Our Christmas went pretty well! On Christmas eve we made the drive up to LA to have dinner with Rosie's family. They are so nice and welcomed us into their home. All of the kids there loved playing with Amelia. They had turkey, pork, chicken, puerto rican rice, tons of other sides and of course flan for dessert. Rosies mom even sent us home with some fresh Tamales. Christmas morning we did Amelias presents. She wasn't too interested at first, but once she got going she did okay. Christmas day we spent at home, I made a ham and the typical sides. Jeff's friend Andrew came over for dinner and then we watched bad Santa.

Below are some of the photos I took, there are bunches more but I was too lazy to upload them all! I hope everyone had a Happy Holiday!


On Christmas Eve with daddy

Attacking the presents at Rosies house.


Here Mommy want some of my food??


Amelia with Rosie's dad. Amelia was the youngest kid there, so of course everyone had to hold her. Even though we don't have much of our own family here, at least we are lucky enough to have other families adopt us. :-)


I don't think Kahlel was very happy about sharing his Grandpa's lap with the baby...

Amelia and I on Christmas night.

Walking away from Mommy...


Christmas Morning!


Presents!
Opening more presents!

Walking baby

This is Amelia on Christmas day walking! I know it's dark. I hope to get a better one soon.


Upload Video at DropShots.com

Happy Holidays!

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday. We're driving up to LA to visit one of Jeff's coworkers families for Christmas Eve dinner. MMMM Puerto Rican and Mexican food..... Then we are going to have Christmas home with just the three of us tomorrow. We may have one of Jeff's friends come over for dinner, haven't heard yet. I'm so glad we're not traveling this year. Even though I'm really sad I won't get to see my family.

Pictures

I found Stuff Portrait Friday's in Melanies blog. They are posted each week by Kristine over at Random and Odd. Now that is a funny blog! I've decided I'm going to start doing it as well. This week its

Dec 23 - Ho Cubed
-Your favorite wrapped present

This one is from my fellow nanny Buffi for the bug. It's cute because it's sparkly and has a great bow on it!



-Something new you added to your decorations this year

This funny little tree. I decided I didn't want to deal with the big tree this year with Amelia into everything and having just moved. It's not as pathetic and disorganized as it looks in the picture. It's much cuter and happier. Promise!


-Your Christmas cards
They are taking over the house...

Weight loss..

I am finally feeling like I'm back on track with my eating and weight loss. I have been working out a lot as well. Something happened the end of October ( moving, trip home to Oregon, I could go on and on with excuses) and it lasted through November. However, I'm back on program again and doing well. Last week the scale said I gained a pound but this week it says I'm down 4, so it all evens out. As long as it comes off eventually I'm happy! :-) I am really enjoying the different workout tapes I have found. Who would have ever thought I'd enjoy doing aerobics, kickboxing, and dance videos. I'm sure I look like an idiot but I don't care! It gets my metabolism going and I feel so much better. Once I get a bit more confident I want to start going to the gym here in our complex. It's really nice and every time I've been over there I see maybe one person. I'm going to make it a goal to start going 1x a week after Christmas. Gotta work up to these things.

Now that Amelia has started walking, she is all over the place! She walked all over McDonalds today, it's so much fun to watch her! A lady there asked how old she was, when I said 10 months she seemed surprised, she said Wow you have an early walker! Poor you. ha ha ha...

She's Walking!

It's offical, Amelia has started walking. For weeks she has been taking a step here or there, and cruising like crazy. Then yesterday she just started taking off. THe most steps in a row I counted last night was 10. And if I let her hold my finger, she will just keep walking. My baby is getting all grown up. :-(

The "Special" one

You're Donner...the "weird reindeer"! But
we love you that way!


Which reindeer are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Upload Video at JussPress.com

More pictures

Pictures...

More pictures...

