15 Months

Bug, you are 15 months now! I just can't believe it! You are my lil monkey, literally! You climb onto anything you can get your feet up high enough to reach! You have most recently mastered the dining table chairs and subsequently, the dining table. The only piece of furniture you haven't mastered without assistance is our bed (and the potty, but that's because you prefer to flush it). You have even crawled into your crib, just not out yet thankfully!

This past month we have started working on you putting yourself to sleep. We started it, and then I had to have my appendectomy and we got off so we started again, and it's going much better the second time around. Prior to starting this, you were taking over an hour to fall asleep while rocking and while I love rocking you, that is just too long and it was causing a lot of pain for me (25 pounds on 1 shoulder is not comfy). So I'm slowly lowering the amount of time we rock, and then I sit by your crib until you fall asleep. Once we get to not rocking at all, I'll work on slowly moving away from your crib and out of the room. You are doing really well, and it's getting easier every night. As much as I love having you fall asleep in my arms, it is nice to see you being so independent.

As far as everything else, you are growing so fast! You love talking! Your new favorite words are "uh oh" and "owwie" and you are working on "bubble" since your favorite book is "Bubbles, Bubbles." You know where your nose, mouth (and tongue), eyes, hair, and toes are. You also know where all that is on me and Daddy. You also know where my "owwies" are from my surgery and you love to give them kisses. You love Dodger to death, once I come get you in the morning you are immediately asking for him, and you have to see him before bed each night.

We recently go a Zoo Membership and have already been several times! You enjoy the zoo so much! Especially when we let you run around like crazy and explore. If it's outside, you are all about it! Now that it's warm we are outside most of the day every day and I love watching you run around! I've been looking for a climber/slider outdoors toy, I think you will LOVE that!

Little girl, you are the light of my life and you put a smile on everyone's face in your life. I love the time you and I spend together and watching you learn something every day!

Coming to...

Random post... but there's only so many times you can refresh Facebook and Pinterest while laid up in bed.

Let me start off with I've been put under general anesthesia 4 times, including this last time for my appendectomy. When I woke up from my surgery the very first thing I remember thinking was "oh my gosh, my mouth is dry" and the second thing was "why can't I close my mouth?!" I preceded for what felt like forever trying to get my mouth to close and got very frustrated in the process. Once I finally got my mouth closed all I could think about was getting something to drink- ASAP! I don't ever remember coming out of anesthesia with such dry mouth. All I wanted was some ice chips or water, and as soon as I could get the words out to the recovery nurse I did- it was very difficult with such dryness. She looked at me and said "you can't have anything yet, we have to make sure you won't get sick from the anesthesia." WHAT?!

I suppose I fell back asleep, because I woke up asking for water again. She finally got me the smallest, least full cup of ice chips I've ever seen. I scarfed down the ice chips as fast as I could without making the nurse mad :) Of course, soon after I felt nauseous- shame, shame, shame (on me, of course). I tried to hide it and went back to sleep. When I woke up, the nurse was telling me that my pulse ox was too low when I slept, so they put that horrendous nose oxygen thing on me, I finally admitted my nausea and she whisked away with my ice chips, and came back with zofran.

By the time Paul got back to me, I was really annoyed. I had all these tubes hooked up to me, I had calf massagers (not as nice as it sounds) on my legs, I hurt, and I was still thirsty. I preceded to call my mom at almost 1am and explain how cranky I was. I finally got some water and some more ice chips. When the nurse wasn't around, I would quickly take off the oxygen thing, and finally talked the nurse into taking the calf things off until they moved me to my room. Things were looking up.

Unfortunately, they didn't have a room ready for me and 20-30 minutes turned into 2 hours of waiting in recovery. When they finally got me to my room, it wasn't the private room I had specified, but there was no one else in the room. They moved me into the bed into the room, only to find out it was broken. They preceded to make me stand (only hours after an abdominal surgery) in the middle of the room (couldn't reach the other bed due to the IV placement) while they tried to fix it. When they couldn't fix it they finally moved me to the other bed. I still had the annoying calf compressor thing on, but they forgot to put my oxygen back on me- YAY!

It was 2am and I was exhausted from not sleeping the night before, my little brother finally left and Paul started to get comfortable. At 3am, the aide did my vitals and I requested pain meds, since I was really starting to hurt. It took an hour and a half of requesting it (!!!), but finally at 4:30 I got the meds I asked for and was able to go to sleep. Sadly, at 5 my vitals were checked, my blood was taken at 5:15, and my IV bag round out and needed to be replaced at 5:30. I finally got to sleep after that, and luckily, my day nurse let me sleep and delayed the start of my antibiotic when she saw I was sleeping at 6:30- I made it until 7:30 before I woke up myself and the day started. I napped throughout the day, but was so happy when I was finally released at 4:30pm- 24 hours after my initial doctor's appointment....

I must say, even though I was cranky, I really wasn't impressed with my service at the hospital in Tulsa I was transferred to- I definitely prefer their sister hospital in Owasso- they took great care of Paul when he had pneumonia. Glad I got that out :)

14+ months

So if you have a toddler, you know why this blog has gone silent for a bit. That's because keeping up with a toddler is a full time, no blogging time, job. However, on Friday night I had my appendix removed and am now laid up in bed while Paul has complete control, so I thought I would update what is going on in the life of my baby girl.

Rylee has been 14 months for a week now, and she is in full blown toddler mode. She is a little over 25 pounds and close to 31" tall. She is walking, running, and climbing all over the place. She is quite the little daredevil. She likes to do anything that makes my heart skip a beat (and not in a good way). She is quite the explorer and loves to be outside all day, every day. She is quite the vocal one and is talking more and more every day. She is also signing all the time- up to more than 30 signs. She is wearing mostly 12 month clothes, though I can put her in 18 month shirts. She seems to be growing more and more everyday. Even right now, when I'm not around her as much, she seems bigger every time I see her!

We are all having fun and enjoying time together. We are currently trying to plan a trip to Florida to see Suzie and Eric this summer. I'm very excited to take Rylee to the beach! I think she'll love it, and all the water time it'll involve. We can't even say the word "bath" without Rylee trying to take her shirt off and crawl in the tub. If she hears the water going, and she's not in the bathroom, she has a mini-meltdown, until you distract her! The girl loves her baths!

Another big change in our life is that we are in the process of going gluten-free. We already get most of our produce and all of our meat from a local, all-natural farm, and after much reading, and my previous stomach issues, we've decided that gluten-free is our next best step. It's going to be a hard, complicated change, but I think in the end it will be best for our entire family. We can also get a lot of the GF products from the farm we get our meat and produce, so it'll be like a one-stop shop for the most part for us now! I can't wait to see how this change manifests itself for us.

Sorry if this is all over the place, I blame the pain meds :)

Let's end on some recent pictures of Rylee