Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Who needs teeth anyways?

I've decided that maybe we don't need teeth. I mean, if it hurts as badly as I think it does to get molars why the heck would we put ourselves through that?

My little peanut already has 8 front teeth (yes, 8!!), 4 on the top and 4 on the bottom. The front teeth were admittedly a little rough, we had some tears, a little diaper rash and a few sleepless nights but overall it seemed easy in comparison to what we are going through now. She is now cutting molars... (I feel like I need scary background music)... to put it nicely, its brutal. Previously with the front teeth, teething tablets seemed to do the trick, we only had to use ibuprofin once or twice... well now it seems like there are days that without it Adelina might just cry all day long. And of course this one of those times that I just feel helpless. The good news is that she has 3 front molars that have cut through, and 1 more that seems to be taking its sweet time coming through. I took the time this morning to do a little research (http://www.ada.org/sections/scienceAndResearch/pdfs/patient_56.pdf) and it looks like maybe, just maybe (cross your fingers) we will have a couple month reprieve before more teeth come in. Here's hoping for Adelina's sake we get a little break once that final molar makes its appearance.

Besides all the fun that comes with these teeth, we are just enjoying our little toddler! Hard to believe that she is already 1 years old! She is quite independent and a little fiesty. She no longer allows us to feed her, everything has to be cut up in manageable pieces for her to eat with her fingers. Sign language is coming along and our little miss can tell us 'more', 'food', 'milk', and 'all done'. Its pretty neat to be able to communicate with her, and I hope that its less frustrating for her to deal with us, ha! As most kids, she does not enjoy hearing the word 'no' but we are using that more often these days

Walking is in our near future, Adelina is pulling up on all the furniture, cruising along and then speed crawling... I think walking will be here any day! Our daycare is anticipating walking as well and as such Adelina will soon be transitioning to the toddler room. I am admittledly being a bit crazy about it because I am truthfully not sure I am comfortable with the transition but I have to trust the experts right? The transition to the toddler room typically occurs when babies are walking and taking one nap a day, Adelina is not yet doing either but she is the most advanced and I do feel walking will happen any day now. Naps have always been a bit of an issue so we'll see what the transition is like.

With that... I'll leave you with this... I mean this lady looks pretty happy without teeth right?

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30 days to a new Mama!

I just got back from a 3 day women's learship conference. To say that I left feeling like a different person would be an understatement. All of the sessions left me with things to think about and accomplish over the next few months to year. But the final session literally left me with a 30 day revolution plan (#WFF30days). Below you will read about the top ten changes I am making in my life. I am choosing to blog about it on here so I am being held accountable by my friends and family. And for the obvious reason that this process will make me a better mother, wife and person in general. I look forward to updating the blog as I move forward! 1) Be a better role model for my daughter 2) Get healthy! Do 'Insanity' 5 days a week, do yoga once a week, run once a week, eat better! 3) Make time for myself 4) Commit to more time for hubby and I 5) Find a mentor within the industry  6) Pinpoint exactly how I can make an impact within my organization and create a plan 7) Plan and book our next vacation 8) Blog at least once a week 9) Take my dogs on more walks  10) No alcohol during the week

Bumps and bruises

It is amazing what a difference a few months make. It has officially been nearly three months since my last post and our lives have changed immensely since late November. Not only has my daughter received numerous bumps and bruises while growing and changing but she is a completely different baby. I hesitate to say child or person because that means she is growing up and I need to take baby steps before I say that!

In these 3 months, Adelina has experienced her first Christmas which we were able to spend at home. Granted it was 3 days of entertaining but it was still a Christmas at home with family and close friends! And we loved every minute of it. We also had our first New Years eve, it was very exciting... I think we were all in bed by 1030!

When Adelina started crawling (around 8 months or so) our lives changed immensely. The days of sitting her down and watching her play were officially over. With each change of these major changes/events comes more and more of a personality and interest in all of the new things around her. It's so much fun to watch her crawl around the house and realize when she hasn't seen something or touched something before. It definitely means we are watching like hawks but its seriously so great to watch her discover new items and places in our house. Her new favorite is the bathtub... admittedly not the best place for her to play but she does find it fun right now.

