Visit with Jaimie G and trips to the pool....

Noah hangs out with Jaimie G (and Steve) at Chuy's. Afterward we went over to Noah's Nannie and Poppy's house and Noah went swimming for the first time. He wasn't so sure about laying on the beach chair but liked the water....until it was nap time and then we had a total meltdown. It was the only time we got in Nannie's pool all summer but I have a feeling we'll be spending a lot of time there next year!!

Conflicts...

**Disclaimer: Don't tell my former (or current) boss about this post!!

Well, work is really getting in the way of my blog time. There are two main reasons for this:

1) they actually expect me to work at my new job. This is a new concept for me. You see at my old job I once said that if I actually did stuff all day I could get everything done in 2-3 days a week and therefore just work part time. Last year I would come into work and spend the first hour or so checking email and reading blogs. I would often write my own blog from my office. I would also take care of other personal business. For example I planned and booked our entire Belize vacation from the comfort of my desk at work! There was also a lot of sitting around in other people's offices talking and long lunches. Long story short, it rocked.
And at my new job...well, there is work to do. Much more work. And there are deadlines. And the other people around me have tons of work ethic and are really driven....so longer story shorter I have to actually do work.

2) the other problem is that my work's internet system has a serious filter on it. And although it will allow me to read blogs via blog lines I can't actually log into blogger or look at any blogspot pages. This seriously limits my ability to comment on blogs. So now I read blogs and think about comments but never get to post them. Isn't that sad??

GO BEARS GO!!!

Thursday night was Noah's first experience with Baylor football. He was decked out in his green bear onesie and cargo shorts. Note the hopeful look on Noah's face as he prepares to cheer for the Bears against Wake Forest.

Since he is a true Baylor fan in the making, Noah didn't make it through the whole game. He got fussy when the Baylor kicker was terrible and fell asleep before the end of the game.

He did say that he's still holding out hope that the Bears can win at least one game this season.

NO exceptions...

So Noah has been at daycare for almost 2 full weeks. I say almost because the preschool was closed last Thursday and Friday for teacher inservice. Noah got to enjoy Thursday at home with his Daddy and spent Friday with his Aunt Ya-ya and cousin Ava.

Overall I like his daycare. They aren't perfect but if he can't stay home with me then I know this is the best place for him to be. I do have some issues with the main teacher in his class though. Here's the story:

Each day Noah is sent home with a little form telling about his day. It details when he ate, slept and was changed. It's great. When I went to pick him up last Monday (8/18) across the top of the form his teacher had written a note and highlighted it with pink highlighter. It said:

Family & Me pictures due Wednesday AM

or NO poster for crib

NO excpetions!

And yes, the NOs were in all caps.

You see at Noah's school each baby has a poster in their crib with pictures of their families. They are really cute and it makes me happy to think that Noah could look at our faces during the day. When I dropped Noah's supplies off at the school the week before he started the director had mentioned bringing in the pictures. Honestly though with starting a new job and still getting settled in the house it wasn't really a priority. No one had mentioned anything since then.

So I read the note and as I'm driving home I start trying to think of how we are going to get family pictures together by Wednesday AM. I had left my camera at my sister's house the previous weekend. I was trying to run through my mind of what pictures were saved on the computers.

Then I started to get upset. Because I was SO stressed out about this silly poster. Part of me wanted to say:

"NO exceptions"?? Seriously. Noah has been at school a week. We'll be in that class for the next 11 months or so. Why do the pictures have to be in this week?

"NO exceptions?" Fine then! I'll make my own freaking poster.

"NO exceptions?" Wait a second. Don't I pay for Noah to go to this school??

Things were busy so I waited until Tuesday to try to get the pictures together. I saved a bunch of photos to my pen drive and tried to go print them out at CVS. The CVS near us is a 24 hour CVS. We arrived at 10:05pm....and the photo lab closed at 10pm!! ARGGHH!! So instead we bought some photo paper and came home to print out some pictures. We printed 3 and then ran out of ink.

So here we are at 11pm opening box after box in the guest room trying to find the photo albums and then leafing through the photo albums to find good pictures of all the grandparents, aunt and uncles and of course the parents.

