The Zoo!

Earlier this week we ventured to the Milwaukee County Zoo!  We had a LOT of fun!  On the way there, we stopped in a park in Marshall, Wi.  It was very pretty and a beautiful day!  We ate lunch, skipped rocks in the pond, went down slides, and played on the bouncy animals!  Emelia had a blast!  She did great being in the car for so long, as well.  It helped that her Uncle Quinton was in the back seat to play with and entertain her!

After we got settled into our hotel, we went swimming, which Emelia continues to LOVE!  The second her little feet touched the water, they just started kicking and she was all smiles and giggles!  The water was even a little bit chilly!  We ate that night at Outback Steakhouse, that was conveniently attached to our hotel.  Emelia enjoyed herself there and kept everyone entertained!

Tuesday was our zoo day.  Emelia slept fairly well her first night away from home.  She woke up from 2:30-3:00am, tossed and turned a little bit, then laid back down and fell asleep.  We all got up, ate breakfast, and off to the zoo we went!  It was a lot of fun!  Emelia was amazed at all the people!!!  She really enjoyed all the different animals, also!  Many times I had to take her out of her stroller so she could see the animals, but she definitely saw them.  Her favorites include the sea lions, monkeys, and various fish.  She ate lunch with us and even took a 15 minute power nap in her stroller.  It was so much fun!  She was so well behaved!  Once we got back to the hotel, she was asleep within minutes for a nice long nap.  The weather was perfect, as well, and not too hot at all with zero mugginess!  We definitely lucked out!

Tuesday night we got delivery for supper.  Living in the rural area we live in, we don't have the luxury of deliver, so when we are in a bigger city we take full advantage of that!  After supper, we went back to the pool for some time.  Mom brought a ball for Emelia to play with (which we forgot there) and did we ever enjoy ourselves!  I would pop the ball out of Emelia's hands and then we'd pretend we were running after it and I'd bounce her in the water!  She loved it and I swear if I hadn't held her well enough she would've lunged right into the pool after that ball!  It was great fun!

She slept perfect that night, never waking up once.  When we got up Wednesday morning it was to pouring rain and thunder!  We were pretty glad we did the zoo the previous day!!  We were planning on going to a place called Discovery World.  It is like a Children's Museum on steroids with many different interactive things to do including aquariums where you pet the critters, flight simulators, and a tour through a boat.   Unfortunately, when we got there, there was zero parking!  We drove all over the area and couldn't find a thing!  So we said to heck with this and drove around a little ways to find somewhere we could see Lake Michigan at.

Emelia loved watching Lake Michigan!  She kept watching the water, smiling, and giggling. It was a bit chilly on the lake from that morning's rain so we bundled up in her blankie.  It was pretty neat and it was fun to see Emelia's reaction!

Then we headed home!  We hit some really heavy rain on the way home, slowing us down a little bit, but we were pretty happy when we made it!  We played at Grama and Grampa's a while before coming to our home.  Emelia had been in the car for so long I wanted to let her stretch her legs a bunch before sticking her in the car seat all over again!

We were happy to be home!   We missed daddy and Moxie our dog.  Emelia was kind of crabby still from the long journey home and the busy days we had in Milwaukee.  She was a definite momma's girl our first night home, but she is back to her normal happy self (crabby when tired!:O)  This morning she is pretty content playing with the broom!  Haha!!

And that was our trip in a nutshell!!  Here are some pictures to enjoy!!

Playing on the Bouncy Elephant in Marshall, Wi

Swimming fun!

Power nap!

Emelia and I by the Zebra

Emelia and I by the Giraffe

Emelia and I riding the "Safari Train" that went through the zoo

By Lake Michigan

Emelia enjoying Lake Michigan

Definitely a great trip!  It sure is fun to share all of this neat stuff with my daughter! :)

Mmmm!

Last night Emelia got to taste another yummy food!!

WATERMELON!!

And she loved it!  We had to stop eating it when she started putting big chunks into her mouth.  She just wanted to eat it all up.  Of course she didn't get the whole big piece the whole time, just for the picture, but she would've if I had let her!! :)  She was so cute when she was enjoying her watermelon! :)

She had a good evening with us last night, after a nice long nap of course!  She is getting to be quite the mover and has no trouble getting around the house!!!!  One minute she's playing on the living room floor, the next she's out trying to dig in the dog food dish!!  She has really been enjoying her new found freedom by sneaking out into the dining room and kitchen at every opportunity!

She has totally mastered sitting up on her own and is getting pretty good at pulling herself into a standing position as well!  Today she pulled herself up alongside her jumper-roo! 

Vocally she is advancing by leaps and bounds, as well.  She says "Rar, rar, rar" over and over as well as the occasional "Ba ba", "Ma ma", and "Da da".  Screeching at the top of her lungs is also a new noise she has been enjoying a lot of lately!  She still blows raspberries when she is in a mood or doesn't like the food we're giving her!

Otherwise, all continues to go well.  I think she might have a bit of a cold, otherwise her allergies are kicking her butt!!  Emelia's poor nose is so stuffed up lately and yucky!  I hate to rely on medicine too much and the Claritin doesn't seem to provide much relief and the benadryl makes her too sleepy to use during the day.  Mold spore counts are high in our area right now, and that's my big allergy trigger as well, so maybe that's her issue also!

This week has been miserably hot in our area, with heat indices over 110 degrees!  Next week we are hoping for some cooler weather... it is our trip to the Zoo!  We are leaving on Monday and coming back on Wednesday!  I'm super excited to see what Emelia thinks of all the different animals!! :)

Daddy and Emelia enjoying a story! :)

And finally, a cute picture to end the post! :)

Mommy's Night Out

Last night, I got a night out!  I went to see the final Harry Potter movie with mom, dad, and Quinton.  It was a great movie and I had a lot of fun with the family!

Emelia stayed home with John for the evening.  I wasn't sure how it would go.  The other times I've left to get groceries or things like that, in the evenings, Emelia had pretty much cried the entire time and I was hoping the same didn't hold true last night.

It was also John's birthday yesterday.  His grandma, mom, dad, brother, and sister in-law came over with chinese and cake with ice cream for him.  By all accounts, Emelia did well!  John said she only got fussy a little when she was tired and hungry.  She enjoyed seeing everyone and playing.  After a full day of daycare and playing, Emelia was tired and was in bed asleep by 8:15pm!  That's early for her.

When I got home, the house was calm and quiet.  John was happy to have had the chance to spend some time with Emelia.  Since I've had every weekend off this month, he hasn't gotten his "daddy and me" days with her for some time.  It makes me very happy that he looks forward to these days!

The cutest thing, though, was Emelia must have heard me come home because she woke up shortly after I walked in the door.  I went in her room, scooped her up, and we cuddled for about 20 minutes together.  She fell right back asleep, never wanted to eat or anything, just wanted to get some momma love before sleeping the night away!  My heart melted! :)

Finally, Emelia has conquered another feat!  She can now get herself into the sitting position from laying on her tummy!!  She did that this morning for me and I was so excited.  Come to find out from John, Emelia was doing that like crazy last night!  He is one proud papa knowing he was there when she did something for the first time!

OH, one last story I have to share!  Before we went to the fair today I went into the bathroom to change and get ready.  Emelia was getting hungry and tired and she started crying when I left the room.  Something she's been doing more and more.  Next thing I know, her crying is getting louder and suddenly she's poking her head around the door frame of the bathroom!  She had crawled all the way from the living room to the bathroom just to get to me!!  Too cute!

Okay, enough for now!  It's been a great couple of days! :)

Summertime Fun!

Today Emelia got to go to her first fair!  We had so much fun!  Her favorite things include watching the pigs (and laughing when they oinked) and riding the carousel!  I was super excited to show her the new animals that she's never seen including horses, rabbits, ducks, and pigs.  She wasn't such a big fan of the horses and wasn't too interested in the rabbits.  She did enjoy the pigs, though! Here are some pictures!

We played games at the carnival, "Lucky Duck" it was called!  Emelia LOVED all the colored ducks!!

Emelia won a prize!  A cute little pink butterfly!

We went with my brother Quinton and mom.  The three of us then played the game where you throw darts at balloons.  We won a bunch of prizes, three stuffed animals, two of which have now been added to Emelia's toy pile! :)

Getty-up Horsey!  Emelia and I waiting for the ride to start!  We could've picked a less creepy horse, though! :)

Emelia having a blast on the carousel!  I was enjoying it, too, just because I got to share it with her! :)

When the carousel finally started moving I was happy that Emelia didn't get scared.  On the contrary, she was laughing the whole time!  I kept saying things to her like "Getty-up!" and "Wee!"  She was loving it and never cried or even got a little scared at all!

