Happy Father's Day

This weekend was Father's Day.

Such a  contrast from last year at this time. Last year, we were unemployed, not sure where we were going to live or what we were going to do for money, and expecting a baby. Pretty stressed out.

This year, we're still stressed out but much more optimistic about it all. I've got a great job, Matt's doing a super job as a stay at home dad, we live in a house (for now, at least), and while the thesis isn't done, it's almost there. Oh and that baby arrived. And she's wonderful.

Hannah is now ten months old. She got her big girl carseat this week, so no more bucket for her.

She's getting so big. She is super close to walking and even took a few very tentative steps tonight.

Even though today was Father's Day, we gave Matt his gift earlier this week when it arrived. I made a board book of pictures of the two of them for them to read at bedtime.

Also earlier this week, we went to the park for a picnic dinner. Hannah had never been on a swing or a slide, and since she is getting one from Sam and John for her birthday, I figured we should get started. She seemed to like it for awhile. We ended up bringing the swing home this weekend, so that she was able to use it for the summer.

The slide also went over well, but Hannah didn't want to sit still at the top.

I had a great week 'off' although I spent almost every night working at Starbucks until 1am at least. Hopefully, this will be the last super intense week of work. The thesis is almost done and Paul and Al both want to have the defense sometime in the next two weeks. Eek! I'm so happy to be this close to being done.

Hey look! It's me!!

I was featured for the Monday Snapshot on the PAIL blog this week.

I know I've mentioned PAIL before, but as a refresher, it is Pregnant and/or Parenting through Adoption/ Infertility/Loss.

I've discussed our brief trek down the infertility road on this blog often. I mean, that's why I created the blog in the first place. I haven't, however, talked much about it on Facebook. As much as I'd love to share the link to the Monday snapshot on Facebook, I'm not sure I'm ready.

And that makes me sad.

My all time favorite picture

I hate pictures of myself. I'm not particularly happy with my post-baby body so I am quite critical of any pictures that are taken. However, at the same time, I don't want to get to the day when Hannah asks to see photo albums and there aren't any pictures of her with me. So every once in awhile, I make Matt take pictures of us.

The other evening we went to Kopps for dinner. It was super yummy and greasy. Obviously we didn't share with Hannah but she had her own stuff to eat. Once we were done, we got here out of the stroller and decided to take done pictures in front of the water wall. Many of them turned out pretty well.

This one I don't like for how I look, but Hannah looks so precious, I have to share it.

This one is my absolute favorite.

I also like this one that was taken a few nights ago after a particularly messy dinner.

Hannah makes me so happy and I want to make sure that there are pictures to look at down the road.

Eight and Nine months

Things have been crazy lately. I completely forgot to do a post around eight months so this a joint post. My thesis is taking over my life; I can't wait for it to be done so I can spend time with Matt and Hannah again. Progress reports are due this week so I've spent more time on those and at home this week. It's been a good week.

So I posted a few weeks ago that I was back on the mini-pill. Without going into too many details, it didn't go well. At all. Matt and I ended up talking about things, and he is adamant that he thinks the fall is too soon to be talking about another baby and isn't even sure that another baby is even in the cards. He is worried about our financial stability (a valid point) and admits that it is possible we won't be in a good financial spot ever. So since it appears that it's going to be awhile for we try for another baby, if ever, I decided to get an IUD. I hate taking the pill of any kind, the mini-pill specifically, and he hated all of the barrier methods we were using. I got it on Tuesday; it killed while she was doing it, but wasn't too bad afterward. Some cramping, but nothing too awful. I'm sad about the semi-permanence of it , but at the same time, it's nice to know that we are protected until we change our minds down the road. It is also going to give me the opportunity to lose some weight and get in better shape. Being in better shape will be nice and it may also give me the confidence to let myself be pregnant at a later age. At this point, I don't really feel like being pregnant after 35, but if I'm in way better shape, that might change....

Hannah is growing by leaps and bounds. At her most recent doctor's appointment, she weight 21 pounds and was 28.25 inches tall. She is crawling like crazy now and pulling up on everything. She wants to hold your hands to walk everywhere. We're hearing words like 'dada' and 'mama' which are addressed to the correct person about 50% of the time. She has also said 'cat' a few times; she will chase Luther around like crazy. He is finding solace on the other side of the gate, up on the couch, or up on our bed. He also has taken to hiding under her crib behind the stuff that's under there. She has completely outgrown her 9 month pants and pjs and is on her way to outgrowing her 9 month onsies. She has also grown two teeth. She's turning into a little person.

Sleep has been an issue the last few weeks or so. Lots of waking up during the night or struggling to be put down, so we've had to go back to letting her cry. There have been some rough nights and nap times. Unfortunately Matt has taken the brunt of this since he is the one putting her down most of the time. I've been spending way more time than is healthy at Starbucks working on the thesis.

The stupid thesis is slowly getting finished. I had hoped to have a rough draft done by the 17th, I even took the day off to finish if needed, but it just didn't happen. I put it off too much and spent too much time dilly-dallying. I should have worked on it more last semester. Oh well, no use whining about that. The first three chapters are mostly done and just need editing (as far as I can tell). Chapter four is in progress and chapter five is a bundle of thoughts floating around in my brain.

My advisers have been very unhelpful with this whole process and have given me very little feedback. I don't want this to drag into the summer, unfortunately it's looking more and more likely that is going to happen. But dammit, I am going to finish the stupid fucking thing. I've already had them order my special education stole; I had decided from the beginning that I wasn't going to walk at graduation (which was this afternoon), but I still wanted the stole as a physical representation beyond just the piece of paper. Progress reports are due this week, so now that those are done  I can get back to work on the thesis. I really should figure out a way to get work done at home; I'm tired of Starbucks and it's starting to pack on the pounds. I've put on six pounds in the last two months. I also shouldn't know the baristas as well as I do.

I'm looking forward to the summer. We've already made plans to do the zoo with my mom and dad in June and we're spending a few days with the rest of the Story family in Indiana over the fourth of July. We've talking about going to Atlanta in August, but that is still very much up in the air. In general, it will also be nice to just work four day work weeks. I'm guessing I might have a few Fridays to go in for trainings that I missed last summer when I had Hannah, but I'm hoping it won't be too many. It'll just be nice to have less stress.

If you've made it this far, congrats!! Now for the best part: pictures!!

Eight months old!

Shopping for yummy food

Sleepy baby at the zoo

Standing at the front door, watching daddy leave for aikido

Good morning mommy! (while we were visiting my mom and dad)

Cooking with grandma

Looking at flowers on Mother's day

Playing at the library

Nine month check-up

Fun with mirrors

Playing the guitar with daddy

Shoes for the first time....... they didn't last long.

She's growing up so quickly. It's just amazing.

Crap

I've come to the realization that I am a lousy adult.




I should fix that.

Atlanta

Atlanta was awesome. Hannah loved and was loved by everyone who met her.

Take-off on the way there.

Sitting on the tray table and playing during the flight.

Meeting great-grandma

 and great-grandpa

Four generations

Fat Matt's Rib Shack. Hannah had mac 'n cheese for the first time. It went over really well.

We had fun just hanging out in the townhouse. The king-size bed was great for playing and rolling around in.

Hannah was just as good on the plane ride back as she was on the way there. 

We had a super time, but we were all happy to be home.

Easter

Easter was lovely. Matt and I did a photo shoot with Hannah on Friday, then took a few pictures in both her dresses on Sunday. Yes, she had two. One of them we picked out and bought ourselves. The other was a hand-me-down from a friend that I just threw into the diaper bag on a whim.... just in case. I was glad that I did.

The Easter photo shoot

The Easter dresses

There was spit-up in between the dresses.

There was also a nap, hence the peppier looking Hannah in the second picture.

Two decisions and pictures!!

A quick update on my last two posts.

First, I'm on the pill. It's the mini-pill which is approved for use while breastfeeding and it somewhat of a compromise since in theory, it shouldn't mess with my cycle. A number of the women on the August rav boards are on it, and many of them still haven't gotten their periods yet. So it's not going to dictate my cycle. I'm not horribly thrilled, but it is what it is. Matt and I are both somewhat getting what we want.

And spontaneous sex is awesome.

Second, we let her cry. We didn't do it for the initial put-down. She slept for a few hours after that. It was the multiple wake-ups between one and four that finally did it. There was a misunderstanding between Matt and I and I ended up pissed off and then he tried to put her down and she immediately woke up and cried, and we'd finally had it. It wasn't how I wanted to do it; I didn't want CIO to be something that we did out of anger, but honestly, we were just burnt out. We had tried just about everything the nurse suggested on Friday and we we were out of options. So we held her and snuggled her until she was super sleepy, then put her down and left the room. At that point, we just let her go.

