Year In Review {2011

Looking back this year has flown by, but living it, it felt really long. Seems like so much has happened this year and I am ready to see what 2012 has in store for us.

{January}
Micah Wyatt was born 4 weeks early, but perfect. Can it really have been a whole year ago already? As I sit here thinking about how I was suffering from constant contractions this time last year and thought that child would never get out. HA!
It's a Baby Story {pt1, pt2, pt3, and pt4}



{February}
Leighton turns 2.

Take family pictures.

Other than settling in with our new normal not too much happened, you know other than listing our house on the MLS!! Nothing like having a newborn and a toddler and trying to keep your home in magazine perfection.

{March}
My sister came home for a visit and to meet Micah Bear.


Micah had a sonogram of his tummy to rule out pyloric stenosis. Looking for causes of his chronic reflux.


{April}
Went to see Sesame Street Live as a special Lo Lo sister only date. It was so fun we will probably go again. :) It really was fun to see the joy on her face when she saw Elmo live and in living color.

{May}
Here is where things start to get nuts. After nearly 8-10weeks on the market our house gets a contract. The new owner wants us out by the end of May. Giving us two weeks. Thankfully, our awesome realtor negotiated middle of June. Let the chaos of packing, moving and did I mention looking for a home for ourselves panic set in...


Once again thanks to our awesome realtor {and GOD} we found the perfect home in the nick of time!

We also dedicated Micah Bear to God.


Micah had a visit to the pediatric surgeon to discuss possible fundoplication surgery due to slow weight gain and chronic reflux/spitting up. No other treatments have worked at this point. Surgery is not a option at this point per the surgeon. So we wait and try more things.

Lo Lo sister finally decided the crib was for babies and moved on up. Once again in the nick of time.

{June}
MOVED

My new nephew Hollis was born!

{July}
Getting settled in our new home.

Told some our dear friends good-bye as the moved back "home."

Lo got her first hair cut. Very exciting. ;)


Micah is still not improving after being switched to prevacid. We are then referred to a pediatric gastroenterologist who finally convinces me to go off all dairy and soy. She strongly feels this is completely allergy related. Thus beginning my dairy free diet. However, I wanted a blood test to confirm this even though I saw some results from my new diet. Blood test came back negative for dairy allergy. Continued on dairy free, but pretty much back to square one.

{August}
Back to school time for daddy. Settling into a new fall routine.


{September}
My sister and her family come to visit.

Went to the State Fair.


Micah is doing worse. He hasn't gained more than 8z since May! He is starting to look very thin. I break down and take him back to the pediatric gastroenterologist. She immediately schedules a EGD scope "surgery," my baby was placed under anesthesia. Very hard day for mommy! We are then referred back to the pediatric surgeon who decides our only other recourse is the fundoplication surgery.


{October}
Re-unite with our college friends who moved back from Texas.


Mommy turns 29. :(

Micah has his fundoplication surgery on Oct 21st.

{November}
Micah has turned the corner and is gaining and thriving! As a result mommy weans MW.


{December}
We all get the Great Flu of 2011 just in time for daddy's 31st birthday. Awesome fun had by all.

Micah finally sleeps through the night!!!!!

Celebrate Christmas


I don't even really know how to sum up a year that seemed to be filled with so many up and downs. I can say that memories were made and you would never trade those in. So I lift my "red solo cup" :) up to 2011. Cheers! May 2012 be filled with as many memories.

From Our Family To Yours

Surprise! I am not sending out Christmas cards again this year. I love all of yours, but think the green version is the way to go. {more green in my pocket and it's good for Mother Earth too!}
Merry Christmas!

Momma ain't got no sick day

I don't even know why I am sitting here at the computer when I have a bazillion things to do. As Leighton would say "llama llama such a tizzy, sometimes momma's very BUSY!" She hears that a lot! {Llama Llama Red Pajama Book}

Last week through a huge wrench into my plans b/c momma ain't got no sick days. Seriously, I think that is one of the hardest things to come to terms with once you become a mom. There are no sick days. I can handle the giving up everything else, but when all you want to do is hug your toilet and curl up on the bath mat and die, it is a little to much.

