She is my Sunshine.

I'm still in a slight state of shock. My little baby is now 1. She has been in my life for a WHOLE YEAR! Crazy. Definitely the best year of my life...minus my fatness.

Isla saw her doctor today for her 12 month checkup. She is 31" long and 25lbs. She's in the 95% for both height and weight. I'm not sure I'm ready for the transition into toddler-hood. There are so many changes...whole milk, forward facing car seat, no more bottles...eek! I'm stocking up on books to help me figure this all out! Currently I'm loving The Happiest Toddler on the Block. I never read the baby version, although I've heard many fabulous things about it.

4 days old:



1 year:

I'm just about done with Isla's baby book. I've abandoned scrafting and moved on to Snapfish baby books. I also finished my special birthday present to Isla: her mommy and me video.

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When Isla was tiny I would sing You are my Sunshine to her as she fell asleep. It's our song.

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Happy Birthday, Pretties!! I love you soooooooooooooooo much! Thanks for making my world a better place!

Goodness I've been busy...

Isla and I have been BUSY lately! We're trying to enjoy summer as much as we can :)

Isla's birthday party was a SUCCESS! She looked adorable in her birthday outfit and loved her tacky Yo Gabba Gabba decorations. She received many generous presents and we were happy to be able to spend the day with my family!

We met some of my lovely friends for a water park play date. Isla was in heaven. I walked around with her for a few minutes before she took off on her own. She is one brave and independent kid!

We have been spending less time at the park, and more time at Chuck E. Cheese (think 3x per week!). It's been so humid I nearly melt within 5 minutes of being outside. I love that Chuck E. Cheese is essentially free! Sometimes Isla and I get pizza to share, but most of the time we just play. We purchased 50 tokens for 10$ a few weeks ago and still have some left! She loves going on the little "rides", especially the Tellatubbies and Bob the Builder rides. She kisses Bob the Builder each time she rides his bulldozer.

Yesterday, Andy took a half day so we could spend Isla's actual birthday together. He made her this "Cookie Monster" cake, which I find incredibly creepy and sweet all at the same time.

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Isla was not a huge fan. I'm not sure if it's that creepy face that scared her...or if she just doesn't like cake. She was more interested in eating pizza. So I'll probably polish off that cake in a few days. No biggie.

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Hmm, aside from all that fun stuff I've kept busy buy tackling the mountain of laundry that seems to build on a regular basis (I'm shocked at how much more laundry we have now that we have a kid. I had laundry issues pre-Isla, but post Isla I'm nearly drowning in it.) I've also been tutoring 8-10 hours a week, doing lots of unnecessary shopping at Target, watching way too much Yo Gabba Gabba, and playing with Isla and all of her fun new toys. She is starting to get into her pretend play phase and we've been "cooking" in her new kitchen, and "eating" the play food. Isla even makes the yumyum pretend eating noise when she eats her food. It kills me.

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That's about all we've been up to. I'm looking forward to more summer, fun filled days ahead! Today however, is Doctor day. Isla gets her 1 year shots. Not looking forward to it...

LAZY!

My dad stopped by to say hi to Isla and ended up taking her on a little "adventure". Adventure = toy store. That kid is so spoiled! It's lovely to have time to do whatever I want. I really wish doing whatever I wanted meant that I was drying my hair right now instead of allowing it to air dry into a floofy mess, but I just don't have the energy. And really...I'm going no where today and I have no one to impress. But still...when my hair is nice, I feel better!

I've been a stay at home mom for almost 6 months...you would really think I would have some sort of routine down that allowed for showering and overall personal grooming. But I don't. I love sleeping in the mornings during Isla's nap. When I do that, it means no shower until late afternoon. This means we cannot leave the house in the morning without scaring anyone I come in contact with. Sometimes, like yesterday, I put Isla in the pack-n-play while I shower in the morning. It's nice to shower, but I don't have time to fix my hair or do makeup during the 23 minute show. If I could just get my ass out of bed in the morning, my problem would be solved. Much easier said than done.

