It’s an exciting day for the books.  Obama’s inauguration day.  I didn’t even get to see it because I was working and tried to catch a re-run of it tonight but all they had was the inauguration ball.  I’m sure I can find it on the internet somewhere.  Everything is going really well for us.  We survived the 40 below days.  Yesterday was our last meeting with our social worker and we should be getting papers in a week for Andi’s finalization court date.  Yeah!!  It’s almost here.  Bryan has left for work for the evening.  He seems to like the prison.  Bryan will be switching to 10 hour shifts next week.  My job is going fine as usual.  We got an email that we may not be getting our 2% cost of living raise so this year our health insurance cost will go up as usual and my pay rate will not.  It’s pretty depressing but at least I have a job and insurance so I can be thankful for that.   Andi is cute as ever.  She’s been rolling over a lot lately.  Still teething and still no teeth.  She slept until 10 a.m. this morning for Bryan.  Sleep seems to take precidence over food for her.  Andi has been eating her baby food well.  She’s been eating carrots applesauce and rice cereal so far and I plan to start her on another veggie shortly.  Andi was 6 months old on Saturday.  I can’t believe how fast they grow.  I’m sure I’ve probably written that in every blog so far.  Andi’s favorite toys are her exersaucer and her little singing animals.  She has been doing a lot of hair pulling so I will be getting a hair cut very shortly.  Not a lot of exciting news at the moment. 

I’m getting really excited for the holidays.  I love spending time with the family and all the food.  We have get togethers Wed Thurs Fri Sat and Sun.  It’s a week of Christmas.  We might as well switch to Hanukkha.  Just kidding.  Andi will be a little young to get excited about opening gifts this year but I’m so happy that we get to spend Christmas with our new baby.  I’m sure she will have a ton of fun with all the family.  She seems to love everyone and so far doesn’t seem to care who’s got her.  Bryan had his tonsils out Wed along with some nose restructuring and a tube out of his ear.  His throat has been really sore.  He’s already lost 10 lbs from not eating for 3 days.  It’s a good diet.  He did eat a tiny bit yesterday and today and snowblowed the driveway this morning so he’s getting his strength back a little.  Hopefully by Christmas he’ll be feeling a little better.  We just got 8″ of snow Friday and now we are supposed to get another 10″ tonight, I guess.  Andi has added quite a few different sounds to her vocabulary.  She’s got the mmm and bbbb sound down now so I’m hoping by next week she’ll be able to say mamma and babba.  Maybe my hopes are a little far fetched.  I’m so excited for her to learn new things and so sad at the same time that she is getting so big already and I won’t ever get this baby time back.  She has been doing really well with her baby food.  She’s been on rice cereal for about a month now.  The other day I gave her her first fruit.  Avacodo’s.  Weird choice, right.  I just happened to be making guacamole and thought I’d put a little aside for Andi.  She seemed to like it.  She shook her head a few times as if it were sour or something but I think it was just her tastebuds trying something with actual flavor for the first time.  She kept coming back for more and she seemed to like it the second day too.  I made baby applesauce and carrots.  I think I will start her on carrots next.  One of my co-workers said she gave her kids veggies first because you know they’ll like fruit.  Her theory was that the baby might be a better veggie eater growing up if she starts on them first.  Might as well give that theory a try.  Andi has been rolling over occasionally from her tummy to her back.  I think she has the ability to do it but then forgets how so she’ll roll over 3 times in a matter of 5 minutes and then she’ll forget how for a few days and then she’ll figure it out again.  That little arm has to be in just the right spot in order for it to work.  I’m not in a super huge hurry for her to learn how to roll over.  Once she has that down, she’ll be all over the place.  Right now I’m content with laying her on the floor and knowing she hasn’t rolled away.  She loves her little (and by little, I mean huge) exersaucer.  She hasn’t shown much interest in supporting herself with her legs and I would say she has another month before she has the sitting up thing down pat.  You never know though.  Bryan and I have had a couple shocks already on things she learned and we didn’t even realize she could do.  Bryan has decided to go back to school for his RN lisence through the college network.  It will basically be online/self paced program.  From the sounds of it, it will be another 3 years before he gets back in at the tech and we’re both sick of waiting.  Besides the nursing program at the tech is so horribly run he doesn’t even want to go back there anyway.  If anyone ever meets anyone thinking about going to school for nursing, I highly recommend the 4 year college rather than the 2 year tech program.  The wait list is ridiculous at the techs.  If you spend 4 years waiting to get into the tech program and another 2 years taking the classes, you may as well gone for your bacholers degree.  There is a lot more opportunities for Bacholers in Nursing too.  Well, that’s all I can think of for now.  I’m going to go to the grocery store now.

