Little Lady

Last Thursday Natalie and I went to my job to get our hair done together. I went a smidge darker and got it trimmed, she went for green ends and bangs. I'll have to say she made a good choice and it looks so cute! I can't get over how grown up she looks with bangs. It frames her beautiful eyes too. She also got her ears pierced on Sunday. She started asking about getting them pierced last summer and we agreed she could do it for her 7th birthday but she changed her mind come December. I feel like people might judge me for letting my little girl have green hair and holes in her ears but what the fuck ever. After our hair appointment we got lunch and then picked Vanessa up from my mother in laws house. At home she wanted to watch a movie and I got to do that with her for a bit before baby duties called.

I love spending time with this little chickadee and so don't look forward to back to school. Tomorrow she is going to meet her new teacher at open house. She didn't get the teacher she wanted and none of her best friends are in her class but I am optimistic she will like the teacher and make new besties. I am so proud of my little lady.

2 Months

Vanessa turned two months three days ago. She had a doctors appointment last week and her weight is 11 lbs 9 oz (64th percentile), length 23.5 inches (93rd percentile) and head circumference 38.7 cm (72nd percentile). Her percentiles went down and I was concerned about the head circumference but the doctor assured me not to worry and we'll see where things are at 4 months. It's not that I'm comparing her to other babies and basing my concern on the percentile thing, it's that her growth slowed down. Her head barely grew and that freaks me out. She is so alert and coo-y and smiley and seems to be improving on coordination and head strength so that is the most important thing to me. The doctor also felt her hips at the end of the check up and said her left hip possibly felt a bit loose. So we scheduled an appointment with a pediatric orthopedic, then were told they wanted her to have an ultrasound before seeing the specialist but the first opening for an ultrasound was October 12th. I scheduled that then they called me and said they were going to see if the doctor wanted her to come in anyway without an ultrasound or if they can get her an earlier ultrasound. So we're just waiting but I am not too concerned with that and expect everything to check out okay.

So overall everything is still amazing and I am so happy! I love this little baby so much my heart wants to burst! 

8 Weeks

The summer is coming to an end and I feel a little bummed about Natalie going back to school. Okay, I feel quite a bit bummed. I want her to get out of the house and socialize and learn but I sure will miss having her at home with me. Granted, we don't get to do as much as we did last summer and I feel bad at times but she is happy and has fun. She can still struggle with following directions the first 14 times I ask and can get an attitude when things don't go her way but she is such a good kid. She is so freaking funny. I can't even explain fully, she just is silly and witty and has a good sense of humor (unless I poke fun at her, then she gets sensitive). I enjoy our conversations and how mature she seems when talking about things.

Vanessa is 8 weeks old today and the absolute sweetest. She is so smiley and chatty and cuddly. I literally have to keep her strapped to me all day for her to nap and hold her in my arms at night. I'm not crazy about the night time thing only because I am concerned about the safety of it. I looked into getting a breathing monitor for her but that tracks movement and if she's in bed with me it will pick up on my motion, hence giving a false reading. She loves being held and talked to and gets bored fairly easily. I actually hold her all day, or put her down and talk to her. Her eating and sleeping is still all over the place. She definitely is the gassiest baby. Poor girl has belly pains often and fusses, part of the reason I think she likes being held and upright so much. Natalie is the perfect big sister to her and absolutely adores her. I just love and adore these girls so so much.

I am feeling good. I've been taking Zoloft for two weeks now. I am not sure it's actually had an affect on me yet or not. I can tell you I felt so good the first day I took it and have since. Everything I read and the doctor said it takes weeks for it to start working, so perhaps it is just a placebo effect.  Either way so far so good. Physically I feel awesome too! I've lost 35 lbs and am trying to take better care of myself overall.

Lately

Today Vanessa is 6 weeks old and Natalie is 7 years and 8 months old exactly! I am certain my father in law will be by later to drop off a card and donuts for Natalie, Vanessa might have to wait awhile before she gets special treats. ;)

Sleep is still not good. Honestly I don't really care about that though. As I lied awake at 4 in the morning today after feeding the baby, her a bit restless and uncomfortable in her sleep, I thought how lucky am I that this is my biggest problem? Waking up to take care of this beautiful child who belongs to me is amazing. So what if she wakes up more often than most babies or has tummy troubles that make her fuss? It's such a small thing compared to the problems a lot of people have.

Her eating is still all over the place at times. We've increased nightly feedings to 4 ozs. She doesn't always finish them and during the day she will eat, fuss, eat, sleep, wake up after 15 minutes, fuss, eat, so not much consistency when it come to feeding. She does drool and chew on her hands a lot- Matt calls it her handburgers when she does. If she weren't a month old I would say it's teething. I also remember Natalie drooling and chewing a lot long before she ever got teeth too, so I think it's just something babies do.

Natalie is doing well. She is such a funny and smart kid. She genuinely makes me laugh and impresses me with her vocabulary. She uses words like subtle and eager and I think it is so cute. The other day she told me she liked my sunglasses and tried them on. I said, "You look good in those," and she said, "Aw, thanks. So do you...even though I don't know what you look like in them," so I tried them on and she goes, "You look good in them! Even better than I look in them...even though I don't know what I look like in them," and it cracked me up because she was intentionally being playful and silly. She has been enjoying going to camp pretty much every day. Granted, we only send her for 3 hours a day or so but she has fun and looks forward to it which is such a relief. My concern is once school starts she is going to hate doing that and have a lot of anxiety about it.

Speaking of anxiety, I talked to a doctor about mine and was prescribed something for it. I just took my first does today. I have so many hesitations about going on meds. I am afraid of the potential side effects and that it will physically make me feel bad. Then I am scared of the emotional side effects possible and that it will mentally make me feel more depressed/anxious or worst of all make me feel suicidal or something crazy. I know that is rare but still. Then I debate if I really am all that anxious/sad. I don't have the classic checklist of symptoms for depression like loss of interest in activities, poor appetite, fatigue, feeling hopeless and such and I certainly don't feel depressed but on occasion I just break down and sob out of nowhere. I know I am anxious for sure but sometimes I think it's fine and that I am handling it fine but then I think, why would I want to keep feeling like this if I don't have to?

I think going back to work is a good thing for me mentally too, at least it seemed to be this weekend. My first day back was Friday. Everyone welcomed me back and it felt good to have different responsibilities for the day. Of course Saturday morning things at work had to get a bit off track and I came in to computer issues first thing. Everything I do is on the computer and it was malfunctioning so making work a bit difficult but it was early enough it didn't fuck things up too much. I swear that salon is cursed though because we have the worst of luck with everything. Every week or so there is a new issue popping up. A few weeks ago when my sister was working lightening struck right outside the shop and completely fried our computers and wifi modem. There are so many things like that that consonantly happen and it makes our job 100 times more challenging. Plus my boss really isn't helpful and leaves us to figure out how to solve the problem while we're trying to deal with the problem and explain the mess to customers. Sounds like I really am happy to be back to work, huh?

Life has been good. We've had lots of visitors including my friend who lives in N.C. One of Matt's friends even stopped by to meet Vanessa, which was sweet to me because he's this big, burly dude. We've been spending a lot of time with Matt's parents too. They are always so kind and helpful and we're so lucky to have them.