Time Off

I took another day off since Smug-Baby's fever was back in full force all night. The poor girl slept wrapped around my chest most of the night - Comforting for her, but way uncomfortable for me. Her fever broke around 3 and she was all sweaty, but she slept better and more soundly after that.

Today she is acting much like her old self, running around and playing so I am hoping that she is feeling better and the worst is behind her on this. Her nose is running a lot, but other than that, she seems perfect!

I took her over to the new library and it was amazing! There was this wonderful kids area with stuffed animals, blocks, puppets and a table for a ton of trains. Smug-Baby really had a great time and I think that it will be added to our weekly outings!

Now we are back home and she is down for her nap. I really need to spend some time getting the diapers washed, kitchen cleaned up and the house straightened up overall. I really need to clean the bathrooms and clean out the car too. I should also nap while she is napping, but the other stuff that needs to be done is weighing heavily on my mind and I don't think that I will be able to rest with all this stuff hanging over my head.

We don't have many plans for the weekend so I know that I will be able to get caught up on things, but still... I want to walk around my house without tripping over blocks and I want to eat without having to wash a spoon first!

I am so grateful to have had the vacation time on the books to be able to stay home and take care of my sick girl, but at the same time it messed up my routine and I don't do well without a list, a timeline, a routine, a schedule. Its a curse :)

Sickly Little One

Smug-Baby has been acting a little odd the last day or so and I wondered if maybe she was cutting a molar. I still don't know if she is or not, but last night she was really restless in her sleep and kept crying out or moaning. I pulled her into our bed really early, like 10:30 and noticed that she was really hot.

I didn't get up to get the thermometer but a mother knows when her baby is sporting a high fever so I held her close and gave her water whenever she woke up. She tossed and turned and rolled and moaned and cried; all mostly without really waking up. Her head was so hot I thought for sure I would have burns on my arms from holding her.

Since I didn't get much sleep and because I knew that if she was sick she wouldn't be happy with just daddy, I stayed home from work. As soon as I sent the e-mail to my boss and peed, I couldn't get back to sleep. My head was KILLING me! I think that it was a combination of stress/worry for Smug-Baby and general lack of sleep, but the end result was that I wasn't able to go back to sleep.

I got up and puttered around the house for a bit until she woke up and she immediately asked for "bites" so I got her some cereal and fed it to her in bed, holding her hot little body against mine. I could tell that the fever wasn't gone, but she wasn't nearly as hot as during the night. I pulled out the thermometer and she was at 99.9. Not too bad, but certainly enough to make her feel lousy.

She played with daddy and the bouncy ball for a little while, but that seemed to take all her energy and then she spent the next several hours just sitting in my arms watching Elmo. I took her into the shower with me and she pretty much just stood under the hot water and didn't play with her bath markers or anything. It broke my heart knowing just how yucky she felt.

After bath we did more sitting on the couch. She just wanted to be held and didn't even want me to read to her, just hold her. About 11, she asked for food and ate about 6 bites and was done. Within moments of being back on the couch she was asleep. I am just doing this quick post while I let myself get a little more sleepy and then I am going to join her. I hope she sleeps for hours and hours and wakes feeling much better.

My poor angel! I love her so much and can't stand it when she feels badly! On the other hand though, it is really nice to know that all she needs in the world to help comfort her when she feels sick is my arms around her and I am so grateful that I am able to provide those arms!!

Feel better my sweet little one!

Hungry

I woke up hungry this morning. I couldn't go back to sleep and it was only 30 minutes before I needed to get up anyway, so I got up and had two big glasses of water. I hope that it will last me until I get to work and can have my normal breakfast on my normal schedule.

I used my free time this morning to stock the new bookshelf. Smug-Hub put it together for me last night, so now it is full of books and DVD's and the top of Smug-Baby's dresser is cleared off somewhat. I need to wipe it down and arrange the little knick-knack items to make it look nice, but I wanted to get a post up and I am running out of time before I need to shower and stuff.

Yesterday, I was productive in that I completed all of the laundry except the sheets and towels and I washed all the dishes. I still need to put the clean ones away, but they are all clean and that is something. I did some of the cooking I wanted to do, and the house is fairly straightened up. All in all, I call it a win.

It was hard too, because Smug-Baby who has been consistently sleeping around two hours during the day, thus giving me time to have lunch and nap as well, only slept 30 minutes!! I tried for a while to get her back to sleep, but then it became that magical time of day where it is too late for napping and then I spent the next several hours trying to keep her happy and awake. It was exhausting! Not to mention, I didn't get to nap at all!!

She didn't know what she wanted and would ask for food and then just play with it or throw it. She kept falling and tripping on things. She cried about everything. She wanted me with her every second. She kept pointing inside her mouth, saying "ow" and asking for a kiss. Finally, she let me poke around in there and it does seems like maybe the lower-left gum is rougher, so maybe she is cutting a molar. That would explain the grumpy mood and lack of nap I guess.  She slept decently last night, waking once for me to come to her bed and another time when she came into ours (incidentally, she wouldn't lay with me, she crawled to the end of the bed to sleep between Smug-Hub's legs - go figure). I did give her some Tylenol last night before bed and tried to put some stuff on her gums, but she didn't want that. I hope she sleeps well this morning and cought up a bit.

Man, I am so hungry!! What is up with me? I had a good dinner of rice and veggies and Quorn Chicken! I shouldn't be hungry this early!! I'm gonna go shower and try to get to work without needing to knock over a grocery store!!

Nesting, Part 1

I can feel this little nesting urge coming over me. I woke up early this morning, got out of bed, straightened up the house, made wipes and put away all the toys in Smug-Baby's room - All before getting in the shower. I would be cleaning the dishes right now, but I am nervous that the clanging will wake Smug-Baby up, so I am blogging instead! I have this almost overwhelming urge to throw things away and wipe things down and get the house really, really clean!

I have already made plans to go buy a bookcase today for all Smug-Baby's books. I can't stand one more day of all these wonderful books, falling over, getting stepped on or the pages getting bent. There is one at Wal-Mart for $15.00 and that is an investment I am willing to make!!

I was reading about Organizational Junkie's 29 day Challenge and I realized that I don't normally have much in the way of clutter and what clutter is generated I am generally able to tame on a daily basis. However, where I need help is with the deeper stuff. The "everything has a home" concept is foreign to my husband and he is constantly putting things away in odd places. He finds it perfectly acceptable that odd items suddenly take up residence on top of a cabinet rather than putting it back where he found it. For example, the rolling pin has lived in the drawer under the stove with the pan lids for years now (it lives there because it is too long for any other drawer and rolls around in cabinets. It fits perfectly in with the lids and doesn't interfere when you pull out a lid), for some reason, this weekend I see the rolling pin, hanging over the edge of one of the top cabinets. Just sitting there, collecting dust. It bothers me so much!! I spend time and energy working on organizing a room of the house and within a few days, he has things totally out of order and staged in odd places. I have even found odd food items, like say a cookie, sitting on the shelf of a cabinet. Not wrapped in anything, just hanging out, attracting mice and ants.

When I try to talk to him about putting things back where he found them, he says that he does. In reality, he doesn't pay enough attention to the details to even know where something belongs. I end up preferring to just take care of stuff myself, but this means that each day I would have to go through every drawer and cabinet in every room of the house to make sure that anything he has touched is returned to it's rightful place and frankly I would rather spend my day reading to Smug-Baby and taking her to the park.

My plan was to get the whole house organized by tackling one room each week and then keep that organization in place by cycling through each room again on a 3 month rotation (1 room each week, 12 rooms = 12 weeks). However, as soon as I finished the last room, the morning sickness hit full force and I haven't been able to keep up on the weekly rotation. Now that the morning sickness is mostly gone and only the sleep deprivation remains, I feel like I am ready to get back on track. But it is hard to see that all the hard work of just a few months ago has all been for nothing and that I am starting at square one again.