Before I had Amelia, I never knew how little sleep one could survive on. I swear we were up and down with Amelia about 15 times last night. Of course I couldn't go back to sleep every time I got woke up, I'd lay there and think about how tired I was and that it was already 2 3 or 4 am and I had to get up soon. There really isn't enough Diet Coke in the world to keep me going on high energy today. The kids aren't all in great moods either today. At least they are all sleeping at the same time though.

So it turns out my friend Mic has a talented photographer for a husband. He set up a photo studio in their dining room last weekend and we got more Christmas pictures taken. There are some really great ones of Amelia, they turned out really cute, now I have to decide if I want to use one of them for the Christmas card picture, or still use the one of Amelia with the Santa Hat. At least I didn't have to go pay someone at the mall a fortune to take so so pictures. I can't believe how grown up my baby is!

On another topic, I know I shouldn't complain about Jeff in my blog, however it's my blog, and he is welcome to set up his own, so here it is. I hate it when he starts big projects at krappy times and then gets mad that I'm not thankful that he sort of did something. I have been whining ( yes I know I shouldn't whine) since we moved that I wanted to switch bedrooms with Amelia. Her closet was bigger, and her bathroom had only a shower, while ours had the bathtub. Her room was also really cold and I was worried that was why she wasn't sleeping well. So anyway, Jeff decided Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend to rearrange the furniture. He started it while I was out running errands. He said it was a surprise for me. I think it was really sweet of him to think of doing it for me, but he started at 4 oclock on Sunday. It's now Tuesday night and both bedrooms are still a wreck. Our clothes are still all in her new closet, nothing is where it's going in her room and none of us are sleeping well. I know I should be thankful that he took on moving all the furniture and stuff on his own, but it's really frustrating that I can't even get to the closet in her room because there is so much stuff in the way. I'm working late tonight so he's going to try and get it finished before Amelia and I get home, because pretty much as soon as I get home from work she goes to bed, and we can't do much in her room with her in there sleeping.

Xmas cards again

Here is the actual picture that I think we are going to use for the xmas card, I guess I forgot to post it earlier.
It totally shows her personality... "Forget you mom, I'm not wearing this stupid hat..."

Frappr

Have you all seen Frappr? I think it stands for Friend Mapper or something like that, anyway it's a map that shows where everyone in a group is located. I set one up for my blog to see who's reading. So come one all you readers out there, add yourself to my Frappr

Christmas Card Pictures

So my plan for Xmas card pictures was to just go to Sears and get Amelias portraits done and buy cards there. Well then I heard how much it would cost, and decided I wanted to try it on my own first. Sears charges 34.99 for 20 cards. OMG thats just insane. Plus you all know we won't get out of there without spending a few hundred on the portraits not to mention the cards that cost almost 2.00 each. At walmart.com ( I KNOW Walmart is evil. However, they are what I can afford!! lol) Anyway, at Walmart they are $.33 So I took a bunch of pictures of Amelia in her Christmas dress sitting in her rocker. They turned out pretty good! She was so funny though. She did not want the Santa hat on her head, and she did not want to sit down for the pictures. I have a couple of pictures of her standing up in the rocker, and one of her down on her tummy trying to figure out how to get down. So anyway, here are a few pics we took that day.

Finally some new pictures...

These are from our trip to Oregon for the kids' birthday party.

We survived!

So we survived the move! I wasn't sure a few times but we did it. I think the biggest thing was thinking we could pack and move and be out of our old apartment in 2 weeks. We somehow managed. I must say I was pretty stressed out about it all, and probably not the nicest wife in the world. At least I apologized for being psycho and stressed out. :-)

I love our new place. It's so much bigger, and more open. And it really feels like the living space is really seperate from the bedrooms. We can watch TV or listen to music or talk at a reasonable volume and not worry about Amelia waking up. I'm also loving the attached garage. My only complaint is our closet is too small. I keep trying to convince Jeff that we should switch bedrooms with Amelia, her closet has 8 feet more hanging space ( I measured it!!) than ours does. Her bathroom is also the one with only a shower, and ours has a tub. So that would also probably be better. I don't think he's too big on moving all the furniture. I thought about just moving most of it while he's gone at work one day, but I'm not sure how well that would go over. :-)

I also finally weighed myself this morning... I had expected to see a big gain. We were eating out a ton since the kitchen was all packed and I'm definitely a stress eater. However I stayed the same, no loss no gain in the last two weeks. So at least I don't have even more to take off to get back to where I was.

