Monthly Archives: June 2011

Your Love is Like a Rollercoaster

Since I wrote the post about me riding a rollercoaster while pregnant, I figured I’d share some photos from Peanut’s first trip to the amusement park.

Oma and Opa took Peanut to the boats while mommy and daddy went on a ride. Apparently she didn't like it at first.

Just being cute.

Peanut was so happy getting off the swings!

I'm awful at group pictures, but this is us when we're about to go on the boats.

The "eggs" were by far her favorite ride. She went on them twice that day and tells everyone about them.

Obviously, she got a little better about riding rides by herself by the end of the day.

Peanut loved the ferris wheel. She also peed in it. Marking it as her own?

The last ride of the night was the carousel. Peanut had to hold on to her doggy daddy won her while riding the kitty.

We had so much fun that we decided to get season passes and have gone back twice already! Yay amusement parks!

My Non-agressive Dog

Curie sleeping with her face between her paws

I love my Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.

Yeah, sometimes she’s a monster, but I would say she’s the second best animal-related decision we’ve ever made–the first being to put down our first dog Kerrigan.

I’ve always been against the idea of buying a dog. Adoption was the way to go. Why not save an animal that needs a home? There are plenty of good dogs out there that just need someone to love them. I still thoroughly believe this. I hate that people are out there breeding dogs for money when there are so many that need homes in shelters. Obviously, this was my line of thought when we got Kerrigan. I spent weeks searching online trying to find the perfect dog. We’d go see one that seemed great, but it was too big (living in an apartment limits the size of dog you can get) or needed to be potty trained or was too timid or too hairy. There were so many reasons why a dog wouldn’t be perfect for us and we were okay with waiting it out and keeping looking. We wanted a forever friend and those don’t come by every day.

When we met Kerrigan we thought she was that forever friend. The lady told us that she was still drugged up from her spay, but we didn’t even consider it. Look how she laid so happily on my lap! She looked so much like my husband’s childhood dog! She’s so cute and tiny and she was only 4 months old! It felt like we had hit the jackpot. Of course, if you’ve followed my blog for a while, you know that she wasn’t perfect. She was aggressive from the get-go, but as first time dog owners we didn’t understand that’s what the signs were pointing to. We didn’t know to do tests before taking her home. We didn’t know that cleft palates are genetic disorders, and as our vet told us later, one genetic disorder means higher likeliness of more genetic disorders. We didn’t know the signs to tell that she was probably a puppy mill dog that was so inbred. We just didn’t know.

It took me years to finally grasp that my dog wasn’t going to get better. We had her for 3 full years, over 2 of which she was regularly biting people, including myself and, even a few times, my daughter. I didn’t say a thing on this blog until the end because I felt so ashamed of not only having an agressive dog, but regularly exposing my infant/toddler to this dog. Even with all the training we did, even when she got a bit better (through lots and lots of work and then lots and lots of upkeep), she still wasn’t anywhere near safe. There was no way to have her in the same house as my child who was growing older and grabbier and getting more and likely to get bitten. There was no way to rehome her because there would never be a way for her to get better. What she had was more than agression, it was something wrong with her brain. So we put her down.

It was one of the most difficult decisions of my life. I was convinced I wouldn’t have another dog in years. I felt like such a failure. How could I be sure that I wouldn’t bring another dog that was just as dangerous into my house with small children?

Soon though, I felt the ache of missing a canine companion in my life. I would never put my animals on the same level as my children, but they are part of my family. Even with two cats and a rabbit, I still felt the hole in my life where I needed a dog. Dogs can be a lot of work, but they provide something that none of the other animals do. They are full of excitement, joy, and pure love. My cats love me, but after being pet for five minutes could care less if I leave the house for 8 hours. Dogs want to be with you all day. They need you.

So we went, cautiously, in search of another dog. I’m sure everyone thought we were crazy. My husband wasn’t entirely on board with the idea. Nevertheless, I started to research.

After having had such a bad experience with a dog, I felt there needed to be some ground rules. Ground rules that would be impossible to keep with going to a shelter. My rules were strict.

  1. The dog has to be very small, even smaller than Kerri was (because one of the blessings of Kerri was that she was small enough not to be able to do much damage). If it wasn’t small, it had to be calm and happy and make it very obvious that it’s size didn’t matter.
  2. It needed to pass all agression tests with flying colors. If I felt even a flicker of fear, that dog was out.
  3. The dog had to be a child-friendly breed. Even the smallest “may not be good with kids” was not tolerable. I know that breed isn’t everything. I know you can find plenty of muts that are great with kids, but for this time in my life, I needed that clean slate to start with. I needed to know that this dog had a predisposition to be friendly with kids and people in general.
  4. The dog needed to be young. I think being raised around small children will make a dog more likely to be good with them.

I tried the shelters at first, but finding a small dog there is difficult and none of them met my standards. Finally after searching for a long time, I decided to look into buying a dog. After searching online, I found a dog that wasn’t being sold by the breeder, but rather a girl that bought the dog from the breeder. It was only 11 weeks old and the only reason she didn’t want it was because her older dog was unhappy with it around. I went and did all the tests and she passed with flying colors. She was still spendy, but much less than buying directly from the breeder. I think that helped talk my husband into it.

And there we were. We had a new dog. A dog that has never growled at my child in the 6 months we’ve had her, even when my child is noticeably too rough. A dog that not only treats my child like a person, but gets excited when she gets home. A dog that plays with the cats like she’s one of them. A dog that listens to me. I dog that I as sure as possible, will never, ever bite me.

My New House Mondays: Ripping out Trees

We knew when we bought this house that there was a lot that we wanted to do on the outside. Since we worked so hard on the inside last year, we didn’t do much to the outside property. This year we’re making some drastic changes, which includes taking a lot of stuff out of the yard. So one weekend we enlisted in my father with his truck and a few friends to come help us take care of some trees. We hooked the trees up the the truck and pulled!

Before:

These are the trees when we were first buying the house. All the ones straight in the middle of the photo.

After:

And here's that same area after we ripped out 5-6 very old, haggard-looking trees.

Before:

A pictures from last summer of Squeed, her mom, and I sitting on the ledge that shows all of the vines.

After:

All the vines are gone! And only one friend was sent to the emergency room in the process. :-(

Here is just one of the two loads that we took to the dump. That also included a tree we chopped down in the back last year.

There will be plenty of changes to our yard in the near future. This summer we’re working on the front because that’s what people can see. If we finish all we want to do in the front this year, then we’ll move on to the back next year. As you can see, we still need to plant stuff in the areas that are missing plants now and we need to knock off a bunch of that concrete that’s where the vines used to be. Old houses can be a lot of work.

Intuition and Ultrasonic Rays

11 Weeks 0 Days about to do some yardwork.

I’ve been really up in the air about ultrasounds and dopplers. These two things are considered par for the course in a regular pregnancy, but surprisingly enough that’s not recommended. The American Pregnancy Association only recommends ultrasounds (including dopplers) if there is a medical concern. So why do most moms have at least one ultrasound during pregnancy? When I was pregnant with Peanut, I had 3 ultrasounds (one at 6-7 weeks because I had some bleeding, one at 18-ish weeks to check the sex and all of the other regular checks, and one at around 40 weeks to check the amnionic fluid amount) and doppler used at Every. Single. Prenatal. Appointment. A healthy, young mom taking care of herself, not using drugs, and no family history of birth defects and I needed that many ultrasounds? I was the epitome of low risk and still exposed my child to these potentially harmful ultrasonic rays that many times just because I didn’t know.

The emphasis in that sentence is potentially harmful. We don’t know if ultrasounds are harmful. Most things I’ve read say that they could be. There are emotional risks too. Some studies say that babies who aren’t diagnosed with problems prenatally end up doing better once they’re born, possibly because the birth is allowed to go on normally (no induction or c-sections) and the babies get more time to cook. Not to mention the high rate of false positives (same link) when it comes to things like placenta previa. Actually, I was told I might have that when I had my second ultrasound, but luckily I didn’t stress because my doctor also told me that it would grow upward with time.

It’s always the kicker of making a decision when you don’t have hard facts that tell you to go one way or the other. If they told me that ultrasounds could give my baby a third arm, it would be easy-peasy to make this decision. If they were entirely useless, it would make the decision easy. The problem is that there is potential for the rays to heat the baby and if they do, we don’t know if it actually hurts them. There is potential for the ultrasound to diagnose life-threatening problems in time to save a life, but that’s a rare occurrence.

So here’s what I’ve decided to do: I’m not getting an ultrasound unless there proves to be a medical reason for one. The doppler is basically a higher intensity ultrasound that happens for shorter amounts of time, so the same thing goes there–with one little adjustment. I decided to hear Twig’s heartbeat at my appointment yesterday just for the reassurance. I talked with my midwife about it and she basically said that she’s there just to support my decision. She also said that pregnancy is a physical and emotional experience. She said this in the context of if I was worried about a procedure and it’s safety, I should skip it.

For me, it also applied to this situation. With a fetoscope, I wouldn’t be able to hear the baby for at least another 5 weeks, if not 9. So I decided that for piece of mind, I wanted to hear the baby once before then. Other moms might not agree with this decision, but it made me feel better to know that this tiny little thing is really growing in me. There’s something about hearing the heartbeat that makes this all more real. So I went with intuition and I’m happy about it.

I am now 11 weeks. Actually according to the midwife I’m a few days further along, but I think she was going by LMP rather than ovulation for some reason. Either way, it only changes things by a few days and Twig won’t care about a due date anyway.

Everything seems to be getting better. The nausea is still there, but getting less and less. Other than sleeping 12 hours a night, I’m getting some of my energy back. I feel like I can actually get up and do things in the day, which included a couple more Lagoon (amusement park) trips this past week. We decided to get season passes and Peanut is thrilled. Once again, if my toddler can go on a ride, I think that my pregnant self can handle it. If I get to the point where I feel like I can’t by the end of the season, then Peanut can go on the rides by herself.

I had my first prenatal appointment yesterday. We chatted about the ultrasounds and dopplers, I gave her my paperwork (basically a medical history type of thing) though we didn’t go over it, I peed on a stick to check for protein and sugar (I think?), I weighed myself (I’m not sure on my pre-pregnancy weight, but it seemed about where I’m at now, so I don’t think I’ve gained anything), and we listened to the baby. She knew I was concerned about the doppler so she made sure to figure out where the “bulk of the baby” was prior to putting the actual doppler on. Peanut was pretty scared about mama laying down on the table, but she seemed happy when she heard the heartbeat.

Pregnancy Restrictions

10 Weeks 2 Days

You know what? We put a whole lot of restrictions on moms. If you’re pregnant you can’t have that sandwich, if you’re nursing you can’t have a beer, I think it’s all crap. I mean, I realize these restrictions are put out there for a reason, but I am allowed to use common sense. It’s the same as vaccines to me (which I realize some of you may not agree with). If my child is at home with me and nursing, she simply doesn’t need as many shots. Decreasing vaccines may not be right for everyone, but having Every. Single. One. isn’t right for everyone either. There’s a balance here and your doctor may not express this to you.

That’s where I was with my first pregnancy. I was told I don’t do A, B, C, and all the way to somewhere around Q. It’s bad for the baby! You could get a horrible disease that kills you/kills your baby/makes you go into premature labor/gives your baby an arm coming out of it’s forehead/blah blah blah. I don’t disagree that these things do happen (well, except maybe the last one), but it’s all about being smart about it. Last time, I was so terrified of toxoplasmosis that I moved the cat litterbox to where I couldn’t even see it, I microwaved my deli meat, and I wouldn’t even eat something cooked in alcohol. What if it hurt my baby?!?!

This time, I’m realizing that I’m a young, I’m in good health, and I’m having a normal pregnancy. If I’m smart about where I get my deli meat, I don’t need to microwave it, I can still exercise and the baby won’t fall out, and I will lift my toddler every time I frickin’ want to (and often when I don’t)!

What I thought! I can use my common sense to determine my risk! And you know what I did with that common sense this weekend? I used it to glide me down a roller coaster.

A pregnant woman on a roller coaster?!?!

I knew we were going to go to Lagoon (a local amusement park) on a specific day for my mother-in-law’s work, so I did some research. Everything online basically told me to not go on any ride at all. That carousel can be mighty dangerous to unsuspecting fetuses, right? Wrong. I not only rocked that carousel, but I went on about 10 other rides with my toddler. She loved every second of it and so did I.

I was smart about it. I avoided rides that with sudden stops, anything that made me feel nauseous, and anything that I wouldn’t feel safe with my toddler riding it along side me. I felt comfortable going on every ride I went on and felt like I was putting Twig at zero risk. If I were 8 months pregnant I probably wouldn’t have done the same thing, but right now Twig is still snugly tucked down inside me and thoroughly surrounded with squishy goo, so I figure he/she was just fine. Who knows, maybe Twig will become a thrill seeker like Peanut.

I am 10 Weeks and 2 Days. Sorry for not posting for a few weeks. Things have gotten immensely better since I last posted. Peanut is doing well with nursing (though I don’t know if she’s getting a hard letdown anymore). I am feeling less and less nauseous. I’m finally getting into the swing of things with this exhaustion. I feel like I can finally be a productive member of society again.

That said, I am still really tired. A lot of the time it’s not really sleepy tired, but more I-don’t-want-to-run-around tired. I’ve been really flaky with social engagements and honestly we’ve spent a lot more time at home in general, but I’m okay with that. We’ve been busy bodies for a long time, so I’m really to sit around and play in the backyard all day.

I’m also having some severe food aversions. One second I’m eating a second breakfast and the next I’m starving, but can’t find a single thing that sounds in the least bit appetizing. Yesterday I made myself a breakfast burrito even though I knew I had lunch to go to in a couple hours, then when I got home from lunch the smell of breakfast burrito in my house made me want spend the night in a hotel. Makes no sense. Guess that’s a theme of pregnancy.

Happy Daddy Day

Happy fathers day to the wonderful red-bearded giant I'm married to (okay, not so much giant, but certainly a ginger).

I sincerely believe that you are the best daddy in the world.

I don't know how I would parent without you.

I don't know how I would live without you.

Happy fathers day my one and only. You rock my world. You are my world. Thank you for supporting me and loving me and our children. I am the luckiest woman in the world.

Viva Las Vegas

This is going to be a not-very-wordless wordless Wednesday post. As I’ve mentioned previously, we went to Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. So we packed up the car with way too much stuff, drove 8 hours (with stops) Thursday, saw some sights and went to a wedding Friday (the reason for driving down), saw some more sights Saturday, and then drove another 8 hours home Sunday. It was our first trip as a family and it was stressful, but fun. Now to the pictures!

Peanut and daddy waiting for the bus on the way to the aquarium.

Neat jellyfish!

Peanut was super interested in the sting rays, but wouldn't touch them.

Peanut being super sassy to a little girl at the aquarium.

Family photo :-D

Peanut with the M&M guy. I find this amusing because she can't have M&Ms.

Once you get a photo with one large suited person, you must have photos with all!

And another with big bird (who was hanging out at the Welcome sign where the wedding took place).

The beautiful bride and groom (my husband's uncle and aunt) who are Las Vegas residents and had a very "Las Vegas" wedding.

Peanut with the prizes daddy won for her at some arcade while waiting for the Tournament of Kings to start (and daddy making a creepy face).

Peanut being fascinated by the fountains at the Bellagio.

Another family photo.

Peanut up close and personal with a dolphin at The Secret Garden.

Peanut relaxing on a tiger.

We also went to the Bodies exhibit and to The Tournament of Kings, both of which you can’t take pictures of. Honestly, those were probably my favorite two places. Peanut loved the Tournament of Kings. She was very interested in the ladies dancing. She didn’t go with us to the Bodies exhibit, but I got to see an embryo the same size as Twig! It was pretty neat. All in all, a good vacation.

Oh Katy Diaper Review

Get ready for the Peanut and baby photo shoot!

As many of you know, we are on the tail end of Peanut’s diaper life. She’s been potty training for about two months now and I think she’s getting the hang of it. Since we’re potty training, she’s diaper free for most of the day, but during naps and night time she’s still rockin’ the cloth diapers. I love cloth diapers. Seriously So. Frickin’. Cute. We’ve been using almost exclusively gDiapers since Peanut was big enough to fit in them, but honestly I’ve been wanting to broaden my horizons. So when I saw Oh Katy diapers at the Great Cloth Diaper Change, I had to get some!

Peanut's baby in an Oh Katy diaper. It's large on baby, but that's a tiny diaper!

And I must say, I’m impressed! Not only do these diapers get super, super tiny for newborns (see picture to the right), but they also can hold up to toddler sized waterfalls of pee! It’s amazing! And, while I still love my gDiapers, I’m very happy to have diapers that always smell fresh and delightful (since you reuse the outside cover on the gDiapers, it gets stinky after a while).

Butt in the air Peanut. :-P

Peanut has been undoing her gDiapers for quite some time now (the velcro in the back helps, but it’s still velcro), but she can’t undo these for the life of her! Very, very nice commodity when your poopy toddler is being impatient. You can even wrap them up this special way so don’t have to carry a wetbag! What an idea!

Peanut and baby smiling for the camera

I am thoroughly impressed with these diapers. It’s a local {to me} mama who makes them and she’s just a lovely person. I really enjoyed chatting with her. I’m excited to use these on Twig and I love that they’ll fit him/her from day 1 until {theoretically} 5 years! I just hope Twig doesn’t stay in diapers that long.

Now guess what!? You can win one! Are you so excited? Here’s how you enter! (Please leave 1 comment for each entry.)

*Mandatory*  1 entry – leave a comment with your favorite Oh Katy diaper color! Here’s a link to the different colors (the names for the colors are in the pull down tab)

1 entry – follow me on Twitter. 

1 entry – follow Oh Katy on Twitter.

1 entry – Tweet about this giveaway (leave a link to the tweet in the comment)

2 entries (make 2 separate comments) – follow this blog by RSS or email.  

2 entries – follow Oh Katy’s blog by RSS or email. 

2 entries – become a fan of The Adventures of Lactating Girl on Facebook. 

2 entries – become a fan of Oh Katy on Facebook.

2 entries – blog about this contest (leave a link the comment) 

The winner will be chosen on Monday, June 20th at 5PM Mountain Standard Time by random. The winner will be emailed and must respond to the email within 48 hours or a new winner will be chosen. Good luck everyone!

Congrats Vashti McMurray! You are the winner of the Oh Katy diaper! 

Peanut’s Sleep

Hello blogging world! We are still alive! Sorry I’ve been absent around here. We were busy packing for a vacation, going on vacation, trying to get life back in order post-vacation, and generally being lazy about doing anything productive. I am back up and running and will have pictures of us in Vegas up soon. 

Before leaving town, I met up with a friend to borrow a couple of books. She, very nicely may I add, lent me The No-cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers and The No-cry Nap Solution. I have The No-cry Sleep Solution, but since it’s mostly geared towards babies and older babies, most of it isn’t relevant to Peanut these days. Too bad I didn’t keep with the thoughts when I read the first book a year or so ago because then I wouldn’t be in this mess!

Obviously, her sleep schedule was out of whack before we even left for Vegas, but it got even more so while we were gone. She stayed up until 10pm our time every night we were there, her naps were incredibly sporadic, and she woke up every morning way before anyone else. Yeah, that’s always nice when you’re sharing a hotel room with two other couples (one of which was sleeping in the living room, so we had no where to go). Needless to say, we started working on the whole sleep problem the day we got home.

My husband laughs when I use this term, but our child is chronically sleep deprived. Yeah, that’s a real term from the books. Pantley (the author) says that many behavioral problems stem back to chronic lack of sleep. Even missing as little as an hour a day has shown to increase tantrums, decrease focus, etc. I can tell that Peanut isn’t getting enough sleep at night because rather than waking refreshed and happy, she wakes up screaming at me, having fits, hitting. She’s never happy in the morning.

I would say that where we are right now, Peanut is getting approximately 10 hours of sleep on a good night and a 1.5-2 hour nap. She should be getting 13-14 hours a sleep total in a day. That means that on a good day she’s missing anywhere from 1 to 2.5 hours of sleep per day. On a bad day, oh my, it gets much worse.

I can tell it affects her waking hours too. She’s grouchy when she wakes up. She has more tantrums the day after a bad nights sleep. She just isn’t as happy all around and it’s progressively getting worse. She was into a good place with her naps and sleep last summer, but when I started school in the fall everything went downhill. I’m working really hard on not letting that happen again.

She’ll be in the preschool while I’m in class and their nap time is 11:30-1:30, so I’m working on getting her napping earlier. I can also tell that napping earlier is better for her because she falls asleep easier, naps longer, and is happier when she wakes up. So that’s goal #1.

She also fights sleep really hard most nights. Some nights I’ll start getting her ready for bed around 8 and she’s still wide awake at 10. These nights I end up taking her on a drive to get her to sleep, which is not something I like to rely on. Honestly, we’ve been using that too much lately in general. This problem, of course, is compounded by the fact that I’m pregnant and need her to not fight sleep so hard. So goal #2 is to get her to fall asleep faster and happier.

Lastly, she wakes up every morning the second the sun rises. Most days she’s awake and won’t go back to sleep at around 6:30-7, but yesterday is was 5:30. Seriously kiddo? Who wakes up at 5:30?!? She was at a point a few months back where she’s wake up once at night around 6:30 and come to my bed, nurse, and go back to sleep for another hour or so. Sadly, she’s not only not going back to sleep, but most nights she’s waking up in the middle of the night and I have to go comfort her. So the last goal is to get her to stay asleep longer.

So we’re working on it. As I’ve already shown you, we made a daily chart. The naps still aren’t in the right place, but I try to be consistent about the food and what not. There have been days where she naps as early as noon, but those are few and far between. I’ve also figured out how to get her to bed at 8:30 like planned, but the routine isn’t into full effect yet.

Honestly, the biggest thing I’ve figured out is that light, or the lack thereof, is a big sleep cue for Peanut. So how I’ve gotten her to sleep at 8:30 is nursing her in the basement where it’s nice and dark. She’ll even go to sleep while I’m watching TV if it’s low and dark. I’m going to get some sort of light blocking window covering for her room and hopefully that will help. Summer is hard in that sense because it gets dark later and later. We’ve also spent way too many nights driving her to sleep on the way home because summer also means various events and many go until 8:30 or later. We have to work on that.

Either way, this is the start. It feels like parenting is one big project after another. Any advice would be graciously welcomed.