Where has the time gone?

It seems like just yesterday we were in the hospital waiting for Allie to make her debut. It was the hardest and most rewarding day of my life. And now here we are, six months later! I'm not sure where the time went!

Allie is growing every day. Its amazing when I look at pictures from just a couple months ago, like this one...

... and then to compare to this one taken just yesterday...

... and this one from earlier in the week.

Maybe the difference isn't that obvious, but I can see her growing and taking in the sights and sounds of the world around her.

She's grabbing her toes like a little monkey and she's trying to crawl. She's also pushing herself straight up on her legs. If she figures out how to grab onto things to pull herself up, she'll be standing! What happened to my little newborn baby? She's already a big girl!

Allie has been making strides with rice cereal. She loves to jump around and be twirled upside down and lifted up in the air. She loves to play with her growing collection of toys. She can be quite the attention hog. We don't mind though.

I love getting her out of bed in the morning because she almost always wakes up smiling (though I could do without the middle-of-the-night wake up). I look forward to picking her up from daycare to see her pretty smile when she sees mommy and daddy coming to get her. I love how she is so happy playing or just hanging out with us. Her little laugh is so cute and we love trying to coax it out.

Its not always easy having the responsibility of a little one, but we wouldn't trade it! Happy half birthday Allie-kat!

There goes April

Where did the month go? It seems like it was just last weekend we had our Easter trip to southern Illinois. But here we are on April 29 and I only ran 6 miles this month.

I feel like our family spent the whole month of April sick or recovering from being sick! It hit me the worst. I used to never get sick but spending a year in my house caught up with me as I've been out in the world again. I've had four colds since January and a bout of mastitis. Right now I'm dealing with the after-effects of a probable sinus infection. I still have fluid in my ears, which has caused me to lose a bit of my hearing and have a terrible ringing.

Its an especially heinous form of torture, this ringing. I can't hear anything but this loud ringing. It gives me headaches. And its going to take a few weeks to a month to clear up. I just hope this doesn't become permanent.

I do consider it a small victory that I've managed to work two weeks without taking a sick day.

And of course we had Allie's first cold this month, which she passed to mommy and daddy!

So it was a tough month, physically and mentally. I'm sure May will be better. At least one thing is sure: I will beat April's mileage in May!

Sleepy girl

Allie has always kept a strange schedule on the weekends. I think just because she's out of the daycare routine. For example, yesterday she woke up at 6 and didn't go down for an official nap until about 11:30. We went out in the morning and she dozed a little, but no nap.

So her second nap of the day ended up being kind of late. She woke up around 2 from her first nap and was ready to sleep again around 4. She went to sleep at 4:30 and then she kept.... on.... sleeping! Finally around 9 I got her up to change her and feed her and see if she'd stay up a little while. I was worried about her deciding it was time to get up for the day at 4 a.m. or something. Well, aside from being annoyed that I disturbed her, she barely woke up. I put her right back to bed at 9:30 and she kept.... on.... sleeping! Woke up for a feeding at 4 and then slept until 7:15! I guess she's growing again or something.

Its been a good weekend for sleeping. I slept a lot yesterday too, in the form of not one, but two naps! And I slept 10 hours last night as well. I think my body is trying to finally kick this cold I've had for the last week and a half.

Because of my cold and also the cold and yucky weather on Saturday, we didn't do the Crazylegs walk. :-( If I had been well, and if we didn't have Allie, Doug and I would have done it for sure. And as race time approached, it wasn't raining but still cold. But its so hard to really do anything downtown anyway and its a lot harder for a big event like this. It was just hard with a baby, and especially since we've all been sick lately. We really needed the weather to be better. So we went and picked up our tshirts and then went out to breakfast instead. At least we supported Badger athletics!

Our breakfast choice was a hit. We decided to ty something new and we will definitely go back to Monty's Blue Plate Diner. I had their donut french toast: "Two of our Raised Donuts, dipped in spiced egg batter and grilled golden brown. Topped with powdered sugar and served with American fried potatoes." Not so good for the diet, but oh-so-good for the pure enjoyment!

