Moving Day

Well, moving day has come and gone and we are now settling into our new home. It's a beautiful townhouse and I'm so excited for all the adventures yet to be had here. Isabella adjusted well to the move, though we've been up in the middle of the night every night. But that was going on for a week or two before the move. I wonder if she's in a growth spurt or something. Who knows...We brought the dog home on Sunday. She's trying to adjust and tonight is the best night for her so far. She's very anxious about it and I think she's secretly afraid that we are leaving her. She recognizes the furniture and can smell herself on it, but she's still very insecure.

As we were moving, I realized that I never donated or discarded my old fertility medicines. So now, I have a kitchen pantry full on injectable medicine that I will not be using for quite a while! At this point, we probably will wait until fall 2012 to TTC again, but we will see. It's probably the best decision. Then, we can enjoy a lot of time with Isabella and watch her grow and have firsts before the second one is even thought of. 

As far as the new house and the new neighborhood go, there are a lot of kids around. Most of them are older, but that doesn't mean there aren't any babies around. We just haven't seen any yet. I'm hoping there are some little ones around so that Isabella will have some friends to play with in a year, but we'll have to wait and see what happens!

I'll leave you with some pictures of the new townhouse now that we are moved in. 

 This is Closing Day-our first picture once we owned it.

Isabella is enjoying her new kitchen.

Lunch time!

Moving Day

family picture in front of the new house

The formal dining room

 

The cooking half of the kitchen

The front door, ready for visitors

Isabella's room (will be painted in a month)

Her nice set up, the only thing missing is her books.

 Our full finished basement

The living room is ready to go

 Isabella even has her Jumperoo ready!

 This is the rest of the kitchen.

More pictures to come in a future post...

New Home in Less Than a Week!

Well, five more days will pass and then, we will be moving out of this apartment. I am excited to be moving into a new home, a bigger home. It will be nice to provide play space for Isabella, a place where she can grow up having room to run around, cause chaos, and enjoy every minute of it. Packing is going as well as it can with having Isabella to help. She was sick all of last week and even now, she just wants to be held while one of us is packing. So instead of four hands getting the work done, only two hands are packing and the other two hands are loving Isabella. But it's exciting. You dream about having a new home for so long and you eventually decide it may just never happen. But God provided this opportunity for us and I'm so thrilled about it. 

At the same time as I am excited, I am also very sad. This is the home Hubby and I moved into a year after we got married. It's where we established ourselves, grew our marriage, added to the family with our precious dog. It's where we prayed many nights about starting a family and where we felt God answering our prayers with a "Yes" for starting to try for a family. It's the home that saw many tears and hugs in all the failed months before even starting fertility medications. It's the home that saw 11 long months of fertility medications. It's the house that saw the positive pregnancy test on Thanksgiving morning. It's the home I relied on in the heat of summer when  I was bursting with pregnancy, waiting on Isabella's arrival. It's the home that Isabella came to first when we left the hospital. It's where she's spent the past seven and a half months of growing, changing, developing, and blessing our lives. There are so many memories in this small space. If walls could talk or write, they could write a long novel of all the experiences this house has seen. This house is where our friend J. (who died March 18, 2010) proposed to my very dear friend A. when he was house sitting for us a few years ago. The memories this house holds are not just our own. I know I will cry the day we move. It's a bittersweet thing. You grow attached to the memories that are held within the walls of every room. 

Moving Day will be bittersweet, for sure. But it's an exciting time for us. Moving into a three bedroom townhouse will be nice. And, if my dream/nightmare of last week were to come true, even that space would be too small. I had a dream that I was pregnant with 8, YES-I SAID 8- babies. In  my dream, I found out I was pregnant, had an ultrasound to confirm that there were 8 babies, and went into labor all in one week. The paramedics did a c-section at home (we already lived in the townhouse) and all 8 babies weighed 7-8 pounds EACH. Yes, it was more of a nightmare. We didn't move. We housed them all in the townhouse, which gave us 9 babies to be responsible for. Good thing it was just a dream, I think I would cry, scream, and need some serious help with that.

On that note, I'll leave you with a picture of what happens when packing gets a little out of control around here.

Chugging Along!

Well, Isabella is almost seven months old! We're still here, chugging along. A big change looms in the very near future-we got a house! So, we are in the process of moving. Closing is set for March 18, so it looks like we will be moving on the 19th. I'm excited, but I'm also very nervous. We have so much to get done and doing it all with a baby in tow is very difficult. It's not impossible, but it sure is tough! She is getting over her first cold and add the shots from yesterday's pediatrician appointment, she's super clingy and wants to snuggle. So not a whole lot has been done. It's scary to think about it. But that's a HUGE change in our lives and it's going to be excellent for Isabella.

