Mikayla is 3

Mikayla turned 3 on May 7th and all I have to say is where did the last 3 years go. It seems like yesterday she was a baby.

Grandma and Grandpa (Joe's parents) came in on Wednesday to help her celebrate her birthday. There present was the trampoline and it was a huge hit. On Saturday we had a birthday party and invited all of her friends.

They had plenty to do, we planted seeds in pots for them to take home and grow either flowers or herbs. Then it was time to hit the trampoline.

After that is was time to play in the sandbox.

Mikayla's daycare provider, Eric, was there and he made baloon animals and a crown for Mikayla to wear.

Cake Time!!

After opening presents they sat on her bed while I read a new book she received. That lasted less than 5 minutes!

Overall she had a great time and I think the party was a huge success.

Cute Pictures of My Girls

These are just some cute pictures of the girls. Lily is 3 months and Mikayla will be turning 3 in just a few days.

Tummey time when wrong!! Instead of working her muscles she took a short nap.

It is so hard to get a natural smile from Mikayla. Normally she forces a smile and closes her eyes. This picture would be great except for the funky colors due to the camera.

One Saturday while Daddy was working and Lily was sleeping I put Mikayla to work finger painting while I cleaned the kitchen. She had a blast painting herself instead of the rocks and cardboard she was suppose to be painting.

Look at these cute smiles. How can I get upset when one minute she is a screaming fit and the next she is giving me one of these smiles.

This is the view from our living room windows. In years past you could not see the other houses - now the neighbors tore out all of the willows because they are broken from the heavy snow we had in November. Now Joe and I are thinking about getting curtains in the living room. I really miss our privacy.

Mother's Day

With Mother’s Day coming up in a couple of weeks I want to know what the perfect present for your Mother’s Day would be.

I have been thinking about this and I would love to spend a day at the spa with a couple of girlfriends and lots of mimosas.. I would start the day off with a kick butt workout class, then head off to enjoy brunch. After that I would get enjoy a manicure and pedicure while drinking those wonderful mimosas and girl talk. After that it is off to take a aromatherapy steam shower. Then I will enjoy a facial (need to clean up that face!) Next it will be lunch time with the girls again and a dip in the hot tub. We will end the day with a yoga class followed by a 90 minute aromatherapy massage.

The day is not over yet. I will come home to a perfectly clean house, well rested Daddy, Mikayla and Lily. Finally the grandparents will be over so all I have to do is continue relaxing and nurse Lily as she want. Oh yeah one more thing, Joe tells me the house in under contract, someone wants to pay the full appriased value and take the house as is - they will be delivering a cashier's check tomorrow. Ahh the perfect Mother’s Day present!

Baby Clothes For Sale

Joe and I are done having babies so I am getting rid of some of the clothes. I know that most of you are not interested in buying these but by listing them on my blog it makes it easier for me to sell them on Diaper Swappers because I can't figure out how to load picture onto their website.

I am selling all of these infant sleepers for $6.00 each or $65 for all 12 - this includes shipping. Lily has outgrown all of these and she is almost 3 months old. She out grew most of these around 2 months.

The sleeper on the left is size 0 to 3 months, 6.5 to 12 pounds. Lily wore this until she was 2 months old. It is an off white with little bees and a picture of Pooh.

The sleeper on the right is light pink with white flowers on it, the brand is Vitamins. It is 0-3 months.

This is a light pink sleeper with brown polka dots. It is made by Little Me. The size is newborn up to 8 pounds.

This is Premie and it has been washed but never worn. It has light pink and white stripes and it says adorable under the bear. It is made by Child of Mine, Carters.

I love sleepers with a zipper for midnight changings. The sleeper on the left is white with tiny ducks, bees and turtles on it. It is made by Gerber, 0-3 months.
The sleeper on the right is fuzzy material and yellow with ducks. The size is 0-3 months and made by Gerber. I was upset when Lily outgrew this one - I loved it.

The sleeper on the left is yellow with pictures of sheep, Noah's Arc and lions on it. It is made by Gerber and is 0-3 months. The one on the right is the same except it is light green with two larger pictures of Noah's Arc.

