Chi Omega Halloween

My sorority chapter threw a Halloween Trick or Treat at the house tonight. It was also a canned food drive. I quickly donated the soy formula I didn't need. I told them they would be the star of the donations with that liquid gold.

Full Body Shot

It was such a cute idea that although Lily could not get any of the candy I had to take her around and show her off. Especially since she was a Baby Owl! She was an angel as usual and stole lots of hearts. I was a little disappointed in the turn out since I thought it was such a cute idea, but it was still fun. I had worked so hard on her costume that I wanted her to wear it as many times as possible. Not bad for a handmade costume huh? She was even pretty cool with me putting the makeup on her!

Looking at Mommy
Looking at Daddy
Daddy always gets the good laughs!

Tomorrow she has a costume parade at school and I have volunteered to help with that. Then we are going to take her around to peoples houses tomorrow night. Well by people I mean my neighbors and probably Aunt Brookie's where it is rumored that a haunted house will be! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

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20 Weeks? I am losing count...

Oh what a week! As many of you know sleep in the Eads household has been a hot topic. Poor Lily. Oh wait POOR MOMMY! Over the past three weeks my darling angel has been suffering. Between a cold that woke her up and then teeth pushing through we are all exhausted. But there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Disclaimer: Mommy jinx stay away! If I say it she will stop doing it. Here goes...

For the past two nights she has slept all night. There I said it. I am cursed now. This is what full disclosure does. It jinxes you!

I slowly weened her off the waking. I am quite proud. In between the new schedule (see previous post) and a little Mommy self pep talk we did it for now. Thursday she woke up, I nursed her, she fussed, and finally went back down after about an hour and half. She woke back up. Then I had an epiphany! She is getting used to eating! No more eating for you missy. So when Michael went back in I said don't feed her! He calmed her down and she fell back asleep. Friday night she woke up. I got up, went in, DID NOT pick her up, and just gently rubbed her hair and comforted her. I gave her a pacifier and turned on her crib soother (Fisher Price Rainforest soother I love you). She actually calmed down. Total time: 3 minutes. Well she started fussing after the soother stopped playing so I ran back in there and turned it back on and PRESTO! She slept the rest of the night. Saturday night: she woke up, I went it and did the same thing and she slept the rest of the night. Total time: 5 minutes. Sunday and Monday slept the whole night. She stirred last night and whined but before I could throw the covers off and get up she was back asleep. Ahhhh heaven. I have my good baby back (for now).

So over the last week we finished the vegetable rotation. She is now chowing on carrots, green beans, peas, sweet potatoes, and squash. So all stage one veggies in addition to her cereal. She has been averaging one less bottle a day with the additions of solids at daycare. I may just start making the two she is eating bigger because now I am worried she is not getting enough! I know I know. First I thought too much so I started her on solids, now I think too little. It is my job as a mother to worry. I think I am going to hold off on fruits until she is good and used to veggies. The prefer the sweeter stuff so I have even been watching the number of times I give her sweet potatoes, although they are her favorite, because I can see a difference in her patience of a lesser veggies (e.g. green beans) after having them. I really want her to not be picky and basically eat what I give her.

For the first weekend in months we had a completely chill weekend. We went out to a family dinner and shopping on Friday for Lily's Halloween costume and a coat for her. Well the only thing we came back with was....MY CAMERA! Oh yeah! We were at BJs and they had my Nikon D40 of $350 dollars!!

I could not believe it. The average is $499 and I have seen it for $450 at BJs. But $350! Holy Moly! I got my new camera..I got my new camera. Michael claims I am not getting a Christmas present now but I don't believe him. I took some pictures of Lily and Michael with it but have not had time to download them so will try and post some pics this week. I can tell a quality difference just in the viewfinder! It is awesome. UPDATE: PICS ADDED! Some random shots of house and Lily with new camera!
Hey mister bug......

I will eat you!!!!

On Saturday we laid around and spent time together. Then we decided to take advantage of the down time and do some stuff around the house. Michael fixed our sink sprayer, I cleaned, he fixed a cabinet that was messed up and the toilet paper roll that was broken. I consider that a successful day!

On Sunday we went to try to find a costume for Lily AGAIN! I finally just bought some stuff to make the owl costume. I give up. I attempted to make it last night but she looks more like a chicken. Oh well. I am going to tweek it over the next few days and see if I can make it better.

While we were out on Sunday I got Lily this adorable coat from Old Navy and some other fleeces and this sweater. Basically some stuff to not make me look like a horrible mother for dressing my child in shorts when it is 40 degrees outside!

And Michael comes out of Toys R Us with

Although I have to admit it is fun. I played the drums most of the time and it was not easy but lots of fun. But it caused me to stay up way too late. Work was awful on Monday...but Lily slept so that helped.