I'm still breastfeeding. I love it. I honestly really never thought it would be as amazing of an experience as it is. My initial reason for choosing it was that it saved so much money. Teachers are poor in the summer, you know? With a summer baby, breastfeeding seemed to be the less expensive route. And it's been truly the most rewarding and amazing experience of being a Mom. There is something so beautiful, so personal, and so intimate about that moment of nursing, whether it be for nutrition, comfort, or sleep. My baby looks to me for her source of comfort and it just melts my heart. 

Isabella is doing so many exciting things now. She's got a tooth getting ready to cut through the gums. The outline is there on her gums, it just hasn't popped through yet. She's been playing with a lot more of her toys and initiating the play with them. She's figured out how to get her pacifier back into her mouth. She reaches out to pet the dog. She's so excited about little things, like seeing her Daddy walk into the room. In fact, now, she reaches out for him so that he can pick her up. 

We went to the park last week when it was strangely (and beautifully) 70 degrees in February in NJ. It was her first time walking to the park in an umbrella stroller and she loved it. She went in the swings and at first, she wasn't sure what to think. It was new, probably a bit scary. But once she got the feeling of the back and forth movement, she was all giggles! 

She had her well baby checkup and my little jellybean is up to 15 pounds. She's about 24 inches long, so she's a short one! The pediatrician is very pleased with her growth, so no worries. She's doing well! She's still getting over her first cold, which she had last week and the week before. So she's still more tired than usual, but she'll get back to normal soon. 

I'll leave you with some pictures from this month including on from the park.

Exciting Changes

Where do I start with all that's going on around here...I guess I'll just make it a short list. There's really not all that much going on, but it's enough!

1. Isabella is already six months old! WHAT?! Where does time go? Seriously, my baby girl is growing so quickly and I'm just so in awe of her. She's beautiful, sweet, and generally so happy. I'm so blessed and just can't believe she has been with me for a half a year now. 

2. She's teething...big time. There aren't any teeth ready to pop through yet, but she's really been bothered by her gums lately. She's in her six month growth spurt. So with that and the teething, her sleep patterns have changed. I feel like we are back in the first two months again when we are up all hours of the night with a crying baby. She has a wet diaper. She's hungry. She wants her pacifier. It's all the joys of parenthood. I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. But it sure is taking a toll on me. I've had a migraine off and on for the past three days. 

3. Isabella's been sleeping in her big girl crib now for four nights. Tonight will be the 5th night. It's a little scary for me to not have her in the room with me in her bassinet. And maybe that's what is causing some of her sleep issues, but we'll see how things go in the weeks to come. She'll get used to it. 

4. I'm still have blood pressure issues. It was an issue before I got pregnant with Isabella. But throughout most of the pregnancy, it wasn't a big deal. It didn't get bad until the third trimester. So now, my family doctor wants me to have all these tests done to see what the cause is and to see if it is affecting any major organs. So I saw the cardiologist yesterday. I had a stress echo cardiogram done and I passed with flying colors. So it's not my heart. I am getting blood work done next Friday. I guess we'll see what happens with that. I am due for my annual exam with my OB and I'm sure he'll ask me if I've done anything about my blood pressure issues. At least I can answer him with a "yes" even though they haven't figured it out yet.

5. The biggest news of all-Hubby and I are going to be homeowners! I'm so excited. We have been searching for a home since right after Christmas. In fact, we had an offer on three other homes and nothing came of those offers that was worth doing anything about. So we are so excited about this townhouse two-story townhouse with a full finished basement. It's the perfect space to raise a family. So now, we can think about conceiving #2 in the fall as long as my blood pressure issues are better under control. 

I'll leave you with some recent pictures of Isabella, some from her six-month pictures and some from this past weekend. Enjoy!

Why I Breastfeed

I never imagined I'd be the mom who discreetly covered up and nursed in public. I thought I'd be the formula-buying, bottle wielding mom who was prepared with filled bottles in the diaper bag, on guard and ready to go. Even at the beginning of my pregnancy, I was on the fence, really not sure if I wanted to go through the beginning learning process of breastfeeding. I chose to go with breastfeeding for two reasons-bonding and cheapness. Okay, I know, cheapness? Really? Yes, really. I'm a teacher. I'm married to a teacher. Isabella was a summer baby. Everyone knows that teachers are poor in the summer. So I weighed the cost of nursing pads and lanolin cream with the cost of formula. It's obvious which one costs less. So I chose to go with breastfeeding and prayed that I would have sufficient milk for my little princess.

