Finally Home, with a 9 lb 2 oz baby in fact!

Sorry for not posting for the past couple days while we made our trip BACK to the hospital. Needless to say I was exhausted after staying up all night long Thursday night in the ER, having and Ambulance ride from hell to Louisville (that I will explain later) and then me coming down with my own cold/sinus infection that has made me feel like crap, and since Mallory was doing ok other than being a little congested, I failed to update the blog or really notify too many people as to what was going on.

I’ll try to be brief but here’s the basics:
We got home Thursday night from Kosairs around 8:30 pm. By the time we fed her and put her in bed her congestion seemed to be getting considerably worse, although acting normal, no freak out episodes like the Friday night before, so we got to thinking it must be something in the house and decided to make a frantic trip to Walmart to get some kind of filter and other stuff, so we loaded us all up in the suv and headed into town. I went on and called the Dr’s office and talked to the nurse since the blue bulb didn’t seem to be really helping suck out much of the congestion and she said if you really think it’s worse, go to the ER so they can check her out.

So we decided just to be safe we’d go by, I figured they’d suction her out a little and we’d be on our way, because otherwise she was looking and acting fine. So they brought us back fairly quickly since they knew our history (so nice to be recognized in the ER, sigh) and her O2 sats were high 90’s, no temp, and her congestion seemed much better since we left the house. They went on and did chest xrays again because I really think that’s all Owensboro’s Hospital knows how to do and they were then showing up with some pneumonia in one of her lungs. Now after the fact, it had probably been there all week and was on the down hill side of being a concern but because of that, it got us an automatic transfer, since apparently unless you have a broken bone or are having a baby, Owensboro is fairly useless. I tried to get them to send us to St Mary’s in Evansville which is only 1 hr away as opposed to 2, but they wouldn’t take us since we just got released from Kosairs. They also didn’t want us to drive the 2 hours, we had to go by Ambulance, AGAIN.

At this point it is like 3 in the morning, I just told Ben to go home and get some sleep so one of us would have some and that I’d go in the Ambulance again and he could come to Louisville once he got up and our stuff packed. The Ambulance finally arrived around 5 am and they were the most unprofessional ambulance team I’ve ever seen…..and they were out of Hopkinsville, so that probably says it all because all the one’s I’ve dealt with this year out of Owensboro have been great.

They crazy woman driving the ambulance didn’t even know how to get to Louisville from Owensboro, I mean she didn’t even know which way to turn out of the hospital parking lot. All I wanted to do was sleep during the ride since there was no real issue with Mallory but I ended up having to be the guide to the ambulance company to get to Louisville. I had to give her turn by turn directions all the way to the hospital. She had some piece of crap gps and she didn’t even know the street address of the hospital , which I did, so as she is trying to drive the ambulance and plug in the data to the gps I basically took it out of her hand so she could keep us out of the ditch and plugged in the address. Then she was fiddling with it again and lost the address I plugged in. At this point I just gave up and told her how to go and resigned myself to the fact I was getting no sleep.

You would also think that they would fill up with gas prior to a patient pick up. I mean, I know we were not in any life threatening situation, thank goodness because I would not have trusted these 2 for anything, but seriously, we had to stop for gas, not cool in my opinion. She was also blaring country music so even in the few places where I felt like I could sleep, I couldn’t because the music was so loud and I know she was doing it just to piss me off because I don’t think you could have put two people more like oil and water together. I was in total bitch, over protective, no sleep momma mode and she could tell I was appalled at everything they were and were not doing.

I could swear the guy who was in the back with Mallory had fallen asleep because I called back there to see what her O2 sats were and the driver had to like yell at him to get him to respond. Like I say, it was just the ride from hell and I was never so glad to get out of the ambulance.

Once we got to Kosairs everyone was helpful again and they gave her more antibiotics, but again, all her vitals were good, she sounded good, her O2 levels were good so they went on and admitted us just to keep an eye on her basically since they sent us all the way back over from Owensboro, AGAIN.

