I am currently watching the Olympics and typing on my laptop. I just put Andi to bed and picked up a little, probably not as much as I should have though. Bryan is trying to fix my Elliptical Machine. It squeaks and clunks and drives me crazy when I try to use it. Bryan just finished his last class and is waiting to hear back from Excelsior College about his clinicals. Work is going ok. My hours have changed a little and I’m not too thrilled about that. Neither is Bryan since it effects his sleep schedule. I’m hoping when Bryan gets his RN lisence that he will work full time and I can cut back to 32 hours a week. I’ve been getting a little stir crazy with the winters. There isn’t too much Andi can do at her age so we spend a lot of time at home playing toys. I’m anxious for spring so we can get outside more. Last weekend Amy, my mom, and I took the kids to Funset to ride the train and play the games and have pizza. Saturday Bryan and I took Andi to Disney on Ice. I would highly recommend it. Even if you don’t have kids it would still be a good show. Andi is doing well. Learning so much. She learns new words so well. She will ask me what something is and I’ll tell her and then she’ll repeat it. It doesn’t always sound quite right, but close. She seems to always remember the words after she learns them the first time. A lot of times she’ll be saying words to me which I’m sure is something one of us taught her, but since she can’t say the word exactly right I don’t know what she’s talking about. I was talking to a co-worker of mine who told me she just got so used to the way her daughter talked that they never realized she couldn’t say her “r”s until she started kindergarden. I thought that was interesting. Andi says keekee for blanket, melmo for elmo, nose for snow and nose for nose, four for floor, but we know what she’s saying. She is a very clumsy little girl. She falls down quite a bit and gets lots of bumps and bruises. She doesn’t eat well either. I’ve decided for her bedtime snack she will be getting her left over dinner from now on. She eats about 2 bites at dinner and then and hour later is asking for a snack because she want something better than meats and veggies. She’s too smart for her own good. I’m also having a hard time getting her to listen and mind. I’m sure that is just with her age though. We don’t have any very exciting plans coming up other than spring!
It’s Friday night. The baby is in bed and the hubby is off to work and I thought I better blog now because who knows when I’ll think about it or have a chance to next. November’s weather has been pretty tolerable this year. I just finished the final book of the Anne of Green Gables Series. I really enjoyed the books although I was a little dissappointed because after the first few books it became less about Anne and more about the other people that came and went in her life. They were still really good though. Bryan’s work has been ok. It’s another job in his big portfolio that he doesn’t really love. Maybe nursing isn’t for him. He doesn’t seem very happy at any place that he works. Well, he at least has to finish school since we’ve invested so much money for him to go and like 8 years. Mona ate Bryan’s dinner tonight. I had it out on the counter for him for when he woke up and he slept a few hours longer than I had anticipated and by then I had forgot all about it. Andi and I spent the evening playing in her bedroom. She pulled all the books off her bookshelf and all the toys out of her baskets. She is getting really terrible at meal time. She throws her entire dinner on the floor some nights and then I don’t know if I should find her something else she will like or not give her anything since she didn’t seem to want it. She is also getting into the temper tantrum stage and if something isn’t exactly how she wants it she lets us know. Isn’t she too young to be like this? On the plus side. She’s such a great little girl. She just tells us story after story in her own little language and has such a little sense of humor always laughing at her stories and us. Still, anytime she hears music she’s up and dancing away. She does a lot of taking things out and putting them back together. She gets into our kitchen drawers and pulls all the sandwhich bags and saran wrap out of the box and then tries to put them back. She also takes all the utensils out of the drawer and puts them back in. She does this with kleenex and toys and books and diapers. You name it. Andi is starting to give kisses and does the little smack. It’s nice to be loved back. She says all kinds of words now. Fish – pronounced fisk, hot pronounced hock, baby pronounced buba, car pronounced ca, keys, book, bird, my, me, wow, Mona, Tanner and a bunch more that I should start a little log of. She is finally getting daring enough to take steps on her own. I thought she’d be such a good walker by the time she did it on her own but she still seems to have a ways to go. She seems to be in a huge hurry and doing a running fall rather than slow and steady. We have a busy week planned. Tomorrow Maggie and Dan are in town so we will spend some time with them. Sunday I am going to the Packer game with Dad. Monday we are having a birthday dinner for Bryan at Beef Eaters. Tuesday is the Christmas parade. Wednesday I don’t have anything other than the usual work. Thursday is Thanksgiving. For those of you that didn’t hear, Bryan’s uncle was on his motorcylce in Florida and hit by another car. He was very seriously injured. He has gone thru multiple surgeries, he had a lot of organ failures and has been sedated and on a ventelator ever since the accident. We would appreciate lots of prayers for his recovery. Bryan told me yesterday that Uncle Charlie has just been taken off the ventilator. I hope everyone has a safe and happy Thanksgiving.