It was awful. She cried for half an hour and I'm pretty sure I cried for most of it. Honestly though, half an hour isn't bad, from what I'm hearing. I was surprised when she woke up less than hour later. We did the same thing, and she went to sleep. Last night was rougher. We left her in her car seat, normally a guarantee of sleep. Unless someone knocks the remote off the bed onto the hardwood floor. That set us up for a long chunk of time spent trying to get her sleepy again and she even had a bottle. Eventually we did the soothe then leave, and it took about ten minutes. Tonight we put her down sleepy and she woke up about 45 minutes later. I picked her up, rocked her until sleepy, then set her down. She cried for less than five minutes. So hopefully this will help get rid of these silly wake-ups in the middle of the night.

On a happy cute note, pictures!

Our first dinner as a family at the dinner table. We've been pretty good about keeping it up, even on the nights when we get take-out.

It is possible for bathtime to be fun!

Playing by herself in the pack 'n play while we did laundry did not go over very well.

We opened up all the toys left from the baby showers. Now that she's old enough for them, we cleaned up her room so there was room on the floor to play.

She also played with the new toys in the crib so that I could sort through her clothes and swap out the stuff that wasn't big enough.

Seven months old..... man, where did the time go??

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

The Talk

Matt and I had a conversation about birth control and our future baby plans. As far as he's concerned, he's fine with just having one baby, and if my opinion didn't matter, we would go back on birth control, he would work on his music career, and we would get this whole parenting thing under control. Then once we were a little more stable, we could discuss baby #2.

I don't do well with open-ended plans. I'm not saying I want to set a date for when we're going to start TTC again, but I'd like something a little more specific than 'when we're more stable' and 'his music career is more established'. Especially since he's been on working getting said music career established for almost as long as we've been together: 12 years ago, yesterday. I don't particularly want to be adding another baby after 35. Not saying it can't be done, but I just don't want to be pushing 40 with a kindergartner.

He also doesn't think I'm going to be ready to be done after #2. I am a self-declared planner. I'm always looking for the next thing to plan. I've always been like that, and he's convinced that we're going to have #2 and I'm going to decide that our family just doesn't feel complete, that I need more to plan.


And if I'm brutally honest with myself, deep down, I think he might be right. And it makes me sad. Not that he's right, but because some of my reasons for having a second baby are selfish. There has been so much drama and negativity surrounding my pregnancy and the first few months of Hannah's life that I want a do over. I want a chance to just enjoy being pregnant, not worrying about jobs and my thesis and where we're going to live and how we're going to pay for XYZ. We'd have a better idea of what we're doing; I feel like Hannah and I don't have a great connection and I can't help feeling like I did something to cause that. But that's selfish on my part. I'd be bringing another human into the world for something for myself.

He also wants to be able to have spontaneous sex and we can't since condoms are just not comfortable for us. So we have to wait at least 15 minutes for what we're using to kick-in if I'm not the one initiating. He realizes this is a selfish reason for me to go back on birth control. But he also made the very good point that if we're not talking about #2 any time soon, my whole reason for not going back on birth control (to figure out what my cycle is going to do on its own now that I've had a baby so we have a better chance of conceiving faster next time) is pretty much mute.

*sigh* I have never thought of only have one. Not there is something wrong with it; it just has never been the plan. I'll admit that spontaneous sex would be nice again. Especially since sometimes all we get is 15 minutes. And while I don't miss getting my period, I would be less stressed if it just would follow some sort of schedule.

As much as we needed to talk about it, I didn't come out of the conversation feeling any better. If anything, I feel worse. All of his points were very valid, and I find myself running out of logical arguments. All I've got are feelings. There's nothing wrong with making decisions based on feelings; they just don't always stand up in the face of facts and logical arguments.

I wish there was a zone of compromise when it comes to having children. Either we're both going to be happy about having a second one or we're both going to be unhappy about not having a second one (me about not having one and Matt for making me unhappy); there is no middle ground. If he puts his foot down and says he's confident that he is happy with one, there isn't much I can do about it.

Busy busy....

This post is going to be rather piecemeal. It's the work of a few early morning sessions with Hannah plus some random venting.

It's been a busy few weeks. School has been a little crazy and work on my thesis is increasing. I have a definite deadline and somewhat of a plan to get there.

