Category Archives: Mommyhood

Miss Fussy Britches

I don’t know what’s going on with Ally lately. She seems fussier than normal. She fights her naps, kicks her legs and bucks when you lay her down, and just seems all around miserable. I hope she is teething that way I’ll have an answer for this random behavior. She’s always been so good and calm. Maybe I’m bragging about her too much and it’s jinxing me? It makes me feel like a bad parent for not. Ring able to soothe and calm her. I feel even worse when I pick her up from my dads and they say she was a good little angel all day. Does she just hate me? Are they exaggerating so they look like super grandparents? I just don’t know. But I’m going to lean towards teething to make myself feel better about the situation. Oh well, either way, it’ll pass and she will be my happy baby once more.

I want to send out Christmas cards of Ally to everyone. I fear it may be too late, but oh well, I can make them “Happy Holidays” cards so they cover new years as well. Continue reading →

Mother. Wife. Gamer.

Posted in Gaming, Geekery, Mommyhood by

I always start a post but by the time I get around to finishing it, it’s either no longer relevent or I’ve lost my train of thought. I am going to attempt to do this in one sitting. Please Ally, stay asleep. Anyhoo, a few new things have been going on as of late. Nothing to stop the presses about, but I’m going to tell you about it anyway. To spite you! Bwuahaha! (That’s my evil laugh, just for future reference). Ok, I’m not really evil. I mean you can always not read it if you want, it’s not like I hijacked your computer while you started reading this and made it stay here until you finished… or did I? *Dramatic prairie dog face*

I guess I can start with Ally’s 6 month check up on Thursday. We, or rather I, decided that I wanted Ally to have a female doctor, instead of the male doctor that we were assigned when she was born. He was a nice enough doctor, but I spent more time waiting in the front waiting room and in the examination room, than I did talking to the doctor or his nurses. It was just a little too dingy for my taste. So I found us a new pediatrician. She is very sweet and I liked how she did her check up. I was really impressed with them overall. They gave me a courtesy call to remind me about the appointment and everything. This may sound crazy that I am excited about that, but our last pediatrician did not ever do that. The nurses at this new place were great. Super friendly and made me feel welcome. The location of this place is in a very good neighborhood, so that made me feel even better about our choice. I am probably going to run out of adjectives for how great this place was compared to our last pediatrician. The waiting room was painted like a jungle with trees and animals and had a lot of elbow room. The examination room was bright and colorful with hearts and animals all over the wall. Very cheery place. So I think we have definitely found our new doctor. Now onto the results of the visit. Ally is now 16.7lbs and 27 inches long. My little girl is growing so fast! She is in perfect health and progressing just fine. I couldn’t have been more pleased with how good she is doing.It really is amazing to watch her grow and learn. Makes me feel all warm inside.

Whoa, that was a little all over the place. Hmm… maybe blogging while sleepy isn’t a good idea…? Eh, screw it, you probably stopped reading it after the first sentence anyway. Lately, I have been having a bit of insomnia. Either that or I have realized I am a night owl and not an early bird. Maybe a little of both. I get stressed and wired at night and this sudden burst of energy comes out of no where. Usually it is to clean. Random right? This is when I go all Superwoman and clean the house from top to bottom. I did this Friday night and Mykal woke up and was pleasantly surprised at how the house was in order. I guess I’m also like that because Mykal works so hard that I want to make it feel equal. This is why I would make a great housewife. One day this could be a possibility. I’ll be waiting for that day. For some reason work has been stressing me out lately. It adds to my insomnia. So does bills and a whole bunch of other things. But enough of this random bunch of words. No, this doesn’t mean you can stop reading, it just means I am switching from household talk (or lack there of), and taking a turn on to geeky street.

