Journey to and Through Motherhood: Lily's 40th Week (11/30/09

I had to start work a half hour early on Monday so Paul had to drop Lily off at Kirsten’s house alone. That was probably a good thing because Lily doesn’t have any separation anxiety issues when he drops her off. Apparently she only misses mommy. Mondays are always the worst for separation anxiety and it probably would have been especially bad that day considering that we had four days together instead of two. While Lily was at Kirsten’s house, she continued to pull up on everything which meant that she fell down a number of times. She slipped while crawling on the wood floor and bit her lip but a Popsicle made her happy. She had a mark on her lip when I picked her up and still had the red line on her head from banging it on the chair on Sunday. Poor girl! I worry about her getting injured this week because we are scheduled to have her nine month pictures taken on Sunday. I don’t want her all bruised and battered for them! I threatened to wrap her in bubble wrap for the rest of the week but, luckily, she didn’t get any more injuries. Kirsten and I just tried our best to keep her off of our slippery wood floors as that is where both injuries occurred.

On Tuesday, Lily turned 9 months old! I can’t believe that my little girl is so big already. Looking back at old pictures, I am amazed at how much she has grown and changed. Every stage has been so exciting but the time seems to be passing by too quickly.

Most of the week was spent desperately trying to prepare for Christmas. I can’t believe that it’s already December. I only have about 1/10 of my Christmas presents purchased and nothing is wrapped. Usually I am done by now. It is hard shopping with a baby and I can’t find the time to go, anyway. I tried to do some shopping on Monday but couldn’t find anything I was looking for. Then I had to leave because Lily was getting hungry and fussy. I decided to give up and do the majority of my shopping this weekend but that didn’t work out as I will explain later. Instead, I focused this week on getting the house decorated for the holidays. I finally got Paul to bring down all of the Christmas totes from storage on Tuesday (I had been pestering him to do so since Sunday). Then I was up past midnight decorating the house as I can only get stuff done when everyone is asleep. I got everything done but the tree. To make room for the tree, we stashed the coffee table in the basement and put the ottoman where the coffee table was. It has been working out really well because we don’t have to worry about Lily pulling up on the coffee table and getting hurt anymore. Plus she always tried to crawl through the bottom of it. Even though our coffee table is round, it’s still hard and can still hurt her. On Wednesday, we got the tree up and put the lights on it only to discover that the middle strand of lights wasn’t working. Of course, we forgot to check the lights before putting them on the tree. I was up late again trying to change bulbs but couldn’t ever get it to work so I went to bed quite frustrated. Paul finally got the lights to work on Thursday by doing a high-tech method of shaking the strand really hard. Whatever works! So I finally got to put all of the decorations on the tree that evening. We are used to only putting breakable ornaments on the top half of the tree due to the cats’ inability not to attack shiny dangly objects but I was especially diligent because I didn’t know how Lily would be with the tree. I also made sure that the ornaments that were within her reach didn’t present choking hazards and put the hooks on the branches really tight. I thought that Lily would play with the ornaments or try to pull down the tree but she mostly just ignores it. It is right next to her play area but the most attention she pays it is to look at it every once in a while and bat at the branches occasionally. I am shocked because she usually wants to play with everything that is off limits (remotes, cell phones, keys) but I am so glad.