The first day breastfeeding was far from joyous, I have to admit. Isabella had a lot of difficulty latching on, thanks to my morphine drip (oh the joys of c-sections). But I'm so thankful that the hospital had excellent lactation consultants hanging around. They gave me the silicone nipple shield and said that morphine makes your body tissues soft, not a good thing for getting a newborn to learn how to nurse. But that shield made all the difference in the world. It was uncomfortable. My nipples were very raw, sore, chapped. Isabella would nurse for a half hour on each side for the first two days. She would fall asleep. I never had doubts, though. I never wanted to throw in the towel in those first few days. Even when my milk came in all at once and the engorgement was painful, I never wanted to give up. Even when I was shopping for well-fitting nursing bras two weeks after giving birth and I started leaking something fierce in the dressing room, I didn't want to give up. 

There is something so intimate, so amazing, so beautiful about breastfeeding. It's an art. When you think of art, you think of something beautiful, magical, enjoyable, and peaceful. That's breastfeeding! I'm so blessed to have an ample supply. I'm so blessed to be able to provide that sort of bond for Isabella. It has really helped my little Isabella put on much needed weight, since she was in the bottom 5th percentile when she was born. Our bond is unquestionably very close. She comes to me for nourishment. She also relies on me for comfort. Yes, even at six months, she still comfort nurses and enjoys nursing to sleep. I just love those moments when I can look down and just enjoy the view of my beautiful child looking up at me. 

I will admit that pumping at work isn't the most amazing or beautiful experience in the world. In fact, it's rather ridiculous. I chose to set up my classroom with my desk in the far corner so that from the doorway, you can't see it. I lock my door, sit in the corner, and pump. That's how I spend my lunch every single day. It's not intimate. It's not amazing. But it means Isabella still has that connection to me during the day when she's at my parents' house. It's just all part of it. I hate pumping. But I do whatever it takes to provide for my little darling. After all, if I have the supply of milk, it would be a shame to not use it!

Six months into Isabella's precious life, I am still breastfeeding. I get stares, glares, and comments out in public. I hear the whispers, I get the comments of "I know what you're doing under there" as they walk past my covered up child nursing. Do I have to cover up? No. But I chose to. Some people just aren't okay with public breastfeeding and I honestly feel more modest being covered up. But I'm still going strong. It isn't about saving money by choosing the cheap feeding option anymore. It's about enjoying my Mommy moments with Isabella. It's about sharing that intimate bond with her as she relies on me for food, for comfort, for sleep (when she's cranky and just can't get to sleep). It's just one of my sources of joy with being a mother!

A Woman of Strength and Courage

Ten months ago, my friend A. lost her husband J. in a horrific car accident. I know I posted on it around that time. She was pregnant and had a child turning two years old. In the past ten months, I have learned so much about life, family, love, courage, strength, and faith just from watching her, helping her, listening to her, and spending time with her. A. is a woman of unbelievable strength. Of course her strength doesn't come from her own self, it comes from the loving God we serve. But she just amazes me. In the midst of so much personal pain and grief, she still serves her family, her friends, her church. She gives where she can give, helps when she can help, and reaches out when she feels the need to serve others. I stand amazed of the courage she has to get up each day, a single mom of two children, and continue on with life. She is so brave. I know A. doesn't always think so. She mourns still, grieves still, and really misses J. He was the love of her life, her childhood sweetheart. I've never known anyone else to have the love they shared. J. was such a unique and fun person. I'm sure there were days when A. had to have a lot of patience to live with someone who would get up at 5am, wide awake, singing. But that was J. 

A. is getting by. Her oldest daughter, M. is going to be 3 years old in April. Her younger daughter, A.J., was born in early September. A. is a SAHM right now and a single mom to boot. Even with lack of sleep, she still inspires all the women, wives, and moms around her. I don't know that I would be able to be as wise, calm, patient, or strong as she is with all that she is going through. 

With all of that said, please pray for A. She has a lot of personal challenges she's being faced with right now. I know that God doesn't give us more than we can handle, but I know there are days when she feels the burdens are getting too heavy to bear. Time supposedly makes the grief a little less heavy, but losing your spouse has to be one of the hardest things life can offer. She really misses J. and her heart just aches for what he gave. So just pray for her, for her family, and for her children. God has been good in providing friends who can comfort, but we just can't understand the true mourning of her heart. 

Through all of the grief, she remains strong for her children. She greats each day with the courage to go through it and see what God would have her do. A., you are an inspiration to me. I love you very much and I'm so blessed to call you a dear friend. Thank you for all that you teach me through your actions and through your life.