I’ll admit it to anyone, I’m an achievement whore. I can’t help it. I love to see my gamerscore go higher and higher, and when I see scores higher than mine, it makes me want to run home to my xbox and get to playing. Currently I am 100 points shy of 13,000. I want to get that last 100 so I can be at a nice round number. I also want to go through and fully complete each of my games. That means get every single achievement. Easier said than done, but I am going to try anyway. For the past day and a half, I have been obsessed with Stacking. It’s a xbox live arcade game (and pretty sure its in the PS marketplace as well) that I got on sale a couple of months ago. I finally got around to playing it, and it is fun. I really liked it. It’s about a little boy who had his brothers and sisters taken away to do child labor and he goes to rescue them and bring down the evil Baron. You are a little Russian stacking doll that can jump into other Russian stacking dolls and use their abilities to solve puzzles and get closer to rescuing your family. If you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend it. I’m about to start the expansion for it called The Lost Hobo King. I’ll hopefully get to it tomorrow. Next mini game on my list will either be Ms. Splosion Man or maybe Super Meat Boy, they have both been out for a while, but I didn’t play a lot while pregnant. I also need to get some play time in on Assassins Creed Revelations. I have it, but I was finishing up Batman Arkham City before I started it. I can’t really play more than one big game at a time, I feel like I’m not fully invested in it do. My “to play” list is huge and I;m hoping that I will be able to change that list into my “already played” list.

Well, that’s enough late night blogging. I can feel my fingers get sluggish as they aren’t flying across the keyboard like they normally are. Until next time!

Respect. Self Love. Compassion.

So lately, I’ve decided that I need to be more comfortable in my skin. That I need to love myself and my body the way it is. I see all these young girls, who look great, worrying about their weight. I don’t want Alanna to be that girl when she grows up. I want her to be happy with how she looks. She is gorgeous. This means I need to set the example. I need to embrace my body, no matter what. I do have a horrible self image, but I am working at changing this. Every time I look in the mirror, I criticize what I see. I’ll tell myself horrible things and then when I’m on the verge of tears, I tell myself the suck it up. I’ve always hated how I looked. I’ve never felt very pretty. And when I do feel pretty, it’s only temporary and is gone as quickly as it came. I blame society for its skewed vision of what “perfection” is. A woman is perfect as she is. No matter how she looks. She is a human being and thus perfect.

To help Alanna, I have decided words such as “fat”, “chunky”, “thick”, “gorda”, and anything else that is negative, shall not be used around her. I don’t use those words to describe people anymore either. No more mean jokes. I have people in my family who think they are fat or ugly and I hate that they feel this way about themselves. Any jokes I would make would only be negative towards someone else. Putting someone else down. How would I like it if people were doing that to my family members? I wouldn’t and neither would you. I just don’t want to make fun of people. It’s not nice and all it does is send more negative energy out into the world. The world needs more positive energy, but if we continue to treat people horribly and talk down to them, then this will never happen.

I think Alanna has been the one to bring about most of this change, if not all of it. When I see people in public, I have an out of body experience and I try to image what they may deal with on a daily basis. Surely, some of them have the same worries and concerns I do. I am courteous to others, because I would want them to be courteous to me. It’s funny how this is a cardinal rule that almost no one obeys anymore. “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all”. Not in this world. With technology being how it is, it’s very easy to say what you want and put others down. You never see the faces of these anonymous screen names, so you don’t think of the consequences. This may all sound like I’m rambling, and it could be true, I do that a lot, but let me try and bring this back around to my first paragraph to make sense.

Respect. Self love. Compassion. These are traits I wish to teach Alanna. I feel the younger generation has lost its way among the busy Internet highway and forgotten what humanity is like. I know, I know, how can I preach on my soapbox when I too, am on the interwebs posting this? Well, the best way to get any message across is to post it where the busiest place is. Hello Internet. And I don’t care if anyone actually reads this, sure it would be nice, but I do this to cleanse my own soul. And if someone does read it, and they become inspired in anyway, then I’ve done a good job in the world.

So until my next ramble session, please stop and think before you do or say anything, it could be the most important thing you do for someone else.

❤

Catching Up

I am so terrible at keeping up with this, it’s almost ridiculous haha. I do love to write, I’ve just been a bit preoccupied as of late. I’ve also been in a bit of a dark place, and I don’t want that to reflect in what I write. So I try to wait until I’m having a good day. Things aren’t great or back to normal yet. I’m still drowning in debt, still having to work more than I’d like to, and still not as confident about myself as I used to be. But I’m working on all of it. I know I need to focus on the good things in my life. Great examples being that my husband, baby girl, and I are all still healthy. Alanna is growing and developing very well. Hubby and I still have our jobs. And we still have a roof over our heads and food on our table. I need to be more thankful and grateful for that, instead of taking it for granted. Not everyone has what we have. Not even the basic stuff like food and shelter. It is the month to give thanks and the season for giving. Maybe good fortune will allow me to help someone less fortunate than I. On IG (Instagram) I tried to keep up with the daily “Thankful for “, but much like this blog, I have a hard time staying consistent with things. Maybe my next blog will just be a huge list of things I’m thankful for and get the whole month out of the way at once.

♥♥Cutest Kitten Ever!♥♥

I had intended to make a post for Halloween and tell you all about Alanna’s first Halloween. I still will, but it is far less interesting than I had wanted. It went well, but poor little mama’s was tired. She was dressed as the cutest little black kitty ever! I could keep her in that costume forever and explode from the cuteness overload. We had planned to go with my bestie and her two girls to the mall and do some trick or treating. But unfortunately, Alanna didn’t take a nap at all that day, so by the time I picked her up, dressed her, took her to see my Granny and Mom, and then got home, she was out. So we didn’t get to show her off this year. We stayed at home and gave out candy instead. We didn’t have many kids come by at all. It makes me sad to think that Halloween isn’t what it used to be. I remember going out as a kid and seeing people all over the place. It was so fun. Now everyone is afraid of their own shadow. It’s such a shame that so many sick and sadistic people have ruined this. I know that where my house is probably affected it as well. But still, I don’t see trick or treaters like I used to. Oh well, maybe next year will be even better. I want to go all out on decor and everything. One day I would like to be the house that everyone talks about and is excited to go to.

Back to November. This month is my dad’s 50th birthday. He’s been a little down lately so my grandma thought it would be a huge pick me up if we made him a surprise party. I had made lots of calls to halls and they had gotten pictures together to make a slide show and everything. Things were coming together pretty well. Until he found out and the surprise was ruined. One night some of my family went out and one of my aunts was talking just a bit too loudly about it. She shouldn’t have been talking about it with him around anyway, but what can you do now? So now that’s been canceled. In a way I am glad. Back in May, they did a similar thing for my uncle, and after my dad found out he said “I don’t want a surprise party. I don’t want it to be like Mike’s party. I want something different.” Now I am at a loss of ideas for “different”, but I know we will do something. Maybe we can take him to the caves or go to the zoo with Alanna. I know he is excited for Alanna to get a little older, maybe the walking and talking stage, so he can take her to the zoo and Sea World and all sorts of fun things. I’m pretty sure he loves this little girl more than me haha. But I am glad she brings him out of his funk.

And in other father related news, last week he had an eye appointment for a consultation to correct his cataracts. I am so excited for this. Daddy hasn’t been able to see properly for over two years now. His veins in his eyes kept bleeding and they would have to do surgery to stop the bleeding and get the dried blood out. This caused him to stop working and has been a huge part of why he is depressed. One of my biggest concerns was if he would be able to see for my wedding and be able to see Alanna grow up. I still worry and I hope they can fix his eyes soon. He has another appointment to go to his first eye doctor and tell them what the second eye doctor said so they can get him in for the actual procedure. I’m just hoping this all works out.

♥My Big Girl♥

On to happier news now, Alanna is getting so big! She’s 15 lbs now, although I’m not sure of her height. But I’m sure she is still very tall for her age. She can sit up on her own now too. I love watching her sit on the couch and play with her toys. She is such a trip. Don’t worry, she is never left alone and we have a sectional couch with huge cushions so we basically trap her in the corner so she is protected by pillows. Safety first! Alanna needed something a little more fun and helpful for development, so Saturday my mom bought her a jumper. I was so excited, probably more so than Alanna haha. It is a Baby Einstein jumper. Alanna likes it pretty well. She really gets into the lights and sounds, and loves gnawing and drooling on the seat haha. My sweet little teething baby. She drools like a Saint Bernard. It’s so cute. Today, the sneaky little girl took a snack size bag of unopened Cheetos from Mykal and proceeded to turn it into a bag of unopened crumbs haha. She loved the crinkle sound of the bag and enjoyed slamming and kicking it around. She thought it was the funniest thing ever.

