Happy birthday to ME!

Today was my birthday. I turned the ripe old age of 28. I had to count that, because I seriously never know how old I am.

It's funny how much birthdays change as you get older. Today, I celebrated my birthday by doing the following:

- Screaming bloody murder at Lee at midnight because I was feeding Cooper and a HUGE bug crawled across his head! True story. It turned out to just be a moth, but I thought it was a cockroach because it was so dark in the room

- Waking up at 7am to see my baby boy looking right at me :) He doesn't sleep in our bed, but he usually wakes up for a feeding at 5:30 and I always just pull him into bed with us and let him stay there until he wakes up for the day

- Having lunch with my supervisor and my manager. Booooooo going back to work Sept 1

- Cleaning the bathroom

- (TMI warning)Picking up a very large, very gross 'accident' by one of the dogs (in her defense she kept asking to go out but I ignored her bc I was cleaning)

- Picking up the house

- Going to dinner with my family, where I had a glass of WINE!! I honestly forget that I can have wine again.

Cooper's gift to me was taking ALL of his naps on his own! He took 3 naps in his bassinet and one in his carseat at lunch! Usually, if he naps at all, I have to hold him so this was awesome :)

Lee's (and my parents') gift to me is a new wardrobe! Well, maybe not a whole wardrobe, but I definitely get to go shopping for lots of new clothes. NOTHING I own fits me. I am excited to go shopping, but at the same time, I know that I will be sad when I figure out what size I am now, but that's another post.

Here I am with my little man at dinner! It was his first dinner out and he was really good! Fell asleep about 1/3 of the way through. That is his drool all over my sleeve :)

Family pic! I think this is only the second picture we have as a family, we'll have to change that!

I have a 2 month post for Cooper coming in a few days, I wanted to wait until we go to the doctor tomorrow so I can give his stats

Long time, no blog

Whew. Things around here have been a little crazy lately.

Cooper is one fussy and gassy little fella. He has been since the day he turned three weeks old. And when I say fussy, I mean sometimes he screams out, like he's in pain. :( He acts like his stomach hurts (just my opinion of course, I really don't know what hurts, but something sure does) and he is REAL gassy. You have no idea, haha. This mostly happened in the evenings, like from 5-9ish. And the only way he would stop is if he nursed. Like for the entire 4 hours, constantly. There would be a day or so here and there that he wouldn't do this, but it was extremely rare, and usually if we were out doing something. At first, we thought he has acid reflux, I think I've mentioned this before. The doctor suggested it as a possibility (when we went for his weight check at 3 weeks, we discussed his fussiness) So he was put on some medicine, and that really didn't help at all. So we stopped that. I don't really want to give him meds when he doesn't need them.

Then, with the help of everyone's bff, Google, I thought that he might be cluster feeding. I had never heard of this before, but apparently some babies want to nurse for several hours in a row before they go to bed. Like they are fueling up or something. So I went with that for a few weeks. But I still don't feel like he;s just cluster feeding if he's screaming when he's not nursing. That doesn't sound right to me.

So then, we thought that he had colic. Not really bad, but just a little colicky. I had colic when I was a baby, and it's supposed to be more common if a parent has had it before. The more I read about colic, the more convinced I was that he had it. I guess we could have called the doctor, but there's really nothing you can do for it so we didn't think it was necessary.

Anyway, this week it seems to have gotten much worse. It's not just in the evenings, it's during the day a lot now too. Yesterday and today were rough. He wakes himself up from his naps a lot, just screaming. I know that he could just be going through a bad period, but if there's something I can do, I want to at least try it. So I finally decided to cut dairy out of my diet for a week or two to see if that helps. Yesterday I suddenly remembered when we were at his 3 week check and the dr asked if I drank a lot of milk when we talked about his issues. I said no, because I don't drink milk, I don't like it at all. I didn't really think anything of it at the time. But, I do consume a lot of dairy. I like cheese, a lot. And yogurt. And I make a lot of recipes with milk. So I'm going to give this a try. I started yesterday afternoon. Hopefully by the end of this week we will see some kind of difference. I know that it can take longer to see results, or sometimes it's immediate. Tonight he didn't try to nurse all evening, so that's good, but it could be a fluke. It's really not a huge deal to me to give up dairy (especially if it makes Coop feel better) but I am sad that I will not get to have my ice cream cake for my birthday next week, haha. Yes, I actually thought about that this morning! I look forward to that all year :)

Tomorrow Lee is going to watch Coop so that I can run a few errands alone and just have some 'me' time. This is a big deal. I haven't left him for even 30 minutes since he was born. I'm paranoid that no one else can take care of him, even if it is Lee. I need to get over it. I'm stressed out, especially after the past few days, and as much as I hate to say it, I need some time away. I feel guilty about it but there is it.

