11 Months

I can't believe E is now 11 months old. She is doing so well and has come so far. We have to wait until her 12 month appointment to know how much she weighs but I would guess she is about 20 lbs. We switched her to her convertible car seat a few weeks ago (rear facing of course) and it has been so nice not struggling with the infant seat. She looks like such a big girl in her new seat. She is now crawling all over the place and with great speed. We have taken to barricading her into the living room with storage bins. I know a little low class but we just have not had time to get a gate. The bins actually work quite well and we can put toys on top for E to play with. Additionally Darwin can jump over so we are not constantly getting up to open the gate for him. Ella has mastered pulling to a stand and starting to cruise a little bit. She spends much of her day pulling to a stand, sitting down, and then pulling back up. She is very funny when she goes down and very carefully looks to see what she is doing before lowering herself down. She is babbling more and more these days and is definitely repeating her consonant sounds. Just today she was saying mamama. Not that she was saying it with purpose but it was nice to to hear as she tends to babble dadadada a lot. This week she learned to clap (finally!) which is good since I was getting a bit worried about her lack of clapping and waving. Still waiting for the wave but I think she is getting close.

I am anxiously counting down the last days of school. Just 5.5 days with kids left! I was smart and the kids are doing presentations Monday-Wednesday this week leaving just Thursday for a wrap up activity, Friday a field trip, and Monday graduation. I can't wait to have my summer to spend with my family! I have secured a part time consulting job for the summer which will require me to work 20 hrs/week from home. I am very excited about this as the money will be great to have saved when Shazam goes back to school.

Shazam mentioned in the last post that we have started planning Little E's first birthday party. I must admit that I am going a little crazy about planning the details of this festivity. We are having a pink owl theme and I have found a shop on etsy to make some party items to coordinate with our invites. I am pretty sure that it will be pretty cute. I know that some people think that having an elaborate birthday party for a one year old is stupid and the rational side of me agrees, but for me this party is much more than a first birthday party. For me I am reclaiming the day. I can confidently say that July 10th 2009 was one of the worst days of my life. It was also the best day of my life. I have never been so scared and so sick in my entire life. Shazam and I have tried to put on a brave face about the events of the day and put a positive spin as we told the story of Ella's birth but in reality things were bad. I would say they were just about as bad as they get. I was on a morphine drip to control the epigastric pain I was experiencing (a pain that was so severe they thought my liver had ruptured), I was on a mag drip to keep me from having a seizure, the lights were off so that my nervous system was not stimulated, my blood pressure was so high they thought I was going to have a stroke, my kidneys shut down, as did my liver. Little E was in equally tough shape. She was small and measuring weeks behind her 30 weeks gestation. While she did cry when she was born she scored a 2 on the apgar. She was intubated and not breathing on her own. Ella was born at 1 pm and quickly whisked to the nicu. Shazam and I would not see her again until after 8 pm when they wheeled me in on a gurney. I spent the first night as a mother weeping in Shazam's arms as I was bombarded with the sounds other people's babies crying in the adjacent rooms. As July 10th approaches I am relieving those terrifying days in the hospital before her birth and the 69 days of terror that we lived through after she was born. It all is still very fresh and still very raw for me. It is my hope that by concentrating on E's party I can fill July 10th 2010 with some beautiful memories that will perhaps help soften the not so pretty ones that I live with now. So if I think ordering cute birthday banners will help me feel better that gosh darn it all I will do it. I personally think I deserve it!

Well That Is Embarrassing

Wow. I'm embarrassed by my blog slacking personally and just in general. I have no good excuse except that being a mom has kind of swallowed me up a bit. I guess that's why moms make reference to "losing themselves" a bit. I'm totally consumed with Little E, diapers, laundry, etc.. To say I'm looking forward to SSG being done school in a couple weeks is an understatement and I will probably regret this later, but I am looking forward to school starting in September. I don't really consider myself on overly extroverted, social person but damn to I crave adult interactions.

I also don't want to come off like I am complaining that I've had the opportunity to stay home for a bit. I think I've done a pretty good job considering I don't think I am a natural at this. Little E is thriving and a super-happy baby. She will be 11 months old next week (what?!), she is probably around 20 pounds, she's doing a great job eating, she crawls like a champ, she pulls to standing, NEVER stops moving all day long, babbles all day long, and now has two teeth! I find it unreal that we are starting to plan her birthday party.

On the mommies front, I think we are fairing well. We are enjoying our time with her and E makes us laugh all the time. We are especially functioning better because E sleeps from about 7:00 to 7:30 on a regular basis. It's heaven and dammit we deserve it! This sleeping thing only happened around mid-April so it was a long haul or at least it felt like it. SSG is so ready for school to be over. I know juggling parenthood and working full-time has been no easy task. She really has handled it like a champ. I really admire her for that. Beyond being home with the girl I have over the past couple months tried to pick up some projects here and there to earn a little cash. I am in the middle of an interior paint job right now and have 3 jobs after that. I feel like I'm running myself a little ragged with lots of working on weekends and in the evening but it needs to be done. It's how I feel I can contribute financially. It makes me feel good which I need as the fact of unemployment for over a year now really weighs on me.

So last Saturday we took the ferry to Provincetown to spend the day there. We have friends that have a place there on the beach so it was great to see them, walk around, introduce E to the beach, and also nice to have a home base. We had a great time but holy crap was it exhausting. The ferry each way is an hour and a half...it was a looong hour and a half. E wants to move allll the time so it's exhausting. Add that we sad across from this pretentious jackass that went on about the private schools he sent his kids to, the huge house he had, and how successful he is. I wish I had a picture of his face when I said I was going to school to get my masters in social work. He didn't get it and to have a job where you didn't make tons of money just didn't compute. God I hate people like him. Anyway, like I said we had a great day and E was pretty good considering she only slept like 30 minutes the whole day. Here are some shots from our day!