She's a swinging...

Despite the rainy weather, Ben was determined to get Allie's swingset finished last night.


I mean, he had to. The girl has no toys to play with.


She offered her help, anything she could do to speed up the process...

Finally, she got to swing. It was a beautiful moment, a long awaited moment.

Daddy was still hard at work.

Then she got to test out the rock climbing wall...

And peek her head through the hole.

After that I made her come inside for dinner and a bath. But I'm happy to report that thanks to a late night visit from Uncle Shaun, it's finished! Well, except for one little thing. Allie is very excited and grateful to have her swingset completed!

Doing our part to stimulate the economy

We have been talking about using some of our stimulus check to help stimulate the economy. We really wanted to get Allie a swing set and Allie really really wanted us to get her one. Ben wanted to build one, I tried to talk him out of it, he tried to talk me into it, we dropped it. Then we started talking about it again, I tried to talk him into a small plastic one from Toys R Us, he tried to talk me into building one, I tried to talk him out of it. We dropped the subject. You get the point. Yesterday when we got home, Allie saw Niki outside on her swing and wanted to go over and play. Then of course she threw a fit when we tried to get her off. Isn't it obvious, she really needs her own swing set.
Soooo, off to Toys R Us we went. They didn't have the one we were looking for, so we went to Academy. And there it was, just calling our name. Allie loved it. She loved the slide, the swings, the chalkboard, everything about it. Of course the price wasn't on it, we were hoping to spend around $300, but this one was $600. You know what comes next, Daddy pulls out his wallet and it's ours!



We have three big boxes on our back patio waiting to be put together. Allie is beside herself with excitement! And don't let us fool you, we are too!


And of course Daddy wanted a present too, a LSU National Championship football!

Operation: Potty Train Allie

Operation Potty Train Allie in it first stages. I want to enroll Allie in dancing in the fall. You have to be 2 1/2 and potty trained to enroll. We have one out of two so far. We. can. do. this. I have lots of things to bribe her with, I just hope it works. We sat on the potty last night and explained that she gets a sticker to put on the potty chart and an m&m if she makes a pee-pee and a present if she make a poo-poo. The only thing she made was me crazy. Lots of screaming and crying later, we called it quits for the night. Round two will commence this afternoon.

Sitting on the potty


The potty chart


The bribing loot

Mother's Day Weekend

I realized something this weekend. I wish my life was one big revolving weekend. I think that's called retirement...

Saturday poor hubby had to work, so I took Allie next door to play with our neighbor, Niki. It's very ironic to me that we ended up living next door to a little girl that is exactly FIVE days older that Allie. Can't beat that for a playmate! We have been living in this house since November of 2006, right after the girls turned one. They get so excited when they see each other. Niki has a super cool swing set, which Allie loves to play on. Mike and Amy (the parents) set out her little pool and the girls had a field day.

Allie and Niki enjoying the pool


Amy pushing the girls on the swing

It sucks to be short

She loves to swing!

My third Mother's Day post-delivery was very nice. We started by going to church, where Allie behaved like a normal 2 year old would. My dad cooked a big bbq for us moms and we pigged out. Then I spent two hours on their couch watch The Deadliest Catch on the Discovery Channel. Then we headed home where I spent another several hours on our couch catching up on TiVo. When Allie went down for a nap, so did I! It was a great and very relaxing day. The only bad thing was that I went to bed with a huge migraine and don't feel great this morning. I think I'm coming down with something.

Chilling on the couch with mommy

Silly girls!

Allie...continued

There is no way I can describe what it's like to be a mom in one post. Or in 20 posts. But I want to use this blog to document as much of my life as I can. So I'm backing up to the first few weeks of being a new mom.

After my emergency c-section, I spend some time in the ICU. I was completely unprepared for this. I was very drugged up and don't remember much about those first few hours. I remember getting to hold my precious baby for a few moments, then throwing up all over the place. That was nice. We didn't tell my family Allie's name until after she was born, I imagined them coming into my room and seeing her for the first time and us announcing the name. Instead, I was chilling in the ICU and Ben rolled her out in her little incubator and got to see everyone's faces when they met her for the first time. That still hurts when I think about it. They took video of her first bath, which Ben showed to me later. My family did get to come and see me in the ICU for a few minutes, even though it was like 1:00 in the morning. Allie spent the night in the NICU and I drifed in and out of sleep, I was so groggy. A really funny thing that happened here...it was time change that night. All of the clocks in the hospital stopped at 2:00 and just stayed there for an hour. I honestly thought I was going CRAZY. In retrospect, it was funny.

The next morning my family and friends started to show up and take turns going to see Allie and coming to see me. Sometime around 5:00 am, she had to move from the transitional nursery to the NICU and the lovely nurse brought her to me for a little while. Though I don't remember much about the night before, I do remember Dr. L telling me that he would be back around noon to hopefully release me to my private room. And I knew that was the key to getting to spend time with my baby. Sometime late morning I asked my nurse when he would be coming by, I was anxious to get to my private room. She told me "Dr. L already did his rounds and won't be back today. You are going to stay here and your baby will stay in the NICU. That's what is best." I lost it and used many choice words on this lady. She had just turned away my family because it wasn't visiting hours. She wanted me to "calm down" so my blood pressure would stablize. After I yelled at her for a while, she went and got my mom for me. And she never came back, I got another nurse. Stupid woman. And sure enough, around noon Dr. L came back and released me to my private room.

My mom gave me a nice surprise. Along with a beautiful card, she took the white teddy bear that my sister gave me many many Christmas' ago and cleaned him up, tied a pink bow around his neck and some balloons. It was very touching and sentimental and he "fluffy" is still sitting in Allie's room.

So I eventually got to go to my room, but Allie had developed a bit of jaundice and had to stay in the NICU under the lights. But being in a room meant I could go down and see her as often as I wanted to. I pumped every 2 hours and sent breastmilk down to her. I spent a lot of time in the NICU that day. That night, Sunday, was the last time I would get a good night's sleep for weeks....

Monday morning Allie was released from the NICU. This was hard. She was a good baby, but I was so FREAKED out. I didn't sleep, I just cried and worried. It was a long two days.

We were released on Wednesday afternoon and headed home. The next several days were a blur. I remember lots of pumping, lots of nursing, lots of diapers, lots of dirty dishes and dirty clothes. And not much sleep. For me anyway. Ben didn't have a problem sleeping. This is when my hormones started to crash and I was so upset about the way the birth went. Even though I knew I had no right to be, I couldn't help it. It was a rocky few days.

The beginning of week 2 my mom took off of work and came over every morning to help me. That was the only time I slept. Ben would gladly take night time feedings, but I didn't sleep anyway. I was too worried that she would be dead when I woke up. I even had the BeBe Sounds AngelCare Movement Monitor. It didn't help me much those first few days. And she was so SMALL, only 5.5 pounds. She was in preemie clothes until she was almost 2 months old.

Most of this was just for my memory, and I'm sure it's pretty boring to everyone else. So here are some photos to make up for the boring post!

My baby girl over the years...


She loves American Idol!


She hurt her arm last year, it was very sad.

Her 2nd birthday party was Mickey Mouse

She's also a LSU fan!

Grandparents

Allie was also born on my grandfather's birthday. The grandfather I never got to meet, he died before I was born. When I was born, I had 3 living grandparents. Both of my dad's parents and my mom's mom. I was very close to my mom's mom, Big Mama is what we called her. We lost her in 1990, and it is still very hard on my mom.

My only living grandparent is my dad's mom, and I haven't talked to her in years. His dad died in 2001, and let's just say that I don't have too many fond memories of him. My grandmother is pretty much estranged from all of her kids, except one. It's a very sticky situation that I don't really understand. How you can choose one of your kids and treat the other 5 the way that she does. But I made peace with the situation a long time ago and I can honestly say it doesn't bother me any longer. That still doesn't mean I understand it though.

I look at my parents with Allie and wonder how a grandparent can not care about their grandchildren? Not care enough to treat them ALL equally and love them all the same. What kind of person does that? And when they are little, not as older adults when you can use the excuse that you don't like the person they have become or agree with some of the decisions they have made. Anyway, enough about that.

When I married Ben in 2003, he had all 4 grandparents. How awesome is that? From day one I have felt like a part of the family and they have treated me as such. Unfortunately, we lost PawPaw Ned in February of this year. He was 89 and had cancer, again. He was lucky enough to have all of his children, most of his grandchildren and his wife by his side when he took his last breath. I hope we can all be that fortunate.

So to sum it up, Allie is a very lucky little girl. And it might sound crazy, but at only 2 1/2, I think she already knows it.

A name, what's in a name?

The first of two...what does that mean?

I could mean many things. The first of two children that I hope to have. The first of two marriage that I hope to have (just joking on that one!).

The first of two refers to me, the first of two daughters for my very lucky parents. Since so much of my life revolves around my family, I thought it was appropriate.

And SpunkyMonkey.blogspot.com was already taken.