The sleeper on the left is light pink with pink ladybugs on it. It is made by Carters, size is 0-3 months.

The sleeper on the right is light pink with a pink cow and yellow duck. It is made by Carters and the size is 0-3 months, 8 to 11 pounds.
This is a purple sleeper with flowers on it made by Child of Mine, Carters. It is newborn size

The sleeper on the right is made for a short baby. Lily only wore this for about the first month and she was 19 inches long when she was born. It is made by Circo, size is newborn.

Pictures and Camping

I know that I have not blogged in a VERY long time. Our Internet at home was not working and it took two different phone calls to Qwest, a new modem and finally a call to our friend who is the telephone repair man to fix the problem.

I don't know if I blogged about this or not but Mikayla has stromblis. Basically when she gets tired her eyes turn out and don't work. There are also times when I know she is looking at me but I feel as if she is not looking at me by the look I get in her eyes. About a month ago we took her to the eye doctor in Grand Junction. We found out that when you cover one eye and then un-cover it, it has turned out to the side. This is like lazy eye but when her eye turns out to the side it her brain shuts that side off. The doctor recommend we put a patch on her eye 4 hours every day and see what happens. This works about 50% of the time.

On Thursday, Joe and Mikayla, went back to the doctor in Grand Junction and the patching is working and we can reduce the patch time to 2 hours a day. If the patching solves the problem then she will not need eye surgery when she is six.

After the eye doctor Joe and Mikayla headed to Moab, Utah to do camping together. They had a blast and I think the Daddy daughter weekend was a must and a huge success.


Here are a couple pictures Arches National Park.

Mikayla standing in the arch. Mikayla climbing - how cute is this little tom boy?!



Mikayla is in the back pack on Daddy's back.

Our friend Keith came along with his daughter Sienna. Keith has a jeep and they had fun taking the jeep in the river.

Here are a couple of cute pictures we took of Lily today. She is 2 1/2 months old and is doing great. I gotta say that Joe and I make cute kids!

Mikayla cannot wait until Lily is big enough to play with. She loves her little sister.

No Posting Lately - Nothing New

I am sorry for not blogging more often but I really don't have any exciting to say and work is actually keeping me busy enough that I don't have time to sit down and write a great blog entry.

Lily is doing wonderful - as I am writing this I am sitting in the back office pumping away. We have given her a few bottles of formula mixed with breastmilk because there are some days I am not pumping enough. But we are doing the best we can. I hate pumping and it is usually on a Monday morning she needs the formula because I did not pump enough milk over the weekend and Joe might give her a bottle while I sleep in a little bit or go to yoga. Lily is sleeping really good for only being 10 weeks old. Can you belive she is already 10 weeks? Where did the time go? Oh - back to the sleeping she only wakes once a night around 3:30, sometimes it is 5! If she is not going to sleep in until 6am I prefer that she wakes up at 3ish so I can go back to sleep until 6am.

Mikayla is getting so big and so smart. All the time she amazes me by telling me the next line in her book. She started a new daycare and we love it. She is learning her letters and the other day they made birdfeeders. She is also growing out of her clothes so fast I can't keep clothes on her (that is another story - she loves to run around the house naked. I ask her if she wants to put her clothes back on and she says "I want to be the naked baby for a little bit.") She is wearing 3T to 4T pants and her shirts will have to be a 4T very quickly so that her belly is not hanging out. It is getting nicer outside and now it is time to buy some shorts and short sleeve shirts. She only has a couple of short sleeve shirts.

Work is keeping me busy and I am also looking for a part time job - daycare is killing us but if I quit my job right now that won't work either. I am hoping and praying a waitressing job opens up so I can quit my full time job - stop paying for daycare and pay all of the bills which are piling up - I am really excited to get out tax rebate check in May because it is really needed. We also need to pray that the trailer sells and Joe is able to start selling some real estate now that Spring is here.

I will try to post some updated picturs very soon!

Preschool

Mikayla is all set to start preschool at the Lake School in the fall. In Gunnison there is one large preschool and it is run by the school district. There are other smaller preschools that are run by individuals and are more in line with a daycare than kindergarten. There is a very high demand to get into the Lake School because it is so cheap. I will be paying $184 for 4 - 1/2 days each week. It is so cheap because it is subsidized by the school district. It use to be first come first serve on registration day. This year they decided to do a lottery and Mikayla won! I am excited for my baby to start preschool but now I can say she is no longer my baby.

Spring in the Rockies

My husband asked me what the weather was suppose to be like today. Without even thinking about it I said it was suppose to get up to 45 and snow this afternoon. He looked at me like I was crazy - typical Spring weather in the Rockies.

On another note Lily slept from 10:30pm until 5am! It was wonderful to sleep 6 1/2 hours in one stretch. Lily and I had a great morning, playing, nursing, and just relaxing together with no other worries in the world.

Spring Has Arrived

In the mountains of Colorado the seasons do not change when the calender says they are suppose to. We get Winter much earlier than everyone else, Summer arrives much later than everyone else, and sometimes we don’t get Spring or Fall. But this year Spring is arriving on schedule.

Each Spring, there is a HUGE flock of birds that swirl around in the sky above our house. I don’t know what type of birds these are just that they are white and the fly in circles with more and more joining them. There are easily over 100 birds and they sound like turtle doves but they are too big to be turtle doves. They come from the east swirl around and eventually head west. It is a really cool sight to see all of these birds. It also marks the arrival of Spring. The days are much warmer, at night it is only getting down to about zero, and best of all the snow is melting. My driveway is a disaster - don’t come visit us right now unless you have 4-wheel drive and are very comfortable using it! So many people have gotten stuck in our driveway lately. The long part of the driveway is all mud, the river is completely open, and I love hearing the birds in the morning.

Horton Hears a Who

We took Mikayla to see Horton Hears a Who yesterday and she loved it. I was also impressed about how good she was. She sat there and watched it, of course she did talk some but no more than the other kids sitting around us. It was a very cute and funny movie - I loved it. Lily slept on my chest the whole time.

I have not been making enough breastmilk for all of the bottles Lily takes during a day. She normally takes one from Joe after I have gone to work. She snacks from 6am until I leave about 8am and then she wants more from Daddy. I send her with 4 bottles with 3 oz in each bottle to daycare. Then in the evening she snacks from me all night. (I think to her I am one big snack machine), then Joe gives her one more bottle around 8:30 to really fill her up so she won't wake up until around 3am. My friend Jen gave me some fenugreek to take. Hopefully that will help. During the work day I pump 3 times and then at home another time right before bed.

So far I have had to mix 2 bottles of formula with the breastmilk because there was not enough. Hopefully taking this fenugreek will help.

All In One Diapers For Sale

I really want to get rid of these so I having a Buy 1 Get 1 Free Sale.

Purchase one diaper for $9.00 and get the second diaper FREE!!

I have a bunch of misc All In Ones for Sale. They are all size small. None of the diapers have any staining on them.

Price includes shipping. All of the diapers come from a dog friendly, cat free and smoke free home. .

2 Little Pony Diapers with light blue inside

Dark Pink Lil Bummers with white inside.

Lily - 6 Weeks Old

I am finally sitting down to update everyone on how Lily is doing and to show you PICTURES. Lily is an excellent baby. She wakes up around 3am and then around 6am. You can't beat that. During the day she is excellent as well. As Mikayla would say she eats, sleeps, pees and poops. Mikayla loves her and loves being a big sister. Mikayla has also become a great helper.

Sometimes in the afternoon Lily will nap with me. It seems as if as soon as I get Mikayla down for her nap and I go to lay down for mine and get comfortable and I am just about ready to fall alseep, Lily wakes up. So I will pick her up and nurse her in bed with me because she will fall asleep next to me. Today I was able to nap for almost 2 hours. It was wonderful. I woke up suddenly at to hearing Mikayla yell Mommy, Mommy, Mommy from her room. I go into her room, still in a daze, and she is sitting up in bed playing with her dolly and she asks me for a diaper wipe for her baby!

This is Lily's other place to nap during the day.

