Another summer rolls to an end.

I start back at work next week. I am still mostly in denial about this, although I shed two or three tears earlier before I pulled myself together. I just wish everything in the world was free so no one had to work. Who invented this work concept anyway?! I know I am certainly way luckier than most that I even get summers off, so I will try not to sound too ungrateful about the time off work that I've been given.

It has been an amazing summer. And to be honest it's seemed like the longest one I've ever had, so that's a great thing, but also makes it harder than ever to return to work. I'm so lucky that Mr. D (who is also a teacher) and I were able to spend 2 months at home with our baby girl and watch her grow and become a toddler.

Baby D's 1st birthday was on the 28th, and her party was on the 30th. It was a HUGE success. We ordered our invitations from this shop on Etsy. She was AMAZING to work with and I can't rave enough about how fabulous the invitations and other things we got were. Everyone loved them. We went with the Sweet Shoppe them and had an all-pink candy buffet, pink cupcakes, ice cream with yummy toppings, and strawberry cake.

I originally had planned on making Baby D's smash cake from scratch. I've never given her more than a small taste of sweet things at a time, and I didn't see the point in starting now. I decided to make her a sugar free carrot cake using ingredients like unsweetened applesauce and apple juice. I'm sure you can imagine how it turned out. Disgusting. I knew I would have to give in and just order one from the store. I'm glad I did, it was super cute and way better tasting. She only gets one first birthday, so why not let her live a little and have some sugar? She didn't eat very much anyway. What she did eat she loved, though!

The one thing I am really bummed about this summer is that Baby D hasn't walked yet! I know as soon as we put her back into daycare she'll probably take her first steps there, and it actually makes me a little sick to my stomach to think about missing out on that! But I know she will enjoy being back with her "peers," because she just loves other kids so much and she thrives around them. So it's for the best anyway.

I am going to try to be more diligent about posting in this blog. I hate that I always go so long without posts. There's really no excuse aside from utter laziness.

Summer quickly approaches! I am so excited to have two months off of work. Teaching really sucks sometimes, but I've gotta tell you, the light at the end of the tunnel is summer vacation.

I've been battling a myriad of illnesses for the past week. It started last Friday. By Saturday, I had a raging fever. I luckily felt better for Mother's Day (which was amazing, by the way). That night, though, I felt sicker than ever. I took some ibuprofen and felt good enough to go to work. I still felt like my body wasn't healed yet.

By Tuesday, I was convinced it was strep throat, but a visit to urgent care revealed that apparently my woes were due to allergies. Wednesday morning, I awoke to discover I had lost my voice. I somehow made it through a day of teaching, but it took a toll on my voice and wiped it out completely. Then I developed pink eye (probably due to Baby D's new obsession with eyelashes).

I had to take off Thursday to give it a break, which really stinks because I have no paid time off yet (I used it all up during maternity leave!), so I lost a big chunk of money.

After my day off, my voice was still weak and I had developed a horrific cough, but knew we couldn't afford anymore time off. So, back to work on Friday. My voice was way better (now sounding more like a boy entering puberty), but the cough was worse. I had to raise my voice too many times and lost my voice again. I took some Delsym when I got home, and it did nothing for my cough, but it did get me feeling really high, which meant Mr. D had to do the brunt of the baby-rearing once again this week.

Here it is, Saturday again, and I still can't stop coughing. It's so frustrating. It is pretty amazing to see Baby D become accustomed to my barking cough, though. That girl sleeps right through it, even when I'm holding her!

Which is what I'm doing now (yes, I typed this whole entry using one hand - THAT'S talent!), so I'm going to be a creepy mom and just stare at her now.

All good things must come to an end...

Our spring break is wrapping up.

I am never ready to return to work, but I can honestly say I have had a completely fulfilling vacation. Mr. D, Baby D, and I had some fun outings over the past week.

The baby and I enjoyed numerous cuddle sessions. We made it to the park during the two nice-weather days (Um, speaking of which, 40 degree weather? You do not belong in spring break.), Baby D got to swing on a real (infant) swing for the first time. She LOVED it.