I kept getting so mad at the daycare center because it is ridiculous that we were so stressed out about this silly poster. But of course I can't let my baby be the only baby in the class without pictures of his family.

In the end Josh and I had to laugh because we knew that someday we'd be more stressed about a school project than Noah was....we just didn't know it would happen at 11 weeks.

Ava is 1...

Ava turned 1 on August 16th. Of course my sister threw an awesome luau bash for the big day.

Noah had the perfect luau outfit complete with Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses.

He spent most of the party being passed from friend to friend but of course his Aunt Ya-ya got him first.

And here's the beautiful birthday girl!!! She had a blast running around the yard with tons of little friends.

The giant tubs of drinks were tempting to little hands that love water. Ava kept playing with the ice. Or maybe she's just trying to decide if she'd like a Diet Dr Pepper or a beer.

It wouldn't have been a first birthday without a little cake just for Ava. She wasn't sure what to do with it at first but eventually decided to pull out little pieces and feed them to anyone who got close to her....which lead to Noah having cake rubbed all over his little face.

I can't believe our little Ava is already 1 year old. The time since she joined our family has flown by. We've fallen more and more in love with her each day. I'm so glad that Noah will grow up with a cousin close to his age. I can only imagine the trouble they will stir up together.

We love you, Ava D!!!

In One Word...

**Left my camera at Chris's over the weekend. I'm back at work so I haven't had time to drive over there and pick it back up....but when I do I'll post cute pictures of Noah and Ava at Ava's 1st birthday party!!

I was tagged by Kelli. (I linked her public blog. She also has a cooking blog and a really cute blog about her daughter but it's private so I won't link it here.) She must know that I'm a total sucker for these types of things....

The Rules: Answer the questions using only one word. Then tag three others.
1. Where is your cell phone? pink
2. Your significant other? perfect
3. Your hair? frizzy (it's been raining too much)
4. Your mother? amazing
5. Your father? daddy
6. Your favorite thing? sleeping
7. Your dream last night? didn't
8 Your favorite drink? dr pepper
9. Your dream/goal?
10. The room you’re in? paint
11. Your hobby? eating
12. Your fear? spiders
13. What do you want to be in 6 years? administrator
14. What you’re not? serious
15. Muffins? no thanks
16. One of your wish list items? kitchen (as in a total remodel of the one we have)
17. Where you grew up? texas
18. The last thing you did? email
19. What are you wearing? jeans
20. Favorite gadget? phone
21. Your pets? Monty
22. Your computer? necessity
23. Your mood? sleepy
24. Missing someone? yes
25. Your car? gray
26. Something you’re not wearing? jeans
27. Favorite store? Target
28. Like someone? sometimes
29. Your favorite color? green
30. When is the last time you laughed? lunch
31. Last time you cried? Daycare drop off

Hmm....If you actually read this whole thing consider yourself tagged!!!

Going to School Tomorrow...

I've been at work now for the last 3 days. So far I like it. Right now we're going to meetings and orientations which can be boring but I've met lots of nice people and I think I'm really going to enjoy my new job.


My mom took care of Noah on Friday, Monday and Tuesday so tomorrow is Noah's first day of daycare. I really like the little school that we've found but obviously it is going to be difficult to drop my little man off with people who are strangers to me right now.
I'll let you know how it goes...

Chicks Dig Me...

2 months

Noah was 2 months old on August 6th. I can't believe our little man has already been here for 2 months. Time is flying. He's so much bigger and really alert. This month he really started responding to voices, smiling and laughing. He has a great laugh. He also found his hands and will play with them. I found this great monkey for our little Monkey. You can tell from the pictures that Noah obviously has mixed feelings about the monkey.




2 month stats:
Weight: 12 lbs 4 oz -- 50th percentile
Length: 24 inches -- 90th percentile (yeah, right!)
Head: 16 1/2 cm -- 90th percentile (full of brains?)

Noah did really well with all his shots and got 3 cool Snoopy bandaids. Of course the next day he ran a fever which broke my heart because I was at work. Nannie (my mom) took great care of Noah though.

End of summer...

Tonight is the end of summer. I have to go to work tomorrow. It won't be too bad because the training is specifically for my new job and not just the general first of the school year meetings--those start next week. My mom is watching Noah tomorrow too so I know he'll be in good hands.

And hopefully tomorrow or this weekend I'll have time to post his cute 2 month pics and give the details of his 2 month doctor's appointment. Let's just say I think those percentile measurements are a straight up joke.

If you have time on Friday please say a little prayer for me as I'm away from my little man for 8 hours.

Chili's....

Noah made his first trip to Chili's just a few days after we moved. Josh and I are what some people might refer to as Chili's "regulars." It is just quick and easy and pretty cheap if we split the fajitas. Plus throughout my pregnancy I craved their fries so we ate there a lot.

Noah overall was pretty unimpressed but did sleep through most of the meal.

Side note: I think the people in the next booth that I was a little bit of a nut to be taking pictures of our baby at Chili's.

Jogie the Great...

Noah's Jogie the Great came all the way from New Jersey to visit him. "Jogie" is grandfather in Polish and our Jogie is so excited to be a "pra-jogie" which is our Americanized pronouncation of great grandfather.

Noah is 1 month old (almost a month ago)....

I'm so totally behind on blogging. Mainly due to the whole moving thing.

Despite the fact that I had surgery 2 days before I made sure that we took pictures of Noah at 1 month. I wanted to make sure I posted them before he's 2 months old (a week from now) so you can see how much he's changing.

Check out those skinny chicken legs!!

He was so patient and sweet sitting up in the big chair. I wanted to put something near him so we could compare growth from month to month. So, here he is with his Pooh bear.
Eventually he grew tired of his photo shoot but I couldn't resist just one more picture. He's cute even when fussing.

Boxes, boxes, boxes...

The movers came. The stuff was loaded. Then it was unloaded....in the rain. It hasn't rained in weeks in Texas but of course it poured on our moving day. No harm done though.

Now begins the task of unpacking all the boxes. Of course the unpacking has to happen on Noah's schedule....which means that it happens in short bursts between feedings, changings and play time.

My mom is of course super helpful. Thanks to her help our 150+ boxes are now down to about 60 or so left to be unpacked. Next on the to-do list...pick some paint colors and get some paint on these new walls.

Our last night on Wren....

Well, I'm sitting in a house full of boxes. Everything is packed and ready to go except for a few last minute baby items we need to throw in the car and the clothes we'll wear tomorrow. The movers arrive at 8am.


We've been in here for 6+ years and we're definitely tearing out some deep roots to move our lives to a new place. We've had so much fun and we're sad to go. We'll miss Fort Worth and our friends here so much. We love y'all. Thanks for everything.

July 5, 2003

Five years ago I married my best friend.
It was a great day and a wonderful beginning to our life together.

Guess what we did for the 4th?!?!?

Most people watch fireworks and picnic on the 4th. Some people watch baseball games. Josh and I decided to do something a little different this year. But first a little back story....

So, during my pregnancy I would sometimes get intense pains in the middle of my upper back (between my shoulder blades) and/or across the top of my rib cage mainly on the right side. Now when I say intense I mean that it hurt to sit, stand or lay down and it hurt to breathe. The pain would last anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours and made it impossible to function. These "episodes" sometimes occurred at work but usually hit later at night once I was home. One episode started while I was driving to my grad school class final. I finished the test in record time (do they keep records like that?) due to the fact that I couldn't focus and it hurt to sit there. Josh and I often debated whether or not I should go to the emergency room during these bouts of pain. Josh represented the "let's go" side and I camped out on the "I can get through this without the emergency room" side of the fence. I was resistant to going to the emergency room because I thought the pain was caused by gas and it is embarrassing to go to the ER because you have gas.

Eventually I described these pains to my doctor and she thought that I might have stones in my gall bladder. She told me that she could run some blood tests and that if I needed to that I could have surgery to remove my gall bladder. She assurred me that gall bladder surgery while pregnant was totally safe. I explained to her that between work, grad school, job and house hunting that I didn't have time to have surgery whether I was pregnant or not.

I'm sure by now you are starting to wonder what this has to do with Independence Day.
Wednesday my mom came over to help me pack some boxes. Wednesday at 3am after I fed Noah I noticed that my back was starting to hurt again. An "episode" was coming on so I took some advil and went back to sleep. The pain persisted when I woke up. And persisted. And persisted. My mom finally convinced me that maybe I should go to the ER around 4pm because I was hurting so badly that I couldn't function which included being totally unable to take care of Noah. I would describe the pain of these episodes as worse then my labor experience. So, I gave in and up to the ER we went.

