ode to baby girl

yesterday baby girl saved me.  seriously, my morning with brady was rough.  like needing constant attention.  not just to be held or placed in his bouncer but needing to replace the binky in his mouth every 5-10 seconds or hold it in there constantly.  and still listen to his grunts, squirms, cries, and whatever else.  he would stay awake and eat for 45 mins or so but instead of putting himself to sleep at that point, he'd get a second wind and become over stimulated so i'd spend the next hour and a half trying to get him to calm down and go to sleep.  and then he'd wake up after an hour because it was time to eat again.

so thank goodness baby girl was my precious little child that she normally is.  she was acting out and super whiny the whole time my mom was here and i just kept repeating, "i can handle a difficult newborn or a difficult toddler but it's going to be a stretch for me to do both at the same time."  i guess baby girl took this to heart because she slept in, woke up in a great mood, and played happily in her crib til i got her out at 11:00.  then we cuddled and read books together on the loveseat in her room for half an hour.  and i told her to go play trains and i'd join her in just a second after i checked on brady.  who of course was already stirring and then crying.  so then i was trying to get him happy again and feeling bad that i wasn't "coming right back" like i'd promised baby girl.  but she just came down and was okay with it.  she told me she was hungry and then kept begging me for milk but didn't melt down about the fact that i was feeding brady and couldn't help her just yet.  when we finally went to the kitchen to get milk she pulled her sippy out of the fridge and started drinking it like a lost soul in the desert.  bless that child for putting up with me.

and then she helped me make eggs and she ate an awesome breakfast and was so cute and such an awesome listener all day.  when i started to get the chills and aches, i crawled in bed.  brady had finally fallen asleep in his carseat by my bed and i climbed under the covers and told baby girl to bring us some books to read.  so we did that for probably an entire hour with her bringing me book after book and then returning them and getting more.  we looked at the gorgeous views out the window from the comfort of our cozy bed and warm covers heated to the max with our electric blanket.  i was soaking this kid up.  she is worth her weight in gold times a million.

then she nicely ate her lunch.  it was painful to pick her up so i just gave her a banana and told her to stay in the kitchen and she ended up following me in circles around the island as i paced and clutched my chest.  so cold, so achey, so tired, so much pain.  i put her in her crib and she was so sweet and fell right to sleep.  i came downstairs and of course brady was stirring as i crawled in bed.  and then i started to cry.  i can't do this.  i can't deal with this pain and stay awake with him for the next two and a half hours feeding him and trying to get him to go to sleep just in time for abigail to wake up.  and that's when my prayers were answered with drugs and somehow i fed my child and loved him and was able to place him in his carseat and have him put himself to sleep without a binky, without crying, and without me walking around and swinging his carseat.  the flu symptoms went away and i actually felt happy and competent even!  and my precious little girl slept forever and didn't get out of her crib til just before 6.  it was like she knew i really really needed those three and a half hours that day.  she continued to be a good listener for the rest of the day and it wasn't until she was in bed for the night that i realized not once did she ever even ask to watch tv (which was one incessant tantrum while my mom was visiting).

the whole day i was just thinking about how it was like she knew i needed her help and she delivered.  and so last night, still thinking about that, it brought back to me those first few weeks of her life when she never ever cried.  i was in so much pain from my labor recovery and then right after that again so much pain from clogged milk ducts.  that whole first month of motherhood was so physically painful for me (as referenced in this post again) and i remember every day thinking that baby girl not ever crying was heavenly father's way of helping me through it because i was physically unable to care for my child in my often bedridden state.  as even mentioned in this post, i was so sure that once i was over the rough part, my non-crying child would turn into a normal screaming newborn (and that i would try to be okay with that because her goodness had served its purpose) ...but she never did.  she stayed sweet.  even when she was 11 months old, right before we moved, i had a friend in the ward (with a daughter just a week older than abigail) ask me "does your baby ever cry?  i see her at church every week and when you guys are at the park and when you bring her to relief society activities and i have honestly never seen your child cry."  and then i had to tell her... "ehhh, she cries.  just not very often."  like almost never.

so i am so grateful for my sweet baby girl... who continues to take care of me and save my sanity.  i really don't know how to describe it but she still is just so wise sometimes.  she is the most perfect child i could ever imagine.

