One month

Well, this is a few days early, but Emily will be one month old on Tuesday. Where does the time go? Seriously, I feel like we just came home from the hospital. And considering that we're not getting much sleep, I'm definitely spending way more hours conscious than I normally do.

Speaking of which, all of you non-parents out there take your sleep for granted. Big time. Now, Travis and I are extremely lucky in that we have a baby that sleeps, for the most part. There are very few nights where we're up every hour or two. Emily has been a sleeping champ since she was born, really. But there are far too many nights for my liking where she doesn't go to sleep until 11:30 or so, and then is up again at 1 or 2, and then again at 4:30. The 4:30 am waking is really the pits, because by the time she's changed, fed, and burped then I only have about 20 minutes left until the alarm goes off. So then I lay in bed thinking "I should just get up. But I need these extra 20 minutes!"

The lack of sleep leads to some very zombie like moments during the day, and occasional conversations at night where I'm not sure Travis is really awake, and I'm not even sure if I'm awake for that matter. However, things are getting better. We just had two nights, in a row, where she slept through the night. TWO NIGHTS! Hallelujah!

Here's what Emily has been up to this month:
. Holding her head up and looking around all the time.
. Eating over 4 oz between formula and breast milk. What a little piggy!
. Making and holding eye contact
. Smiling! She's even starting to laugh a little. So far Aunt Stefanie is the only one to get an intentional laugh. But she's trying!
. Going longer during tummy time and pushing with her legs.
. Sleeping through the night on occasion. She loves napping in her swing, but she's napping less and less. Normally I'm lucky if she naps once a day for a few hours.

This is a "give me food!" face. And yes, we have to use the bib because she is a messy little dribbler.

RAWRRR! I'm Queen of tummy time!

In other news, last weekend was the 100th Bear River Fair. We decided to take a trip up there with Emily and take part. There were soft ball games, bingo, a photo booth, lots of exhibits, pony rides, karaoke, and two dinners. We actually didn't do all of that, but we did watch a lot of softball! Emily slept through the entire thing. Oh well, there's always next year!

Travis is taking another week off to help me out since I'm working and watching Emily at home full time. This excites me like you wouldn't believe! Emily is a much more active baby than I would have ever imagined, so working and taking care of her is actually a lot more difficult that I expected it to be. I'll leave you with a sweet photo from his last "vacation" to watch Emily.

Rough life!

Introducing...

Emily!! This is what I've been working on in my absence. Emily Faith was born on 7/30 at 3:02 pm weighing in at 9lbs 2 oz and measuring 22 inches long. She's a big girl!

I was officially 9 days late on her birthday. The night before I went to the fair again with my in-laws to watch Trav's band play. We ended up having to park really far away, and I think all the walking did me in. My water broke at home around 4:00, so we went to the hospital and got settled in there. Labor progressed pretty fast until I got the pain meds at 11:30, which seemed to slow everything down quite a bit. They started me on Pitocin to make my contractions stronger and I started actively pushing at noon. 3 hours later, Emily finally made her debut!

We've all been settling in and adjusting to life with baby. Thankfully she's a pretty good sleeper, and we've only had to get up once or twice with her every night. Of course, I check on her a lot more than that but that's what new, paranoid mothers do!

Going home! I'm still looking pretty tired here, even after two days of resting!
Here she is getting a little burp time in with Daddy.

Not to sure about hanging out on her boppy.

So that's what we've been up to lately. Hopefully I can keep up with my posts during nap times!

Twiddling my thumbs

Just patiently waiting. I was hoping to have baby news, but no such luck. I'm officially past my due date at 40 weeks and 4 days. Yayyyy....

I've tried walking, eating spicy food, eating fresh pineapple, being really energetic and cleaning my house, driving down a bumpy road (not intentionally, just got lucky with that one). Guess what? Old wives tales are just that, tales. Basically they suck and are always wrong. Emily is going to come whenever she wants to. Maybe she heard me say that I don't like rubies, so she wants to be an August baby for the peridot?

In other news, our weather finally cooled off. We sent that heat packing east and enjoyed a weekend of under 70 temps. Yep, you read that right! Today has actually gotten up to 80, but it's breezy and beautiful. This is more like Minnesota summer!

Travis had a gig with the band Friday night. Everyone was worried about me being all by myself, so my mother-in-law and sister-in-law came to keep me company. I kind of find this amusing since I spend every day by myself (well, with the company of Maya), and Trav works about an hour away. But whatever, we had a good time and that's what matters.

The one part of Friday that was not fun at all: getting stung by a bee. How the heck did that happen, right? Me and my big old pregnant behind were out watering my flowers on the front deck when one snuck up on me from behind and stung my foot. Seriously, it was like a covert sting operation. The scariest part: I've never been stung by a bee before.

So imagine this if you will: I'm 40+ weeks pregnant, and I just got stung by a bee. I'm home alone. This is my first bee sting ever. Commence irrational panicking. First off I ran into the bathroom and started filing up the tub with cold water, because that mofo burned! As I sit there, I try to remember what I've learned about bee stings. Which really equals about zero. I assume if I'm allergic that there would be some swelling. Well, my foot is swelling up anyway, I just got stung by something! So once the radiating burning has numbed by my ice cold bath water, I hobble over to my computer to do a little research. Here's a hint if you're ever in my situation: don't Google images of bee stings. Stick to the "web" search. Thankfully I found some helpful information to inform me that at this point, 20 min after the initial sting, that if I wasn't in anaphylactic shock already then I am likely doing ok.

Of course I sent my hubby a text to let him know what happened, just in case something serious really did come out of this event. And then my brother called me. Cue me missing Trav's phone call, his mind naturally going to the scenario of me being passed out somewhere, and getting repeated phone calls until I finally switch over and tell him I'm fine. Hey, if I have to have a heart attack for no reason, so does he.

So this weekend he did his husband-ly duties of finding the bee's nest, buying insecticide, and killing them. But not without taking a picture first:
This is underneath our front porch steps. As you can see, the little buggers had one nest and decided at some point that it wasn't good enough, so they made an even bigger nest next door. Seriously, how did we miss this? How the heck hasn't my mailman been stung every single day by these buggers? One will never know I guess, but hopefully they're good and dead now.

So that was our big excitement this weekend. Here's my latest (and hopefully last!) bump picture at 40 weeks:

Are we there yet?

Baby yet? No baby yet, and it's starting to feel like I'm going to be pregnant forever! Really I'm only 38 weeks pregnant, and we have 11 days to go until my due date. But trust me...those 11 days seem like way to long! I'm hot, my feet are swollen, I have some bizarre hip pain making it difficult to walk.....so yea, I'm done being pregnant. I'm ready for Emily to make her appearance!
I know you don't believe me about the heat thing. We live in Minnesota, how hot could it get? Well, let me tell you - upper 80's when you live in a house with no A/C might as well be 100 for all I care. There is no way to get cool. I've seriously contemplated filling my bathtub with cool water to go "swim" in.

In other news, we finally got the quote back for our flat roof and signed the contract to get it redone. It came back a little higher than I expected at $3600, but we're biting the bullet and getting it done. Hopefully that will happen this week, or at least before Emily arrives. They have a few others to do before ours, apparently it's replace-your-roof-season. But then it'll be done and we won't have to worry about it for another 10 years or so. So we can get back to our regularly scheduled programming of replacing windows, installing garage door openers, etc, etc. Ah, home-ownership. AKA: "money pit that you can only hope will repay you in equity 20 years from now." Ain't it grand?

Happy 4th of July

Errr, belated!

We were blessed with beautiful, if not a tad warm, weather this weekend for the 4th. Hooray for no rain! So we all piled in the pontoon boat for cruise around the Side Lake chain and did a little BBQ'ing for dinner. Since it gets dark so late in the summer (around 10pm) we decided to forgo the fireworks. A day of sun can really wipe you out, you know!

Here's part of the lake we were on. I believe this is Big Sturgeon, which I normally get confused with Little Sturgeon. It's easy to do!
Even Maya came along! I think she liked boating way more than laying out on the beach, but she's such a busy-body that it's hard to tell. She was all over the place, sniffing the wind, checking out other boats and looking for shady spots. Of course, being next to mom is always good too.

Most of our crew got in and swam. I thought that getting on and off the boat might be a little too difficult for me so I just dipped my toes. The water was only 4 feet deep where we anchored, so it was shallow enough to stand and see if there were any creatures swimming around. Say hi Trav!
But no drowning!

Of course we didn't get any pictures of the picnic, because we were eating! It was a great day out for a boat ride though. Despite using 50 spf, I still got some sun and so did Travis. His is already starting to turn a nice shade of tan, while I just look like a lobster. Oh well!

