Happy Birthday Randi!

One year ago today I held my baby girl in my arms for the first time. I can't believe she's a year old already. It has went by so fast. I love every minute of every day that I get to spend with her. I am truly so very blessed. Happy Birthday Randi! Mommy and Daddy love you so very much!!

Birthday Party

We had Randi's first birthday party on Saturday at our house. We had originally planned on having a huge party but due to everyone's schedule we had to settle on a small get-together which turned out perfectly. Just the grandparents and a few of randi's cousins and a couple of aunts and uncles were in attendance but we had a great time. Randi did so well. She loved unwrapping the presents and especially loved her cake. Her actual birthday isn't until the 18th but I can't wrap my head around the fact that she will be a year old very very soon. It went by so fast! She's talking a lot more, well baby talk, but she does say baby, mom, dad and dog. And we do animal sounds and we'll ask her what the lion says and she roars. It's absolutely hilarious. She has such the little personality, she's so much fun to be around. She'll stand on her own now but has yet to take her first steps but I'm sure those will be coming soon. She still sleeps like a newborn, getting up several times a night but I've gotten used to the lack of sleep so it's ok. She's precious and happy and lights up my life.

Another Tooth!

Having fun playing

My first 4th of July

Swimming in my little pool

Finally Randi has gotten her second tooth, it's right next to her first one on the bottom. It popped up on Thursday. She's nearly a year old and only two teeth. She wants to eat real food so bad but without any chompers she just can't have much. She loves mashed potatoes though! Randi's first birthday is fast approaching and we were going to have a big bash for her but so many of my family members wouldn't be able to attend so we have decided on having just something small at our house with just the grandparents and us. That's all we need anyway right? I wish we could have done something bigger, I had such a vision in my head. Maybe next year. Randi is doing so many new things these days. She is shaking her head yes now and will shake it yes if we ask her if she is hungry or wants a bottle. She was just shaking it "no" previously. She waves bye and is standing on her own at times. She hasn't gotten brave enough to try to walk on her own but she can cruise right along when holding on to something.

I have to get her One Year pictures taken, we have tried several people in the past and I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that I need to learn more about photography and buy a good camera and take the pictures myself. Any suggestions? I am literally a huge dummy when it comes to cameras. I can barely work my cheap digital one that I have. But we have been spending small fortunes every time we get her pictures taken and it will be totally more cost effective if I can learn to do them myself. Can't be that difficult right if you have the right equipment?

Well, it's time to put Randi to bed. Hope you all are doing well!

(I have yet to figure out how to get my pictures to post in the right order, sorry!)

1st Trip to the Zoo

This past Friday I took off of work early and we packed up the car and headed to the zoo. I totally dislike the Zoo, we always seemed to have field trips there when I was little and I never liked it and can distinctly remember throwing up my lunch on one specific trip to the zoo. I am not an outdoorsy person by any stretch of the imagination and am quite possibly the most girlie girl when it comes to animals and bugs. They creep me out. But and this is a very big but, there is not one thing on this earth that I won't do for my daughter, so to the zoo we went. It's not like Randi said to me, "Mom, you know what I'd really like to do today? I'd like to go to the zoo." But being as she is only 10 months old, there are very limited things that she "likes" to do and she loves seeing animals. We stand out on our deck and watch the squirrels and birds and rabbits and she just loves it. She always just watches in amazement so I thought for sure she'd love going to the zoo. It was a beautiful day on Friday and it wasn't too crowded and she did love the zoo. She loved being around all the people, she loved seeing the geese and loved taking a ride on the train. We were only there two hours but she enjoyed the full two hours and that made it an awesome day. Just minutes of getting into the car and she was passed out from all the excitement. I'm glad she had a good time and I'm glad that I did not throw up my lunch. :0

Randi riding around the living room

My daughter is the coolest. She is so funny riding around on this little thing, it's by Fisher Price and it's called a corn popper. Her feet can touch the ground and she can totally move it herself but prefers to have mom or dad push her. Enjoy!

Camera Shy

Oh mom, please don't take pictures of me while I'm trying to nap.