Mom was supposed to come up on Friday to stay with Mallory while I got some work done but since we weren’t home now she came up to Louisville to stay with us so I could basically get some sleep because I felt horrible and with no sleep, well it wasn’t helping matters any. So mom arrived around 11:30 and I tried to just sleep as much as I could that afternoon.

There wasn’t much for them to really do for Mallory because the pneumonia that was showing up had apparently been there and she was already recovering from it, she didn’t need oxygen, she didn’t need fluids because she was eating good again, so they had an IV lock on her so they could give her the antibiotic once a day through that, but otherwise, we were just crashing in the hospital for a couple days to double and triple check that everything was a ok.

We were still worried that perhaps some dust or dog hair in the house was the problem since it seemed like she got worse when we got home. So Mom and Aunt Sharon went to our house on Saturday and did some serious spring cleaning. It wasn’t that the house was that bad, they typical dusting and vacuuming had been done, but with being in the hospital so much this year, no DEEP cleaning had been done in preparation for Mallory to come home, so they did an amazing job, moved furniture, cleaned things that I probably would have forgotten about for years to come, so that way she was in the best environment we could offer.

Thankfully later on we had a good talk with several of the doctors and they reassured us that what Mallory has/had isn’t allergies, they just don’t develop them this young, so that there really shouldn’t be any issues with Tucker at this point. She could develop allergies later, but that’s not what this is.

We could have been able to go home Saturday but since we had just gotten there and they made us come back to Kosairs from Owensboro they decided to keep us until Sunday. She had her first gas pain episode Saturday night which kept her up and crying from like 9 pm to about 2:30 am. Not sure what finally helped her, but we finally got to sleep around 2:30. And of course, since we knew we were getting released on Sunday, the Doctor that was the one who could actually give the nurses the ok to release us took forever to come around, so it was 2:30 in the afternoon before we even saw her. But regardless, we got home around 4 or so on Sunday and Susan was on her way over from Sikeston so she could help clean up what Mom and Aunt Sharon couldn’t get to and then to keep Mallory for me while I worked this week so she could recover fully.

So, the past couple days has gone well. We went to the pediatrician Monday morning for a follow up from the hospital dismissal and Bean is up to 9 pounds 2 oz, so somehow although she didn’t eat much in the hospital, she has gained some since her appointment on the 9th. Thankfully she continues to sound good and seems to be back to her normal self and has her normal appetite back. I think Susan is enjoying having her to herself and getting to enjoy some Grammy/Mallory time while I’ve set up my office in the camper so I can concentrate on work but yet just be a few steps away from the house, so it’s working out very well.

Looking forward to Wednesday night with Scott, Amy and the kids come over from Kansas to stay for the long Holiday weekend!

Sorry that ended up being a way longer explanation of everything that has gone on since Thursday night, but now everyone knows it all!

There's an IV on my head!

Last night wasn't very peaceful....since she's finally gotten some food in her tummy and knows she's hungry but we don't want to let her eat as much as she normally does makes for a fairly fussy baby.

I got 2 more ounces down her at 10 and then another 2 at midnight. She still wouldn't settle down and go to sleep so the nurses gave her 3 oz around 2:30 in the am. She did spit some of that up, not all of it by any means but I did have to get up and change her out of her gown.

Got her up this am and fed her 2 oz and then had a coughing spell and spit all that up, so she still acted hungry so we went with another 2 and it came back up too with another coughing spell. I think like more of us she is more flemy/congested in the am and all the coughing brought breakfast right back up. So we let her sleep for a while and I fed her again around 10 and I just gave her 1 oz and she kept that down fine, no coughing spells.

Even with the lovely diaper foot, her iv in her foot still worked its way out so they called to have the "iv team" to come in and give her another new iv. In the meantime I fed her again 2 oz and of course just as I was finishing up the iv team came in....great I thought, screaming and kicking will for sure make her throw back up what I just fed her....amazingly enough she has a little spit up but not the vomiting of her entire stomach, so we were good to go.