I am feeling more motivated about tackling it this week though. Like I said, maybe this is the first signs of nesting! I have a couple of months before Little-Smug makes his debut, so I should have plenty of time to get the house back in order and keep it up for a while. Once I'm not getting up at 4:30 in the morning for work and am able to sleep in a bit, the upkeep shouldn't be so hard.

Today I am going to tackle the laundry -  Man oh man is there a massive pile and it is going to take all day!! I am also going to do some cooking and make a plan for the week, picking this week's room is going to be easy though! I am going to start with the bedroom! It shouldn't be too hard to tackle and will ease me into this get-back-in-the-grove plan I've got!!

OK, I have got to get to work!! Wish me luck! This only works if I get enough sleep at night to justify not napping during the day!!

Pictures

I took Smug-Baby to have her two year pictures taken this afternoon. It was really fun and they spent a lot of time playing with her and getting her comfortable. Although, I think that next time I will arrive about 45 minutes early and let her try to run around and play and get comfortable before the shoot starts. Once she warmed up, she wanted to play with the props and sit in the chairs and so on, but at that point, we were all finished.

I got the CD with the images on it, because they all rocked and I had to have it :) So here are a few of them - certainly not all of them or even all of my favorites, but a smattering of my girl's loveliness!!

On another note: What a difference a year makes!!!

Mortality

I have been working today on finding all the important details of our financial life and putting together a document for Smug-Hub. I generally handle all the bills and make sure that everything gets paid and juggle all the bills with the need for food and gas. He doesn't get involved much, unless I am having an issue or there is a larger decision to make (can we afford payments on a new bed, or how should we use our income tax refund). I run all the money... And then I got to thinking about my own mortality.

I am going to have a baby. Last time, I had a baby, I hemorrhaged and could have died. I want to make sure that my family is going to function if something terrible happens to me - during childbirth or anything else!

So, I am putting together a list of all the links to pay things online, along with the user names and passwords, security questions and any other details I can think of for all our monthly bills. I want Smug-Hub to be able to take over paying the bills and managing the accounts without issue if, for some reason, I am no longer able to do it.

Part of me feels like this is morbid, but the larger part of me feels like this is the smart thing to do - hope for the best, plan for the worst!

It has gotten me thinking about what else I should be collecting into one place for him and what we should collect from him in case something happens to him instead of me.

I am also thinking about needing to make up a will or at least a document about what we would like done if we should die in regards to our children. I remember thinking that I would wait until Smug-Baby was born and then get working on the will and stuff, but I never got around to it.

I think that I need to pull out Women and Money again and start getting myself and my family on the right financial track. We need wills, we need plans and we need to know the important stuff that the other handles in case something happens to one of us.

Anything could happen at anytime, so we all need to do this and get ourselves prepared in case the worst does happen. What are you doing or have done to be prepared??

Skype and 5 Hours of Sleep

We finally got to Skype with Smug-Hub's mom last night! We have been trying to get her set up since Smug-Baby was born and she and the other brothers finally helped her get set up last night and we had our first video chat!

I was concerned that Smug-Baby wouldn't be interested and would just run off. I was even more concerned that she wouldn't be able to keep her little hands from banging the keys and disconnecting us.

As it was, she really got into the whole thing!! It was so cool - she played "scare Grandma with the dinosaur" and gave Grandma wooden cookies to eat. She talked a bit and waved good-bye when we were ending the call. We stayed on about 40 minutes and she was pretty good the whole time!

It is so important to me that we create as much of a relationship between Smug-Baby and her grandparents as possible! I never was close with my grandparents, until last year when my last remaining grandpa came to live here in town until his passing. I am so sorry that I wasn't able to be closer with any of them, to get to know them as people and not just someone who sent gifts on birthday's.

