We are still alive!

Hi everyone. I have not forgotten about my blog - I promise. Things have been very busy lately. Jason has finally gotten called back to work!!!!!!!! He got laid off in the beginning of December and was called back for 6 weeks while I was on maternity leave. We figure he has been out of work for somewhere between 6 and 7 months - henceforth, no blogs because the internet, along with many other items, is a luxury that we had to cut. There are no pictures today because I am posting from mom and dad's house. The job that Jason is working on right now is 12 hour night shifts for 7 days a week until the job is done. They are doing the shutdown of the Rockport power plant. Lexi and I came to visit and give Jason a chance to sleep today.

Now on to more entertaining things. Lexi had her 6 month check up 3 weeks ago. At that time she was weighing in at 20lbs 0oz and was 28 inches long. We are off the charts in both height and weight. We have come a long way from the premature 6lbs 12oz. She has kind of given up on the rolling idea. If you look at Barbara's blog, you can see that Lexi would rather sit on the floor and play with the big girls than be held. We have also had to change daycare. Lexi has the ability to be a difficult baby - nobody used to believe me. Well I think that I have the only 6 month old who has been kicked out of daycare. We don't know what happened, but by the time I took Lexi out of daycare, she would scream for hours every day. I think that it was a blessing in disguise. Our new daycare is 5 blocks from home instead of the opposite side of town.

Well that is all for now. When I have a chance, I will upload some pictures.

Life is CRAZY!!!

I know that it has been two months since I have updated so I am going to give you the shortened version of that time frame.

First, and most important, Lexi is 4 months old. For her last checkup she weighted in at 16 lbs and 13 oz. That puts her in the 97% in weight. She is also 26 3/4 in long. That is off of the charts. Our pediatrician said that she is currently the size of an average 8 month old. Look out Kate - we are going to have a contest to see who is the bigger baby! Lexi has outgrown her colic and has just recently began sleeping through the night. I have discovered that there is nothing more beautiful than my baby - asleep - all night - in her own bed. She loves sitting up being involved in everything that is going on. She hates playing on the floor whether she is on her back or her belly. She wants to be sitting up. We have also recently started her on cereal with a spoon. We had been doing cereal in her bottles at night but the spoon is a whole new world. She has done pretty well so far - if mom could just get in the mouth instead of around the mouth.

I have changed shifts at work. I am now working days instead of evenings. I am extremely happy that I made that change. I did not realize how much time I was missing with my family every day until my shift changed. Now I only work 2 evenings a week and on those nights I am normally home before 8:30. I think that has helped significantly in the sleeping patterns - dad is still trying to figure out what works for him. Now that I am a new mom I have a new hairdo. I had my hair cut off and donated to Locks of Love. I now look like a mom instead of a girl in her late 20's wanting to be 18 again.

Jason is doing okay. He has been laid off for about 2 months. He is getting bored and he is driving me NUTS!! He has only worked about 7-8 weeks since the beginning of December. When he went on the out of work list at the union this last time, he was about 170. As of Friday, he is number 93. Once the weather breaks he is going to be working 6-7 days a week. That is just the life of a carpenter I guess.

Has it really been 3 weeks?!?!

I am so sorry about the delay in posts. There has been a lot going on in the last few weeks that haven't given me a moments rest. 2 weeks ago Grandpa passed away, Lexi's has been to the Dr. 3 times, and I have returned to work.

Chris and Kate were in town 2 weeks ago when Grandpa passed. April then came to join us. Seeing Lexi and Kate together was great. Kate was amazed by Lexi. Kate kept looking at her and touching her. At one point, Kate wanted to chew on Lexi's feet. Now that Kate has teeth, we had to keep an eye on that. We got in on video with my camera, and once I learn how to upload the video I will post it. It was amazing seeing how much our kids can grow in just 6 short months. Lexi felt light as a feather compared to Kate. Oh yeah, we were also happy to see Chris and April.

Their first meeting.

This was right before Kate tried to eat Lexi's feet.

Reach out and touch someone.

We like hanging out with aunt Liz.

