Thursday, March 30, 2006

Chillin' with the g-parents

So I realize I haven't posted for almost a week,
but there really is a good excuse! Charles'
parents came to visit for the weekend, and since
I drove them to the airport in KC, I decided to
stay for a few days with my dad. Anyway, here's
the first of what will be an onslaught of pics with
grandma and grandpa.

I LOVE this picture, although I'm not sure
what the baby is doing.

Eating peas with Grandma.

Friday, March 24, 2006

Picture of the day















It's hard to be a baby.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Maybe we should have gone to Cabo

Not only was it the first day of spring break,
but it was the first day of spring. Yuck. 8 inches
had been predicted, luckily it was only about 1
inch.















Here are all of my tulips and daffodils that
had come up. Some had even bloomed, but are
now lying prostrate on the ground.

Sunday, March 19, 2006

Weekend Update


She's starting to not look so small in her crib
anymore. I had to wake her up because
we had lunch plans with a friend, but I had to
get a picture of how precious she is asleep. Why
is it that the only time she sleeps for a long time
is when I don't want her to? But when I try to
take a nap, she wakes AS SOON as I drift off.

My brother Alex was in town for work, and made
the 2 hour trek from KC to see "the farm."

Charles has spring break this week. Woo hoo!
His goal is to get all the walls up in the basement,
along with the electrical work and dry wall. I'm
so excited to have this done. I'll finally have a place
to lock up the animals.

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Hammin' it up already


I love this picture-she looks so goofy.



Eating my arm.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Don't let the bedbugs bite















With her Papa this past weekend. I know this
bottom picture is blurry, but I still thought it
was cute.














As soon as the baby was born, I started stressing
about how to get her to sleep through the night,
so that she would not be waking up every 3 hours
when she was 6 and wanting to be rocked to sleep.
I have been reading a lot lately on how to teach your
child to sleep, and I decided to give it a try last week.
The most common method is to let them "cry it out,"
which I have always hated, because I hate to hear her
cry, especially if I can do something about it. Everything
I have read calmed my concerns though, as all the experts
say that it does not do them any harm to cry, and it's really
much harder on the parents than on the child.

The first night she woke up at her regular times, around
midnight, 3 and 5 (see why I wanted her to sleep through
the night?). We let her scream. The next night we did the
same thing, and she screamed less. The next night she only
woke up twice, screamed once for 30 minutes, and the other
time just babbled. The next night she woke up only once and
just babbled. The past 3 nights she hasn't woken up at all, from
7:30p-6:30a! We have even established a set bedtime, put her down,
and usually she's out within minutes. It is AWESOME. That saying
is true, "when mama is happy, EVERYONE is happy." We did
try the method of going in to pat her whild she is screaming, but rather
than comfort her, it just seemed to rile her up. "What he hell people?
I'm crying! Pick me UP!"

She is also in her crib, in her own room. Now we do not have to tiptoe around
at night when we are getting ready for bed, etc. The only problem is that I
can not see her at night, can not make sure she is breathing. Sometimes I would
just stand there and watch her chest rise and fall forever, just to make sure.
Now that she is sleeping 12 hours straight, I wake up at 6:30 in a panic,
terrified that she's pulled something over her face since I have not heard a
peep. I know that is probably an irrational fear, but what can I say, I like
to hear her breathing, and the tiny little sighs she makes in her sleep.

Monday, March 13, 2006

Flying cats





We discovered yesterday that if you can get a
cat to fly and flip around the room chasing toys,
that that deserves a good belly laugh from a baby.
That and sneezing.

Friday, March 10, 2006

Forgotten Pictures

Since we now live in the digital age
(and since Charles' parents surprised
us with a digital camera-for
purely selfish reasons, they claim),
most of the pics from Paisley's birth
were done with the digital camera. We did
have my old-fashioned camera
(you know, that kind that takes
film) as well, and Charles' mom
took a few with it. I just now finished
the roll and got them developed, 5 months
and 1 week after the birth.

Charles feeding her the first bottle. She was about
15 minutes old in this picture, and had to be
given formula immediately because her blood
sugar was extremely low. I still don't know what
would have happened if they hadn't caught that,
all I know is that she came out listless, scaring the crap
out of me. I was so concerned with watching the nurse tend to
her to make sure she was okay that I didn't notice the delivery
of the placenta (although Charles kindly photographed
it for me), or any of the stitching and repair work.

Snuggling with dad. She still sleeps this way, with
her hands up by her head.

Wednesday, March 8, 2006

Tuesday, March 7, 2006

It's hard to be so little


Okay, let's try this rolling over thing...

can't...quite...so...close...

I give up.

P.S. Yes, that is a huge basket of dirty clothes
in the background. Hey, at least they're in the
basket and not on the floor.

Sunday, March 5, 2006

Cat for sale

Or we can pay you to take him from us. Maddox again. He sometimes sleeps on our bed, no big deal, right, as he's NEVER shown a speck of interest in the baby, never goes near her. So we put the baby down for a nap yesterday, leaving Maddox on our bed. For some reason, I decide to check on the baby, and to my horror, Maddox is ON TOP OF THE BABY in her cradle. Purring, I believe. Now not only do we have to worry about locking him out of the room, we have to worry about him spooning with Paisley. Any takers? He really is cute...

Friday, March 3, 2006

This is Maddox

Sometimes cats baffle me. Meet Maddox.

For those of you who haven't met him, he is
the MOST RAMBUNCTIOUS PIECE OF FUR
that I have ever known. For awhile Charles and
I attributed it to his kittenhood, but now that he is
1.5, that doesn't work. He's always been crazy,
getting into things he shouldn't, batting food out
of our mouths (he loves starch, I often give him bowls
and vegetables and he scarfs them up), picking
on the other animals. He likes to bop the dog on
the head as she walks by, I'm still surprised that
Maggie hasn't retaliated and bit him. After all,
he'd just be a snack to her. When we first moved
into this house, Maddox learned quickly to put
his paw under a closet door to pull it open, allowing
himself and the others access to sleeping on our
clothes, hiding mice and balls in our shoes, and
just generally causing trouble.

Once the baby came, we took to locking the animals
out of all the bedrooms. We didn't want to deal with
hair everywhere, or worrying if the baby had a
sleeping companion. A few nights ago, I was up in
the night, and after I went back to bed, the bedroom
door banged open and in came Maddox. I assumed
that I just hadn't shut the door all the way, and he
opened it. That happened twice that night. Then a
few nights ago Charles was up early studying, heard
a crash and came to investigate. The bedroom door
was wide open, and Maddox was curled up with
me on the bed. That's when we realized that the punk
learned how to open the door!


We've never seen him in action, but he's done
it a few more times. He must run as fast as
possible down the hallway and leap up to the
door handle and swing it open, because it's loud.
I never thought we'd have to lock the our cats
out of the bedroom. (Take THAT Jan! Can your
cat do that?)

Wednesday, March 1, 2006

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'

I rolled over today!!!!