Michael was off to Jersey on Monday so I am running solo until Thursday. Just in time to dress up Lily and take pictures to blackmail her with in later years.

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Need Sleep STAT

Last night was yet another miserable night in the Eads household. But I think I have a reason. I noticed last night two teeth pushing through on her bottom gum. I take some comfort in the fact that there is a reason and not just that she hates me.

She woke up at 1:30 and was up on and off until 5:30 when she just woke up completely. I tried to hand her off at 4 so I could get thirty minutes of sleep before I had to get up for work, but Michael just said she was hungry. AKA she wanted her human pacifer. How convient he cannot provide this comfort.

I am so tired today I fell asleep pumping.

I love my child. I love my child. I love my child. I love my child

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19 Weeks

I sleep through eating but not through the night...whwhwahhahahahaa!


We had a busy weekend! Lily got to try some new foods, went to Grandpa's 60th birthday party, and then to the State Fair. She also gave Mommy daycare germs! YAY!

On Friday I woke up feeling awful! I was achy and my head hurt. Lily had been up half the night which had become ritual over the past two weeks. I had stuff at work I had to get done or I would have just stayed home. I had a low grade fever and a sore throat. Blah. Luckily I had a half day because we went to a work friend's wedding. So at lunch I left and got Lily from daycare. We proceeded to take a nap together when we got home and I felt better with a little Tylenol. It sucks because I cannot take a lot of medicines while I am nursing. It's like still being pregnant! But I think because I haven't been taking hardly anything for over a year the Tylenol actually worked and I felt better (not great) before the wedding. For the wedding we took Lily to see Teagan and Flynn. She was an angel as usual. We were home and had her in bed by 9:30 so we could get up early to go to Gastonia the next morning.

And by early I mean we left at 1:00pm. Life with a baby takes three times as long as life without one. I wanted to be out of the house by 11:00am. I failed miserably. But we got there well before the party started. It was fun to see everyone. Even though Uncle Larry did not remember Lily's name! I see where we fall on the totem poll. We got some cute pictures of the girls with their Grandpa. He was very excited to have us all there to celebrate him. The best part was that they had baby pictures of him when he was about six months old and it is completely apparent she gets her looks from the Eads side of the family. She is a spitting image of him! She definitely has the Eads eyes. They seem to be a very dominant feature.
The Happy Grandpa with Morgan and Lily

We came back early on Sunday after visiting Lily's Great Grandma. We relaxed and fed Lily and then headed off the NC State Fair with Lily, Aunt Linda and Glen. We wanted to go early evening because we thought Lily would love the lights once it got dark. She did! She was so well behaved and was just in awe of all the people. Now I will say this....it was COLD! Probably low 40s...maybe even 30s. We had her in Fleece PJs and a fleece blanket plus a little hoodie. This trip made us realize we need to buy her a coat ASAP. Besides her little red cheeks and her complete stubbornness of not keep her hands in the blanket she seemed comfortable. She only cried when her toboggan fell over her eyes and she couldn't see. We took her on the carousel which she loved! Although it was a little fast, and I started getting a little sick. Best part about the fair? The pig races. Be prepared for major cuteness. The pig racing guy also does Goat and Duck races in his routine. During the races he picks "callers" in the audience to cheer the animal on to victory. Well for the Duck Races Lily got picked to be "Ducky Gordon's" caller. And guess what? Her Duck won! She got a little ribbon and everything. It was a fabulous memory of our first family fair trip.
All bundled up

Aunt Linda and Lily
Mommy and Lily Carousel fun!
It was a little fast...most pictures were blurry but we got this one.
Disclaimer: the carousel had stopped
Glen and Lily

We are still struggling with sleeping. It is so frustrating to have a child who consistently slept through the night for months to regress and start waking up two or three times a night! Even when she woke up when she was a few weeks old it was only once! So I sat and thought about what could be causing this. Michael wants to start bottle feeding her, I want to start giving her cereal at night, is she sick, is she cold, nightmares? I decided it is my fault. For months I was the schedule nazi. Then I went back to work and she started daycare. Our schedule faltered. First she wanted to fall asleep earlier because she was tired from daycare. Then I was struggling to get dinner and stuff cooked because I was so busy with her. Then she started eating solids which adds chores to the daily routine. Finally her nap schedule was so unpredictable we couldn't depend on anything day to day. Some days she comes home and sleeps from 5-9 other she is up and wants to go down at 8. Last night I decided NO MORe! I want her on a solid food schedule (she has a pretty good milk schedule) and a set routine. New proposed schedule-varying as necessary to a certain extent.

