a little update

Its been over two months since I have posted. Woops! We have been crazy busy here and the blog usually is the first thing to go off my to-do list. The biggest reason for this is that Jeff is doing his surgery rotation. Surgery has pretty bad hours and Jeff is hardly ever home. This means I have been a single parent for a while now and it drains ALL of my energy. We knew it would be this way so Christine and I hopped on a plane and flew out to Utah for two weeks to spend some time with my family while Jeff did liver transplants.

Things we have been up to:

Christine turned one! I had grand ideas for a birthday party with her little friends, but with Jeff living at the hospital we decided to keep things really simple. We just picked up some little presents for her and enjoyed playing with her around the house.

Christine got super sick. Turned out to be a bought of gastroenteritis with some secondary complications. This was the first time she's been really sick. She threw up everything I gave her. I ended up having to force pedialyte down her throat using a syringe to keep her hydrated for several days. We went back to the doctor and he gave her a prescription for Zofran. I am a big fan of Zofran now, as soon as she had the medicine in her she could keep down her formula. She lost a lot of weight during that time though, poor girl. We survived the hard days because, lucky for me, Jeff's parents live only an hour away.  So Christine and I stayed with them for a few days, it was so nice to have help taking care of Christine. It was an added bonus that they let us use their washing machine. I washed so many loads of laundry that week. One night I went through all of Christine's sheets (because she kept vomiting-- this was before the Zofran) and then I moved her into bed with me and placed her on top of a towel and then she leaned just over the towel and threw up all over the bed sheets... more sheet changing! Those were long, hard days. The doctor gave me a special diet for Christine after he prescribed her anti-nausea medicine, we had to switch over to soy formula and give her things like angel food cake. We are completely back to normal now. We just saw the doctor again and got the clear for switching to whole milk.

Christine cut four upper teeth all at the same time. This was at the end of the gastroenteritis. (bad timing!) I am glad that she finally has teeth to chomp her food with. Finally we can introduce more real food.

Eleven Months

 I finally have a laptop again, which means I can (hopefully) post much more often. It took a month and a lot of yelling at customer service reps for Office Max to get the laptop to us. Lesson learned: DO NOT buy anything online from Office Max.

Christine has only six days left until she is a year old. Six more days of counting her age in months.

Highlights from Christine's eleventh month:

• Still only two bottom teeth. I've enjoyed not dealing with teething, but Christine is ready to eat real food, and her two little teeth just aren't enough to chow down on Texas BBQ
• Christine prefers to walk, and hardly crawls. I am afraid she's no longer a baby, and is officially a toddler. A friend asked me yesterday if her walking helped get her into more trouble. But I don't think it has. She has been very mobile and curious since she was crawling, except now that she's a little older she can understand what "no" means and tries to be good. This means that she is a little easier to take care of then two months ago. Although, I still have to remove the toilet paper from the holder and place it out our reach while I do my hair. The moment I stop watching her and pay attention to blow-drying my hair, she makes a mad dash to the toilet paper and unrolls the entire thing in about three seconds.
• Christine continues to sleep well. She wakes up at 7 in the morning and I get her our of her crib, bring her into my bed and give her a bottle that she drinks while I lay next to her enjoying a few extra minutes of sleep. She still takes two naps a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. They range from 45 minutes to two hours. The 45-minute nap days are hard ones, and the two-hour nap days are beautiful!
• Jeff has begun his surgery rotation. He had his very first surgery yesterday and came home on a high. He loves everything about it. I am adjusting to the new schedule (very long hours) and trying to fill our day more. Christine and I hosted our first baby playgroup yesterday and are very excited about getting together with our friends every week.
• I have been trying to teach Christine baby sign language and she is starting to use a few signs to communicate. She can do the signs for more, drink, all done, and cheeto. Yes, that's right, cheeto. "Little Crunchies" are their real name, but we call them baby cheetos. They are Christine's favorite snack. She is constantly requesting them. She does the sign for them by putting her index fingers together and goes "CH CH".

I admit, I eat them too sometimes. They are quite delicious.

At the Beach

My sister Ashley and her husband Tyler came to visit us this month! (yes- during this insane heat wave, I don't know if they will ever come back!) We took them to the Museum of Fine Arts, drove them downtown, gave them a walking-tour of the medical center, and took them to the beach! Ashley wrote about their visit here, you should go look at her pictures, I love the ones of the squirrel feeding. We had a lot of fun playing with them, and Christine loved all the extra attention.

The beach was everyone's favorite part of the visit. We started off taking turns bogey-boarding and playing with Christine under the shade of our umbrella.

Christine tasted her first real cheeto (thanks to Uncle Tyler)

Last time we went to the beach Christine did not like the water or the sand at all, and I expected the same reaction. But Christine surprised me.

"Hey mom, what's all that water over there? Let's go play over there!"

"Hmmmm, odd texture, but it looks safe. I think I'm going to explore a little"

"It's kinda like the bath tub, but bigger!"

"Yes. I like this!"

"Let's go swimming Daddy!"

Ha ha! I just have to laugh at these pictures. Christine is fearless! The water would splash in her face and she'd swallow some. You would think this would scare her and make her cry, but no, she would cough and then laugh!

10 months

I haven't purchased a replacement laptop yet, so I am still behind in blogging. So even though Christine turns 11 months in just a few days, here is her 10th month post.

Christine is so beautiful, but her hair always looks so messy. In fact, I am often asked if I tried to cut her hair. I guess people think the only way it could look so bad is if I haphazardly took a pair of scissors to it. Nope, it's Jeff's fault. He passed on his weird cowlicks. I try to put headbands and hair clips on her to improve the hair-do, but Christine is an expert at getting those things off.
Christine has two teeth now. Those teeth are very slow at coming in, all of her little friends who are months younger than her have 7 or 8 teeth. That's okay with me because when Christine is feeling ignored she likes to bite my knee.Christine took her first steps on Thursday, July 28th. She was playing with GiGi (aka Jeff's mom. she would die if I used the g-ma word) and I was talking on the phone with Jeff during his lunch break, Christine was standing at the coffee table and then took about 4 steps toward GiGi. It was amazing! Every day she takes a few steps here and there, but she still prefers to crawl.
Now that she's more mobile, she's getting into a lot more trouble. This sheet was draped across the desk to keep her from playing with the computer cords. Now the sheet turns the space underneath the desk into Christine's personal fortress.

Another new discovery: windows

...and drapes!

One more example of Christine's trouble-making:

"Mom, why are you packing away all of my clothes?"

"This isn't too small for me. We should keep it out."

"I can't believe you packed this away!"

"It's okay I still love you mom! Just don't pack away my stuff."

Amazing Husband

I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, and found a cockroach guarding the bathroom. Poor Jeff woke up to me chasing the cockroach through a maze of Christine's toys trying to smoosh it with a wipes container (bad choice of cockroach killing weapons, but it was closest to me at the time) as I yelled DIE! DIE! DIE! Jeff hopped out of bed and killed it immediately.

One of the many reasons why I love him.