I guess I better do an update. This month has gone by fast. The weather has been really great, with the exception of the last 2 days, but we really needed the rain. We’ve got a couple pumpkins in our garden this year. The garden seems to have done better in the back yard than the front. We also got a ton of tomatoes, lettuce, peppers, cucumbers, and fenal (which I’ve only used once since I don’t really know what to cook with it). I’ve just moved our iris’s to a different spot. I told Bryan I don’t want to put any more money into the house. I think we will probably move in the next year and I don’t believe that we will get any more money out of the house if we put it into it. Our house only has 2 bedrooms and we won’t have enough room if we adopt another baby. Now the dilema is what do we want in our next house. We like the older houses like we have now with all the charactor, but then there’s all the renovations and old pipes that come along with that. Bryan wants to move to the country and have a 5 car garage. I don’t want any bigger of a garage because Bryan is kind of a slob and can’t keep the one we have clean. I also like living in town because it’s not as far of a drive to work and for the kids when school starts. It would be nice to have nearby neighbors as our kids grow older and want to play with other kids. I think we will wait until Bryan is done with school. One stress at a time. Bryan has gotten more hours at his job now. It’s still not full time, but he is still in school so that gives him a couple extra days to concentrate on studying. I’m so anxious for him to just be done with school and our life to be a little more relaxed. I work all day and then get home from work and spend the rest of the night and weekends taking care of Andi and the house. When Bryan is done with work he comes home, watches Andi, sleeps and spends the rest of the night studying. It will be nice when it is all over with and we can take turns having free time and actually see each other and do things as a family again. We do have a family vacation coming up in a few weeks which I’m really looking forward too. We are going to Florida to stay with my parents in Naples. Bryan and I are going to go to Orlando for a few days while we are there and my parents are going to take Andi. That will be the longest we’ll have been away from her. It will be nice to have that little get away and not have to worry about things Andi isn’t big enough to do and nap time. I’m worried about the plane ride and her ears. Andi is doing really well. She’s just so lovable. Of course she’s still a little drama queen. She still isn’t walking all on her own yet. She’s a pretty unbalanced little girl. She should be a pro for all the times she pulls herself up on things, but she seems to fall and bang her head on the hardwood floor on a daily basis. Andi loves to walk though, and is constantly grabbing our fingers so we will walk her around the house. As soon as I let go she plops down to her knees and crawls. She’s been saying lots of new words and has all kinds of conversations and laughs about what she’s saying. We just play along like we know what she’s talking about and laugh when she laughs at her funny stories. Andi’ “oufs” at her stuffed animals. I’ve been trying to teach her different animal sounds but I’m not very good at it. My elephant sound don’t sound like elephants at all and I don’t know what kind of sound half the animals make. She pulls out all her little hair-do’s, hair and all, so I can never put a bow in her hair and I can’t get her to sit still for a ponytail or to clip her nails. I should clean since the house is a mess, but I think I’m going to read instead. I’ve just started the Anne of Green Gable’s Books.
What an exhausting day. Andi had her 1 year doctors appointment yesterday and got 4 shots and blood drawn. She was up half the night crying and has been crying all day. She’s just not feeling well from them. I’ve been giving her baby Tylenol but that doesn’t seem to have helped much. Poor girl. I wish there was something I could do. The doctor detected what he thinks is either a heart murmur or pulmonary stenosis and is referring her to a pediatric cardiologist. Hopefully it is nothing. I know I will worry about it for the next month until she sees the specialist and we find out for sure. Bryan had a pretty promising interview. It’s sounds like he was pretty much offered the job on the spot. The best part is it’s in Appleton so he won’t have to spend 2 hours a day driving. It is only 32 hours a week but he is still working on his RN licence so that will give him a little extra study time. I guess there are always shifts he can pick up too. It’s nice because they are paying him extra in lieu of health insurance which he already has through me. Most places don’t do that. Andi had a great birthday party and got tons of gifts. Thank you everyone who came. We hope you had a good time. It was really nice having so many family and friends there. It’s such a gorgeous day outside today. Hopefully after Andi’s done with her nap she’ll feel better and we can get out and enjoy the beautiful weather. First she has to stop crying and fall asleep. We have lots of exciting plans for August. Next weekend Pete is in demolition races at Winnebago County Fair and Sawyer will be having a birthday party. We also have a Merline family reunion in Michigan and a camping trip to Peninsula State Park planned. The summer is just flying by, except for today. Andi is so much fun now. She does a lot of furniture walking and loves to climb the steps and walk when we are holding her hands. I think it will probably be a good month or so before she’s walking on her own. We will be switching her to regular milk soon when her formula runs out. She eats tons of stuff and throws the food she doesn’t like on the floor. That’s been hard to get her to not do. Thankfully we don’t have carpet. She says mama dada kick and socks. I think she tries to say Mona but it comes out mama. Bryan took her to swimming lessons the last few weeks. He said they went well and she really liked the water. She was the youngest one in her class and the other kids understood to scoop the water and jump off the side of the pool and she was too young to do that stuff, so then he just had to stand in the water with her instead. He couldn’t get any pictures because he had to be in the water holding her. She also talks in a monster voice. It’s hard to explain, but very funny to witness. She says “Oh” in a high pitched voice to everything she sees and gets really excited and claps and cheers all the time. Still only 4 teeth. She likes to lounge, so if she’s in the stroller she has one or both of her legs up on the bar in front of her and she does the same in shopping carts. She always has to have her legs up. All in all our family is doing well and enjoying our summer.
Today was pretty crummy weather so Andi and I went to the mall. I got a couple pairs of shorts and tank tops and a pair of shoes and I bought Bryan a pair of shorts and a hat and a jacket that he doesn’t need. I didn’t get Andi anything. She has so many clothes and toys that there’s not much to get her. We are all doing fairly well. I’m stressed out with my work. They are trying to redesign the entire patient check-in and scheduling process which sounds like a nightmare so far and is all supposed to start in a few months. It’s crazy and I think it will probably fail miserably. More to come on that in the upcoming months when we move to our new building and they start trying to do everything different. Bryan has been working a lot of weekends and that’s pretty much it. There have not been a lot of hours available to him. That is ok though because he can spend more quality time with Andi and has more time for studying. He’s half way through his RN classes now. He’s been doing one class every 5-6 weeks and is moving right along. It is all pretty much self pace and then he takes a final when he thinks he’s ready. There is no homework or tests in between. Just the final at the end. I’m concerned about the clinicals and have been hounding him to figure out if he needs to have a certain amount of hours of clinicals or how that all works. He thinks there will just be a test out on the clinicals and that’s it. Andi’s been doing better. Must be a little break between teeth coming in. I’m hoping the rest won’t bother her as much as the first 4 did. It’s so nice to not have her crying all day. She’s been really talkative lately. She’ll just gibber jabber