Here is the happy baby.

Isn't this a cute outfit.

Here is a picture of Lily's room.

Daddy, Mikayla and Lily reading books.

Big Yawn

This is how Skylar lets me know that she wants in. She is looking into our living room.

Isn't this oneise cute!

Back to the Same Old Same Old

Today is my first day back at work and I am already bored! I managed to create enough work for me until now. This is why I hate my job - oh yeah memo to self - need to email resume to a couple of places in town.

I have missed Lily today. This morning and even now I want to hold my little girl. Mikayla was excited to go to school with Lily. Also once Mikayla got to school who two best buds, who left this daycare for a preschool, were there. They will be there all week because the preschool is closed for Spring Break. Mikayla was very happy to see them. I am sure I will here all about it tonight.

It was nice to be able to go for a 20 minute run at lunch time and not worry about the kids or what to do with them. It was also nice to run an errand without having to put two kids into the carseats, take them out and put them back in again. Being back at work has it positives and negatives.

New Baby Boy

I am so excited that I have to share this news with everyone. My sister had her first baby today. It was a boy and he weighed 7 pounds.

I thought sisters were suppose to be alike. My labors were both about 21 hours. My sister, her water broke around 4:30 this morning and she had him in less than 8 hours. As soon as she got her epidural in they checked her and she was fully dialiated and it was time to push!

Her little one did come early, she was right at 37 weeks. Can you believe she had a 7 pound baby and he was 3 weeks early?? Good thing he came early because if he had waited he would have been over 9 pounds I bet. Mom and baby are doing good. I think she is still in shock over what just happened. Because he came 3 weeks early they will have to wait until he is 48 hours old to go home.

Back to Work

I have decided to go back to work on Monday. For the next two weeks I am planning on working 3 days a week and then starting on March 24th I will go back to work full time. I am crying as I am writing this because I don't want to go back to work any earlier than I have to and I LOVE being a stay at home mom. But due to finances I am going to have to go back. I will only be bringing home about $65 a day before taxes and after childcare but it is better than what I am bringing home right now which is nothing.

I have looked for a waitress job but none are available right now. I am going to continue looking and hopefully I will find one in the next month or so when it gets busier in Gunnison.

I also wanted to go home to visit my family in April, especially since my sister's baby is due any day now. She is 37 weeks in a couple of days but she is already 3cm and 90% effaced! That trip will have to wait a few extra months but I am determined to see her before the end of the summer - hopefully sooner.

The good side of going back to work is that I have to take a lunch break every day so therefore I will be able to get a workout in! The other good side is that since I am going back to my borning job I will be able to blog much more!

So no more tears this is the way it has to be. I would love to be financially secure and be able to pay the bills every month - even if this means that I have to work full time. Right now even with a full time job all of the bills don't get paid. I am tired of this and I want to move to an area that will pay us what we deserve.

Nursing Issues - Gassy Baby

First of all I apologize for not blogging in quite awhile. As all of you with kids know it is hard to blog with an infant and a 2 1/2 year old running around. It was much easier to blog while I was at work bored out of my mind. I need to sit down and make a commitment to blog at least 3 times a week.

Lily has been a very gassy baby with lots of grunting, tooting, screaming while nursing and only pooping about once a day. Her poops are also VERY runy and sometimes they are green. I mentioned this to my friend Jen who was (I think she stopped) studing to be a certified lacation consultant. Jen said that Lily is getting too much foremilk and not enough hind milk. Which does make sense to me because in order to make sure I keeps the boobs even I switch her a lot. Lily will also do lots of snacking during the day so she is mostly getting foremilk.

Jen mentioned this to me yesterday so I have been working really hard on getting Lily to nurse much longer. It has been difficult because she will either fall asleep and not want to latch on again, fight me to latch on, or we are in public and it is not the best situation to really work with her. But I think we have been getting better.

