I'm It!

I got tagged today (ok a couple of days ago, I'm late) by Mesa (love ya!):

The Rules:

1. Go to where you store your digital photos and open the 4th folder.

2. Post the 4th picture in that folder.

3. Explain the picture.

4. Tag 4 people.

I had to adjust the rules some because I can't post my 4th folder and picture since it's a face shot of Squeaky. So I went to my back-up photo site and checked the 4th folder and 4th picture.

So here's my 4/4 picture!


This is my 2 week old niece, Avianna. I call her Avi. This was taken on her 2nd day in the hospital laying in her mother's lap. She's equipped with pink mittens since she was born with very long nails and loves to keep her hands near her face. She looks simply beautiful to me in this picture. She's got my brother's eyes and lips, and her mom's hair. I know she's going to be a heart breaker, and my brother with be a boyfriend breaker! Avi had my heart from the moment I found out about her, and she's got her aunt Ashley wrapped around her finger. I love her so much. My brother has gone through a lot in the past couple of years so she is a huge blessing to us all.

Ok, I'm tagging Dream Mommy, Brandy, Kris, and Waiting for Baby Garcia.

It's back

I'm still not sure why I can't seem to ever get Squeaky fully well. We got a call from the daycare Tuesday at noon that he was running a fever of 102 so I left work to go get him. He had slept for 4 hours since I left him that morning and that is not like him at all. This is a child that only naps for 30 minutes usually so I knew he was coming down with something. I was hoping that the fever was because he got shots the day before. He usually runs a temp for about 24 hours or so after his shots, but we try to keep him medicated to prevent that. I brought him home and he went back to sleep. He slept another couple of hours. He would barely eat anything. He just cried and fussed. He would take the bottle and suck a little bit and then start gagging. This lasted all night and into the next morning so I called the doc to get him in that morning. They checked him out and said that his throat was blood red, but the nurse couldn't say for sure if it was thrush again or strep throat. She didn't want to give him antibiotics to treat strep if it was in deed thrush so she called in the thrush med. And wanted us to give it to him as soon as possible and bring him back the next day to see if that has helped. I was hoping and praying it was thrush and not strep even though I couldn't figure out how he got thrush again. I sterilized the crap out of everything that we kept and replaced most of his bottles with new ones the last time.

So I fought him to get the medicine down and gave him some ibuprofen which seemed to help a lot. He was able to take his bottles with a lot less pain. Rob took him back to the doc yesterday, and she said he looked better so we will be sticking with the thrush medicine for the next few days to clear things up. He's back at daycare today, and hopefully having a good day. I just hate to see him in pain and feel so helpless sometimes because I can't figure out exactly what the problem is. I just pray that when the weather gets better he will finally get completely healthy.

I feel like a little kid at Christmas stalking and waiting for my Nutri*system box to arrive. I'm so ready to start. We haven't been eating well at all these past few days with a sick baby no one really feels like or has time to cook so we're running out and grabbing junk. I'm hoping it will get here early, but right now it's scheduled to arrive the middle of next week. Ughhhh! Hurry up!

I had a good birthday even though I wasn't looking forward to it. I kind of felt bad when I left work Friday because only 1 person remembered my birthday. But I got tons of well wishes on Saturday so I know that I wasn't forgotten. Squeak stayed with my parents that night, and they had a good time together. He even slept through the night for them. I'm glad he didn't give them a hard time. Rob took me shopping and let me wander through a couple of my favorite stores without bothering me to hurry up. It was nice. Then we ate at our favorite Mexican restaurant, and had a huge thing of yummy fajhitas with chicken, steak, mushrooms, olives, onions, bell peppers covered in cheese. Yum! I had 2 huge margaritas when got me nice and drunk. I can't remember the last time I got drunk. I know Rob had fun laughing at me. I enjoyed just letting my hair down after being so wound up for so long. I came home and crashed only to wake up at 3 in the morning wide awake. So I watched a couple of hours of TV before going back to bed to get more rest before church.

It took me a long time to decide what I wanted for my birthday. I would go back and forth between jewelry, clothes, and other random things. But I kept feeling like that really wasn't what I wanted. I wanted something more important than a new purse or a new outfit. I decided that I wanted to try Nutri*system. I'm so damn tired of being this fat. I've always been chubby or as I like to call myself, thick. But the last year or so it's just gotten out of hand. I look at pictures of myself when I got married, and I don't see myself. I see someone that's beautiful, but I don't feel beautiful at all now. I also think that my weight is really holding me back from getting pregant again. I know that people much heavier than me get pregnant everyday. But I don't think my body functions correctly at the weight that I am. I feel like God wants me healthier before I get pregnant that's why it's been almost 3 years since I was pregnant with Madison. I'm not getting any younger, and I'm determined to give birth again and this time bring my baby home in my arms. So after researching and talking with people I decided that the structure of Nutri*system is what I need to get back on track. So now I'm waiting on my order to show up from QVC since they had the best price for the plan I wanted to use.

