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!!

Pictures of Snow

So I promised you pictures of the snow in Crested Butte. Here you go - enjoy!!

Snow, snow and more snow

Sorry I am not blogging as often as I use to but it is hard with a newborn and a 2 year old! Gunnison has been receiving so much snow. I have lived in this valley for 10 years and Gunnison has never seen this much snow. With the first big snowfall of the year all of the willows along the creek bent over. I was upset because we lost our privacy - I could see the main road and they could see us. But now we have huge snow piles all around the house so I can't even see the driveway! We are planning on going up to Crested Butte this weekend so hubby can go skiing. I will take pictures for you - there is so much snow up there that some houses are hidden from the street.

Yesterday we decided to drive to Salida so Mikayla and Daddy could go swimming in the hot springs. We had to go over Monarch Pass which reaches 11,000 feet. At the top we stopped real quick to go pee. There is a store up there but when we got to the top we could not see the store. It was also snowing real bad and it was hard to see anything. As we were pulling away I noticed a corner of the store sticking out of the snow. That was all you could see was the corner of the building - everything else was under snow!

We had a fun time at the pool but WOW Monarch Pass and the whole drive way tough - 4-wheel drive the whole way.

All In Two Diapers

I believe these are called an All In Two - they do need an insert. They are white with a cream colored flannel inner. There is no staining. They come from a smoke free, cat free and dog friendly home. There are 3 diapers total. I am asking $4.00 per diaper and this does include shipping. Please email me with any questions - oconnellhouse@msn.com.

Jaundice

In higher elevations you have to watch out for jaundice. Normally all you need to do to prevent this is to put the newborn in the sun for 20 or so minutes per day. Mikayla was born in May so I would take her outside, take her sleeper off and we would sit in the sun for 20 minutes every day. I would also nurse her in the sun in the early morning.

With Lily being born in January it has been much harder. First I had to find where the sun comes into the house during the day. That was hard because since she has been born we have seen the sun 2 days. It has been snowing every other day since.

I took her to the doctor on Friday and they checked her billirubin levels and she was jaundice. We put her on a billi light blanket (it wraps around her middle) for a day and the levels dropped enough in 24 hours to be done with it. Good thing because it was very ackward.

I could not have asked for a better baby. I am suprised at how well this little one sleeps. I don't mean to brag but she only wakes me up once a night. The night she had the billi blanket she woke up twice. I am waking up more to check on her than she is waking up.

Mikayla is also really good with her sister. She also knows that when I am nursing her I am limited in what I can do for her.

My mom went home today so we will see how the next week goes. I think Mikayla might go to daycare on Monday and Wednesday so I can have some time to get things done (pay bills, blog and sleep!)

Lily's Birth Story

On Thursday, January 24th I had to go to the hospital to get some blood work done. I noticed that the hospital had warning signs about enter at your own risk due to the Influenza A virus and that they had confirmed cases of it. I thought no big deal. Well Thursday night I was really tired and slept horribly. I ended up only going into work for a total of 2 hours on Friday because I was still tired and very achy sore (typical start of flu systems huh!). I slept off and on all day Friday and Friday night. Friday night I was very uncomfortable with achy legs.

Around 1am I started to notice that the contractions were involving my back and they were starting to hurt. I was up with Mikayla from 1am to about 3:30 and then I did not go back to bed until around 4am. From 4am to 7am I slept off and on waking to some contractions and probably sleeping though others.

All day on Saturday my contractions were anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes apart. I was able to get the house cleaned like I normally do on Saturday which made me feel better. I knew I would come home to a clean house after giving birth. I called my mom and she managed to get cheap airfare into Gunnison.


We picked up my mom at the airport at 6:30pm and my mom was surprised that I came into the airport as well. Mom was worried that I was not actually going to have the baby because my labor was still manageable at this point. We all headed to the hospital to get me checked in. While I checked into the hospital, Joe, Mikayla and mom headed home.


I was at the hospital about an hour by myself and at this point my contractions started to come every 5 minutes and become harder as well. The doctor came in and tried to break my water the first try was unsuccessfully but the second one worked. At the point my contractions increased to every 2 to 3 minutes. I asked for the epidural around 9ish and it took a while to get it going and stronger enough. Around 10:30pm I finally had relief. I am just not the type of person to give birth without drugs. I was also getting pretty tired by this time and was napping a bit.


I started pushing around 12:15pm and I pushed for 1 1/2 hours without getting anywhere. The doctor said she would be willing to use the manual vacuum if I wanted. I said let me try one more time. With each push I really was not getting anywhere. I had the doctor use the manual vacuum and Lily arrived two contractions later. She came out totally sideways and that is also why I was not not making any progress with each push. I did have one small tear this time and needed stitches.




Lily never left my room from the moment she was born and she is a great nurser. The family came to see her the next morning around 9am and Mikayla was soo excited to see her.

We left the hospital around 2:30pm. I was ready for my own comfy bed.

Update

So far Lily has turned into a great sleeper - I am waiting for the newborn sleep stage to wear off and her to start waking up every 2 hours. Her first night home she woke up 3 times and other than the first 2 they were spread pretty far out so I could sleep as well. Then last night she slept from 9pm to 2am! Then she woke up again at 6:30am. I would love for this scheduled to stick but I know it is not going to!

Mikayla absolutely loves her baby sister. She loves to watch her and let me know what she is doing. Mikayla has been great - even when I have to sit down and nurse Lily and I am not able to get up and do what ever Mikayla wants me to do.