My Everything . . .

I've been thinking lately about a conversation I had a while ago with someone close to us. According to society this person and her husband "have it all" - two kids, a beautiful home on a lake, good paying jobs, brand new vehicles, etc. Yet I can tell when I'm around her that she's not happy. A while back she admitted to me that she wasn't happy with the way her life has turned out. She keeps going back and forth on switching careers, going back to school, etc. She posed the question to me, "Don't you ever think about what would make you the happiest you could possibly be? If there was that perfect job out there for you, what would it be?" Without even a second's hesitation I answered that what I am doing everyday in my home, and being with my children is my dream come true, all I've ever wanted to do, and I feel so blessed that I am able to live out my dream come true! (At that point, by her reaction, I'm sure she thought I was crazy!) A lot of people ask me what I'm going to do once my kids are in school, like my life is just on hold right now! Of course, not everyday is perfect, there are certainly days when I would love to just get away for a little while, or when I long for a break with some adult interaction! What mom doesn't! It makes me sad to think she thinks the perfect career is finally what's truly going to make her happy, when she has two beautiful children and a loving husband. I think this is a perfect example of how our current culture influences so many people. And I'm not at all saying that the house, careers, etc. are bad at all, those are very nice things to have. But I think when you rely on those things to measure your happiness, there just must be something else missing . . .

My faith, my family - my greatest treasures . . .

This and That

It's been so long since I've posted anything with substance it seems! I think I'm in a blogging slump. I've had the time to blog, just haven't felt like it. I've either been curling up with a good book in the evenings, or else wasting the night away doing other things like facebook stalking :) or plopping myself in front of the TV (Monte and I are both hooked on HGTV currently). I really want to start playing a game with Monte every night again, last winter we played Scrabble every night, we need to start doing that again!

Speaking of evenings, we have them completely to ourselves (thus the free time). Jaymes still goes to bed for the night between 5:30 and 6:00 and Isabella is almost always in bed by 7:00! She gave up napping about two months ago, but she still lays down and "rests" everyday for about an hour. Since giving up the nap, she always asks to go to bed by 7, therefore I'm not too upset about the not napping, and am thankful for 4 years of great naps from her.

Jaymes will be 6 months this Saturday!! How did that happen?! I'll probably do a separate update on him soon. He is SO much fun, I just can't even stand it!! I swear the child sleeps more than a newborn. I always write down his nap times and how long he slept, otherwise I forget. I was surprised to learn that when I added up his night time sleep plus naps he sleeps an average of 19 to 20 hours a day! And if he gets that sleep (which he usually does) he is the happiest baby ever! If he doesn't get that sleep, he is quite cranky! That means we don't get out too much, as he sleeps the best in his crib. Another milestone - he learned the fine art of self soothing about 5 weeks ago. It's wonderful to just put him down in his crib, and have him fall asleep peacefully on his own, versus having to walk and "bounce" him around every time he needed to sleep before. Isabella was always a self soother, so this was new territory for me! He's also been rolling over for about a month now. His first months of fussiness seem like a dream now (or a nightmare!). In typical 2nd child fashion, I missed his first 3 times rolling over! Oh, and his spitting up seems to finally be getting some better, our washing machine is quite happy about that.

I was feeling adventurous and painted our kitchen and dining room about a month ago. I did a dark sage green and tan in the kitchen, and tan in the dining room.

I'm bummed that my wedding ring has not fit since I had Jaymes (actually since I was pregnant with Jaymes). I finally lost all the baby weight, but it still doesn't fit! I kept postponing getting it resized, but I guess I'll have to bite the bullet and get that done soon. Hmm, I wonder if there are finger exercises I could do . . . :)

I've been mostly sticking to my new year's resolution of working out everyday. I finally figured out that if I don't do it in the morning I won't get it done at all. I've also been sticking to my resolution of being more organized and planning a weekly menu. I have a printed out list of all of my household chores/cleaning that needs to get done on each day of the week (I know, I'm a tad OCD). And planning a menu every week has really been saving us money! I used to do it all the time, then got out of the habit when pregnancy nausea kicked in. I was also committed to stop making desserts . . . that lasted exactly one month. You know, sometimes a person just needs chocolate.

The weather this winter has been crazy, but then again, it usually is every winter. It seems like we've had way more below 0 days than ever, though. And I swear the interstates are closed at least once a week. Our snow is piled over 6 feet high on the side of our driveway!

Isabella is really enjoying gymnastics, she always asks how many days until she comes again before we even get out of the building. Gymnastics is a big thing in our little town, I didn't want her to start until she knew exactly what it was and could make the decision on her own if she wanted to do it or not, I didn't want to force her into it. Almost everyone starts at age 2 or a young 3, so that's the group that she's in since she just started as well. Thankfully she's not old enough to care that she's older than everyone else! She's a bit um, uncoordinated, but she's improving! :)

Congratulations if you actually made it to the end of this!

First Sleepover . . . kind of

My sister-in-law, and her two youngest kids came for a quick overnight visit. Isabella was so excited to have her cousin come play! This is how they started out the night, Isabella was completely giddy about her cousin sleeping in the same room with her. But about a half hour into it, cousin M. decided she wanted to sleep in the guest room where her mom was. Isabella was devastated and broken hearted about that. :(

Jaymes (almost 6 months already!) and my youngest nephew (2 and a half months). He won't be the youngest for long, though, there's another niece or nephew (my sister) on the way this summer!

Baby boy . . .

and his sister . . . who started gymnastics today, and LOVED it! What a great way to burn some energy every week during these long winter days.

And what do you know, even a picture of the mommy, that doesn't happen too often on this blog!

Why the Y?

Lenetta reminded me that I never posted about why we put the Y in Jaymes' name. We have tons of girl names that we love, but it was really hard to come up with a boy name! It was important to us that he be named after a saint, and I also liked the idea of a biblical name. Monte shot down a couple of names I liked - Matthew and Andrew. I've really liked the name James for a quite a while, but Monte wasn't so sure about it because he feared people would eventually call him Jim. Most of you know that Jim most definitely would not be good with our last name! (Please don't put our last name in the comments, thank you!) Monte has always loved the name Jay, but I have always vetoed that name. So, just to humor him, I decided to look up the name Jay in the baby name book one night, and it said, "short for Jaymes". We instantly both fell in love with both the name and the spelling. We figured as he got older, if he ever got a nickname it could be "Jay". I think Monte will eventually call him Jay, too, but we'll see. Right now he's Jaymes, except I call him "precious Jaymesy baby", I just can't get enough of him! :) Since scaring us half to death last weekend, and his stay in the hospital, I've hardly put him down. Boy, do I love that boy!

5 months old already!

A long night

Jaymes was doing really good with his acid reflux, but the last week things have seemed to have gotten worse. He didn't seem upset or too bothered, but he was spitting up a lot. We put him to bed at 5:30 yesterday evening, and then put Isabella to bed at 7:00. We were looking forward to a very relaxing Saturday night, but the type of evening we actually had was anything but relaxing! Around 7:30 we heard him coughing/gagging on the monitor, when we went in there he was laying in a HUGE pool of spit up. Since it was completely soaked through his pj's and onesie we started running his bath. All of the sudden he started choking, then his eyes rolled in the back of his head, and he quit breathing! This has happened before. Just like before, I totally panicked, and Monte remained insanely calm while he quickly flipped him over and hit his back until he came to. I quickly called the neighbor to just come over and sit while Isabella slept. And we took off for the over 20 mile drive to the hospital. We decided to take him to the big hospital in the town we doctor in, instead of the little hospital in our town, since it doesn't have the best reputation. It seemed like hours before we got there, as Jaymes had several episodes of choking, spitting up, and not breathing on the way there. They had a TERRIBLE time trying to take his blood in the ER. They couldn't find any veins on him, and poked him about 8 different times. They would stick the needle in, then blindly keep it in there like they were fishing around. Monte and I were getting really upset, as Jaymes would scream his lungs out in pain. Now I know how Mary felt, watching her Son suffer. It was pure torture, I finally had to leave the room. They wanted to put the needle in his head to draw blood, but I said no. They finally got some blood out of his arm, and decided to do a heel prick and squeeze out as much blood as they could out of his heel. I also had to leave the room when they put a catheter in him to get a urine sample. Even through all of that, when they weren't prodding and poking him, he just kept cooing at the nurses and giving them huge smiles. While we were in the ER, he continued to choke and gag, until the only thing coming up was pure bile. All of his labs came back okay, and they decided it was a bad attack of his acid reflux combined with the stomach flu that is rampant around here right now. They decided to keep him overnight for observation. They got us up to a room around 11:00, and Monte went home to relieve our neighbor from babysitting duty. The on call doctor came in around midnight, and Jaymes was so exhausted he slept through the entire, thorough exam. He was dehydrated, so the dr. ordered some IV fluids, but when they hooked them up they discovered the IV port that the ER nurses had such a hard time putting in was really swollen, and no longer in his vein. They also could not find any where to put a new IV, and asked me if I would be opposed to them putting an IV in his head. I said yes! So they called the Dr. and he said if Jaymes was able to keep down his milk the next time he ate, he wouldn't have to get the IV. Thank goodness he kept everything down the rest of the day today! I spent the rest of the night holding, rocking, loving him, and watching all the monitors he was hooked up to. Monte and Isabella came this morning to take us home, Jaymes and I were both so glad to get home. I layed him on the floor when we got home, and he just kept laughing and smiling, like he was so happy to be home. Isabella told him all day how much she loves him, and how sorry she is that he had to go through all that. Please pray for my precious little baby, I don't know how many more scares like this we can handle! The ER doctor said if he continues to have bad acid reflux flares, he might have to have surgery.

Christmas (with lots of pictures)

We celebrated Christmas a couple of weeks ago with my entire family. I hadn't been to my parents in over 7 months!! That's the longest I've ever been away from "home"!

It was also the weekend of my newest nephew's baptism. The three 4 year old cousins had a blast together!

My mom gave them matching outfits.

We came back to our house in awful weather, the roads were really icy. It should have taken us 4 hours to get home but it took 5 and a half. Jaymes travelled really well, thank goodness! We were home for one day, when we travelled again in the opposite direction to Monte's parents. We were there for 5 days over Christmas. Monte and I even got to go on a dinner and movie date to celebrate our 8th anniversary while we were there. Before opening presents on Christmas Eve, the grandkids acted out the Christmas story. You'll notice that baby Jesus has quite the modern "manger"! :)

My sweet boy decked out for Christmas. He slept most of the day, and was in bed for the night at his usual time of 5:30, he ended up being in this outfit for about 45 minutes. I was kind of sad because this is the first year we didn't go to Mass on Christmas Eve. We sent Isabella with the rest of the family on Christmas Eve, but Monte and I opted to go on Christmas morning instead, since Jaymes was in bed by the time the Christmas Eve Mass started. I'm a huge believer in a routine for babies, so I wanted Jaymes to stick to his normal early bed time, because I knew the next day would not be pretty otherwise.

Santa made a visit to Grandma and Grandpa's house on Christmas Eve, Isabella was not impressed . . .

A Barbie house! She plays with Barbies just like I used to - Barbie and Ken are the Mommy and Daddy, and they are always having babies!

Jaymes got his first John Deere tractor!

Ready for Church.

Dora Mega Blocks.

We ended the holidays with a big blizzard over New Year's. The interstate was even closed for 3 days. Our winters are so awful, we had to get a new snowblower this year, we didn't know how bad it would be when we moved here, and we got a 5 horse power snowblower, which just didn't cut it. At one point I looked out the window, and saw all the neighbors helping Monte out (he's in the front), we have the best neighbors!