Whew!

I have been working full-time this past month, and let me tell you it has been something else!  I have SO MUCH more respect for moms who work full-time.  Seriously, I don't know how you do it!  I have only done it for 4 weeks and I am exhausted and feeling inadequate.

Because the hospital has been SO short staffed they offered a summer incentive for PRN employees to work full-time for a contact period of 4, 8, 12 weeks.  They were offering a pretty generous compensation that made it sound very appealing, but the question was what to do with Phoebe.  Aubra (Chris' intern at KSU with RUF) was looking for a summer job, so it worked out that we were able to offer her a month of employment working as a nanny.  And as a side note, she has been WONDERFUL!  She has taken her to the pool, taken Phoebe and Knox for walks regularly, has been really patient with Phoebe working with her to eat, and has really worked with her on her speech therapy and physical therapy exercises!!  THANK YOU AUBRA!

This was my last week of my four week contract.  Whew!

On the one hand I really enjoyed being back at the hospital so much.  I do love my job and it is nice to be outside the house socializing with adults vs. babbling at home all day and fighting to feed a baby.  But on the other hand I felt like things that I am used to being able to do fairly easily (in relation to this past month) such as cooking dinner, keeping my floors clean, making food for Phoebe, and staying on top of laundry were slipping out of my control.  Little chores I wanted to get done (that are hard enough to find time to do with a baby and puppy) were simply pushed aside for a month.  I hated feeling like I had to rush home to see and play with Phoebe, feed Phoebe, cook dinner, clean up, put the baby to bed, make lunch for the next day, and by that time it was typically past my bed time.  And then of course there is my wonderful husband who I would like to spend some time with as well!  I did miss some of that time crawling around on the floor, babbling, singing silly songs, and over exaggerating everything.  I also missed being able to get up and run in the mornings and exercise on a consistent basis.

It was definitely a good experience trying to juggle it all, but at this point working full-time is not for me.  However, if I was given another opportunity to do it for a short stint of time I absolutely would, knowing there was an ending point.  The extra money has been nice.  I am going to set aside some of it to do a little shopping at some point.  But in the mean time, we need a new vacuum, shelving for the garage for storage space, a longer hose that reaches the garden, a new file cabinet (our old one is rusted from water damage and has been in the garage for several years), and a new bookshelf for all Chris' books (that are currently in piles on the floor for lack of shelf space).  I'd also like to take some of that money to throw a party for Phoebe's birthday too.  Basically lots of little things that really just don't work into the budget on a month to month basis.

Some of my favorite times over the past month have been bath-time because we can play in the tub in the evening before she goes down for bed.  One of her favorite things is trying to grab the water running down out of the faucet.

Priceless

This is potentially my favorite series of photos of Phoebe!  We went on Sunday evening to take some pictures of Phoebe for a different project.  She got a hold of some dandelion seeds and we happened to capture these as well...

PRICELESS

Dogs, Dogs, Dogs

I hope you all had a good weekend.  Ours was busy with dogs.   This weekend we were dog sitting for Julie and Justin.   They dropped Amos off at our house Thursday evening and picked up Sunday evening.

Here is the sweet face that we got to see all weekend

Let me tell you, two dogs and a baby are a handful!  The boy's energy fed off of each other- especially the first couple days.  They were like 2 wild men!  To try to run off some energy, Chris took them to the dog park Thursday evening.   Then we had two tired puppies.

Because the two boys play so well together Friday morning Chris took them to a ball field to run around in and then Friday evening they ran and played on an empty field by the church.  Saturday morning Chris and I each took one of the dogs for a run and this seemed to wear them out pretty good.   Early Sunday morning they both went to the dog park (before any other dogs were there so they could focus on playing with each other) but by Sunday afternoon their energy had picked back up and they were wrestling in our living room again.

We felt like we had to watch Phoebe a little bit closer this weekend with both dogs.  Amos was really well behaved around Phoebe if you reminded him to be gentle.  But because he was in a new place and not used to Phoebe she was a big curiosity the first couple days that he wanted to check out.

At the dog park Knox is quite protective of Phoebe.  There is one really annoying dog that has jumped on me several times while I was holding Phoebe trying to get to the baby and has also gotten up in the stroller with her.  Each time Knox came out of nowhere and put this dog in her place.  (We were very proud of him)  But Knox did not seem to mind Amos being close to Phoebe and checking her out.  We were thankful for this.  I guess as long as you are a friend of Knox you can be a friend of Phoebe.

Knox did get jealous of Amos playing with Chris though.  It was quite amusing.  Chris was on the ground wrestling with Amos and Knox started growling and trying to jump in and break it up.

So our weekend consisted of refereeing dogs and mostly trying to keep the baby out of the way.   Julie and Justin kept Knox for 9 days while we were down at the beach, so we were happy to help them out for the weekend!

Easter- Better Late Than Never...

Yes, Easter.  I realize it was over 2 months ago, but I never posted about it!  So here's a brief recap and a chance for me to share some fun Easter pictures.

We went up to Chattanooga for Easter and brought the puppy with us.  It was a fun weekend!

Phoebe got to swing for the first time in Mamo and Papo's front yard.  She loved it!  I really wish we had a tree where we could put up a swing.  We have since stopped at the playground next to the dog park for Phoebe to swing, but it would be awesome to have one in the yard!

Knox had a great time running around in the backyard and playing with the next door neighbor's dogs.  After church on Easter we went over to JP and Catrina's new house, which has a fabulous fenced in back yard.  Knox was in puppy heaven!  Aunt Carol gave him this big green ball and he LOVED it!

Phoebe enjoyed eating her Easter card from Aunt Carol and getting into her Easter basket from Mamo and Papo.

Daddy had a nice nap under some of Phoebe's loot while Caylee went on her first Easter Egg Hunt

The whole gang...

Got it!

Ohh, what's this?

I want it

Give it to me!

Got it! Now what do I do with it?

Chew on it of course!

This is what happens when daddy keeps Phoebe.

10 Months

My sweet baby turned 10 months old last weekend!  Ahh, I will have a one year old before I know it!  Time to start thinking of some fun party ideas :)

But in the meantime we will recap the previous month.  Its been a big one.  Phoebe has started "crawling" well army crawling anyhow.  She hasn't quite mastered getting her knees up underneath her.  She will pull them up under her in her crib and rock back and forth, but has never moved anywhere in the crib. She won't pull them underneath of her on the floor.  This crawling means we have started saying "no" to her for the first time.  Her favorite things to crawl to- electrical wires, Knox's toys, food, and water bowl.

She claps and waves now too.

Look at those chompers!

She has five teeth now and no longer sleeps through the night.  Although her teeth hurting or waking up in a strange place while at the beach *may* have initiated the night-time waking, I'm beginning to think a habit is forming...  She did not sleep very well at the beach and we were hoping once we got back home her sleeping would improve.  It did not.  She now wakes up around 1am and around 5am almost every night.  We have been going in and rocking her back to sleep and laying her back down, but I'm beginning to wonder if we need to start letting her cry it out for a bit.  It would be hard, but I can't keep getting up every night.  She's not hungry- she won't eat.  She just cries, gets rocked, and falls back asleep.  I've tried patting her bottom in the bed and she calms down and stops crying, but then as soon as you walk away she starts again...obviously she doesn't get back into a deep enough sleep before my arm gets tired and starts to cramp.

Her eating is still so-so.  Sometime she will eat, sometimes she will refuse.  Sometimes she will take a bottle, sometimes she will refuse.  We haven't been able to get her to drink her bedtime bottle for over a week, so we have started putting her down without and then "waking" her up before we go to bed to give her the bottle.  She wakes up a little bit, but really just enough to eat and then she easily goes back to sleep.  Chris will typically rock and her read for 30 minutes because we are now trying to keep her elevated after eating.

Also new in the past two weeks since we got home from the beach is night-time vomiting.  This is more than spitting up- this is close to entire contents of dinner or previous bottle requiring a change of clothes and bath for mom, baby, as well as some carpet cleaning.  It doesn't happen every night, probably about 3-4 times/week. So now the doctors and myself as well are wondering if maybe there is some reflux going on??  She has never before this point acting uncomfortable after eating or had any problems spitting-up or vomiting.  I can count on two hands the number of times she spit-up between birth and 7 months of age.  Now they are wondering if her aversion to food might be the result of a little bit of reflux??  Obviously not enough to bring anything back up but enough to cause some discomfort (that she never showed any visible signs of).  No one ever though she had any reflux problems in the past with her poor weight gain and poor eating habits.  So who knows, but we started her on Zantac a couple days ago to see if that helps or changes anything.  If it doesn't then we can at least rule it out definitively.

Let me tell you she does not like taking the Zantac.  I'm going to take it back to Kroger today to get some flavor put in it to see if that helps.  It can't make it any worse...  Poor baby has enough issues rejecting things put into or around her mouth, so it would be nice for this to be a bit less of a fight.

Destin

After a week at Summer Conference we drove over to Destin and met Chris' family for a week of "real" vacation.

We spent most of the time at the pool this week too.

Chris and I did head down to the beach for one day and it was fabulous!  Probably my second favorite day after deep sea fishing.  I love just sitting out at the beach - tanning and reading and relaxing listening to the waves.  The beach with a baby was definitely a different experience though.  There wasn't much reading (despite all the books that I naively brought...) or tanning or relaxing listening to the waves.

It was a fun week with good food and good company!  Thanks!

RUF SuCo 2012

Well besides airbrush t-shirts, we had a great time at Summer Conference.  It's a fun week because a lot of the campus ministers' families will come, so I enjoyed hanging out with other wives and children while our husbands were busy working.  Chris was the director this week so he was pretty busy, especially at the beginning of the week.  Phoebe and I hung out at the pool because getting a baby and all the accessories out to the beach by myself was a little bit more than I was willing to take-on.

We did take Phoebe to the beach on Sunday afternoon before the students arrived on Monday to see how she liked it, and the sand didn't bother her at all.  She wasn't extremely fascinated by it, but she didn't "not-like" it either.  She played in it a little bit, but mostly I think she could have been sitting on our living room floor and not really noticed the difference.

I love beach volleyball, so Phoebe and I did go out to the beach a couple afternoons so I could play in the volleyball tournament with the students.  Aubra and students that weren't playing would entertain Phoebe.

KSU students at our dinner out at The Back Porch

For those of you that have not had the joy of attending RUF Summer Conference at Laguna Beach Christian Retreat Center- it is gross.  I mean really.  I did not go at all in college and my first year going with Chris he failed to inform me that I needed to bring Lysol wipes and my own sheets.  I was not very happy... All that to say, Phoebe played on this sheet on the floor all week, and we were thankful she was not crawling yet.

Ready to go to the pool!

 Phoebe LOVED the pool!  She loved splashing around in her little float.  She really did have a ball.

This year we stayed in a "house" on the edge of camp.  The family that stayed above us had a little girl that was born the exact same day as Phoebe.  Here are Sadie Jane and Phoebe playing together in the pool.  (Sadie Jane has 2 older brothers...)