Photos I Forgot

Laundry Day

Mail Call

Elise had a box of clothes come in the mail this morning from her Gma.  I was able to get a little video of her sorting through her new duds before my camera ran out.

 

Last night while I was hanging clothes up out of the dryer, Elise decided to crawl into the kitchen and watch.

Elise-a-Roo

As you can see, Elise is going to grow up to be a doctor or something.  She already has the "mad scientist" hair going on.

Or even possibly a veterinarian???

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I know you will find it hard to believe, but Elise doesn't have very many toys.  We try to encourage her to play with things we already have at home.  That way we won't have to waste money on frivolous toys.

 

Digging her toys out of her basket...

Still digging....

 

 

As you can see, she is really going without.  These are just the toys in our living room.  Yes, that's right family members, Elise gets to play with her toys in our living room.  We won't be confining her to her closet like her Momma was.... even if I do have to pick all these toys up multiple times a day just for her to pull them all back out.  We have people that like to enable Elise's toy addiction, and at this stage in her life I guess I'll allow it.  But, when she starts walking she only gets brooms, mops, and vacuum cleaners to play with.

Breastfeeding

From the beginning of my pregnancy I made the decision that my baby would be breastfed.  Throughout the entire pregnancy I read all about it, took a class, surfed the web, and followed other Mommas on message boards that were or wanted to breastfeed.  Throughout all that, I understood that there were certain circumstances that would make breastfeeding difficult or impossible: Baby not latching, low milk supply, any health issues, but I hoped I wouldn't face any of those obstacles.  Then I researched pumps in case there was some reason Elise wouldn't latch on and because I had intended on pumping to send milk to daycare.  I decided to wait on buying a pump, just to see how it would all go.

I had a very loose birth plan, but the one thing I was adamant about was that my baby was not to receive any formula.  I breastfed her soon after she was born, but then the nurses took her off to the nursery.  Before they left with her, I asked "no one will give her any formula, right?" 

I was very lucky that I didn't have any problems that prevented Elise from breastfeeding.  Of course it hurt like mother for a little while, but it was soooo important to me for my child to have breast milk that I just bit my lip and closed my eyes.  I just went through child birth.  Surely I can suck it up and breast feed.  Nursing isn't for everyone, and it is a personal choice, but I found it very surprising that many people would actually ask me "are you nursing?"  I found it even more surprising that everyone that works at my pediatrician's office assumes my baby is bottle/formula fed.  I guess that's becoming the norm these days.  The nurses would tell me what to add to her "formula" or "bottle" for her constipation.  I'd have to tell them she is exclusively breast fed and refuses a bottle (spoiled!).  They would pause for a minute... as if they didn't deal with this situation very often.

I'm going on 9 months of breastfeeding.  It has become much easier now that Elise isn't eating every two hours like when she was a new baby.  She has two teeth now and has bitten me four times.  But, she's been formula free for eight and a half months, and I would be devastated if I have to give her any.  I am so proud of myself for sticking with it this long, and so happy that Elise is getting the best nutrition she can.  I can't forget to mention how much money we've saved by not formula feeding.

L.O.V.E.

Is It Wrong?

You know those self check-out machine's at Wal-Mart?  If you pay with cash, it spits your change out "below the scanner" like the woman inside the machine tells you.  So, if the woman inside the machine tells the person and they don't take their money... it's really their fault, right?  So, that money is like fair game for the next self-check outer.

Well, last week at Wal-Mart I was waiting in line behind this guy at the self check out.  He paid, got his stuff, took his receipt and headed out.  My turn.  I start scanning my items and then to my pleasant surprise I see some cash money... $3 to be exact.  So, before I bend down to pick it up I look behind my left shoulder. Clear.  I look behind my right shoulder.  I see the guy that left it is almost out of the store.  Sorta clear.  So, I bend down grab the money and bam!  Three dollars richer!!!!