They couldn't find another good vein in her arm or leg so they had to move to her head, which looks awful but gets the job done. I drew a flower on it to make it a little less scary and more girly! She doesn't seem to care that she has what looks to be an antenna coming out of her head!




I fed her again around 3 and she took another 2 oz no problems, so I'll probably up her a little more next time.

We do get moved to a regular room today and they came in and said good news we are heading up to the 7th floor and so I immediatly called Ben and told him and then as soon as I hung up the nurses phone rang and nope, for whatever reason, we no longer have that room, seriously it went from her telling me to getting that call in all of 3 mintues. Oh well, so we wait longer to move to a regular room. Good Grief.

I bought Mallory a puppet, or more like I bought myself a puppet to play with Mallory, not real sure what to think of it, but it seems to amuse her some....i've named it 'birdy.' Here's a picture of birdy and Mallory.




They did come back fairly quickly and got us a room on the 5th floor, so we are all moved in there. By the time we got settled in it was time to feed Mallory again and she was HUNGRY this time. I was only going to try to give her maybe 3 oz but she was starving and took 4. I'd say about 1 oz came back up in a coughing fit 15 mintues or so after she finished eating, but it was by no means all of it. Now she's just snoozing away.

As long as everything goes well it looks like we will be able to go home tomorrow, hopefully but I'm not going be set that we will either. I know I'm tired and ready to get back to our routine at home.

I think I'm going to have to find a different sitter though, I think she just has too many of her own kids and then a couple more that she watches that is just too many germs for bean.....so back to square one. Oh what I wouldn't do for a nice Amish girl who would come to the house....not going to find that in Owensboro though.

Fingers crossed her feedings continue to stay down and we get to come home tomorrow.

Diaper Foot

Diaper Foot: off patent use of a baby's diaper to pad the iv when located in the foot.



This is what we came back too last night after the iv that they put in her in Owensboro worked its way out.....a diaper on my childs foot. It helps them from knocking it around but somewhat alarming to see for the first time!

After not keeping any of her feedings down yesterday and having a conversation with my mother in law about Ben and Micah becoming sensitive to cows milk and having to switch over to soy milk that I thought who knows, perhaps some of her issues are due to a milk sensitivity....that can cause congestion, reflux, etc.

So after this mornings feeding with the Neosure that we use at home coming right back up about 2 minutes after she sucked it down I talked with the nurse and Nurse Practitioner about Ben having to be on soy and perhaps we should try that. They were fairly adament that they didn't think that was the problem and the Speech Therapist was going to come by at noon to feed her.

She had been fed numerous times in the NICU by a speech therapist and by the end was deemed a normal swollower. I know that's not the technical name for it, but she didn't have anymore eating issues basically. I also went through my theory with the speech therapist and she didn't think soy was the answer until.......Mallory succeeded in throwing it all up back on her about 2 minutes after she was finished eating. At that point she thought maybe trying soy wasn't such a bad idea!

She said she didn't need a swollow study, she ate fine, but they might want to do a reflux test where they drink that gross barium stuff and then do the xrays to see if and where it's refluxing, but if the soy worked, they may not need that.

So, with the spit up problems she was having they decided not to to move her to a regular room today.

They finally agreed to go get me some soy formula because at this point what could it hurt, so at 2 pm I fed her again, just 1 oz of soy formula to see how that worked.

1 oz down and it stayed down.

4 pm we fed 1 1/2 oz. She ate it and it stayed down.

7 pm we fed 2 oz and she ate all of it and it stayed down.

Hmmm, perhaps we are on to something here.

Who knows, but if soy is staying in her then we will go with that!

She's feeling much better today and now that she actually has some food in her tummy you can tell she's even more active

Here's a couple more pictures from today!

Normal CT Scan

We had our CT scan and that all came back normal, so they think her Brady episodes probably are just due to some reflux.

