Prayers

I am so blessed to have a beautiful healthy little boy. Every day I look at him and I know how lucky I am that he is and always has been healthy. This is not the case for so many other little ones out there.

Back in January, I began following little Harper Stamp's story.



I prayed for that darling little girl daily and asked for her strength as well as strength for her parents and the doctors and nurses who cared for her. I am so happy to say that Harper is doing great and is at home and getting cuter every day! I have continued to follow her Mommy's blog and have found a number of other sweet little babies and children who are in need of all of our Prayers. I figure the best way to tell you their stories is to just post the links to their parents' blogs. If you could please take a few moments to pray for these precious little ones. Pray for their strength and for them to heal. Pray for the strength of their parents and also for that of the medical professionals who care for them daily. There are a couple that I will list that have already lost their little ones. Please pray for their families. They need us all during these difficult days. Thank you all so much.

• Abby
• Andie Grace
• Bevins Family
• Gledhill Family
• Green Family
• Katie
• Makenna
• McKay Family
• Mikels Family
• Others..................
• Simmons Family
• Tipping Family
• Wagner Family
• Williams Family

Pee Pee in the Potty!

That's right my big boy went pee pee on the potty for the first time tonight! I didn't think he was anywhere near ready and wanted to wait til he was around 2 years old to start potty training, but Daddy wanted to try before he deployed so we got a potty last week. We have been sitting him on it and he has been scared silly up until tonight. Daddy sat him on it before bath and he went! Mommy missed it though! I made him a potty chart when we bought his potty, so he got to put a sticker on and he was so happy! Then he gave everyone high fives. He was so proud of himself! We will see how he does tomorrow! I am so proud of him!!

I'm Feeling Crafty

I have been doing a lot of sewing lately. I've sewed before in the past, but I'm by no means an expert and I still make plenty of mistakes. I got a sewing machine for Christmas and have done quite a bit of sewing since.

We switched Alex over to cloth diapers about 2 months ago. In the long run it saves us money and it is better for the environment than disposable diapers that take forever to decompose. Another plus is that we can use the diapers on our next baby as well. I bought a couple of different cloth diaper patterns and made 5 cloth diapers. The rest of our stash we bought, but I was quite proud of the ones I made :) Here is a picture of one of them.



I just love that fabric. It's called Ooga Booga and it is so cute! I made him some pajamas out of the same fabric to match his diaper.


I bought the blue t-shirt and then I added the long sleeves and the little "ooga booga monster" on the shirt. It is hard to see from the picture but I did add some arms and legs to the little monster on the shirt. There are also matching pants. Alex loved them when I put them on. He loves the fabric and just kept pointing at them and saying "Oooo". :)

I'll be making another trip to the fabric store in a little bit to pick out something to make Alex another set of pajamas. I never thought I would enjoy sewing as much as I do. It makes me feel very accomplished :o)

Urgent Care

Alex has been sick since Monday. He has been sick a few times before in his life where he was all stuffed up and congested, but this time he had a really loose cough to go along with it. The only other time he had a cough in his life was when he was 4 months old and we flew out to San Diego for Christmas. He ended up with bronchitis. Needless to say ever since he started coughing on Monday I have been worried. Up until yesterday it had just been a loose cough, but then yesterday it sounded like it was settling into his chest and he was running a small fever. I immediately called his doctor. They had no appointments left for the day. WHAT???!! How can a pediatricians office with 6-7 doctors not have ANY appointments left for sick children?? I was then transferred to the nurse triage line where I had to explain what was going on again. She told me I could A)wait it out a couple of days to see how he was feeling, B) take him to urgent care or C) I could wait until Saturday morning at 8am and call the other office to try to get him in on Saturday. So when my Mom got off work we took him to Urgent Care. Luckily we were 4th in line when the opened at 4 so we didn't have to wait TOO long.

Now Alex DESPISES the doctors office. But what little one wouldn't? All they know is doctors=shots. He started screaming and crying the second we walked back to the room. He got himself so upset he almost puked a few times. I brought everything I could think of to comfort him, but nothing helped. Not his binky, nor his stuffed doggy "Spot", nor his blanket. The doctor looked him over and said that it was not settling into his chest and his lungs and breathing sounded great. They tested his oxygen level and said that was great as well. Then she checked his ears. He has the beginning of an ear infection. I am so glad I followed my instinct that it wasn't just a cold and took him in. If I would have waited all weekend the doctor even said he would have been in a lot of pain from the ear infection getting worse. So now we are on a round of antibiotics to get rid of the infection. Hopefully he starts feeling better soon.

