family. The problem is Scott's parents adamantly refuse to participate in the drawing of names saying lines like "you don't need to get us anything." Well, who really does that? Who really doesn't give their parents a x-mas present if they can afford to give one? seriously. All of the other siblings give presents so we do also. One of these years, I swear I am going to rally all of scott's siblings and spouses and say ok, we are not doing gifts for his parents b/c they refuse to participate in the name drawing and refuse to follow anyone's wish list. You see my mother in-law gather's all the wish list and sends them out to the appropriate person who drew your name. That way we can kind of keep it a secret. sigh. I digress. I need to learn to enjoy Christmas again. I also need to learn how to think through the Christmas plans offers of whose house to go to, etc.
This week has been kind of crazy. Sara came down with a cold on Tuesday and has been running a fever ever since. Well, after much internal debate with myself and some talk with my mom, I decided to take her to the doctor Friday afternoon. It was just a cold, like I had been thinking all along, but the fever was being caused by an ear infection as a result of all the drainage she has had. So sara's on antibiotics for 10 days. I hope they work and make her feel better. I've been giving her imodium during the day every 6-8 hours then not doing it during the night. Then she wakes up burning up first thing in the morning. sigh. I hope it gets better soon! The other craziness is what this post is really about...ECI. Early Childhood Intervention.
so I've been worried for quite a while about sara "catching up" and learning to walk. well, since she is almost 18 months she should be caught up. They usually give preemies 6 months to 2 years to catch up. So she's getting close to the point where she should be all caught up. The problem is, sara is still not walking. she crawls in a funny way, but pulls up on things w/o any problems. She even barely holds on to them. The thing is she adamantly refuses to "practice" walking with either of us. You put her in a standing position, hold her hands/arms to start some practicing then book she picks up her legs so she is just hanging by her arms. Her legs are now in a frog type of position. then we go into temper tantrum mode. sigh. So ECI initially doesn't know what is causing her not to walk. for the next 6 months they will be coming to my house on Mon. mornings at 8 to work with both of us. I pray that she can learn to walk very soon. My pet peeve though, is all these people who say I will regret her learning to walk. seriously? you think so? has anyone really regretted really and truly their child learning to walk? I don't think so! I am not talking about feliztheowl's mom's thoughts on it. those are amusing and make some sense. I am talking about the mom's of young ones who are close to sara's age saying oh, just cherish the moments when she is crawling, she cannot get into trouble that way. You wanna bet? and you know what, I think sara knows that she is different from the other kids. she gets upset at my gym when we she is much slower to do activities than the walking kids. It breaks my heart that I have no idea how to help her. I hate the other moms commenting about how she is so tiny. I hate the looks I get for having a child who is still crawling especially in her funny way. poor sara, she's already an outcast at some places. ECI also thinks she is delayed in speech. She is not forming the words, yet (or I just don't listen well enough to hear them). Sara points to everything and wants to know the name for it. You can see it in her eyes and lips she is trying to figure out how to say the words, she just doesn't know how. another heartbreaker there. I have also turned into an obnoxious speech therapist type who puts objects next to my lips and names them, embellish the sign language signs I do for her, literally take her hands and have her do the signs. If I were sara and could talk I would tell my mom to tone it down, already! I am doing what ECI said to do, though, so that doesn't become an issue. So yeah, since the first week in January all of these thoughts have been on my mind. I am hoping Monday will bring some good progress!
there really isn't much else going on in my life. Scott and I are thinking about looking for a new house this spring. we are quickly outgrowing this house despite the fact that there is no baby in my belly at the moment. I only wish...all of you know the struggles with that, though. We want to get a bigger house and pay what we are right now or less. Hopefully a little less.
the gluten/soy free diet is becoming challenging for me here lately. I have been cheating a heck of a lot just because I have been craving stuff or just being plain lazy. I've got to get back on track. I feel much better overall when I do not eat the stuff that causes me to feel worn down, tired, and have a grumbly tumbly. The problem is the reactions are not just huge and horrid that they bring all that much immediate desire to do different. It is all subtle and gradual but then it builds up.
yes, we are trying for #2, have been since late spring. hopefully scott's surgery helped that out some, the next couple of months will be the test.
church has been very good here lately. although I feel like I am doing this thing where I over commit myself. I just took on tutoring a first grader and his mom once a week. I know I will enjoy it, but a part of me has been saying "why did I volunteer for another commitment." so that makes the green team, yoga, tutoring, teaching 3 year old sunday school every other week, being active in our sunday school then the stuff sara does.......I enjoy it all, just seems like I am always at the church!