Nutrisystem

I joined Nutrisystem yesterday. I had to. I'm fat. I gained 50 pounds with my daughter and still have 8 pounds to lose of that and before I had Randi I had gained 20 pounds with all the miscarriages. I am totally disgusted with my body, there are stretch marks and saggy skin everywhere. I only lost 17 pounds after having Randi, I've lost 25 pounds by dieting and exercising and since losing that, I've just given up. I'm ready to start again and need some help in doing so. I have never ever had to diet before, the weight always just fell off of me when I was younger. I have never been the chubby one in my family or friends and now I am. It's really hard to take in, but I have to do something about it then just sit here and complain. I have my 10 year class reunion coming up in September and almost every girl I graduated high school with looks exactly the same if not thinner now than they did in high school, even after having babies. The reunion is not why I want to lose weight, but it's motivation. I need to lose this weight for me so that when I go out, I don't feel like people are staring at me because I'm so disgusting. I don't feel comfortable in anything that I wear and I hate shopping because I just get frustrated because I don't know how to dress this body. Ok, that's enough complaining for one post, so wish me luck ladies, I'm gonna need it!

Randi's first tooth

My daughter turned 9 months old yesterday and on that day we discovered a little somethin' somethin' in her mouth, a little pearly white tooth emerging from her gums!! She hasn't been sleeping very good, she'll wake up every other hour crying and she's been doing this for about a week now and this tooth explains why. She's been perfect throughout the day so I can't complain. We're so excited about her tooth, I didnt' think they would ever come. :) A few other milestones I'd like to mention as I use this blog somewhat to keep track of what Randi's doing, she's very very quickly crawling now. About a month ago she was scooting all over and just last week she's full blown crawling. She stands up next to everything and sometimes thinks she can walk and quickly lets go of whatever it is she is holding on to and then plops firmly on her little behind. She is much more vocal and I swear she's telling us stories. She'll ramble on for sometimes 10 minutes at a time just talking in her own little language. I love it! She is absolutely in love with the Sprout channel. There's this little chicken on there I think, it is called Chica and every time she comes on Randi smiles big and claps her hands. She does the same thing for Elmo too. I love love love being a Mom to her. She is absolutely a wonderful baby. She's still a pretty terrible sleeper but I'm sure that will get better as she gets older. I will leave you with a pic of Randi's new teeth. Ok, so they're fake halloween teeth that her aunt thought would be funny and so did Randi. She played right along and underneath those teeth was making a huge smile. She's such a ham! The pictures hard to see but it totally cracks me up.

Reflux

I took my daughter back to the doctor on Thursday because she has been spitting up a lot, has wet burps and cries when we lay her down. Reflux right? This is the third time I've taken her to the doctor and finally they gave us some medicine to help her. She has been making weight so I guess that's why they weren't too concerned before. Well, we gave her the med on Thursday night and it seemed to help and we gave it to her again on Friday morning. That afternoon I picked her up from the sitter's house and she said to me, "I think she's allergic to her medicine". My poor baby was covered in hives. She had just gotten the hives so I called the doctor and they said to bring her in. We were told to give her benedryl and that it should clear up soon. Well almost 24 hours later, they were much much worse than they had been. The benedryl wasn't helping at all. We took had to take her to the ER. They gave her some steroids and told us to give her a larger dose of benedryl. Well, the hives are finally starting to clear up some. They're still there but are getting better. Has anyone else had a child allergic to Zantac? I asked the doctor if children are generally allergic to this particular reflux med and they said, nope, she's the first one we've seen be allergic to it. Go figure.

Randi's 1st Easter

Here's a pic of my darling sweet girl rockin' her little polka dot dress for Easter.

6 months

Hello Ladies!!! I know I said my last post would be my last but I simply just couldn't stay away. Although I haven't written any posts since the birth of my daughter, I honestly still read yours every day. So I must say that motherhood is the absolute greatest thing in the world. I love love love being a mom. The first eight weeks were the toughest after we brought her home. I have never ever been that tired. I was lucky to get a few hours of broken up sleep a day. I was sleep deprived to say the least but as they all say, it does get better. Although Randi has regressed some in the past few weeks due to some pesky gas that she seems to get at night, she normally gets up just once a night. I still get very very tired sometimes because she'll have her good nights and then some not so good ones mixed in there too. She is an excellent eater. She loves all her fruits and vegetables and drinks her bottle like a champ. She recently started palming the bottle. She was too cool to be holding it with two hands anymore so she switched to one. So cute! She can sit up all by herself and just talks talks talks to us all day long. The doctor says she's meeting all of her milestones and then some and is just perfect and healthy. Babies honestly do grow up just so very fast. I feel like I'm missing so much when I'm at work but I have to work so there's no way around that, it just makes our time together all that more special.

I don't have much time to write as you can imagine but I just wanted to drop in and let everyone know how things are going. To those of you ladies out there still waiting for your precious miracles to come, they will and I promise you, it's all worth it and then some! Hang in there!