Eva ~6 Months~

I can’t believe Eva is halfway through her first year of life! Yikes! I would be lying if I said it has flown by because I’ve been brutally aware of every waking moment of her life. That sounds horrible. I don’t mean it in a horrible way it just hasn’t been a piece of cake. I’m hesitant to say it but I’m gonna…life is getting better *knock on wood*! We’ve been having night nurses and I feel alive again! It’s more fun being a mom when you aren’t sleep deprived.

It’s a good thing she’s cute!

 

Eva has been doing a great job of slowly but consistently gaining weight this past month. This was last week at her weigh in for her synagist shot.

Her hair has gotten so long that I can do super cute hairdo’s now

She has gotten really good at making sounds past her trach, I love it! She has perfected her little whimper which she does when she wants to be picked up or lately she does it just because she likes making sounds.

She keeps getting sick which makes her regress when it comes to any progress she has made with her feeds. Today I just started giving her tastes of baby food. She doesn’t love it but she’ll do it for a couple of minutes. I did give her a taste of graham cracker and she LOVED that! She’s still not rolling over and has actually become very stubborn. When I try to do her rolling over therapy she refuses! I guess she’s gonna be lying on her back swatting at toys until she’s 5! No, I know she won’t be but she sure is trying to stress me!

I love my girl and I love this stage she is in. She has such a cute personality and I’m just enjoying so much about her!

Oh Aidan

This face…

I just love it!

As you can see, his front teeth are FINALLY coming in! He has missed them. I think little kids always look so funny when their adult teeth come in because they haven’t grown in to them yet. Can’t believe my little boy is already at that stage:(

He’s so grown up, he goes to school every morning with the kids in our cul-de-sac.

I think that this little uniform was one of Rich’s best purchases because Aidan has loved it! He will randomly decide he wants to be just like daddy and run and put it on. We might have to buy him a bigger one soon!

I’m so proud of the progress he has made in school. He is becoming an excellent ready and while he struggle with math, he is still progressing. He loves checking out books from the school library. This was his most recent choice.

He’s growing up so fast!

Night Nurse

After I got shingles Rich and I opened up the night nurse conversation again. I’ve been very stubborn and have not wanted anybody to take care of Eva but me. I finally agreed to give it a shot with the condition that if I decided I didn’t LOVE it we wouldn’t do it. The nursing director came to my house to get us all set up and papers signed and brought along the nurse that would be taking care of Eva that night. I liked her ok but didn’t feel any real connection with her. I was fine with giving her a shot. She came over Monday night at 11pm and stayed until 7am. That night I didn’t get much sleep because I felt like I needed to watch Eva on the baby monitor all night.

The nurse was supposed to come back the next night but we got a call that she had the flu! Honestly, I was relieved because I wasn’t really feeling her anyways. The nurse that  was offered to us as a replacement was described to me as “one that has mixed reviews”. Mixed reviews???? Uhhhh…no thanks! Only 5 star nurses for my baby, thank you very much! I told them that we would just like to take the week off.

We immediately looked into another nursing company called Ivy Lane. After speaking with them on the phone we thought we would give them a shot and see if they had any better options for nurses. The director came over on the following Monday and brought along the nurse that would be watching Eva that night. Her name is Chee and I immediately loved her! She reminded me of my close friend from my mission, Kulia. This was the feeling that I wanted to have when it came to the person that was going to be watching my baby while I was sleeping. Chee asked me tons of questions about Eva and specific details about how I like her to be cared for. After they left I was so excited for her to come back that night. She did come back and did a great job taking care of Eva (I watched her on the monitor). It was awesome knowing that I was going to be able to rest well in the future.

Chee took care of Eva on Monday and Tuesday night and then they sent me a “very experienced” nurse named Jami. She got here a little after 11pm and when she walked in she expected to go straight back to Eva’s room. I had never met her and she had never met Eva so this really shocked me! She had read Eva’s file but her file just gives medical facts, it doesn’t say anything about her personal preferences like what helps her fall back to sleep if she wakes up in the middle of the night or how I like to handle her when she is about to throw up. I asked her if she wouldn’t mind sitting with me in the living room so I could give her a little run down on Eva and she looked at me like, seriously??? We did sit down together and the whole time I was talking to her she was looking at me like she was so bored. I was really annoyed. I wanted to give her a chance since she came very highly recommended.

Jami went to the room with Eva and I went to bed…to stare at the monitor all night. At around 2am Eva needed to be suctioned and I watched as she put the catheter down her trach 3 times in a row, gagging her each time. She was going too far! I immediately jumped out of bed and went into Eva’s room. I said to her, “Are you just suctioning to the 8?” to which she responded, “Uh huh!” I said, “Ok, I just wanted to make sure because on the monitor it looked like you were going down too far.” I could tell by the look on her face that she had forgotten that I had a video monitor on. I went back to bed and watched as she suctioned to the 8 the rest of the night…JERK!

In the morning I went in and she was all chatty. I was super annoyed with her and unimpressed. Nurses like her are the very reason I was so reluctant to trust my baby with anybody. I was very short with her and as she left she said, “See you next week!” I responded, “Ok!” As soon as the office opened I called the nurse scheduler and had her remove Jami from our schedule and told her why.

The next night Chee came with a new nurse named Erika. I got the same feeling with Erika as I did with Chee, an instant connection. Chee spent the whole night teaching Erika all about Eva so that if I liked her she could come back and watch her the next night. Of course, I loved her so she came back last night and did a great job. I’m so grateful that Rich convinced me to give this whole nursing thing a shot because now that we’ve found 2 great nurses I feel completely comfortable letting them watch her while I sleep. I’m grateful for good people who really care about how they treat others and have such a gentle and good spirit about them. We are so blessed to have these wonderful women in our home and as a part of Eva’s life.

Eva ~5 Months~

I guess I should hurry up and post this picture since she will be 6 months old before I know it! I need to be a little more consistent with taking her monthly picture.

Here’s my girl!

Happenings…

Just another random post of our random happenings. These are what matter after all, right?

I’m gonna start with mini momma. She loves to pretend she is big and carry Eva. Truthfully, Eva is usually uncomfortable but I figure she’s not going to be small enough for Maya to be able to carry for too long so I let her enjoy her big sis priviledge. I’d also like to note Eva’s matted hair on the back of her head.

Arabella got her very first ever pimple.

She was so cute this day. She grabbed a stack of books and curled up in her sleeping bag where she read for almost an hour. She bought that sleeping bag with the money that Nana Jackie sent her for her birthday and has slept in it every night since.

Aidan wanted this hat so bad! When you squeeze the end of one of the flaps the ears pop up. He was so excited to wear it to school the next morning that he laid out his outfit the night before.

He didn’t actually wear it to school because he was worried about getting teased but instead took it in his backpack. He pulled it out right after school and it was a huge hit with all of the kids on his walk home. He did wear it the next day:D

 

Rich changed the sheets AND made the bed for the very first time this last weekend. Noteworthy.

It’s hard to tell from this angle but the nose is still attached and she is licking it. It’s her favorite chew toy these days.

This is the very moment right after Eva pulled off her nose for the first time. Oh great! We are in for it now.

After her nap.

We had to go to the clinic to have her weighed for her synagist shot. She hates the carseat.

Her weight as of a week and a half ago.

 

In other news, I got shingles! Apparently, when you are way too stressed and way too sleep deprived stuff like that happens. This is what they look like after they’ve gotten bad enough that I’m sure I need to go in to the clinic to have it checked out. This is on the right side of my stomach.

There is another spot on my side and back. This is the day before it got really bad. They later became excruciatingly painful…actually my whole torso hurt. After 5 days of steroids(which caused depression, by the way) and 7 days of an antiviral, I’m feeling much better. Lesson’s I’ve learned: Take care of myself and don’t blog when I’ve had a depressing day. People start to worry about my mental state.

 

Everyday life is good.