all day long. All just baby talk yet. She’s been saying mumma a lot lately so that might be her first real word but I’m still not sure if she is saying mumma to me or just in general because she hears the word a lot. She is quite the crawler now. I bought a fancy baby gate for the kitchen to the back porch the has a little door on it rather than taking it up and down or trying to crawl over it on the steps. It’ still kind of a pain to have the gate. The opening is pretty narrow and I have to hold Andi’s car seat forward in order to get through the gate but it’s worth it for her safety. Pretty soon she won’t be in that baby car seat anymore. She’s still so tiny though so who knows when that will be. Bryan has an appointment at the firestation to have Andi’s carseat checked in my car. My middle seatbelt comes from behind the seat andit tips Andi’s car seat sideways so we’re not sure if we’re doing it wrong or if she should just be in one of the side seats. I think I’m going to get one of those instep bike trailers so we can take bike rides again. We haven’t been on one all summer. The one I’m looking at seats 2 kids and is convertible to a stroller. Pretty handy. We have plans to go to the Dells with our family at the end of the month and I think we’ll be going to summerfest at the beginning of July. I won tickets to the No Doubt concert there. I don’t even know what they sing, but free concert tickets. I’m sure I know some of there songs. I’m just horrible with remembering who sings what and what actors are in what movies and remembering anyones names. I guess that is all I can think of for now. Now I’m going to bed.
I put Andi to bed and am winding down for the night. It was a stressful day at work and at home. We were short staffed at work today and I didn’t even get a minute to stop and think. When I got home Bryan was pretty cranky because his blood sugar was low and Andi cried half the night like usual. Bryan calls her his little drama queen and Andi Grace with a pretty face who came from Outer Space. He probably picked up on all my weird comments. Maybe one child is enough. I just wish she could tell me what was wrong, but I’m guessing its her teeth and there’s not much I can do about that. Hopefully she will be in happier spirits when they come through. Does anyone know once the four front teeth come through, are we done for awhile or are the others right behind. Bryan still has not gotten much work. He’s plugging away at his classes though, in the absence of work, so thats good. I was so happy to have 70 degrees and Friday and Saturday and then today it snowed. Grrr. My work is going ok. They are cutting a lot of our benefits. They cut a day of vacation, our 401K contribution our pension plan and we didn’t get a raise this year. All that said, thankfully I still have a job and insurance so I’m not too upset about the whole thing when I’m seeing so many other people losing their jobs all together. It’s pretty much work and home for me. I went to Once Apon a Child a few weeks ago and got Andi some cute hats. I was looking for a spring jacket and never found one. I checked all the stores in the mall and Kohls. I ended up buying one on Ebay. Apparently children under the age of a year don’t need jackets. Andi is starting to do the army crawl a little. She uses her feet and arms but still refuses to get up on her knees. She’s been eating quite a bit of grown up food. Alot of the skins on things give her problems yet. We’ll find beans and tomatoes skins in her mouth a half hour after she ate them. She’s been trying all kinds of new foods and usually half of it ends up in her hair. Andi just turned 9 months old on Friday. I can’t believe how big she’s getting. Andi dances all the time. Whenever we clap or she hears a little jingle or I sing her a song, she will start dancing. Very cute. We had a nice Easter with our families. My grandma’s brother died so we ended up not going to her house because she was at his funeral. My parents are off to Florida again. Each time my mom comes back from Florida after being gone 3 weeks or a month she is so happy that Andi is still little. I tried her in some 6-9 month clothes and the pants still fall off her. The tops are a little better and I’m sure the dresses would fit if she doesn’t wear the little bloomers with them. She needs to fatten up a little to keep those pants up. Bryan and Andi are signed up for swimming lessons in July. It will only last 2 weeks but I think Bryan will have a good time doing that with her. It’s Monday thru Friday in the morning so I won’t be able to make it there because of my work schedule. It would be fun to watch so I’m a little sad to be missing it but glad Bryan will have the opportunity to do that with her. Well until next time. I can’t think of much else to say.