Auriel and Aneasha watched Lily on Friday because Kirsten had a full day of doctor appointments scheduled. Last week, Lily cried for ten minutes after we dropped her off but this week the transition went smoothly as she was asleep. She woke up happy for them and had a really good day. When we picked her up, we dropped Aneasha off at work then had to go straight to Pinckney High School to pick up the poinsettia plants from Rachel’s orchestra fundraiser. All of these stops meant that we didn’t get home until two hours after we got out of work. We always watch Monk together as a family on Friday nights as Rachel and I love the show so we sadly watched the very last episode of the series. Lily was in great spirits but was a little sniffly when she went to sleep. Unfortunately, her stuffiness intensified throughout the night and she barely slept due to her congestion. She was up crying for most of the night and could only really sleep sitting up lying on my chest. She only slept in short stints then would wake up crying, reposition herself, then fall back asleep for a little while so she never got any good quality sleep and I didn’t get any sleep at all. Paul took Lily and let me snooze a bit on Saturday morning but it was hard to sleep because Lily was crying a lot. We could tell that she didn’t feel well and she kept having giant goobery sneezes. She absolutely hates to have her nose wiped so she cried every time we tried to clean her up. She was tired but couldn’t comfortably sleep and was hungry but had trouble eating due to her congestion. The poor girl felt miserable. She finally took a nap later that morning sitting up on Paul then woke up in a much better mood. She was still ill but wanted to play which was a good sign. She took a fairly decent afternoon nap sitting up on me then woke up with a fever. I gave her some Tylenol and she seemed to stay in good spirits, despite her fever. I had to give her breastmilk in a bottle all day because it was quicker and easier for her to suck down than breastfeeding. She had to eat in quick gulps, gasping for air between them. Needless to say, I didn’t get any Christmas shopping done as I was busy tending to my sick baby all day. However, Paul did get the Christmas lights up on the house and the outdoor decorations in place so at least he got to accomplish something that day. He also went to our friends' house and picked up some baby gates that they generously gave us. Those things are expensive! Especially the big one that they used on their front porch that we are going to use to corral off the cactus and jade plant by the front window so that we don't have to get rid of them. We were very grateful.

Lily slept a little better on Saturday night but was still congested and needed to sleep sitting up. I propped her up next to me on a pillow which seemed to work pretty well. She appeared to be feeling better on Sunday and didn’t have a fever but was still very congested with nasty sneezes. We decided to keep our portrait appointment since she was in a fairly good mood. Plus I wanted to order our Christmas photo cards and get them sent out ASAP so I didn’t want to have to reschedule for next weekend and be a week later in mailing everything out. We got some family shots as well as some nine month pictures of Lily. She wasn’t super smiley but we got some good pictures which I will post separately. They did less poses and backgrounds than usual and we felt a little rushed but I know that they were really busy. They print your order within a half hour so we did some Christmas shopping at JCPenneys then picked up our pictures. Afterward, we went to Olive Garden for dinner. While we were there, we got a call from Kirsten. She was quite ill and wouldn't be able to watch Lily on Monday so we called Auriel to see if she and Aneasha could watch Lily for us again. They said that they would gladly watch her. We are so thankful that they are willing to be our ‘on-call’ caregivers. Paul will have to drop Lily off on Monday since I will be working at the Brighton Health Care Center. I was up pretty late on Sunday night trying to get address labels on the Christmas cards and write on the backs of all of the pictures. I still need to write our holiday letter. I have no idea when I will have time to do that but I need to get it done ASAP so that I can send out our Christmas cards. I may have to take Paul’s suggestion of writing, “We’ve been really busy, Happy Holidays.”

Here are some pictures from this week.

Lily fell asleep on the way home from Kirsten’s on Monday so we kept her in her carseat on the living room floor until she woke up. Her good friend, Amber, sat at her side guarding her until she woke up. It was so sweet:

Peeking over the coffee table on Tuesday:

Lily pulling up on the ottoman to see Reiley immediately after I got her off the coffee table. The girl refuses to stay down now that she can stand:

Rachel was reading on the loveseat so Lily grabbed a book all on her own and crawled over to show her big sister that she could be just like her:

I can read, too:

Lily and Amber reunited after work on Friday:

Lily happily chewing on a toy that she ripped off of her Exersaucer:

In a rare moment, she decided that she wanted to get an ornament off of the Christmas tree:

She pulled up on the ottoman to see me. I much prefer having the ottoman in front of the couch as opposed to the coffee table. I have no idea what Paul is pointing at in the background: