A Sensational Sequence

My friend, Heather, found this fun letter game where you're given a letter and make a list of 10 things you love that start with that letter. So, she gave me the letter "S" and I'm having trouble cutting it down to 10. So, heck with 10. I'll just explain the top 10 and throw some others out there. Here's my list (in no particular order) of things I love that start with the letter "S." If you'd like to play, just post a comment and I'll give you a letter!

1. Spouse

I feel very blessed to have such an amazing husband. He is my very best friend and a true partner in life. He makes me laugh every day and he has a calm energy that is such a nice balance to my neuroses. :) We'll be celebrating 11 years together in a couple of weeks!

2. Siblings
My siblings and sibs-in-law are my dearest friends (well, plus Ian). I am so thankful to have such a great family, who are so supportive and loads of fun. I feel very fortunate that the only issue I have with my sibs is that we don't live as close together as we would like. I sincerely hope we're able to change that someday. I hope that Isabelle will be able to have siblings that grow into friends, as well. I think there's nothing in the world like the bond of brothers and sisters. (Ian's siblings are pretty great, too!)

3. Sophia
This sweet girl is my second niece (how do I have 3 already??) who is now 15 months old. She's the first grandbaby on Ian's side of the family. Isn't she so beautiful? We got to spend some quality time with her (and her mommy, Naomi!) after Isabelle was born. It was so wonderful to have some time to get to know her, since all of our previous visits had been quick and with a lot of other family around. She is so precious and I'm looking forward to watching her to continue to grow... and I hope she and Isabelle will be good friends!

4. Smiles
Any smiles are wonderful, but I especially am in love with Isabelle's. There's nothing in the world like the feeling of seeing her eyes light up and receiving a huge, gummy, dimply, open-mouthed smile. I get a little teary-eyed just thinking about it. :)




5. Stories
I would say that my favorite pastime is reading. I'm pretty content to read any genre of story, as long as it includes well-written characters. I think I've got to be the world's worst book critic, because I generally like everything. It's very rare for me not to finish a book once I've started. My love of stories extends to people, too. One thing I love about being a counselor is the chance to really be present with someone and hear their stories. I am a fan of narrative therapy and I do believe that the stories we tell about our lives have an incredible power over how we feel about ourselves and the world. I've seen some awesome healing happen by people developing new stories of their lives.

6. Spas
What I would give to go to the spa regularly! It encompases some of my other favorite "s" things, like stillness, silence, solitude & serenity. I adore massages, pedicures and all those good things, but I think that just sitting somewhere peaceful and still is as rejuvenating. Well, maybe not QUITE as much as a massage... :)

7. Snuggles
I can't think of a better activity than snuggling up on the couch to watch a movie with my husband... or laying in bed with a sweet purring kitty snuggled next to me... or having a sweet baby frog fall asleep snuggled on my chest. Ah, simple pleasures!




8. Sea
I love the feeling of looking out across water you can't see the end of. I also love feeling the wind and hearing the waves. I always said I wanted to live near big water (if a sea wasn't possible, I could probably make do with a Great Lake). It's ironic that I've ended up in Kansas, but I've assured Ian he could make it up to me by hooking me up with an apartment in Nice... or perhaps Hawaii... ;)



9. Sleeping In/Snoozing
I am SO not a morning person. I adore waking up in the morning, knowing I don't have to get up yet and going back to sleep. When I was working, it seemed like the time between when Ian left for work (poor guy) and I had to get up was some of the best sleep I got and I think that's because they were sort of stolen moments. It's been harder with the baby, but sleeping in on the weekends (see also #1 & #7) is one of our favorite activities.


10. Starry Skies/Storms
I couldn't pick between these two! They're both sky related, right? One thing I love about where we live now is that it's super-dark and I can see a bazillion stars. It's probably not great for security, but it is an awesome view. :) Very, very different from Chicago & Houston! I also love a good thunderstorm - assuming I'm safe and warm inside! That also contributes to some good sleeping. I have a noise machine app on my iPhone and I like to go to sleep listening to the thunderstorm sounds. It's nice to be back in the Midwest where we have some truly great thunderstorms.

And the rest of my list...
11. Songs
12. Sunshine
13. Snowflakes (that stay on my nose & eyelashes)
14. Sales (I love a deal!)
15. St. Louis (We miss you!)
16. Sangria (Yummy!)
17. Soft things (I'm a bit obsessed with thread count & liquid fabric softener)
18. Saturday (even though I don't work anymore)
19. Summer (relaxing, swimming, vacations, fun times)
20. Spring (especially in North Carolina)

Sibling Rivalry

I'm pretty sure Connor hates the baby. He's been relatively tolerant of her so far, but we went out of town this week (to meet sweet baby Hannah!!) and he has been impossible since I've been back. I think he's very unhappy that I didn't leave her. For the past few days, he's been bringing his favorite toy to me every time the baby starts crying, I feed her or I change her and demands I play with him immediately. He cries and cries when Isabelle is crying, which makes everything even more stressful. It would be a pretty thought to imagine that he's worried about her, but it really seems like a competition to see who will get my attention. I've tried hard to make sure to pay attention to him when Izzy isn't immediately requiring my attention, but then he's not interested. I even held her on my lap and tried playing with Connor, but he just walked away. For 2 of the 3 nights since we've been back, the baby slept through the night. Hooray! Unfortunately, I did not because of the cat. He starts crying around 4 am, tries to knock over my lamp and runs on the shower door, which is SUPER loud. We've had to lock him in the closet (which is in the bathroom) and then also close the bathroom door because he's so loud. The double door does help the noise a bit, but I think he's going to get locked in the guest room tonight if he does this again. At least that's on the other side of the house. I feel very sad for the poor kitty. I wish I could tell him I love him just as much as ever, but the baby requires more attention. :(

Tirade

I started this blog to keep our family & friends updated on our lives after Ian & I moved to Charlotte. I discovered that I enjoyed writing and it was a nice way for me to take a step back and reflect on things. There is also something cathartic about writing sometimes. I try to be pretty positive, but today is about venting and catharsis, just so you know.

I am so frustrated right now. I was supposed to be going to Springfield today to visit Kevin, Mandy & Emma, but everything is taking FOREVER to get done, so there's no way I'm going to be able to leave today. I hope I'll be able to leave in the morning, but who knows? It drives me crazy because it's not like I sleep late, go to sleep early or sit around all day, but still NOTHING gets done. I'm exhausted because I feel like there's never time to take a break and if I ever do stop doing things, I can't help but think about all of the things that I'm so far behind in. Normally, I feel guilty about it, but today I'm just feeling angry. So here are some of the highlights of the things particularly driving me nuts at the moment...

• I have yet to even start on the thank-you cards for things since Isabelle was born. That includes starting a list of all the people I need to send cards to.
• I made sure to order birth announcements as early as possible because I felt I needed to send them out before our Christmas cards. Otherwise, the cards & letters would go out and the birth announcements would be pointless. The announcements have not been sent.
  
• I got Baptism invitations for all of our family members and took the time to write in all the information & address the envelopes, but never had a chance to send them. What a waste of time (and money) to have done any of that at all.
• I still have not mailed a single Christmas present to any of my family members. I drove myself crazy making sure all of the gifts were purchased and almost all were wrapped before Christmas, but lost my steam when all of Ian's family was here. I finally got the gifts wrapped & ready to mail and then realized that I can't carry the gifts and the baby, so I can't go by myself to send them. Ian's been too busy at work to help me, so they've been sitting in my car for a couple of weeks. I sincerely hope the cold weather hasn't damaged anything.
• I also haven't mailed birthday presents or cards for December birthdays.
• I took down all of the Christmas decorations from the upstairs part of my house (which is where we spend all of our time), but I haven't touched the basement.
• I have yet to wash any of the linens from all of our guests who left about a month ago.
• The rest of Isabelle's nursery furniture arrived last week. I was so excited about getting the nursery done. I have not yet 1) done anything about getting the rooms painted or 2) assembled any of the bookcases. So, now they're just one more thing stressing me out and ugly boxes taking up space in our house.
• I want to take Isabelle's newborn and premie-sized clothes with us to Springfield so baby Hannah can use them, but I haven't gone through anything yet.

I think there are about 50 more things, but the baby - who has only slept for about 10-15 minutes at a time since about 7 am - is crying again, so I guess that's it for now. Ian just left for a conference in Las Vegas, so I'm really on my own. I sure hope tomorrow's a better day.

Phew...

Did I say that I had such an easy baby? Did I jinx myself with that? For some reason, Isabelle's been much fussier than normal over the past couple of weeks. Maybe she misses all of our visitors. :) In the past few days, though, she's started screaming for about 30-45 minutes several times a day. She used to cry pretty hard, but the screaming is new. Now she does that, has big fat tears and cries so hard she chokes herself. Poor sweet baby. Until now, she's really been very easy-going and I was always able to identify an easy reason for her to be crying. We've been only swaddling her at night for the past month, but I've gone back to swaddling her during the day. Today, there were two times that it seemed like all I could do was to wrap her up, hold her tightly, sing songs and rock her until she wore herself out. Unfortunately, one of those times was when I was having my car serviced. :( Uncle Kevin made a good recommendation of giving her some Mylicon drops for gas. We gave that a whirl tonight and so far, so good. I hope that will be our miracle cure. It's interesting that she just seems to have a wider variance in her moods now... the other end of this screaming & sobbing is that she has times where she grins and giggles so much, it cracks me up, which cracks her up, etc., etc. What a roller coaster!