I also had mastitis which I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Fever, body aches, localized inflammation of the breast, the red spot on my breast; I had all the the text book symptoms. They didn't even have to see me to diagnose it, that's how textbook it was. I was exhausted all the time and I would fall asleep on the couch in the evening. It hurt to hold Hannah; it just royally sucked. The general thinking is that the clogged duct I had about a month ago never really fully cleared so it got infected. And the antibiotic was a pain in the butt. Do you know how hard it is during the day to find a time that is not less two hours since you last are and more that an hour until you eat again? It may be a first world problem, but I guarantee you, I took those pills an extra day because I kept missing a pill in the middle of the day.

Mastitis messed with my supply on the right side. It's always been lower, but now it's at least an ounce if not closer to two ounces behind. Oh well, I'm still producing much more than she is drinking in a day, so I'm not too worried. We're still freezing a bunch and I've been able to keep up with donations. I did mark the milk that had the antibiotics in it, and I don't plan to give any of that to the families I donate to.

Hannah has also been having difficulty sleeping. At first we thought it was just a random thing, but over the last three weeks or so, she has slept through the night exactly three times. It's been awful. Matt's been a zombie, and for the first time since she was born, we had a serious conversation about CIO. We don't think that it would work for her since she tends to escalate when left to cry, and I cry when she cried while I'm holding her, so I know I would be a MESS if we tried, but we had to have the conversation. We're just doing what we can. Our second hypothesis was that it was my antibiotics from the mastitis. But there have been nights where it was okay and it has continued even though I'm off of the antibiotics. We think it's a cold, so we picked up a soothing vapors bubble bath. It seems to help. It doesn't fix 100% of things, but anything that helps is worth it. Last night was better, so hopefully there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Hannah also struggles with settling for me at night. She definitely has a sleep association developed with Matt. We've been forcing the issue as much as we can even if it means me holding her for 20+ minutes while she cries for Matt. He's been trying to stay out of the livingroom to give her less fuel for the fire. It's been rough, lots of crying from both Hannah and I. I sometimes wonder if this stubbornness on my part is more trouble than it's worth. But then we have nights like last night when I sang her songs and she fell asleep and slept until after 8 this morning. Parenting is like golf: you go for long stretches where you feel you can't do anything right and you'll never get good at it, but then you have a great storytime or reach a milestone during playtime or bedtime goes exactly as planned, and you are reminded that it's not all poopy diapers and fussiness.

We've stepped up the solids in Hannah's diet. She's had fish and spaghetti and oatmeal now plus different puffs and yogurt melts. So far the only thing she hasn't liked is chickpeas. So we'll try that again in a week or so, but for now, she's a great eater. She also has been having one bottle a day out of a sippy cup. We will gradually be transitioning her over, and my hope is to have her done with bottles around the time that we are done with breastmilk, so about a year. We also have upped her bottles to 5 ounces. She'd been holding steady at 4 ounces since early October, so we figured it was time.

Overall, things are going well. Hannah is growing and is mostly happy.

I just can't help it!!!

I love taking pictures of Hannah. I just can't help myself. Matt went to an aikido seminar this weekend so Hannah and I hung out at my mom's during the day on Saturday, joined up with Matt for dinner party in the evening, then spent all day on Sunday just snuggling and napping. It was awesome. I took a lot of pictures!

Getting ready to go on Saturday. It wasn't even 9:30AM and she was on her second pair of pants.

 Playing the piano with grandma!

Lunch with mommy on Sunday.

PJ day on the couch after we got back from lunch.

Post-nap with a happy baby!

Random pictures:

We tried avocado last night the first time. It went over quite well.

She is in love with the cat. Whenever he meows near her, she perks up and looks around until she sees him. When he walks into the room, she just stares at him and smiles, occasionally she even laughs at him. She's very grabby whenever she can get her hands on him, but he's doing a great job of putting up with it.

There are times when I wonder if I should limit the amount of pictures of her that I put on my blog, but at the same time, I just want to share her adorableness with the world! There are very few naked baby in the bath pictures, so not too much blackmail worthy stuff. I read a blog post once by someone who did not post pictures of her kids for fear/concern/whatever reason that they might not appreciate it someday. Eventually, when Hannah is older, I might ask her if she minds her picture appearing in my blog. I ask any adults that are pictured if they mind. I'm just not sure it matters at this point. To each his/her own, of course.