I am in a constant battle with the messes in my house. they keep winning. I still fight, though.
I am very upset with myself for all this extra weight on my body. I have nothing to blame except for myself. I have been exercising twice a week, but my eating habits have not helped one bit. Then I go into this emotional cycle of wanting food for comfort because I don't like the way I look. well, we all know where that leads. I am not always an emotional eater. I just go through phases. one of those phases is going on right now. winter time makes it so easy to do b/c I am indoors so much and surrounded by food and warm beverages.
scott and I have been trying very hard to only use the debit card this month and pay as much as possible on the credit cards. we've been mostly successful.
sara's incredibly slow weight gain is frustrating. I want her so bad to at least be 20 lbs. and be able to face the front in her car seat. At t he doc. yesterday she had lost weight and was 17 lbs. something oz. She had almost gotten up to 19 a few weeks ago. le sigh. Once again, her being below 5% on the charts makes me feel like a bad mom. I do try to remind myself that she started off at 3 lbs. but still.
to end it on a happy note for me...Tuesday was awesome! the whole day I was just filled with hope that I had not had in 8 years. sigh of relief. it feels good!
Since becoming a mom my whole life surrounds doing the best for my child. More so than I anticipated. I thought I would have other thoughts about things other than parenthood more often. Not the case with me. I am almost always thinking about how I can be better to sara, what to do about this stuff or that stuff when it comes to her, etc. I would say 80% of my thoughts surround her then the other 20% is everything else. Some days I wish I could shut it off when I have some alone time. Haven't figured out how to do that, yet.
Christmas was good. It was a bit more low key than I expected. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it was very different than last year. Maybe it was because of scott's surgery and then infection that I just did not take very much time at all to prepare for Christmas. All things considered we hardly bought sara or each other much of anything. Sara definitely did not need anything from us, and we knew she was getting some big stuff from my parents and my sister. That is why I went small. I enjoy the fact that we draw names in our family now among Scott, mere, Steve, mom, dad, and me. The only thing is, I honestly miss the surprise and anticipation with opening the presents from my parents. I do not need any of the extra stuff that I could have gotten. It's just that selfish part of me misses that part. Then there is the drawing of names among scott's family. The problem is Scott's parents adamantly refuse to participate in the drawing of names saying lines like "you don't need to get us anything." Well, who really does that? Who really doesn't give their parents a x-mas present if they can afford to give one? seriously. All of the other siblings give presents so we do also. One of these years, I swear I am going to rally all of scott's siblings and spouses and say ok, we are not doing gifts for his parents b/c they refuse to participate in the name drawing and refuse to follow anyone's wish list. You see my mother in-law gather's all the wish list and sends them out to the appropriate person who drew your name. That way we can kind of keep it a secret. sigh. I digress. I need to learn to enjoy Christmas again. I also need to learn how to think through the Christmas plans offers of whose house to go to, etc.
This week has been kind of crazy. Sara came down with a cold on Tuesday and has been running a fever ever since. Well, after much internal debate with myself and some talk with my mom, I decided to take her to the doctor Friday afternoon. It was just a cold, like I had been thinking all along, but the fever was being caused by an ear infection as a result of all the drainage she has had. So sara's on antibiotics for 10 days. I hope they work and make her feel better. I've been giving her imodium during the day every 6-8 hours then not doing it during the night. Then she wakes up burning up first thing in the morning. sigh. I hope it gets better soon! The other craziness is what this post is really about...ECI. Early Childhood Intervention.
