There's something wrong with this picture.

I pulled this book from Amelia's collection the other day to read it to her.

The illustrations are really nicely done...

I found out that the book has very few words, just pictures.  That's fine, I like making up my own words to the story.

If only the story wasn't about a completely irresponsible mother, who, in the real world, would have been arrested for child neglect and abandonment.

Um, lady?  Carl is your dog.  Or maybe the voices in your head told you that he's a human being, capable of caring for your infant.  I mean, I normally throw Amelia in a fish tank to see how she swims, too.  Totally normal.

"Better job than I could have done, Carl, especially when I'm not on my meds."

Steam or cold? Let's do both.

Millie celebrated her first day being 7 months old by going to the pediatrician.  Then, she thought it would be fun to get a diagnosis of Croup today, too. 

I highly doubt she is having a blast. 

I crawled into bed last night/this morning around 1:30am.  I don't usually stay up that late but I had things to do on the computer.  Important things like write a blog.

At 1:38, I kid you not, Amelia woke up.  At first I didn't know what I was hearing.  It sounded like someone had parked Sea World in the middle of my living room.  My daughter was barking every time she sucked in to take another breath, and it sounded painful.  I rushed in there to nurse her and unfortunately had to change her diaper, too.  I really am not a fan of middle-of-the-night diaper changes.  One of two things happen:  Either I change her diaper prior to feeding her or I wait until after she's been fed to change her. With the former option, she cries because she's hungry and her screams wake up David, and with the latter option she manages to wake up completely and is sometimes harder to get back to sleep.  Last night she started crying while I was changing her after she had been fed, and since she was barking so badly it woke up David.  He really was worried and asked me to call the pediatrician in the morning.

So, I did and they said they'd like to see her. 

It was pouring outside and my gas tank was inching closer and closer to "E".  I don't like to get that close to empty, but I don't drive my car all that often so I frequently forget where my gas gauge lies. 

I decided to take the freeway, figuring it would take less time even though the backroads are more direct.  I was already running late.  Right outside my neighborhood the "low fuel" light came on.  I get good gas mileage so I wasn't too concerned.  I made it to the pediatrician's office only 5 minutes late, but wasn't called back until after 10 minutes of waiting.

Her oxygen levels were good.  Whew.
She was diagnosed with croup and offered a steroid shot to open her passageways.  Steroid shot?  My baby?  No, thanks.  We were told she is contagious and would take 7-10 days to fully recover.  I need to watch her to make sure she doesn't run a fever or start to have trouble breathing.  Having a sick baby is absolutely no fun...it's so hard to have her feeling crummy and not be able to tell me what's wrong.  Even if she could, I can't fix it.

She fell asleep on the way home and I decide to take the back roads.  It's like I was being punished - I hit every. single. red. light.  I'm not kidding. Every one.  The needle on my gas gauge inched closer and closer to the dreaded "E" and I tried to coast down hills when I could.  The back roads only have one gas station and it's Arco...I mentally block it out. 

I made it home.

David got home tonight and he sounds awful.  He's getting sick, too.  I guess it was inevitable. 

Right before her bedtime, we ran a hot bath and sat in the bathroom with Amelia for several minutes, hoping the steam would help her breathe.  She would NOT sleep tonight.  I couldn't nurse her, rock her, sing to her, sway with her...nothing worked.  Several minutes into my efforts, we decided to take her outside and hopefully let the frigid air do its work on her croup.  She stopped crying as the scenery changed and really any time David held her.  He wasn't the evil person trying to get her to sleep.  We brought her inside and I kept trying.  She cried really hard and the barking started again so finally after an hour and a half of fighting her, I gave up.  She played happily on the floor in the living room until she pooped.  After that, I successfully nursed her and rocked her to sleep at 10pm.   

I think this is my most boring post yet. 

Here's something unboring (at least to me):

Talented friends & my baby girl is 7 months old!

Man, I have talented friends.  And nice friends. 