5:30 Wake up, get dressed, nurse
7:00 drop off at day care
9:00 bottle and cereal
noon: bottle and vegetable
3:00 bottle
4:30 Picked up from daycare
6:00 nurse and vegetable
8:30 bath, get ready for bed
8:45 cereal
9:00 nurse, story, and bed
9:00-5:30 SLEEP!

Notice I have no nap times. I will let her control that..but from now on we do this! The schedule nazi is returning to reclaim her beauty rest. BTW did this yesterday and guess what? She slept all night! I am convinced kids need routine. Going back to work had killed that for us. But I am going to fight to get it back.

On a Mommy note I got my new Mommy do yesterday. I cut off all my hair. Michael has not said a nice thing about it so I know he doesn't like it but I love it. In his defense he hasn't said anything mean either, but saying nothing is sometimes worse. It means you have nothing nice to say. It is very Katie Holmes new hairstyle. With my big sunglasses like we could be total twins. Except for the hundred pounds more that I weigh and the 6 inches she has on my height. It took me like five minutes to blow dry it. AWESOME! And the best part? She cut all my color out. I have my natural hair color for the first time in 10 years! wow! Its actually really nice. Pregnancy gave me one good thing, well other than the whole baby thing. A nicer hair color. I will try and get a picture up this week. But I will say that getting my haircut has shown me a small glimmer of the person I was prebaby. I am starting to feel back to my old self. I have a few pair of pants I can now squeeze into that are not maternity, my hair looks nice again and not like a mother who has a newborn and is only getting three hours of sleep a night so she rolled out of bed and threw it in a ponytail. It is amazing what a haircut can do! I feel great. I said earlier that I started a weight loss group at work (down three pounds-pre fair food!) so hopefully the other pants will fit soon. Who knows..maybe the new hair can merge the old Stephaine with the new Mom Stephaine and form a super woman that can have the best of both worlds.

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Green Beans and Me

Lily trying Green Beans. My hopes were not to high for these since I thought they tasted awful. But she did her usual look of disgust and then gobbled them down. We are now up to Squash, Carrots, and Green Beans

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What's up Doc?

Lily Trying Carrots

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4+ Month Update

Lily playing with a toy I hung on her carseat. She loved it!

Oh what a busy busy week this has been. I have been so busy I haven't given my Lily update.

Sickness
Remember the cold I said wasn't giving us too hard of a time. Well it ended up being an inconvenience. Lily was suppose to go to daycare for a few hours on Friday while Michael and I cleaned up the house/yard and ran errands for upcoming Eadsfest. Unfortunately she was up most of the night and had a temperature of 100.9 on Friday morning. So I called the doctor and they wanted to see her. The suspected her cold had turned into an ear infection which caused the fever. So we go. She is fine. Of course. No ear infection just under the weather but...no daycare. So I had to run all over town on Friday with her. Lucky for me (unlucky for her) she felt so bad she just laid there like a blob and did not fuss or do much of anything except observe. I got her a humidifier and we sucky balled her nose a lot this past week.

4 Month Well Visit
I had a well visit scheduled for Monday. I tried to talk them into giving her the shots on Friday but no go. So she got her DTaP and Rotavirus today and will get the remaining shots in a month per Dr. Sears schedule. Her stats are

Weight: 14 lbs 4 oz (65%)
Length: 24 in. (35%)
Head: 40 cm (75%)

Apparently she has a big ol' head. They also gave us the hand out on solids. We had already started her on cereal so they said to go ahead and start her on baby foods.

She has also started gurgling this week. She lets the spit build up and then tries to talk. Its adorable. Oh the little things we parents get excited about!

Sleep
I am not sure what is going on but maybe it is the Mommy jinx. This past week Lily has been waking up a lot. It may the cold. It may be a growth spurt. I am not sure. I am sure of one thing...Mommy no likey. I have been exhausted for a week now. I finally handed her off at 4am this morning after being up with her on and off since 1:30am. Blah. I have started nursing her at night instead of bottle feeding and we may need to switch back. The only problem is I barely have enough milk for daycare let alone daycare plus the last feeding. Plus I miss nursing her now that I am back at work so the bonding time is nice.

She does not seem to have an issue sleeping in the bath tub though! How does a baby fall asleep during this?



Eye Issue
So she went to the doc on Friday. Then on Monday for shots. Then Monday when I picked her up from daycare her eye was all crusty. The teacher suspected pink eye. A few cases had been reported over the weekend from the class. I was ill. If I had to take her to the doc three days in a row it was going to be on! LEAVE YOUR KIDS AT HOME IF THEY ARE SICK. I left mine out of daycare on Friday why can't you? Well luckily no pink eye. But lots and lots of crusties. I am thinking it is a side effect of the cold she is clearing up.

