Work

I'm a little nervous.... Today I'm going to work at Samaritan Hospital - or at least I'm going to go spend a day orienting there. I haven't been there since I was in school 4 years ago. I've been getting cancelled constantly at Memorial. For some reason the census is really low and they've had to close 2 floors. That's never happened in the 7 years that I've worked there! And since I'm per-diam I'm the first one to be cancelled. I've lost four days work in the last couple weeks and its not looking like its getting better! That's a half months pay! And all right at the time that I was trying to pick up extra hours to cover the time I'm taking off for vacation! Ugh - its been really stressful for me, but just a perfect reminder that God is in control - not me - and I need to trust Him fully. So anyway, Sam is a "sister" hospital and they usually need more help so I'm going over there to orient so that I can hopefully pick up more hours there when I get cancelled at Mem. I don't like change.... ....I'm nervous.

1 Year Old!!!

My little tiny baby is one year old today!! I can hardly stand it! It feels like just yesterday that I went the hospital and came home with such a tiny little bundle. I'm so happy and excited to celebrate her birthday and yet I'm sad. My little baby is growing up and I can't slow time down! I'm just trying to enjoy every moment with her - it goes by way too quickly! I pray that she will grow into a wonderful and stong woman of God. I pray that God will give Kris and I wisdom as her parents - that we can help her to learn and grow to her greatest potential. We love you little babe and we're so happy to have you in our lives :)

June 2, 2008

June 2009

Napping update...

I hesitate to write this - lest by some strange turn of events I jix myself. That's not possible silly - I don't believe in superstition!! Well - our little babe who has been a HORRID sleeper since she was born seems to be doing better. I completely lost it about 3 weeks ago and decided that I couldn't stand it a day longer, so I pulled out the book "Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Baby." I read the chapter about kids her age and I can't believe how much it seems to have helped. What did we do? One, small... little... change... We moved her bedtime forward by one hour. That's it. Period. She now goes to bed at 7pm instead of 8pm. That's it. Period. And our life has changed. She's no longer totally over tired all the time and bouncing off the walls. She takes great naps usually twice per day. (Don't get me wrong - we still have bad days some times...) Weekends are a little harder - when Kris and I are both home she just wants to play with us and usually takes about an hour to get herself to sleep - or doesn't sleep at all. But in general things are getting better - I'm sooooo relieved! Its been a rough year - just due to lack of sleep! Because its been tough, I still freak out every time we have a rough day, but I'm so grateful and praising God that things seem to be better. It makes me love and enjoy my time with Abigail so much!!

A couple nice updates...

We were very blessed to get a nice income tax return this year. The first thing we did was get a new railing on the stairs. We didn't even get it because we wanted to (we actually had other things that we wanted to do), but it was a necessity! Abi could put her head through the old one and slide underneath - not safe at all!!!

I'm sooooo glad that we got it done though - We absolutely love the new railing! I'm in the process of staining/poly-ing it still. But, it looks so nice - nice and modern and new!

I've been dreaming of re-doing this garden since we moved in 2 years ago... I was finally able to get to it this year. I dug all these out a couple months ago and then spent pretty much every day thinking about exactly what I wanted to put back there!

And this is the finished product!! I love it - I'm quite happy with the way it turned out. I think that it will look better as the plants grow a bit, but I already really like it.

We also just had a new roof and gutters put on - courtesy of our home owner's insurance due to a hail storm we had last year in June. We only had to pay the $500 deductible and the rest was covered by the insurance. It was soooo noisy and we couldn't stand having the construction guys here - they were just nasty - but thankfully its done and we shouldn't have to replace the roof for many years to come! We actually just had the gutters done last year, but the insurance agreed they should be replaced - so we have new gutters again for 2 years in a row...

Four wonderful years :)

5-27-09 marked four years of marriage. They've been wonderful. I love my husband and I know how blessed I am. We've had a couple tough times, but mostly we've had great times. We've walked it together and with God's grace. I love you, Honey. You are my best friend. I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with you.

11 month shots

And the 11 month shots! I just want to kiss those big ol' cheeks :) Thanks for your help, Mom! I couldn't do it without you - she's too wiggly.

How long has it been?

Once again I have allowed the ages to come and go and I have not posted to my blog... There just isn't enough time in any of my days! My little baby is about to turn 1 in just four short days. I don't like to think about it - I'm sad. She isn't going to be a baby much longer and its gone by MUCH too quickly.On the other hand - I'm so proud to celebrate her first birthday with her! I love this little babe. :) I love to watch her learn and grow - its such a wonderful thing. I swear there has never been another more awesome baby in all the world!

Here are Abi's 10 month pictures - so what if they're almost 2 months late!! Isn't she adorable? Its getting harder and harder to take her picture every month because she won't sit still for even 2 seconds anymore...

Our New Furniture!