Beverley has been my twin's bff (sorry - just using the lingo that was used when they became friends) since middle school, and also a friend of mine.  She has a beautiful daughter named Lucy who recently turned one.  Bev offered to take some photos of her baby, my baby, and my sisters' babies all wearing some of the bows I've made.

She did a fantastic job.

Seriously, I feel like my bows don't live up to the photos taken of them!  Hey, at least they're perched on some seriously cute little heads.  And, the good news is that I'm getting better at my bow-making skills, which helps David to know when I'm buying out my supplier's entire stock of ribbon.

Did I mention I will soon have 1.5" crochet headbands in a variety of colors in stock?  I will.  I'm so excited.  Nylon headbands, too, in pink and in white.

There are so many cute photos, but I guess you'll have to go to my Etsy shop to see them.  Or become a Facebook fan.  I do want to show you this one of Kate, not only because she's adorable, but because she's sporting my new ladybug clippie. 

Okay, enough shamless plugging.

While I'm on the subject of talented friends, I have another friend who dyes and spins her own yarn and makes absolutely gorgeous items.  Her Etsy shop is called Neauveau Fiber Arts and Supplies.  She offers free shipping on everything!  Here's my favorite item in her store...a Snow Bunny handknit baby's hat.

My baby is 7 months old today (Wednesday).  7 months. I wrote about her milestones in my previous post so I guess there's no use in posting them again.  I'm so proud of her, though.  I can't get enough of her.  She still isn't feeling well which makes me sad.  But, except for the gurgly nose and cough you wouldn't know it - she's still happy and playful.  A bit clingy and hasn't been napping well but that's to be expected.

You know how I posted about our PC being in our bedroom?  My husband is currently snoozing away and I'm still up trying to get the pictures uploaded to Etsy ASAP.  I'm going to wait until tomorrow to load them onto Facebook.

Oh, one more thing.  I was in a rush to get out the door and to my sister's house last Saturday when Bev was going to meet us to take the photos that I didn't change Amelia out of her recently green bean stained shirt.  I thought the shirt she was wearing over it would cover it, but it turns out she didn't wear that shirt the whole time.  Thus, the trailer trash look.  Not my most shining motherhood moment.  Ah, well.  What's a baby without a stain on her shirt?

Milestones

Amelia and I are both sick.  Congested sinuses, runny nose, occasional cough.  Thanks to David I slept like a drugged baby last night (on Nyquil) and he got up with the baby the 3 times she woke up to eat.  I actually got up once (maybe twice - who knows, it was all a drug-induced blur) to nurse her back to sleep.

Sleep, tonight, is just not happening.

Ways David and I have tried to get her to sleep tonight:

- Rocking her (arches her back and squirms and screams)
- Nursing her (see above)
- Feeding her via a bottle (takes a few sips then...see above)
- Laying her in her crib, awake (no way.  Silly us)
- Getting out the swing and putting her in it (played with the toys on it for a few minutes then...see above)
- Giving her some Benadryl (for her nose, not to get her to sleep)

So, right now she's laying on our bed playing with the case for the thermometer.  Happy as a stinking lark.  Usually she'd let me nurse her and/or rock her to sleep but she's not having anything to do with sleep tonight.
Recent milestones she has hit:

- She now says "Dada" on a regular basis.  Everything is "dada", so I don't know that it counts as a first word, but she'll usually say it when prompted which means David definitely thinks it is her first word.  Either way, it's the cutest sound in the entire world.

- She screams.  I don't mean crying, I mean she just screams/screeches at the top of her voice just because she can.  I'm sure that will eventually get annoying, but for now it's the second cutest sound in the entire world.

- She's army-crawling.  She has never gotten on her hands and knees and rocked back and forth, but she gets where she wants to go by using her elbows and dragging the rest of her body along with her.  She'll move her legs, too, but more like a frog so I don't think they help her much. But, she can get across a room!

