two and a half

Tonight, at 9:30 PM, my big girl turns two and a half! Oh.my.goodness. When did this happen??!?!

Lastnight as I was folding her clothes it hit me like a ton of bricks, she's actually growing up! I was folding 3T clothing (and still some 2T :-)) and little panties when I came across one of Isabelle's newborn onesies. I have a big girl AND a baby! When did I grow up? Whoa.

Anyways, in honor of my big girl turning 2.5 I'm going to list all the smart & funny things she's doing these days so I never forget.

*She's 95% potty trained-all but naptime and night.
*She has more energy than a room full of kids her age-I'm positive.
*She's mostly happy and loves to laugh.
*She's a good big sister to her "Baby Belle" or "Isabo" and gives her lots of kisses without anyone asking her to (and this is huge-she wouldn't have anything to do with her the first week or two).
*She loves to be called a big helper and will do just about anything to earn the title of one...even if it means throwing baby sisters terrible explosive dirty diaper in the trash.
*She can count to 13.
*She can recognize every letter in the alphabet and can call them all by name.
*She can sing the ABC song from the letter Q to the little tune we all sing after the ABC's-"Now I know my ABC's, next time won't you sing with meeee". It's really cute when she does it ;-)
*She knows the colors blue, purple, orange, yellow, brown, black, pink, white and green.
*She still loves cars and will line them all up and then jump over them over and over again.
*She loves to "help" do dishes which usually consists of her soaking her clothes and causing a bigger mess.
*She's still obsessed with her kitty.
*She uses the letter T in place of a C for some reason. So instead of car she says tar. Instead of cookie she says tootie. Instead of kitty she says...well, you get the point.
*She loves to be outside, still. Especially if there is snow to play in.
*She will randomly refer to her Daddy as Sean.
*She enjoys watching videos of herself, haha!
*She's not really that affectionate but she surprises me atleast once a day with a sweet kiss or big hug.
*She doesn't really enjoy "girly things" except for her kitty...well...and spinning and doing flips which I'd consider some type of gymnastics but that's not just for girls. The way she dresses and her hairbows are quite girly at times but that's forced upon her.
*Oh, she also loves the color pink-that's girly! She insists on wearing a pink shirt atleast 4 out of 7 days of the week. I have her pink shirt stock up a little to accommodate her preferences.
*She is back to napping during the day. Thank God. It's usually around 2 and we wake her up at 3:30 and allow her to stay up until like 8 or 9. This has been working nicely. Yesterday she didn't nap so I put her to bed at 7 and she was up by 9:20 ready to party. She stayed up until almost one (in her bed & out of her bed) and then was up again at 6:30. AAHHHH! Of course I made her go back to bed and she slept until 11. So, again, today, we have a messed up schedule but I won't be putting her to bed early tonight because of it. Forget that.
*She's all things transportation. HAHA! Cars, buses, trains, airplanes, tractors, trucks. A very unique little girl I must say :-).
*She has a way about her that melts me to the very core and then there are times where I'm sooo very frustrated with her that I can't believe she's my kid. HA. I'm ready for her to understand the concept of reasoning, bargaining and rewards (and consequences).
*She enjoys dancing to a good tune.
*She LOOOOVES playing with her daddy. They have so much fun together. Daddy is good for play and discipline and mommy is good for making sure she's fed and clean. TEAMWORK!
*She likes to "type" on the computer even though she's not supposed to.
*She really enjoys "drawing" on her magnadoodle and really loves when she tells us what to draw and we do it for her. Haha.

All in all, I really enjoy and think the world of my 2.5 year old but I'm definitely ready for this age to be behind us. It's been the most difficult one yet and I'll be doing it all over again in two years!


Happy two and a half little lady. You sure are a beautiful (and hilariously funny) little girl!

...I'm not jealous anymore...

...I've had my fix...

...And so has she...
This is as close as we'd let Baby Belle get to her first snow...plus, I'm pretty sure she'd hate it. She hates to be cold.

All in all, it was a WONDERFUL post-birthday!

25!

There is no other place I'd rather be spending my birthday than snuggling with these two sweeties all day long. Goodness gracious.

