I feel like I'm always on the verge of tears. Not the "I can't handle this" kind. The "I can't believe she's mine", "She's so perfect" kind. Peyton has just started to babble and with each aa and oo my chest hurts just a little bit. It feels like my heart is swelling a little more with each new sound, and look, and cuddle. I was just a little bit worried to start with. How can one person hold on to so much love? But then I realized I don't hold it, she gets it all back. What a wonderful cycle of feelings don't you think?

I had planned on packing up her newborn clothes today. It was SO hard to bring myself to get up because she was snuggled on my chest asleep, but I walked into her room and laid her down in her beautiful crib that she rarely sees. My heart did the little painful thing I talked about and I ran for the camera. I got to take just a couple of shots before it woke her up. Then I picked her up and left her room. I can pack up her clothes later...

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago and never published it... but here it is now :D


4 weeks. For four wonderful weeks I've had the pleasure of kissing, smelling, holding, feeding, soothing and falling head over heels madly in love with my little girl. Yep, she's here people and I've slacked at announcing it. We've been busy.. lol


Oct 26th I woke up about 7am, took a shower and as I was getting out I felt a gush. I realized my water broke. I called the hospital about an hour later when my contractions started, asked if I should come in to get checked before I called my husband or if I should have him take me. The nurse said to call Jonny so I called him, asked him if he wouldn't mind coming home and then started cleaning the house and doing the dishes because I knew I'd be at the hospital for a couple of days and my parents were flying in the next night. :P

Jonny got to the house and took our bags out the the garage, put the car seat in the car and off we went. Once we got there they put me on the monitor and saw I was having contractions every 2 mins. I was at 4 centimeters and they did a test to make sure it was my water that had broke. When the test came back they said it wasn't my water and asked me to walk the halls for a couple of hours to see if I could make anymore progress.

I was SO embarrassed. I was positive it was my water that broke and I hadn't just peed myself or something. So I huffed and puffed and walked around in a horrible mood and my contractions got worse. They weren't horrible but it got to the point were I had to stop walking when they came on.

When we got back to L&D to be checked I told the doctor to please tell me I was more then a 4. She said said I was at 5 and we could stay and have a baby. (YAY!)

We meet our nurse and walked over to our room (I was already gowned up). Inside my room were about 10 people. lol They were taking a tour of the ward. My nurse kicked them out and got me in bed with strict orders to GO TO SLEEP after an hour or so they started pitocin.. I don't know how they expected me to sleep though pitocin contractions but I decided if I needed to sleep I needed the epidural. Once I got the epidural it was smooth sailing. I had 2 different doctors try and break my water and both couldn't get to it.

Once the time came I had 4 pushes with the nurse and 2 pushes with the doctor and Peyton was born. I told them I wanted her with me right away but when she came out they told me they needed to clean her up first and took her to the warmer to look her over. I asked if she was ok and the doctor said yes but seemed a little stressed so I asked if I was ok. She said yes. I kept having to remind Jonny to take pictures because he was too busy gushing over his daughter to remember he had the camera.. lol I was still being stitched up when they brought Peyton back to me. Turns out I had a postpartum hemorrhage, and they had been trying to stop the bleeding. Peyton was perfectly healthy (and I don't remember my water ever breaking during delivery, could it be because it already had...  lol)

Then Breast feeding started off well. We looked like we had it down, but I started getting really sore, like crying thinking about having to feed her sore, and we went to a lactation consultant who told me Peyton has a high palate so even though we're doing everything right it's like she has a bad latch. Got a nipple shied which helped but I was still frustrated and in pain. A week after seeing the consultant I wasn't feeling well so I took my temp. It was 100.9 so Jonny and I went to the doctors. Turns out I have mastitis I had to get my first round of antibiotics though IV. ugh. So now I'm pumping and finding out I'm not getting enough milk so we had to start supplementing with formula. Peyton wasn't gaining weight before but is now up to 9 pounds 4 ouncesIt's just been the craziest 4 weeks of my life! My family was here for 2 weeks and now Jonny's's mom is here until the 3rd . We'e very grateful for all the help :D