Now, I'm thinking to myself... "Oh snap!  I better check out and high tail it outta here before a) he comes back or b) someone around me saw and is gonna say something."

But, then I'm also thinking "You snooze, you lose sucker!  I probably need it more than him anyway!"

You know it could be like pay it forward.  At least it makes me feel less guilty if I think about that way.  If you will remember back to when I gave all my change to the Fireman for Fill The Boot and then at the zoo I had no change for a drink at the coke machine.  I'm finally getting re-paid.

The only thing is, that was the second time I scored some cash from the self-check out.  The first time some old lady didn't take her money... so I did.  I bet I could make some serious cash if I just hung out at Wal-Mart all day long and watched the people that didn't pay attention to that chick inside the machine that says "Thank you, cash is dispensed below the scanner."  But, one of these days after I cram $3 in my pocket, the What Would You Do crew from ABC is gonna bombard me, and you'll see me on TV trying to explain myself.  I can't imagine trying to explain to John Quinones that the only reason I felt compelled to take the cash is because one day in June I gave a fireman standing in the road all my change and then I didn't have any change for a drink out of the coke machine and that zoo is the only freaking place in Texas that doesn't take debit cards or have ATM machine.

Maybe next time I'll be a good citizen (like my husband) and chase the poor fool down to give him his money.  Maybe.  Depends on how much it is.  And if my husband is with me, because he would disapprove for sure.  At least he does enough good deeds on a daily basis to make up for my character flaws.

NO Naptime!

Ever since Elise has realized how much fun it is to be mobile, she has lost all interest in sleeping late and napping.  Before, I put her down around 1pm everyday for a nap.  She would take her blanket and paci and go right to sleep.  Now, I put her down, and before I'm even out of the room she's climbing up the bumpers, getting on all four's, or sitting up in the crib.  I go back in several times and lay her back down.... repetition.  That's what Super Nanny does on ABC.  Anyway, I usually end up going in and laying her back down an average of four times.  After that, if she's going to continue to chatter, climb, and roll around I just leave her and she eventually ends up falling asleep.  Sometimes it will get quiet in her room, and I'll peek in.  She'll still be sitting up in her bed playing with Bambi.  If she's not crying, I just leave her in there.

 

We're off to a good start

But, it's short lived

 

I'm ready to get up now

 

Then I leave the room for a bit and come back to this

Where I Wish I Was...

Sometimes I look back at all the pictures on my computer, and today I'm really wishing I was plopped down in a lounge chair right in front of the beach with Jason by my side and a nice refreshing beverage in my hand.  You see, we went to Mexico for our honeymoon and then again for our one year anniversary.  Our 3 year anniversary is coming up next month.  I'm sure we'll just go out to eat, but I must say... how amazing would it be to be doing this all over again?

 

My hot husband!

 

Wish I was here!

 

Carlos & Charlie's!

 

Sunset Boat Ride

 

Dancing on the beach after dinner

 

White sand, Blue water

 

 

Guess we had our days....As much as I'd like to be there, things change.  Now, I really want to take Elise to Disneyland or Disney World (which ever one is in Florida) when she's old enough.  If we start saving now, maybe we will actually be able to afford it by the time she's old enough to enjoy the rides.

It Can Only Go Up From Here... I Hope

Things just haven't been going my way.  It first started with this little beauty that started increasing in size everyday.

I swear, every time Jason would look at me to tell me something, all he would be looking at is the small city on my eye lid.  I would constantly say "quit looking at my eye!"

This, my friends is not a zit.  It is a cyst.  On my FREAKIN EYE!  Really?  Could it not show up anywhere else?  Because I'm such a freak of nature, the most random things have to happen to me.  It could be a birth defect... actually, I'm pretty sure it is.  When I was in the 6th grade I had a cyst on the inside of my mouth in my cheek.  Another random place.