I know it’s already a super long entry, but like I said, I love to write. One thing I like about Alanna getting a little older, is that I don’t feel as guilty leaving her for a date night. Saturday night we had a date night with a fellow IG mommy, Jackie (ragingsunshine.com), and her husband, Eric, who don’t live too far from us. We went to see The Immortals at a Movie Tavern. Jackie and Eric had never been to one, so I thought it would be a good idea for our movie date. I was right, of course. Haha. Seriously though, I had a great time. I had a pina colada, for the first time in over a year, and it was delicious! And the movie was awesome! I loved the epic fight scenes and the whole Greek mythology theme. I just eat that stuff up. I did feel pretty bad though when I found out that Jackie doesn’t usually watch such violent movies. She said it was fine, but I still feel bad about it. I remember looking over and seeing her expression and how her hand covered her mouth and I knew for sure that she wasn’t very comfortable with some of the scenes. (Sorry Jackie! I loves you! Thanks for going!) After the movie I continued to be a bad influence and we all went to Steak and Shake for burgers, steaks, and lots of embarrassing stories haha. We learned a lot about Jackie and Eric, and they probably learned more than they wanted to know about me and Mykal. I can’t wait for another outing. I don’t get them enough and they are really cool to hang out with.

This is how Jackie and I roll!

Well now that I have basically written enough for a first chapter in a book, I think I will call it a night. I am going to try to post as often as I can, but I am making no promises people. Until next time my friends!♥

4 Months Already?!

Wow! Time sure does fly by. I can’t believe my baby girl is already 4 months old! It seems like just yesterday when she was all tiny and squishy. Now she’s so long and active. The days of sleeping all day are over, she is so interested in everything that is around her. Everyone says she is very alert for a 4 month old, but I don’t know much about babies since I’m an only child and haven’t spent much time around any. She’s especially become more aware of her hands and feet. It’s so cute to watch her play with her hands and try to eat her feet haha. Too adorable! Sometimes when she eats from her bottle, she will hold her feet and swing them from side to side, my silly girl playing while she eats. Other times she tries to hold her bottle by herself, and just recently she has figured it out for the most part. Alanna will hold her bottle like a big girl, but sometimes she will raise it too high and it will come out of her mouth. She is so funny.

My big girl holding her bottle!

I love watching her grow up and learn new things. Her new thing when you hold her is to touch, grab, and slobber on your face. Or anything that gets near her mouth actually haha. I think she may be starting the teething process. She’s gnawing on everything and drooling like a saint bernanrd! I’ll be honest, I am not looking forward to this part at all. She is going to be fussy and in pain and I don’t like it one little bit. I wish I could just bypass the whole thing, for her sake and mine. I’m sure all mommies and daddies say that though. I am excited for the real foods she will be able to eat when her teefies come in. Her pediatrician just gave us the green light for rice or oatmeal cereals, and to my surprise, she likes them. We went and bought her little spoons and everything! I was giddy and jumping around like a little school girl while looking for the right spoons haha. It’s just so easy to get super excited about everything she does.

Alanna had her 4 month check up this past Tuesday and she did great! She got her shots, and of course cried, which always breaks my heart. She was a little trooper though. And holy camolie is she getting big. She is now 14 1/2 lbs and 26 1/4 inches long. Wowza! She is in the 90th-95th percentile in her height. I have no idea where she got her height from. I’m only 5′ 4″ and her daddy is 5’7″. We aren’t short, but I don’t think we are all that tall either haha. Her weight is right on track, so i have a little stringbean for a daughter hehe. If she keeps this up then I will have to put her in 6-9 month clothes instead of 3-6 months. Which would suck cause I just went and bought her a bunch of 3-6 month outfits. So please stay in that size for just a little bit, my precious Alanna. Oh, how mommy loves you, you sweet, beautiful child! ♥