Of course Quinton and I had to ride the Tilt-a-Whirl!  While we did that, mom and Emelia hung out and played with all our prizes!  It was so much fun and such a great day!  We left after a couple of hours because it was H-O-T!!!  We were all damp with sweat, but it was totally worth it!  Emelia was so super happy the whole time, it was wonderful!

Blue

I'm a little blue today.  There's many factors, I don't want to go too far into it, but I did write a poem tonight about my frustrations...

There is a mountain of laundry on my couch,
Dust bunnies run rampant on my kitchen floor,
Toys are scattered all over the place,
If I look closer, I see so much more!

Trinkets, spills, papers, and cheerios!
Shoes, boxes, wrappers, and clothes!
There's just not enough of me to go around,
I wish I wasn't the only to know.

My flaws come as many, this much is true,
But how down can I get before people can see
That their jeers, sneers, and comments cut like a knife
And swallow me whole, make me hate me?

I try to say to myself every day that
"My baby loves me and misses me so!
She just wants her play-time with mommy!"
And yet here I am, feeling quite low.

I try and I try to make it clear,
Watch her one day and I'll clean end to end!
Still, no offers do I receive,
So I'll deal as always and just try to mend.

I'm just tired..... I am up and running from 4:00am until 10pm every day and it just has me ragged.  It's hard to get help.  It's days like this I wish my mom lived closer to me. :(

I'm going to go to bed now, to hell with the mountain on my couch of clean clothes, at least they're clean!  I have a book to immerse myself into to get away for just a little while (more like a chapter - 5 minutes) before the alarm wakes me at 4am again!

p.s. Tomorrow I am going to a movie without baby, without hubby, and for ME!  Of course it's John's birthday tomorrow, go figure, so now people probably think I'm being rude and selfish not being with him, but TOO BAD!  I have not had a day for myself since I had Emelia, I think I'm due!!!!!

Waving!

Well, thrush treatment is continuing for both Emelia and myself.  I am not too terribly impressed with the doctor we saw last Friday.  I asked him repeatedly if I should be treated for thrush too, since baby's mouth comes into direct contact with me.  He was adamant that it wasn't necessary.  A couple days later and it was apparent I had thrush, also!  I was so irritated with this doctor!  After numerous phone calls I finally was able to get a prescription called into the pharmacy rather than go down for an appointment.  It took talking to my former midwife's nurse before someone was willing... she says "Oh, no problem, we do that all the time for moms!"  PHEW!  I didn't want to have to go back to the doctor just to get a prescription when I KNEW what I needed.  Funny enough, the lactation consultant was shocked that the first doctor didn't start me on something right away.

BUT, we are on the mend!  I can't wait until this goes away!  Yesterday was particularly painful when I had two clogged ducts as well. (not a great day at all)

However, today is going better by a long shot!  Emelia is happy as can be and currently napping!!  Which she always needs to stay happy!  She had to go to daycare today for a couple hours while I had a nurse's meeting at work and I think she enjoyed playing for that short while.

The newest feat Emelia has mastered includes waving!  She understands to wave both "Hi" and "Bye"!  The other day she waved me off to work like crazy and yesterday she waved "bye" to daddy on his way out the door to work and it melted his heart (and made me feel pretty good, too)!  It's a great feeling to see my baby girl learning and she is so proud, also!! :)

Finally, Emelia is practically crawling now, too, and it's pretty darn cute!!  She is doing this thing... it's like a cross between an army crawl and regular crawl.  She can go from one side of the room to the other in a matter of minutes.  She is pretty impressed with herself, too, I love it.  Even daycare has noticed her new-found mode of transportation!  After we got home today I went out to the kitchen to get something quick; when I came back to the living room she had herself to the wood floor of the dining/kitchen area and was on her way out to find me!  She thought it was hilarious when I asked her "What are you doing?" :)

I think she is working on teething again as she seems to have picked up in chewing on things more the last few days.  I wonder if the top two front teeth are almost ready to make their grand appearance!

But, that's all for today! We might be zipping to town to visit her Great Aunt Suzie and Great Uncle Pete!  It's been forever since we've seen them!

Waving "Hi!" to me this morning!! :)

Thrush

Emelia and I had to go to the doctor yesterday after work and daycare.  I had a feeling she had thrush.  And I was right.

Thursday I had started noticing that her tongue was a little whiter than usual and then I noticed that there was getting to be a "fuzzy" appearance to the whiteness.  I have seen thrush in residents at the nursing home I work at so I figured it was happening to Emelia.