At the ER they did some blood work and a sonogram of my gall bladder. I not only had gall stones but some of the stones were stuck in the ducts connecting my liver and some other organs. This was causing all sorts of havoc on my system. The ER doc asked if I'd had pains like this in the past. I explained that I had them throughout my pregnancy as well as 3 other "episodes" in the past week. She then admitted me to the hospital for a procedure to remove the stones in the ducts and a surgery to remove my gall bladder. I asked if they could do both at once but I was told that wasn't possible.

So, we spent Wednesday night at the hospital. Thursday was spent in misery because my procedure was at 3:30 and I couldn't have anything to eat or drink after 7am. Due to the fact that the stones were causing blockages my bilirubin count had gone pretty high and I was totally jaundiced. We should've taken a picture to commemorate how yellow I was.... Anyway, I got to have full anestesia and go to sleep while they removed the stones from my ducts. Afterwards I was starving but was on a "clear liquid diet" due to the surgery I was having the next day. At this point it has been about 36 hours since I had eaten anything solid.

Friday morning at 6:30am another anestesiologist woke me up to have me sign consent forms for my surgery. They rolled me down at 7am and I had surgery to remove my gall bladder. Happy Birthday America!! I have four small incisions in my abdomen that they actually put back together with glue instead of stitches. I was ready for a chipotle burrito, pepperoni pizza and a cheeseburger at this point but they insisted I start slowly with more clear liquids and eventually a turkey sandwich. They sent me home Friday night around 7pm. My mom made chicken, rice and salad and I promptly ate everything in sight. We just watched fireworks on TV since I wasn't in much of a mood to get out and about at that point.

It was definitely a 4th of July that I won't forget for quite a while.

I'm a little sore still today. I would describe the pain as kind of like having a stitch in your side after you've been running. I have great pain meds though! :) And of course I now get to play the "I had surgery" card in order to avoid all things move related!!

Hope your 4th was hospital free!!!

Noah loves to sleep. He sleeps so much that I had to call and check with the doctor about waking him up to eat. He is usually wide awake between the hours of 4-6am though...so if you're in the neighborhood and want to hang out please stop by....we're up and ready for fun....well, at least Noah is.

Noah's been busy...

They say that newborns eat, sleep, poop and repeat. Noah is eating well. He sleeps like a champ. And well, let's just say the child has no problems pooping either. But he does tons of other stuff too....

He's been to the doctor for weight checks. Today he weighed in at 8 lbs 2 oz. Like I said the kid eats well. You can probably guess from the expression on his face that laying on the scale is not his favorite thing to do.

He loves hanging out with visitors. He spent Father's Day with Daddy, Poppy and Uncle Mark. Daddy and Uncle Mark were both celebrating their first Father's Day. It was Poppy's 30th Father's Day but his first time to celebrate Father's Day with his grandkids. Here's a picture of the new dads and the Poppy.

Noah has also enjoyed tons of snuggles and kisses from his Nanny and GiGi.

Noah has also been on two outings to Target (he slept the entire trip both times) and over to Plano to look for a preschool.

Of course most days we hang out at the house and feel totally busy just eating and hanging out....after all this is my summer break and it wouldn't be summer without some lazy days of doing nothing.

Another big check...

No, not the kind of check you cash. But another big check off our to-do list. I found a daycare for Noah yesterday!! Woohoo! Actually, it isn't a "daycare" but a "school." Whatever. It is clean, cute and the ladies were so so so nice. It is also in our price range and has an opening in the infant room in August. Double Woohoo!! It is also located nicely between work and home.
I know that come August it will tear me up to leave Noah there but of all the places we looked it
seemed like the place that will tear me up the least....or at least I think so.

Now all I need to do is find some spare time between Noah's meals to pack up some boxes. 20 days until the moving truck comes. Speaking of moving truck I need to find movers!! One more thing to add to the to-do list.

I know it is totally disappointing that there are no pictures of Noah in this post. I'll try to take care of that tomorrow during one of Noah's naps....uploading pictures sounds way more fun then packing!!