We've started feeding her formula again and she's taken to that much better than the pedialite they were trying to feed her yesterday. She took 2 oz this afternoon, she did spit part of it up when she was coughing, but I think that was just because she was coughing.

So, we will increase feedings to get her back closer to the 4-5 oz she normally takes per feeding and then there's a chance they might put her on zantac or something like that to help with reflux some.

Thankfully otherwise, she's done well today!! Fingers crossed for a regular room tomorrow.

Still in the PICU

We are still in the PICU today. She is doing much better though, she has her oxygen off and is keeping her oxygen sats up on her own, and her congestion is better, they haven't had to do a deep suction since about 2:30 pm on Sunday.

She has had a brady episode or two, which isn't uncommon in babies with congestion/drainage, but just to make sure there's nothing else going on they are going to do a CT scan this afternoon. It makes us a nervous wreck, but I still think all it is is her reflux on the drainage. She has had a few brady's over the past month or so that her apnea monitor had picked up that appeared to be due to reflux, so I'm hoping that's all it is.

We did finally get to feed her a little formula today and she took an ounce down without any problems, so we should be able to slowly increase that back to where she was before.

She looks SO much better and her lungs are sounding better so fingers are crossed that we avoided pnumonia.

We are about to head down for the CT scan and I'll update everyone again after that, hopefully all is normal there and we are just dealing with a little reflux and will get to go to a regular room soon and then head home.

Bean is acting much more like her normal little cute self!

Happy Fathers Day and Hospital Update

As some of you know, we ended up back in the hospital with Mallory yesterday. As hard as I tried to make sure her cold didn't develop any further by having the Dr check on her Friday morning, it didn't help.

She was crying around 4:30 am Sat morning to be feed and after changing her diaper and getting her bottle ready, once I sat her up I could tell she wasn't acting right and when she didn't snap out of it I got Ben up and we went quickly to the er. I think what was happening is that she was so congested that she couldn't really breathe deep enough and her blood oxygen SATs were dropping and her color was off and just basically couldn't catch her breath. But because she was breathing, which is good, her apnea monitor was of no help or alert because it doesn't test O2 sats, it was just me knowing something was amiss.

I really think the Owensboro hospital is good for little more than stabilizing and sending you elsewhere, at least as it pertains to kids, but with them transfering us back to Kosairs in Louisville, at least I know we are in good hands.

So, dejaveu once again, we are strapped into to ambulance and are heading to Louisville. I give Ben a list of things we need and he goes home to pack and then meets us back at the hospital. Thankfully once they got some O2 on her in Owensboro she was looking some better. They did a chest xray and didn't see pnumonia and tested for rsv which came back negative.

She is all settled into the picu and is looking much better this am. She's had some Brady/dsat episodes, but overall is doing good. She's had a couple more xrays and there's a little cloudiness in part of one of her lungs, it's still not pnumonia yet either but they are treating her with antibiotics to help it from going into full blown pnumonia. They have the good sucking mechanisims here to clean out her mucus and no wonder the bulb was of little help, it's really thick and deep.

If she continues to do well this morning we will be moved to a regular room and out of the picu.

She looks so much better today and is moving around a bit so I'm sure she is feeling better.

We slept on the pullouts in the room with her last night, I was so tired from no sleep Friday night that I coulda slept anywhere and from all that nicu time I have basically trained my brain to know when to ignore the alarms that don't matter and only wake when the true alarms that mean something go off, so I slept fairly well. Ben on the otherhand I'm sure will be finding alternate sleeping arrangements tonight!

So keep the prayers coming, she's doing better but I want my happy baby back!

Here's the picture the nurses did for Ben for fathers day and of bean in her bed.







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Annoyed and other less Annoying stuff....

Annoyed….

Here I was all excited at the prospect of having someone come to clean our house again and she called me Thursday afternoon before we were supposed to meet and told me that she just thought we lived too far out for her to drive and clean our house. Whatever. She told me where she lives and we can’t live more than 10 miles from her, it’s probably further for her to drive to the other side of Owensboro than to get to our house. Again, whatever. Just pisses me off.