Of course, she was up yesterday morning at 2:30am and would NOT go back to sleep.  Not surprisingly she slept very little at daycare.  They even said she was a little more ornry than she normally is.  I told them it was probably because she hardly slept!  So needless to say I was tired and it was a long drive to the doctor's (which is 45 minutes from where I work!)

Sure enough, the doctor was able to look into her mouth and see not only the white on the tongue, but also some white patches in her cheeks.  I wasn't able to look there, she never cooperated.  So then we had to pick up her prescription.

Thankfully it hasn't gotten too bad yet and hopefully we caught it soon enough to prevent that.  After a day of her getting her medicine (which is a nasty liquid she has to get FOUR times a day) I am going to sterilize ALL her toys, which will be quite an undertaking!

She hasn't been eating solids as well for me as she had been in the past and this thrush might have something to do with it.  She did enjoy her blueberry pancakes this morning, though!  I think her favorite food has to be pancakes at this point!

She is still just as cute as ever.  She is jumping in her bouncer right now with a big smile on her face!  She's loving it!  Wouldn't life be nice if it could be like it is for babies?  Main concerns for the day are having fun, eating, sleeping, cuddling, and messing the diaper!  :)  Maybe I could go without the diaper part, but the rest would be great! :)

Fourth of July!

This year was Emelia's first Fourth of July!  We had a great weekend!  Sunday we spent the day shopping with my mom and brother.  That evening we had our little family celebration.  I had to work Tuesday so we preferred to be up late Sunday versus Monday.  John, Emelia, and I had supper over the campfire.  Emelia actually just had some baby food, but John and I had hot dogs and baked beans.  Emelia did eat a few of the baked beans, but she was too full to eat too many.  As it got dark out, we started some fireworks.  We started with some sparklers.

Mom and Emelia doing sparklers!

Emelia enjoyed watching the sparklers!  A little bit later, we started the other fireworks.  We had decided just to get some smaller ones this year because, well, to a 7 month old, fireworks are pretty scary!  Emelia was kind of funny with the fireworks!  She seemed to be scared of them yet she couldn't stop herself from watching!  She kept a death grip on me the whole time and made these funny faces.  They were a combination of scared and smiling! :)  She kept kind of laughing, also!  We did have a couple larger ones left over from last year that John insisted we launch.  Emelia got REALLY scared from those.  The first one we weren't prepared for and John lit it!  She did cry a little.  The other two of the same I covered her ears and she wasn't as scared then. :)

Overall it was fun!  She did enjoy the fireworks, which was good.  I didn't want her to be afraid of them forever because her first time scared her! :)

After we were done with the fireworks, it was pretty late for her.  She ate some milk and fell fast asleep.  I laid her down in her stroller and John and I enjoyed a little time by the campfire!

All bundled up and snuggled into her stroller!

Fourth of July campfire!

Emelia did wake back up about an hour after she fell asleep.  I was feeling pretty sleepy myself so we went back to the house!  It was a great Fourth!  John and I even told Emelia all about the reason we were celebrating and how fortunate we are to have our freedom!

The next day we just bummed around the house.  John and I made a fancy supper from a recipe we got off a cooking show, BBQ University, that was on PBS.  It turned out ok.  We had a great holiday weekend!  It's so fun doing things together as a family!! :)

Emelia's Fourth outfit!  The shirt says "American Sweetie" and the shorts have blue and red stitching on them! :)

Transition

Emelia's transition to her room continues to go well.  She has slept in her room every night since Friday night!  There was only one night (Sunday night) that we had issues.  Emelia woke up at 2am and wouldn't go back to sleep until 4am!  I don't know if being in her room was the reason, but it was exhausting!  She's a little turd that way sometimes!  All she wanted to do was play! 

I'm glad things are going well with having Emelia in her own room.  I was pretty nervous about it!  Monday night was the first night she slept in there before I worked in the morning.  I didn't know how she would do when I got up in the morning to get ready, but she didn't even wake at all. 

I have been doing good, too, with her being in her "big girl room" as we have been calling it.  The baby monitor works well at picking up her breathing and every little noise.  It even picks up noise when we are dinking around in the kitchen!  It's a relief for me!

And it was NICE this morning that Emelia didn't wake up when John's alarm went off every 9 minutes for an hour! :)

So yet again another hurdle jumped through!! YAY!!

Holy Heat!!