With all of this crawling has come bumps and bruises galore. At one point she took a fall at daycare and came home with this amazing bruise on her cheek that we swear took almost a month to go away. We realized after countless comments at Home Depot and other places that we were pretty sure people thought we were beating her. Not awesome, but I suppose with you go to Home Depot with a bruised baby and looking to buy all of the items for patching a hole in the wall... it might be easy to come to that conclusion (oopsies).

Luckily now that my little miss is becoming more stable in her movements the bumps and bruises are less frequent. Walking is in our future though and I imagine that will bring a whole new meaning to bumps and bruises.

 

 

Do you work to live or live to work?

Never had I imagined juggling a career, motherhood and a family would be so tough. The first few months back at work were interesting to say the least...between missing Adelina all day at the office and dealing with the little sleep I was getting, it was a blur. Luckily after eight weeks or so we started to get into a routine... and I say that with a grain of salt because our routine doesn't always consist of sleep but we try.

I've heard the saying that some people work to live and others live to work... I would say that I fall in the category of working to live, especially now that I have a daughter. I work to provide the life for her that I didn't have growing up. Cliché'? Maybe... but its the truth. And I don’t mean that in the sense that I didn’t have anything growing up but more so in the sense that I simply want Adelina to have better than I had. Now let me be clear that I enjoy what I do and I love the company I work for, I see lots of opportunity and growth for me in the future. But lets be honest when push comes to shove if i won the lottery, I would probably stay at home with Adelina.

After a couple months back at work I randomly interviewed for a Financial Analyst position at my company. It came about after a rather odd water cooler conversation with the CFO but I was thrilled that he and the team would even be willing to consider me. I have a degree in finance but my 8 years (yes I just said 8 years, holy cow!) of experience out of college are all human resource and recruiting related so my learning curve would be slower than someone with a couple years of recent financial experience. It was a casual interview process and after a couple meetings with the hiring manager and the Director of that team, I decided that it might not be the department or position for me. I suppose you could say one specific conversation really stuck with me. I was at lunch with the hiring manager and his boss and they asked what I thought about staying late (in not so many words). Knowing what I know about that team (95% of them were at the office until 6 or later during the week, some legitimately working, others just hanging out). I have absolutely no issue with staying late and working to get projects or my work done if that is what is needed BUT I do not want to stay at the office for "face time," its silly, I've done that at previous jobs and I refuse to do that again. I responded that of course I had no issue with that, but also pointed out that two days a week I have to pick up my daughter but I could be flexible when needed. One of the gentleman responded with "that’s a hard questIon." It was at that point I just knew it wasn’t going to be a fit. My current department culture is relatively flexible and while that’s nice, it's also not essential to put in face time to seem like you are getting your job done, when we can easily take our laptops and blackberries home and get the work done from there if necessary.

I may have shot myself in the foot with that team by deciding to take my name out of the running, but while I want growth within my current company, I also know what type of culture is a fit for me and what is not. As all of this transpired, I also took some solid time to figure out what I really "want to be when I grow up" and with some help from my current team I may have just figured it out. I took my first compensation class a few weeks ago and hope to continue to take more until I am ready to fully transition into a compensation analyst position. Wahoo!

leaving on a jet plane

We have been a busy busy family for the last few weeks! In mid-September while many of our friends were headed to Breckenridge for one of our favorite weekends (Oktoberfest!) we headed to Michigan to see family, introduce Adelina to her other cousins and see one of hubs best friends say "I do". It was a little nerve-wracking leading up to the trip as I had just had to cancel a trip to see one my closest friends in North Carolina. We had just switched Adelina to a new formula after coming to the conclusion that she probably had a soy allergy along with her milk protein allergy. With the switch came a major transition (Adelina hated the new formula... it smells like dirty feet so I can't blame her) and  since I was still breastfeeding, attempting to supplement with the new formula and trying to build up our milk storage for future use it wasn’t going to be feasible for me to go on the trip to North Carolina. Instead we focused on our trip back to the mid-west!

Packing for myself has always been a struggle and now packing with a child was loads of fun (can you hear the sarcasm?). It really did seem like we needed so much more with a child! Besides a massive bag with all 3 of our things, we had to take a diaper bag, a breast pump, and what seemed like 12 other bags (really I think there was only 1 other one).  Not to mention having to carrying the little one through the airport. To help with this I decided to use our moby wrap to carry Adelina through security and the airport so that freed up my arms somewhat. I received a lot of funny looks while walking through the airport but that wrap was a lifesaver!

I was most nervous about the flight and having a screaming baby. If you can believe it, it ended up being one of the easiest parts of the trip because Adelina slept practically the whole flight to Michigan AND the whole flight home. It was almost too good to be true! Adelina struggled a little with sleeping once we arrived in Michigan but I am sure she was completely out of her element and while we tried to keep her on Colorado time so it was a little tough. The most "interesting" part of our trip was trying to figure out how I was going to breastfeed while on the plane. We had been told that it was easiest on babies if they were fed while during take off and landing to help with ear-popping so that was our plan. Now, I have to admit I've lost all "shyness' about breastfeeding in public, but being in that close proximity to other passengers and not having a guaranteed seat next to Brent, I was a little worried. The flight attendants were nice enough to help us out with seats close to each other so seating wasn't an issue. And breastfeeding was surprisingly easy to pull off with a cover-up, but I was just waiting for the moment when Adelina would kick or pull the cover-up down for the whole plane to see my girls. Luckily it never happened.

The trip overall was a success! Adelina had a chance to see Grandma and Grandpa Wardell, meet Cameron, Ariana and Emma (and her Aunts and Uncles), as well as go to her first wedding! In addition I had a chance to see a couple old friends that I haven't seen in years at the Potter Park Zoo (also Adelina's first trip to the zoo, even if she did sleep through it!).

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Got Milk?

One of the biggest changes to our lives since Adelina was born was the dairy-free life style that I had to adopt after we found out at six weeks that Adelina has a milk protein allergy. I say "our" lives because by default my poor husband has had to adopt the dairy-free lifestyle as well. Luckily he's been a good sport about it, and eats as much cheese as possible when he is at work.

Finding out Adelina had a milk protein allergy came after our first trip to the ER... we suspected that Adelina had an allergy but weren't completely sure. I had started to limit my cheese and dairy intake but when we had Adelina's 8 week doctor visit the doctor we met with said it probably wasnt an allergy but an anal fissure... yes the things I have learned since becoming a mom. When she told me that I think I almost jumped for joy, I am pretty sure I went home that afternoon and made myself a grilled cheese sandwich. Not a day or so later Brent and I went out for ice cream, it was sooo good, I wish I had savored it a little more because its been at least 3 months since I had ice cream. Not 24 hours later, Adelina not only had blood in her stool but the poor baby was flat out unhappy. And then the blood in the stool got worse and worse until I was literally freaking out. We called the doctor on call and he sent us to the ER, at the young of an age its best to be safe than sorry. Thus at ten o'clock on a week night we were on our way to the ER. We ended up being there about two and a half to three hours and the doctor said that she definitely had a milk protein allergy and to consider other dairy items I had been eating... butter... cream... etc. I hadn't even thought about butter... DUH! Being lactose intolerant myself it probably wasn't a bad idea to give up dairy, but WOW do I miss cheese every so often!

From that day on, I really made a big effort to cut out almost all dairy with the exception of dairy in breads, etc. I suppose this is when the anal mom-zilla of me comes in handy because I am uber aware of anything and everything with dairy, probably to a fault, but if it ensures that Adelina is healthy and well that's all that really matters. I can definitely tell when something has more dairy in it than other things though... i.e. honey nut cheerios have more milk in them than you would think! It's been difficult because truthfully you never realize how many items have milk in them and its hard to find some items without it. I have learned to deal and I tend to fall back on a good 'ol peanut butter and jelly sandwhich when I can't figure out anything else to eat. Boring, yes, but it works! I tweeted to Whole Foods Market one day and asked them what non-dairy snack options they had and they were nice enough to respond with some options for me (Kind Snacks). I also found some non-dairy recipes that I will share in other posts from Whole Foods. And after walking up the aisles of Whole Foods enough times I've also found that there is such a thing as dairy free ice cream AND its not so bad!

It's funny to me now that I gave up dairy at all. One because I love cheese (I mean I worked at a cheese/ice cream shop in high school for crying out loud) and two because lets be honest, I am a bit self-ish. Because of this I wondered when I became pregnant how I would handle putting someone else's needs in front of mine. I kinda thought that I would struggle with it, but it's probably the exact opposite, I am pretty sure (and hubs will probably agree) that I put Adelina's needs in front of mine before anything else. Everyone always tells you how much you will love them when they arrive and how different your life will be but really nothing can prepare you for how little your needs mean and how important everything related to them becomes! Truthfully I love the change motherhood has brought me thus far and while I still need to learn to make more time for myself and for hubs and I to have time to ourselves, its work in progress and I am learning as I go!

Strike three and you're out

As Adelina approaches six months old we have officially decided to switch her to a different day care. We have had numerous experiences at our current center and truthfully most of them have been negative. I know now it shouldn't have taken us this long to come to the conclusion but it's a hard decision to disrupt your child again when the initial change was so challenging.

Strike one really came within the first week. We (or should I say, I) started off almost immediately on the wrong foot with the day care I will refer to as "the center." Leaving Adelina wasn't so bad that first day and week because they truly looked like they cared and wanted to love on her, but within a few days I was already irritated with them. "The center" staff asked for all of the typical items... enough milk for what she typically took during the time she was at day care, a feel for her typical day (naps, etc), diapers, wipes, and anything else that would make her comfortable. Within the first two days they were already asking for more milk... for those of you aren't moms yet and those who didn't breastfeed, breastfed babies should only take in a certain amount of milk a day and at the time I thought I had it figured out as to how much she would need based on 3-4 feedings and what I produced during the day. I had done a lot of reading about what to expect out of day cares in general and what things to keep an eye out for. One of the big ones was overfeeding, if babies are over full they will sleep more and thus need less attention. This is what I saw happening within a few days... or at least what I felt was happening. Now I probably wouldn't have had as much of a problem with the "overfeeding" if they just would have asked instead of immediately feeding Adelina anything and everything we had brought but they didn't ask they just told me. I had a tense conversation on day two about what I expected, and we went back and forth before coming to a middle ground on the amount she was to be drinking. To this day I don't think they agree with me and they make references to it on a regular basis to hubs and not me. (yes, I find this irritating too)

Strike two came about 6-8 weeks into being there. Both hubs and I leave at 4 o'clock on alternating days to pick up Adelina by 4:30 at the latest. I had left work on one such day and arrived at the day care. Being a smaller center, it is one that you have to knock on the door in order to be allowed in (provided the door is locked, otherwise you can just walk in). Well I knocked on the door and could hear Adelina crying on the other side of the door. I sat outside the day care for what felt like ten minutes (frantically knocking, looking in windows, knowing more, etc) before someone came and opened the door and let me in. It was probably the most excruciating ten minutes of my life, knowing that she was crying on the other side, not seeing anyone in the room, and not being able to get to her. Supposedly she was just "fussing" but I know a cry when I hear one and I was NOT happy. I practically left that day in tears myself being so irritated and upset about it. I wasn't really comfortable with the daycare from that day on. I knew in my heart something had to change before I would feel good about leaving Adelina, but at the same time wasnt really sure what we could do or find knowing full and well that most places we had looked at had a six month to one year wait.

Another big negative for both hubs and I was the security issue. For some reason it wasn't something we had spent a lot of time thinking about prior to having Adelina but after having her and taking her to this center we realized what an issue it really was. The center is two houses that were combined in a neighborhood. So in order to get into the infant room you enter through what would be the front door. The door is supposed to be locked on a regular basis and you have to sign in when you walk into the room. The issue is that on many occasions the door wasn't locked and literally anyone could walk in off the street and grab a baby. It was a major worry for us on a regular basis and in my opinion not something we should really have to think about.

For me, strike three came after hubs went to pick up Adelina one day and the infant room supervisor's husband was there holding Adelina. Now I fully realize that he probably just stopped by to say hello and was probably just helping out BUT I was not in any way shape or form comfortable with some random man that I had never met and wasn't (in my opinion) qualified to be holding my child. I was again upset and so irritated. It would have maybe been different if we had met him before and had the chance to get comfortable with him but this is a day care center not an in home day care, they are two completely different things. I came home that night knowing that we really had to figure something else out. 

For hubs, I think strike three came after a friend had a bad experience at the center. We had referred her and her son thinking it would be nice for Adelina to have a friend and neighbor at the same center. While she was there dropping off her first check, a little girl literally fell out of a high chair and took a major spill on the floor. When I say took a spill I mean she essentially went head first onto the floor because she wasnt strapped in and no one was watching her. Talk about mortified... The gal we referred ran out of the center with her son in tow, never to be seen again. I not only felt awful for referring her but if it wasn't crystal clear before, it was now, we had to find something different as soon as possible.

 It took longer than either of us had hoped but we finally found our new center (we had put ourselves on the wait list when we had done our initial search early in the year) and are so excited about the change. Security is a world of difference, cleanliness is amazing and the center employees seem awesome. They truly seem interested in the development of the children and spending time with them versus putting them in a swing or bouncer to keep them entertained.

It's still a couple weeks away before we can start but it's a light at the end of the tunnel and couldn't come at a more perfect time for Adelina's development since she will be sitting up and be able to interact more with the other babies and day care personnel. We look forward to the change and hopefully feeling like the weight will lift just a little off our shoulders and our hearts.

balancing...

Is there such thing as balance when you have an infant at home? To say that we have had sleepless nights is probably an understatement. And to say its been tough balancing work, wanting to spend time with Adelina and time as a couple is probably a major understatement as well. I suppose a part of me thought "balancing" would be easy... ha!

The first few weeks at work were tough for many reasons but I figured once we got through the "transition" it would become second nature and we all would fall right into a routine of wakeups, work, home and sleep. I laugh now because as someone said to me just a few days ago... just when you think you have your kids figured out something else changes. It's SO TRUE!

Now, two months back into work its still a struggle on a daily basis. The mornings are always interesting because Adelina still isn't into a morning wake up routine, it seems to be either a super early wake up (like 4 or 5am) OR we have to wake her up to get her going... it would be nice if there was some sort of middle ground but oh well. I have to admit that while mornings are always interesting with trying to figure out how we are all going to get ready and get out of the house, its also one of our favorite times of day. The minute Adelina starts to wake up both Brent and I rush to get into her room first *yes we race*. She will look left and right until she focuses in on us and then we get the most beautiful smile from her, she gets so excited to see us in the morning... it literally brings tears to my eyes writing about it. Typically its one of her happiest times of the day and that means more smiles, a few giggles and these days more and more sounds!

The day times (during the work week) typically fly by and yet half the time I feel like I never get enough accomplished and there aren't enough hours in the work day. Whether thats because I suck at time management these days, I am day dreaming or maybe I am just that busy I am not sure. Regardless after we get Adelina down for the day I have been logging on to get more work done on a relatively regular basis. Which means, of course, that I get less and less time with my hubby. Luckily I think he understands but it puts me in a situation where I really need to work on my time management skills because I swear I never brought work home as much as I do now. In addition the last thing I want is for my team to think I am not putting in the same effort as before because when push comes to shove I want to continue to grow my career and move forward within the company. I suppose I need to realize that I can't do everything but I truly do feel like there is some improvement that can happen on my part during the work day. So, thats my big to do for the next few weeks... focus, work hard, and then come home without work so I can enjoy my family. I'll let you all know how that goes!