Here's my 37 week picture. This was one of our hottest days yet and I didn't do my hair or make up, hence the "from the neck down" photo. Apparently Emily has reached the "small watermelon" size, and it sure looks like it from this shot!

Happy Summer!

I'm drowing

No seriously. One drip at a time.

We've had rain for over a week, with only one day of reprieve. So naturally my family room roof has to start leaking. Right? Is it too hard to expect my roof to do it's job - stay dry and keep us dry? I guess not.

We had a leak a few weeks ago that Travis was able to fix. Now we have a new leak. Joy! The very special home owners that used to live here had a wood stove in our family room, which apparently was a bedroom at one time. They took the wood stove out, but left the stove-pipe opening and the whole pipe stack that sticks out of our roof. There is a bucket over it, but apparently there is some cracking going on down farther that is causing it to leak. The side that we actually see from the family room was filled in, so it looks like an upside down top-hat sticking into our family room. This is where the leak is.

Let me tell you: this makes our "special" house just that much more special.

So we're coming to grips with getting the roof replaced. At least it's only part of the roof, and not the main one. Plus it's a flat roof, so it should be relatively easy to replace, re-tar and throw some rock down. We had some guys come out last week to give us a quote. We asked about some different things, like even re-trussing it to put a slant on it and then put shingles on. The hard numbers? $4,000 to do that. $3000 to put rubber down. So I'm hoping when we get the actual quote, it's like $2000 just to re-tar. Hey, a girl can dream, right?

Oh yea, did I mention that my due date is less than a month away? Replacing a roof is exactly what I wanted to do one month before having a baby. So here's hoping that the bid comes in lower than I expected, they get it done quickly, and we figure out a way to pay for it!

Here's proof I'm about ready to pop!

36 weeks down, 4 more to go!

Happy Father's Day!

Today is the day that we all thank our Dad's for being who they are. My Dad is pretty awesome, I have to tell you. He's always there when I need him, even when he's 1500 miles away (give or take), with a shoulder to cry on, an ear for listening, and good advice when I need it. One of my favorite things about my Dad is that he kind of thinks he's Superman, and he's ready to do anything or help out in any way he can. But honestly, he's always been my hero so maybe that Superman thing is true. Here's one of my favorite pictures of us:
Love you Dad!

The other hero in my life, dearest Hubby, has been hard at work this weekend since it's Outside Project Weekend 2011. We do have plans to grill burgers and go see a movie, and he has yet to see the present on the dining room table for him. All in good time...

So here in northern MN, the hardy green thumb ladies usually start rolling out their flower beds and whatnot sometime in May. This year has sucked for weather though, and we've had cold and rain for more months than I care to count. I think we've all decided "screw it. I'm planting anyway!" Today was a balmy 63 degrees, and although the weekend has been overcast the rain has held off a bit so we went ahead with our plans.

We have a window well in between the house and garage that we cleared out sometime last year. Our intention was to fill it with rock and some landscape lights. These were very good intentions for upwards of a year or so. Well this weekend we finally decided to go for it! So we went from this ugliness:
To this!
Looking good! The lamps kind of blend in, but there are 4 on this side of the fence and 1 right on the other side. I originally wanted white rock, but the multicolored river pebbles were not only $1 cheaper per bag (x30 bags = saved us $30!), but they also got a little better with the overall "brown-ness" of our house. I did my part by weeding out most of the longer bed, which I have to tell you - not so much fun at 8 months pregnant. I also held the weed tarp (that goes underneath the rock to keep weeds from sprouting up), and I was an integral part in positioning the lights. Not to shabby when I'm feeling like a blimp! I let Travis do all the heavy moving and lifting of the actual rock, naturally. :o)

I also took the opportunity while at Lowe's to pick up a few flowers to dress up our front porch a little. It looks a little drab, and we really need a bench out there or something. But honestly, I think my true Minnesotan neighbor wives are ashamed of the lack of flowers our house has. So I needed to do something! Here's what I came up with:
Some hostas and impatients
and a pretty, red Salvia with some white impatients. There's also some "dusty miller" mixed in which is like a white, furry fern. I thought it looked pretty cool, so we'll see how it fares. Actually, I'm no green thumb at all, so fingers crossed that all of these do okay!

Here's my latest bump picture at 35 weeks:
Have a great week!