so I've been worried for quite a while about sara "catching up" and learning to walk. well, since she is almost 18 months she should be caught up. They usually give preemies 6 months to 2 years to catch up. So she's getting close to the point where she should be all caught up. The problem is, sara is still not walking. she crawls in a funny way, but pulls up on things w/o any problems. She even barely holds on to them. The thing is she adamantly refuses to "practice" walking with either of us. You put her in a standing position, hold her hands/arms to start some practicing then book she picks up her legs so she is just hanging by her arms. Her legs are now in a frog type of position. then we go into temper tantrum mode. sigh. So ECI initially doesn't know what is causing her not to walk. for the next 6 months they will be coming to my house on Mon. mornings at 8 to work with both of us. I pray that she can learn to walk very soon. My pet peeve though, is all these people who say I will regret her learning to walk. seriously? you think so? has anyone really regretted really and truly their child learning to walk? I don't think so! I am not talking about feliztheowl's mom's thoughts on it. those are amusing and make some sense. I am talking about the mom's of young ones who are close to sara's age saying oh, just cherish the moments when she is crawling, she cannot get into trouble that way. You wanna bet? and you know what, I think sara knows that she is different from the other kids. she gets upset at my gym when we she is much slower to do activities than the walking kids. It breaks my heart that I have no idea how to help her. I hate the other moms commenting about how she is so tiny. I hate the looks I get for having a child who is still crawling especially in her funny way. poor sara, she's already an outcast at some places. ECI also thinks she is delayed in speech. She is not forming the words, yet (or I just don't listen well enough to hear them). Sara points to everything and wants to know the name for it. You can see it in her eyes and lips she is trying to figure out how to say the words, she just doesn't know how. another heartbreaker there. I have also turned into an obnoxious speech therapist type who puts objects next to my lips and names them, embellish the sign language signs I do for her, literally take her hands and have her do the signs. If I were sara and could talk I would tell my mom to tone it down, already! I am doing what ECI said to do, though, so that doesn't become an issue. So yeah, since the first week in January all of these thoughts have been on my mind. I am hoping Monday will bring some good progress!
there really isn't much else going on in my life. Scott and I are thinking about looking for a new house this spring. we are quickly outgrowing this house despite the fact that there is no baby in my belly at the moment. I only wish...all of you know the struggles with that, though. We want to get a bigger house and pay what we are right now or less. Hopefully a little less.
the gluten/soy free diet is becoming challenging for me here lately. I have been cheating a heck of a lot just because I have been craving stuff or just being plain lazy. I've got to get back on track. I feel much better overall when I do not eat the stuff that causes me to feel worn down, tired, and have a grumbly tumbly. The problem is the reactions are not just huge and horrid that they bring all that much immediate desire to do different. It is all subtle and gradual but then it builds up.
yes, we are trying for #2, have been since late spring. hopefully scott's surgery helped that out some, the next couple of months will be the test.
church has been very good here lately. although I feel like I am doing this thing where I over commit myself. I just took on tutoring a first grader and his mom once a week. I know I will enjoy it, but a part of me has been saying "why did I volunteer for another commitment." so that makes the green team, yoga, tutoring, teaching 3 year old sunday school every other week, being active in our sunday school then the stuff sara does.......I enjoy it all, just seems like I am always at the church!
I am in a constant battle with the messes in my house. they keep winning. I still fight, though.
I am very upset with myself for all this extra weight on my body. I have nothing to blame except for myself. I have been exercising twice a week, but my eating habits have not helped one bit. Then I go into this emotional cycle of wanting food for comfort because I don't like the way I look. well, we all know where that leads. I am not always an emotional eater. I just go through phases. one of those phases is going on right now. winter time makes it so easy to do b/c I am indoors so much and surrounded by food and warm beverages.
scott and I have been trying very hard to only use the debit card this month and pay as much as possible on the credit cards. we've been mostly successful.
sara's incredibly slow weight gain is frustrating. I want her so bad to at least be 20 lbs. and be able to face the front in her car seat. At t he doc. yesterday she had lost weight and was 17 lbs. something oz. She had almost gotten up to 19 a few weeks ago. le sigh. Once again, her being below 5% on the charts makes me feel like a bad mom. I do try to remind myself that she started off at 3 lbs. but still.
to end it on a happy note for me...Tuesday was awesome! the whole day I was just filled with hope that I had not had in 8 years. sigh of relief. it feels good!