Need Your Votes!

Thanks for all you messages of support on the work and day care issues. It really helps! Tomorrow is Kylie's first morning at day care and while I've had a couple break downs about it I'm trying to convince myself that:

1. She'll sleep a lot while I'm at work

2. These are professionals that come highly recommended

3. I'm only 2.5 miles away and can come by anytime I want (and can get away from work)

4. Our evenings and weekends with her will be that much more special

Can you tell I'm trying to talk myself into being okay with it all?  At least my first day is only a 1/2 day.  Thursday will be our first full day *gulp*

Anyway, onto more fun things. We got Kylie's 3 month photos taken at JCPenny's on Sunday. I have to admit I wasn't expecting much but it turned out better than I planned.  She was SO good and smiled so much =) And the photographer was great with her.  Now we have to choose what to print and I need your votes on what are the best pictures. Here they are:

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ARGH!

Before I had Kylie the plan was that I would go back to work part time and my Dad would watch her 3 days a week (m-w-f).  Well, it turns out that nothing is as I thought it would be.

First failure point is that my work is unwilling to do any part time option in the long term even though they told me before I had her that they were flexible for me to take extra time after she was born.  This just totally sucks and had us thinking about me staying home.  But it's hard to say good-bye to a good paying job these days and honestly it's just not do-able for us.  Maybe if we didn't need to pay for house insurance, property taxes, car maintenance, house maintenance, etc.  But you get the idea, it's just not really an option not to have my income. 

Next, my Dad is a sweet man, loves Kylie and has the best of intentions but he just doesn't seem to be getting the hang of how to care for her.  He's been coming over for two hours every weekday this month and he still lets her cry harder than I want her to and seems the most comfortable when she's sleeping or cooing.  Let's be honest, she's only going to do that for 1/2 of the day and I can't go to work and wonder if she's screaming her head off at home.  Plus he's 70 and can't get down on the floor and play with her.  It's clear to me that he's better suited for babysitting while M and I go out to dinner, not full day care like we need.

So last Thursday and Friday after returning from our road trip M and I decided we needed to go to day cares and see what they were all about.  Luckily we found two that we are comfortable with (out of the six that we went to) and they both had one opening.  So yesterday I went to observe for an hour at each to make the final decision.  I left the first feeling a little sad because the only time babies were held is to be fed or changed.  Happily the 2nd was different and one person was always on the floor holding and playing with the babies. 

So I go to the front office to sign Kylie up and I was told the one opening had been taken.  ARGH!  So sometime between Friday at noon and Monday at noon her spot got taken.  And the kicker..next full time spot opening is in January.  Double ARGH!  The silver lining is that they have room for her full time on T & Th and also W morning starting Sept 1.  A couple other bright spots are that we're first on the waiting list for the first available full time spot and my boss has agreed that at least for Sept I can take two half days off. 

I guess that leaves the plan to be that Kylie will be at our house and watched by my Dad all day Monday and Friday morning (which I'm nervous about).  She'll be in day care T, W (morn only) and Th (which I'm sad about).  Then I'll be with her on W & F afternoon (YIPPY!).  Who knows what will happen if my work isn't ok with the two afternoons off until I can get a full time spot at day care.  I guess that would leave my Dad watching her 2.5 days which I'm not a big fan of. 

My last week with her is underway and I'm so anxious and sad to be leaving her =(  Sorry this has been kind of a blah post I guess I'm just processing having to leave my little girl.  I think I'll probably have more separation anxiety than she will.  Anyway, I'll include a picture of Kylie so it ends on a happy note!

Kylie's first road trip

Sorry I've been MIA.  Thanks for checking in on me (Lara)!  We got back last night from a five day road trip to Wyoming and South Dakota to see M's grandparents.  Kylie was the bell of the ball and had her great grandparents eating out of her little hand.  She was a quiet traveling companion and slept the entire time in the car, even though we were traveling 3.5 to 7 hour in any given day.  It's an experience to stop at rest stops, breast feed, shove a sandwich in our faces and then push on.  Kylie slept all night, every night even though she was in a strange place.  I've decided that she' is WAY more adaptable than her mom =)  Here's a couple pictures of our adventures:

Now we are back home and are trying to sort through my work saga.  My boss has made it clear that it's full time or nothing and all hours must be in the office.  So we are trying to make the heart wrenching decision of no money stay at home mom or go to work day care mom *BOOO*  Today we visited three day care places and tomorrow we will go to one more.  Luckily today we went to one that didn't make my skin crawl.  They had lots and lots of good activities for the tots and it was impressive how much they do.  Tomorrow is the one that's super close to work so I'm hoping it'll be the best of the bunch.

Hope everyone in blog land has been doing well, I have some MAJOR catch up to do!

Random thoughts...

I can't believe it's Sunday night already!   Hope everyone had a nice weekend =)  We managed to get out and about a little but had a pretty low key weekend over all.  It's amazing how little we get done now that Kylie has put us on her schedule.  She rules with an iron fist I tell ya *lol*

It seems like it might be time for me to admit to something...I have to admit to all my blog friends that I went on and on about how I would use cloth diapers to that I tried to use them for all of two days and haven't used them again.  I'll start from the beginning - a friend that didn't know we planned on using cloth gave us 100 disposables in size "newborn" at our shower.  So we thought we'd use those and then move on to the cloth ones I spent so much time finding on craigslist. Just before I ran out of the disposables I tried the cloth ones for two days and the whole lower level of my house smelled like pee and the cloth diapers made her little butt so big that her clothes didn't fit.  I felt so guilty buying disposables and honestly I don't know if I'll go back to using the cloth ones.  So there, I admit it...I'm a disposable diaper user! *guilty look*

The diapers seem to be one example of how I thought things would be and how they actually are.  I thought I would be itching to go back to work...and I'm so not.  Tomorrow I will be talking with my boss about coming back part time instead of full time.  He doesn't seem to be a fan of the idea, so wish me luck!  I don't know what we'll do if he refuses.  It would be VERY hard financially not to go back but I don't want to look back in 10 years and regret not having more time with my potentially only baby. 

I also thought that I would be able to schedule her enough to have a predictable plan each day.  True to my type A nature this was something that I thought was a necessity.  But I'm learning that in practice she has new plans for each day and I'm on her schedule.  It's a nice break from my need to control the plan I guess =)  It's teaching me more patience than I thought I ever had.  It's also amazing to me how hard it can be to organize the feeding schedule in order to get to bed between 8:30 and 9:30.  The last two nights it's been 11...how does that happen?!?!

Not sure there was a purpose to this post...but at least I can leave you with a parting picture of Kylie in her dress yesterday =)

Lovely, Delicious SLEEP!

After our Monday appointment we decided to follow the recommendation to start putting some rice cereal in Kylie's nightly bottle (of pumped breast milk).  She gets the bottle her last feeding of the day so that M has some dedicated time with her and we are sure she's getting a full feed before putting her down.  Well, the first night we introduced rice cereal to the bottle was Tuesday night and she slept nine hours.  The second night was last night and she slept ten hours 8-)  I actually woke her up at 8am to feed and take our daily walk before it got too hot.  I can't even tell you how much having two full nights sleep in a row feels.  I am a brand new woman...it rocks!!!  Sleep is not over rated.  The purpose of the rice cereal is to help with the reflux and the jury is still out on if it's helping that or not...but I'll take the extra sleep side effect.

Only down side to this new nightly schedule is that now I have no idea what her daily schedule is.  Her naps are at different times for different lengths.  But it's a problem I'm willing to deal with =)  Probably TMI but she seems to be having some trouble going #2 so hopefully the cereal doesn't stop her up.  She was going 3-4 times a day and now hasn't gone since yesterday morning.  I'm honestly scared to see her diaper when things let loose *lol*

Since I can't post without including a picture, here's Kylie wishing it was hockey season =)  We so thought this onsie would fit this fall but it appears she's growing so fast it's more summer wear!

Doctors Appointment

Kylie had her 2 month appointment at 6pm yesterday. She is 12lb 14oz (97th %) so she was very close to doubling her birth weight (6lb 8 oz) already. Her head circumference (15.5") and length (22.25") are both in the 75th %. The doc suggested we start "thickening her feed" to help with her reflux. That means we can start adding some rice cereal to her bottle feed. I know that is kind of unusual for her age (they usually wait to 4-6 mo) but since she's growing so well the doc isn't concerned about the decreased nutrition of the cereal and thinks it may help the milk stay in her stomach instead of coming back up her esophagus.

Kylie had to get three shots and one oral med, in all 8 vaccines since some of the shots were multiple vaccines. I felt so bad for her, she howled when she got them =( Mike was nice and held her, I hid where I couldn't see the needles but managed not to cry (I know, super brave). She recovered pretty quickly afterwards and we came home for a quick bath, dinner and off to bed. We put her to bed at 9:30 last night and she woke up at midnight screaming until about 1:30. Not sure if it was reaction to her shots or not. Poor thing! She did go back to sleep and do pretty well after that thankfully. She does have a low grade fever today and is more tired and fussy than normal.  Hopefully she's back to her normal self soon.  

Here's a picture of her playing on her activity mat last Wednesday.