OMG the drool!

On and off since around 8 weeks, our precious baby girl has been drooling like a maniac. Call it teething, maybe, but this results in either several outfit changes or several bibs each day. As parents of any child will tell you, kids create a LOT of laundry. In order to save on some of the laundry as well as keep Clara from getting "diaper" rash on her chest and neck, I gave into another "Bump" fad and ordered some drooler bibs from Apple Tree Boutique. Here's a picture:

I bought them through Etsy, but you can buy them on either website. These bibs are totally customizable. The ones I ordered I was able to pick the kinds of fabrics that I wanted. From her website: "These bibs are thick. They have a high quality cotton woven print on top, hidden layer of 100% organic cotton in the middle and are backed with a polyester fleece to prevent leak throughs". Anything to save some laundry!! I often think that I do more of her laundry than our own! I can't wait to get them!

Oh Monday, how I hate thee.

Ah yes, Monday morning again. Never my favorite day of the week. In fact, I'd like to outlaw Mondays. I had a long weekend and would have loved nothing more than sleeping in, but alas, my alarm went off at 4am like it normally does when I work. Looking at the clock right now, I've got about 10 hours left til I can go home again. Boo!!!

To really give my Monday a good flavor, I do believe Aunt Flo has been making arrangments to make her first return in over a year. Not horrible, but not a lot of fun, either. And the fatigue makes the sleep deprivation all kids of special. Also, Adam and I were talking about having a getaway weekend on April 8th and 9th, but after looking at my revised work schedule, it looks like I work on April 8th. While I'm off of work on the 9th and 10th, it wouldn't give me much time to spend with my daughter, and it would eliminate my "buffer" day (a day between "vacation" and going back to work). The next opportunity I would have would be Good Friday. Unfortunately, I'm having oral surgery that Thursday so it looks like that weekend won't work, either. UGH!!

On the flipside, though, we had a pretty good weekend even though it was busy and consisted of some early mornings!

Friday was our consult appointment for Clara at Children's Hospital. In order for us to get there on time, we had to get up at 6am. Yuck! But we made it out the door on time and got there with time to spare. The surgeon for the consult came into our room for a grand total of 3 seconds before telling us we should see the dermatologist instead. Unfortunately, we couldn't get in to see her until 1pm! We ate lunch, killed some time and Clara took a nap before we got in to see her. Dr. Drolet was great! She's an expert on hemangiomas. She gave us an information packet on them and discussed our options, as well as taking measurements and doing an ultrasound of it to make sure that it wasn't encroaching on her ear at all. Right now we're taking a wait & see approach. We'll be going back at the end of May to assess it again.

Saturday Clara went by my mom's house for some quality time. I also got to have lunch with my SIL Jessi. It was a great time! I also got some shopping and grocery shopping done. My brother & his wife came down for supper. Jessica made a super yummy lasagna and we finished that up with some Buster Bars from Dairy Queen (there goes my diet!). Little girl didn't get to bed as early as I would have liked, but she slept ok.

Sunday was another 6am day. There was a mass for Adam's grandpa and in order to make it there on time, we had to get up that early, since it was in Casco. Clara did pretty well in church! She needed a diaper change right before the end, but made it most of the way without having a meltdown. :) Afterwards we went to his Grandma's house for lunch. A lot of the family got to see Clara for the first time (in person, anyway) and she had a pretty good time, too. We were going to make a quick stop at his parents' house before we came home, but saw that his brother and his wife were at Mom & Dad's so we stayed to chat for a bit. Grandma offered to watch Clara for the afternoon and Adam and I went home. I managed to get the kitchen cleaned, but didn't get as much done as I would have liked. Clara came home around 5 and went to bed by 8 and slept until around 5 this  morning! All in all, not too bad! I hope this trend continues!

I work today and tomorrow and then I have off Wednesday and Thursday. Wednesday we'll be implementing the first of our "days off"-a few hours that alternately Adam & I will get "off" where we'll have time to do whatever we want. I'm going for my yearly physical on Wednesday (not really something I WANT to do) and then Thursday I'm getting my hair cut & colored.

Saturday is Clara's official 5 month birthday! I can't believe how fast time is going!

20 weeks old...

And a new roller!

I'm so proud of her!

Just had to share...

This girl is so precious, I had to share this picture. She graced me with this beautiful smile yesterday morning while we were playing in the living room. Mornings are my favorite time with her because she always seems so excited to see me!



30 years ago...

Thirty years ago today, I began a journey that would include lots of joy and heartache; lots of trials and tribulations. It would also ultimately lead me to becoming a student, a wife, and a mother. None of this could have been accomplished without the love and support of my wonderful parents, and then later my awesome husband. My life hasn’t been the easiest one in the last few years, but I know I made the decisions I needed to make in order to be happy.

Along the way, I’ve made friends and lost friends and I believe people come into and go out of your life for a reason. Maybe they had to teach you a lesson or something about yourself. Even people I’m not friends with anymore have taught me things; things like what a true friend is and what the important things in a relationship are.

For the first 30 years of my life and all I’ve learned so far, I want to thank my parents most of all. You’ve always been there for me even when I was a brat. I’m sorry And Mom, I’m really sorry I turned your hair gray so early. :) Thanks for loving me anyway.

To my wonderful husband, who not until recently came into my life, I hope the rest of our lives are as interesting as the first couple years have been…minus a lot of the stress!! We’ve made it through some tough stuff and I know we’ll be able to make it through whatever comes next. I’m proud of all you’ve accomplished so far and I can’t wait to see you accomplish your ultimate goal. You are truly a great friend. I also want to thank you for our daughter. She’s the greatest gift anyone could have given me. I look forward to watching the two of you grow together.

I may not have always seen it this way, but I love my life and wouldn’t change a thing. Every bad thing I’ve ever gone through was worth it in the end if it got me to where I am today.

I can’t wait to see what the next 30 years have in store!

Growing like a weed!

Clara had her 4-month Well-baby exam yesterday. She did pretty well. She had a meltdown before she even got her shots, and then the shots didn't help, either. Poor girl.

So here's the stats:

Birth weight: 8lbs 2oz
Current weight: 15lbs 14oz

Length at birth: 21in
Current length: 26.5 inches

She's growing up so quickly! The doctor even said that she's acting more like a 6 month old than a 4 month old. Her next appointment is in 2 months. We'll be going for a consult sometime after that to Children's Hospital to have her hemangioma looked at. It's just a consult at this point, but the thought of her having ANY kind of surgery scares the crap out of me.

Yum!

Ok, so I haven't done a Food Friday entry in a few weeks. I've been struggling to come up with recipes. Right now I'm on a diet so I've been trying to find healthy and filling alternatives to what I used to eat.

I was shopping at Festival Foods last week and found these:

They're called Sandwich Thins. I found them by the deli case both at Festival and Pick N Save. They're a healthier alternative to bread.

I usually take 2 sandwiches to work with me: one for "breakfast" that I usually eat around 8am and another for my actual lunch around noon or so. Today I have turkey breast with Havarti cheese and a chicken salad sandwich with Provalone. I can't wait to get into them!! For my snacks I have 2 containers of Yoplait light and 1 serving of Thin Mints. I also have my one bottle of soda (Pepsi Max, with ZERO calories) and the rest of the day I get water. I don't even bring money to work for the vending machines anymore, and if I do, it's only enough to get a bag of chips to go with my sandwich.

People ask me which diet I'm on. Well, I'm not on a specific diet. What I'm doing is watching my portions and trying to make healthier decisions as far as snacks go. For example, instead of eating a whole tube of Thin Mints like I used to, I only have one serving per day...which is 4 cookies. So far I'm down 11lbs and only have 9 more to go before I hit my goal. When I do finally hit that goal, I might try for 5 more pounds, but won't be too upset if I don't.  It's great because I told myself that I wouldn't be allowed to have another baby until I lost all the weight from this one....and I'm almost there! I'm feeling better about myself, too. It's motivating when my pants are getting too big and the numbers on the scale keep going down. As someone who has been really skinny their entire life, it's been a struggle to be happy with the way I looked after having a baby. They're not kidding when they say nothing is where it used to be. But my husband loves me anyway, and that's been a really big help.  I think with the next baby I'll be a little better about my eating. I gained WAY too much weight in my opinion.

Anyway, check out the sandwich thins if you're looking for a healthier sandwich option. They're tasty!!



Is it Spring yet?

I just bought a new vehicle yesterday. Today, it's freezing rain outside. Wonderful. I'm ready for warmer weather.

I even saw tulips sticking out of the ground in my back flower bed.

I can't wait for the snow to be gone and the warmer weather so we can start spending more time outside. I want to get my hands into my flower beds. I want to be able to take Clara and Scooter for walks outside. I want to go camping and have fires in the backyard. I want to be able to be out in the garage or run to the mailbox without having to wear my winter coat (don't get me wrong, it's like having another refrigerator, which is nice).

Sigh.....

Oh joy...not.

So it’s that time of the year again. It always seems that the 18 months goes by so fast, but here we are in shut-down mode at work again. Without getting into too much detail, I’ll put it to you this way. During the time we are shut down for 30 days (hopefully not more), we bring in 400 or so people to help out with projects that couldn’t get done while the plant is running. Most of these people I wouldn’t trust to work on my car, let alone work in the plant. We affectionately call them “The Carnies”. They travel all across the country working at different plants. Don’t get me wrong, the money’s good. In fact a lot of these guys cram 6-7 people into one small hotel room in order to save their per diem money, too. But GOOD GRIEF. We call them carnies for a reason, and it’s not just because of them travelling all over the country. I’m convinced most of them have a criminal record. And it’s the same thing every day. They’re not smart enough to figure out how to get into the plant, but they’re going to take it apart and work on it. Yikes. I’ll give you a prime example. We have walk-thought metal detectors. These people will walk through the metal detector wearing steel-toed shoes, but they can’t figure out why the metal detector is alarming because they’ve already emptied their pockets. Shut-down officially starts on Saturday, but I’m already sick of it.



Enough said about that.



So in school right now, I’m taking a class called Microcomputer Applications. I thought the class sounded interesting. Boy howdy, it is! I’m having a lot of fun with it. It’s basically teaching us how to use Microsoft Office. You’ll probably start seeing a lot more interesting looking blog posts from me. I’ve learned so much about Microsoft Word, like how to put pictures in, doing word art, and all kinds of other things. I’ll even be helping my hubby with some power points…if he wants my help.  I had a lot of fun with that particular portion, too. The class is so easy that I’m generally a week or more ahead with my homework! My other class isn’t quite so exciting. It’s an Introduction to the Study of Religion. I needed a humanities course and that was the only other one besides Feminine Studies or something like that. I have to say, I hate liberal arts. I’m better with fact than with theory or philosophy. I’m not saying I’m not learning anything, but I am saying I hate the class.



There isn’t too much of anything else going on right now. Adam’s still going to school full time. He’s looking to start at Bellin next year. It’s going to be a lot of work, but hopefully worth it when everyone is tripping over themselves to hire him. He’s also still working on his writing. He’s got a blog (www.adamwriting.blogspot.com) where he’s posting about his writing endeavors. I’m really excited that he’s getting more and more things published. 



I think that’s about it for now. I only get a chance to do nice long blog posts while I’m at work…unfortunately, I can’t get it posted from my laptop at work, so I’ll be waiting til I get home. Hopefully I can get it to work there.