Everyday life

Going back to work was such a hard thing for me, I love what I do I really do it is interesting and it challenges me and I get adult time which is nice most of the time, but the only thing I have every wanted to be was a stay at home mom and it is super hard leaving my little girls while I got to work.

It has been easier because I have such great babysitters, there is a family that lives down the road from my parents that they watch the girls, they are good family friends and both the girls really like going there. They spend time painting Adelyn’s nails, and playing tea party and play outside. She loves all the attention and asks all the time to go over there.

My schedule was super crazy in the beginning but it has now settled into a pretty decent consistent schedule.  I work 6 on 3 off, then 3 on 2 off. I get Thurs and Fri off one week and then Fri-Sun off the next so I work every other weekend instead of every weekend which is super nice.  My shift is what they call a swing shift I work 4pm to 1230am accept on Saturday and Sunday I work 2pm to 1230am. It will be a good schedule for me because once we sell the house Casey will be going to school and it will either make it so we don’t have to use babysitters or, we will only have to use one once in awhile and it will only be a couple hours here and there. Right now I drop the girls off at the babysitters usually at 315pm and my mom picks them up at 530pm and then watches them til I get home at 1am.

Its hard because my mom doesn’t get much sleep and its also hard because I don’t get to tell my girls good night and put them in be most days, but it makes it so I am with them most of the day so I guess any job would be give and take. It will be nice when Casey gets here and we get our own house and we’ll be closer to work and stuff.  

Now I am offically caught up on my blog, the next blog I write will be in present time and I will try and keep it up to date all the time, I just figure my life isn't very interesting but I guess that isn't the point.

Here are just some random pictures of my girls! 

Amelia Newborn Pictures

        I forgot to post Amelia's newborn pictures, I loved how they turned out. It took some effort to get her to cooperate but it was worth it. Stacie did such a good job with all of them she has done several of our pictures and they always turn out so wonderful!

Family pictures 2013

A Lady in our ward was starting a photography business and we asked her to do ours and they turned out so wonderful! I love them so much and they sure do capture my little Adelyn's personality. Enjoy!

Little miss Attitude

A

My Baby girl is 3!!

Adelyn turned 3 on January 27^th, I had been asking her for awhile what kind of birthday she wanted. She became obsessed with Frozen the movie and that is what she decided to have her birthday party theme be.

Frozen was not an easy theme to do since it was just a brand new movie, I did finally find some Frozen stuff at the party store in meridian.

Adelyn got a frozen theme dress, crown and jewelry set, a Doc McStuffins and Lamby, a couple fairies, the movie planes, a Brave bow and arrow set and a few other things.

 From Nana and Pops

 Her Aunt Bonnie got her the Frozen dress and tiara and jewelry

 Auntie Dee got her a bow and arrow set 

 Casey and I got her this chair and she loves it, it even has a cup holder. lol

Amelia got her two necklaces one has Ariel on it and the other has Minnie Mouse

I made her a cake because she isn’t a big cake fan anyway and I just put an edible picture on top that was frozen.

Things to know about Adelyn when she turned 3:

·         Her favorite color is pink

·         She will eat almost anything, she loves burgers, and fruit and veggies she also like Panda Express.

·         She has a huge vocabulary for a 3 year old but there are still some cute sayings that she says like si-cee (spicy), hims (his, or he), own-a-mine (my own), too later (for something that will come later whether it be in an hour or weeks). Go-dead (in stead of saying where did sissy go she says where did sissy go-dead I don't know why and I do correct her but she still says it this way.)

·         She LOVES to sing and dance, it doesn’t matter when or where. If she is in the car it is usually super loud, but usually the right words. We have the Frozen soundtrack and we listen to it in the car all the time.

·         She is my big helper and is always willing to help out, although she usually loses interest quickly in whatever she is doing for me.

·         She loves to color, and blow bubbles, and just play outside, she likes to have tea parties

·         She is saving money to go back to Disneyland she has three piggy banks and she tells me half is for a new house with a puppy and the other half is for Disneyland. She has saved $125.00 so far, and any time she sees a coin she runs and picks it up and tells me here mom for my bank.

·         She gives “lovin’s” which is where she comes cheek to cheek with you and then rubs her cheek on yours back and forth. It’s super cute and it doesn’t happen often so it’s nice when it does.

She is a joy to have around and I can’t imagine my life without her, she is such a special little spirit and I can’t wait to see how she will continue to develop and how her personality will grow and change.

Christmas 2013

After all of this exciting stuff happening with me having Amelia, the NICU stay, moving and going back to work it was time for Christmas.

Christmas is my favorite time of year, not because of presents but I like the spirit of Christmas. I am not a cold weather fan, especially if I have to drive it in. But I love sweaters, and hot chocolate, I LOVE Christmas music, and I love that most people are super happy and nice. Oh and I love romantic Christmas movies that come on the whole month of December.

One of the really fun things that Adelyn really enjoyed this year was we had an elf come visit and her name was Jingle and she did little pranks and left a gift once. Adelyn loved her and hated to see her go but we told her if she was good she would probably have an elf of her own come to her new house next year. 

Love her face she was so sad to see Jingle leave I told her maybe when we get our own house next year we might have our own elf. 

Since it was Amelia’s first Christmas she didn’t get much from Santa, she got some clothes and toys from everyone but that was about it. Adelyn got some fairies (Tinkerbell ones), and a few board games. She got a Christmas book from Santa. On Christmas Adelyn and Amelia got a Christmas movie and new pajamas. Hers were Hello Kitty and Amelia’s had penguins on them.  Adelyn also got a few movies, and finger nail polish.

