9 Months

Woooowwwwww! I cannot believe this little guy is 9 months old!

If I would have known then how big of a stinker you are now.... I would have you a million times over again! At nine months you:

• Have decided that you don't want to nurse during the day anymore. We started you on a little formula to get you ready for cow's milk in a few months (and because I am tired of the pump :P). You still nurse at night.
• You only like big people food. Bananas, avocados, sweet potatos, bread, and chunks of fruits and veggies. You still won't touch baby food.
• You still wake up to nurse at least once a night.
• You wave bye, roll em up, do "so big", give high fives, throw a ball, lift the drain in the tub, and hold a phone to your ear.
• you do a serious worm crawl, but no all fours. you can get places faster by walking while holding on to furniture or mommy. i dont know when you will be brave enough to let go.
• you say mama, dada, oh, gog (for dog), quack for a duck, baba, uh oh (selectively), go, ga, ca, da
• you are sooo silly! you think every one/thing is halarious.
• you have started being shy about who you go to.
• you definately have your favorite things: bella, mason, daddy, bath time, your crib, standing up, outside, your pacifier, biting....
• you have a little tan :)

You are the best thing that ever happened to our little family! I love spending each day (and sometimes nights) with your sweet little face. You are very interested in the world right now, and i love discovering things with you. We love you little man!

• you are very busy

The Sweet Things...

I had no idea so many people read my blog... and now I am so embarassed on how much I complained in my last post! I was a rough day... in fact, a rough week with this dumb splint, but I am doin good! Its hard with a gimp arm and a baby, but i have a lot of great people to help me. So, since i made a list of all the bad things in the past year, my mom had a great idea to list the good things in my life:

• Jesus. He rocks. Thanks to a good friend of corey's, i met the two greatest people of my life: Corey and Jesus. I struggle every day with how to keep God first with all the crazies with life with a baby, but I try.
• Somehow, i totally lucked out in the husband department. Im pretty sure he hung the moon, and if he didnt he would find a way to if he knew i wanted it that way. He is absolutely my best friend and we make the best team ever! I found a man who makes me smile every day; how could i ever ask for more?! :)
• 8.5 months ago, my little world got a whole lot bigger. Little brigzy makes my day. every day. I completely under estimated to amazing-ness a baby brings to your life. It gave corey a different smile. He smiles a certain way just for brigz and its my favorite! My only complaint is my days are never long enough with him. I am so blessed to be a stay at home mamma. I would eat canned beans for every meal to get to stay home with that little stinker though!!
• Family. There is nothing like being surrounded by tons of people with so much love for each other, random similarities, and too much talking to get a single word in! well thats how our family is anyway! Sundays are my favorite. We all go to my mom and dads and eat good food and pray for good weather so we can spend the day in the sun outside. I wish i could bottle up the feeling in the air when we are all together. Its comfy, warm, fun, and it just feels right. I love being around coreys family too and seeing the similarities of him and brigz to every one else. You cant beat family time and love.
• unanswered prayers. My biggest fault is being a super planner. If things would have gone the way i wanted them to, life would be boring! God knows what he is doing by leaving me out of the driver seat! Why he thinks i am worthy of all my blessings, i will never know.
• friends. besides my mom and sister i have 4 best girl friends who keep me sane. They are all so different, yet so perfect for me. They are the best.
• nutella and amazonmom.com. If you dont know about either, you should.
• my job. working with family, making my own schedule, and having 20 gay male hair dressers make you laugh all day, who could ask for a better job!? i only work 1-2 days a week, but it is great. soooo glad i didnt end up being a dentist. I would have gone crazy!

thats just to list a few of my awesome life. Each day, i get better at figuring out how to use just my right hand and how to ask for help. Both are equally hard for me! two weeks left in this awful splint, then 8-10 in a short cast. I think the short cast will be better... i pray it will be!!!

rough year

Since I got pregnant in November, 2009, it feels like it has been one bad thing after another.

• At our second ultrasound, the technician and doctor found cysts in Brigz's brain. They told us he could possibly be special needs or even trisomy 18. With lots of prayer, the cysts disapeared by 26 weeks.
• At 35 weeks prego, i found a cyst in my left breast. After an ultrasound, a team of specialists determined i had a tumor/cyst that looked like cancer. They scheduled a biopsy and we prepared for it to put me into labor, which was likely. It didnt, and thank goodness, it turned out to be a lactating adnoma that needs to be watched annually.
• At 39.5 weeks prego, the toughest 6 days of my life arrived. My water broke but it was a high and small slit (we think) so the triage teams and doctors did not believe me. At the same time, my body was "failing to progress". So my baby and body contracted for 6 full days in terrible, terrible pain before an angel of a doctor saved our baby just in time before he ran out of fluid. I am still so bothered about this. Just the other day, corey and i were watching "One born every minute", corey thought this baby;s umbilical was "huge" when it looked normal to me. I asked if Brigzy's looked different and he said his was like a "collapsed pencil". That gives me the chills. God is good though, and our little guy was a fighter.
• At 8 wks old, brigz was diagnosed with GERD.
• At 8 months, he has had 3 ear infections, eye infections, countless bouts with croup, and the possible diagnosis of asthma.
• annndddd now, i brake my stinkin arm. I cant rock my baby, feed him easily, pick him up, wash my hair, brush my hair, do up my own pants, or put on shoes.It doesnt even hurt, yet i have this massive thing on my arm! I have tried hard to be a trooper, but i am starting to get very frustrated. We have unreal hospital bills still from Brigz and now this. We were working so hard at becoming debt-free, and it doesnt look like that will be as soon as we thought. 