I'll write more later, I hear Amelia waking up.

Freecycle couch

This is a picture I took when we got the couch 6 months ago from a friend. My camera was not working last night so couldn't get a new picture.

Our trip

The trip up to Oregon went pretty well. Amelia and I flew out a 8 Thursday morning and returned at 11 pm Sunday night. She had a great time with her cousins, I can't believe how big all three girls have gotten! I'll post some pictures from the weekend later, I forgot my digital camera, so had to use regular film. I forgot what a pain it is to wait for film to be developed, dang I'm spoiled now. ha ha. Anyway it was a good trip.

The crazy part though was there was a thunder storm going on in SoCal Sunday evening. So we had to land in the middle of it. I actually was seeing lightning out the window of the plane! It was also really turbulent. Amelia did pretty well, didn't sleep at all. She got grouchy at the end of the flight, and the flight attendant gave her a cookie. I think he just wanted her to be quiet. :-) So my 9 month old ate a chocolate chip cookie. Oh well, just once won't kill her I guess. She sure liked it! We were both very chocolately by the time we landed. It was a really hard landing, I'm sure the runway was slippery from the storm which didn't help make it any smoother. On the way home from the airport Amelia finally crashed in the car. We watched the lightning across the sky all the way home. I was afraid to carry Amelia in from the car when we got home, the thunder and lightning were happening almost simultaneously. We finally just made a run for it. I think the next time I fly, I'm going to get Amelia a seat. She is too wiggley for my lap!!

Amelias bedroom

So now that I FINALLY got Amelias room all done how I like it, we're moving. I like the blue in her room now, but of course I want to do something different in the new room. THe bedrooms have big vaulted ceilings so I can't paint all the way up, and whatever I paint I'm responsible for getting back to white when I move out. So I'm thinking about doing a border at chair rail height, and just painting below it. I'll leave the top half white, then paint the bottom a light green. It will look sort of like grass, this is the border I like, then the green paint color.

Moving

We're moving... in two weeks! I don't know how much I'll be updating in the next few weeks, I have so much to do, and I'm going to Oregon on my days off next week, my nieces are having their birthday party, so Amelia and I are flying up for the party. :-)

We found a new apartment, it's a bit more than what we are paying now, but it's soooo much closer to my work, and Jeff's commute won't be too bad. It also has a garage, washer dryer hookup and 2.5 bathrooms. Wahoo!! :-) Much better than the 900 square feet we have now...

I found this list on another blog and I"m borrowing it. It's the 100 most banned/challenged books. In other words, they are books that people are trying to keep out of schools and libraries. I've read a lot of these, and many of them as a child. I'm sure there are more that I've read and just don't recognize the titles, I'm bad like that. I'll make the ones I've read red.

Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
Forever by Judy Blume
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Giver by Lois Lowry
It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Sex by Madonna
Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
The Goats by Brock Cole
Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
Blubber by Judy Blume
Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
Final Exit by Derek Humphry
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
Deenie by Judy Blume
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
Cujo by Stephen King
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
Fade by Robert Cormier
Guess What? by Mem Fox
The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Native Son by Richard Wright
Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Jack by A.M. Homes
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
Carrie by Stephen King
Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
Family Secrets by Norma Klein
Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
The Dead Zone by Stephen King
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
Private Parts by Howard Stern
Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford
Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
Sex Education by Jenny Davis
The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

Bush Funny

Someone sent me this and I thought I'd share

Donald Rumsfeld was giving Bush his daily briefing. He concluded by saying, "Yesterday, three Brazilian soldiers were killed."