Another thing Lily has been doing is getting up around 4am nursing for less than 10 minutes, then falling asleep and she won't latch on again. Then she will wake up an hour or so later and want to eat again. I just want a 2 hour stretch at that point. Today I have been pumping after some of the nursing sessions when I think she did not get enough hindmilk. I think I will feed her a bottle of this hindmilk when she wakes up at 4am tonight and then pump afterwards. Hopefully this will get her more of the hindmilk she needs and also get her to sleep a bit longer.

Gasy Baby

Lily has been a grunter since she was born - one month ago tomorrow (time flies!!) Lately I have noticed she is grunting more, spitting up more, and even getting a red face as she grunts. She just seems unhappy and a little too gasy. So I have decided to stop the dairy in my diet and I bought some gas drops for her. I also noticed a while back that I had a yummy smoothie with lots of milk and yogurt in it, and then when I nursed her a while later she did not seem too happy about all of the dairy in my system.

So far with the gas drops she is doing better and not as gasy. No more red faced grunts. I have only stopped eating dairy for a little more than 24 hours so not enough time to tell if it has made a difference yet. I was thinking though that all of the breast milk in the freezer has diary in it. Joe has started giving Lily a bottle at night which helps me get a little more sleep.

Update

As many of you have figured out I have no time to blog anymore. It was much easier to blog at work because I was never very busy. So here is an update on the family.

First - Mikayla did something odd the other night. She did not go to bed until almost midnight! That is very unlike her. We put to her bed like normal around 8pm and she started to throw a fit when Joe was done reading to her so I went in and read one more book and rub her back and got her a snack. Then I checked on her at 9:45pm and she was still awake so I read another book. Then Joe heard her at 11pm! So he brought her out to the couch and they watched movies. I got up at midnight to feed Lily and they were both sleeping on the couch. I put Mikayla to bed and she was up the next morning at 7:30, I thought for sure she would sleep in. We saw the eye doctor that day and they dilated her eyes - would that have kept her up? It was the only thing that was different. Mikayla did take a nap that day and slept for 3 1/2 hours but that is not different, normally she will nap anywhere from 2 to 3 hours - 3 1/2 is a little long.

About the trip to the eye doctor, Mikayla has to go see a specialist. Her eyes turn in or sometimes she has cross eyes. It is not all of the time but we do notice it. So in mid-March we are going to Grand Junction (about 3 hours from here) to see a special kids eye doctor. Hopefully Mikayla will not need eye surgery but we will see.

Lily is still doing great and sleeping great. The other night when she was up every 2 hours was because I had the monitor on too loud and I was getting up with every noise she made. Now she will sleep between 2 1/2 to 3 hours at a stretch at night. Last night Joe got up with her for the midnight feeding and gave her, her first bottle. They did great together and I got some much needed sleep. Then after her 2:30am feeding I did not turn the monitor on loud enough and Joe woke me up because Lily was screaming (or screaming as loud as a newborn can scream). I felt horrible but as soon as I picked her up she settled down. I did the same thing with Mikayla when she was Lily's age too.

That is all for now - nothing much exciting. But we do have family coming in next week. Joe's brother and sister in law will be here. I am very excited the last time they were here was when we got married.

No Sleep

Lily is almost 3 weeks and I think she is going through a growth spurt. Last night she was up at least every 2 hours and she was not a great nurser. She would nurse one side and fall asleep but once I would go to swaddle her she would wake up but not want to nurse. She would take her time falling back asleep and then not go to bed super easily - she would grunt and make noises for a little while before really falling asleep. Even today she has been up every one or two hours and then nursing just a little bit. She has been awake a lot more today which is more fun for everyone as well. I love to see those little eyes looking around and watching what is going on around her.

I am also dealing with a boob issue! The right one is smaller than the left one. I also noticed that the left one has more milk in it. I am trying to favor the right side in order to get them back to even but so far it is not working - maybe I just have to be loopsided.

Well - Lily is awake and needs to eat again - she just ate and hour ago!

Exercise

I am ready to start working on getting back into shape. So I re-started my old blog, Fitness Tiff I know it is a corney title but I don't know how to change it. Chech it out and watch me get back into shape. I would love to list a lot of goals such as run a 10 mile race, do a triathlon but I am starting slow for now. Soon enough I will be planning too many goals!!