Well, I am 37 weeks! WHOO! I know swelling is just apart of being pregnant so I didn't really worry about my feet being too big for my shoes. Then I noticed that my right foot was swelling a LOT more then my left. I mentioned it to my mom and she encouraged me to do what Google says and call my doctor. I shrugged it off for a while. Well, today my feet were pretty much to same size but my right leg started to hurt a bit. This made me worry. Google says if one swells more it could be a blood clot, so with the swelling and new pain I went ahead and called my doctor after my mom again encouraged me to do so. They asked me to come in. Jonny has 24 hour duty tomorrow so I told him to stay home and I drove out into the night to make sure it was nothing serious. Once I got to the hospital they hooked me up to some monitors (just because it's routine) and left me there because they were having a crazy night and it was obvious I wasn't going to have a baby.

The nurse looked at my legs and assured me I did the right thing by coming in and she thinks my leg is red and my foot is defiantly more swollen then the other one. she looked at my monitor and said "oh look you just had a contraction. Did you feel that?" I reply "nope, didn't feel a thing" When she left an intern came in to examine my legs and told me "eh, doesn't look like anything wrong" he then left and an hour or so later (the wonderful nurse kept coming in to talk to me and bring me ice water. She was super sweet) the doctor showed up she took on look at me and said "I'm not even going to ultrasound it, that'd be a waste of your time at this point. You're fine" The she took a look at my monitor and said "well, I'm going to examine you. Your have contractions every 2-5 mins. did you know that?" I told her I'd started to realize what I was feeling when I was watching the monitor but I didn't know before coming in.

Turns out I'm just a fingertip dilated. But that's better then nothing right!? Now I just need to figure out some ways to get some real labor stuff started. lol

I got home from the hospital a few hours ago and now that I know what I should be "feeling" for I'm noticing contractions left and right and the seem to be getting a little painful. Although, the pain could be all in my head at this point.. lol. It's all very exciting and of course is not helping with my insomnia....

I'll leave you with a picture of Peyton's' crib. It's pretty adorable if you ask me :)

It's not the best picture ever but I felt like a new belly picture was needed..... I'm not really 31 weeks until Sunday ;)

I haven't posted in over a month! A whole MONTH! Eek!

Jonny and I moved into our new place a few weeks ago and we're still working out the kinks. I have one box I just can't seem to get unpacked... There's so much more storage here. I love having a garage to store all of our extra things instead of having to use the 2nd bedroom like we did at the last place, lol.

I thought after moving here we'd go baby shopping crazy and get Peyton's room all set up for her but that has yet to happen. lol I don't know where to start with getting stuff! Jonny's mom has mentioned she wants to help us get the crib. It's so sweet of her! Jonny's making me wait for that to happen before I buy the bedding... but the bedding is already back ordered until the 15 of October! (I think we're going with a slightly different pattern it'll save us about $50).

New bedding:



The one big thing we have done since we moved in was redo the backyard. The grass was completley dead when we moved in so Jonny dug it all out and we laid sod (which has turned out to be much harder to keep alive then I thought it would.) I posted the pictures of it on facebook but in case you didn't see here they are:

I forgot to take a picture of the grass in the backyard before we took it out. Here's the front yard to get an idea :)

 

Backyard with the grass gone...



From above



Yay new grass!







I know that last picture makes Jonny look bald.. lol  He's got a short hair cut, was outside all day and it is HOT here in VA. lol

So, since moving here to the new place I've learned something...

This stuff...



LIES!

After all of the reviews I read and all the products I looked at... I decided this $30 or $40 (I can't remember which) bottle of oil was going to be my answer to making it though unmarked...

(if your offended by naked belly pictures it's probably best you don't scroll down.. lol)

DUN DUN DUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I was going to save myself the embarrassment and not post this picture but, what the hey, it is what it is.

I honestly knew I was going to end up with them.... it's just so sad when it really does happen. Oh and yeah, notice the belly button not popped? That was one thing I was looking forward to, really, I was.. lol and it didn't (and i don't think it will) happen.

Well I'll do my best to put up some house pictures here soon.. I was really hoping to put stuff on the walls before we showed it off but I keep wanted to do Peyton pictures and am having a hard time committing to anything else.. lol

LOVE YOU ALL!!!

A belly picture.. :)

I've been meaning to post some pictures of the view from our roof top garden. I've only got 10 more days to do it before we move!