"OH NO!" Bush exclaimed. "That's terrible!"

His staff was stunned at this unusual display of emotion. They watched nervously as Bush sat, head in hands.

Finally, Bush looked up and asked, "How many is a brazillion?"

A funny

Someone just sent me this quote...

When women are depressed they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country.
-Elayne Boosler-

Florida and babies

I have to start out by saying I've been a bad blogger lately! It seems like I never post anymore. I promise I'll be on here more often!!

I think we've lost another family member to the warm states. My cousin Connie is in Florida, and I have a feeling she isn't coming back. :-) She is 18 years old, and grew up in a little bitty town in Washington ( the same one I grew up in.) She just graduated from High School. Her boyfriend moved to Florida after graduation, and she decided to go visit for a while. She left last Saturday. My mom talked to her today and she loves it there. She said it's just like where I live only hotter and smaller. LOL She is going home to visit for Thanksgiving, but she bought a round trip ticket so I think she's planning to go back to Florida after the holidays. I'm so proud of her for doing this. It's always a good thing to get out of Ilwaco!!! Too many people stay there and never get to see what the rest of the world is like.

I'm sure the family isn't very happy that she left, ( I still don't think they've forgiven me for leaving) and who knows, maybe she will change her mind and come back, but I hope she has a great time first!! I know I grew up and changed so much when I moved to California all by myself.

On to my next topic of Babies. I was reading in someone else's blog about 2nd babies and how hard it is (in part) because toddlers don't sleep through the night. I don't know if I'm just lucky or if circumstances are different, but the kids I've nannied for have all slept through the night by 6 months and pretty much stuck to that. With my last 2 families that was the case, and I'm pretty sure Mason did the same. Unless they were sick or had a really bad night of teething. I'm wondering though if it's because the kids I've nannied for have all been Cry It Out babies? They are all thumb suckers as well. I'm sure they wake up at night, but they go back to sleep on their own. Bed time is also pretty easy. Do night time routine, put child in bed, say good night, turn off the light, close the door. Quiet ensues.

Amelia is somewhere in the middle. She is not a thumb sucker but a pacifier baby. Once a week or so she wakes up and needs to be snuggled before she can go back to sleep. Other than that she wakes up and finds her paci and goes back to sleep, OR she cries till we come find her paci and she goes back to sleep. I have learned the difference in her cries, she has the "i'm tired, I don't wanna go to sleep though" cry. That one I usually leave her for a few minutes, and she conks out almost immediately. She also has the "something is wrong, get in here now cry" that one makes me come running. There are others that are in between and I admit, sometimes she cries for a few minutes before I get to her. I want her to be comfortable with herself, and being alone, and I want her to be able to soothe herself to sleep. She is finally starting to be okay in her crib, she will wake up and play in there for a few minutes, a couple times lately I have gone in to check on her and I find her standing up smiling at me around her pacifier. Honestly, I think parents need to listen to their guts and to their children. Not just listen as far as is my kid smiling or crying right this second, but see how they are doing. So far I've been blessed with a pretty happy, mostly healthy child.

We must be doing something sorta right! :-)

New furniture and sick

Well we bought the new furniture. It arrives in a month. We got the couch, the chair and the ottoman. I like it because it feels pretty tough, I think it will be hard for the cat to rip up right away. I'm so excited for it to get here!

I'm still doing good with the WW, I am down 2 more pounds this week. Being sick might have helped with that. I'm home from work today, have a fever throwing up etc. Soooo not fun. Jeff is being great though, he went and bought me chicken broth and diet 7 up and brought them home at lunch time. :-)

Amelia will be 8 months old tomorrow! I'm thinking we should go get pictures done this weekend.

This is the furniture set I really like. Now I just have to convince Jeff... :-)

This is so funny... I'm one of those people who corrects other people's grammar in my head while they are speaking. I never tell them though!



You are a GRAMMAR GOD!