I guess I need to remember that small town America people don’t like to drive. For me its nothing to hop in the car and drive an hour somewhere because I want to, not so much the case with some people. So, the quest to find someone to clean our house continues as the dust continues to build….( just kidding, I will clean/dust, but it probably will not get done as frequently as it should.)

This week has been crazy with babies, birthdays and weddings….so, just so I don’t miss anyone….

Monday the 14th: Happy Birthday Aunt Sharon
@ 12:59 pm Easton Mills was born, a happy baby boy! Yeah Lacey & Justin!
Tuesday the 15th: John Douglas Rue was born to Mendy and her husband Ryan! (Love it when
they use her maiden name in the baby’s name, unfortunatly Caughlin doesn't have quite the ring that Douglas does, LOL!!)
Wednesday the 16th: My birthday, enough said.
Friday the 18th: Ben’s Dad’s Birthday, Happy Birthday Bud!!
Kelli at works Birthday, the big 3-0 I understand!
Saturday the 19th: Misty and Jake are getting married!! So happy for you guys!
Sunday the 20th: Ben’s first Father’s Day and Happy Father’s day to Daddy and Bud!

I think that covers it all…..it’s been a good week!

It's summer and that means the college kids selling Southwestern Books are running around.....and somehow, although the cleaning lady doesn't want to, Lathen from one of the Florida schools, found our house. I know a little about Southwestern, Ben's brother sold books for them one summer and got shipped off to Eugene, OR to do it, and I'm not sure Lathen quite knew how to handle someone that acually understood what he was doing and just wanted to see the books! It's like he didn't quite know how to handle straying from the very scripted sales pitch they are supposed to give at every house. So, I mustered up some patience and just let him go through it all!

Thankfully the books were for little kids, educational and scientific, and I bought them because I'm a sucker for books, and I wish Lathen the best, and although this is his second summer with Southwestern and it does take balls to go knock on random peoples doors, I'm not real sure he's cut out for sales in the real world......thankfully he is a computer engineer major, that should work better for him.

I've made it to the gym at lunch 3 times this week, so yeah for me. I finally transferred some of my audio books to my iphone so I can listen to books while I work out. As I said above, I'm a book nerd, prefer non fiction, criminal mysteries and the occasional chick lit and since I don't really have a lot of time to just curl up with a good book right now, I listen while sweating on the elliptical. I've found www.audible.com which I love and buy books from there, and now that we have DSL and not Hughes net, it only takes a few mintues to download a book and not half a day. So, this week I started the Devil Wears Prada....haven't seen the movie yet, had rather invision it in my head as it's being read to me and then I might watch the movie. Books I love, movies, not so much. I think the Hangover was the last movie we saw. Once I work out my way through 14 hours of the Devil Wears Prada, I will move on to the next 3 books by one of my Fav authors, Kathy Reichts, the books that the tv show Bones is very loosly taken from. Can't wait!

Ben is making his way home from South Dakota today, will arrive back in Evansville around 8:30 tonight.....ready to have him back home!

Mallory went back to the doctor this morning for the rest of her 2 month shots, I'm trying to divide them up a bit and they wern't sure if insurance would cover these or not, so we held off on them until I could check and see. She's such a little trooper, hardly cries at all! We will see how that works when she's older and actually knows and understands what's going on!

She's also been congested, which isn't that alarming, but I was a little concerned when she was coughing this morning so we saw the Dr real quick while getting her shots. He said she sounds clear and as long as it doesn't get worse or start a fever she should be fine. I called him again this evening because she just sounds horrible, it's just the congestion and she's just going to sound that way but I so wish you could just blow her nose! No fever, so we will just watch it and hope it doesn't get worse..

I'll post some more pictures tomorrow, I'm on the laptop with her in my lap right now, so it's not real easy to get to the desktop.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Happy Birthday to Me today!