Oh the Sleepless Nights

Will they ever get better? I know eventually they will, but I guess I just assumed it would have happened by now. I know I said I wasn't going to blog about Alex again this next time, but I got quite a few comments saying how much everyone loved reading about him, so I figured it was okay :)

For those of you who don't know, let me give you a little background info on how Alex has slept since he was born. When he was first born we co-slept. I know a lot of people have a lot of different views on this and it doesn't always work for some, but it worked for us. We made our bed as safe as we possibly could. I did tons of research on safe co-sleeping and we made every necessary adjustment to our bed. Scott & I each used our own blanket and tucked it around us so it could not cover over his face. I could go on and on defending our choice to co-sleep, but I'm not going to. It worked for us at the time and all was well.

When Alex was around the age of 5 months, we started the process of moving him to his own crib. It was a hard process. Mainly because he was still nursing at night. He would sleep in his crib but I was up almost every 30 min-1 hour. Around 7 months I stopped nursing him all together because I went back to work. He was still up a lot at night even when he wasn't nursing. I finally bought a book called "The No-Cry Sleep Solution" because I knew I couldn't handle letting him "cry it out". I read the book and we implemented the plans outlined in the Sleep Solution book. It took a few weeks, but eventually Alex was sleeping in his own bed all night waking only 1-2 times a night. He was even taking good naps at this time.

I know Im missing some things along this "sleep timeline" because his schedule has changed so many different times, I can't even remember all of the changes. Then came the cutting of the molars. For the past 4-5 months or so, he has been waking every 1-2 hours again. It isn't just as simple as laying him back down and giving him back his binky and he will go back to sleep. No he wants to be picked up and rocked. I know so many people have told me, don't give in, don't pick him up he will eventually get the picture. Okay we tried that. MANY times. And each and every time he will get himself so upset that he ends up throwing up all over his crib and himself. So we tried every time he wakesup and wants to be picked up, we pick him up, rock him until he is almost asleep and then laying him in his crib to fall the rest of the way to sleep on his own. DOESN"T WORK!!

The last month or so I have been so worn out from not sleeping, that I've given in and let him sleep with us again starting around 1 in the morning. I just can't keep going getting up every 1-2 hours and having to rock him for 20-30 min to get him back to bed. It was starting to affect my daily life and attitude. So needless to say for the past month or so he has been sleeping in our bed again. I know what you are thinking...I've let us take 100 steps back. I just don't know what to do.

Right now he is sick so I'm not trying anything new until he is all better. He was up until midnight last night coughing and just unhappy and eventually coughed so much he puked all over our bed. Luckily he slept til 10am so he was able to get some much needed rest, but now his nap schedule is all messed up today. Its a never ending cycle! :)

I love my son more than anything in this world, but I guess I just assumed that by 18 months, he would be sleeping through the night. I know it's mainly mine and Scott's fault for giving in and letting him sleep with us again, but we were just desperate to sleep! I guess this post was more of just me ranting and getting it all out. Thanks to those of you who have read this far!

P.S. I apologize if I rambled or totally lost my train of thought a few times on that blog..I am running on a few hours of sleep. Although Alex slept from midnight to 10am, I sure didn't! When he sleeps with us he tosses and turns and kicks and punches us :)

A Year is A Long Time

Scott should be leaving anytime now. We still don't know an exact date and that is very frustrating. We would like to at least know how many days we have until he leaves, but we don't so we are just spending every second we can as a family. I still don't think it will completely sink in until he is gone...a year is a LONG time to be gone, but he is doing it for us, for our family, to better our future. All of the sacrifices will be worth it in the long run.

As for everything else, it is all going pretty well. Except for the face that Alex is sick. He has had a very loose cough for a few days now. Poor little guy just doesn't feel well at all. I hate seeing him not feeling well. He is sleeping worse than normal...which for anyone who knows how poorly he sleeps in the first place, can imagine how little sleep we are all getting right now. As soon as he feels all better, I am going to stick with a plan to get him to sleep better and sleep in his own bed. We have always let him go back to the old habit of sleeping with us and I know it is only going to make things harder, but I know I have to do it.