Looking into the crystal ball

Is predicting the future this easy?

Who takes care of the baby when mom and dad are sick?

Mom and dad still do, of course! Allie is completely recovered from her cold of last week, but last week she passed it on to Mommy and Daddy. We're both varying levels of sick. Its already so hard to function while you're sick, but add taking care of baby to the mix and its a new level of hard! Allie still needs all her usual stuff when Mommy and Daddy just want to rest.

I'm hoping we'll all be well enough for the Crazylegs Classic this weekend. This 8K was my goal race since I decided not to run the Madison half, but I've decided with being sick not to run it but to do the 2-mile walk with Doug and Allie. It will be disappointing to sit out another goal race, but necessary. With all of us being sick, I haven't run in a week and a half.

Looking on the bright side though, this will be a fun family event! We love the Crazylegs. Its such a fun time with a great atmosphere. I ran it last year while pregnant and we plan to participate every year, so Allie can say she participated every year since before she was born! We just need to get the whole house well first...

Time to babyproof the house!

Allie doesn't crawl - yet. She's trying though. She gets up on all fours and rocks there and can stay there quite awhile. And even though she's not actually crawling yet, she sure moves around the living room! We'll put her on the middle of the floor and in no time she rolls and scoots all over.

Gone are the mornings where I can bring Allie downstairs and set her on the floor to play on her mat while I make breakfast and pack lunches.

So this weekend we have an urgent mission: to babyproof our house!

I'm still not sure how to accomplish this. The biggest goal this weekend is to get our coffee table out of the living room. Allie has rolled into the coffee table many times already. She doesn't have any bruises yet, but they'll happen! I totally understand why people told me to babyproof before Allie was here. Now she's here and moving and we're totally unprepared.

But we'll make do. We'll figure it out like we've figured everything else out thus far. Wish us luck!

She speaks the truth

That's certainly been the case this week!

Allie still looks a little rough from her cold. She still has a runny nose and a gunky eye, but she's recovering nicely.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Poor baby

Allie has been sick this week with what I'm guessing is her first cold. She's been running a low fever and had quite the runny nose and watery eyes. She's been drooling a lot too. At first I thought it could be teething, but with how long it continued I really don't think it was teething.

The poor baby has been in remarkably good spirits despite being such a mess. She hates the changing table right now because we have to wash her face and try to suction her nose as well as put some ointment on her face because of the rash from all the stuff that irritating her skin. Despite all that she's been laughing, smiling and playing.

She's stayed home all week, which has been a little stressful for mommy and daddy. The good news is we think she's coming out of it. Her fever seems to be gone, at least is was overnight. But she's home again today just because she's still a mess and out of consideration for the other baby in daycare. However, all indications are that our happy healthy baby is still in there and conquering her cold. I hope its a long time before she gets sick again!

Family time

The best part of spending Easter in southern Illinois was the family time. Allie got to see her Grandma and Grandpa Durso again, as well as her Aunt Julie. She also got to meet her cousins Carson and Cole!

The last time Allie saw her Grandma and Grandpa Durso was when she was a week old. She's grown a lot since then, and she was a lot more awake!

One of the fun things we did was a visit to the Blue Sky Winery in Carbondale. Allie seemed to want to share the wine.

It was a nice relaxing way to spend a vacation afternoon.

After Cole (left) and Carson (right) found the Easter Eggs Grandma and Grandpa hid for them, they spent some time getting to know Allie. They seemed to all get along fine.

I think Allie enjoyed meeting so many new people. She has a really big family!

Grandma gave Allie an Easter Bunny and other presents in her Easter basket. I didn't think to take a picture of the basket though. I took tons of pictures of everything else but not the basket!

Its too bad we live so far away. I wish we could take Allie to see her grandparents more often. But we enjoyed this visit and got lots of quality family time. We'll probably go back down sometime over the summer. Who knows what kind of mischief Allie will be up to by then?

Fast friends

This is Allie with her new friend Macenzie.

Looking at them side-by-side, you'd never know they're only three and a half months apart in age. Macenzie was born Feb. 16 to my best friend Desiree and her husband, Tim. When we drove down to southern Illinois on April 1, we stopped in Charleston to meet Macenzie and so Desiree could meet Allie.