As I mentioned in my last post, Lexi is a collicy baby. It is worse in the evenings. On our worst night, she screamed from 8pm until 2am. The only time she wasn't crying was when she was eating. We decided to try going to my chiropractor. We have now been there 2 times. I think that it might be helping, but it is was not an immediate fix. Now instead of having a bad day everyother day, it now occurs about every 3 days - so it is getting better. We have also had to go visit the pediatrician. Lexi's belly button has herniated out. It looks like someone took a cap from a 2 liter and put it under her skin. Jason and I think that it is beginning to look a little better. At it's worst, it stood up from her belly about an inch to an inch and a quarter and was purple and just looked like it was going to pop. Because of this, she didn't like laying on her belly, especially in the beginning, which is how she sleeps. The only way she would sleep for more than 2 hours at a time was if she was being held. So for the last 2 weeks, Lexi and I have ended up sleeping on the couch or in the recliner together. Well, to say the least, I was getting tired of that routine very quickly. So Jason and I decided that we would have to fight it out in the crib. On Friday night she cried herself to sleep after an hour and 15 minutes and then slept for 6 hours (our longest nights sleep so far). Last night it took her an hour to cry herself to sleep. She woke up 4 hours later, so I got up, fed her, and 45 minutes of crib crying later, she was sleeping again. It has been really hard listening to her scream and cry and knowing that if you pick her up, you have set yourself back even farther but I have slept better in the last two nights than I have in the last 2 months.

I am super excited to say that I have been back at work for a week now. It has been great. Lexi only goes to daycare for about 4-5 hours a day because I drop her off before work and Jason picks her up when he gets off of work. He gets about 6 hours of uninterrupted daddy time in the evenings.

Life is crazy!

Prior to having Lexi in our world, I thought that when people went on maternity leave that they had the opportunity to relax just a little bit and get to know their new baby. I have since found out that there is NO relaxing. I thought that it might have just been me not having a routine in place yet, but I found out today that it is not just me. We went to daycare today for a few hours and Theresa, my daycare woman, said that out of the four hours that Lexi was with her, 3 of those hours Lexi demanded to be held. Theresa said that she has never seen a baby that grunts as much as Lexi does. When you don't pay attention to Lexi's grunts she will use her vocal cords to get your attention. Hooray for colic!

We are beginning to sleep for extended amounts of time over the last few nights. It started on Valentines day. Elizabeth, Mom, and Dad babysat so Jason and I could go out to eat and to a movie (it was wonderful). I got 5 1/2 hours of uninterupted sleep that night. It was heavenly. Since then we have only hit about 4 1/2 hours at a time, but I will take it. I have also discovered what sleeping position makes Lexi happy - on her belly. I know that everyone has heard about babies needing to sleep on their backs because it reduces the risk of SIDS, but when you have a colicy baby who refuses to sleep for more than 1 1/2 hours on her back at a time, you begin to do what works best for you and your baby regardless of what all of these "experts" say. Lexi can actually fall asleep on her own sometimes when she is sleeping on her belly. She has also taken a liking to mom and dad's bed. She doesn't even mind sharing with the cat or the dogs.

In the last 2 weeks Lexi has gone from looking like an infant to looking like a baby. She has finally begun to fill out. I went to the Dr. yesterday and while we were at the hospital, we went ahead and had them weight her. As of 2-17 she weights 10 lbs 3 oz. Over the last 3 weeks she has been gaining almost a pound a week. We are preparing to outgrow our newborn size diapers.

I am super excited. I was released from Dr.'s care yesterday so I am no longer on restricitons and I can return to work. As much as I love being home with our little one, I have been craving some adult conversation and interaction. I am going back to work next Wednesday so I can work for 2 days and have a 3 day weekend. I thought that would be a good transition back to work. I have been craving human interaction so much that I have been stopping in at work just to visit with everyone about once a week. Lexi has been meeting a lot of new people during these visits. She has also got to meet Grandma Graper's coworkers and we made a trip up to Ireland to meet Great Grandma Jerger. Grandma Jerger says that Lexi squirms to much for her taste - makes her nervous.

Last night Lexi and I had a playdate with Jenna and Christa. It was so funny. When we first got to the apartment, Lexi was sleeping in her carrier and Jenna was sleeping in her crib. About 5 minutes later, they started grunting at each other. It sounded like they were having their own little conversation in their sleep. About an hour later Jenna woke up and was ready to eat - 30 minutes later, Lexi was too. After their grunting competition, they had a crying competition. There were no winners, just two crying babies and at least one mommy having some serious let down.

That is all for now. I promise I will try to get back to the computer for another update in a timely fashion.