It’s been a month of ups and downs for us. The ups: Andi’s adoption was finalized. Cailey was born. Yeah!!! The downs: We had our arbitration hearing for my defective car. Bryan got laid off from his job. Bryan’s school enrollment has been delayed for a month. T he adoption went really smooth and quick. We were all really excited and not really sure what to expect. The judge came out and asked us if we wanted to adopt Andi and said all the papers looked in order and he signed the paperwork for approval. Then he came down and took a few pictures with us. I think it lasted about 10 minutes. We already got the birth certificate in the mail. The social security office is giving us a little grief. They want a medical record with Andi’s new last name and we don’t have anything since she doesn’t have an appointment until later in April. The doctor’s office computer program is unable to print anything for us until that appointment. The doctor gave me something that will hopefully work but I don’t think it counts as a medical record so we’ll see what the social security office says. The arbitration did not go well. Because my hyundai runs, the arbitrator did not approve our request to have Hyundai buy back our vehicle. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, since I bought my car brand new last year there has been an awful squeal every time I start it in cold weather. Hyundai claims the car is fine and is refusing to fix the squeal because they say it is a normal cold weather noise. So much for the awesome warranty, the reason we bought the SUV in the first place. Bryan got an email last Saturday night from his manager saying that he was told he needed to cut back on budget so Bryan was laid off as of now. No warning and no phone call. He has applied at a few staffing agency’s and was able to pick up one shift for tonight in Berlin. Better than nothing. Hopefully he will be able to pick up some more shifts closer to home and be able to find a permanent position in the near future. There are not any LPN openings out there right now 3rd shift because of the economy. Even the health-care field is on a hiring-freeze in our area. Thankfully he can get unemployment in the meantime. We did not realize that it would take so long for Bryan to get enrolled into the Exelcier College Nursing Program that partners with The College Network. Bryan has been taking on line classes for his RN license but now Excelsier is not allowing him to take the finals or any more classes while they are processing his enrollment paperwork. It has been about a month now. Crazy. He has been waiting 3 weeks to take the final for the class he’s in right now. They keep telling him it should be done next week. Andi has been learning new things every day. I call her my little buttercup. I don’t think that’s even a word. It’s a weird nickname for her, I know. She will wave to people on occasion now and we taught her how to clap. She’s having fun with that one. She claps my face all the time now. I’ve been working on “no” with her now. She loves to pull my hair and is getting pretty strong. She has been doing a lot of crying lately. I’m hoping it’s just because her tooth is coming in or it’s a little phase she’s going through. I can’t leave the room anymore with out her crying. It’s been wearing on my nerves a little. Then of course I feel guilty because I know she’s just a baby and I’m sure it’s just as frustrating for her as it is for me that she can’t tell me why she’s so upset all the time. She will be 8 months already tomorrow. I’m going to start her on some more solid foods. She’s already doing the breads and Cheerios and crackers and banana’s. Now I just have to find some other healthy soft foods she can eat. She has a hard time picking the little banana pieces up because they are too slippery for her with her slimy little hands. I’m happy it’s so nice out the last few days. I think Andi Mona and I will go for another walk tomorrow after work. We all usually get a little muddy, but it’s worth the fresh air. Take care everyone.
We are so glad to make it official today. Welcome to the family Andi. Love mommy.
I guess Amy had her surgery around 11 p.m. last night. They did it in her room so it was probably not too major of surgery. I believe they drained some blood from the hematoma and that helped relieve alot of the pain/pressure she was having. My mom said Pete called and she is feeling much better since the surgery.
Amy called from the hospital and said she’s going to need surgery. She has a hematoma, which I think is a fancy word for bruise. I talked to Katie for a few minutes about it and Katie said that they normally go away on their own but if they want to do surgery it is probably getting worse instead of better. I don’t know how serious it is but serious enough for surgery. Please keep her in your prayers tonight and tomorrow morning.