It's time I go from:
Back to:
"Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph; a beginning, a struggle and a victory." Ghandi

29

I still can't believe that I'm 29 years old today. I'm one step closer to that dreaded 3-0. I'm not where I wanted to be at this age, but I see that God had different plans for me. So today I'm enjoying a day with my boys. Rob cooked me breakfast, and got me my favorite cake. I can't wait to dig in. My mom is babysitting Squeaky tonight so that we can go out to dinner and a movie, and sleep in tomorrow morning. I was going to vent about this past week at work, but I don't want to ruin my birthday so I'll save it for later. Well, time to finally get dressed so that I can leave the house. And my little boy is talking and smiling at me so I've got to go :)

Exhausted

We're back home now, well we've been back since Friday evening. But we're still trying to get adjusted to being back home. Squeaky seems to sleep horribly when we're away from home. He usually sleeps through the night at home once he's put to bed. But when we're not at home he's hard to get to sleep and even harder to keep asleep. He woke up in the wee hours of the morning everyday that we were in TX. Each day he woke up earlier and earlier, and was harder and harder to get to sleep. Our last night before we had to drive home he woke up at 2 in the morning and it took me on and off until 7 to get him to stay asleep. And by that time I only got about an hour and half more sleep. I tried to let Rob sleep since he was driving, but I knew that I was going to be a caffeine junkie the rest of the day. But usually once S is back home he's fine and back to normal. But not this time. He's still waking up in the middle of the night keeping us up. Last night we were up from 2:30 to 4:30 with him. I'm so tired. Diet be damned, I'll be chugging cokes and coffee with lots of sugar all day.

We really enjoyed our trip and the time we got to spend with my niece. I was strong and didn't cry when I said goodbye that last evening before we left. I didn't want to go. I miss her so much. I want to be a part of her life on a regular basis, but that's hard since we're 5 hours apart. :(



We had another visit with Squeaky's BM on Friday since we didn't know we were supposed to bring him to the Family Team Conference. We had no idea that they usually do a parental visit after the conference. And since the letter that the case worker claimed she sent to us never got to us we were not fully informed. She just said that she needed my husband and I to be there. She never mentioned Squeaky. So on our way home from TX we stopped by the office so his BM and his grandmother could visit with him. I hate going to visits, and I hate supervising them. It's so ackward because S is looking at us and trying to get us to hold him, and we can't. I try to even avoid eye contact with him because he starts to get fussy when I don't come and pick him up.

I keep trying to put it out of my head that he will probably be going home. I worry about him going home. His grandmother talks about letting him play with her dogs. She's got 4 chows. I'm not an expert, but from what I've heard and experienced chows are not that friendly to people they don't know. His BM wanted to change his diaper even though he wasn't wet just because she brought him some diapers. She didn't have any wipes, and as I'm pulling the wipes case out of his diaper bag his grandmother says "Get some paper towels. You need to learn to use what you got. You don't need no wipes." WTF? I'm an adult and I don't wipe my ass and private parts with rough paper towels so why the fudge would you wipe a baby with them? Ughhhhhh! I gave her the wipes before she got paper towels thank God! Something about this family doesn't sit well with me. I just hope and pray that they don't send him into a dangerous living environment.

Well, it's about time for me to get dressed for work and to get more coffee. Yay!

She's Here!!!!

My niece, Avianna Victoria, was born this evening. She's a petite 6 pounds 11 ounces. Mom and baby are doing fine. I'm so in love!!! She ended up coming via c-section, but that's just fine because she's happy and healthy. I can't wait until I get to hold her and continue the spoiling only an aunt can do. I love my little Avi!

Blue

I'm feeling sad right now, and I really shouldn't be but I can't help it. We had our 1st family team conference today, and things don't look good for us getting to keep Squeaky. I'm heart broken. It's hard to even put into words how I feel right now. I can't wish bad things on his birth mom or be upset at her for getting her life together, but it doesn't make the possibility of losing S any less painful. They scheduled our next family team conference for July 24 so hopefully that means that we will have him for at least the next 6 months. I hope we will get to throw him his 1st birthday party, and I'm still praying that it won't be the last birthday we share with him. This hurts so much.

At the same time that we're dealing with this we're getting packed to go to Dallas for the birth of my niece. I can't wait to meet her and hold her. So now I have to put my pain aside and try to enjoy my niece's first couple of days here on earth. We'll hit the road in the morning so I'll post more later because I need some sleep.

2009

Happy New Year everyone. We had a pretty low key new year's eve this year. Some of Rob's friends came over for a while, and I was glad to see them go. They are boring and lack personality...but i digress. I planned a couple of fun foods for us to have to make the night special. I made a Colby/Monterey jack fondue that we enjoyed with big chunks of Hawaiian bread and sauteed chicken. Yum! I bought Rob some Samuel Adams Black Lager (And it was good. Tastes like chocolate beer :) and I had some wine. We spent most of the evening laughing and talking to Squeak because he was in one of his "talkative" moods. I still wonder what he's trying to say to us sometimes. LOL! He went to bed about 10 because it was hard to get him to sleep with all the fireworks going on outside. Another friend of ours, Scott, came by and rang the new year in with us. He brought us some Martha Washington balls that he and his mom made. All I can say is Yummy and thanks Scott! We had a nice relaxing evening and thoroughly enjoyed it.

New years day we all stayed in our pajamas all day. We spent the day watching a Looney Toons marathon with Squeak. It was fun to see the old, good cartoons before everything got so PC and sensitive. I love me some Pepe La Pu and the Roadrunner. I cooked dinner that night which consisted of New Year's Day staples like cabbage greens and black eyed peas with a pork rib roast. I hope the rest of this year is like yesterday, spending time relaxing with my 2 boys.

I stopped writing resolutions several years ago, and changed to goals for this year. Some of my goals are:

1. Lose weight for my health
2. Pay down debt
3. Stick to my monthly budget
4. Spend as much time as possible with my son and husband
5. Live life one day at a time
6. Get more active

I hope everyone has a happy and blessed 2009!