33 Years ago mom had me, almost a month past my due date! I know she was ready to evict me from the womb!

Once you are past about 25, birthdays aren’t really all that exciting, but good never the less. Ben’s out of town this week in South Dakota doing some Raven gps training, so it’s just me, Mallory and Tucker! We will just have some good cuddle time tonight with Mallory, and Tucker too and just enjoy each other.

I started the day off with birthday coffee from Starbucks, went to the gym at lunch and then grabbed Panera for lunch, so got two of my favorites in. I’ll just have Ben grill me something good this weekend to celebrate! I also made a call to a cleaning lady to see if we could get someone back at the house every two weeks to clean again….at night I just don’t really have time, I don’t want to devote my entire weekends to cleaning house and I just hate doing it, so works for me to pay someone else to come do it for me a couple times a month. I don’t mind running the vacuum from time to time (since we have the Dyson Animal that is) so it’s really the dusting, mopping, etc that I hate and never seem to find the time for.

I’d much rather spend my time with Mallory and Ben and just pay someone $100 a month to clean my house. Happy Birthday to me! So we will see, I’m going to meet with them tomorrow after work (which means I have to have the house somewhat straight when they show up so I don't scare them away, LOL!). The lady I had before went back to work full time right before I ended up in the hospital, so it’s been several months since I’ve had someone on a regular basis and I can tell it’s just not going to get done in a very timely manner if I’m left to be the one to do it!

Now if I could just hire someone to grocery shop and cook…..

Since I had yet to get a bouncer for Mallory at any of my showers, I did a little more investigating and decided I didn't really like the one I registered for anyway, so I just took it off the list and ordered her a Baby Bjorn Babysitter Bouncer. It was a little more money than the one I registered for, but they can use it up until they are like 2 and it had really good reviews, so I was sold. I scoured craigslist looking to find one cheaper but they were all too far a way to just go pick up, so her new bouncer arrived today! So here's a few pictures of Bean enjoying her new "seat," one of me and bean and then Tucker watching over all of us!

Tummy Time Video!

Here's a little video we took today of Bean spending some time on her tummy lifting her head and kicking her legs around!

Life with Ground Beef....

I forgot to add some comments about my quest to find new recipes to use Ground Beef in...

Since we bought a quarter of a cow from BIL (brother in law for those that don't speak text or forum speak) and it seems as though half of it is ground beef in 2 1/2 pound bags instead of 1 pound bags, I've got to have at least 2 ground beef meals per week when we thaw it out and can sometimes get three meals.

So, If you have any yummy ground beef recipes to pass along, please send them to me!!

Thus far I've scoured the site www.allrecipes.com which is one of my favs and have come up with 2 that we've made thus far.

The Mac N Cheese with Ground Beef needed some extra help....I'll probably tweak and remake it and try again.

The Enchilada recipe I really liked and Ben did too. I tweaked a bit upon making it and halved the recipe since it was just the two of us.

Here's the recipe I used for anyone that wants to try it...I halved it...

Enchiladas

Prep Time: 20 Minutes
Cook Time: 30
Minutes
Ready In: 50
Minutes
Servings: 8

INGREDIENTS:
2 pounds lean ground beef
1 large chopped onion
1 can of Refried Beans
2 packets of Taco Seasoning
2 small cans diced chilis
12 (8 inch) flour tortillas
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
8 ounces shredded Colby cheese
2 (19 ounce) cans enchilada
sauce
DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
2. In a heavy saucepan or skillet, brown the ground beef and onions and chilis.
Season the ground beef mixture with taco seasoning and then add refried beans and heat thoroughly and then add some cheese to taste and set aside.
3. In a skillet, fry the tortillas in vegetable oil. Spoon some meat mixture
and cheese into the center of each tortilla, roll them up and arrange
them in a 9x13 inch baking dish or oblong pan. Pour the enchilada
sauce over the rolled enchiladas and top with any remaining meat or
cheese.
4. Bake in the preheated 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 20 to 30
minutes.

Semi Wireless Baby!