- She's done it for a week or two (maybe more), but I've noticed that not everything goes directly in her mouth anymore.  First she shakes it as hard as she can and if she has an object in her other hand, she bangs both objects together several times.  Then it goes in her mouth.  It's really neat to see her coordination get better.

- She coughs because we react.  She'll cough once and either David will say "Bless you!" or I'll just exclaim "Oh!" so she'll cough again and smile/laugh at our reactions.  She does this 3 or 4 times before getting bored with us.

I have spent some time reading previous posts I wrote before and directly following Amelia's birth.  I love those posts, mainly because I have forgotten a lot already and it's fun to look back and read some of those things.

Well, David is waiting on me to try once again to nurse Amelia and hopefully get her to sleep. 

We had a fun weekend in Oregon.  I did a lot of baking with my mom for a shower she co-hosted with another lady from church for a girl who is having triplets.  I was really looking forward to going to the shower but that's right after Amelia and I got sick.  My friend, Bev, graciously offered to take some photos of her baby, Lucy, and my sisters' babies and Amelia with some of my bows in their hair.  I should get those photos soon so I'll share them as soon as I do.  Thanks, Bev!

Have a wonderful Tuesday!

Thank you, Tylenol

I love Tylenol, if for no other reason (which, admittedly there are several) then for making such an infant-friendly medicine dispenser. 

We got to my parents' house in Portland pretty late on Wednesday night.  Amelia had slept the entire way down and didn't so much as wiggle a finger as David carried her in the house as she sat in her car seat.  Once we got inside, she woke up but only barely.  My mom waited up for us (Dad was out of town on business) and was so excited to see Amelia that we handed over the dazed baby to a very eager granny.  Amelia was obviously still very tired, but after an hour of visiting with my mom, sister, and brother-in-law, she was on an over-tired buzz. 

I tried to nurse her.  We gave her a bottle.  We laid her down.  She screamed.  We sat her up.  She fussed.  I rocked her.  She screamed some more. 

The only thing that worked was giving her that blessed Tylenol bottle and letting her go to town on the rubber applicator top.  She didn't scream when we would sit her up in the portable crib and let her play so that's what we did.  David was exhausted. I was tired and getting more tired every second that passed.  There was a small lamp on the desk in the room where we were staying so I turned that on and we decided to let her play for a bit and see what happened.  She's never been the kind of baby to fall asleep while playing, eating, or anything else, so I really wasn't expecting her to just topple over and succumb to slumber.  After a few minutes she started whining.  Then fussing.  Suddenly the Tylenol bottle was completely abandoned and she was staring at us through the mesh of the crib, lip puckering.

I'm not opposed to a little "cry it out" action, and I would have just let her do her own thing in her crib to fall asleep had it not been for 5 other people in the house trying to get some sleep.   

I had this under control.  My daughter has been on this earth for a mere 6 1/2 months - she can't beat me at this!  I knew that nothing was wrong except that she didn't want to sleep.  Or, rather she really did want to sleep but was so exhausted that she couldn't figure out how to relax herself and fall asleep. 

I picked her up, put her paci in her mouth and assumed "the position".  It requires her head cradled in my left arm with my left hand wrapped around to hold the pacifier in place while my right arm holds, and subsequently pats, her rear end, all the while standing in place and bobbing up and down while swaying side to side.  It hurts.  It hurts real bad, and at first she was really mad. 

Just as a side note, you know how "they" say you should relax when your baby is upset because it helps them relax?  I so wish that weren't true.  I have to go into full-on zen mode to tune her out so I can compose myself enough to relax my body.

So, back to the cradling, patting, bobbing, and swaying.  I was doing all of that.  It started to work.  It's funny that the second it started to work, it worked quickly.  She had been crying pretty hard so when she fell asleep she was still sniffling.  That always breaks my heart.  I thought for sure since she was calm and sleeping when I was holding her that she would wake up the second I dared lay her in the crib.  Nope - she stayed asleep, sniffling and all.  At 1:30am.  She woke again at 6:30am then at her normal wake-for-the-day time of 9am.

