So finally an update..after 6 months! I know, I know.

Yes I know that I have really been slacking!!! It occured to me today that our blog had not been updated since the 4th of July! : P , Pretty sad I know. But I am giving myself a slap on the wrist and resolving to update this blog more twice a year!

Here is a quick recap of our last 6 months,

Zoe dropped down to the 3rd percentile for height and weight at about 6 months. We couldn't figure out why. I mean the kid would breastfeed for 45 minutes and then eat 1 or 2 jars of babyfood after that. She was meeting all of her milestones on time or early, and seemed to be doing fine as long as Mom was holding her. The doctor assumed that she was just petite, but decided to run a battery of tests just to be safe. Everything came back perfectly normal, so he decided to monitor her weight with monthly weight checks. At 8 months she fell off the charts. The doctor said not to worry and just to up her calorie intake. Yeah right, that doctor obviously had NO idea who he was dealing with. Me, not worry? Please. I freaked out, called and harassed every nurse in the office until I got someone to recommend that I go to the Primary Children's Food and Nutrition (FUN Clinic) for a second opinion. So without a doctors referral I scheduled an appointment, begged the nurse in charge to squeeze me in the second that they could and had an appointment scheduled for the next day. It was amazing to pull that off, the office was booked out for a month. They had me put Zoe on a special diet, had me quit breastfeeding so that we could monitor her calorie intake and sent me to a Feeding Specialist. She watched Zoe breastfeed and finally told me what was going on. Zoe had a case of acid reflux that was so bad that it was painful for her to eat until she was full. She was intentionally doing 10 sucks to a swallow, tricking me into thinking she was eating longer and only getting 1-2 ounces of breastmilk a feeding. Even with the babyfood she was only taking in 500 calories a day, 200 calories shy of the 700 that she should be eating. She was intentionally eating just enough to get by. So we treated the reflux, powerpacked her diet with Pediasure, butter and cream and in one month she gained 5 pounds! The nutritionist said she was cured : ) And after months of not being able to cook, clean, shower, eat, or do anything fun (at least until Jake came home from work) I suddenly had a life again! I could cook! I could clean! I could function like a normal human being because I could put my baby down! I was in heaven! And Zoe was much, much happier!


We moved out of our gross and ancient rental into a beautiful brand new house of our own. Which is beautiful, clean, much bigger and mouse free : ) We love it! Zoe is much happier now that she is allowed to crawl on the carpet, Jake and I are loving having an immaculate house with lots of extra space in a great location and I am sleeping much, much better without the stress of little Mickeys running around. *shudder* Uggghhhh! So glad to get out of there!!! We love our new place!!!!! : )

Zoe pulled herself to standing at 10 months and was an expert cruiser by 11 months. She's had a blast exploring her brand new house!

Zoe was a skunk for Halloween. Ridiculously cute, I'll have to post a pic!

I started painting again after a 10 year hiatus! I'm having so much fun! I really missed it!

I cut my hair short! Well actually shoulder length, but that's short for me!

Zoe tasted Thai food and loved it! Along with salmon, wild rice, pickled beets, mashed potatoes and yams. She loves bananas, cheese and anything spicy. She is definately Jake's baby!

We had our first Christmas as a family together! I was sick but it rocked! Watching a baby's first Christmas is just the sweetest thing ever!

Jake is taking Portugese classes, before I know it he'll be teasing me in a foreign language!

Well that's about it for the recap! I'll try not to go so long between updates next time!

Hope everything is going great for all of you guys!!!

: )

American Woman

We started our 4th with a giant Dees breakfast of 'Freedom' Toast and decided it would be a yearly tradition for us to eat foods from different countries and change the name of those foods to make them sound patriotic and American. Next year I'm thinking maybe we'll do Freedom Onion Soup with Freedom bread for dinner. Mmmmmm......sounds patriotic : )

Haha, we're such nerds.

Anyway after breakfast Zoe was in a great mood so we all just hung out and vegged. Zoe played with her froggy, Jake slept on my lap and I watched a Michael Jackson special on VH1. RIP Michael, you will be missed.

After our relaxing morning we went to a BBQ at my Mom's house and then to Zoe's Grandma and Grandpa Smith's house for some more visiting and some fireworks. The food was great and Jake had a lot of fun lighting fireworks with Ben and his Dad. Zoe was exhausted so she slept in her sleepywrap during the fireworks show. At about 1am we finally made it home to get some sleep. All in all we had a really great and relaxing 4th!

