Almost a year...

Well is about a week and a half my little Evelyn is going to be a year old. I can't believe time has flown by so fast. Our schedule is about the same as before except Evelyn goes to bed a little later. I am so grateful for that. Everyone told me that the whole working away from home would get better, but it really has only gotten worse. My relationship with Evelyn has changed quite a bit and she seems to prefer being with my aunt now so I can't really give too much detail on the things she does. I get most of the stories second hand. Don't think I am taking any of this lightly because I am not, but if I say too much on the subject I will just get upset so... moving on...

She has grown up so much! She is still small in size, but very big in personality! She still hates crawling on her hands and knees because her tummy is faster, but my aunt said that sometimes she will crawl on her belly, but try to use one knee to push off of. She is a little strange sometimes! :) She is almost walking, too! She has been cruising for a while, but I sometimes catch her standing on her own without help balancing. She won't try to take a step though; she just drops to the floor and crawls where she wants to go! My aunt has taught her a few things too! She likes doing "ojitos" (which is Spanish for "little eyes" so she bats her eyes), she likes to show you her tongue, touch her ears and head, and do "arms up"! Sometimes she waves, but usually she looks at you like she has no idea what you are talking about! She says Dada, but she doesn't say Mama really anymore. For some reason she says "cat". I try to explain to her that mama is allergic so she probably won't be getting one, but she insists. She insists on a lot lately. She gets pretty spoiled at my aunt's so now she screams to get what she wants... not my favorite new things, but I am working on correcting that one. She also has 7 teeth! She is working on her eighth, but it hasn't cut just yet.

Isn't she cute?!

We decided to wean her from breast milk too about a week ago. My last day to nurse her was May 15th. (yes i marked the day) She just didn't seem interested anymore and I was afraid she wasn't getting enough. Now she is getting whole milk and she loves it! I think she may fatten up now!

A few weeks ago we took her to my father in laws to go swimming. She loved it! I thought she would be afraid, but she wasn't even a little bit! She just floated in the water like she belonged there! Joey even dunked her in the water a few times to get her used to it and I am so thankful that she was comfortable with it. I am hoping to take her to the pool more often this summer. Hopefully we will have enough time, because I want her to be very comfortable with the water. I don't think she will have any problems though.

My little water baby!


How can you NOT smile when you see this?

Already wanting to take the car!

So there is a little update on our little girl. I am sure I will blog again as her birthday approaches and then about her birthday party. I was going to try to do something small with just family, but my family is so big the guest list got a little large! We will see what happens!

As hard as things are right now there are moments that just melt my heart. Lately Evelyn likes to hug. She likes to hug her animals and a couple of time she has just given my a big hug. I can't tell you how much that means to me right now. Then a few weeks ago I was having a particularly hard day. I came home and I was just warn out from all the stress and sadness. I turned on the radio in Evelyn's room and after I changed her we started dancing. A little two-step in the bedroom before bed! She just smiled and giggled! That was one of the most precious moments I've had in my entire life. Times like that make me feel like maybe I am strong enough to get through the hard times. I love my little angel.

9 Months and Working

Well I tried to be better about blogging, but too much is going on. Let's just start with Evelyn's 9 month appointment. I can't believe she is already 9 months old! She is still tiny, but such a big girl! Her weight at her appointment was 16lb 3oz. It was the end of the day and she had just eaten a pretty big mean, but I will take it! Her height was 26". She is just not going to be tall. I guess with her genes she had no hope! ha! The doctor was so impressed with how calm she is. She is so curious and just tries to figure out everything. She has 5 teeth now and she walks while holding on to our hands. She still won't crawl on her hands and knees but she is pretty fast crawling on her belly. I've seen her play patty cake, but only once. My aunt (who watches her during the day) says she does it all the time. She also likes to stick out her tongue at you. I love my little monkey!

Can you read her shirt?

My precious angel!