Wednesday the "great stomach flu" of 2011 hit with a vengeance. It is only by God's divine grace I survived Wednesday and tending to two kids until Chad got home at 415p. Every hour I got worse and worse. Normally Micah is attached to me like white on rice, but this particular day as I lay in the middle of the living room floor praying fervently for Jesus' return, I realized Micah was PLAYING by himself!! Miracle right here. Even Lo who is seriously the greatest toddler evah didn't ask her 1000 annoying inquisitive questions that day.

When nap time arrived I thought I had arrived. Just a few short long hours until Chad would be home to rescue me. Thankfully the kids both slept 2-2.5 hours. Only 1.5 hours of torture to endure. Pretty sure in that time I scarred my kids who so rudely busted through what I deemed a locked bathroom door. Nothing like trying to keep Micah away from his favorite toy: the potty while you are on your hands and knees. I am going to say it--I deserve a medal. ;)

Of course Lo who is a little on the dramatic side started gagging and saying she didn't feel well. I told her to just go lay down then. I didn't believe her. Big mistake. 10 minutes later she is re-living lunch all over the basement floor. Awesome. Two down. Sadly I couldn't even clean it up! Chad arrived home 15 minutes later to that mess. Thanks honey. You can have a medal too!

The rest of the evening was a blur. I was so dehydrated my arthritis was flaring up big time. Yes, I have arthritis at the tender age of 29, thank you gymnastics and cheerleading. Thankfully Chad stayed home the next day to help me recover. The closest thing to a sick day I got, even though I found myself taking care of everyone per usual. At least I got a few naps in. I pray it is a long time before I am that sick again!

By Thurs night Chad was hit. Lucky for him he is daddy and he can lay in bed all day. :) {I still love you!}

We all slowly recovering. This junk seriously messes with your GI system for days!
Lo woke up the next morning and said "I feel much better!"
"Awesome baby, I don't!"

Micah may have gotten it; he was one nightmarish diaper after the other for 4 days! Bless his heart due to his surgery he can't throw up--at least I thought. He did "puke" a very little bit on Friday...so my guess is he got some form of it, at least his messes were mostly contained to the diaper and not my couch.

Now Christmas is here and I feel so behind. My house needs cleaned sanitized since I am hosting, last minutes gifts need to be purchased, food bought. The list goes on. Yet I sit here...time to get busy.

Christmas Traditions

I love creating traditions or memories with our kids especially during the Christmas season. Thanks once again to pinterest I am not disappointing. HA! {of course I am not doing too great at getting pics of some of these traditions. :( oh how my scrapbook will suffer. HA!}

Laying under the tree. {no pic :( } but even Micah participated willingly!

Making cookies with Lo. She is surprisingly very helpful and fun during this process. Probably helps she has been cooking with me since she was 6 months old. :)


Operation Christmas Child and Project Generosity {something our church is doing to help out our local pregnancy crisis center} is a great way to show generosity to those who really need things this season rather than focusing on the "me" mentality.

Christmas craft. I am not cool or fun like a lot of moms and do crafts daily or even monthly, but every so often I can pull one out that ligths up my daughter's day. We made salt dough ornaments {thank you pinterest} and painted them.

Look at that chubby foot. Just wanted to prove MW gets to play too! :)

The tree is my "thumbprint" ornament that didn't turn out so great...oh well. You win some and lose a lot copying pinterest ideas. At least in my case. :)

This pretty much sums up 90% of my pinterest endeavors. HA!

Source: thechive.com via Michele on Pinterest

Jesse Tree. I have been looking for a way to really incorporate Jesus more into Christmas in effort to help Lo understand the true meaning of Christmas. This idea is fantastic, but in our case the stories are too above her head and I am not skilled enough to make them 2 year old friendly/understandable. I keep searching for a pre-k level for the Jesse Tree but coming up empty handed. Suggestions???

However, she likes to color the picture ornaments and we hang them on her tree and just keep talking about Jesus' birthday and that he was born to save us. Sometimes I worry she doesn't get the true meaning of Christmas, but then I have to stop and say "she is 2.5, stop stressing! She goes to church, she is growing up in a Christian home/family, and she does know Jesus loves her at least abstractly. That is all she needs right now, as she grows she will understand more and more. There are many more years to do the Jesse Tree!"


Christmas picture. The "good" ones. HA!


Then of course there will be our Christmas Eve service.

I love this time of year now that I have kids to do things with. What traditions are you starting?

From our home to yours Merry Christmas!

Micah 11 Months {Watch Me Grow}

This time of year always makes me sentimental. I find myself reminiscing about all that was going on last year at this time. I find it hard to believe that it has nearly been a year since your birth. In so many ways it feels like it has been 2 years already, time flies... I have been looking forward to you being one since about 2 weeks after you were born! HA! Momma isn't a fan of the newborn thing, I love toddlers and their independence.

{somehow this month I have taken nearly zero pics of anything including you! :( }


Milestones: You are waving 'bye-bye' now. You are so close to walking. You are up to 3/4 steps and trying all the time now and everything is a walk toy to you; chairs, step stools, books. My Christmas wish is you will be walking by then?! And you are playing peek-a-boo with us. I also think you are cutting 4 new teeth! Wow.

Language Skills: finally making some consonant sounds such as "dada, baba, mama and gaga." You even make "vroom vroom" noises with your toy cars. Such a boy. You sort of sign "milk" and you definitely sign "all done." I have got to work on this harder with you, I am sick of all the melt downs. :/

Just this Wednesday the kids and I were hit hard with a tummy bug. Poor MW can't throw up due to his sx, so it was hard to know how bad he felt, until daddy snapped this picture. Poor baby.

Eating: You eat 3 meals/day plus 2 snacks. You drink 3-4 bottles {officially weaned!}. You still prefer your milk over foods. I am adding cow's milk to your bottles to help transition you over and starting to give you more and more sippy cups to get you off your bottle. So far all of this is going well. However, the first time I gave you cow's milk you started drinking it. Stopped. Looked up at me like what he heck is this stuff? First my breastmilk is gone now this?! Then you shrugged it off and continued drinking it. HA! It was too funny.

Sissy likes to take it upon herself to feed you! Some of it does make it to your mouth.

Sleeping: Ah the big topic. I have dedicated an entire post to just this, but if you missed it here is the short and sweet of it. You are a terrible sleeper at night. Your bedtime is 630p and while you are still waking some at night we are in progress of sleep training you and you are to put yourself back to sleep. So far so good. The last few nights I haven't heard you wake up, so if you are you are not screaming you head off about it. PTL! You are up at 7a. And take two naps per day 830a and 1230p. They are about 1 and 2 hours long respectively.


Favorite Toys and Books: Mommy. You refuse to play by yourself for longer than 35seconds. I wish I were exaggerating. You want mommy to hold you all.day.long. standing. I try to engage you in play, but clearly that isn't your thing. You do great for everyone else. Everyone raves about how sweet and happy you are. I don't really get to see that side of you. On a occasion, because even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile, but overall you are just a little firecracker for me. Should have named you Aiden like I wanted. {Aiden means fiery--and if that doesn't sum up your fiery red head temper then I don't know what does, because it sure as heck doesn't sum up Micah.}


Anecdotes/Quirky things you do: When we were in the hospital for your surgery your day nurse would ask us if there were any engineers in the family?
I said "no why?"
"Because he has an engineers personality." HA!

And those of you who have engineers in your circle know what that means! And it is true. You are so focused on figuring things out. You are precise with your movements and you can see your little brain actively figuring out what makes this tick. You love electronics most, so perhaps and electrical engineer?! You are fun to watch because your sister still doesn't even try to figure out how to work a problem out and here you are at 11 months giving it your all!


You love to throw your ball and then chase it like a little doggy.

Temperament: Everyone says how sweet, happy and content you are post-op. I still think you are a bit of a firecracker. There is a lot of truth to fiery red-heads. HA!

Stats: {to come later today. Thanks to this weeks tummy bug I didn't get him weighed we are now on monthly wt checks! :) Hip hip hooray!}
wt: 16#8z {0%} (up 1 measly pound in a month, but you are now as big as your sister was at a year with a month to spare! So right on track in my book.}
ht: 27in {1%}
diaper: size 3 swaddler {yes, swaddlers come in size 3 now! so excited...it is the small things ppl!}
clothes: 9m

Happy 11 Months Micah Bear!
We love you so much!

Sleep Training.

I finally bit the bullet and am going to sleep train Micah.
Micah is a terrible sleeper at night. I have been putting him down at 630p and he would sleep until 1030p, take a bottle and usually sleep until 630a. Worked for me. Then he decided he needed to wake up at 1030p-230a-630a, taking a bottle at each time.

I started searching for ideas. For crying out loud he was 10 months old this needs to stop. I tried cry it out, that never seemed to work as he would cry for over an hour and that is/was my limit. Then I found this website The Baby Sleep Site. I had never seen anything like it. I don't have time for books and this was straight and to the point. I realized a month ago he was not on a schedule and that was effecting his sleep. Duh. I had Lo on a solid schedule by 6 months.

While the schedule has helped with nap time, it hasn't really helped with night time. Part of it is my fault. I have several excuses I use to allow Micah not to sleep through the night.

1. He is starving. Thanks to all his spitting up issues, I told myself he "needed" to eat over night to "survive."
2. I was afraid his crying would wake Lo. It never has thus far, but I figured him crying over an hour would test my luck.
3. I.am.exhausted. He would wake up at 230a, if I let him cry for an hour I was up listening to it for an hour, getting mad and stirred up over his nighttime wakings. Then I would give in, go get his bottle, change and feed him (15-20m process) lay him back down and then toss and turn myself for another1-2 hours. By the time I fell back to sleep my husband's alarm was going off. This was miserable, so when he woke I cut out the "middle man" aka crying it out and just jumped to what worked: feeding him.

However, this past week I finally decided that all my "excuses" are bogus and I need to fix this NOW! I received the email from the site about how crying can lead to babies sleeping through the night. It was just what I needed to hear!

1. He is not starving--it is a crutch to fall back to sleep. {because there have been a few night this month he has slept 12/13 hours fine!}
2. If he wakes Lo I will deal with it, but that has yet to ever be the case in 11m.
3. I have been running on 4-5 hours of broken sleep per night since his birth what can it hurt to have a few more under my belt?

I was committed to this. Even if it meant he cried for 3 hours straight I was NOT going to feed him. He was going to learn to put himself back to sleep! End of story. We are now on day 3 and while he has woke up each night between the hours of 230a-4a he has successfully put himself back to sleep in under an hour! Hip Hip Hooray! And he is sleeping until 7a! I am still waiting for him to sleep all night with NO wakings. But thus far we have success. Matter of fact on night 3 he didn't even cry out at 1030p like he usually does. So here is hoping by Christmas he sleep through the night soundly. Scratch walking I will take sleeping through the night instead!

Santa

This past week our city had Santa come to town.
Last year Lo was less than thrilled about seeing Santa, but this year she had her bestie there and between the two of them they were both very brave. We had to wait in line for about an hour and these two hammed it up for the crowd. Clown college has never been more proud of their distinguished alum.



Finally, the big moment arrived. She was timid, but climbed right up. She looks mad, but that is her new smile. Lovely. Micah on the other hand evidently thought I was giving him up for adoption to this crazy man and cried like he was the most evil man in the world. Big pouty lip included. Hilarious! {P.S. isn't that the best Santa you have seen?!}


"Oh thank you mommy for not giving me up! That man was scary!"

The we headed to the library to sign the kids up for the Dolly Parton reading program. It's a free program to get books to kids 0-5. Each month your kids get a new age/gender appropriate book!
So while I was doing that Lo met Mrs. Claus and enjoyed her candy cane.
2.5 going on 16.
Speaking of Santa, have you made your video for you kid yet? Check out the Portable North Pole you can make a customized video from Santa to your kids! It is so cool and Lo has watched hers 100x already.

Merry Christmas!