Congratulations! If your mission in life
is not already to preserve the English tongue,
it should be. You can smell a grammatical
inaccuracy from fifty yards. Your speech is
revered by the underlings, though some may
blaspheme and call you a snob. They're just
jealous. Go out there and change the world.


How grammatically correct are you? (Revised with answer key)
brought to you by Quizilla

Funny

I just thought this was funny. Go to google and put Failure in the search box. Then click on I'm feeling lucky. Ahh it's the little things that amuse me these days.

Either Amelia is teething finally or she is getting sick. She is soooo grouchy. She is sitting in her high chair, playing with veggie puffs, but not actually eating them, she has a pacifier in her mouth. It's keeping her calm while I make dinner though. Poor grouchy baby. :-(

One more thing...

...about baby food.

Anyone know when babies can have cheerios? Amelia eats the veggies puffs really well not sure when they can have cheerios though. We tried the jarred baby food for lunch today, and she wasn't crazy about it! It's really difficult to take her home made stuff to work with me every day, and make sure it gets defrosted but not too warm , I'm hoping that she will warm up to the jarred stuff. I'm planning on giving her my concoctions like normal at home, and letting her eat the jarred at work until she gets better at eating, then I can just mash up veggies and stuff at work for her.

It's Monday

I'm having a great day for a Monday. Amelia and I went grocery shopping, got lots of food we needed, and some we didn't I bought Jeff some junk food he should be happy about. Got him stuff I don't like so I don't have to worry about me eating it. :-)

I've finally got Amelias room all finished up, I'd like to paint her dressers but thats a pretty big project so it's done for now. It's totally baby safe, and a bunch of her toys are in there now. She will play in there for an hour at a time!! I just close off the bathroom and our bedroom doors so if she decides to go on an adventure she can't get hurt. It leaves me free to do stuff ( like cleaning out the fridge which I just finished, OH JOY!)I just check on her every few minutes and she is happy as can be. She plays much better when she can't see me. It's like if she sees me, she whines and wants to be picked up. If she can't see me she is content to play. I can peak in on her without her seeing me.

I had my weigh in this morning, I lost 4.5 lbs!!! I'm thinking it's a fluke but who knows. Last week was only 1 lb so maybe it's just averaging out. For what I'm eating I should lose 2 lbs a week. So yeah, the scale this morning totally made my day. :-)

I just talked to Jeff, he doesnt even remember talking to me last night when we got up with Amelia. I figured he wouldn't remember it. Still hurt my feelings though! lol

I know I've been really bad at writing lately. This going back to work thing has been a big adjustment for all of us. I worked from 7 am until 1130 last night. I'm so tired! Then of course by the time I got home and parked 4 blocks away ( yes FOUR blocks away) it was 12:30. It was after 1 when I went to sleep. Then Jeff got mad at 3 that I didn't want to get up and feed the baby. I was so tired and upset that I started crying, and he got mad at me for that too. I'm hoping it was just the middle of the night talking, and he didn't mean to yell at me for being tired after working 16.5 hours. When I stayed home I didnt mind as much that he didn't want to get up with her. But he acts like his job is more important or harder or something. It's not like I get to sleep in when I'm home with her, she gets up earlier than he does for work most days. I'm worried that I made the wrong choice going back to work. Jeff was all gung ho for me to do it and said he'd do such and such to help, and I'm just not seeing that. Oh well it is what it is and I'm going to live with it. Things will calm down at work soon as well so I can just do my three days. Maybe he will adjust and be able to help out more. On the other hand, he's so good with her when he's home, can't wait to play with her every evening.

On another note things are going really well with weight watchers. I'm down a total of 41 lbs since I had Amelia. I have a long way to go still but so far it's been really good.

I got tagged by Darshani!

10 years ago I was: 15 years old, and living with my mom and sister in Washington. I was getting ready to start my sophomore year at Ilwaco High School. I worked at a grocery store, and couldn't wait to start school and Driver's Ed.

5 years ago I was: 20 years old, living in Oregon. I had just finished my degree in Early Childhood Education, and was working at a preschool during the day. I had two other jobs, one was at a transitional housing facility for mentally ill people, another was at a church. I was so busy, but so happy to be living on my own.

1 year ago I was: 24 years old, living in Southern California, and I was 4 months pregnant, I had just started the second trimester, and had begun to feel good. I was so happy that the morning sickness was finally gone.

Yesterday: was my first day at work with all the kids. It was tiring, I think I went up and down the stairs about 40 times, but I had a great day. All the kids were great, Mason and Amelia got along so well. :-)

5 snacks I enjoy:chocolate, fruit, carrot sticks, pirates booty from trader joes, diet coke. (Is that a snack?? IT should be.)

5 songs I know all the words to: I actually know all the words to a lot of songs, I remember stuff like that all the time. The ones that are always in my head though are of course kid songs. Hush Little Baby, Rock a bye baby, Lullaby Song, Sweet Dreams, ( are you seeing a theme here??)

5 things I would do with 100 million dollars: Send a lot of money to the Red Cross. That aside, I'd buy us a house and some land, pay off the few debts we have let, set up college funds for Amelia and all of my nieces and nephews, and buy a new car. :-)

5 places I would run away to: it depends on why I'm running away. Oregon ( family is there) Europe ( far far away from family) I'd like to see NY, a week ago I would have said New Orleans, and maybe some tropical beach somewhere with no one else.

5 things I would never wear: okay so I can't think of anything, if there is a good enough reason I'd wear anything. Okay maybe not an "I heart George W. Bush" t-shirt..


5 favorite tv shows: Only 5???? Here is the current top 5, Dirty Jobs, Gilmore Girls, mythbusters, anything on HGTV or Discovery channel.


5 bad habits: nail biting, late night snacking, not putting things back where they belong, interrupting people, screening calls too much. Okay thats scary, I'm just copying your 5 Darshani. LOL


5 biggest joys:Jeff, Amelia, extended family, knitting, quilting.

5 favorite toys: the computer (of course) digital camera, mini food processor (awesome for making baby food!!) my car, and the DVR


5 fictional characters I would date: I don't know.


5 people I tag to do this:
Brianna
Nicky
Jenn
Terra

I have been working on redoing Amelia's room. I'll take pictures when I'm all done, her bedroom is light blue, (the color is called Little Boy Blue, the first U/S said she was a boy) anyway, I'm doing mostly white furniture. The bedding and everything is mostly pink with some blue and purple, and it's all flowers and butterflies. Anyway, I'm trying to decide which switch plate covers would go better in her room. I already ordered the pink and white ones...


but then I just found these and I'm wondering if they'd be cuter. Anyone???



I know it's probably silly to do all of this to her room, but I'm doing it all myself so it's not costing much, and I just want her to have a bedroom thats special.

On another topic, we have to do more babyproofing this weekend. Amelia is getting into everything, we need to move the computer out of the living room, probably going into our bedroom. I have to figure out how to move the cable modem since our phone is also digital, and comes in through the modem.

Going back to work

Well it appears that my time as a stay at home Mom has come to an end. I'm going back to work starting tomorrow. Things worked out really well, I get to go back to my old job!! (I had to quit after I had Amelia because I just wasn't ready to go back at 4 weeks as we'd planned. The c-section and nursing and her not sleeping was a lot harder on me than I thought it would be.) So anyway, I got to stay home with her for 7 months, but now I get to go back to work. It's great because I already know the family, I'm totally comfortable with them and know they are awesome to work for. The extra money will be nice as well, I'm hoping we'll get our savings back on track. And we've already discussed that I get to get a new car pretty soon. Wahoo. I love the Honda, but Jeff drives it now for work and I get his truck. The truck wasn't bad when I was staying home, but with gas prices so high driving it back and forth to work would probably cancel out any money I'd make working. LOL


I've had a succesful two weeks with weightwatchers now. I lost 1 lb this week. Of course I'd like more, but I get a lot of extra points because I'm nursing, and losing more than a lb a week can affect milk supply. The first week I lost 3 lbs, so I guess overall it's not too bad. Jeff keeps asking me if I can have certain stuff on my diet. Thats the beauty of it, I can have whatever I want, just in moderation. And I have to decide if it's worth it to use my points up for something. I'm doing pretty good with the veggies and water, just need an extra glass or two of water and still need one or two more servings of fruit and veggies each day.