Bean and I are about to head out to do a little shopping, gotta go to Kohls and Kroger and Target might get thrown in the mix as well...oh yeah, I need makeup too...lots of in and outs today. Ben gets to mow the yard while we are out and about.

I stayed home with Bean on Friday. She didn't want to eat very well Thursday night and then after sleeping for 7 hours Thursday night she only took 1 1/2 ounces instead of her typical 5 oz that she scarfs down after sleeping all night, so I was a little concerned. She acted a little more clingy than normal, so I think it may have had to do with her shots or she coulda just wanted some momma time and not been all that hungry, but either way, I may have over reacted, but we stayed home on Friday. Thankfully by lunch or a little after she seemed to be back to her normal self and I wasn't concerned anymore.

So, Mallory is doing great, she's awake more and interacting more with us. She likes looking at herself in her little mirror during tummy time and likes us to shake her rattle and there's another little toy that lights up and says different things that she likes to watch too. She's doing good at lifting up her head for longer times, so she's advancing along well! I still think she's a little ventriloquist because she can make more sounds without ever opening her little mouth!! She the queen of grunting!

Ben got to change his first poopy dipaer last night and he did great! I think his comment was it looks like paste....yep, mustardy paste, LOL!

We did a dump of her monitors data earlier this week and on Friday the Neonatal Dr's office in Louisville called and said everything was looking good, looked like she had only had a couple small "real" episodes back around Mid May that appeared to be due to reflux. How they can tell all that from the monitor that seems to go off for false alarms all the time is beyond me, but basically because she's been so good, we only have to have her hooked to the monitor when she's asleep and we aren't around her. So we have a Semi Wireless Baby now!! I feel a little bad because I never noticed or saw where she actually had a "real" episode, but they said they were quick and self recovered, obviously, but still, oh well. They said probably the next time we dump data we can take her off the monitor all together....part of me wishes we could just keep her on it at night until she's 6 months but I don't imagine the insurance will pay and we can just move to the angelcare monitor then I guess.

I've uploaded more recent photos to Mallor's shutterfly page that can be accessed here to the side of the blog to see other pictures. My new favorite app on the iPhone is the shutterfly app so I can quickly log on and see all my pictures of Mallory anytime I want!!

Also, in non baby related info, I was tipped off to two cool new websites this past week. The first is www.craiglook.com. Basically it's a search engine to search all craigs lists postings for whatever you are looking for, like a jogging stroller within 150 miles of Owensboro....very cool site!!

The second is www.sweatybands.com. I'm always on the quest to find a hair band to wear when I work out, clean house, ok, all the time, that doesn't slip and have to be readjusted ALL.THE.TIME!!! I think I've found them, these Sweaty Bands were inveted by a personal trainer up in Cincy and I bought one and it came in this week. LOVE!!! They don't slip off, I had it on for HOURS and never had to touch it. Will be buying more. They aren't as cheap as the rubbery ones you can get at Target or Walmart but they are SO worth it. Owning 3 is my goal, they are $15 each, but I'm sure I will want more.... I found these in my monthly email from my favorite running shoe store in Lexington who is now carrying them. They are AMAZING!!

Enough of all that, here's a couple pictures of Bean from this AM sitting with Daddy...

Growing like a Weed!

Today was Bean's 2 month check up appointment and it acutally coincded with being exaclty 1 month from being discharged from the hospital.

We knew from Ben weighing her on our home scale that she was somewhere in the 8.5 pound range late last week, and today on the official office scale she weighs 8 pounds 9 ounces!! So, the home scale is a little off, but still, that's awesome!!

She left the hospital on May 9th weight 5 pounds 10 ounces, so she has essentially gained 3 pounds in the past month!

As for lenght, she's up to 20.5 inches, which is 1.5 inches of growth since the May 12th appointment.