There are my complaints and now im done! haha! Im giving all my worries up to God!

My Favorite Part of Everyday...

Mornings with these two stinkers :)

awww finally some sleep!

Corey is home. The baby is asleep. Life is good.

Brigz is so much fun right now. He is so silly! He is so ticklish and so giggly. I love that he thinks pretty much anything Corey or I does is the coolest thing. Today I was wearing a baseball cap and he thought it was halarious!

I decided to cut down his naps from 3 to 2 to see if he went down to bed easier. He used to be the easiest baby ever to get to sleep. For two nights, it has been a struggle. So, I make sure he is awake by 4pm and so he is tired at 7:30. The past two nights, he has been tired at 7:15 so bedtime was really easy. He also slept through the night. He is also healthy and has been home for over a week so I am sure that is a big huge part of it.

I am so in love with my smiley, wild, little man!

Ready For Summer

Basically, winter has not been so much fun for poor Briggy. He has basically been sick for 80% which is hard to believe considering he is not a day care baby.  So here is the count down:

• reflux/GERD diagnosis
• croup 5 times
• three ear infections
• two eye infections
• breathing steroid started two months ago
• second breathing treatment for possible asthma started this week

For a seven month old, he has been sick ALOT! His doctor said is has to do with three things. He is a reflux baby so he is more susceptible to respiratory illness, he is most likely asthmatic, and babies that get one respiratory illness at the beginnin gof winter will most likely get sick throughout winter. Great huh!? Well thank goodness it is sunny outside and warm and hopefully it is uphill from here!!

Since we travel so much and have so much sickness, sleeping is always an issue. As soon as we get a schedule down packed, we either go out of town or he gets sick. Right now, he has consistently been waking up two times a night. And what used to be a 10 min sleep routine to get him to bed, took a whopping two hours last night. Mamma was a little frustrated and a lot tired. Thanks a lot time change!

Enough complaining, we have exciting news: we finally found our next move! I am so excited! In may we are moving to a place in between edgewood and moriarty. Corey will get to finally bring his cows down and have them right by us. The house is a really cute little house on two and half acres, but basically NOBODY close to us and miles of rolling grassland. It is so pretty! We have a huge back porch with a big back yard, all grass, and big trees! Bella can run and Brigz and I can hang out outside. The downside is the drive for sure. It is about an hour to my mom's :( I don't mind driving, but my mom does so she is not very happy about the move. It'll be fun though!

I can't beleive our little guy is almost 8 months old! When I was little, I would tell myself I was officially a teenager when I turned 15 because I saw the older girls I showed horses with and they seemed so old at 15. Now that I have had a baby, I have told myself that 8 months old means a big baby. I am so in denial that Brigz is almost there :( He is doing the funniest things right now!

• He is a pro at putting in his own pacifier. Even if he gets it upside down he does a little spinny thing to get it back right.
• He waves hi and bye... 75% of the time
• He does a vaccumm crawl where he legs push him around with his forehead on the ground. I am surprised he doesn't get carpet burn.
• He all of a sudden hates food. All of it but breastmilk.
• He has more hair than I have seen on a baby his age. He probably has almost as many strands as I do on my head. And it is fluffy, like a baby chicken.  
• He flaps his wings like he is trying to fly all the time
• He opens his mouth over and over like a fish when he having fun
• He an already throw a fit
• When he wants me rock him, he rocks his body back and forth. He looks like he has failure to thrive, but it is totally the opposite problem.
• His favorite toy is a fake coffee pot from his cousin McKenna's toys.
• He thinks "boo" is the coolest word ever. If anyone says it to him he immediately cracks up
• His favorite things are: his cousin mason, my mom's dog Otis, his daddy's hair, my eyelashes, his Popz's glasses, my Betsy Johnson shower gel in the bath tub, his stroller, being outside, Bella.
• Every one says he is the most smiley baby they have ever seen. For being sick so often, he is definately a trooper. He is generally always in good mood despite ear infections and not being able to breath :(
• His hair is white. His eyes are really light blue. His skin is clear. Corey thinks he is an albino.
• He likes to do anything that is considered wild. He likes to be upside down, scared, tickled...
• He does two really funny faces: one where he smiles reaalllly wide and all you see is his bottom teeth and he scrunches his eyes and one where he opens his mouth and eyes really wide and screeches at the top of his lungs.

Basically he is perfect. Every thing he does, we are in love with him! Now that Corey is home and not out of town sunday-thursday, we feel like a little family again! I am so excited! I am working at the salon on wednesday now and my sister is watching the baby, and her kids too. She is super woman. God is good. Life is good.

So Sad!

The middle of the night wake ups, the crying from separation anxiety, the fussiness of teething... it all comes into perspective when you think about this poor family. If you go to this blog, you will read the devastating story of a little angel who went back home very early. My heart breaks for her parents who are so much stronger than I could ever be in that situation. Please pray for their family.