The hubby took me to dinner last night to celebrate since he is spending most of today and night working. We left the little one at home with grandma and took the littlest with us. She slept the whole time and left her daddy and I to stuff ourselves. Queso and chips, a cup of potato soup, double decker club sandwich and the biggest piece of fudge cake I have ever seen with about four scoops of ice cream. Yeah, we were definitely stuffed. I even had half of my sandwich left for lunch today. Yum.

And here's the best gift I could've ever gotten....this morning I was in Anna-Kate's room picking up some toys and out of nowhere she says, "Bless you momma. Yuv you!". Talk about melting my heart into a million pieces. That definitely made my day.

Then, while I was nursing the baby I heard AK in her room singing, "Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, your love makes me sing" to her Praise Baby video. That was definitely a proud mommy moment. She's been blessing my socks off today with her sweet little self.

I'm off to relax now since both girls have decided together that they'd add to my great day by taking naps at the same time. :-)

Tonight I'll do some more relaxing-in front of the T.V.-while NeeNee takes AK to play. It's The Bachelor-Women Tell All night. EEP! Every season I tell myself I'm not going to watch it and every season I get sucked in around the 4th or 5th episode. I've gotta stop.

I'm home...

After receiving my last dose of antibiotic through my IV yesterday morning I was discharged to go home. I left with two prescriptions and strict orders to do this breathing exercise thing 10 times an hour to avoid developing pneumonia.

I woke up this morning with horrible hacking of some yucky junk. I called to schedule my post op appointment and went ahead and let them know that I was coughing up some mucus. They will inform my surgeon and she will contact me if she's concerned.

Yesterday, after I got home, was some of my most uncomfortable times yet. It doesn't help that after I got discharged we headed straight to Walgreen's, then home to get AK, then back to Walgreen's where I climbed from the front seat to the back seat because Isabelle was getting upset, then we headed on over to Chick-fil-A so Anna-Kate could get some energy out. I sat on the outside of the playroom with Isabelle while my mom was in there with her. For one, I didn't really want to hear a bunch of kids screaming and two, I didn't feel okay being enclosed in such a small space with a bunch of germs with Isabelle breathing it all in. So I sat right outside at a table half asleep while Isabelle chilled in her carseat all nice and covered up. Yeah, maybe doing all that right after being discharged was a bad idea but the world doesn't stop moving just because I've experienced a few bumps in the road.

Today I'm going to take a shower and remove these bandages that are MEGA upsetting my skin. Did I mention that I have the most sensitive skin probably known to man?? Well, I believe I do and having all this tape and such stuck to it is irritating the junk out of it. Here, just see for yourself (and excuse my little post baby stretch mark "dots"). See my arm? That's where the IV was AND all the red? Why that's from all the tape! Now check out the second bandage (counting from the top), do you see how it's turning red around the edges? Yeah, it itches like CRAZY!!!!!!!! I'm not too thrilled about peeling these things off but I'm sure my skin will be so much happier once they're off.

And just for fun, here is me and Isabelle when we got home. I'm not sure if you can tell from this picture but my eyelids are raw from having them taped shut during surgery and on the side of my face that you can't see I have a little red rash from the breathing tube being taped to my face. They sure did a doozy on me huh. Haha!

Oh well, I'll take all this redness and pain just to not experience the pain I was having the other morning before my gall bladder was taken out. Wowzers, that was bad.

Oh, and really quick, while I was receiving my last dose of antibiotic yesterday my mom ran Isabelle down the road for her two week check up. The little chunker weighs 8 lbs. 1 oz. and is 20.5 inches long! She has gained a pound and grown a whole inch in two weeks. She's in the 45th percentile for her weight, 50th for her height and 40th for her head circumference (I have the head measurement but don't feel like getting up to get it :-)) She's growing up so fast already. *tear*

I'm in the hospital...

I wanted to update you all...okay...my one reader :-), I am spending the night in the hospital. I went to the ER at 6 o'clock this morning with severe abdominal pain. I literally thought I was dying and couldn't breathe. I was turning very pale and getting hot and clammy. Sean had just gotten home from work when the pain started at 5.