I'm not sure when I became the laziest person I know. The person who would rather sleep than shower. The person who can barely muster up the energy to shave her legs once a week. The person who lives in sweatpants. The person who can no longer use "I just had a baby" as a reason for being fat. Good God. I need to pull myself together. College Betsy would be APPALLED at current Betsy. Even high school Betsy would be ashamed. This is the only Betsy that can relate....

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4th grade Betsy. Although in 4th grade I had no idea my hair was floofy and that my teeth were too yellow. Ohhhh to be young and carefree again!

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Okay, I'm off to tame this floofball on my head and attempt to look decent before my cute little bubby gets back from her adventure.

One of those days...

Today is one of those days where I barely have the energy, or desire, to do anything. I fell asleep around 9:30 last night and slept until 10:30 this morning (Andy gets up with Isla at 5:30 and puts her back down for her morning nap before he leaves for work around 8). After lazily playing with Isla for a while, I plopped her in the pack-n-play to read her books and watch Yo Gabba Gabba while I took a much needed shower. Then I had 2 Mt Dews and polished off a bag of potato chips for lunch. Isla is currently down for her afternoon nap, and it's taking a lot of self restraint to go back to bed and nap myself. UGH. I hate days like this! I get so mad at myself for being a lazy slob. When I envisioned being a stay at home mom, there was lots of fun involved...trips to the library, splash park, daily walks, all that fun stuff! We do have days like that, but more often than not, we're here going crazy in our too small apartment. The surgery recovery/crazy health issues I've been dealing with have contributed to this funk. Plus the cloudy weather and Isla's teething and cold combo have been the icing on the cake today.

I was wide awake at 5am this morning. Normal people would get up and shower, maybe make some breakfast, workout?? Well, not me. I laid in bed, wide awake, for over an hour until I forced myself to fall back to sleep. RIDIC.

Anyway, what's done is done. I'm hoping my little fussler will be up for a Target run this afternoon, and maybe we'll head to the park if it doesn't rain. I should at least attempt to turn this day around :)

Realllly sick of being sick.

When you are a person struggling with anxiety, sometimes it is hard to determine if you have a real illness, or if you have manifested an illness in your head.

My headache, neck pain, and facial numbness are all real symptoms that have been causing me great worry. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I thought my brain was swelling on the 4th of July. The following day I had the most horrific neck pain and couldn't even look to the right. The past week and a half I've been to the ENT doctors 3 times, my primary care doctor, the ER, immediate care doctor, my chiropractor twice, and an Internist. I am exhausted, and I'm going broke from all of my copays. When I woke up with facial numbness on Monday I became very worried. All of my pain (head, neck, face) is on my right side. The worrying manifests into fear that I am going to die. I then spend hours googling possible illnesses and start thinking I truly have these weird diseases. Stupid anxiety.

No one can really explain what is gong on with me. The consensus thinks that I may have an infection or a small tear in my sinuses, causing swelling and pressure on a nerve. I hope this is the case. But I can't help worry about Lyme Disease since I had a very unusual bruise looking bug bite 3 weeks ago. It was so odd I showed it to my doctor thinking it was a bruise, and she said it looked more like a bug bite. Obviously, Lyme Disease is rare, but I was at my mom's retreat house in the woods and it's very possible a tick made it's way into the house and bit me while I was sleeping or feeding the tigers.

Anyway. I am waiting on blood work to rule out Lyme Disease. I have an MRI of my brain scheduled for next Tuesday. I had a CT scan previously that came back normal, so I'm hoping the MRI will be clear as well.

I'm very frustrated living like this! Having a constant sinus headache makes me miserable. I really shouldn't complain though. I know there are people out there struggling with debilitating illnesses...it makes my headache seem trivial. But I'm not one of those "tough it out" people. When I get sick I am worthless...so it's been hard to be a good mommy and wife when all I want to do is sleeeeeeeeeep.

Being on Zoloft for mild anxiety has definitely helped with my crazy irrational worries, such as food shortages, earthquakes, car accidents etc. However, it has not seemed to help with my fear of dying or getting a horrible disease. I was given the option of trying something stronger, or upping my dosage but I passed on both offers. I don't want to use medicine as a "magic cure" or something to numb me entirely. I obviously need to learn how to work through these fears and with the help of my therapist I've been attempting to do so. So maybe these mysterious symptoms are a life lesson. Who knows. I just want to get better soon!

A Poopy Situation

Yesterday during our routine Target run, I smelled a poopy diaper. I could tell by the smell that it wasn't a horrible, sloppy poop so I figured I could wait until we got home to change her. (I can't be the only mommy who knows what kind of poop is in the diaper by how it smells, right??) Anyway, so we continue shopping and a few minutes later I notice her whole crotch area is now soaked in pee. She's had a few leaky diapers before, but never anything this bad. Now I've got a stage 7 emergency. I pay for my things and head out to the car to change her. I open the diaper bag...no extra clothes and no wipes! WHAT?! I can do without the clothes but wipes are pretty essential. I was totally baffled because I KNOW I just put a new pack of wipes in there a few days ago! Normally, this is where my emergency kit would come in handy...but I took that out of the car last week to update it! Grrr! After pretty much dumping out the entire diaper bag, the only 2 options for butt wiping were Clorox cleaning wipes, and antibacterial hand wipes. I obviously went with the hand wipes...they were pretty dried out anyway, so I'm hoping they didn't hurt her little butt too badly. Once the diaper situation was taken care of, I remembered I bought Isla a little tshirt on clearance, so I busted that out so she wouldn't look like a naked hillbilly baby. Success. She was somewhat clean and somewhat dressed! I rewarded myself with a yummy Jimmy John's sandwich and when we returned home I found the pack of wipes on the floor by the front door. The end.

Fun with Chuck.

Grandma Donna took Isla to Chuck E Cheese's yesterday! Isla and Chuck quickly became BFFs. Cute huh?!




I met up with them after my doctor's appointment and Isla was totally exhausted. Her legs were wobbly noodles...she could barely walk! Before we left, we decided Isla needed a VIP diva pass. Isla was less than thrilled. Or maybe that's just her diva face? Who knows?





Apparently, she can get backstage runway access with this bad boy. All for 3 tokens! Score. Now we just need to find some runway shows to attend.

Once we got home, Isla was in a Chuck E Cheese coma. Who knew Chuck E Cheese's was so awesome?!

Burrito Baby

When it comes to sleeping, Isla is just like her mama. She's a stomach sleeper who LOVES to have blankets near her face. When I put her in her crib, she sits up for the first few minutes, so I am never able to cover her up. She very quickly discovered how to wrap herself in the blankets, and it cracks me up (I watch her on the video monitor)! Anyway, she lays down, grabs a corner of the blanket, and rolls. Burrito style. This method gets her covered, but a lot of time her whole head is wrapped up tighter than a turban. She falls asleep (or maybe passes out) quickly when she is so cozy, but I always have to run in there and rip the blanket off of her head! I'm starting to get nervous about her suffocating herself! Last night, Andy didn't notice that she had fallen asleep with the blanket around her head. I went in there to take the blanket off and she was drenched in sweat. I'm not sure how to solve this problem because she absolutely won't sleep without blankets anymore (and I don't blame her!). Thoughts? Suggestions?!

Innnteresting!

Hmmm. I left the 13th best city in the US to move to the porn search capital of the US. Not sure how I feel about this!

More bullets. Because I'm still lazy.

-Apartment living has gotten old really fast. I do love the pool (well for Isla, not me), and the convenience store, and the location. I don't love lugging my groceries up from the garage to the 5th floor, pulling into my narrow parking spot and SCRAPING THE CRAP OUT OF MY LOVELY NEW CAR, and taking Torii down the elevator and across the parking lot to go potty. And I really hate that we have no yard to play in. Thankfully, there is a park across the street that we try to go to daily.

-Isla has become such a brave kiddo. She has mastered climbing stairs at my dad's house, and today she figured out how to climb the little platforms at the park to get to the top of the slide. We both slide down together, although I'm sure she'd have no problem going down alone. She loves wandering around the park, watching little kids, and picking up sticks and giving them to me. She also loves chasing birds and yelling, "DA!!" I love how little kids think all animals are dogs.

-Isla's birthday party is less than 2 weeks away! I just ordered all of her Yo Gabba Gabba decorations and I'm trying not to cringe at the very thought of the tackiness. Whatevs. She loves it and that's all that matters! My mom is driving down for the party, which is incredibly kind. Andy's parents are too busy. Figures. They haven't seen Isla since mid December.

-My neck pain is slowly getting better. Between the chiropractor, a professional massage, and forcing Andy to massage me nightly, I've seen some improvements. I have a constant dull sinus headache that is not going way though, and it is becoming really annoying. Man, I'm SUCH a complainer, but I just want to go back to normal! Oh, and I've been told my voice is noticeably different now that my nose is fixed. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not.

-We have set out to make baby #2. Fingers crossed the second time around will be just as easy!

They joys of living 2 miles from my parents.

In Minnesota we lived less than 10 minutes from Andy's parents and we rarely saw them. They never offered to babysit, never had us over for random meals, and rarely initiated any type of get togethers. I was fine with that! And since my mom lived 50+ minutes away, I was used to having little help with Isla and seeing family sparingly.

Now we live less than 5 minutes from my dad. We see him all the time. If he finds out Isla and I are at the park, he literally jumps right in his car and drives over to meet us there. He called on Monday to do a "stop by" and ended up taking Isla home with him for 3 hours. Now that he has a carseat (he stole our 2nd seat) he takes Isla on adventures once or twice a week. It is heavenly. Isla still has her Friday sleepovers and we try to go over there on Sundays for dinner. Today I needed a babysitter so I could see the chiropractor. I called my dad, he cancelled his morning meeting, and I dropped Isla off. Tomorrow my step mom is watching Isla so I can tutor. My dad often stops by on his way home from work for 5-10 minutes just to give Isla kisses.

IT IS SO NICE HAVING HELP! I didn't know what I was missing out on while living in Minnesota! It also helps that my parents are IN LOVE with Isla.

Aside from all of the babysitting help, their house has become a lovely getaway for us. We stayed there when our power was out. I spent the afternoon there today while our AC was being fixed. If Isla is getting bored at our house I'll drive over there and we'll play in her playroom for a while.

As much as I miss Minnesota, I'm starting to wonder how I ever managed without much outside help with Isla. I guess we did have an awesome daycare provider who was willing to keep Isla from 7am-6pm which helped if we needed to schedule appointments before or after work. But still. I'm amazed at how much easier life is with a little help.

Bullet Points. Because I'm lazy.

-Isla had a great first 4th of July! I felt like CRAP the entire time. My brain felt like it was going to explode, and I literally could not think straight. We spent the evening at my dad's neighbor's country club. We had the most yummy dinner at 5pm and then we had lots of time to kill until fireworks. Luckily, Isla enjoyed people watching, wandering the halls of the country club, and playing with the kiddos we were there with. By 9:00 Isla was getting a bit tired, but we headed out to the golf course and got ready for the incredible fireworks. They are the best I've seen. 2 years ago, we were so close to the fireworks we had ashes falling on our heads! The minute the fireworks started, Isla was completely in awe! She LOVED them! It was a great night, aside from the fact that I thought I might be dying. I love the country club life.





-My ENT Doctor does not think my neck pain is being caused by Bactrim (antibiotic). I am convinced that it is. I found a website where people write about their experiences with different drugs. Several people had severe neck pain and were in the ER with meningitis scares! That was convincing enough for me. She said I could stop taking the antibiotic since it was a precautionary measure, not to actually fight an infection. My fingers are crossed that I'll be feeling great in no time! Yay for not having meningitis!

-I was hired on the spot last week for a tutoring job I was hoping to get! I'm tutoring a little boy going into first grade for 8 hours per week. At $25/hour I'll be making some good money :) Plus I've really been missing teaching, so I'm enjoying planning lessons and working again. I feel very fulfilled when I teach. The one down side is that I'll be tutoring Saturdays and Sundays throughout the remainder of the summer at 8:30am. Not ideal. But I actually pushed for weekend tutoring so I wouldn't need to get a babysitter. I'll also be tutoring on Wednesdays and Fridays. I have a high school student watching Isla on Wednesdays and my Dad and Donna should be able to cover most Fridays. The job will extend into the school year, requiring me to pick him up after school (hopefully just M-TH), take him home, and work on homework with him for an hour. Not entirely sure what I'll do about babysitting yet...but I have some time to figure it out. The $200 a week should cover groceries, clothes for Isla and I, and my splurges (pedis, hair appointments, massages...ya know...the stuff I don't need but love!)

-Isla and I made a special Toys R Us trip today. She is outgrowing some of her baby toys so I wanted to get her a few big girl things, and get some ideas for her birthday presents. Isla LOVES the baby aisle. She squealed in delight looking at all of the cute babies. I let her pick out any baby she wanted (hoping for a Cabbage Patch Kid) and she picked out a black baby. I thought about naming her Taquita, but Andy said no. So her name is Alyssa. We bought baby Alyssa some bottles, a bowl and a spoon for feeding, and a baby crib. I showed Isla how to feed her baby and within minutes Isla was holding the bottle to Alyssa's mouth. It was the CUTEST thing. Isla also enjoyed sharing a bed with Alyssa. I'm pretty sure that crappy baby bed will crumble in no time if Isla continues to crawl in there. But I can't say no...it's just too darn cute!



So yeah. That's what's on my mind! I hope everyone had a lovely 4th!

Sick of being sick.

After an excruciating headache on the 4th (prompting me to tell my sister that I thought my brain was swelling), and waking up with horrible neck pain yesterday, I decided to head to urgent care last night. My step mom, Donna, was nice enough to go with me so Andy could stay home with Isla. I was pumped when we arrived because there was no wait and I was seen within minutes of walking in. Once I saw the doctor though, my mood quickly changed. He had 3 thoughts for me: Meningitis. Brain aneurysm. West Nile. Grrrrrrrreat. He called one of the doctors in the emergency room and told them we were headed over for a spinal tap and CT scan. Not at all how I wanted to spend my evening.

The emergency room was filled with crazies and creeps. I didn't like being there. I had a normal CT scan (thank GOD!) and it was determined that they were not going to do a spinal tap because the doctor thought I "looked to good to have meningitis." I was sent home with no good answers and an order to see my ENT doctor in the morning.

Unfortunately, my ENT was not working this morning, so I had to see the other doctor. He was of little help to me, due to him not knowing the extent of my surgery, specifically, how far up my doctor went into my sinuses. He agreed with the ER doctor and said I didn't look like a typical meningitis patient and ordered me to take 600mg of Ibuprofen every 6 hours in hopes the anti inflammatory would bring down my neck pain.

Currently, I cannot turn my head to the right without feeling intense pain. My headache is not nearly as severe as it was on Sunday, but there is definitely sinus pressure. I was told to go to the ER immediately if my headache or neck pain worsens, so I'm hoping and praying that that does not happen. That will mean spinal tap. Right now, the 3 possible causes for this horrible pain are: a reaction to my antibiotics, steroid withdrawal, and meningitis. Steroid withdrawal is what I'm banking on. After lots of googling, it seems like people who go off of Prednisone can experience muscle and joint pain. I'm praying that is what is going on with me.

Tomorrow I plan on calling my ENT doctor and getting her opinion on everything. Basically, I'm playing a waiting game. Praying I don't get worse. Praying that I wake up feeling better. Praying that I don't have a crazy virus I can give to Isla.

I'm sick of feeling sick. I'm sick of worrying about what this could be! Please send good thoughts my way. I totally need them.

Monday Movie!

Isla has mastered her silly laugh. It is a riot! She also loves kissing her baby and her monkey. She is so sweet!

My little headbanger.

I read an article that 20% babies bang their heads on purpose. What a fabulous statistic for my daughter to be part of. That's right. She's a headbanger. She has been one for 2 months now. It started off innocently enough...banging a few toys on her head and laughing. It's now evolved into something a much larger.

She bangs her head against the wall if she is angry or frustrated. Sometimes she'll walk directly up to the wall, sit down, and start banging her head. She bangs her head if she is bored. Just yesterday on the video monitor I watched her bang her head against her crib rails for a good 15 seconds before she fell asleep. She bangs her head for attention. She bangs toys on her head to make us laugh (although we have obviously stopped laughing in an effort to get her to stop!). Sometimes she watches tv and slaps herself on the head over and over again. WEIRDO!

The word, "No" has been setting her off a lot lately. Anytime she hears it, she gives us a nasty look and immediately starts banging her head on the closest object she can find. I'm obviously trying to use "no" as little as possible, and use more positive statements. It can be hard when she is yanking Torii's leg, or trying to climb up the side of the desk to reach the computer keyboard.



I have read that headbanging can be a sign of autism, but I have no worries at the moment. Isla makes eye contact, interacts with others, follows things and people with her eyes....there are really no signs of autism. She's ahead of the curve with her development so I know this is just a stage. I just hope it's one she outgrows soon. I don't like seeing my baby inflict pain on herself :(

Fixed!

Am I sexy or what?!

That was the evening following my surgery. Aside from the puffy eyes and slightly swollen face, I wasn't in tooooo bad of shape. I had to wear that "moustache dressing" for 4 days. Isla did not like seeing her mama with such a funny thing taped to her face. I mainly stayed in bed Thursday-Sunday and avoided contact with the world. I felt like I had the world's worst sinus infection. My head was so stuffy and it was constantly throbbing. The pressure behind my eyes and ears was so uncomfortable. I mainly laid in bed, in a dark room, sometimes with the music on low. TV hurt my eyes after an hour or so, and normal lights did as well. I couldn't focus on anything for more than 15 minutes. I couldn't even read! I was very bored and restless. I had a bad reaction to the first antibiotics I was given and got some lovely stomach issues on top of everything else! And the first pain meds prescribed to me I wasn't allowed to take because they didn't go well with my anxiety meds...so I was only taking Tylenol which was pretty much crap. I didn't actually get my good pain meds until Monday...and by then I didn't really need them. JIP! I do like me some vicodin though :) Although, I swear it makes me paranoid. So I've taken them at night to get some good sleep, but I've been convinced that my heart is going to explode or that I am going to choke on my own bloody mucus that constantly drains down my throat. Yes, I know that is super gross. I've been spitting huge wads of blood lately. My nose is still stuffy and I can't blow it yet. Plus I still have dissolving gel packs in my nose that should be close to gone. The drainage has been nasty and has given me a really questionable stomach. And probably bad breath. I think possibly the only thing that is grosser than the drainage is that I wore the same jammies for 3 1/2 days straight. I didn't even attempt to shower until Sunday night. You should have seen my armpit hair... I can't even imagine how I smelled! Eeewwies!

All in all...I'm happy I had the surgery. I really wish I would have been in more pain and had less sinus pressure though. The whole foggy head thing really sucked. I barely hung out with my kid those 4 days because her squealing and belly laughs made my head feel like a ticking time bomb.

I see my doctor today and I am hoping that everything is healing normally! There is a chance the polyps can grow back in the future and cause some blockage again. I'm hoping since now my septum is straight, that I'll at still be able to breathe better even if the polyps do return.

Yay for surgery! I can't wait to breathe out of my nose.