Our little ice storm

Just when I get cleared to drive again what happens - an ice storm. I didn't get any pictures, but if you want to know what it looked like, Carla's blog had a couple of pretty accurate pictures. We lost power either Tuesday or Wednesday last week (I can not keep my days straight since I am not working). Lucky for us, Jason's parents had a generator and insisted that we take it. There were a couple of nights that we were supposed to get lows down into the single digits.

As soon as we lost power, the first thing that I did was to bundle up our little one. Because Lexi is still wearing preemie onesies, I had tried to find a newborn snowsuit. I found out they do not exist. 0-3 months is the smallest snowsuit that anyone carries. 0-3 months is still trying to eat her alive. We could have put another baby in there with her.

Her outfit was so heavy on her little arms and legs that she could not move any of her extremities.

Lexi, we have learned, is just like her mommy and daddy - very expresive. When she is happy, she makes some of the strangest faces and when she is not happy, everyone knows. The dogs will look at me with that begging face to make the screaming stop. She is a very gassy baby and lets face it, I would be unhappy too if I had that much gas in my belly. All in all, she is a happy baby.

2 week appt.

We went to our pediatrician for Lexi's 2 week appt on Jan 19th. We found out that our little girl is growing like a weed. Her height was 21 1/2 in - above 95th%, weight was 6lbs 15 oz - 25th%, and head circumference was 33 1/2 - 25th%. Our big concern was with her weight. When we left the hospital she had dropped down to 6 lbs 5 oz. Here are some pictures that were taken that week.

More info

I am also doing well, all things considering. My incision is healing very well and my pain level is under control. Our days and nights are backwards right now. We only sleep for about 2 hours at a time at night and 3-4 hours at a time during the day. I have been trying to keep her awake as much as possible during the day so she will sleep at night. As of right now, we have not changed our sleep habits yet, but we are working on them. As much as I love being at home with my little one, I have decided that I am definitely not a stay at home mom. Not being able to go anywhere or do anything is driving me nuts. I am not allowed to drive and I am not allowed to lift anything heavier than Lexi. That kind of puts a damper in your day. I just appreciate all of the help that everyone has given us, especially with cooking meals. Jason can cook, but because he is so worried about taking care of me and Lexi, it makes his life a little easier to just reheat dinner.

Jason is still laid off of work, which has been a great help to me. But because he is laid off, he has been out trying to find side jobs to help out financially. He has been wiring a barn for the last 3 days. It has been good for him getting out and working, but he has put in 2 really long days, so by the time he gets home and reheats dinner and gets all of the bottles and breast pump stuff washed and do dishes or picks up the house, he is ready to take a shower and go to bed. Just a note, I have been home all day just me and Lexi. I am ready to talk to someone (I know that just doesn't sound like me at all, does it) and he is ready to relax in the quiet and comfort of his home. So to say the least, we are still adjusting and I have a funny feeling that we won't even be close to adjusted for a while.

I decided to post some pictures of our first outing to Wal-Mart. To say the least, I needed to get out of the house and I got to play dress up with our little one. Her little outfit is a 0-3 months and it swallowed her whole. We also found out that even preemie socks would not stay on her feet, so we ended up safety pinning her booties to her pants to help keep them on.

I'm back

Hi everyone. I know that it has been a while since we have updated. April did an amazing job keeping the post up to date. Now on to more important things.

Lexi is doing great. We were in the hospital until Saturday afternoon. When we left, Lexi weighted 6 lbs and 5 oz and was only eating about 15 - 20 cc (approx. 1/2 an oz) every feeding. We took her back to the hospital to get weighted again on Wednesday. She now weights 6 lbs and 8 oz and is eating almost 60 cc (approx. 2 oz) every feeding. After the C-section, my ob told me how happy she was that we decided to go that route. Apparently, Lexi was stuck in the birth canal so when she was born she had a bruise on the left side of her forehead and her nose was smashed toward the left side of her face. The bruise has gone away and her nose is almost centered. She is absolutely wonderful. I guess that I never realized how noisey babies are until Jason pointed it out. He is having a hard time sleeping because every noise that she makes, he thinks he needs to check on her. She is having some irratic breathing, which the pediatrician says is normal, but Jason disagrees (it goes back to all of those normal baby noises). We are trying to breastfeed, but because she is a preemie, she does not have the stamina of a full term baby and breastfeeding is very hard for her. So at this point we are doing a lot of pumping.

Pics

Here are some pics that Mom and Liz sent me from last night:

Bonnie called Mom this morning.  Lexi is out of NICU on the condition that they can keep her awake long enough for her to get 15CC of food in her per feeding.  I guess when Bonnie was talking to Mom, Jason was trying to feed her.