She also went down the slide with Daddy and me, and was thoroughly unimpressed with that.

During this break, we also re-discovered our favorite onesies in a big girl size! We are overly excited to re-live these outfits. By "we," naturally I mean the Mister and me. The baby could care less. In fact, she prefers no clothes at all (with the exception of her diaper). While undressed, she regresses back in time to the caveman era, where she grunts and violently kicks her legs and pumps her arms. Clothes just make her cry for the first minute or so. I do think she realizes how darn cute she is in these onesies, so she eventually accepts that she has to wear them in public.

Anyway, as our spring break draws to an end, I am satisfied with the time we've had off of work. I'll return knowing that the best break of all - summer vacation! - is right around the corner! Oh, I can't wait.

Karma!

I am a firm believer in Karma. I try to do nice things for people, not only because it just feels good, but because I hope that it will come around to me again in my times of need!

For instance, if I'm driving and someone needs to merge in front of me and everyone else is being a jerk and refusing to let them in, my attitude is "By all means, get in front of me!" And I feel like this is good car karma, so perhaps later at the store I will get an awesome parking spot. I know, I am insane.

Today, however, Mr. D, Baby D, and myself went on a walk to the local. It was so gorgeous outside! I had just relocated one of our favorite little blankies that Baby D has, and was pumped. I decided she needed to cuddle it in her stroller on our walk. In our neighborhood, we stopped to talk to our neighbor for awhile. Later, on our way back to our house, I noticed someone's ad-chocked junk mail insert was rolling down the street. Papers were everywhere! I knew what it was because one had been in my mailbox earlier, so I gathered all of them up and disposed of them.

30 minutes later, we are back in our living room when the doorbell rings. For some reason, any time the doorbell rings, I assume it's a home invasion waiting to happen and it FREAKS ME OUT!

This time, it was just the neighbor we had chatted up earlier. He held up the aforementioned blankie and said "Is this yours?" Apparantly we had somehow dropped it on our way to the park. Him and his wife were walking their dog and came across it, and since he knew we were just in that area he was nice enough to pick it up and return it! Karma from the junk mail!

I'm so glad he was thoughtful enough to bring it back. I also find it cool that had we not stopped to talk to him, he might've never assumed it was ours, and it would still be laying on the sad lonely street.

I'm still not sure how we managed to lose it!

Flying fast!

Life is moving so fast. Every day I promise myself I'm going to start blogging more but it doesn't happen!

Baby D has gotten SO big and smart and fabulous. She is playful and silly and, sorry to say, STILL not sleeping through the night. We're talking about waking up every 1-2 hours. She is over 7 months old! I cannot believe I thought babies slept through the night at like 3 weeks. And while pregnant I thought, "Man, three weeks without a full night of sleep? No wonder new parents are cranky!" UM HELLO PAST ME, welcome to the worst wake-up call ever!

Speaking of the baby, I smell spit up and cannot locate the source. It's driving me insane. I even just attempted to smell my boob thinking perhaps the stink was radiating from that area. It's not. Oh, mystery baby vomit, where are you?

I am on spring break for work. I LOVE IT. This morning we woke up and I realized we had nothing for breakfast. So we loaded up and went to Starbucks, drank delicious coffee (vanilla latte for me, yum) and had yummy scones. Then we went to the store to get some groceries. Afterward, we came home so our girl could nap, then went back out again for lunch and some shopping. It was such a lovely day! We had forgotten to get lunch at the store that day, but I didn't mind because eating out is such a treat.

We still forgot to get breakfast food at the store, so we get to have Starbucks again in the morning! I love little vacation treats like that.

I can no longer type without locating the resting place of this spit-up.

It's been awhile, which is typical around here. I need to start blogging every day but it's really hard! Everyone always acts like it's so easy to do stuff while baby sleeps, but when your baby sleeps on you, it's pretty difficult. Baby D rarely takes naps in her crib when she's at home, she's typically held by one of us. Yes, she's spoiled, but she's no worse for the wear.