Finally an update!

I decided that since it's been a couple of months I had better get on updating our blog. I know that I've really been slacking, but what a a couple of months! Zoe is 4 and a half months old already! She's eating rice cereal and drinking apple juice! ( Is it weird that a little part of me is a sad that she's growing up so fast?) We had to get the organic kind with no supplements or sweeteners in it because she had an allergic reaction to the first rice cereal that we gave her ( I think it was the soy used to flavor it). She got a little rash on her forehead and cheeks. She loves her apple juice though! No problems there. Grandma hooked her up with her first apple juice last week. The first time she tried it she made a face like she was sucking on a lemon, but after that first try she is happily swigging down up to 2 ounces a day of the stuff. It's a nice treat for her when it's hot outside.

I almost had her going to bed at midnight for a while and it was amazing, then one night a neighbor pounded on the door at 2 am and she hasn't gone to bed earlier than 1 or 2 since. Her norm is actually closer to 3 or 4. I've been really exhausted because I've been going to bed at 3,4 or even 5 most nights, then when Jake leaves for work at 7 it usually wakes me up and I have a hard time falling back to sleep. But when she wakes up and looks at me with a giant smile on her face, like I'm the best Mom in the whole world for changing her diaper and feeding her breakfast, I forget how exhausted I am. And it doesn't matter that I have forgotten my birthday, my address or even my social security number earlier that day.

Although it will be nice when I start sleeping a little bit more and the 'mom-nesia' wairs off. There we go, I just forgot how to spell wair. Ware? Wair? Where? I swear I'm losing thoughts from my childhood...

Wear!!! There it is! I think...I hope my brain will go back to normal eventually. A couple of weeks ago Jake went outside in the mud to feed the dog and when he came back into the house to see the baby, I asked in a very serious, accusatory tone, "Did you wear SHOES outside!". He just looked at me and laughed. What I meant to say was ,"Did you take your shoes off?". Here's your sign.

Anyway back to my sweet little girl.

She's teething again (I'm so grateful for baby Tylenol!) and she's been fussy because she doesn't feel well (also incredibly grateful for Gripe Water!). We also made the mistake of putting ourselves in a situation where I had to take a day after pill (which is exactly like taking birth control pills except stronger for times when you um, aren't as careful as you should be and want to prevent pregnancy) well some of the hormones must have passed through my breast milk creating a perfect storm of fussiness. My poor baby cried for hours. That'll teach us to be more careful!!! And of course this perfect storm of fussiness had to happen on a day when we had somewhere we needed to be. It was the day of our friend Parisa's baby shower for her first baby girl. Zoe was so fussy it took me 3 hours to get the 2 of us out of the house and I could barely get the present in a gift bag! It was like colic all over again. We were an hour late. I felt really bad and was pretty embarrassed, but what can you do? Thankfully everyone seemed to understand and thanks to Zoe's toy dragonfly, baby tylenol and my sleepywrap we somehow survived the evening. Hopefully we didn't scare Parisa too much with what's to come...Sorry P!

She was blessed the first Sunday in May. My mother in law got some great pictures (I'll have to post those soon) But I was so busy I got one picture of my cousin holding her and I didn't get any more until after everyone had gone and she had changed into some comfy play clothes. But I got some cute after blessing pictures of Zoe playing with her Giraffe. She was really good at the church. She cried for about 2 seconds and was a perfect angel the rest of the service. She was really fussy at the after party though. I think she was just really over stimulated. She completely relaxed and played with her toys after everyone left. She had some great one on one time with her Grandma Smith.

She also got her first spider bite this month. On her little forehead. It made me sick to my stomach. I thought maybe it was just a mark from a headband, but it turned out to be a spider bite. It made me want to kill every spider on the planet to avenge her. It also stayed red for over a week and has just started to clear up. Her pediatrician prescribed a topical antibiotic and that really helped. Now Jake and I are trying to find ingenious ways to spider proof our house.

And finally, for the last part of this novel of an update, last night Jake and I went on our first date alone since Zoe was born and saw 'Up'! It was so nice to finally get out of the house and do something fun together! I was starting to feel like I was chained to the bedroom. Jake even shaved his goofy moustache and goatee off for the occaision. He looked really handsome. The movie was adorable and really touching. I was in tears about ten minutes after it started. We may have to buy that one. Jake's Mom babysat and she said that Zoe fussed a little bit (she's had a little bit of separation anxiety lately), but was pretty good and spent most of the night drinking apple juice and watching 'Dances with Wolves' with Grandma. We had a great time and I was really glad that I finally got comfortable enough to leave her with a sitter. She had some fun with Grandma and we had a really great time together.