♥ Happy Family ♥

Part-Time Parent

Ok, I know that I just posted something yesterday but I am feeling really blue right now and I need to let it all out somewhere. Maybe I’ll feel better after I get it all off my chest. I keep thinking that I am ok with being back at work. I mean sure, I miss Alanna like crazy, but I keep telling myself that I am doing this for her. That by me working, she will never go wanting. But honestly, I hate it. I hate that I am not the one that gets to spend time with Alanna all day. That I don’t get to watch her every bit of growing. That I can’t be the one who teaches her how to sit up and crawl and talk and, well, everything. I really hate myself for this. I feel like it should be me. That I, as her mother, should be the one to feed her and play with her all day. To lay her down for a nap and be there to hold her when she cries. I get to see her from 5pm until 6am the next morning. But she goes to sleep between 10pm and 11pm and so I really only get to see for about five or six hours a day. And she will probably nap an hour or two of that time. Sigh. It’s like I never get to spend time with her. Today for instance, she has been asleep since at least 7pm. I got to hold and play with her for maybe an hour since I got off work late today and didn’t get to pick her up until 6pm. There are days that I cry all the way to and from work. Tomorrow will probably be one of those days. I just hope I don’t miss everything because I am at work all the time. Being a part-time parent sucks.

Mommyhood Unlocked

♥My favorite maternity pictures♥
♥My favorite maternity pictures♥

I’ve had this blog set up since I got pregnant last October (2010), and I never got to use it. So I missed out on all the pregnancy blogging. But that’s ok, my pregnancy wasn’t special by any means. It was easy and smooth, so it wouldn’t have been very interesting posts anyway. But I’d like to start this with the birth of my beautiful baby girl Alanna Michelle. Also I would like to point out that when reading the name Alanna, we are choosing to pronounce it as ah-lawn-uh. We found it in an iPhone pregnancy app called Baby Bump while searching for names and liked the way it sounded. No special or sentimental meaning to it, except it’s not a name I hear very often and I like that. Her middle name, Michelle, has a deeper meaning though. It is the name of my Granny. She always watched me when I was little, and I thought this would be a good way to honor her since she’s sick and may not be with us much longer. I was the only granddaughter and now this is her first great-granddaughter. It just seemed right. But let me tell you, coming up with names is bard work! I mean this is a name that will stick with this child forever, so it’s got to be good. Any who, on with my story.

Alanna’s estimated due date was June 4, 2011. But when my doctor gave me the option for induction a week early, as long as I was already dilated 1cm, I went for it. I was ready to meet my baby girl, and so over being pregnant. Seriously, I was done with the swollen feet and only fitting into a small amount of clothes and being all around uncomfortable lol. It took a few days to get a date for me to come in since the hospital was a little busy and full. I guess everyone decided to give birth around the same time. A couple days later we had an opening and I took it.

So at 7:00am on Tuesday May 31, 2011 Mykal and I went up to the hospital to get a room and get this party started. I was so nervous, I’ve never been a patient in a hospital before, so I had no idea what to expect. They had a room ready for us when we arrived, and it was a pretty nice room. It had a tv and a couch and was decorated to feel like I was in a home. It was relaxing, which I guess is the emotion they were going for. It had a balcony area, but the doors were glued shut. That was actually a little disturbing. Did someone jump once and so they had to close it off? Or maybe it was so no one could go out on the balcony for a smoke? Who knows, but it was still a nice room. The only downside to it at all, was our tv. I know, I know, why should I even care about the tv when I’m there to deliver a baby? Well the tv would have helped distract me, not to mention I was being induced, and that can take all day sometimes. The picture worked, but the sound didn’t. We had the maintenance guy coming in periodically trying to fix it. But it didn’t matter, I had so many guests in and out of there all day, that I didn’t have time to watch tv anyway.