So, as I continued to watch this thing grow over last weekend, I finally decided to go have my doc check it out.  So, I painted on as much make up as I could to cover this nasty thing, but then I ended up looking like I had a huge, unsightly mole on my eye.  So, it wasn't much better.  My doctor looked at it and said she would be sending me to a plastic surgeon that specializes in Oculopasty.  She said they would need to cut it out.  OH BOY!  I can't wait to have a hole carved in my eye.  But at this point, I'd take the hole over this nasty thing.  My doctor's office set up an appointment for me with the surgeon.  Bad news:  They can't get me in until August 4th (my anniversary).  So, with that being said, by the time I actually go see the surgeon I will more than likely look like this:

And, I'm supposed to be going out of town at the end of the month.  Just perfect.  I did get on their cancellation list, but you know that those people aren't going to cancel their eye lifts, boob jobs, and liposuction... while I'm here having a REAL medical condition.

So, then yesterday we decided to invite some friends over to BBQ.  Unfortunately, our dog Jason's dog, had a minor tee-tee accident on the floor the other night and our efforts to clean it made it worse.  Jason steam-cleaned it twice without much improvement.  I figured I'd try to work on it some more myself.  That was until accident number 2 yesterday.  This time it was Elise.  She was playing on her little mat, scooting around, and I heard her coughing.  I went to take a closer look and saw she had coughed or burped up some regurgitated prunes... on to the floor.  Ok, no problem.  It's a small spot, I'll get the Oxyclean and get it cleaned.  Then I was frantically trying to finish vacuuming and picking up stuff before our company arrived when I saw something "interesting" on the carpet.  Turns out, Elise pooped through her diaper, through her clothes, and then proceeded to scoot along side the coffee table.  So, I now had very light poop trail across my carpet.  I cleaned up Elise and then oxy cleaned the carpet, and then took a look around...  then out of disgust just said to hell with it all, I'm calling the carpet people.  I absolutely cannot stand to have stains on my carpet, and now I'm having company any second.  Nothing I could do about it at that moment, though.

Then this morning about 4:30ish Jason was tossing and turning in bed.  I asked him what was wrong and he told me his shoulder was hurting and he was going to get up for a little while.  Usually he's pretty healthy, but when something is wrong with him, he is the sickest person in the world and refuses to take any medication or seek medical attention.  I find it somewhat annoying that he complains about it, but then won't do anything to fix it.  Considering that he deals with sick people all the time, he has little sympathy for me.  When I had mastitis and was running a fever in the middle of the night he didn't even become fully coherent when I was trying to tell him something was wrong with me. 

Anyway, he got up and eventually came and laid back down.  He stayed awake, so I tried to stay awake too.  I guess we both finally fell back asleep when I woke up and heard Elise in her room at 6am.  I went in and picked her up and brought her back to our bed to feed her.  Since we have one of those 20 year old bed and headboards that you can set stuff on, Jason had set a glass on there last night that was half full of milk and Oreo crumbs.  He dunked all 9 of his Oreos in the glass, but didn't drink all the milk.  I was reaching for Elise's burp rag from the headboard and knocked the glass off the headboard.  It fell forward onto Jason and all over the bed.  Disgusting!  He wasn't even awake until that moment... poor thing.  That's an awful way to wake up.  So, we were stripping down the Oreo and milk coated sheets, pillow cases, comforters, and feather bed at 6 something this morning.  I didn't have any other sheets that were easily accessible, and I didn't want to sleep in the spare bedroom because I'd have to wash those sheets again.  So, I dug out some comforters and blankets, Jason spread them out on the bed, and Elise and I climbed in and called it good.

The feather bed is at the cleaner's, and I've been washing linens all day.  So, what else catastrophic could happen over the next few days?  I'm just dying to find out!

On The Move!

Elise took her first real crawls yesterday evening, but didn't make it very far.  Today, she is back to work so I managed to get a little video of her.  Before you watch though, please keep a few things in mind...

1) The annoying noise in the background is my Roomba vacuuming my kitchen floor.