Anyway, that's the latest! Sorry about the novel! I'll try not to wait so long between updates next time : )

Freedom!

Zoe finally turned 3 months (12 weeks) old last friday! Which meant that I finally had the okay from her pediatrician to take her to public places that aren't too busy or crowded with sick people. So I am finally free to leave my stuffy house and take my sweet baby out into the world!!! I am so excited!

To celebrate, last Monday we ventured out for the first time with her Grandma to Target, I was worried that she might get hungry and I was thinking about feeding her before we left, but it was getting late and her Grandma convinced me that she would probably be fine so I decided to give it a shot. Bad idea jeans. Zoe was hungry and fussy the second we got to the store and I was so distracted and overwhelmed with guilt for not trusting my instincts or bringing an emergency bottle of formula with me that I couldn't enjoy myself at all at first. To top it off I had forgotten her pacifier. So I panicked and tried to find some ingenius way to buy and sanitize a new binky, but by the time I made it through the checkout line she had fallen asleep. My mom and I had a great time once she fell asleep though and bought Zoe some cute summer dresses, headbands and a new toy.

At last on the 22nd, the two of us went shopping together for the first time. I made sure that she got some food before we left this time and it was awesome! I felt like a human again! We went to Barnes and Noble and got Zoe a little board book copy of Goodnight Moon. She had a great time shopping. She loves riding in her stroller. I cleaned off her book and handed it too her and she actually turned the pages and looked at the pictures herself. She was so good in the store. She didn't cry once. She just stared in fascination at all of the colorful books. Then we went back to target to do a little shopping and stopped to visit Zoe's Grandma and Grandpa Smith before we headed home. She was all smiles. It was a beautiful day too, just like summer outside. It was a really great Earth day for us. Zoe got to see a little of the Earth and I got a much needed reminder that I still lived on it.

Easter

Zoe's first Easter was a pretty eventful day at our house! We almost didn't make it to any of our family parties because our washer broke with all of Zoe's clothes in it and it wouldn't spin the water out of them. Since we couldn't take her to visit our families in her pajamas we waited around for her clothes to dry, for 3 and a half hours! But once she had some clean, dry clothes to wear we finally made it to the Thompson party 2 hours late and had a really great time visiting with everyone, eating a giant Easter dinner and flying kites. Jake actually got a kite 2200 feet up into the air and it took 3 people 15 minutes using a power drill to reel it back down! It was hilarious. Just one more thing he's completely gifted at. Zoe was the center of attention most of the day and she loved it! She smiled and cooed at everyone and hugged her bunny rabbit for hours and got lots of attention. By the end of the party she was nice and tired, so Mom and Dad got the best Easter gift ever, 8 hours of sleep!

Almost 8 weeks!

My little girl is almost 8 weeks old and smiling at me! I can't believe it! I also can't believe that I have survived this far. She's been really colicky and teething, ( TEETHING at 7 weeks! I couldn't believe it when I saw that first tooth!) and between the exhaustion, new parent stress and a few well deserved nervous breakdowns, I feel like I've aged 5 years in the last (almost) 2 months. My house is a mess, I'm living in my bathrobe in the bedroom surrounded by banana peels, pop tart and granola bar wrappers like a refuge. I'm lucky if I get a shower or an actual meal before Jake gets home from work and the only way that I can pee without her breaking into tears is if I bring her carseat into the bathroom so that she can see me the entire time. It's been a long few weeks, but it's all totally worth it when I get to see that big smile.

Her carseat carrier is my new best friend, I know it sounds terrible but sometimes she spends the night in that thing because it's the only way either one of us gets any sleep. If I didn't have that carseat and a hot water bottle I don't know what I'd do.

Zoe's first growth spurt!

Our little girl turned 3 weeks old last week and hit her first milestone, her 3 week growth spurt! So that meant that mommy went from feeding her every 4 hours or so to every hour or hour and a half! What a long week! Last night after about 5 days of 'spurting' she was back to her pre growth spurt, super angelic self and slept for 5 hours straight! It was fantastic and we were sooo grateful to get some sleep! But we both decided that a few days of sleeplessness is a small price to pay for someone so cute.