Today we put up our Christmas tree and my winter village.  I know it’s a little early but we plan to be busy next weekend and since we didn’t have any plans this weekend I thought we might as well get it over with.  Decorating for the holidays is too much work.  Sometimes I’m in the mood to do it but usually it’s just a big chore.  I am pretty much done Christmas shopping already.  I shop throughout the year for people so I’m usually half way done by the time Thanksgiving comes around.  I like to shop.  The stores have already been running some pretty good sales.  I don’t plan to do any of the crazy black Friday shopping like we did last year.  Especially with Andi.  I brought my car in again for service.  This time they gave me a loner car.  My car only makes a squeeling noise in the winter and I spent 3 months last winter driving back and forth to VanDynHoven’s for service.  They wouldn’t give me a loner vehicle to use so I could keep my car there to be serviced, so I had to keep going back and forth every other day to drop it off.  I left it there for 2 full weeks while I was on vacation at the end of winter last year and they still never fixed.  So now I get to start the whole charade over again.  I think the techs can’t figure out what’s wrong with it.  They are complete jerks to me.  They already called me and told me to come pick my car up after having it for one day and I told them I wasn’t going to pick it up until they fixed it.  It is so stressful dealing with those people.  I wish I’d known ahead of time what I’d have to deal with and then I’d have boughten a car that wouldn’t have to get serviced by them.  Ok, I’m done venting.  Can you tell how much grief they are giving me?  I fed Andi rice cereal for the first time on Saturday and again this morning.  She seems to really like it.  She was already getting antsy between bites this morning.  I think I’m just suppose to feed her in the mornings for awhile.  If anyone has advice on what worked well for them, I’d love to hear it.  I fed her about half her bottle and then gave her the baby cereal and then gave her the rest of her bottle and that seemed to work well.  She has not rolled over again since last Sunday.  I think she forgot how.  Andi learned how to spit now and has been having fun with that.  She has also added some new baby noises to her vocabulary.  I’m getting excited for all the food for Thanksgiving and seeing our families.  Bryan’s 30th birthday is Tuesday.  So old!!  We’re going to go out to dinner and the Thanksgiving parade afterward.  I’m already not looking forward to being cold at the parade, but I have to get used to it now that it’s winter again.  I’m really excited to hear that Katie’s boyfriend is thinking about taking the plunge and moving to Wisconsin!!!  I hope he likes it here.  It’s colder but you also can get a much nicer house for the money.  We do have some great golf courses here too and a lot of lakes for fishing.  Jon’s big into golfing and fishing.  Hopefully we can get him onto an ice hockey team here too and then maybe he’ll never want to go back.  If anyone knows of a team, let looking for players, let Katie know.  Yeah!!  Katie sounds like she’s ready to be done travel nursing for the time being and have a permanent address and income again.  I think it was a good opportunity for her and she never would have met Jon if she hadn’t done it.  I think that’s about it for now.  P.S. if anyone is thinking about investing, now’s a great time to do it.  Oshkosh Truck is down to $4 a share.  It’s a huge steal.

I’m such a proud mommy today.  Andi rolled over twice.  She hates being on her tummy and she figured out a way to plunk herself down on her side and then kick until she turns herself over on her back.  Yeah!!  I’m sure it’s only exciting news for me, but I just can’t belive how much they learn in such a short time.  Lot’s for her to learn yet though.  I painted Andi’s toenails on Thursday.  So cute!  She’s my little girl.  I always have my toenails painted even if I usually don’t wear makeup.  I’m going to wait until she asks to pierce her ears though.  We have family pictures tomorrow at Sears.  Hopefully the photographer is somewhat decent.  Amy’s was horrible for Sawyer.  She didn’t have any suggestions or help or idea’s for poses.  She waited for us to do something with Sawyer and then she’d take the picture.  The Packers won!  Bryan is doing a little more leaf blowing and then hopefully we’re done with yardwork until spring.  We went a visited my Aunt and Uncle and cousins yesterday and had a nice time.  We got to meet little Joshua.  What a sweetheart.  We had only planned for a short half hour visit and ended up having dinner there and staying several hours.  My grandpa was there so it was nice to see him too.  Adam got an apartment.  Yeah!!  I’m excited to see it.  It even has two bedrooms so he can have a roomate if he wants.  Andi has been getting a little more tempermental lately.  She cries when we lay her down for a nap now because she wants to be held.  Her vocals are definately getting stronger the older she gets.  She’s still a really good baby though.  She has her 4-month appointment next week and gets some more shots.  I also have to get my flu shot next week.    Well, I have to go feed the hungry baby.