Here's me holding Macenzie. Look how tiny she is! It didn't even feel like I was holding anything.

Desiree and I have been friends for almost 11 years now. Wow, 11 years! We lived together in college and were in each others' weddings. Being pregnant at the same time made me really wish we lived closer. It would be fun for our babies to have instant playmates. But we do what we can to visit and talk on the phone or facebook, even though thats a lot harder now that we both have infants! It helps that Charleston is on the way to Carbondale. So its easy to stop for a visit on the way.

Even though we don't live very close, I know Allie and Macenzie will become fast friends like their mommies.

Meeting new people

One of the highlights of our recent travels was introducing Allie to our extended families, and some friends too. At my cousin's wedding, Allie met her great-grandma. Unfortunately by the time Allie got to meet great-grandma, this is the state she was in:

My grandma will be 87 this month, and she stayed at the wedding reception longer than we did!

Allie was tired from the long day, and Doug had already gotten her ready for bed in her cozy sleeper. So in spite of the live band, Allie fell asleep at the reception! Babies really can sleep anywhere.

It was fun having an opportuntity for us all to dress up and take a nice family picture.

Before she fell asleep, however, Allie met most of my dad's side of the family. That was a lot of people, too many to take pictures of everyone.

What did we learn from this?

This week has been crazy and tough. I am so glad its Friday.

Traveling the last two weekends took a lot out of us, and Doug and I are both happy to relax this weekend. Except we can't totally relax. We have to take care of everything we couldn't take care of this week after we got back from southern Illinois. But don't worry, we will relax too.

So the moral of the story is: We need to take an extra day after long trips to detox and get ourselves reorganized! Its been a struggle to eat because we never really got a good grocery shopping trip in. Its been hard to find things to wear, as bags never got unpacked and the laundry didn't get completely done. The house is more of a mess than usual. AND I never wrote all the blogs I promised early in the week!

But we really enjoyed all our family time the last two weekends. And all those issues will be rectified this weekend. Look for lots of news posted here in the next few days. Have a great weekend.

Laughing all the way

Allie has become quite entertaining! Doug and I laughed all the way to daycare this morning at the noises she was making in the car. She blows raspberries now and loves it. I'm amazed at how easily she can amuse herself.

Allie is learning all sorts of new tricks these days. She's just discovering her feet now, and whenever we have her tootsies uncovered, she grabs her toes. When she's on the changing table she likes to grab the diaper, her clothes, whatever she can. It's starting to make diaper changes a bit challenging!

Great news!

I got an email yesterday letting me know my project position with the unemployment office has been extended! The original end date was Nov. 9, 2010. We'd been told a number of times the powers that be were working on getting it extended. Its official now! We are now project employees of the state unemployment office until Jan. 10, 2012!

That was great news to get when I wasn't all that excited about going back to work after our mini vacation.

Stay tuned for more about Easter weekend. And look at the following post for a little snippet I posted last night about it!

So much to report, so little time

We're back! We survived two road trips two weekends in a row. Allie was such a trooper. She's so good! We couldn't have asked for a better road trip. We had a nice visit in southern Illinois, but we're glad to be home. I have many things to repot from an eventful weekend, but tonight we want to relax and go to bed early. So here's a few pictures now and I'll post more when I can!

Allie met the Easter bunny! Unlike when she met Santa, she was awake to meet the Easter bunny. She smiled right away and they only had to snap one picture to get this gem!

Among other new tricks, Allie can now lift herself up on her feet in a sort of downward dog position.

Allie tried rice cereal on Sunday night! She was so cute. We think she liked it but every time she tasted it, she looked like this.

Here she is in between the many social obligations of the weekend. We had quite the packed schedule. Allie handled it like a champ, except when we waited too long to feed her.

This is a shot from the wedding we went to the previous weekend. Its her first time dressing up. I think she likes it.

This is actually from before our travels. One of the things Allie does while playing is her "superbaby" pose. Here, daddy decided to do it too!

Stay tuned!