We're Moving!

I'm sure for any of you who know us, that sounds like it's time for our annual move, right? Not this time! Thankfully, this move is only in cyberspace. We are quite happily staying put in our Kansas home. I've recently been giving the future of our blog a lot of thought. When I started blogging, I really intended it as a way to keep in touch with family and friends after we moved from Chicago to Charlotte. It never crossed my mind that anyone else would ever happen across our blog - or be interested in reading it. As I've noticed I'm getting more readers (yay!), it has made me think more about privacy. My other concern is that the practice & hospital have been doing a fair bit of advertising for Ian (yay, again!) and I want to be sure that no one looking for information on their potential surgeon stumbles across my little blog. Not that I talk about how crazy Ian is or anything... It's just not what this blog is about and, honestly, Ian is very uninvolved with this. (We talked about it yesterday and he said he couldn't even remember the last time he read it.)

SO... for these reasons, I've decided to move our blog to a new home, whose address doesn't involve our names: growingkumquats.blogspot.com. On this new blog, I will not refer to Isabelle, Ian or I by name. That way, I can continue to post candid thoughts and reflections, but still maintain some privacy.

The best thing about this is that we finally have a move that involves no boxes or packing whatsoever!

Not Me! Monday -- Stellan Style!

MckMama's sweet baby boy is not doing well. I actually just began reading her blog about a week ago when I wrote my first Not Me! Monday post. It was just after her MckMiracle baby was admitted to the hospital for SVT. It has been a long, long week for their family. This Not Me! Monday post is dedicated to sweet Stellan.
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I have NOT been thinking about that baby boy constantly since hearing his story.

I do NOT feel such a strong connection to this family and baby, even though we have never met and I have only just started reading her blog.

Like Heather said, I do NOT think of sweet Stellan every time I hold my baby, who is almost the exact same age as Stellan. I also did NOT get choked up reading the post announcing his healthy birth when I realized he was born 3 days before Izzie, was the exact same length, and weighed only .9 ounces more than her. And I did NOT just get choked up writing that. And my heart does NOT ache for MckMama every time my healthy baby jumps, laughs and smiles at me.

I have NOT been hounding Ian with questions about cardiac pathology and what does XYZ mean and what are the implications and pros and cons and on and on... I also have NOT talked so much about this baby boy that Ian thought he was the son of a friend from my moms' group.

I have NOT been checking MckMama's Tweets and blog on my phone before I go to bed at night, first thing when I wake up, and about every hour in between. I have NOT been filled with worry every time I check and desperately pray that he will be healed.

There are so many things I have NOT done this week. I also have NOT been amazed and touched to see the number of people writing words of encouragement on MckMama's blog and wondered how many other people like me are out there, praying so much for this family, but haven't written to say so. I also have NOT been inspired by the number of people who have been moved to prayer, turned to God, and treasured their families more dearly because of poor Stellan's struggle. I have NOT been afraid that this was Stellan's mission on this Earth and I have not fervently hoped there is still a great amount of work for this boy to do.

Please keep Stellen and the entire Mck family in your thoughts and prayers.

A Very Happy Friday to You!

It's Friday again (times flies!) and time to play along with Noob Mommy and share some things I'm happy for on this "beautiful" Friday.

1. First and most important BY FAR is that my sweet niece, Hannah, had an appointment with the pediatric orthopedist this morning and learned that she does not currently need any treatment for her hips. She will need to have another ultrasound this month, but at this time, she's doing OK. Thank the Lord!
2. A close second is that my Ian passed his oral board exams!! I am thrilled that he will not be going AWOL for months at a time to study in the basement.
   
3. As mentioned in the other post, the baby and the big kitty are making peace. Now that the baby is good at holding things as she flails her arms around, I've been giving her the kitty's favorite toy to shake around for him. He ALWAYS brings his toy to Ian & I to play with him (much like a dog would), but yesterday he took it directly to the baby!
4. Izzie is definitely on the mend; there are only some small spots from the staph infection still visible. Phew!

That's about it for now. I hope you all have a wonderful, happy Friday!

A Thousdand Words Thursday...a day late

Apparently, I'm having a little trouble lately coming up with my own blogs, because I've decided to play along with everyone else's. Truly, there are a lot of mommies out there with neat ideas for regular blogs. So, this week, I'm starting to participate in The Mom Jen's "A Thousand Words Thursday." Unfortunately, I didn't get around to downloading my pictures until today! Oh well. :)

I mentioned a month or so ago that there has been a lot of sibling rivalry between the baby and the big kitty. Here's my picture for this week that speaks volumes to me, if not to everyone else. I'll call it "Peace in the Home." :)

Rest in Peace, Uncle Jack

I received the sad news on Tuesday that my "Uncle" Jack passed away earlier this month. It's interesting how news like this can sometimes hit much harder than you'd think. His death has been heavy on my heart and I thought I would share a bit about him and why he meant so much to me.

Uncle Jack was a dear friend of my father's. I have to admit that I don't know the family stories nearly as well as I wish I did, but my understanding is that my dad and Uncle Jack went to seminary together. My father was a Redemptorist priest before he met and married my mother. Anyone who knows anything about Catholics will know that leaving the priesthood was not exactly a popular move - neither with his brother priests nor with his family. Not to mention that there was quite a large age difference between my parents. (For the record, Izzie will be locked in a tower indefinitely if she ever thinks of having a relationship with a man that much older than her!) It took a long time to reconcile with his family, which meant that for most of my childhood, we had little contact with my extended family. That made our extended family of friends very valuable. Uncle Jack was a particularly valuable friend because he was one of the few of the Redemptorists to stay in contact with my father. He and a friend would come down to visit us every Fall. I remember it was Fall because they would always stop at Eckert's Orchard to go apple picking on the way to Farmington. They would bring us lots of apples. That's the major impression of him from my 8 year-old self.

They remained friends until my dad passed away about 5 years ago. (Hard to believe it's been that long!) Uncle Jack concelebrated my dad's funeral Mass. Uncle Jack and I have exchanged Christmas cards for years, but this became even more important to me after my dad's death. For whatever reason, I wrote to him about some doubts I had regarding what I should do with my life. He wrote me back saying very encouraging things that were so much like what my dad would have said. He also said that regardless of what I chose to do, he knew my dad would have been very proud of me. Even though we didn't correspond often, knowing Uncle Jack was out there was kinda like having a bit of my dad still with us. I hadn't realized that per se until I heard of his passing and felt like I just lost the last bit of my dad I had. I said this to Ian as I was holding Isabelle and he told me I had part of my dad sitting in my lap. Since she was born, I've thought a million times that I wish my dad were here to meet Isabelle. I like to imagine that she knew him in Heaven before she was born.

I'm sad to have lost my uncle, but I know he has joined his old buddy in Heaven. I'm sure they're up there right now laughing about old times and enjoying a pint. Slainte!

Hooray!!

Happy day! Ian passed his oral board exams! That is the last of very many hoops for him to jump through in his training process. We are finally DONE! :)

Drama... Blurgh

This has been such a long week! I feel like it's gone on for ages, but it's only Wednesday. (Right? It is Wednesday, isn't it? Well, it's after midnight, so I guess now it's actually Thursday...) Anyway, Ian was out of town from Thursday - Tuesday for his oral board exam. We don't have the results yet, but I'm PRAYING that he passed. I'm so eager to put these exams behind us! Passing is far from a sure thing, so I'm trying to be prepared for any outcome, but I am hoping!

On Monday morning, Izzie woke up and I changed her diaper as usual. Totally normal. About an hour and a half later, I changed her again and she'd developed a ton of redness in her diaper area, including a serious red spot with a blistery center. What the heck?! How can something like that happen so quickly? So, I made an appointment with the ped and actually got in to see the NP within the hour. Lucky me! I was told the baby girl probably had a staph infection. I took the topical antibiotic the NP gave us and happily went on our way. Ian, however, was very concerned when I called and told him about this. This is where everything went downhill. Poor Ian was under a lot of stress Monday as he prepared for his exam on Tuesday morning. All that studying tends to pull up more complicated - and potentially dangerous - scenarios. He's spent enough time in the burn unit to have experience dealing with some of those worst case scenarios. I got very nervous when he said that he was concerned. I usually get frustrated with Ian for not getting worked up enough. Anyway, Izzie was acutally looking better for most of the afternoon. Around 5:30, though, she had another diaper change and looked remarkably worse... like 4 times worse. There were new big red, blistery patches and other bumpy areas. Poor baby! Then I was worried how much worse she might get by the morning, if it could change so much in just about 4 hours. Plus, I wasn't sure a topical antibiotic would really work, since it was in her diaper area. I figured that the odds of her "washing" it off or me then wiping it off too soon were probably pretty good. After talking with Ian, my brother who is an ER nurse, a friend who is a pediatrician, and the on-call nurse for Izzie's pediatrician, we all decided it would be best for me to take Izzie to the ER so someone else could take a look at her that night. We were very "fortunate" (i.e. Ian made a call) and got in to see someone pretty quickly and found out that the baby girl was fine. She did have an infection, but it was progressing normally and this NP agreed that the topical antibiotic should do the trick. Two days later, she's looking WAY, WAY better.

After reflecting on our Sunday activities, I've decided to blame this whole fiasco on the changing table at Babies 'R Us. I have to confess that it never occurred to me that I should clean my hands before changing her diaper. It does make sense, though... especially for those tables that are in bathroom stalls. I'm sure there's lots of ickiness on the handles. I have learned that lesson and I will be much more careful about that now! So, it seems we've really had a lot of drama over nothing. It's funny to write this and see that it all truly has ended up not to be a very big deal, but it sure took an emotional toll on me! I'm pooped! I can't even tell you how happy & relieved I was when Ian finally got home last night. I am so glad my little stint of single-parenthood is over!!

Not Me! Monday!

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

I did NOT have a mini shopping spree at Target on Saturday in spite of the fact that I gave up "frivolous spending" for Lent. That non-existent shopping spree did not include a ridiculous amount of baby-related things because I decided it was not frivolous if it was for the nursery... or clothing that the baby would wear and then pass on to her cousins... or Easter presents for the girls... or a good deal on diapers. And I absolutely did NOT decide that I shouldn't buy all of the items in my cart, but then purchase them anyway because I was too tired to go through the cart and actually put some things back.

I also absolutely did NOT follow this up with a trip to Babies 'R Us on Sunday to look for a high chair, even though that was one of the items purchased (out of laziness) at Target the previous day. I also would never have proceeded to walk out of BRU an hour later with a full bag of goodies that did not include a high chair. I also most certainly did not justify making the BRU purchases (buy one, get one 50% off!!) by planning to return the Target items that I was too lazy to remove from my cart.

There also is NO WAY that I would have suggested my very cranky child and I come over to a friend's house for dinner... especially not when my baby has decided the appropriate behavior at someone else's house involves crying and screaming to the point of turning purple and nearly vomiting. Knowing this, I most definitely did not drag my baby from church to brunch to BRU to KMart (tornadoes are coming! we need a radio! and a sleeping bag! the Red Cross said so!) to dinner without letting the girl have a proper nap all day long.

AND I absolutely, positively did not stay up WAY later than I should to write this blog, knowing full well that, best case scenario, the baby will be waking up in approximately 6 hours.

Nope! Not me!!

Happy Friday... again!

I've been a total blog slacker lately! For some reason, I've been really tired and haven't been able to put together too many coherent thoughts. :) But, it's Friday again, so I thought we'd do another round of Noob Mommy's Happy Friday fun to help me get back in the swing of things.

• We went to the zoo today and had a great time! It was a bit chilly and crazy-windy, but it was still nice to get out. We went with the moms' group and got to see some folks I haven't seen for quite a while, so that made it extra fun.
• Izzie (I'm trying out a new spelling... we'll see) is sleeping through the night AND in her crib! What a big girl! I really can't believe it. We FINALLY finished painting the nursery and have officially moved her in. (Pictures will be coming soon... I still have to do the decorating part. I have most everything; it's just a matter of actually hanging the curtains & pictures & such at this point. Hoping to have it done before she leaves for college...) She has been awesome. She really has only had 1 night since we moved her over that she's woken up. Here's hoping I didn't just jinx myself...
• My big girl is also loving eating solid food! Seriously, how is this girl growing so fast? We just started trying out rice cereal about a week ago. (What else would an Asian baby start with?) She did pretty well and took about 3 tsp the first day, but then was very uninterested for the next couple. I decided to take a couple days off was feeling very lazy and didn't even try for the next couple days. Yesterday and today, though, she's eaten her entire little bowl (~1 TB dry) and really probably would have eaten more if I'd tried.
• We just had a little thunderstorm... really it was about 5 minutes of rain, thunder and lightning, but it was great. I love thunderstorms and I'm excited we'll be having more of them now that Spring has sprung!
• I am feeling particularly thankful that Izzie is such a healthy baby. We're having some worries about sweet Hannah's hips and that has just made me reflect on what a miracle it is that any kid is ever born healthy.

That's it for now! Happy Friday, everyone!

Happy Friday!

It's Friday, which I still love, even though I don't have a regular job anymore. I thought I'd participate in Noob Mommy's Happy Friday fun. There have been some things that have made me very sad this week, so I'm hoping this will help me focus on the positive.

1. We finally got the rest of the blinds for our house installed!! No more paper shades for us. We're classy now. :)
2. I finished painting the baby's bathroom. (Really, I'm kinda bummed I haven't finished painting her room, but at least I did finish the little bathroom nook, so that's something!)
3. The weather is GORGEOUS!! Record highs yesterday and 75 today. I'm loving it. As my friend, Heather, said, if we were still in Chicago, we'd be looking forward to a couple more months of icky weather.
4. We found out Ian will be off for Easter, so we'll be able to go visit Ian's family & the bazillion Filipino friends in Midland who are excited to meet the baby.
5. Isabelle is taking a real nap this morning. Lately, she's been snoozing for about 15 minutes at a time and only if I was holding her. Right now, she's sleeping soundly in her swing.
6. Speaking of sleeping, the baby girl is consistently sleeping until about 6:30 - 7 every morning. Hooray!
7. I'm planning on going to a Girls' Night Out tomorrow with some ladies from my moms' group. I've had scheduling conflicts with all the other GNO's so far and I'm really looking forward to finally getting to go. (Hoping I didn't just jinx myself... Ian's on call this weekend, so I can go as long as he's home to take care of Izzie.)

Happy Friday, everyone!

Big Girl!

Isabelle is 4 months old today! It's hard to believe she's growing so quickly! I feel like the 4 month birthday is a kinda big one... closer to 6 months than newborn. She's such an awesome, fun, happy baby (most of the time). We are both so thankful to be her parents. Some highlights of life with Isabelle lately... She's smiling and laughing a ton. Every morning, she laughs and squeals when she wakes up & sees us. I don't know where she gets that - Ian and I definitely are not morning people! She loves to chat up all of her little buddies and tells them tons of stories. She's been rolling onto her side for a few weeks now and she just rolled onto her belly for the first time today! She found her feet recently, so grabbing onto them has really facilitated the rolling onto her side. She always seems to grab one foot and then flops over to that side. This week, she's started blowing raspberries, too. She cracks up when I do it back to her. Cute girl. :) Those are the biggest fun things she's been doing lately. She's also been showing a very strong preference to be held by Ian or I. Flattering and all, but it's been a little tough to have her freak out if someone else tries to hold her. We actually just went out with only adults for the first time since she was born. It was so hard to leave her because she was so, so upset. We're hoping to go to Midland for Easter and I'm nervous about how she'll be with everyone. I know Ian's family is so excited to see Isabelle and I'm worried they'll be hurt or disappointed if she doesn't go along with being held by everyone. Hopefully, she'll be a lovely, smiley angel like she is at home. I guess we'll see in a few weeks!

Oh - you may have noticed that she & her elephant have a different background this month. That's because her crib is in the middle of a little construction zone. Yes, we're FINALLY painting the nursery!! I'm SUPER excited to finally get it done! We've been working on it since Saturday, but it's been a little slow-going. Ian's oral board exams are coming up at the end of the month, so he hasn't had a lot of time to spare. He did take care of Izzy while he was studying last night, so I could work on the room. I just need to do the edging around the ceiling (I was hoping I could stall and Ian would just do it...) :) and do a second coat on 2 walls and I will be dunzo! I truly can't wait. I'm hoping that by this time tomorrow, the nursery painting project will officially be completed. We're getting the blinds for the rest of the house (Izzy's room plus the basement) installed on Friday, so her room really will be done very soon. I think it'll be just in time. We're planning to head back to Springfield again (we can't stay away!) because Aunt Cortney & Uncle Dave will be visiting next week. I think that should be enough time for the paint fumes to air out and then we'll be making the big shift of moving Isabelle to sleep in her room. Time is flying!