I want more for Smug-Baby and she sees my parents on an almost daily basis. She loves them, is comfortable with them, talks about them and misses them when we go more than a few days without seeing them. I love that she runs to to them, excited to see them and gives them hugs and kisses. She isn't upset when she stays with them while I go off to yoga or whatever.

I want the same for Smug-Hub's mom too! I want her and Smug-Baby to be close and yet the distance makes this really hard! If Smug-Baby only sees her other Grandma a few times a year, then she will never be excited to see her, run to her and so on. I really believe that using Skype once or twice a week will make a huge difference in their ability to stay connected! This way, when my Mother-In-Law is able to visit, Smug-Baby will already associate her as a familiar face and that "warm up" stage won't last as long. I feel like as Smug-Baby grows, learns and understands more, she will be able to create and foster a close relationship via these video chats.

I think one shorter week night call and one longer weekend call would be great and I hope we can keep it up. I hope that now that my Mother-In-Law knows how this all works and we have done it successfully once, we will be able to get into a routine and make sure we don't let the distance keep us all apart!

In other news...

I slept 5 whole, solid hours last night!! I didn't nurse all night!! I feel like I need about a hundred more nights of sleep, but I also feel like I can function today, so I call it a win!

Smug-Baby was a little hyper after the Skype call, but we got her all ready for bed, read some books (which she is getting more into, but still not loving yet) and went into the bedroom and laid down.

Here is the thing (and forgive me if this is TMI), last night marks the second night in a row that I have painted the Binky's with Gentian Violet. Gentian Violet is used to treat thrush and I wanted to try treating for thrush on the off chance that my pain with nursing isn't totally pregnancy related. The thing is, Gentian Violet is bright purple! Smug-Baby has decided that it is very yucky and she doesn't want to nurse. I have offered and still offer, but she keeps turning me down.

This means that she isn't interested in nursing to sleep and when she is hurt or asks for Binky's and I remind her that they are still purple (or show her) she chooses not to nurse. I really didn't mean to cut her off cold turkey, but since there really isn't any milk there anymore, it was just nursing for security and comfort and not for the milk.

The last two nights, Smug-Hub and I have laid with her and talked to her and each other until she falls asleep. The first night it took about 90 minutes and she kept trying to get up and wanted water and to jump on the bed and toss around. Last night, she moved around a bit getting comfortable, but settled down much faster and was asleep within about 40 minutes. She sucked her thumb and held onto my hand and I laid close beside her like I would if she was nursing.

Smug-Hub and I were having such a nice conversation (we rarely get to talk for longer than basic pleasantries and discussions on Smug-Baby) that we kept talking for a while and it was close to 10:30 when I finally shut up and fell asleep (it didn't help that I had to get up 3 times to pee)!

Smug-Baby slept until 3:30 and when she climbed into bed and asked for Binky's I said she could have them, but they were still purple and did she still want them. She said no and rolled over and snuggled into me. It took her a bit of time for her to settle and go back to sleep, but was much better than the hours and hours she was restless the night before. I didn't get back to sleep, but it was only an hour before I was getting up for work anyway, so I am really pleased!

I feel like naps are going better and I am going to give her the option of nursing or not again today. I feel like I want to make sure that not nursing is her choice (even if I am manipulating it a bit) so she doesn't feel like I took something away from her. I am also very clear that this is medicine to help with mommy's ow so she knows there is a reason for the purple paint.

I hope that soon she will be sleeping longer stretches and not waking up to nurse. Then, we can make the transition to having her sleep in her own room. I feel like once Little-Smug comes and needs to nurse in the night or have a diaper change, Smug-Baby needs to be in her own space so Little-Smug's needs will not wake her or disturb her. I hope to have all the transitioning complete before he arrives in a few short months.

Then it will be on to potty training...