I just put Andi to bed and now I can write a little update.  Bryan is on facebook now if anyone wants to add him as a friend.  He is so excited because he has like five friends.  All is going well here.  I gave away little Oliver.  He was just a little too much to handle with the baby and other animals.  I put a posting for him on craigslist in the adopt a pet section and I got two calls that night for him.  A girl named Libby is his new mommy.  I thinks she’s probably around 15 or so.  Her parents came with the pick him up.  I think he will be happy with her and get the attention he needs/deserves.  I’m sure in a few weeks I won’t be quite as sad about it.  We didn’t make it trick or treating this year but I dressed Andi up in her halloween clothes and took pictures of her.  She did not like it too much.  She’s always so mesmerized by the camera so I can’t always get a very good picture of her.  Bryan’s birthday is coming up Nov 25.  His mom is giving him 30 presents for 30 years.  It started Oct 25.  Every morning he gets home from work he holds his hand out for me to give him his present.  I have them stashed somewhere.  He’s having fun with it.  Congrats to my cousins Jason, Kelley, and there new baby boy Joshua.   I can’t wait to see pictures.  I think my co-worker Jessica will have her baby by this weekend too.  She is due Nov 19.  It’s so fun, everyone’s having babies.  We spent last weekend in Minneapolis.  Our nephew Crispin had his forth birthday.  We had a great time.  It was really nice for Andi to meet her aunts and uncles and cousins from Minneapolis.  I think Andi and I will go up to the cottage this weekend to visit grandma Julie and grandpa Mike.  Bryan works 2nd shift every other weekend at the prison and 3rd shift during the week.  It is working out well with taking care of Andi.  Bryan bought a leaf blower/mulcher today.  It was a must have.  He called me at work to tell me he really needed one because raking leaves was too much work.  I told him to wait and I’d get him one for his birthday.  I guess he didn’t like that answer because he called me an hour later from Menards to tell me what a good sale they were on and he really should get one now, so I gave in and let him get one.  We have some pretty huge trees in are yard and quite a few leaves to rake up.  He didn’t get very far before it started raining though.  Well, I’m gonna go to bed.

I love fall

It is so pretty outside right now with the leaves in their peak colors and falling to the ground.  I love the smells too.  Ryan and I went to the Packer game yesterday.  It was an awesome game to be at.  If you ask me next month I won’t remember if they won or lost or who they played, but they are a lot of fun to go to.  Bryan and I flipped a coin for the extra ticket and I won.  Yay!!  Saturday we went to our friend John’s sisters.  His son had a birthday party.  I had authentic vietnamese food.  I am so proud I ate it even though there was fish oil in it.  It was really good.  I didn’t eat with chop sticks though.  We went to a haunted house too.  I don’t think I got my money’s worth.  I had my eyes closed half of the time so I didn’t see the creepy monsters coming at me.  It was pretty scary.  It was the Splatter House in Two River’s if anyone is looking for one.  They had a nice system where they gave us the tickets right away instead of us having to stand in line for 2 hours.  We drove around for an hour in Two River’s, our friend wanted to go to Walmart for some strange reason.  We found a big cow to take pictures with instead.  Andi is so fun.  She is three months now.  She is really good in her bumbo seat and likes to try to talk to us.  Of course she is getting huge.  She is getting rolly polly now.  She still sleeps through the night for us.  The best baby ever!!  Being back and work is going well.  I miss her and I feel like my nights go so quick and I get nothing accomplished which is why I haven’t blogged in a month, but I like being back at work.  I would ideally like to work part time, so maybe one day that will be a possibility.  We will have to see about Bryan’s career.  We invested in stocks for Andi.  My dad said right now is the best time to do it.  Bryan has been watching the stocks habitually as they go up and down.  First he’s excited they are up and few hundred dollars, then they are down.  I told him not to watch them so much.  We own Oshkosh Truck and some DryShips company which my dad thought would be good investements.  Hopefully by the time she is 18 they will have doubled or tripled and help her out a little with college.  I can’t think of anything else too exciting going on in our lives at the moment.

