It has been 0 days since our last trip to the ER...

Nola can say a few words now, besides mama and dada. She can say:
-tenk yee (thank you)
-hi
-yay!
-bye bye
-hello
-cat

She also knows how to 'cuddle' her stuffed animals and give kisses (open mouth of course) and she's slowly developing the ability to use utensils. She's become a VERY picky eater and will vigorously shake her head 'no' when I try to feed her, well, almost anything. Although this shouldn't really surprise me because growing up I was known as 'Two-Bite Leatrice' meaning I'd only tolerate 2 bites of any one thing before turning it away. If only I had that problem now...

She's recently turned into a little toughie too. She stands up for herself against Embry and when she doesn't like something, oh you will know! If she doesn't want something that's on her highchair tray she will wave her hands around violently until it falls on the floor. She has severe separation anxiety whenever I leave, or leave the room, or go upstairs...basically if I'm not easy accessibly, she'll cry. Makes it a little difficult to go anywhere without her, but I'm sure she'll get over it soon enough. Embry never cared when I left or handed her over to someone else, it is actually kind of nice to be wanted this time around. :)

Embry went to the ER this morning. She had pretty bad diarrhea all day yesterday and then when she got up this morning, she laid on the floor and couch for 2 hours asleep and looking not so hot. So when the dr's office opened up, I called and left a message for the Dr. When they called back they asked when she had peed last and I said 'sometime yesterday' and their response was, 'well she needs to go to the ER then.' So after calling Tony and having him come home from work, I took her in. We got into a room right away and she fell asleep, but then woke up heaving, so I shoved the garbage can in front of her and she was awake from that point on. The dr came in after what seemed like FOREVER. He was very nice and gave her a dissolvable anti-nausea tablet and 2 popsicles to try to get her to poo. It worked and we got a stool sample but not before I spilled Embry's pee and poo all over my hand (and the bathroom floor). They tested it and said it was just a virus. Gave us a script for more anti-nausea stuff and said to give her lots of fluids (no kidding) and if she keeps it down then it should do the trick. After 4 hours in the ER we were on our way home and she fell asleep in the car, so she took a nap once we got home. Her poo is much less runny now, which is great! The dr said these usually last 24-48 hours and that the flu vaccine only protects against the high fever/cough flu, not the stomach flu...which I personally think is totally stupid but whatever.

I feel like I might be coming down with something like a cold. My throat feels scratchy and my nose is runny and clogged. I'm hoping it goes away and soon! I have an appt with my pcp on Wed to talk about my hormones being messed up, because I think they are. It would explain so many things...the bone loss, the night sweats, the incredible weight gain, the excessive sleepiness, and the fact that my last three periods were pretty wacky. I always get all revved up to go in there demanding answers and then I get there and feel bad if I speak up, but not this time! I was right about the thyroid levels and I think I know myself enough to know that something's up, so she'll just have to go along with it or listen to me blabbedy-blab for hours on end until she gives in. So there!

33 Weeks

33 Weeks
Taken 9/30/10

This week has been pretty uneventful, at least compared to last week...which is fine by me! Tony never ended up getting sick thank goodness. I did have an incredibly horrible (worst feeling of my life) back pain in the middle of the night a couple days ago. I seriously have never felt anything like that before and never want to again. I felt like a soreness in my back, near my spine, where it always hurts so I pressed on it to massage it and it completely freaked out. I was clutching the wall while yelling for Tony and writhing in pain. Luckily it only lasted for about a minute and hasn't returned since (knock on wood).

My twice weekly NST's are going fine, nothing weird ever happens, so no news there.

Our next ultrasound is scheduled for Oct 19 and that will probably be the last one I have before delivering.

Embry is super cute. She says I love you, which actually comes out 'yuv yoooo!' and she's amazingly gentle (for the most part) around babies. That gives me hope. This whole having 2 kids thing is sneaking up on me way too fast. Ooh, also when you ask what's in my tummy, she will say 'baby Nola' and she'll rub my tummy or give it a kissy. I can't wait to see her interact with her little sister, I might just explode with happiness.

Thanksgiving and Stuff

Tony and I with the oven bird (and mac and cheese to the right)

The whole gang after the meal
From l to r (back row): me, Embry, Tony, Stefan, Allison, Donny
(front row): Dorothea, my mom (JoAnn), my dad (Don)

We had a very good Thanksgiving this year! Tony's family came down and it was nice to see Stefan since I haven't seen him in quite a while. He also brought along a combined bday present for Tony and me...'Star Trek'! We watched that on Thanksgiving, I was the only one who hadn't seen it yet, it was quite good. :) Tony's family got here around 11:30 on Thanksgiving and helped us get some side dishes ready. Then my parents and brother got here around 1:30 and we ate at 2:15ish. Tony's smoked turkey turned out great and the one in the oven was delicious too. We made bacon green beans (thanks for that recipe Sarah, everyone loves it), fall to your knees mac and cheese (another big hit at about 5000 calories a bite), stuffing with hot sausage, stuffing without sausage, marshmallow sweet potatoes, rosemary roasted butternut squash (another popular dish), and my mom brought over mashed potatoes, for dessert I made apple pie, and cheesecake with an array of toppings. Let's just say we pretty much gorged ourselves on delicious food. It was fantastic!

Tony's mom, sister, brother, and Tony all went to see Vince (Tony's dad). Apparently they only allow 4 visitors for one person at one time, so I stayed home with Embry since she was taking a nap anyhow. They stayed for a long time, like 2.5 hours. It was the first time Stefan had seen his dad since he was incarcerated like 7 years ago. I only got bits and pieces of what they talked about, but turns out that Vince started smoking again. He knows he can't smoke when he moves in here and he said it wouldn't be a problem to stop again when he has to move in with us. He told Tony's mom that he thinks having an occasional drink would be fine. I asked Tony if he said anything to him about that and he said that he didn't say anything because his mom was already yelling at his dad about it. I think it might mean a lot more coming from his child than his ex-wife. They also found out that Vince is eligible for an early home release, meaning he would move in here before his release date in march and wear an ankle monitor to be on house arrest. We tried to go visit him on Saturday night to find out more about this, but apparently when he first got to the halfway house they had him do a urine drug test but only let him have 1 cup of water and a time limit of 2 hours to complete the test. Needless to say he could not complete it under those circumstances, so they put him on a 'restriction' which means he can't have visitors for 2 weeks. He said he'd call us if he found out anything else. The only thing we'd need to do is get a landline phone so they can call anytime and make sure he's at the house.

So then Friday morning Allison and I got up at 4am to hit to stores for black Friday shopping! It was lots of fun and luckily most people were very pleasant. I am totally bummed that they were out of the $35 office chair at Walmart because I need an office chair very badly. We went to Target first where I got a new set of pots and pans, a new coffee pot, a mini crock pot, Wii Sports Resort, and Allison bought some Christmas presents. Then we went to Walmart and I got Christmas/birthday presents and for us 'The Dark Knight' on bluray, 'He's Just not that Into You', 'Hellboy 2', 'The Princess Bride', a cordless drill, and a wratchet set thingy. Then to Toys R Us which pretty much sucked. I only got baby food and my parents bought Embry this pink rocking pony for Christmas which she LOVES! Then we stopped at Best buy where we got a few more presents and 'Wolverine' on bluray. Allison and I got home around 10am. We opened up some of our new stuff and tried out the new Wii game...pretty fun. Some ppl took naps etc and then we watched 'Wolverine' and we waited till Embry went to sleep to use our new fire pit. It was awesome! We roasted hot dogs and then made smores, it was so fun, I'm really glad we got it.

Saturday morning Tony and I made Crepes and Eggs for breakfast, which was delic. Then Tony's family packed up while Tony, Allison, and I played Skip-bo and they left after getting some goodbye kisses from little Embry. She's getting very good at giving out kisses and sometimes she'll even close her mouth!

Embry's vocabulary has really expanded recently. Here are the words that she has said or says regularly:

-duck
-hi
-bye
-die
-poopy
-diapie
-sit
-mouth
-cat
-mama
-dada
-baaa
-meow
-doggie
-is it (meaning 'what is it')
-grandma
-elephant
-mmmm
-aww
-baby
-piggy
-dirty
-uhoh

After Tony's family left on Saturday, I watched Christmas movies with Embry and cleaned up while Tony strung the Christmas lights outside. I have to say it looks pretty good besides the fact that the 3 packs of walkway candle markers I got last year only go halfway down our driveway when they should go all the way to the sidewalk. Last year I thought we had too many multicolored lights going on all over, so this year the tree trunk is still in white lights, then the two big branches are in red lights, and the pillars in front of the front door are in green lights. Then we have the issue of the Christmas tree. I love real trees...being the Christmas Nazi that I am, it would only make sense that I get a real tree. So I had decided that this year I was going to splurge and buy the tallest real tree I could find. Besides the fact that getting it home would be impossible with 2 compact cars I then went to Lowes to look at trees. The tallest they have is 9-10 ft (not very tall in my opinion) and it's $100. Holy freaking cow, that's expensive. I just can't bring myself to waste that much money on a stupid tree. So the options are now either a) buy a $15 park pass and drive a million miles to go chop down our own tree (we also don't know how to use a chainsaw and still have the problem of fitting it on the top of our car) or b) use our same fake tree this year with the promise that after Christmas I can buy the largest fake tree I can find to use for the years to come. Option b would obviously be easier, but I will forever be disappointed that we don't have a real tree. Who knew this could be so complicated?