Summer has DEFINITELY arrived in Wisconsin!  Yesterday was a cooker with temperatures near 100 and head indexes up near 120!  Luckily, I work where there's air conditioning, Emelia's daycare has air conditioning, and my car and house also have air!  It was oppressive!  Even Emelia was crabby about it, which is unusual!  She normally LOVES being outside!  It was obvious the heat took it's toll either way when we got home.  Emelia took a 3 hour nap!  It was nice for me, I caught up on some reading, but she must've been exhausted!

Things have been better this week compared to the long and stressful week we had last week!  She has not been nearly as ornry and fussy and she has been back to her regular sleeping habits.  We have kept busy with shopping and visiting my family when we don't work or have daycare.  It's been nice!  I love it when I have the happy baby and not the crabby one!

She is currently trying to learn how to crawl!  She can get up on her knees but hasn't yet figured out how to coordinate that with getting up on her hands!  Emelia pushes herself backwards a lot, which she's proud of, until she is stuck in a corner somewhere and can't get out!  Yesterday she ALMOST was crawling, and she actually got herself to move forwards!  It won't be long.  Today I bought some electrical outlet plugs since she's "on the move"!

Her vocabulary is taking off as well!  No words yet, of course, although I'd SWEAR when she's mad and wants me there's a couple of "Ma's!!" that come out!  She has learned that she can make all sorts of different noises with her lips and her vocal cords.  One of the funniest things she does is what John and I call "The reverse laugh".  She will laugh while inhaling and make just the goofiest noise ever!  It's hilarious, and so much fun! :)

She eats like a pro now, also!  It's getting to where she depends on three different "meals" of solids a day to curb her hunger!  We tried french toast this morning and it didn't go over too well.  I think she was over tired, for one, but for another I couldn't get it to grind up very smooth and she didn't care for the chunks.  One of her favorite things to eat right now are Gerber Yogurt Melts!  Emelia LOVES them and will shove one after another in her mouth the second I put them on her tray!  I tried one myself and they were rather tasty. :)

And that's yet another update on Emelia and how fast and fun she is growing every day!  We are coming up on the Fourth of July this weekend.  John, Emelia and I are going to try and have a camp fire as well as do some little fireworks.  I don't think we're going to any BIG fireworks shows; we think that's too scary for her right now and we want her to enjoy it, not be terrified!  Summer is going by fast, but we're having so much fun! :)

Smiling, happy, and showing off her pretty sundress!

Sticking out her tongue!

Day One

So, yesterday was the date I had set to move Emelia into her own room.  She's been taking naps in her room, which has been going okay.  I think I was more anxious about it than anything.

She did well!  I moved the lamp in there so while I fed her before bed it was dim lighting as it was always before.  She fell asleep eating, as usual, and then woke up as I laid her down, also as usual.  She started to cry and fuss a little, which she has been doing regularly in her crib during naps.  I just rubbed her back and put her little aquarium thing on.  I kissed her good night and told her I love her and I walked out.  In our room, that's all it usually took to get her to sleep... last night, it was a different story.  She cried! :(  I felt so bad, as usual!  I told myself I'd only let her cry for 10 minutes before getting her and calming her down to try again.  By the time the 10 minutes was up, she was gently babbling to herself as she was falling asleep!  I was so happy!

THEN, we had a batch of storms coming through and they were going to be getting to us around 20 minutes after she fell asleep!  I was so worried they would wake her and she'd be scared.  But, Emelia did great, didn't even wake up from the lightning or thunder!

She did stir awake for a couple minutes.  Somehow she turned her aquarium thing on (she either bumped it with her head or actually pushed the button with her hand) and I think that helped her soothe herself back to sleep.

This morning, she woke up around 5:30am.  I laid in bed listening to her over the baby monitor talking to herself and clapping.  She and I both dozed back off and slept until 8!!  That's the latest I've ever gotten to sleep in since she was born!

So, it went well for our first night of having her in her room!  I was happy to be able to hear her breathing loud and clear over the monitor and she seemed very comfy in her crib.  I am so glad it went well.  I am not getting my hopes up TOO high yet, tonight could be a different story, but the first night it always the hardest!  Just like our first night home after she was born; our first night in her cradle (since we co-slept at the very beginning); then her first night in the pack n play!  All milestones we are reaching and bounding over with grace!  :)

 

 

Emelia sleeping in her crib for a nap.  The blanket was made just for her by her Grandma Pat!