Sunday, May 20, 2007

New Bathroom

Some of you may be wondeirng, if she never remembered to post on her blog before, where is she getting so much time to do so now that she has an infant at home? Well rest assured, I am not neglecting my daughter in favor of posting on myspace. We got SO lucky with Emily, she will let out a little squall just about every 3 hours to let us know she's hungry at night, I'll nurse her, and then she'll go right back to sleep. That is, if I get her totally full, and sometimes she'll fall asleep before that happens. There's nothing more depressing than crawling back into your nice warm bed after an hour-long midnight feeding and immediately hearing a cry over the baby monitor, so I have taken to spending 10 minutes or so in the office to make sure she isn't about to wake back up and want food before I return to bed. Works out well for all of us :-)

So Emily is doing very well and we are enjoying her immensely. She likes to cluster feed in the evenings, so I basically have a baby attached to me from 6:30 until bedtime, but other than that she is such a good girl.

So now to the new bathroom part. We are having a handyman-type guy come over and fix some things around the house soon, like our master bedroom door which doesn't lock or even latch. We have the doggies trained not to barge in uninvited, but a door that doesn't even close will not be a good thing with a little Emily running around. Another thing he's fixing is a broken towel bar in the upstairs bathroom, which I actually broke accidentally while Will and I were messing around back when we were teenagers and the Randalls still lived here! It's about time.

Anyway, after this guy fixes the towel bar, he wants to re-paint the bathroom so I said fine. Now, though, I'm thinking it would be nice to re-decorate the bathroom too, since it is going to be a kid/guest bathroom, and as of now we just have a mish mash of old bathroom accessories from college in there. Since you automatically get a bunch of rubber duckies when you have a baby (try it, you'll see) we decided to do a rubber ducky theme and I found this really awesome pattern at Target that is cute but not too kid-ish. I'm not sure how kosher it is to post copyrighted pictures on here, so I'll just say if you're interested in seeing it, search "ducks shower curtain" or "ducks bath coordinates" on the target website. I am now anxiously awaiting the arrival of my goodies so I can make the bathroom awesome. I may not be able to go out and run errands at this point, but I am a first-class online shopper, and I can even do it with a baby latched on, so before we know it I'll have redecorated the whole house!

Not really, the bathroom's good for now. But I DO have to see about curtains in the dining room....

-Sara

Thursday, May 17, 2007

An Evening Fit for a Sitcom

I have to relay the events of last night, it is just too crazy of a story not to tell.

Yesterday started and ended perfectly, it was just the middle part that got challenging. We got up, went for our walk, bummed around enjoying a morning at home without having to go to the pediatrician (Emily was doing great at her last appointment so we don't have to go back until next Tuesday, yay!) and the backyard looked so idyllic with the starflowers sprinkled everywhere (I don't care if it's a weed, they're pretty) we decided to take Emily on her first picnic. The picnic was wonderful, with the notable exception of the dogs. I suppose you can't expect dogs to be pleasant and well-behaved picnic companions, but with the eating and coughing back up of grass, the rolling in and shaking off of dirt and the crashing around they made it hilarious, if not relaxing.

We had a lovely afternoon visit from Carolyn who works with Will, and then the time came for Will to go to the gym. As is our custom, my mom and sisters came over to hang out while he was gone. We watched Will's and my wedding video and were having a grand old time when I got up and went into the kitchen. I noticed immediately that something was wrong, namely there was a half inch of warm soapy water gushing across the floor. I sprinted into the laundry room and found the washer overflowing and cascading water down onto the floor. I turned it off and yelled for help. Emily had to be unceremoniously dumped into her bassinette, and for the first time in her life she didn't cooperate and decided to start fussing. She had spent the last 3 hours being a perfect angel sleeping as she was passed around to the guests, periodically opening her eyes to charm everyone, so I can't blame her.

Krista changed her diaper while I assessed the basement, which now boasted several waterfalls. As I was moving things out of the way, I noticed I was standing barefoot in water that was coursing down over the air conditioning unit, so I beat a hasty retreat upstairs to turn off the AC before I shocked the living crap out of myself. Emily was still fussing, so I latched her on and was trying to push towels around on the floor with my feet while she nursed. All was going well until I had to burp her. I flipped her over into my favorite web-of-the-hand-holding-the-jaw burping position and started patting while I continued to sop up water. Emily was making pretty typical grunting noises, and it wasn't until Krista said "Sara, her face looks really red, I think you're choking her" that I realized her chin had slipped up and I actually just had her leaning into my hand by her neck! I sat her back up and she was 100% fine, except for her bright red face. I then started to cry of course, because my poor little baby had been grunting and trying to tell me she was choking but I hadn't paid attention and I'd been on my way to accidentally strangling her :-(

My mom and sisters assured me they had it covered and insisted that I sit down and nurse her in the living room. I sat nursing her and crying for awhile, it turned out she was in the mood for one of her 50-minute marathon feedings so it pretty effectively kept me from being able to help clean up my house. At the end of the feeding, she unleashed a mighty torrent of barf that soaked her onesie and brought up what I'm pretty sure was everything I had just spent 50 minutes getting into her! I went upstairs to change her onesie, and discovered that just to make sure she was helping as MUCH as possible, she had generated a poopy diaper as well!

By this point everything was cleaned up, and when I came downstairs with a clean and dry (if no longer entirely full) Emily, Will was home with our sushi (which was paid for by Bruce our sushi chef in honor of the new baby, how sweet!) and the evening got calm again. I fed Emily some more, then laid back on the couch with her on my chest and we both zonked out.

I am SOOOOOOOOO glad my mom and sisters were here, I have absolutely no idea what I would have done otherwise. As it is, I now have to call a washer repairman today and BEG him to come out ASAP. After all, I have a baby here and everyone knows that babies are the single most efficient laundry-generating system ever created by man. Let's hope he takes pity on me.

Looking back I can laugh, and I just got to stand over her crib and watch my incredible little baby laugh in her sleep (plus she just slept for a solid 3-hour chunk of time) so I am back to being my usual deliriously happy self now :-)

-Sara

Sunday, May 13, 2007

I'm a mommy!

Well, it has been FAR too long without an update, but this'll be a good one, besides I've been busy making and squeezing out a baby :-) Will and I are parents!!!!! On Monday, May 7th we welcomed our beautiful 7 pound 10 oz baby girl Emily. Parenthood has been amazing so far, she's such a sweet and agreeable girl, we actually have to set an alarm at night so that we can go wake her up to feed her, and she doesn't do much crying at all.

The only not-so-good thing is that Emily is a little jaundice, which is not a big deal except that she is coombs positive, which means my O blood and her A blood don't get along. I had heard of Rh sensitivity before, but I had no clue this incompatibility even existed! Anyway, it means that she is more at risk for going from what she is now (which is a fairly normal level of jaundice for most babies) to dangerously jaundice. What all this means is that we have had to go to the pediatrician's office every day for the last 4 days which is a drag but I have to keep reminding myself that there's really nothing wrong, it's all preventative, and things could be a LOT worse. Todays appointment went so well though that tomorrow will be our first day without having to drive to Frederick with her, hooray! At least she's getting used to car rides and we're getting used to how long it takes to leave the house with a baby :-)

I will post some pictures here when I get a chance, but for now I have pictures up at www.photos.yahoo.com/photos/saradray

So anyway, we're home and settling in. Hope everyone else is doing well too and I'll try to update again before another 4 months passes by!

-Sara