We weaned Embry from her bottle to her sippy cup. It was way easier than I thought. Now we put her milk in regular sippy cups and water in the straw sippy cups. She's also eating a lot more baby food and regular people food (or as we call it 'human food').

Embry can now point to her nose and ears and your nose and ears. She can also sit down on command. She's a cutie!

In other news I'm hosting a friend's baby shower this weekend and I'm getting excited. I got a bunch of the supplies yesterday and I think it will be lots of fun. In store for this week: prepping and cleaning!

Week 46

Embry learned how to blow a kiss this week. We've been trying to teach her for a while, but on Tuesday night I was feeding her some baby food and my brother was sitting on the other couch blowing kisses to her, then she finally put her hand up by her mouth and flung her arm out. So it's kind of blowing a kiss, right? Then we started clapping and I tried to feed her another spoonful of food, then she clapped right onto the spoon flinging food all over the place. I was not pleased. ;)

Formula feeding is going quite well except for the fact that it smells to high heaven. Eww. There is no way that I would EVER drink formula, but I guess I'm used to cow milk, anyhow yuck. So Embry's getting breastmilk in the morning and before bed and then formula and baby food and regular food (whatever we're eating) during the day. Oddly though, ever since we started formula she's had a bad bad diaper rash. My friend said the same thing happened to her daughter and she was having a reaction to the milk in formula, so I just switched to soy based formula and we'll see if it makes a difference. It was really heartbreaking over the weekend when the rash was the worst with big open sores. She would freak out and clench her legs closed when we got out a wipe. Yes, we used some soapy wet paper towels instead of wipes when we could, but it was just horrible. It looked fungal, so we started using the same creams that the dr had prescribed in the past, but on Monday I was worried so we went into the dr. She weighed 19 lbs 8 oz and he said it was in fact fungal. Apparently girls get diaper rashes a lot more than boys just from having more folds and whatnot, but I guess it's just from pee mainly. So I asked the dr how long I should wait when she gets a diaper rash before I bring her in and he said to try the creams on it and wait about a week to see if it gets better. He also said that giving them juice makes them have more liquidy poo, so we cut that out of her diet. Now she just gets water in her sippy cup and let me tell you, she is not as happy with water as she is with juice...a girl after my own heart. Bonus is that I just bought 10 bottles of Juicy Juice for her, oh well, more for me!

Embry now says 'hi' a lot. She also started saying 'na na na' all the time. This just drives me nuts because it's soooo close to 'mama' and I know she can say 'mmm' and 'aaaah' but she just won't put them together. So frustrating! She also started saying 'uh oh' except it comes out more like 'uh eee.' Oooh and if she sees someone rubbing their hands together (as she did at the dr's office) she will imitate it. Oh, she's so cute! Oh my gosh, I almost forgot, she does this adorable thing where I'll say 'let's cuddle!' and she'll rest her head on my chest. Oh, I love it sooo sooo much. I never want it to end.

I took her into the Picture People on Monday...it did not go well to say the least. I think that from now on before I take her to get her picture taken I need to take a few prozacs or something. So, basically the entire time it was her crawling away and me pulling her back while she screamed at the top of her lungs. It didn't help that they put us in the studio that is out in the lobby without a door so naturally she wants to crawl and see all the people and explore. Also, she hates having her clothes changed and I had 3 outfit changes...yikes. Anyhow after all that, then the guy tells me that I can't use both of my coupons at the same time. I had one for a free picture package and one for a free trilogy frame, matte, and pictures. I ended up using the trilogy one because it was a better deal and the guy said I could bring her back before the package coupon expires which I thought was funny because the last thing I'd want is to go through that ordeal again! The pics turned out cute and I ended up getting a frame with a matte with 3 openings which had 2 5x7s and an 8x10 in it and then 2 extra 8x10s all for $8. The one thing I really don't like about them is that the cameras focus on other things besides the kid's face a lot. There was a really cute close up of Embry's face with the hat and boas on, but it was focused on the fuzzy boa instead of her face so it would have bothered me endlessly if I had bought it. I got some pics of her in her halloween princess costume (she thoroughly enjoyed sucking on the fake prop pumpkins), then of her in a hat with my pearl necklace and fuzzy boas my mom gave her, then some of her in the dress I got for her birthday. I would like some more of her in the dress because none of those were super great.

I looked tonight and the second tooth on her bottom left is just poking through the gums. So pretty soon she'll have 8 whole teeth! My baby is growing up!

I reserved the ramada for Embry's birthday party. The larger ramada was reserved all day on the 14 (which is her birthday), but open on the 15, so looks like the party will be on the 15 of Nov. My sister Nancy is coming down from Montana that week, so we'll be taking family pictures on Saturday (Embry's birthday). I figure the convenience of having more picnic tables is worth it to have it a day late. Now I'm trying to decide whether I should send out real invitations or just an evite. Hmmm.