That's all I know for now.

- April

She's Here!!! (UPDATED)

(UPDATED 9:30PM)

I just got done talking to Bonnie. 

Lexi is currently in the NICU - basically as a precaution plus she is premature (Bonnie would have been 36 weeks tomorrow), she's having a hard time keeping her temperature up, and her sugar level was at 45 when she was born.  Bonnie had asked the nurse when she came in if they would be able to go see Lexi.

Bonnie said that she is doing well although she feels like she's been cut in half and she is very hungry.  Right now, her and Jason are waiting for the pediatrician to come in and update them about how Lexi is doing.  

Other than that, Bonnie said that they are all doing well.  

Update on the stats:

Born at 5:48pm

6 lbs 12 oz

19 1/2 inches long

They are in room 1408 at the Women's Hospital.

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Alexandria (Lexi) Marie Roberts was born a little before 6pm (Central Time) this evening.

She was 6lbs 12oz and 19 inches long.

Mom said she has a full head of dark hair and according to Jason, a good set of lungs!!!

Both Bonnie and Lexi are doing well.  As soon as Mom sends me some pictures, I'll upload them to the site.

- April

Prepping for a C-Section

I just got a call from Mom.

They are prepping Bonnie for a c-section.  I didn't get much info but I'm assuming that she isn't progressing as quickly as they think she should.

I'll update again as soon as I find out more.

-April

Update

Hey all!

I just got an e-mail from Liz. She called Bonnie on her lunch and talked to Jason.

Bonnie is now at 3cm and things are going pretty slow.

In the middle of writing this, Mom called. Apparently once they gave Bonnie the epidural, the contractions pretty much stopped. Prior to this, her contractions were about 2 minutes apart. They have given her medicine to start the contractions again and the doctor should be making stopping in the room between 5pm and 6pm.

Mom said that Bonnie's doing well - Jason on the other hand is very antsy and hasn't stopped walking.

That's all for now.

-April

Lexi Alert!

Hey Everyone - this is April.

I got a call from Bonnie this evening.  

Apparently, Bonnie has been leaking amniotic fluid for the past few days.  Her fluid level is still at a healthy level but instead of waiting and risking Bonnie or Lexi getting an infection, Bonnie's doctors have gone ahead and admitted her to the hospital and have started to induce her.

Bonnie is doing well, although she is a little freaked out.  I can't say I blame her as she went to work today and didn't expect to leave with a baby.  

I'll try to update this tomorrow morning with some more information as Lexi is on her way!!!

almost ready

Lexi's room is almost ready! Jason and I still have a few small organizational things to take care of and we will be ready. Hopefully we will be done by next weekend and I will be able to post some pictures. That was our main goal for this past weekend. I have gone through and washed almost all of her little outfits, blankets, socks, etc. I have also been trying to organize things into baskets - bath stuff, diaper stuff, etc. - to make life a little easier. We have learned that living in a small house that is overflowing with baby stuff requires certain organizational skills that I am trying to master.

Jason is still temporarily off of work. As of Friday, he is number 58 to be called back in by the union. Winter has always been hard, but the economy has really taken its toll on construction this year. It is kind of a blessing and a curse that he is off work right now. Jason has done everything to get the furniture in Lexi's room assembled. He painted the room by himself and finished up this weekend by putting the bassinet together. All that was left for me was to organize. He has also put up a handrail on our steps outside as a safety measure for me this winter. If it gets dry enough, he is going to paint it to match the fence. If it doesn't dry up enough, then we will paint it this spring. These are the great things about him being off work right now. My big concern at this point is that he will get called back to work right around the time Lexi decides to join us. Jason is a workaholic who wants to be able to make money so life will be easier for us.

Jason being laid off is also a concern right now because they are discussing bed rest for me right now. My feet, ankles, and lower legs have swollen up to the point where at times I am unable to walk. My blood pressure is fine and I only have trace amounts of protein in my urine so I am not pre-eclamptic, I just can't function. My ob has cut my hours from 10 hours 4 days a week to a max of 8 hours a day. I visit her again on Friday and at that time she will decide if work is still an option. She already told me that things would be different if my job wasn't so physically demanding. But we do what we must. Jason is ready for me to go on bed rest now because looking at my feet scares him. He has been a wonderful help, especially on my bad days.

Well, that is all for now. If I have anymore news, I will keep you all posted.