We took him to get some professional pictures done for his 18 month milestone. He is normally such a ham when it comes to the camera at home, but the photographer couldn't seem to get the best smiles from him. However, the pictures still came out great!










His new favorite thing to do is color. I got him some Tadoodle crayons and a coloring book and he loves to draw pictures for Mommy & Daddy! I have a feeling he is going to be very creative and love arts and crafts. I plan on starting a new project every week with him once he is feeling all better. Right now he doesn't want to do much, except lay around. He is also really big into reading. He has about 30 books and we read each one about 3-4 times a day (at least!). I am so glad that he loves reading so much. He is so smart. And boy does he have a personality! What a ham he is! He knows how to get a reaction out of people so he is constantly "performing" for us. I can't wait to hear the things that will come out of his mouth once he is really "talking". He is such a crack up!

I know my blog is always about Alexander, so I think my next post, I will try to post about something else. Maybe. :) After all he is the most important thing in my life!

It's been a while...

That seems to be a theme with my blogs doesn't it? I go weeks without blogging and then I remember that its been weeks so I get online to blog and realize I have a TON to write about! I guess we should start off with the holidays since I last left off at Halloween.

Thanksgiving was great. I ate A LOT! So I went off of my diet for the holidays a little bit. Honestly, who doesn't?? Who can tell me with all honesty that they stuck to their diet 100% during the holidays? Well I sure couldn't! I did get very lucky though and I only managed to gain back 1 lb of what I had lost. I don't have any idea how I only gained back 1 lb, but hey I'm not gonna argue with my scale! Alex loved Thanksgiving dinner. His favorite was the fruit salad that I always make. Go figure! He loves his fruit. After Thanksgiving dinner, we all sat around and relaxed and watched a Christmas Story. Its usually a tradition. Then the next day, we decorated for Christmas.

Christmas was wonderful too. I did uphold all of the traditions I wanted to with Alex. We looked at Christmas lights on Christmas Eve and opened up one present before bed. Alex loved it!


Then we got ready for bed and I let him color or "write a note to Santa" :o)


And then it was time for bed and we read "Twas the Night Before Christmas"



The next morning when Alex woke up, we opened presents and then had breakfast. The rest of the day was spent enjoying time with the family and watching a Christmas Story and other Christmas movies. Here are a few pics of opening presents.


The holidays were great and I'm kinda sad to see them gone.

Alex has been chatting up a storm. He has been saying new words like crazy. He can make the sounds for a cow, duck, and sheep and dog. He has a book of "first words" and he can say a few, but he can point out everything in that book. He is so smart! He does a whole dance to the Blue's Clues theme song too. Its so adorable! I have yet to get that on video the whole way through though because every time I bring out the camera he stops dancing. :o)

Last Saturday night he had a little accident. He was running from the living room into the hallway and right where it turns to tile in the hallway he fell and he bit all the way through his bottom lip. It was awful. There was blood everywhere and he was screaming so much. I felt horrible and all the blood really freaked me out. I immediately wanted to take him to the ER, but we were able to get the bleeding to stop within 5 minutes. I called the ER and they said there probably wouldn't be too much they could do for it, but if we wanted to bring him in we could. We decided against it because it wasn't bad enough to need stitches. In fact its almost healed already. I do have some pictures of his lip the next day, but they are still on my camera. I will post them soon.

Scott found out on Monday that he may be losing his job. The company he works for is contracted through the Marine Corps. Well because his company bought out another company, they are now considered a "large" company. The time came at the beginning of this month to renew their contract with the Marine Corps. But because they are now considered a "large" company, they have to be in the contract with a smaller company. In the end Scotts company only got a small percentage of the contract, whereas another one got the majority of it. Scotts place of work will be going from 36 positions to 14 and they are going to be keeping the people that have been there the longest. I was defintely freaked out and scared at what would happen if he were to lose his job. However, things are starting to look a little better. The other company that got the contract will have 60 new positions open up-16 of which are what Scott does (flight line mechanic) and he has a pretty good chance of getting a job with them. We won't know the final outcome for a couple of weeks because there is a probationary period or something with the contract to be completely finalized. Its so confusing! But everything with the military is :o) I should have known that from when he was enlisted in the Marine Corps.

Anywho, that about sums up the last few months for us. I hope to do better about updating this. We will see how that goes :)