Hello Dear Blog

Hello dear blog. You have missed me? I know, I know. It's been a very long time. What's that? Oh, what have I been doing all this time? I have no idea. Honestly, what have I been doing? Taking care of baby Maya? Helping our new family get settled? Occasionally studying this (sometimes frustrating and dumb) language? Doing laundry (I've decided that once you reproduce your laundry reproduces on its own--only more like rabbits). We had a short out of town trip, we've been "celebrating" lent by not watching TV (except American Idol on thur and fri nights and West Wing on DVD on the weekends). Matt has been busy learning how to fill in some new forms that are pretty time consuming and complicated (thank you re-org). I've been trying to get back into exercising regularly (Jillian, i love you but i hate you). Maya has been changing so fast. She has found her voice (more about that on the next post). She is sick right now. A little raspy cough and congestion. The weather has been WARM! I wore capri pants the last two days, and pulled out the flip flops yesterday (don't be jealous, summers here are LONG and HOT and the most humid of anywhere I have ever experienced so i really enjoy the little bit of cold weather that we get!!). Politics here and in the area seem to be heating up so we've tried to ramp up our readiness and awareness. We still need to stock up on things like bottled water, tp, non-perishables and diapers. So, yeah. I've been busy but I'm not sure with what!

She is NO Newborn

I was just watching a video of a friend's baby on youtube (how do you put video on there anyway?). And of course on the side bar, a million other baby videos lined up to trick me into wasting time watching cute little videos of strangers' babies. But it led me to this realization--maya is NO newborn! She no longer stares at nothing (at least not normally). Her eyes work in unison most of the time. She doesn't do those weird herky-jerky movements (except when she pokes herself in the eye because she's mad because she's hungry). She looks at us when we talk to her (most of the time). She smiles and does something very close to a laugh. She tries to stand up and looks around with this very proud of herself look. She kicks her legs like crazy. She scoots down in the crib so that when we go to get her she's all catty-wampus. She makes a little yelp sound that i'm pretty sure will turn into a, "NO!" at some point. I had already forgotten what newborns even look and act like. This girl is growing and changing so fast! She is NO newborn!

Busy with Grammie

We have been busy! Maya's Grammie has been here with us so we've been doing lots of fun things like:

making Valentines

eating out at our favorite restaurants

visiting with friends going for walks

having parties

going on road trips

We took Grammie to the grocery store where she got in trouble for taking pictures (not before she snapped a few). And then she got in trouble with the police for taking pictures near the police station. People are kind of sensitive about taking pictures here. But lucky for us, they didn't throw her in jail.

New Skill

Maya has been working on a new skill. Thumb sucking. We are thrilled by this new development because it means she can soothe herself when she wakes up and wants her pacifier, and doesn't know how to get it. She doesn't have the whole thing figured out yet (she still pokes herself in the eye a lot), but she's making good progress, as you can see!

Grammie is Here!

Grammie (a.k.a. my sweet mother in law) arrived safely on Friday afternoon. It was so fun to pick her up at the airport--she did this cute little hop jump thing when she saw us. It has been something like 2 1/2 years since we'd seen her. She says she's a little rusty at dealing with babies, but Maya seems to be taking to her just fine. Pretty sure they'll be inseparable for the next two and a half weeks or so.

How do I go to the store?

Just wondering today: how do I go to the store? If my child is too small to sit up in a grocery cart she has to be in her car seat. If she's in her car seat, where do I put her? The carts at my grocery store won't hold a car seat in the small section that is for little people, so basically, she goes down into the main section of the cart but then where do I put the groceries. (Not to mention that my grocery store is 2 stories and there's a strange lift thing that takes the cart up and down like a cart escalator while the people ride up on the people escalator, so you'd have to take her out of the cart for the trip both ways b/c it's not safe to leave the baby in the cart while taking the cart up the cart escalator). This is all assuming, of course, that whatever matt has going on doesn't require that he take the car. If he has the car, I can walk to the grocery store, but then what do I do with the stroller once I get there? There should be a manual for this kind of stuff. And once I figure out how to go to the store, can someone please tell me how to exercise? . . .

Grateful

Most of you have already heard via emails or prayer requests or facebook that I had to have my gallbladder removed about two weeks ago. It wasn't necessarily how I wanted to spend a week, but looking back at the whole experience, I am so grateful for so many things. I thought I would share some of them with you . . .

1. The doctors were great and as soon as a real Dr. saw me (it was a teaching hospital so the first Dr. to see me still had braces and looked like she might have been 12), he knew right away what was wrong with me and got me scheduled to have a sonogram to confirm, which did confirm that i had a gallbladder full of infection and stones.
2. I am so thankful for good hospitals where we live. When the first hospital we went to couldn't admit me because it was too full, I was transferred to a hospital that has some kind of relationship with Johns Hopkins in the states and I am telling you this place was NICE! In the bathroom they had big fluffy robes like we were in a nice hotel! And oh, the water pressure! And a view of the sea out my windows.
3. Great nurses. They were mostly male nurses, which could have been weird, but they were very kind, and one even wanted to go on a double date with Matt and I and he and his fiance by the end of the week. He also wanted us to take his picture with his i-phone holding Maya. Any time he walked in the room and Maya wasn't there, he would ask, "Where is your baby?"
4. Speaking of Maya, we were able to have her with us in the hospital almost every afternoon while our dear friends Jason and Kelli kept her at night. This was really good for my mama-heart that was really struggling with not being able to take care of my baby!
5. Maya had formula for the first time and took it without any problems for the whole week, then was able to switch back to breast feeding (after I was all drug free) without anything worse than a little constipation.
6. The surgeon was great and he not only took out my gallbladder, he found and repaired a hernia while he was at it.
7. We have medical insurance and the close to $12,000 in bills will not be coming out of our pocket--praise the LORD!
8. Friends here visited and brought me things to do to try to assuage my boredom during the week that I had to wait for the stone to pass and for my inflammation to go down before they could do surgery.
9. At the beginning they were concerned that the stone I had passed was lodged somewhere, which would have required a second procedure, but the stone ended up moving on it's own, which simplified the whole treatment process to one surgery, "Giddy up, giddy up, get a move on--raw hide!"
10. Matt was wonderful, and unless he was going to get Maya or take her to our friends or run to our house to send and receive email, or doing dishes and picking up our apartment, he was by my side, taking great care of me.
11. My recovery has been SO fast and SO easy (i was only on Tylenol starting the day after surgery) and I've been able to resume just about everything I was doing before, and aside from a few digestive issues, I don't seem to be missing my gallbladder one bit! Who needs it anyway?