My Date for the New Year

Here is my date for the evening (at least till 8:30). Afterwards I will be bringing in the New Year with Christmas Ornaments and Lysol. My hope is to get all Christmas items put away and to clean my bathroom. I know, very exciting things that could wait but what else is a pregnant girl to do...

Ryleigh's 2nd Year Video

First let me start off by saying that this idea came from a good friend of mine, Alisa, who has 2 wonderful children. She makes a video every year outlining the year they had. I did the same for Ryleigh for her first birthday (after seeing hers) and once again, I did it for her 2nd year. It's about 8 minutes long but trying to put 365 days into 8 minutes is pretty good. Enjoy!

Holiday Rundown

I hope everyone had a good Christmas. Ours was fun filled although looking back it was a bit of a blur. I hosted Christmas Eve and we did our traditional Honey Baked Ham buffet. It was quite good. My parents, brother, sister, brother-in-law and niece all joined us to celebrate. I spent most of the time in the kitchen either preparing, eating or cleaning up. It wasn't that bad and I actually enjoyed it. The best part was having my family together and having Glenn be home to be a part of it.

Christmas day was an early start for us. I did not sleep well the night before. I woke up at 3:30 am and never really went back to sleep. I got up at 5:30 to shower and get ready to head over to my folks with Ryleigh and Glenn. We got there in time to open presents with everyone. It was mad chaos because the kids (Ryleigh and Avery) were mad unwrappers. My daughter loves bows! If she could, she would have taken every single bow off of every present. She also loved tearing paper but if it was clothes she ran to the next item to be unwrapped. She had a ton of loot. She must have been good this year because Santa spoiled her.

We didn't take many photos... too busy. We did get a good one of the girls late in the afternoon. Glenn was also able to get some video. I will attempt to post that too.

Just checking in...

Okay, I should write a post about our holiday... and I will just not now. I am posting a few photos I took with our new camera. I got it up and running the day after Christmas and I am still learning the ins/outs. I am thinking it will fix my appetite for crisper photos...

Need ideas!

My husband is going Christmas shopping this weekend... I need ideas to give him. Any thoughts?

End of an Era

I did it. I finally put an end to Gymboree! It is scary to think there will be no more Gymbo The Clown, circle time, bubbles... the list goes on. My reason for pulling Ryleigh out of there started in October. We received notification that the location Ryleigh attends would be shutting down and the closest location would be 20 minutes away. We decided we would give it a go though. They were giving us free classes the month of December so I thought why not... make the drive and see how it goes. Well I only made it to 2 of 4 classes. Her new teacher has a great voice and I did love it. Then they called... right after I signed Ryleigh up for 2 classes at our local rec center. They wanted to know if I was going to sign up Ryleigh for Level 5 in January... I decided to bite the bullet and tell them no. It was hard to say no and then write them an email telling them no... we've been going there since she was 9 weeks old. It feels like my little girl is growing up!

I have a cold...but it could be worse

I could by Lynne Spears! Her 16 year old daughter is preggers... good ole Jamie Lynn. The one we thought was responsible. Do you remember when she inked a book deal with a Christian publisher at the end of October... to write (of all things) a book about parenting. I don't know about you, but I suspect I would use it as my, "What Not To Do" book.
In all honesty, I do feel bad in making fun. Her youngest getting pregnant is not something to mock. I suspect if we were all honest we can remember being 16 and naive about the whole sex thing and yet we still did it. So I don't really fault Lynne Spears. And I certainly don't fault her for Britney's behavior. I just had to write a post because I still find it odd that Lynne would put herself out there by writing a book about parenting. I think she needs to re-think that whole idea!

Need to center

I know, I know... my photo is not centered in my title. I am working on it but it may not happen anytime soon.

Birthday Party

Ryleigh had a birthday party on Friday with her friends. Glenn & I invited over my SAHM and their children for some playtime, lunch and cupcakes. It was fun and a nice way to celebrate her turning 2 although Ryleigh didn't seem as happy. At one point during playtime she decided to vacate the playroom and go into our family room for some video time. I think she had enough of watching all her friends invade her toys and listening to all the mommies talk about their pregnancies. Yup, every mom (but 1) that attended is expecting in the new year.