2) If you look closely you can see Elise give me a few big grins under her paci!  We haven't started the paci weaning process, yet.  However, she sure can smile big while holding on to it!

Disappointing Downpour

Last night we got 3+ inches of rain in about two and half hours.  Usually this kind of downpour would be welcomed, but last night it wasn't.  I think Jason was just dozing off when I heard it start raining. 

I rolled over and said "Hey, I think it's raining..."  This was important knowledge for him considering he just had all the grass seed put down a week ago yesterday.

He perked his head up and listened.  It was pouring. 

Then said "well, there goes all of our grass"

"huh?"

Jason got out of bed to look out the back window.

"it's flooding the backyard and will wash all the seed away.  At least the ally or the front yard will have grass"

Then he laid there staring at the ceiling contemplating the fact that he had done all that work and spent the money just to have some grass in our backyard.  All he's wanted since we bought this house was a nice backyard and now the rain was drowning our freshly spread seeds.  I knew he was really upset about this since I had my head on his arm and accidentally drooled all over him and he didn't even moan and groan or say "uhhhh, Stephanie!"  He just wiped it off and stared at the ceiling a little longer.

He got up and went to the back door to look out.  He didn't come back for a bit, so I went to go see what he was doing.  I found him sitting on the couch in complete darkness with the exception of the light from the screen of our laptop.

"what are you doing?"

"checking the weather"

"is it almost done?"

"no, it's building on top of us"

I sat down next to him to look at the radar.  He gave the computer the finger (as if it was the radar's fault) and then it lightninged.  I could see he wouldn't be going to sleep anytime soon.

Unfortunately, while he had been gone all night at the fire station, it was my responsibility to see to it the yard was watered.  Last night was not a good night for me.

"umm... you know I watered the yard"

"yeah"

"well, I accidentally forgot to turn the last sprinkler off because I was giving Elise a bath, she was fussy, the dogs were acting like idiots, and I remembered it was on after I finished getting her ready for bed"

::silence::

"ok... how long was it on?"

"I don't know??"

"was it flooded?"

"it wasn't flooded but there was some standing water"

No response.

We went back to bed and Jason continued to fret about his precious grass.  I was trying to give him a pep talk...

"you don't know it's washed away the seed, at least it's been down for a week, good thing it didn't do this the day it was hydromulched, if there's only a few spots that don't grow we can put some pieces of sod down,"

He was called out to help close the flood gates and didn't come home until after 2am.  We are supposed to get more rain today and tomorrow, so we are playing the waiting game to see what the fate of our grass will be.

The Backyard Project

As I have previously mentioned, Jason has been working very hard on our backyard.  He took 3 days off work and stayed outside until 10 or 11 each night trying to finish everything up.  He expanded our rock patio, poured a polymeric sand (supposed to cure like concrete) in between the cracks, tilled up the yard, raked up everything, leveled the yard, and had it hydromulched.

 

This is the yard the morning the hydromulch was put down

Patio prior to filling in the cracks

 

I would like to re-paint this table and chairs sometime

 If only we had a privacy fence... our neighbors just let the weeds grow rampant

 

 See what I mean?

Houston, we have growth!  I hope this is what it's supposed to look like.

And this my friends, is the intricate workings of my husband's mind.  Five water hoses that lead to five different sprinklers strategically placed throughout the yard.  Each one has to be turned on for 15 minutes four times a day.  Southern engineering is what you do when you can't afford an automatic sprinkler system.

 

Next up, save up $115 to get a new back door.  The previous owners had two Doberman Pinschers that not only destroyed the yard, but the door and part of the outside of the house, too.  Jason said he could just paint it, but to be quite honest, I'm pretty sure it's days are numbered.

Forget The Expensive Toys

Give her a magazine and she's content.  Of course there's a mess to pick up, but it's worth it.  She was loving the Schwan's catalog.  Evidently she didn't find anything worthy of ordering from him... either that, or she was trying to impress me with her paper shredding skills in preparation for Christmas.