Aspiring photographer

Baby girl kept getting my phone and taking pictures but since she just had the phone laying on the bed they all looked like a green screen. So honey taught her how to take pictures on his phone.

the green screen.  what all of her photos look like when taken with my phone.

taking a picture of me.

reviewing her work.

showing me how it works

"take a picture of daddy!"

don't ask why but she prefers to wear her necklaces like this.

what a precious little child she is.  did i mention she was wearing no diaper when honey got her out of her soaking wet bed this morning?  ha.

and here are her latest works... sent to me from honey's phone.

she's got real talent, i can tell.  even though i'm still blown away that she can unlock my phone, open the camera app, and press the correct button to take pictures.  how do kids learn so fast?!  my mother had to be taught how to do that on her ipad mini.  i guess she should have just watched baby girl a little more...

and mastitis deja vu

this post could also be called "drug abuse" or "enjoying prescription drugs."

i woke up during the night to feed brady and automatically started nursing him on my right side because it was most uncomfortable.  as soon as he latched on the intense pain woke me up enough to realize "i fed him on the right side for the last feeding, my left side should be more uncomfortable" and "ohmyheavenssayitisn'tso, i know this pain like it was yesterday!  i have a clogged milk duct."  so long after brady had fallen asleep, i lay awake in my bed dreading the pain anticipated to ensue over the next few days.  i had clogged milk ducts with abigail.  one after another after another after another.  sometimes two on the same side and freqently alternating sides so that i was in constant pain as one side would just start to heal and the other side would just be starting hurt again.  if you haven't experienced this, the closest i can come to describing it is that it's like a super bad migraine or bruised feeling all the time, especially if you move or something touches you, and then when you nurse, it feels like your baby is sucking shards of glass out of your nipples.  literally shards of glass.  i remember gasping so loudly when abigail would latch on that it would scare her and she would pop off and start crying.  and then when i finally got her to stay on and keep eating i just cried the entire feeding.  so so painful.  but as if that wasn't enough, i also started to develop flu symptoms which i later learned are the signs of mastitis.  babycenter type websites will describe clogged ducts and mastitis as "tender, hot, swollen, and painful" but forums online about clogged ducts and mastitis will sound more like, "stabbing pain deep in breast + searing nipple pain = ?  is this mastitis?"*

anyways, i was dreading the pain but determined to avoid the chills, aches, fever, etc. that i had forever (okay, maybe it was only a week but it was horrendous) with abigail.  and then around 12:30 today it hit.  the chills, the fever, the full body achiness, and a bad headache too... just for kicks i guess.  i got baby girl down for nap and looked for a thermometer.  i had a temp of 100.6 which i was grateful wasn't higher... but the best part?  i found a ton of 600mg motrin and hydrocodone left over from my super bad recovery with abigail.  enough to get me through the weekend (no time to go to a doctor today) so i could handle the pain and try to get brady to just nurse this away!  hallelujah.  so i popped in one of each and you wouldn't believe the transformation!  i can now see why prescription drug abuse is so prevalent these days.  i went from flu like symptoms and shards of glass nipple pain and crying in bed that i just can't do this to actually being able to nurse my child without crying, loving my baby, and feeling normal (so long as i sit in bed and don't move)!  i promise i'm just kidding about that drug abuse part but what an answer to my prayers to have enough drugs on hand to help me through this!  elder bednar didn't specifically address "when tender mercies come in the form of precription drug pain relief" but i know anyways that this is exactly that.

so i checked my old posts and apparently when i got this with abigail it was right around the three week mark too, according to a milk duct reference in this post.  when my next kid is 2 weeks old, you better believe i'm going to do everything i can to prevent this from happening again!

*that's a direct quote.

mother come back to me

my mother left less than 24 hours ago.  since then, i almost didn't make it home from the airport, i woke up in the middle of the night to a whole lotta pain and realized i have a clogged milk duct, i woke up to find out that the milk duct was not a nightmare but is a reality instead, i spent an hour and a half rocking a carseat and holding a pacifier in my son's mouth with my feet trying to get him to finally fall asleep, and i am swamped in the guilt of loving my daughter more because she never cried like this and is actually singing to herself in her crib right now... at 10:42am.

the silver lining?  honey was supposed to have a business trip to wyoming today that got postponed because of the bad weather.  so instead of him being gone today from 2am to 10pm, he's only going to be gone during his normal times and will get home hopefully before 7 tonight.  i think i'm going to be really loving that when 7pm rolls around.  i mean, i'm already looking forward to it.

airport run deja vu

you probably don't remember this horrific event in my life but unfortunately it's still seared in my mind.

today was my last day with my mother.  it was wonderful of course but then 2:45 rolled around and we were off to the airport.  mother gave brady part of a bottle and then used the google maps app on my phone (since we just returned my broken gps to costco yesterday) to guide us to the airport (i know i've been a million times but i still need help).  it worked great and was almost as awesome as my tomtom and mother and i raved about it the whole way there.  the kids were happy (baby girl) or sleeping (brady) and life was good.  i said goodbye to my mother (and part of me died inside... severe mourning) and set my home destination not thinking that there's like five different route options home.  well, i'll try to be short (i'm very unskilled at this) and just say that i realized it was trying to take me on the toll roads and i passed it up because i didn't feel like paying $10 just to get home.  then i drove to the middle of nowhere as i kept thinking it would just reroute me.

to be continued...

then things just started looking less and less familiar and more and more like rural kansas so after a few unsuccessful phone calls to get a hold of my honey, and then one where he said "i'm on a super important business call, are you okay? ....where are you?!  you're going west?!", i hung up and pulled off the highway and attempted to figure my life out.  baby girl (who had to skip her nap for this) started telling me she wanted to go home, brady started stirring and fussing, and i realized i was on colfax (which is not a friendly place for someone like me).  i called emmy to try to walk me through the google maps app but it wouldn't pull up when i was on the call so that didn't work and finally i got off the phone, gave brady the rest of his bottle (thank goodness for having a few ounces left!) and gave up on google maps.  i finally just opened safari and looked up the regular mapquest style directions on the web version of google maps and selected the no tolls option.  hallelujah.  and then i told baby girl we were going home!  (the whole time we were stopped she kept telling me we were at someone else's house and she wanted to go to abigail's house)  we were all thrilled!  except for brady who'd fallen back asleep thank goodness.  two minutes after i'd gotten back on the road, honey calls again.

honey: "where are you?"
me: "i'm headed towards 225."
honey: "are you on 70 west?"
me: "maybe.  that or colfax.  okay definitely colfax.  i'm at colfax and chambers."
honey: "k, you're only a few miles from 225."
me: "i know, i'm following mapquest directions on my phone."
honey: "yeah i'd say you've probably added 15 or so miles..."
me: "thanks honey, you're not helping."
honey: "and at least 25 minutes...  maybe more..."
me: "honey, you're still not helping."
honey: "yeah, you should have just stayed on 70 west because it would have just fed you into 225..."
me: "honey, stop."

and then i told him it was fine and done and our kids were content and contained in their carseats and i'm just happy to finally be on the right track home now.  so i dropped my mom off at 3:40, was finally on the right track home at 4:10, and pulled into the driveway at 5:00.  should i tell you we only live 40 minutes from the airport?

Today

last night i tried out a new thing and had brady sleep in his carseat since his night time sleep has been getting worse but his daytime carseat sleep is near perfection.  well... there was improvement and we'll definitely be trying that out again tonight.

brady is not an easy baby and he also follows no patterns.  according to my mother, "he's got a lot of secret combinations!"  but one thing we know is that frequently, a swinging motion helps.  so we checked out this swing at target today and i was planning on asking my honey about it tonight.  well, i'd totally forgotten until brady was crying and my honey had placed him in his carseat and was swinging it back and forth in the kitchen.  slightly out of breath he asked me, "don't we have a swing?!"  and i replied "nope, just that bouncer you're standing next to" and he's like "we need a swing... this kid likes to swing" and so i told him that mother and i just checked that out today and for $70 we could possibly have a slightly happier babe.  we'll see if we break down in the next few days.  ; )

baby girl had sassy girls club joy school today so i dropped her off for that and mother and brady and i ran errands at costco (returned my broken gps), blockbuster (who knew those still existed?!), the post office, target (checked out that baby swing), and bed bath and beyond (i have more creme brulee ramekins now!) before picking her up again.  we got a lot done in an hour and half!  and when we got home, i put my mother to work in the kitchen making me freezer meals and i took my two kids (i gotta throw that in there so i can get used to saying it.  reminds me of how tricky and awkward it was getting used to calling christopher my boyfriend, fiance, and husband) to the playground in our neighborhood.  brady slept in his carseat the whole time and i relished the time with just me and baby girl playing at the park together like old times.  and just for fun memories, i'll make a record here that the whole way home, i pushed brady's stroller, while pulling abigail in her stroller (she'd pushed it there herself... just for fun.  and decided on the way home she didn't want to walk), and listening to the taylor swift channel on pandora.  i couldn't help but laugh at myself.  i'm gonna rock this mom of two thing, i just know it.

ha.  loved this.

brady actually spent a solid hour (most of it he was asleep) in his bouncer tonight.  baby steps... one day he'll hopefully not be so demanding and requiring constant care and attention...