Its here!!! Our fabulous new bedroom furniture! Now we just have to sell our house and get one with a bigger master bedroom. J/K :) Its a little crowded, but its very do-able. We're so excited to finally have furniture... ...and an awesome mattress! Now need to finally get some curtains and decorate the room. The mattress came in on Sat. We were going to just sleep on the futon for a few days till the furniture came in, but we couldn't do it. We just laid it on the floor and slept on just that for a few days till the furniture came in on Tues (yesterday). I'm now waking up in comfort every morning. I've had no back pain for 4 days! What a wonderful feeling. :)

Its amazing how fast the dresser filled up! We had a little trouble fitting things, but I think we just weren't used to having dressers to put things in...

I wanted to get a good picture of Abi hugging her Teddy. This one isn't great, but its OK. My little babe who has always been the one to refuse any kind of snuggling is suddenly becoming a snugly baby!! And I love it!! I don't even really know how she figured it out, but one day I went in to get her up from her nap, and she rapped her arms around my neck, put her cheek against mine and said, "Aweeee...!" Oh, how I love it!! And she loves to hug her Teddies too - or as she says, "Teh-gees." She says Huggies too - "Uhh-gees." :) Oh, she loves to play with the cell phones too. For a couple months every time the phone rings and I pick it up she wants to talk and goes crazy till I let her say hello. Well, a couple days ago she was playing with Kris' phone and picked it up and put it to her ear all by herself. She's getting so big and figuring things out on her own! How does it happen? How do they grow up so fast?

On the other hand... We've had so much trouble getting Abi to nap well. I spent a week working hard to get her on a schedule and it seemed to work, but it didn't last even a week. Now I'm trying again. Its so frustrating. I've been reading "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Baby" and getting some good tips. I feel like we've tried everything over the last year. After doing some reading, It seems that she's been overtired and overstimulated most of her life despite how hard I've tried to keep that from being the case. Who knows... I have new resolve to just keep working at it. What else is there to do in such a case? Its been so frustrating, but the worst part is when it gets stressful. And that it has been. And stress isn't good for happy marriages. :) I'm so grateful that Kris is so understanding and helpful. I love you, Husband - with all my heart! Every day I'm reminded how blessed I am that you wanted to marry me. :)

Updates:

Seems like there's always so much going on and I don't have time to update my blog. So I thought I might just throw out a punch of thoughts and leave it at that... ...for now...

- We've been having so much trouble with Abi's naps since she was born. Seems that letting her scream it out has finally done the trick. She still doesn't always sleep great, but usually so much better.

-We got a really wonderful tax return this year! What a blessing - now we're trying to decide what the priorities are to use it for.

-We've been wanting to have a hole put in the wall between the living room and dining room - kinda like a pass through window. So we decided to get an estimated done. ...$2895... WHAT!!??? Can you be serious???? We're talking a 4x5 foot window people! We're not talking paving the driveway in gold!

-We ordered bedroom furniture and we're sooooo excited. It should be in sometime next week. Tomorrow we're going to look for a mattress...

-We're in the middle of trying to refinance our house to bring our mortgage payments down a bit. The appraiser came on Monday and we're just praying that she gives good numbers. The house has to appraise for at least 223,000 in order for us to be able to re-fi.

-I dug up all the old bushes from the front of the house a couple weeks ago. The plan is to totally re-landscape the front this year. We'll see how that goes. Hopefully I can get at least one side done. I have grand ideas for what I want it to look like.

-I'd welcome any suggestions on how to get rid of moles. Our entire back yard has been completely destroyed by them!

-I can't wait to go to Florida in June! I miss my family soooo much.

-Abi is crawling all over the house now like a little crazy person and getting into everything that she can find. She cruses too - so cute :) She loves to go outside on nice days - she points to the window and says, "side?"

-I'm trying to prep to run a 5K this summer. I'm terrible at running and so far I can only run 1/2 mile at a time. Ugh - I didn't think that it would be so hard! But I really want to do it and I still want to lose another 10 lbs and I think that running will help.

-I have about 15 craft projects that I've been in the middle of for about 2 years. I want to work on all of them and get them finished up so I can start new things but I just can't seem to find any time.

-I need a maid. My house is dirty and I struggle to keep up - only because Abi no longer sits still while I work... Hmmm - I wonder if I can strap mops to her knees so she can clean on the go?!

I'm pretty sure that there is a lot more still on my mind, but I don't know what it is at the moment and I really must go to bed and get some sleep so that I can get back to all this tomorrow!

So excited!

I'm soooo excited!! After almost 4 years of marriage - sleeping in a bed with craters in the middle and putting our clothes in little cubical thingy-bobs... WE ORDERED BEDROOM FURNITURE LAST NIGHT!!! Woohoo!! I can't for it to come in. Now we can finally get our bedroom looking cozy. :) It wasn't that big a priority for us because... well - who sees the bedroom anyway? And there are always so many other things that seem to be more important. But we've been saving for a long time and finally had enough money. Plus with our beautiful tax return we're going to get a new mattress!! I can't wait to be sleeping more comfortably! We were both starting to get more and more uncomfortable on that old mattress. Wow - I feel so blessed...! This picture isn't the best as it doesn't show the dressers, but it was the best I could find. I went on the website of the furniture store that we bought it from and they didn't even have a picture up yet because its so new - so I just hunted the Internet for a while before I found this.