Weight watchers

So I finally did it, I joined weight watchers! Just the online version for now, but it's still really great. There are a lot of useful tools, meal planners, calculators etc. It helps me to write down everything I eat, and I'm seeing how many "points" I can save by just using the lower fat version of something, and I actually don't mind the difference. I'm also incorporating a lot more veggies into what I'm eating. I'm actually eating a lot more food than I was before, and I can tell that I feel more stable throughout the day, not so much of the ups and downs. Another positive is my milk supply seems to be positively affected, yesterday she only had one bottle and that was more so daddy could feed her than anything. :-)

I just had to post these pictures,so cute.

Today we drove up to Long Beach to look at some condos, one was $225k and the other was $250k. They were both 2 bedroom 1 bath. We didn't like either one, they were both pretty ghetto. The areas weren't that nice, and the buildings looked pretty poorly taken care of. So far anything we could afford is smaller than our apartment and is just not somewhere we'd like to live. Oh well we'll keep looking, if we find something, great, if not thats okay too. We had lunch while we were in LB and drove around looking at some different areas. Of course the areas we like are out of our price range to buy in. We stopped at a park so I could go to the bathroom, it was a nice park, with access to the beach, I think we'll have to go back when Amelias not asleep.

Not much else going on, I finished the scarf I was knitting my sister, I'll post pictures of it later. I'm going to start a hat for one of the kids next.

I found a great forum to help with my weight loss stuff. It seems really supportive, and I think it will be great to be accountable to other people who are in a similar situation. My goals right now are
1. Write down everything I eat.
2. Start walking of swimming every day. Goal is 5x a week.
3. 64 oz of water a day.

That's it for now, I have to do things slowly and commit to them so I don't burn out. It's hard because Jeff and I are a bad combination with the junkfood, I'll not buy stuff and then he will, and vice versa. I am hoping that if I start doing better maybe he'll follow along. :-)

These are old pictures from Disneyland, the first two are when Amelia was 8 weeks old, she was bout 5 months in the next ones. I can't believe how quickly she is growing up.

Letters

Okay I have about a million other things I should be working on, but instead I made these today while Amelia was sleeping. They actually turned out pretty cute. I'd love to hear comments, I was thinking about making some others for other people and input would be great.

More breastfeeding stuff....and knitting

I don't know what happened, but my milk supply has gone up again. I was actually able to nurse her a few times last night and for almost a whole feeding this morning. Maybe it has to do with me not worrying about it all the time. I know stress can affect that stuff. So maybe we will make it to 12 months with her at least nursing part time. I'd love to be able to get back to only breastmilk, but if not thats okay too, some is better than none.

On another topic, I am getting all into crafty stuff again lately, I bought a bunch of wooden letters last night so I can paint them with Amelias name and put them up in her room, I'll take a picture of them when I'm done. They sell them all done up and pretty kind of like this but cuter.

Knitting

So I've been getting crafty again lately, not sure if thats a good thing or a bad thing, but I finally started knitting and finished something. I made a little hat. It's too big for Amelia, it was supposed to be for my niece Dorothy, but it might be too small. Oh well at least I finished something!!! And it didn't take me that long either. Now I have to find out if anyone will actually wear it! :-)

Bathtub

Amelias new thing today is trying to climb out of the bathtub! The whole time I was trying to wash her hair she kept standing up. I put her in her ducky tub inside the big tub. So at least she has some cushion around her but it still worries me. I'm not sure how to keep her sitting down, it's hard to wash her and hold her down at the same time!