Michael's Birthday
Tuesday was Michael's birthday and I asked Daycare to do something special for him and help Lily make him a present. This is what they did. I was jealous!


Michael and I went out to lunch alone and then I made a family dinner. We just hung out at home and tried to watch Indiana Jones but being old and having a baby lead to us falling asleep half way through. Of course Lily didn't even make it as far as me getting the DVD out of the case!

Here is Michael and Lily playing on his Birthday. She has a new fascination with faces.

Solids
Monday on the way home from work I stopped and bought some veggies for Lily to start on. Monday night she had squash. The look on her face was priceless. A look of disgust and then excitement. Here is a picture of squash...mmmmmm. You can see her little eye swollen a bit and crusty.


So she had squash for two days and then on the third day I went to pull out the other container of squash and noticed a little funk at the bottom. I looked and it expired September 30, 2008. WTF! I just bought it Monday October 13th. Gross. So I had to take that back and exchange it. But because they were out of squash she went ahead and started on carrots.

This has proved to be a messy process but baby messes are so cute! She seems to be enjoying the change. But she does still seem hungry afterwards. Maybe this is because she has not completely mastered the spoon and alot comes out. I estimate half in half out? I have four carrots so we will finish the week out on those and start green beans next week. Once I get a good variety I can buy them in bulk at BJs which will save me some mulah.

I will post a video of the carrots later.

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You Go Girl!

I got a bill from Rex Hospital yesterday with a note that said my insurance denied a claim and I was responsible for the bill (~140 dollars). It was actually listed under Lily and I could not recall what could have been done that wasn't covered. So I called the hosital and she said it was our visit to the lacatation consultant. She said it was odd, most insurance companies covered this but they denied it nonetheless. So I called Cigna to inquire. The lady informed me that "This is education and training and is not medically necessary. You could have just given the baby a bottle" Am I the only one upset about this?? Not only about the rudeness but my insurance company should ENCOURAGE me to breastfeed. It saves them money in the long run of illnesses. I was appalled by the complete lack of respect this company gave my right to nurish my child. I am not one of those supermom people that believe they should get only the boob and no formula, no bottle, etc. I believe I am a happy medium. I give her a bottle, and she occassionally gets formula. But what right does this woman have? I even tried to explain that my pediatrician asked me to go to one because Lily was not gaining weight properly, but it was to a deaf ear. I have no problem paying the bill. It was in my child's best interest and I do not regret going. But from a company that claims to have well baby programs this is ridicuolous! I think we need more exposure and should push more for our rights. An epidural isn't medically necessary but they pay for that! If my child was not feeding properly then they should cover. Bottom line. Who lets a random woman manhandle their boob for fun?

So to end this I give a "you go girl" to Angelina for giving exposure to such a beautful thing. The more it becomes socially acceptable the more benefits women will get from it and we will not be treated as an oddball for our decisions.

I would love to shove a bottle up that woman's behind (the insurance lady not Angelina!)

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Eadsfest 2008

It was a stellar performance by all, but the Eads officially won the First Annual Eadsfest. All is right in the world. After a conseversal call and the a challenge (that was not met by Michael's bitches!) The Tea Baggers took home the trophies!

We thought C-Nor took an early lead with a crucial clincher in Dizzy Bat, but their tolerance proved to be their downfall. Then Michael's Bitches threatened the champions with what could have been a tie for first. But Sweet T Travis guzzled the boot like it was his job! Fortunately we avoided the Das Boot Head to Head because we proved that the youngins cannot hang with us old farts. They had to go home to mommy and pout about their loss!

The final results were as follows

The Tea Baggers: 21.5 points
Michael's Bitches: 17.5 points
C-Nor: 15 points
Off with Clay Aiken: 10.5 points
Liver Donors: 8 points
DrunkenBauers: 4.5 points

The offical "worst drinker ever" trophy went to another Eads family member Wayne for his disgraceful performance at flip cup. Apparently he was unaware the cup did not have to hit the top of the tent to count as a flip!

The best event was by far Dizzy Bat. Which Michael tried to talk me out of including! The link to the video of this craziness is

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28YDYkXdd9o

People were falling all over the place and it was bust a gut funny.

We only had a few minor injuries so I consider this a success. Mostly Dizzy Bat induced and a few rope burns from the tent ropes.

I hope everyone had a great time and we are definalty going to do this again. If anyone has any suggestions for something you would like different, new games, etc. let me know! See ya next year!

Our team flag made during the opening ceremonies
The DrunkenBauer captain. By far the most diappointing and the biggest junk talkers!

Tea Baggers vs. DrunkenBauers in BeerBall. Loved their getups.

Dana Playing beer pong
Team Liver Donors
Michael's Bitches

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