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!

My eye got really watery today at work during my planning period (no students). I kept wiping it, annoyed.

When my next class came in, one of my students said "What is wrong with your eye?!" I shrugged and told her it had been watering. "You've got pink eye!" she told me (well, actually she said "You got pink eye!" We're still working on the grammar. Yes, I teach 8th grade). I told her it was just watery.

Within half an hour, another student said my eye was swollen. I had no mirror but managed to peek into the metal part of my stapler and sure enough, it was. By the time my next class entered, my eye was pouring goop.

I went to see the school nurse after school and her and another staff member confirmed that I had pink eye. Fabulous. I've never had this before, and it's the last day of school before Christmas vacation! Nooooo!

I went to one of those pharmacy walk-ins and got some eye drops. The most devastating part of this is throwing away all of my eye makeup. I never buy expensive makeup, but I splurged two weeks ago and bought a $20 eye shadow - trashed.

Now my eye won't stop gooping shut. This is gross.

My embarassing afternoon

I'm a teacher at a middle school. One of the substitutes also serves as the girl's basketball coach. Since he's a sub, he doesn't have his own room. He asked me a couple of months ago if he could use my room after school for study hall before basketball practice (woah, say that ten times fast) - something all athletes have to do. I said of course!

On Wednesdays, he told me, they would not be using my room. This is good, because Wednesdays in our district are "short days" - the kids get out an hour early so we can have professional development. I pump at work (breast milk, that is). On Wednesdays, I get 20 minutes for lunch, and after several weeks of rushing my students down to the cafeteria, grabbing my lunch, rushing back to my class, setting up my pump, pumping, taking it apart and cleaning it, taking my milk to the fridge, and picking my kids back up - I cracked. I said NO MORE! And stopped pumping at lunch on Wednesdays. Now, I pump after school before our meetings.

I hate being late for the meetings though, so I usually pump and then leave my milk in a storage bag and my pump parts out, cleaning them after the meeting. Less rushing that way, you know.

So today I went about my routine. Pumped after school, put the milk in a storage bag (this is probably so gross to people who don't have kids, sorry, I swear my entire blog is not about boobs and milk), and left my empty bottles and suction cups sitting on my desk, without washing them.

Well, when I got done with my meeting, I went into my classroom to discover not only did this male substitute take the girls' basketball team into my class after all, but he had brought the boys' team as well. I was mortified, knowing my stuff had been sitting out in the open. Then I went to my desk and saw that the substitute had CLEANED IT UP!

My nipple shields (the suction cups) and milk-drop covered bottles had been cleared off my desk and put into my pump bag, and my sack of milk had been placed in there as well. I am so completely mortified. I mumbled something like, "Oh, gee, sorry about the mess...." And he didn't say ANYTHING. Which made it way more awkward.

Lesson learned: clean up my disgusting used breast pump parts RIGHT AWAY.

Why is making a baby laugh so hard? Ok, for you, it might be really easy. But Baby D doesn't really laugh. She does an excited coo and smiles really big (which melts my freaking heart every single time), but no laugh-out-louds. If she could text or chat online, she would never be able to say "LOL," but might be able to say "COL (coo out loud, for those not in the know)," and still only sometimes. Don't get me wrong, she talks ALL of the time, but laughing? Nope. We've tried everything. Things that, if they were caught on camera, could be used to blackmail me because I look like such a moron.

Still, no laughs. And that's ok, I can be patient. I'm not one of those moms that has to compete with other moms (so what Baby D isn't rolling over? I'm not concerned at all about that), but COME ON, LAUGH ALREADY! I just want it for my own selfish reasons, because I know it's going to kill me with joy every time she does it.

Today is a beautiful Fall day - probably the last nice day of the year. We're hanging out in the living room with the shades open & even a window is open as well. The sun is shining in, the wind is blowing through, and Baby D is shaking the rattle on her play gym and talking to the whale hanging above her. It's such a perfect day that I suppose I can do without a laugh and just appreciate that beautiful voice! And so I will.

Mr. D and I are going on our first date since baby was born today!

We were going to make it dinner, but decided we'd rather just go do lunch and a movie or something. Although there really aren't any movies out that we'd like to see, so who knows what we'll do. I do know there will be a steak involved. A bloody steak, since I couldn't have that when Baby D was still incubating.

I am very excited for date night. I explained to Baby D that moms and dads sometimes need to leave babies with a sitter (in this case, Grandma) so they can go have time alone and stay in love. I realize she probably has no idea what I'm saying, but it makes me feel less guilty for going out and having a good time without her, haha.

Baby D is getting smarter and bigger and more beautiful every day. She is able to reach for things and grab them. She smiles. She's ALMOST laughing. She tries to stick everything in her mouth. I love the face she makes when she sticks something in her mouth that apparently tastes bad. I can't wait until it's time to introduce solids and we get to give her new foods and see the faces she makes when she likes them and hates them! Right now, it's just momma's milk, though, and she still always looks like she's an addict who finally got their fix every time she eats it. And I love that :)

I thought I'd be able to type out a long post, since she was working away in her play gym, but she had different plans and is "yelling" at me, so nevermind!

Three of my students are pregnant.

I teach 8th grade.

I just wish more school districts would stop teaching abstinence only education and admit that, regardless if you approve or not, teens are going to have sex. Teach them how to protect themselves if they make that choice! I would love for them to let me teach sex ed. I wish 14 year olds weren't choosing to be sexually active, but if they're going to be, give them the knowledge they need and show them that, yes, even 14 year olds can get pregnant.

Anyway, it makes me super sad to think about how their lives are forever changed at such a young age. I LOVE Baby D more than everything, but having a baby is HARD. It's so many other positive things, but being easy isn't something parenthood is. And to have to have a baby and still have over 4 years of school left to complete before you graduate high school? I can't even imagine.

Anyway, off of that tangent.

Baby D is doing great. She has hit a majorly cranky stage, though. We think maybe she's already teething, even though she's only a little over 3 months old. She's irritable, drools a lot, and chews on her hands (which used to mean she was hungry, but refuses to eat when she's chewing on her hands). She was screaming in such a painful manor the other night that we finally broke down a gave her a little baby tylenol, which stopped the crying almost right away, so we think she was definitely in pain. I'm going to miss my girl's gummy smile!!

Having a growing baby is definitely bittersweet. I look forward to all of the things she'll be able to do within the next year - rolling over, crawling, walking, talking - but I will desperately miss the infant stage. Even with the unstoppable crying at times. She is just so perfect and beautiful. I will miss her rubberband wrists and her giant elbow dimple, her 14 chins, her perfectly soft baby skin. But at the same time I am looking forward to when she asks me if she can help me cook, or even when she comes padding into our room in the morning to wake us up! (Remind me of that when it annoys me)

Right now she's snoozing away on her newborn lounger (which she has almost outgrown), the morning light coming in and lighting up her little porcelain face. I love her!!