Casey and I got Adelyn a Belle Dress for dress up. 

Amelia liked to stare at the Christmas tree lights she loved them

It was a wonderful Christmas, Casey was able to come to my parents and celebrate it with us and it just made it super special. Hopefully next year I can blog that we were in our new house for Christmas.

Halloween 2013

Last year I made Adelyn's costume and then Casey and I sort of made ours and we were the Big Bad Wolf, Grandma, and Little Red Ridding Hood. It was supper cute and I would like to do a theme every year, but this year was a bit crazy with Amelia and everything so we just let Adelyn pick out her and Amelia's costumes.

 Amelia was Snow White

 Adelyn was Tinkerbell 

Her wand blinked she loved it. :)

Our new life as a family of 4

After our NICU stay, Amelia got a fever and was readmitted for 2 days for observation, they did a spinal tap, blood work, urine and it was all traumatic for her but she ended up being fine and we got to go home.

After we were sent home I stayed a week at my parents and then went back to Washington. I was in Washington for about a month and a half and we decided that I needed to get another job since I had quit mine before I had Amelia.

We also had decided that Casey was going to school and that I was going to get a job in Idaho and stay with my parents until we sold our house in Washington.  I moved here to Idaho just before Thanksgiving and it is now April and Casey still isn’t here. Our house still isn’t for sale and it is a super hard thing on my family. I am going up this weekend with my mom and my babysitter Zoe to finish the house and get it ready to sell because I am so done with living in a different state than my husband and my kids miss him too!

I work at my old job at West Valley in Caldwell and I am doing Phlebotomy again, I love my job. I love what I do and it is nice that it can work out that I can do it and Casey will be able to go to school.

Our NICU Stay

Last time I wrote about Amelia’s birth story and today I am going to write about the aftermath of her birth.

Amelia was born in the afternoon, and when she was born she was quite big for her being 3 weeks early, 7lbs 5 oz is the size of a full term baby usually. They checked her glucose and it was 20 then they fed her an oz of formula and re-checked it and it was still only 23 so they told us if they came back in a half hour and it was still low they would have to take her to the NICU. They came back in a half hour and it was 21 so away she went to the NICU. I didn’t get to go with her then because I still had my epidural and it was taking quite a while to wear off.  After about another hour or so I was able to go and see her in a wheel chair because I was still a bit wobbly.

We checked into the NICU and washed up and they took us back to see her. We found out on top of her having a low glucose that she also had a high bilirubin and then she also had polycythemia (which the proportion of blood volume that is occupied by red blood cells increases) They were talking about doing a reverse transfusion, and stuff and everyone decided that they would just put a line in her umbilical cord (because they couldn’t get an IV in her) and give her fluids and recheck her and then go from there. When they rechecked her, her count had gone down so they didn’t have to do the reverse transfusion.

Through her umbilical they were also giving her stuff to keep her sugars up and help stabilize them. Once they were stable they were going to start to wean her off of the meds. It took two days for her to stabilize and then it took another day or two til she was fully weaned off the meds. But because of all of this that was happening she was so tired that she was sleeping a lot and wasn’t eating so she was dropping weight pretty significantly. So they ended up putting and NG tube down her nose to do her feedings through.

The NG tube was horrible to watch being put in, just because I am in the medical field does not mean that I am okay with stuff like this being done to my daughter. It was horrible because they couldn’t get it down the left side so they had to try down the right side. She just cried and cried the whole time I felt so bad for her.

With the NG tube, we would try to breast feed then we would try to bottle feed and then we would put the rest through her NG tube. And while it was going in her NG tube I would pump and they would store all the breast milk in their fridge for the night time when I wouldn’t go over and feed her.

We were lucky enough that Casey was able to make it to the birth this time, he had training and it finished Saturday and I had Amelia the next Tuesday. And he was able to stay for about a week. We were super lucky and they housed us at the Ronald Mcdonald house which is like a block away. It was a life saver! Seriously if you ever want to donate money to a good cause (or products) it is a fabulous place that could use any help they can get, some families stay there for months. I ended up staying for 18 days. My normal day schedule looked a little like this, it was exhausting!

·         745am- leave for 800am feeding, drive over and go upstairs taking all the milk I had pumped during the night and all my pumping supplies

·         750am- sign in to NICU and wash hands for 5 minutes

·         800am-change Amelia’s diaper, check her temp, weigh her diaper, and then weigh her.

·         From 0800 to 0820 try breast feeding her

·         820-835 try bottle feeding her

·         835-925 put rest of her feeding in her NG tube and I pump

·         925-945 cuddle with her and burp her (when her umbilical line was removed)

·         945-955 pack up my stuff label milk I just pumped, wash pump parts and head to the parking garage

·         1020 Arrive at Ronald McDonald house again

·         1050 head back over to do it all again.

We had feedings every 3 hours 8am, 11am, 2pm, 5pm, 8pm, 11pm and then at night they told me I should stay and rest and just come in the morning. I did skip a feeding here and there that just to keep my sanity and I went to my good friend Elise’s house which was close and it was nice to just relax and have some adult time and sometimes I even fell asleep there.

We were in the NICU for 18 days and it was nice to be able to go back to my parents and I stayed there for another 2 weeks before I went back home to Washington.