And now for the hard stuff. I went back to work the middle of January. I started back the the tax office I used to work at. I loved being at home with Evelyn, but we just couldn't afford it. I knew I would have a hard time going back to the tax office, but that was my only option at the time so here i am. We are having a pretty hard time because of my schedule. Since it is tax season I have to go in at 7 in the morning. That means I have to get Evelyn up at 5:45 so we can leave by 6:20 and I can take her to the sitter and get to work. I've been trying to stay til 6 every night so that I can get caught up so that means I get home at 6:15 and then she gets a bath at 6:45 and is in bed by 7. So if you do the math, I get about half and hour with her a day. It is killing me. One of the reasons I don't blog anymore is because I really don't have any updates. I get stories second hand. I have to have my aunt tell me what foods Evelyn likes because I really don't even know that. I've also had to start working Saturdays too so we don't even get a full weekend. I am missing so much and it just breaks my heart and it makes it hard to acknowledge what I am missing. I don't mean to just complain. I have a lot to be thankful, but it is hard to go from being with your child all the time to being with her so little that you don't even know her likes and dislikes anymore. I use to have sure fire tricks to make her happy, but now i have nothing.

And to make things even better... Evelyn has been sick AGAIN! She had RSV about a month ago and now she has another respiratory virus (NOT RSV). She is starting to feel better, but now i am sick! I know that everyone has been waiting for me to blog, but trust me when I say if I would have been blogging this whole time then they wouldn't have been very happy ones. Joey keeps telling me that it would be like this forever and I do believe him, but once it passes and I am able to spend a decent amount of time with Evelyn, I will have missed so much and won't ever be able to get it back. That is a very VERY hard reality.

An update on health!

I haven't written a blog since November I think and I really don't have a good excuse except for life getting too hectic. I am going to try to write some blogs in the next couple of days to bring everyone up to speed, but tonight I'm just gonna start with Evelyn's progress. I probably won't post any new pics this time because I am pumping as I type and the camera is in the other room! I wasn't prepared! :o)

So we went to Evelyn's 6 month appointment the beginning of December. She was 25 3/4" long and 13 lbs 13 oz. Her length is pretty much staying the same percentile, but her weight dropped. I was a little concerned because she looked so much thinner, but the doctor said not to be too concerned. She was thriving and she didn't look malnourished at all. She said Evelyn is probably just petite. She said to go ahead and be more aggressive with her solids and try to focus on starchy foods and she wanted to check her weight again in 6 weeks just to make sure she was gaining as she should. So she started getting more solids and I hoped she would gain more weight.

Six weeks later we went in for her weight check. This time she was only 14 lbs 3 oz. Of course I felt horrible. The doctor asked how much she was eating and told her that Evelyn eats like a teenager! She eats and eats and eats! Again the doctor said that since she was gaining weight and she was still alert and active not to be concerned, BUT she wanted to check her thyroid just in case. Since Evelyn would need to get blood work done at her 9 month appointment we went ahead and did it then so we could check her thyroid with everything else. The next day the nurse called and said everything looked good! YEAH! We were so relieved! Then a few weeks later we got another call...

Yesterday the nurse called and left a message on my cell. She said the doctor wanted Evelyn to come in for some more blood work. The previous test showed her platelet count was low. I called back and left a message for the nurse. Of course I was worried and when I didn't get a call back in an hour I called again and they put me through to the lab. The lab tech told me the platelet count was VERY low and we needed to come in ASAP! She terrified me! I left work and picked up Evelyn and Joey met us there. They drew blood and Evelyn did such a good job! She didn't even flinch! She just looked at her arm and then up at the guy drawing the blood then back at her arm...back and forth. I was so proud of her! Anyway, while we were there Joey asked the tech what her platelet count was last time. She said it was 50 and that it should be over 150. Then the panic really started to set in. We went home and started researching low platelet count and what it could indicate... bad idea. Joey and I were close to tears at the thought that our little angel could be sick. It was a long night!