Oh, what's that you say? You want to see some pictures of his cuteness? Well, okay then...

I am obsessed with leg warmers. I stumbled upon them online several weeks ago and immediately bought him 4 pair. You can't really tell in the picture, but this first pair is OU and I just had to get them for him for Lee. They are a little big, but I've washed and dried them and he's quite a bit bigger than this now.

These are just brown and blue striped, and much smaller than the OU ones
The mornings are my favorite time with him, he is ALWAYS in such a good mood :)
These were from a bedroom photo shoot last weekend. We were looking in the mirror. He LOVES looking in the mirror. We're all vain like that in our family :)
He was giving some BIG smiles that day, but only in the mirror :)
His 2 months check up is next week, I can't wait to see how much he's grown! We think he weighs somewhere around 11 lbs right now. What I CAN wait for are the shots that he's going to have to get :(

How quickly things change

It really is amazing how much life changes after having a baby. You can't really go out or do anything on a whim. Any outings must be carefully planned around feeding and nap times. Friday nights are spent on the couch watching Hairspray. Sleeping in is a thing of the past.

Lee and I went to some friends' house last week for a barbecue. (Just the fact that we got out with the baby for an evening was a MAJOR success.) There were lots of people, many of whom had children. A sweet girl and I had a conversation about how your twenties are really a difficult decade. There's just so much change. I mean, think about it, you go from college, so carefree and fun, to finding a career, getting married, and having children. It's like going from zero to sixty in ten years, less really.

On the way home, Lee and I talked about what a good time we had, and we laughed about how life is just so different than it was even a few months ago. Conversations at get-togethers are now full of things like breastfeeding, pumping, poop, height and weight percentiles. It's just so funny what we consider a good time now.

It's also pretty amazing, and I wouldn't want it any other way. I'd much rather discuss my breast milk supply than who I think is the cutest boy in my statistics class. :)

Happy...Thursday?

How is it already Thursday? Every week, I am a day off. I've figured out that I lose Tuesday every week, I have no idea why. But every Wednesday, I think it's Tuesday so Thursday I think it's Wednesday, etc. Today I called to make a vet appointment for the girls on Friday and the girl was telling me what times were available tomorrow. I told her that I wanted to come in Friday, not tomorrow (because I thought tomorrow was Thursday) and she told me that tomorrow is Friday! I felt dumb :)

I wish the weeks would go by this fast when I have to work! Of course that will not be the case!

I need a project. Like something crafty or home decorating-related. I recently discovered the world of digital scrapbooking. Has anyone ever done this? There are even websites that have digital scrapbooking kits, complete with 'paper', 'ribbon', little cutouts and everything else you would use to make an actual scrapbook! If you search enough, you can even find a lot of it for free. This excites me to no end because I LOVE scrapbooking, but I never do it anymore. I think the last time I completed a scrapbook was when I was in grad school, which was probably 5 years ago. I never do it anymore because I just don't want to get all of the crap out. It makes a huge mess. I buy stuff all the time though. I love the papers. But then it just sits in a back bedroom and I never use any of it. I think I'm going to get rid of everything I have and just start digitally scrapbooking. There is a specific software program that I am comfortable creating things in, and I don't have it on this computer, so as soon as I get it, I'm going to start something for Cooper. I'm going to upload it to one of those websites where you can make photo books, like snapfish or something, there are a ton of them so I'm not sure exactly which one yet. I'm really excited about this :)