It was about 8:30 when they got me settled in and started me on the pitocin. I didn’t like this part at all. The pitocin wasn’t bad, just the fact that I had to have the needle for the IV in my right hand. Of all the places to put it, they put it in my dominant hand, I couldn’t really do much with my right hand the whole time I was there. More than that though, it hurt. I guess the back of the hand is more sensitive cause it was not a comfortable experience what so ever. Induction isn’t a very fast process. They would come in and up the pitocin a little bit every 30 minutes. The contractions were manageable and not really noticeable. Only way I could tell was by looking at the computer screen that was monitoring me. That is, until the doctor came and broke my water at noon.

Once it was broken, everything went pretty fast. My contractions became more frequent and far more painful. I was definitely noticing them now. Every time one came, I would grip the handle on the bed and my friend Gaby and my mom would look at me with sympathetic faces. I didn’t make a sound cause I didn’t want anyone to know how much pain I was in. I was trying to be a badass haha. But I guess my face gave me away, it would show the pain that I worlds hard to keep silent. The nurse came back go check my progress at 3:30pm and I was 4cm dilated. I was trying to hold out on the epidural as long as I could, but by now I was in so much pain I said screw it and told them I was ready for it. Getting the epidural didn’t really hurt, it just felt like a little pinch. It didn’t take long to go numb and it was a weird feeling to barely be able to move and control my legs. My progress was checked again at 4:30pm, and I was already 8cm! In one hour I went from a 4 to an 8, the nurse said that that was pretty fast. She came back to check me again at 5pm, and I was fully dilated! Whoa! Not long now! She told me that they wanted to give me another hour before getting everything ready to deliver, that way it would give Alanna more time to drop down more into the canal to make it easier on me. Around 6pm the nurses came back and said Alanna was lower and ready to go.

First Moments
♥Our first moments with Alanna♥

I watched as they got everything prepped for the delivery. The room went from homely to a delivery room with the push of a few buttons and the wheeling in of a few carts. All the people that were in there with me had to go wait in the waiting room out in the hall. My mom and Mykal were the only ones that could stay with me. By about 6:15pm I was laying there with my feet in the stirrups ready to get things going. It was time, the pushing began. I didn’t even feel it thanks to the epidural, so the whole pushing was easy and painless. It didn’t take long, and at 6:42pm Alanna decided to make her debut into the world. Achievement unlocked: mommyhood. I couldn’t believe it! She was finally here! And she was so beautiful♥ She weighed 7lbs 8oz and was 21 in long. My little string bean. She came out looking just like her daddy, a spitting image. I was jealous. The only thing she got from me was her hair. She came out with a full head, and body, of hair! The world drifted away into a blur when they laid her on my chest to have Mykal cut the cord. All that seemed to be in focus was Alanna and Mykal. I was in awe. It was such a beautiful moment. Singlehandedly the best moment in my entire life. As soon as Mykal cut the cord they took her off me and went to clean her up and get all her measurements.

Now was the fun part . My doctor begins to get everything else out of me so she can sew me up, well here’s where we hit a snag. I was bleeding quite a bit and it wouldn’t stop. I was just hemorrhaging and losing a lot of blood. I was listening as my doctor talked to my nurses and I was so scared. All I could think was “oh god, this is it. I deliver this beautiful little girl and now I’m going to die from blood loss.” All I could do was cry and stare at Mykal holding Alanna a few feet away. He tried to calm me down by bringing Alanna closer to me so I could touch her. But I was still so scared. It took about an hour to get the blood clots I had inside out and stop the bleeding. By now I feel awful. I’m cold and shaking and hungry from not being able to eat all day. Finally I’m out of the stirrups and holding my precious miracle. They did have to give me an IV bag of medicine because I spiked a fever during the hemorrhaging.

I was so tired but it was now time for the family in the waiting room to meet her. They all come in and congrats go around the room and everyone looks at Alanna and says how beautiful she is. They try not to stay long knowing I was tired and that the end of the delivery was a bit rough. After everyone leaves, we get moved to a different room. Smaller, but still nice. The rest of the visit was nice and relaxing. I didn’t get much sleep because I’m stubborn and wanted to be awake with my baby girl the entire time. But I was ok, I knew me and exhaustion would be good friends for a while haha. I love my little Alanna. She is my world. My little blessing and I can’t wait to watch and see how she changes as she grows.