to say that baby girl is outlandishly obsessed with the ipad would be the understatement of the century.  she got so excited when christopher came home and then cried when she saw he didn't have his ipad with him.  and then she tried to go in our garage to get it out of his car.  this is why i don't let her know that my phone can do cool things.  right now the only thing she likes my phone for is to "see the snowman."  which is just a little snowman on the wallpaper of my phone.  but i finally changed that tonight.  so hopefully tomorrow she'll decide that my phone is absolutely good for nothing.

tonight honey said something to baby girl about holding brady and she instantly "assumed the position."  in case you were unaware, this is the proper way to position your hands/arms to hold a baby.

brady had several screaming fits tonight (i swear he doesn't cry all the time but it sure is a lot!) and i finally got him settled enough that he could lay there, not being held, as long as he had a binky in his mouth.  i'm about to use a rubberband to tie it around his head so it doesn't pop out every two seconds but in the mean time, i'm finding that a strategically placed camera will hold it in place okay and give you two free hands to gchat with your friend, lisa.

my dear mother leaves tomorrow and i'm thinking of ways to lure her back and convince her to stop by on her way home from this weekend salt lake trip.  i haven't done dishes since she got here.  she made stuffed peppers for us for dinner tonight and made spaghetti pie freezer meals for us too. she also made an angel food cake (we had to use up all the egg whites left from our creme brulee!), washed out a million juice and soda bottles i've been saving and filled them with water for our food storage.  she's vacuumed, dusted, and cleaned.  she's run errands for me and done my grocery shopping and even cleaned out a good chunk of my basement.  she's helped with my kids and given me some extra nap time.  she's gone on outings with us so i can learn how to take two kids to the library, walmart, etc. and has stayed home with the kids while christopher and i got out for a bit.  and perhaps most helpful of all is that she laughs with me when i have two crying children and i can't stop making my "is it too late to give up this mom thing and start a career instead?" comments and keeps me finding the humor in less than desirable situations.  and i know there's a million more things i'm forgetting right now that she's done while she's been here and still she comes to me and says, "what else can i do?" stating that she doesn't feel like she's being much of a help to me.  

my goal for myself is that someday i can be as nice to my kids as my own mother is to me.  i am so undeserving.

shake your sillies and other videos

here's a video from last night.  it's a song they sing at story time at the library and baby girl always goes crazy dancing to it.  so i thought i'd try it at home and see if she went crazy if i sang it.  we had a good time.

and these are from the day after christmas.

ps- that last video really sums up the whole first two weeks of my life with two kids.  now it involves a lot more crying from kid number two.  but i'll spare you a video of that mess and you can thank me later.

Aunt Steph and uncle Nate

Steph and Nate came over this afternoon to meet Brady and my mother in law and Nate came too. It was a lot of fun and we had a good time passing the kid around.

brady and aunt steph

brady and uncle nate

brady and his other uncle nate

laughing at baby girl on the video monitor

hanging out with baby after she got up from nap

neglected brady got sent back to me.  dude, if you cry, people are going to prefer the happy kid over you. appropriately, baby girl's pj's say "happy" on the front.

Thank goodness

I've been having some rough times learning to love my life with two kids. By 8am this morning I was ready to give up on life. But thankfully the day only got better. I can honestly say I really enjoyed my day today. Brady's crying was minimal compared to normal and baby girl was quite herself. More pictures to come but thank goodness. I really needed a day like today.

and here's pictures of the denver gardens with mom, steph and nathan meeting brady, and a video of some crazy dancing.

Denver gardens with mom

today was probably my favorite day since my mom got here.  we went to the denver botanic gardens and had an awesome time.  brady slept in his car seat the whole time but mother and baby girl and i enjoyed it all.

watching the ducks

she had a thing with finding benches and sitting on them all

loved these

mother daughter picture

elevator with grandma.  for some reason she was freaked out by every elevator we rode in.

had to help push the stroller.  it was kinda precious.

we spent a lot of time in the tropical plants conservatory and when i finally took off her coat her head was all sweaty. glad she didn't get heat stroke.

the little pond and water fountain feature semi frozen over and arctic looking.

she was also obsessed with every body of water we found.  streams, fountains, waterfalls, you name it, she found it.

she's getting really good at saying cheese really loudly when we take pictures.  i love it.

oh my heavens i wish i could have taken a picture of every orchid they had. we walked through where they were getting the orchid exhibit ready and it was breathtaking.

Get it out

We were hanging out in bed when I saw baby girl taking off her pj's. what're you doing, I asked. "I want to get it." What? And then I figured it out. She'd put a toy piece in her pj's and needed it out. Ha.

My favorite from today? When I put her down for nap and was about to leave the room and she sat straight up, looked me square in the eye and clearly and assertively whispered, "I need a binky!" I died laughing. Whoops. Sorry baby girl! Thanks for keeping us on track.