Bad Night

Andi is having one of her rare bad nights.  She has been crying for the last hour.  Bryan has been trying to comfort her and not having much luck.  I am having a difficult time not running to the rescue.  I keep wanting to run and steal her away and make her feel better.  I told him to let me know if he wants me to try.  I will be going back to work next week and he will be with her all day and I will only be with her in the evenings, so our roles will be switching.  I am worried about his ability, but I’m sure he will find his nitch with her eventually.   We have been keeping it pretty low key lately.  Today we took Mona to the dog park and then I dragged Bryan to the outlet mall for the afternoon and we only bought 3 things. Bryan complained pretty much the whole time because he doesn’t like shopping.  I should know better by now than to talk him into shopping.  Andi is getting better and better at holding up her head.  She has been smiling and cooing and puts her hands in her mouth a lot now.  She also blows little bubbles.  She has slept through the night now for the last two weeks until 7 a.m. or later.  So far Bryan seems to like his new job at the prison.  I don’t like that it’s so far away.  He spends 2 hours a day just driving to and from work.  I hope something opens up closer soon.  It will be through the state and they will let him know of any openings.  Amy and I are going to do a heart walk on Saturday morning.  Andi and I have a birthday party for Morgan, my friends daughter, Sat. afternoon.  Katie is flying in next week for a friends wedding.  She has flown here so many times in the last few months.  That’s why I think it’s not really worth it to live across the country.  Well little Andi seems to have settled down now.  Yay!  Have a good night all.  Good luck with your delivery Lora!!

Andi is 2 months

Andi has her first cold.  Poor baby.  She hasn’t been eating a lot.  She slept until 9:00 this morning.  I finally woke her up to eat but she only ate 1 1/2 oz.  She has her 2 month appointment today and will need shots.  I told Bryan he has to come with me because I will probably be passed out on the floor.  Grandpa Merline passed away.  We are all very sad.  It was expected but still very hard to think that he isn’t there anymore.  Katie is flying in today.  The wake is tommorow and funeral Saturday morning.  It is at a Catholic Church, so will be pretty formal and I’m sure they will do the insence. 

Grandpa Merline

I am sad to say that my Grandpa Merline is not doing well.  I’m trying to be optimistic, but he’s in pretty rough shape and they think he may only be with us a few more days.  He was diagnosed a few months back with mesothelioma (asbestos cancer).  Our family is taking it really hard.  He is a great man.  He served in WW2 on the fighter jets.  The war was really hard on him and he didn’t like to talk about it much.  Him and my grandma were married once he got back from the war and my grandma still will not leave his side.  He has always had a great sense of humor and I never heard him say a bad thing about anyone.  We will miss him a lot.  I am glad we have all got to see him in the last week and spend time with him and tell him how much we love him.  I am glad that he is a Christian and I don’t have to worry about him because he will be in heaven waiting for the rest of us.  Katie will probably be flying back for his funeral.  She just flew back to Phoenix yesterday and we will get to see her again real soon.  I am happy about that part.  I’d rather keep my grandpa though.  Sorry so gloomy.

I’m trying out my new blog Amy set up for me

Just thought I’d try out my new blog site.  Amy spent many hours setting this up for me so I’ll have to make sure I write on it.  All is well at the Piechocki’s.  Bryan is starting a new nursing job at a prison.  Scary.  He’s excited about it.  I’m not for obvious reasons and it’s also a pretty far drive for him.  I like his job he’s at now because it’s 10 minutes away.  I spent the day cleaning.  Tomorrow we have a wedding for Katie’s friend Nicole.  It is outdoors at the Botanical Gardens and the forcast is calling for rain so we might get a little wet.  I have a cute dress for Andi to wear.  I’m guessing nobody will see it because she will be so bundled up.  Andi is actually awake at the moment.  She still sleeps a lot.  I expect it’s because she’s nearly doubled her birth weight.  Bryan says all her cells splitting is a lot of work.  She’s getting pretty good at holding her head up but if it falls forward she can’t get it back up.  Andi’s birth mom signed off her rights in court this week so she’s pretty much ours now.  We just have to wait 6 months to finalize the adoption.   Nothing else too exciting happening at the moment with us.  I’m still out on Family Medical Leave with Andi.  I’ve been spending a lot of time at home even though she sleeps most of it.  You’d think the house would be spotless every day and Bryan would have a huge dinner waiting for him every night, but that really hasn’t been the case.  My house only ever looks clean for about 5 minutes because of all our 3 messy animals and Bryan of course.  Thanks