Breastfeeding and weightloss

Well it seems my time breastfeeding Amelia is coming to a close. I have been having supply issues for a while but it's gotten a lot worse. Even in the morning I don't have much milk for her and that used to be the best time. Over the last few weeks I've tried all sorts of stuff, pumping after feedings to increase my supply, drinking lots of water, adding oatmeal, more fatty dairy and other things into my diet. I have been drinking mother's milk tea as well. So far nothing has worked. I will nurse her long enough to empty both sides, and then she just screams because she is hungry. Rather than continuing to feel like a constant failure I think I'm just going to accept it. I'll continue offering her my milk first then when it's gone move on to only the bottles. I have some frozen milk as well so she will continue to get BM for a while. My original goal was to try it for a month. Once I reached a month it became 6 months. She is now 6.5 months old so at least I did make it that far. She is also to the point where she can handle formula, not like when she was born. So I guess the decision has been made for me.

Weight loss. Another decision I have made is to get serious about losing my extra weight. Especially now that I'm not breastfeeding, I don't have to worry so much about cutting calories and exercising. So far I have lost 30 lbs, (which was my original goal) but thats just the tip of the iceburg, so I have to make my next goal. I have a lot of weight to lose and setting it in small increments seems to make it easier and not so overwhelming.

Amelia and the laundry

I came back from the bathroom yesterday to find my little one throwing all of her clean laundry on the floor. I got a little clip of her , she was so proud of herself! She also stood alone for just a second, she let go of the laundry basket with both hands and then promptly sat down. That is also in the clip.



Video sharing at JussPress.com

Boat ride

Grandma's here!

My mom has a conference this week that happened to be here in Huntington Beach. So she got here Saturday to spend a few days visiting before it started. Luckily Amelia remembered her from our visit in June, and was excited to see her Grandma! Sunday we went to Long Beach to go to the aquarium. The line was crazy long though so we decided to just walk around. We went on a boat ride around the harbor, that was a lot of fun! It was also Amelias first boat ride! It was a little bit windy for her, and we didn't have a jacket since we hadn't planned on the boat ride, but she did well with it, and actually fell asleep before it was over. After the boat ride we had dinner at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. They had trivia questions about Forrest Gump while we waited to be seated. Of course Jeff knew most of them.

Crayons

You are

What Rejected Crayon Are You?

Sleeping beauty

I just love babies in overalls. :-)

Today we had to take Amelia to the doctor. We went a month ago for her shots, and Dr. Tandon was concerned about her weight. So, she wanted to check again today to make sure she was gaining okay. Our appointment was at 10, so we left the house at 9:15, with plenty of time to spare. Got to the hospital at 9:30, (her office is in a medical building next to the hospital.) We had to park so far away that we didn't get into the office until 9:55! And of course I left the stroller at home and carrier at home, so had to lug her in her car seat ( sound asleep) across the parking lot.

Apparently the normal receptionist/nurse was gone today, so we had another lady. It was so slow going. Amelia was having fun in the waiting room playing with other children though! We didn't get into a room until 10:35. Then the nurse asked what was wrong with her. I guess I looked confused because she said well she's here because she's sick right? I told her no, we were there to get her weight checked. So the nurse checked her height and weight, of course Amelia screamed bloody murder. She is 13 lbs 14 oz and 24 1/2 inches long.

Dr. Tandon was gone today so we saw another lady,(it was 10:50 before she made it to the room to see us!) she was really nice and helped me feel a lot better about my "little" baby. I told her about how all the kids in our family are small, my aunts were only 4'11". She said that Amelia is doing just fine then, and some families just have smaller kids. In fact they went through that with her daughter. So anyway, I'm feeling a lot better about her being so little. It's hard because people just assume she is younger than she is. Then if you watch her for a minute she is all over the place, crawling, pulling up on things, I think she is going to be an early walker. Oh we're going to be in trouble once she is walking.