Life around here has been out of routine lately. We keep having snow days! I live in the midwest, where two inches of snow shuts down the city for the day. We got back from Christmas break, had a four-day school week, then it snowed that Sunday so we didn't have school for three days! Thursday & Friday, it was back to work. That following Monday was MLK day, so we were out. Another four day work week. Now, it snowed (actually a lot for us this time - 6-8 inches ) yesterday so the schools are out yet again today. Likely tomorrow, too.

While I am enjoying our lazy unexpected vacation days, the fact that I know we'll have to make them up in the springtime, well, sucks. I also feel a little guilty that we keep getting Baby D out of her routine. She's already doesn't go to day care on Wednesdays (her grandma watches her), so now she's been going to day care like once a week. Naturally we still have to pay for it, too! But we just can't get enough of her, so if we're home, there's no way we're sending her to day care! This also means that she was out of day care for two entire weeks during Christmas vacation. Whoops. I know you're supposed to be all about routines for babies, and she hasn't had one for several weeks now.

She has SUCH a personality now! Little giggles, lots of smiles, she throws tantrums and throws objects. She hits things, she reaches out for people. We finally had ONE full on belly-laugh the other night, but not since. Yes, she is almost 6 months old and has yet to really laugh. It kills us, but finally getting that one "hahahaha!" out of her was worth the wait. She's also rolling over like crazy now.

Ok, off to finish my coffee and snuggle with my family!

Baby Woes: Surviving colic

Once again, let me preface this edition of "baby woes" with the disclaimer that I AM MADLY IN LOVE WITH MY BABY! I love everything about being a mom. The vent that follows is just to inform people that sometimes parenthood can be rough and if they're going through a similar experience, they are not alone.

That being said, colic sucks. Really really sucks. To the point where booting the baby out of the house seems like a really good idea. Baby D had colic. Hers was in the evening. Which was probably hormonal and related to the fact that I had major baby blues in the evening during the first two weeks. But that's another blog post.

For the first few weeks of life, Baby D just slept, pooped, and ate. It was pretty great, actually. We just cuddled her, and if she cried, we fed her or changed her diaper and she was content again.

But at some point after a few weeks, she started having these horrible screaming fits at night. NOTHING helped. Not swaddling, not feeding, not changing her diaper. We tried rocking her. We tried bouncing her. Putting her in the swing. Re-swaddling her. Singing to her. Trying to change her diaper again. Offering her a pacifier (which I swore I would never do). Trying to see if maybe NOW she was hungry. Holding her silently. Holding her and talking to her. Checking her diaper again. Seeing if she was ready for the pacifier yet. Running the vaccuum... you get the point.

NOTHING WORKED.

We are not supporters of crying it out, so we would just take turns holding her while she cried. After a few hours, it would stop. We would breathe a sigh of relief and tiptoe around the house in fear of awakening the beast. (Just an expression, I do not think my daughter is a beast. If shw were a beast, however, she would be the cutest flipping beast of all time!)

Finally one night it didn't happen any more. Now it seems like it all happened so long ago. It's funny, though. I wished those times away so many times when they were happening. Now, I wish I hadn't done that! She has grown so long, and I am so short, that she barely fits into my lap anymore - and she's only 4 1/2 months old! Back during the screaming fits, I could lean back and just hold her against my chest and try to cuddle the cries out of her. Now she is already too big for "chesty time," as we called it. It's downright sad sometimes.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: if you have come across this blog and you are dealing with a colic-y baby, I promise you the tears will stop. Baby D hasn't cried more than 5 minutes at a time for several weeks now. So try (impossible as it might be) to enjoy those times. When you are up in the middle of the night and all you can think is "I wish I could put this baby down without her crying so I can get some sleep!," try to enjoy the time you have holding that little baby! Because you can never get those moments back.

The upside to passing those moments by is that you get to trade them in for smiles, coos, babbles and (not for us yet) laughs. While I miss my tiny baby, this big baby is awesome too! Every time I get sad over a stage ending, a new amazing one begins. Let's just remember to cherish them ALL!