So, Lee's high school reunion is coming up. Obviously it's in his hometown which is about 3 hours away from here. Unfortunately I'm not going to get to go with him. I really wanted to go. His high school friends are really fun and we haven't seen them in soo long. Probably since our wedding over a year ago. And one of the couples got engaged recently and I was looking forward to seeing them since that happened. I also really wanted everyone to meet Cooper. I mean, he's pretty cute so I like to show him off :) Very few, like maybe 2, of his friends from home live around here, so none of them have gotten to see him in person. But we won't have anyone to watch him while we are there. The reunion is supposed to have one thing for families, which we would take him to, and then one event that's in the evening that's not really for kids to come to. Pretty standard events for a reunion. Lee's mom is visiting his sister since she and her family moved back down to the lower 48 from Alaska. His dad will be home...but neither one of us feels comfortable leaving Cooper with him. That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Hell, leaving him with his mom would be a stretch to be perfectly honest. My parents said that we could leave him with them for the 2 nights we will be gone but I am really not ready to be away from him overnight, let alone two nights. Oh well. It's far from the end of the world. But we all know I'm a huge baby and I'm going to have to pack up all of our crap and stay with my parents while Lee is away. That was one thing when it was just me and I really didn't have to bring more than a change of clothes, but with Cooper, it's going to require considerably more. But when you think about the following, can you really blame me?

1. about 3 months ago, a man was shot and killed about a mile from our house. The men who did this were found in our neighborhood.

2. night before last, less than a mile from our house, a man robbed a Subway at gunpoint.

There were 2 other things I was going to say, but my post-pregnancy brain has forgotten them, as usual. Anyway, needless to say I just don't feel safe here when Lee isn't here. I can't wait until the day we can move!!

Randoms

Because I can't seem to focus, here's a random list of things going on lately with us:

• Ever since Cooper was born, I canNOT remember things. Seriously, I'll be walking to do something, and on my way I'll forget what I was going to do! I'll be in the middle of a sentence and completely forget what I was going to say. It's so weird, and frustrating!

• Our neighbors moved last weekend!!!!!!!!! I cannot tell you how happy this made us! Last night we said how Friday (the day we knew for sure) was probably the best day of our lives next to the birth of our son. In case you don't know the story, they had 3 jack russell terriers that they would let bark for HOURS. And they would let them do it at all hours, including at 3am. And they would bark right outside our bedroom window and wake us up. After the baby was born, Lee went over to ask if they could keep it down because of the baby sleeping in our room, etc. Well the woman was a huge b and said that they could do whatever they want in their yard, and that she was sure that his (Lee's) wife made him go talk to them and that he needed to grow some balls. No joke. Then her boyfriend (she is in her mid-late 30's, and he's about 10 years older I'd say, so old enough to be adults) said that he was going to come over and kick Lee's ass! Haha, over the dogs barking! It was ridiculous. Then Lee came in and she started barking like a dog in her backyard!! I am dead serious. And THEN she went over to our bedroom window and started screaming at the top of her lungs for her dogs to come and bark. It was bizarre. It shook me up because they seem crazy and who knows what they would do after all that. So thank GOD they moved! It is so nice and peaceful around here now. Sorry that was long.

• We've had a few rough weeks with Coop. It seems like he's just never happy. I finally came to the conclusion that I think my milk supply is low and he just hasn't been getting enough to eat. I think it happened when I tried to get him on a little bit of a schedule. He had been eating REALLY often, like every hour to hour and a half and it was draining on me. Anyway, I've started pumping (which make me feel like a cow) and feeding him more often so hopefully that will help. We gave him a bottle for the first time last week and he totally downed 4 oz. in no time, and that was after he nursed for like 30 minutes. The kid can eat! When I pump I only get like 2ish oz so I'm pretty sure that's the problem. (He took the bottle like a champ! I was worried because he doesn't like pacifiers)

• I found curtains for the house! Yay the one thing I had to get done while on maternity leave! I found them on Overstock, but we're going to wait to get them since I'm not working. I'm REAL excited about it!

• I never knew how exciting fans, lights, and ceilings were until I had a baby. Apparently they are the most fascinating things to look at ever!

• I have my 6 week visit to the dr tomorrow. I am SO ready for him to tell me I can start working out. I feel gross. I gained SO MUCH weight during pregnancy. And I was already like 15 lbs. more than I wanted to be :(

• We think Cooper smiled last night. And this morning :)

He is 6 weeks old today! This is not a smile but it's still cute :) I wish I was this happy at 6am!

Skip Hop Duo

Jessica at In the Sky with Diamonds is giving away this awesome diaper bag! It is one that I really wanted when I was shopping around, but I didn't end up getting it, and I wish that I had. I would tell you that you should enter the giveaway if you are a parent (or even if you're not because I've heard that this is also great as a bag for whatever you need) but I want to win, so I'm not going to :)

Currently...

...this is the only way he will stop crying. Poor guy :(

On a positive note, see that in his mouth? We finally got him to take a pacifier! He won't always do it, but it's a step.