In happier news, we're looking forward to Isabelle's first trip away from Wichita this coming week! She and I are going to Springfield on Wednesday to visit her Aunt Mandy, Uncle Kevin & Cousin Emma AND to welcome her new cousin, Hannah, on Monday! I'm having a bit of family withdrawal after our 2-month guest marathon, so I'm really excited to see them. And, of course, we can't wait to meet sweet Hannah. I think it'll be so strange to see a baby who's smaller than Isabelle. (Incidentally, I brought a meal over to one of the ladies in my moms' group, who just had a baby a few weeks ago. I thought then that it would be strange to see a smaller baby, but he was actually the same size - within about 2 ounces - as Izzy!) My baby girl will seem so big! It's truly amazing how quickly she's growing. Even though she's still small, she's really starting to get chubbier. She definitely has the double chin down and I do believe she's working on a third. :)

New Perspective

"I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink... I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me." (Matthew 25:35-36)

So I was reading this little booklet we got from church for Isabelle's Baptism about sharing the faith with your child and it references this passage in terms of parenting. That had never occurred to me before. Almost any other time I've reflected on this passage, I've imagined adults. I think this reframe hit me at a perfect moment and has helped me refocus a bit. Isabelle's had a bit of a cranky week, so it was very good for me to take a step back and think about what a blessing it really is for me to have the opportunity to feed her when she's hungry and so on... even if that involves a lot of screaming at 3 am. Really, she's been sleeping fabulously for the past 3 nights (probably just jinxed it!), but she's been SUPER cranky in the evenings. It all started the day she got her first round of shots, so I assumed she wasn't feeling well and that's why she was cranky. Unfortunately, it's continued for several days. She's been in a fantastic mood in the mornings - full of smiles, totally attentive to toys and books and eager to share her opinions of lots of issues. For some reason, this dies down after her mid-morning nap and continues to go downhill for the rest of the day. Sigh. BUT, I am so thankful for her and I'm doing my best to soak up the morning fun and snuggles in the evening (once she finally falls asleep). It's not too hard, really... she is such a precious little girl. :) I totally love that she's smiling more, although I have to admit that I'm a bit jealous of her daddy, who seems to be her favorite smile recipient. I do get better snuggles, though, so I'll take it!(Caption: Isabelle got this precious little "My First Christmas" book where you can put all these pictures like "eating Christmas dinner," "opening presents," etc. Well, we got the book after the tree was already up and it has a page for "helping decorate the tree," but we didn't take any pictures of that. So, we staged some. :) We each posed with Izzy and had her pretend to decorate the tree right before we took it down. Shhhhh....)

New Look

So, I'm a little bummed about my blog. I learned a couple months ago that it's possible to customize blogger templates, so I decided to give that a whirl. Never one to do things the easy way, I ended up spending HOURS one day fiddling with HTML codes and made a new template. Suddenly, every blog I saw had fabulous templates that were WAY cuter than mine. Boo. So, I've dumped my homemade template in favor of a fancy one. The other thing that's a bit of a bummer is that I'm totally obsessed with one particular design... the one my sister-in-law, Jill, already has on her blog! I love you, but darn you, Jill, for getting it first! :) The good thing about using pre-set templates is that it won't be as big a deal to change it, so I don't have to commit to one forever. So, this is our new look for now. I thought the dark background would be good for the pictures of the baby girl. Hope you like it! :)

Two Months!

It's hard to believe, but the baby girl is two months old already! I'm not sure if "two months old" means 8 weeks or two calendar months after she was born, but she now has both of these covered. She's really doing great. She's grown so much! She's about 10 lbs now. Here are a couple pictures that give an idea of how much she's grown. The first one with the giant elephant (from her titas!) was taken when she was just over a week old. The second one was taken last week, at the 8-week mark. What a big girl! She's going to make that elephant look little in no time!

This week was the first one with just the little family for quite a while. It's been kinda fun for Ian and I both to have more one-on-one time with Isabelle. We've mostly been taking turns with her as we've worked on cleaning the house after our months of visitors. :) Today, we went to a brunch at church and met some new folks... and learned that there really are other Filipinos in Wichita! We met one Filipina and she told us of others... We'll see. We've been officially invited to the Valentine's Day party. While we were eating, this lady came up to us and said she'd been watching Isabelle since we first brought her to Mass. She said she couldn't believe how much she'd grown - she was just a tiny little ball the first time she saw her. Today, she looked like such a big girl. She really was the hit of the brunch. There really hasn't been a day we've gone to church and not had some stranger stop us and ask about her. Such a popular girl!