When we got to the ER my sweet hubby did all the checking in and explaining. Once we got back the pain wasn't nearly as bad but I could still feel it. After all the triage stuff I was put in a room where a doctor eventually came in and saw me. He did some pressing on my stomach and I was experiencing a lot of tenderness and pain right against my right rib cage. He said it sounded like I was having issues with my gall bladder so he was going to have blood work and an ultrasound done on me.

I got the blood work done and the results revealed that I had an elevated enzyme count which points to an infection somewhere. Then the ultrasound tech came in and did an ultrasound on all of my organs. She wasn't allowed to tell me anything even though she had the ability to. Fifteen minutes later the doctor came in the some good news and bad news, according to her. The bad news was my gall bladder was severely infected and inflamed and contained gall stones and it had to come out TODAY and the good news was that her favorite surgeon was on call and would be performing the procedure. Talk about WHOA! Wasn't expecting that!

Three hours later I was receiving some medicine in my IV to knock me out. It was some niiice stuff. Literally within two minutes I was out and was waking up in post op which felt like a very quick nap later. Really it was about two hours later but who was I to know that. When I opened my eyes my vision was so blurry that I couldn't see ANYTHING. Everything was a big blur. It was so weird. AND when I woke up my nose was itching so bad from the anesthesia and when I would try to scratch it I couldn't get to it because I had an oxygen mask on. All I could remember was a nurse saying, "don't take the mask off" everytime I would try to scratch it...and then I'd fall back to sleep and try again when I woke up. It's kind of funny now when I think about it. Eventually she did take my mask off and I could scratch my nose! YAY.

THEN, everytime I'd dose off from being so medicated I guess I'd forget to breathe and my O2 stats would drop down to like 87% and my heart rate would dip to the 40's. All I'd hear from the nurse is, "take deep breaths!" Good thing she was there because I definitely needed the reminder apparently. Needless to say I never got far enough into sleep to actually relax. Actually, I guess I was relaxing a little too much.

Eventually they moved me up into an actual room and I got to see my hubby again. The poor guy had been up since 2PM yesterday afternoon. He was so tired (and just went to bed around 9).

The surgeon took pics of what was on the inside of me. Talk about some crazy stuff! She even took a pic of the gall bladder once it was taken out and THEN what was INSIDE of it once she cut it open. I'm not kidding when I tell you this, there were hundreds of gall stones in there! Insane in the membrane. I could post the pic for you to see but I really don't want to lose my few readers. HAHA.

Oh and this is crazy, I had the pains once before after I had AK. I experienced these painful episodes like two or three times within the first two weeks of her life. One time I actually had Sean take me to the ER but the pain went away once I got there so we went home. I went to see our family doctor and he had blood work done but it didn't reveal anything so we left it at that and I never had that pains again until these last three times after I delivered Isabelle. Apparently I've been living with this for a few years with no symptoms. They would only emerge after delivering the babies. They said sometimes it just happens from pregnancy and such but they have no idea why.

SO I'm spending the night at the hospital for observation. I'm getting Vicodin every 6 hours and my newbie is up here bunking with me. The surgeon told me to pump and dump two times before I continue nursing her and I've done that but I might do it one more time for good measure. I pumped twice before the operation to hold us over until tomorrow. With those two bottles I pumped I had about 5 feedings if they were mixed with half formula. And I had about 6 feedings at home in the fridge so she's been well fed while mommy has been away.

I'm a little doped up right now and beyond exhausted so excuse any grammatical errors or anything that doesn't make sense :-).

I should be going home tomorrow morning once the surgeon checks on me one more time.

I'm not allowed to lift anything over 10 lbs for the next six weeks to prevent developing a hernia so please pray for me. I do a lot of lifting of the little one and this is going to be very hard for us to get used to. Plus if I go anywhere with her I have to do lifting to get her in and out of our truck SOOOO it looks like we're going to be getting cabin fever on top of all of these changes.

Well, I'm off to feed the littlest one and then I'll try to catch some sleep. Until next time, goodnight.