Here are just a couple. It was a raining yucky day and my photos look so sad. lol I'll try again another day but for now .......

The Pentagon

Arlington Cemetery
 

Washington Monument 

Jefferson Memorial and the Capital Building

Why I should always put away the laundry after folding it.

(Please excuse the mess we're packing up to move! )

It's been too long :)

I feel super horrible that I haven't posted anything in over 2 weeks! Not a whole lot had changed around here. Still house shopping and planning our move, which happens in exactly two weeks from today. :)

Last weekend I enter a contest they mentioned on the morning news and won 2 tickets to a private screening of Knight and Day. The deal was I had to pick up the tickets from the station that day before 5pm and the movie was showing the next night. So, Jonny and I drove down to the station and picked up the tickets. When I got back in the car Jonny asked me what we had to wear to the screening. I thought it was going to be a pretty casual thing but after we got home I got worried about it and googled "what to wear to a private movie screening" not a whole lot came up but the things that did mostly said either a dress and cardigan or dark jeans, a nice top, and a cardigan. I didn't have a dress or pants that fit me because my belly has decided to greatly expand in the past couple weeks. Jonny and I ended up finding a Gap maternity and buying me some jeans (which are WAY to long, I need to get them hemmed) and a cute light weight cardigan. Then we stopped by JcPenneys and bought me some Vans Canvas shoes. There was no way I was going to go in heels and figure I could pull off and Ellen look for the night. We spent about$100 on stuff to wear to our free movie. lol Of course once we got into the theater everyone else was wearing flip flops, shorts and t-shirts.. lol Oh well. I'll still get use out of the stuff we bought. :)

Last Tuesday we had our Big ultrasound :) Turns out Peyton is still a girl and everything else looks great. They didn't say anything about Placenta previa so I'm guessing that fixed itself. What was even more exciting happened later that night. I finally convinced Jonny that putting a flash light on my belly wasn't torturing our child and he brought one home from work. We laid down and after just a few seconds of putting the light on my stomach Peyton kicked me hard enough that Jonny felt it for the first time!!! I'm so happy that I get to share these kicks and rolls with him now.

Heres a picture of our little one. They weren't able to get a very good profile picture of her. They even tried to show us in 3D but she just didn't have enough fluid around her face to get anything super clear. and they didn't give us a copy of the 3D picture. lol

My best friend is amazing.

When I was in high school my friend had a baby and told me I was to be his god mom. There was never anything official done, no church ceremony, or anything like that, but it was nice to know she wanted me to have special involvement with her son, Jason.

Fast forward a year or so, I met Laura. I can't remember how long we hung out before I told her that whenever I had a baby I wanted her to be the god mom. I've never been involved in church so I really don't know what is supposed to happen with god parents, but I use it as I did in high school, I want that person to have special involvement with my baby's life no matter if they are blood or not.

Laura is Peyton's god mom and she sent her god daughter a bunch of "commercialized love" today. a huge box from Pottery Barn Kids was delivered to the house and Jonny and I sat around it and opened each beautifully wrapped gift. here are a few things she sent us :)

These ones are all monogrammed:

(the pink bunny one) :)

and just a few days ago she sent these.....

Ah! baby heaven!!!!

Thank you thank you thank you!!!

Home stuff

Jonny and I are a *little* obsessed with an HGTV series called Sara's house. It's a show from Canada and in this season Sara bought a farm house, gutted it and redid it to suit her. We love pretty much every room she puts together.

We even bought the exact same dinning chairs that she uses in her dinning room. Look how awesome it is!

The chairs will be used with this table:

We went to home goods yesterday and picked out some bedding to go in our new room. Sara used a dark bed and a really light quilt but Jonny's in the middle of painting our bedroom furniture white so we went for a more colorful look.

Here's Sara's room:

And our bedding (horrible picture, I know..)

We also found the lamps at home goods but they are the wrong color so they will be painted as well :)

Oh and heres a picture of our bedroom set all dark an sad looking. It looks awesome so far but I'll save the pictures for when it's finished. :)

Girl

It's a GIRL!

A Sweet, little, beautiful, wonderful, perfect All-American girl!

I was feeling pretty light headed and called my mom to complain about it. She demanded I call the doctor because no matter how many times I told it was normal, she just didn't believe my googled information. I promised her I would call, and left a message with acute care. Interestingly enough they asked me to come in the next day to get a CBC (which I'm assuming stands for current blood count). They told me I would have to wait an hour for the results so I sat down in the waiting room with Jonny. They called our name and we were taken into one of the rooms with a ultrasound machine. I looked at the machine, I looked at Jonny, and I decided I was going to do my best to get them to let me see my baby. The doctor came in told me the results hadn't come back yet but she wanted to ask me what was going on. After we discussed my blood disorder she asked me if there was anything else... I told her I had a problem. I said "I don't know if i'm having a boy or girl yet..." she asked if I had scheduled my big ultrasound appointment and I said I had but it was a full month away. Lucky for me, the doctor was super sweet and said we could take a peek and see if the baby was in an easy position to find out.

The doctor repositioned the ultrasound wand about 10 different times and each time she saw 3 lines. nothing in between the legs. "Looks like a girl!" she said. She told us not to take tags off of anything we buy but when I asked her for a percentage of how sure she was that it was a girl she just smiled nodded her head and said "I'm pretty sure"

We'll be expecting Peyton Nicole :)

Here is the bedding we've already picked out:

Let me know what you think!

New stuff

A few days ago Jonny and I decided we were going to go antique shopping, or in our case it's really antique browsing.. lol. We planned a list of places to go and I added Pottery Barn to the list. Turns out it was the closest to our house so we headed there first. I walked in and sighed and Jonny fell in love with everything. I've been telling Jonny I'd like to do something different with our living room for a long time but it was never right time to get it done. Now that we have a move coming up and will have a new place to work with I think we're about ready for change. Here's a look at what our living room looked like when we FIRST got it done.

Now we'd like to lighten it up. We're planning on light light tan walls a blue accent wall. leather pieces and awesome rugs.

Here are some of the things we've bought for the new place:

Better look at the lamp

We got this rug in 6X9 for only $200 saving about $500 :)

and these three pillows:

We have a lot more to do. We're planning on keeping our couches and our dinning room table and just added more pieces like an ottoman, a couple chairs and a chaise lounge. We're going to splitting them up into two rooms, the living room and the great room.

What do you think so far?

dinner, cats and a moose

I promised myself that I was going to keep up with this blog no matter how boring things got. I haven't posted in a few days so I told myself I HAD to tonight.

It's hard to talk about nothing.

Yesterday, Jonny and I went out to dinner at On The Border. It's a yummy Mexican restaurant that another military wife introduced us to. The only problem is it's about a 30 min drive. by the time we got there my stomach hurt so bad that I was afraid to eat freely. lol. The rest of my meal is sitting in the fridge waiting for me, but I never eat restaurant leftovers.... I'm a little strange. My second job was in fast food and I had to take a food safety class. Ever since I'm manage to convince myself that by the time everyone is done eating at a restaurant, everything is boxed up, driven home, and put in the fridge my food has been in the "danger zone" for too long and has grow bacteria that can make me sick. Jonny never seems to mind, more food for him a suppose. :)

After dinner I conviced Jonny to take a stroll around Ikea (LOVE IT!!!) We walked around and I pointed out things I wanted and jonny kept telling me "I'm not buying new stuff for the cats to ruin". We've had our two fur babies for about 2 years, in that time, they have managed to tear up most of our furniture. The couches have claw marks, the tables have scratches, and the knick knacks jonny brought home from Africa have been chewed on. I can see where he's coming from but the cats are here to stay so I'm trying to do everything I can to get them to stop. I'm planning on buying bitter spray for Jinx (the chewer) and possibly the claw caps for both of them.

I got a new photo editing program. I have no idea what I'm doing with it but I took one of my friends pictues that they posted on facebook and messed with it a little bit and I have to say I'm pretty proud of myself. Check it out:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

What do you think?

Webcam

My mom bought me a webcam. Well, it's really a joint gift to Jonny and I for our birthdays. She wanted to be able to see and talk to us when she wanted. The webcam made it to my house today and I got to ding around on it a bit. It has some awesome extras... I should just let the pictures speak for themselves...

So much fun! Thanks Mom!