Tag: MM (my monkey)

love thursday: the loves of my life

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I’ve been all about getting more family pictures lately – usually our pictures are just of one or two of us – and I still don’t have any of all four of us, but between this photo shoot and this one, we’re close. I secretly adore the realness and imperfections of these pictures. Sure, I wish the baby wasn’t crying – but at the same time, was she likely to do anything else with a grabby three year old holding onto her not so gently? He tried, but seriously. I do love all of MM’s goofy faces and Dan’s expression in the last one just says it all – we may be sleep deprived and occasionally weepy, but we are still… filled to the brim with love.

Love Thursday is the brain child of Chookooloonks. Check out her post today for more thoughts on love, and the comments section for other people playing along.

52 Weeks: Mother(oftwo)hood

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It’s not easy cramming three people into a self taken picture but we tried. Well, I tried. For the most part, MM was not the least bit helpful as he thinks the picture taking happens at the wrong end of the camera… But here are two that came out well and one that I love in spite of it’s obvious imperfections.

~*~

52 Weeks is a year long challenge for YOU, hosted by Forever in Blue Jeans, to be in a picture once a week for 52 weeks. We are always the ones behind the camera, this is YOUR chance to get out in front and be in the pictures with our family. We are glad you are joining this challenge. More importantly your family will really enjoy having you in the picture. Thanks for playing along! Oh, you can just jump in now with 1 of 52, you’re not getting off that easy! Now go take a picture!

5 Great Things…

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First off, I just wanted to thank everyone for your kind comments and words of encouragement in yesterday’s post. You guys are wonderful and between your words of advice and the general therapeutic nature of writing, I felt a lot better. Anyway, I thought I’d take a different approach today and write about the things that are going really well – that way I’ll have given equal attention to the good and the bad of these days, which are so fleeting…

Jean @ Working Momma 247 has been doing Gratitude Posts lately and that is really what inspired me to give this a go, so here are 5 things that I’m grateful for / happy about right now or just things that have made me smile…

  1. I finally finished reading Dead Until Dark last night – I feel very proud of myself for sticking with it, never mind for finding reading time at night again. I actually ended up really liking this book – I’ll try to write a review soon.
  2. Last night Dan attempted to make a 5 course dinner in celebration of our anniversary. I think it was a little overly ambitious, especially with him not getting home to start cooking until 6:00 pm and us having the new baby and the crazy preschooler, but we had a fun time anyway. Even when he caught the garlic bread on fire. It was actually a really nice night and there was really no point where either of us were upset when our plans went crazy it was just kind of like, “Yeah this is our life now.” I am impressed looking back on it, at how well we both just rolled with the punches. 5 courses turned into roughly 3 which I commented was maybe perfect for a 3 year anniversary. Maybe in two years we’ll attempt it again? We still have the ingredients to attempt courses 4 and 5 sometime this weekend maybe.
  3. MM has added two new phrases to his constant vocabulary – “two minutes” as in, two more minutes until nap time, bedtime, diaper change etc. He says it so cutely that it’s hard to be annoyed, never mind the cleverness of his scheme to bide his time. The other phrase is “two little” as in, I’ll have “just two little crackers” or “two little grapes” or “two little oatmeal.” This one doesn’t really mean he wants 2 – one bowl of oatmeal is fine and he will want more than two grapes but again – it’s cute. He’s cute. There’s cuteness.
  4. We finally got our washer / dryer fixed – again. Apparently another bird made another nest in the vent and our office manager guy came himself, climbed up on the window sill in MM’s room (teaching him new bad habits – hurray!) and got it out, then added a vent cover so as to nip the problem in the bud. And that night Dan added to our child proofing stick in the window thing so that MM will definitely not be able to open to window to reenact our office manager’s actions. In retrospect, I totally shouldn’t have let him watch, but all is good and fixed. Finally.
  5. BB is just beautiful – have I said that enough? She’s healthy and happy and nurses well and is getting bigger and becoming more alert during the day and we are all crazily in love with her. And when the bad seems to pile up on me, it really should be remembered – that I have two beautiful, healthy, brilliant children – not to mention a helpful, caring, patient husband who cooks me 3 to 5 course meals and changes the diapers at night…

How about you? What are 5 great things in your life right now?

Baby Blueberry’s Birth Story

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I thought I’d attempt writing out Baby Blueberry’s birth story now while it’s still fresh in my memory. I’m only going to write about the actual birth for now because although I have a lot of possible tales to tell, this whole blogging thing takes a much longer time than it used to! If I tried to tell you guys about everything that’s happened in the past week, well, I don’t think I’d ever finish. So for now…

Tuesday morning Dan and I woke up around 5am – we showered, got dressed, he ate breakfast and then we headed to the hospital. Pretty much the only things on my mind were, “I’m tired, I’m hungry and I’m about to have a baby.” But mostly, “I’m hungry.” I wasn’t allowed to eat anything after midnight the night before and my stomach was not pleased with being woken up and then ignored. I tried not to be envious while Dan ate his breakfast.

We arrived at the hospital for 6:30am, found our way to the birth center where we were quickly checked in – I think we were their only appointment that morning and they were all kind of gathered around the nurses station waiting for us. We went in to the first little room where we signed some papers, talked to loads of people and got prepped for surgery. Everything was fairly pleasant until it got around time to put in the catheter. For some reason I didn’t realize it was time for the catheter until it was time for the catheter so I never really got to prep myself for Oh My Goodness. Just so you all know how huge of a baby I am, when they finished inserting it, I basically told Dan I was done having children and at the time I was completely serious. I’d already had an epidural when they gave me one for MM’s birth so I never got to feel that awful feeling, but seriously. It was awful.

Luckily not long after the Catheter instance (or Foley as they began referring to it after insertion, like by calling it another name I might forget what they were talking about or like when you are talking to your spouse about bed time in front of your children and you spell it out “B-E-D T-I-M-E” so as not to cause a premature temper tantrum from your kiddos but then eventually they learn to spell so you have to start calling it by another name like “period of dormancy” or “foley“… Well it didn’t work – I totally remembered what they’d done and I was not likely to forget anytime soon) I got my spinal block and the dreaded Foley was eventually not the most pressing matter of the moment. I’ll admit that after the spinal kicked in, the baby was born, etc. I couldn’t feel the foley at all. But I didn’t forget. Just so we’re clear.

Anyway, back to the birth story. It was very different in the operating room this time around since I hadn’t been in an unnatural overly medicated labor all day –  I had my awesome spinal block to avoid feeling anything but I was still totally present and aware of the situation. I loved that. They also were able to give me a medication to control nausea which I didn’t get when MM was born. Not puking is so much better than puking, I’m just saying. The people in the OR talked me through the whole experience and even managed to find time for small talk, not that we were in there long.

They started the surgery at 8:30am and little BB was born at 8:39am. Now that’s fast! She weighed in at 7 pounds 15 ounces and was 18 inches long – thick, dark blonde hair and eyes so dark that the color was and still is terribly difficult to distinguish – she was everything we expected and nothing we could have guessed – probably like all babies she was immediately perfect for us in a way we hadn’t imagined.

After some stitching and such, we were all wheeled back to the recovery room where I spent a few hours before being moved into the main hospital room (I apologize, I cannot remember the official names for any of these rooms). By lunchtime Dan headed back to the apartment to pick up MM and my grandmother so they could meet little Baby Blueberry and I ordered a light lunch of I can’t even remember. It’s funny, I was starving all morning but by the time I was allowed to eat my appetite was surprisingly small. I couldn’t even finish the celebratory cheesecake Dan bought me that night – seriously.

And that’s how little Baby Blueberry made her entrance into this world and I became a proud mother of two…

Pictures From The Company Picnic

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Today we went to the company picnic, which they hold annually. It was pretty lucky that my grandma was able to fly up the day before the picnic so that she could come, too! The weather was a bit chilly but they had lots of fun things to do (a petting zoo and a construction petting zoo, blowing bubbles in a kiddie pool, MM got a free balloon and fun hat and there were lots of other kid friendly events that we skipped like face painting, pottery painting, a climbing wall and some bouncing rides that were just a bit too old for MM – things for him to look forward to next year! 🙂 And of course the food was delicious – Dan, Grandma and I all had lobster and steak with Caesar salads, watermelon and a few other sides. MM had the “kids meal” – macaroni and cheese with hot dogs – which was perfect – and there was cake and cookies for dessert. Dan also competed with some of his coworkers in a big tug of war competition – sadly his team did not win but they had a great time trying. I’d call it a perfect afternoon. Here are some pictures from the day: