Maddie's 2nd Birthday

Yes, I know I'm a slacker and I'm just now posting this a week and a half later, but hey at least I'm posting it.

Maddie's 2nd birthday was of course all about Elmo. She loves Elmo more than anything so we shelled out the money to hire Elmo to come to her party. My plan was to have the party outside and that way all the kids could play outside with her new water table and sand box that she got for her birthday, but OF COURSE the weather had to be crappy. It was cold and windy, so I had to cram about 5 million people in my house, needless to say I was majorly stressed. But it actually turned out to be fine. She didn't really have that many friends there. I didn't want to invite all the kids at her daycare because I really don't know any of those people, so it was mainly just family. Her cousins Liberty, Sade, and Breanna (Sara and Holly's kids) were there. Also, her cousin Makyalan from Rob's side of the family and her little "boyfriend" who lives across the street, Zachary. I was really kind of ticked because there were supposed to be about 5 other kids there, but apparntly no one belives in RSVP anymore, so it made it impossible to plan. So I ended up with about 6 extra goodie bags.....so annoying. Anyway, it turned out really fun.

Mom made an amazing Elmo cake that was totally better than any professional could do. She also made Elmo and Big Bird cup cakes for the kids that were so cute. Oh, and Elmo cookie pops for their goodie bags. We had tons of food and everyone just ate and mingled for a while. Then the fun started when Elmo arrived. The smile on her face when she saw him was priceless. I was really worried that she would be afraid of him, but she was not at all. Actually, she was the only one who wasn't afraid. None of the other kids would go near him. But she danced with him, huged him, and even had her own private tea party with him. It was great.

After about an hour of playing with Elmo, she opened her thousands of presents. She got mainly clothes, which I was really happy about becuase she already has every toy under the sun. I really don't have to buy her any clothes for summer, she got everything she could possibly need. She has so many people who love her, she is a very lucky girl.

The guests were: Mom (Dad was really sick and couldn't come)

Lisa and Bill, Brandi, Grandaddy and Ann, Aunt Tammi, Rob's mom Sharon, Rob's Aunt Pat and Uncle Chuck, Rob's siter Jen and Makaylan, Rob's brother Paul and his wife Gina, my good friend Amanda, Arlene and Shane and Zachary from across the street, my cousin Sara and Holly.

An unexpected dip in the lake

So this weekend we went to visit Rob's parents at their lake house on Lake Athens. We go there a lot and Maddie has been around the water and out in the boat several times, but now that she is 2 she is much more curious about the water and that almost led to disaster on Saturday.

We were down by the boat house standing on the dock while Rob was in the boat cleaning it out. He found a Sesame Street toy in the boat and threw it over to me so I could let Maddie play with it. She reached for it and when she did, she lost her balance and one foot went off the side of the dock. It all happened in a split second, but I saw her falling in slow motion and I reached out to grab her arm, but it slipped right through my hands. She hit the water and sank like a rock. I didn't even have time to think, I just instantly jumped in the freezing cold water with all my clothes on. She was only under for a few seconds and I reached down and scooped her up in my arms and handed her up to Rob who was about to jump in too.

When he lifted her up, she was very shaken up, but did not cry or anything. She must not have swallowed any water because she was not coughing or anything. That water was so cold, I hope she doesn't catch pneumonia, but I am just thankful she is OK. That was really scary, I could not stop shaking for like half an hour after it happened. From now on, she is not going anywhere near the water without her life jacket on.

Am I being really childish?

So I recently joined Facebook and it is like one big high school reunion. It is really a blast from the past. There are people on there that I haven't seen or even thought about since high school, some of them I don't really even remember. Anyway, this one person on there invited me to an event. I knew this person from high school, but we were more like acquaintances rather than friends. She was more in the "popular" group and I was more in the "invisible" group. So, I am a little baffled by why she would invite me to this party. With that said, this party is really the kind of thing I would love to go to- it's a girl's weekend in a cabin on the lake with a boat and booze. It's right up my ally and something I never get to do. So I really want to go, but the scared little child inside me thinks "what if they're mean to me?" I remember being invited to this same person's slumber party when I was in 3rd grade and while I was sleeping they put toothpaste in my hair and when I got the invitation, that memory immediately came back to haunt me. This was like 25 years ago, surely these people are more mature than than now, right??

I know, I'm being really stupid and I should just go and have fun. We're all adults and I can handle it. Maybe I should brush up on my self defense skills just in case......(just kidding)

What a crappy weeknd :(

So to start off this weekend, Rob comes home Friday night and tells me that he has been laid off from his job......not good :( So of couse we are really upset about it, but after talking about it, we are not going to panick. He is in sales, so we are pretty used to this happening. When times are tough and sales are slow it could be job today, no job tomorrow. There just really is no job security. On the bright side, we have some money in savings, I have my job and he really needed to find a job closer to home anyway (he was driving a total of 3/12 hours commute every day) . So, we are just leaving everything in God's hands and hoping for the best.

Then things just went downhill. Friday night we went to a surprise birthday party my sister threw for her fiance's 40th b day. It was fun, but Maddie was so hyper and running all around and jumping and playing. I noticed that she was coughing a lot. So we went home that night and she crashed out in the car. I put her in bed and she slept fine until 1:45 she woke up coughing her head off. I gave her some cough medicine and tried to put her back to bed, but oh no, she refused to go back to sleep. I was up with her from 1:45-5:00AM! Needless to say I was not happy. Then she finally went back to sleep only to wake up 2 hours later at 7:00.

I called the Dr. and to my surprise they were open on Saturday, so I took her in. He told me she is showing all the symptoms of having asthma and sent me home with a nebulizer to give her breathing treatments at home. Well, as the day went on Saturday she got worse and worse. Her cough turned into an aweful souding bark and she developed a high fever. The poor baby, she was so miserable. She just laid in my lap on the couch and moaned in pain. My mom came over to try to comfort her and as she was rocking her she coughed so hard that she threw up all over mom. So finally, she fell asleep in my lap on the couch. I put her to bed and was praying that we didn't have another night like Friday night. Well, I guess she needed to catch up on her sleep because she slept great all night. She woke up crying and coughing about 6am, then I gave more medicine and she went back to sleep and didn't wake up until 11:30! She is doing a little better today. The cough is still bad, but no fever. I took a picture of her on Sunday, you can see in her eyes how miserable she must have been feeling.

I need to vent too!

Julie's post got me in the mood to vent about work. My biggest pet peeve is when people don't reply to my emails. Now I really think this is just plain rude! I mean, if I asked you a question in person and you didn't reply to me that is just completely rude. Well, since I am in a remote office all alone and don't have the means to ask someone a question in person, this is basically the same thing. There are times when I really need a response to a question so that I can complete a task and when I don't get an answer it keeps me from staying on track. It drives me nuts!!!!! I understand people are busy, I am really busy too. But honestly, how long does it take to respond and say "I am in the middle of something, can I get back to you", how hard is that?

Maddie is finally going to day care!

After trying to juggle working at home and taking care of my daughter for almost 2 years (and almost loosing my mind in the process), I am finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Maddie is starting full time day care on the 26th!!! Yea!!!! I cannot even explain the enormous weight that lifted off of my shoulders when I handed in that enrollment paperwork and paid the enrollment fee to hold her spot. It's amazing, I feel like I can finally focus now and be better at my job and be a better mom. Trying to do both all at once makes both suffer.

So, the company that I work for is now giving us a substantial discount on tuition, therefore finally making it affordable for me. Maddie is going to a great school called Children's Courtyard and it is only less than a mile from my house. I finally have the peace of mind to know that she will be well taken care of and I don't have to worry or feel guilty.

Looking Back on 2008

The year started off with Rob and I being very very sick. We both woke up with a terrible stomach virus on New Years Day and could not get out of bed or keep anything down. So, it was the perfect start to our 21 day fast that we did. It was not a total fast, but we did the "Daniel Fast", basically, you can only have fruits, veggies, and whole grains, no meat, dairy, sugar, caffeine, alcohol, etc. It was really hard, but we were determined to make it to the 21 days and we did it. Rob lost about 15 pounds and I lost 10. Towards the end, I had to start adding back in some things because my clothes were falling off. I stared making protein shakes with soy milk and fruit and that helped.

So, the rest of the winter I was busy with work and I joined in a lot of playdates. I found a group of women my age all with babies Maddie's age and we met once a week and did all kinds of fun stuff together. It was great for Maddie to socialize and I made some good friends. I really miss them alot :(

Easter was really good this year. The last Easter, Maddie was only 5 days old, so she didn't really get to enjoy it. This year, the mom's group that I'm a member of had an Easter egg hunt that was a lot of fun. Then we went to church on Sunday and went to the park after that and Maddie got to spend time with her cousins.

In March, Maddie turned 1. This of course, was a huge milestone. I couldn't believe how fast her first year went by. I guess we were so busy, it was just kind of a blur. We had a great party for her at the house. Tons of people came and mom made her an awesome Hello Kitty cake. I weaned her from the bottle at about 14 months with no problem and she started walking a few weeks after she turned 1. My baby girl had officially become a toddler.

I continued to dance taking ballet and jazz at Dance Etc. in Richardson. I loved taking dance there, I made so many good friends, everyone was almost like family. I miss them so much. I worked really hard that spring and my body was telling me I was over doing it. I got really sick in April with bronchitis and for the first time in my life, they told me I had asthma and I was almost put in the hospital. I had to beg the doctor not to make me go because I had a meeting with my boss that day (she had flown in town from Kansas just for the meeting, I couldn't miss it). My knees were aching on a daily basis, but I was determined this would be the recital I ever did. And it was, it was great. We danced to "Bittersweet Symphony" in ballet, which I have always dreamed about performing to that song, it is so powerful. So it turned out great, but I was sure ready for a break after recital was over.

The summer was long and hot. We spent most of it at the pool. The pool in our back yard wasn't that great for Maddie because there was no shallow area so we spent a lot of time at the public pool in Plano. It was great because they have an area just for toddlers and moms could just chill and get some sun while the babies played. We were hit with some hard times when Rob was laid off from his job in July. With him being in sales, we were kind of used to this and knew that it could happen pretty much any time. Although it was very stressful, it turned out ok because he got a little bit of a severence pay and he found another job pretty quick, which he like much better and he was so much happier.

The most important event in 2008 was that we finally became home owners. We had been talking for a while about making the big move back to Ft. Worth. It was a really tough decision for me and I was really torn. On one hand, I had come to love living in Plano. The neighborhood we lived in was great, we had wonderful neighbors, I had my playgroup friends and my dance studio. But we hated the house we were renting, the high utility bills were killing us, and I hated being so far away from my family. It was so hard and stressful on us, we had no one near by to help us with Maddie, which just added to my stress. We couldn't even go out for a movie or dinner without driving to Ft. Worth so my mom could watch her. So after weighing all the pros and cons we decided that we were definitely ready to buy a house, but we knew we couldn't afford to buy anything in Plano and I knew that I was going to have a nervous breakdown if I didn't get some help with Maddie.

So, we stared house hunting. At first we were going to have a house built, but that didn't work out. But it was ok because we found a great house just the right size and well within our budget and it is only 1 mile from mom and dad. So we made an offer, they accepted and we closed on it in like 3 weeks. It all happened really fast and before I knew it, we were back in Ft. Worth. Maddie had a hard time adjusting at first, but Cowboy was really messed up. It took him a good 2 weeks to adjust. I found a little Mothers Day Out program at the church around the corner from our house and I enrolled Maddie so I could at least have 2 days a week to get some work done.

So soon after we got settled in our house, the holidays were creeping up on us. We had a great Halloween. It was the first year Maddie understood the whole trick-or-treating thing, it was a lot of fun. Lisa had a Halloween party for adults and we got really drunk and had a blast. Then Thanksgiving and Christmas just sort came and went really fast. They were both great and relatively unstressful for the first time ever!

So, I have to say 2008 was all in all a great year. I am very blessed and cannot wait to make 2009 even better!

Out with the old, in with the new......New Year's Resolutions

Yes, I am one of those people who always makes New Years Resolutions. Sometimes I stick with them, sometimes I don't. Last year I resolved to live "greener". Now that I have a child who will have to live on this earth way longer than me, I wanted to really start doing my part. So, I bought the nylon reusable grocery bags, stopped buying bottled water, and we started recycling all plastic, glass, and cans. I have to say, I have done pretty good with this. The recycling is just second nature now. Sometimes I slip up on the grocery bag thing when I forgoet to put the nylon bags in the car on my way to the store and have to use the plastic bags at the store. But, every time this has happened, I always take them back to Wal-Mart to be recycled. My other resolution was to read as many books as possible in the year. I didn't set myself a specific number of books to read because I just wanted to see how many I read if I just took my time. Well, I didn't do too well on that one. My life is so busy and crazy, I just don't have all that much time to read, although I love to. I am really embarrassed to admit it, but I only read 15 books the entire year. although a few of them were really long books.

So, for 2009, I have set the following resolutions:

1. Read at least 30 books (yes, I'm doubling this from last year since last year was so pathetic)
2. Read the Bible every day
3. Get in better shape financially (work on paying off credit card, etc)

So, there you have it. I think putting it in writing may help me stick to these better. Will check back in a year and see how I did!