Today I stayed home from work to be with Evelyn while I waited for the nurse to call me. She called this morning and said the tests were fine... "What do you mean they're fine?" She said they were all normal. I asked why they were so low last time. She didn't have an answer. So then I got upset. I asked her how i was supposed to trust that she was fine when the same nurse called after the first test and said everything was fine. I needed answers and she was not giving me anything! She said she would have to doctor call me. The rest of the day was spent relieved that she was OK, but worried that I couldn't trust it. It was terrible! The doctor finally called me and she was so apologetic. Either Evelyn had a virus before that was causing the low platelet count and it fixed itself or there was a blood clot in the sample that caused a false low in the test. She assured me that she went over all the tests and Evelyn was fine. The reason I got a good call before was because she was letting me know about the thyroid and the nurse misspoke when she told me EVERYTHING was normal. So the outcome is Evelyn is happy and healthy! We feel so blessed!

Now the bed part: after everything was settled and we were so happy she is healthy, she started coughing like she is trying to hack up a lung! Her chest is very congested and we are not sure why. She doesn't have a fever or any other symptom so now it is just keep an eye on her and see what happens.

I hate this wait and see approach!

As always I'm not going to check this for any errors so just let me know about anything major...
and Erica I promise I won't wait so long to do another one! :o)

My Giggle Monster!

Ok my last completly random post of the day! My baby girl's little laugh just makes me smile!
When people see her in public she tends to keep a straight face and hardly ever lets it go, but this is what we get at home!

Evelyn's Random Cuteness!

Born to shop!

It has finally started getting chilly here in Texas and I realized that of all of Evelyn's clothes, she has very little that are long sleeves and she doesn't have ANY dresses that are warm so of course it was time to go shopping! So my mom and I went shopping and we saw so many cute things! My mom was going a little overboard and I kept telling her "I think that's enough" and my mom's response was "But she NEEDS it!" Well when we went to the cashier my mom kept piling clothes on top of clothes! This is how it went:

Cashier: (giggling) Is this going to be all for you?

Me: Mom I told it was too much!

Mom: Like I said, she needs it!

Me: Mom she needs a couple of long sleeve onesies and maybe a couple of long sleeve dresses for church. She doesn't need a tutu dress and a pink fur coat!!!

By now the cashier was cracking up, but so were we, especially Evelyn. I think she was having fun! So we went home and I tried a few things on her and I think was born to wear pretty sparkly things! What do you think? I don't know... maybe she DID need the pink fur coat!!! Maybe we should all have one!

Evelyn's 1st Halloween!

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays! I was so excited to dress Evelyn up and go trick or treating! I searched and searched for a costume, but the only ones that would fit her were the ones with the bunting. They are cute, but we were planning on going to a lot of different places and we wouldn't be able to take her in and out of her car seat with those costumes. The solution was for me to make her costume. It made me very nervous because the last time and only time I sewed anything was in highschool for class, but I was determined! I found instructions on how to make a pumpkin costume from Martha Stewart (I love her stuff!) and I decided I was going to make a cap for the pumpkin top. The problem was I needed material with some stretch to make the cap fit right. I didn't know how I was going to find fabric that was the right color orange with some stretch. Well the week before Joey broke a pen on a work shirt and it was ruined. And guess what... it was a perfect orange shirt! So I made Evelyn's costume out of Joey's Aces shirt!


Halloween started off perfect! Evelyn and I just hung out all day. Joey finished carving the pumpkin and put the same face on it that was on Evelyn's costume!

I made a hat out of one of the sleeves on Joey's shirt. I was just checking the size and was going to throw it out, but then I decided it was a nice warm little hat!

After we got Evelyn dressed we started on our Halloween journey! We went to a friends house for a little Halloween party where she had her first cupcake!

She started to get fussy and we decided to leave. We went to our church's festival, but that did not last long! She started to get very fussy and we decided to leave when she started screaming and wouldn't stop. We made a few quick stops, but ended up going home and she continued to scream for about an hour! It ended up being a very difficult night and the only thing that seemed to calm her down was chewing on ice. It breaks my heart that her first Halloween was so hard for her and that she was in pain. Maybe next year she will have more fun the whole night!

My baby pumpkin!

Our little family's first Halloween!