When you look at preemies and the growth charts, normally they go more by their adjusted age because many times they are not even on the growth charts for quite some time for their actual age, but Mallory is on the offical growth chart for a 2 month old, barely but she's there, which is great! She's in the 10th percentile for weight and head circumfrence and the 3rd percentile for height. Obviously if you look at her stats for her adjusted age, which would be around 2 weeks, she'd be smack dab in the average range, so she's doing excellent!

She continues to sleep all night, or all night for me is from 10:30 pm or so to about 5 in the morning, and that makes me super happy! Sometimes we get her feedings off and we get up once in the night, but if we time everything right and she eats around 10 pm or so, she's good until around 5 am.

She currently has a clogged tear duct, which is apparently typical in the first several months...so she has some excessive eye boogers in one eye until the warm washcloth compresses work out the clog. The dr wasn't concerned unless the goo turns green, so we should be good to go.

She got her 2 month shots today as well and she was crying before she ever got them because she was hungry so she cried a tiny bit harder when she got them but overall it was pretty minimal. She's a trooper.

Ben's really doing great with her, so proud! He's changing diapers and feeding her now! I don't think he's gotten lucky enough to get a poopy one yet, but he will manage!

Here's a few more pictures of Bean!!

2 months old today and busy week!

I guess until I get a little more used to this new routine of working/babysitter/home stuff, blog posts will be relegated to being updated over the weekend!

This was a good, but busy week for all of us and today Bean is 2 Months old already!!!

Memorial Day was good, nothing too exciting other than Mom and Dad coming up to see Mallory and grilling pork chops, otherwise, it was just a nice relaxing day.

Tuesday Ben started his new job, Mallory had her first day at the baby sitters and I started back to work....quite a busy day!

Thankfully the sitters went well, I'm happy with her, her kids love Mallory, after a week everything seems to be going well, so we will be sticking with her. Her house is right at 3 miles from work (she lives in Owensboro) so if I ever need to be there quickly, it's not an issue.

Ben started his new job and that seems to be going really well also. Back to a company vehicle and not having to report anywhere specific at a certain time is good. We can actually sit in bed, drink our coffee and watch a little of the morning news together...it's been quite a while since that was able to happen anytime other than the weekends....even if it is at 5:30 in the morning!

For me starting back to work was good. I hated to leave Mallory since you think you are the only one that can take care of her....even though there are billions of people who have babies all the time, LOL! But, after this week I feel much better and know I can really focus back on work and feel like she's being well taken care of.

It was good to actually be back in my office after 3 months of not being there. Had a lovely pile of mail on the floor to sort through and my office needs a good cleaning, but overall the week was good, just trying to get back in the swing of things after being away for so long! Hopefully it will not take long to get some placements rolling again!

Mallory continues to essentially sleep through the night. We put her to bed sometime between 9:30 and 10:30 depending on when she had her last bottle and she typically will sleep non stop until around 4:30-5:30 in the morning, so I'm super excited that she is continuing to sleep that well! Makes for a much happier mommy in the mornings!

We listed our four wheelers on craigs list last Monday afternoon and by Tuesday afternoon late, we had a buyer! I had to get the titles cleaned up because I still had the original ones that had lien's on them even though they had both been paid off for 4+ years. That took me a couple days to get that straight and then he came back to get them on Thursday afternoon. A little sad to see them go but I find it funny that we sold them both to the same guy, so they will still go on to be the Kawasaki/Yamaha pair like we had here!

Next on the sales block will be the camper! Know anyone who wants a camper??? Just too much stuff that we have that we aren't going to be using anytime soon and after living in the camper for a month, I'm not really in any mood to actually camp anytime soon, so at this point it's probably best to just get rid of it.

I'm also happy that I finally got to go to the gym on Friday over lunch! I basically have no other time of the day to do it right now, so lunch will have to work. Hoping to squeeze in at least 3 times a week, hopefully all 5 days. It feels good to get back to exercise! Still have to take it slow, but it's for sure a start, 20 minutes on the Elliptical and then 20 minutes walking on the treadmill!

Here's a few pictures of Bean from the week!