It would take a while to explain the sleeping arrangements at my parents' house right now since my sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew are crashing here until their house is finished, but I'll say that we are sleeping in my mom's office and I'm sleeping on a twin mattress on the floor while David sleeps on the floor.  Just thought I'd explain the context of the pictures.

Edit from my last post:I love my sisters, and being that they were very young in my childhood memory, I doubt they meant anything by the looks they gave me.  As a matter of fact, maybe I have a Cinderella complex and just imagined that they were glaring at me when, in fact, they were actually not glaring at me at all. 

Unrealized talent

I shouldn't be posting but I decided a quick one won't hurt.  We're packing...heading to Oregon tonight after Bible class. 

It's amazing what we can fit into our car.

It also validates our need/desire for a van.  I never thought I'd use the words "van" and "desire" in the same sentence, but I almost salivate now every time I see a newish Odyssey.  Oh, the space.  Oh, the comfy chairs.  Oh, the DVD player.  Oh, the automatic sliding doors. 

I was thinking today about unrealized talent. Of course, my main desire for my baby girl is that she grow to love and serve the Lord.  I think I will have failed as a parent if I haven't succeeded in instilling how important her soul is to God, to herself, and to us.  Then I got to thinking about how much responsibility it is, as a parent, to scope out what your child is good at (and enjoys) and really foster that. 

When I was 7 years old I was sitting in the bleachers of a middle school gymnasium with my parents watching my younger sister play basketball.  Lindsay was/is the athletic one of our family.  She always excelled at sports and really enjoyed it.  Zoom in on me when I was on a little league softball team and I'm squatted down in the outfield plucking dandelions from the grass.  I know it's pretty common to be 6 years old and completely uninterested in organized sports.  I still wish I would have picked a sport and stuck with it just for the experience of team playing and staying physically fit.  But, anyway, not my point.

So I'm on the bleachers with a blank sketch pad in my hands.  I drew a cow.  I remember this next moment very vividly.  My mom praised me for drawing such a good cow.  I mean, she really praised me.  I felt so good about that stupid cow.  Soon after, my mom took me and my sisters to a hobby store to load me up on some art supplies.  My mom is extremely talented...she was always a skilled art student and looking at her drawings from high school and college always inspired me.  The creativeness I have in my DNA, I'm proud to say, came from her. 

So we're in the hobby store and she wants to buy me an art portfolio - you know, one of those big folders with the handles that you can carry your art around in.  She's squatted down in the aisle of the store, propping a portfolio in her hand, looking at me.  She asks me if I think I could use one.  Inside I screamed, "Yes!" and was literally bursting with pride from the attention she was paying me.  But, I could tell my sisters were less than enthused about our little hobby store outing, and when I glanced behind me in the aisle of that hobby store, my gaze was met with glares.  They were kids.  They saw that I was getting attention and they weren't.  But, I didn't want to cause friction so I declined the portfolio.

I still regret it.

I don't know why - I just do.  My mom was trying to show me that she saw my interest in art and she was investing time in my talent. 

So, my prayer is that what Amelia finds that she's interested in and talented in, that I can also recognize that and support her.  Obviously as long as it's wholesome I want to be able to really let her blossom into whatever she wants to be. 

I do, however, want to start her out with a musical instrument (with her fingers, hopefully the piano or the violin) and a sport and crafts at home. 

Okay this went on a lot longer than I had hoped and now David is waiting on me to finish packing so we can get the car loaded.

This started a whole new line of thinking in my head so I'll probably want to continue with it later. 

And the winner is...

Congratulations, Micah! 

Email me your address and I should have your bows in the mail by next week!  Also let me know what color you'd like the flower clippies.

Thank you, everyone, for entering!  I'm sure this isn't the last clippie/hair bow giveaway I'll do, so stay tuned!