Once lunch started Ryleigh perked up. She loved the cupcake and blew out her candle all by herself. She got some wonderful gifts and has played with everyone of them at least once a day since!

This time 2 years ago

At this moment, 2 years ago, I was awaiting the birth of my first child. I was 3 hours into my induction and BEGGING for drugs. In 30 more minutes (2 years ago) I was in bliss. I love the epidural!

I can't believe in 7 hours my baby girl will be 2! I am more in love with her today than I was the morning I met her. Happy 2nd Birthday my sweet baby girl. I hope you have a wonderful day.

Seriously???

Am I really having a baby in 12 weeks and 6 days? HOLY COW I am so not ready! Good thing I have the countdown on my blog to remind me.

Feeling like my father

When I was growing up the big Christmas Tradition that stands out is the TREE. We would get a live tree. My father would get the tree into the stand in the garage and bring it in to our house. It would take another 1/2 hour or so for him to get it just right (some times with string, I might add). All the while I would learn every curse word imaginable. It was the only time I would hear my father spew such language.
Well I am right there with him. Our tree, the one you see in the post below.... is a pain in my neck. The darn thing tipped over on Sunday (early morning). Likely I got up with Glenn and saw it from our balcony. He was able to get it upright before he left. I was praying everyday that it wouldn't fall back again.... well it fell over today. The only saving grace is it is falling back into the wall and not falling forward into the family room. I know what the problem is but I am not strong enough to fix it myself. Our tree stand was not made to deal with such a large tree....
so once Ry gets up from her nap we're off to Lowe's to buy a new tree stand. Then when Glenn gets home at late tonight we can attempt to re-pot it. Of course it has ornaments on it.
I think the torch of 'foul mouthing the Christmas tree' has officially been passed from father to daughter.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

We went Christmas tree shopping today. Glenn, Ryleigh and I went and got our tree today. The tree shopping wasn't all that exciting. We went to a local nursery to pick one out since Ryleigh is too young to enjoy the experience of cutting one down (and I have no huge desire to do that with an almost 2 year old). We found an eight foot tree that looks perfect in our living room.

When we arrived home we bundled up Ryleigh in all her snow gear to play outside for a bit while Glenn got the tree up. She loved walking in the snow in her new snow boots and throwing snow balls (which fell a little short of my feet).

Ryleigh had a good time playing with the tree stand and the water...

Fluke?

I just got a call from the doctor's office... I don't have gestational diabetes! Crazy, but I made her go through my results and it appears I am in the clear! Thank goodness... now bring on the Christmas Feast!!!!

Bugs!

It has been a crazy few days... on Monday I went in for my big glucose tolerance test (the 3-hour one). It was long morning but I survived. Afterward I went home where my mom was meeting me with Ryleigh. She had spent the night at my folks the evening before. Ryleigh and I enjoyed the rest of our day...
then at about 10:30 I started to feel super hungry. I opted to eat some pretzels hoping it would calm the hunger pains. By 12:30 I am praying to the porcelain god. It was a long night with calls to Glenn, who was in CA. I somehow survived till morning and called my parents right away to come help. They were at my door within the hour (mind you, they live 40 minutes away and it was rush hour). My dad did dishes while my mom entertained Ryleigh. We decided to send her packing back to my folks and I would go it alone. Thank goodness for my parents! They were complete and total lifesavers. I called Glenn too so he could make some arrangements to come home as soon as possible. By 9:30 I was alone...
However I wasn't really alone. The baby inside of me was a kicking madman during this bout of illness which just made it worse. The day wore on... I had times of feeling okay but mostly felt I had been punched in the stomach. I haven't felt that bad in a number of years. It was awful. I went to bed feeling pretty meager and hoping I would keep everything down (not much; water, a bit of tea, a little bake potato).
I woke up bright at 6:30 and felt fantastic (relevant term seeing how bad I felt the day before). I am not 100% but seeing how I was at best 20% yesterday I will take anything over 50 at this time. Glenn will be home sometime this morning. I am excited to have the company and a nurse maid. I think we will keep Ryleigh at my folks one more day... if nothing else, so I can disinfect our home as much as possible.
Lastly, I want to once again apologize to my friend (you know who you are), who had a terrible flu bug not that long ago and called me for help but I was tied up with something. I AM SO SORRY and it will NEVER happen again. You say stomach bug and I am there!