Now on to "what's going on with the Popes" -
We went up to Washington (aka "the farm" aka Abby's parents house) for the 4th of July which was fun. We got to see Abby dad's new museum Abby's dad created and built (no Im not kidding my parents own a Winlock History museum - Winlock is the town they live in).We saw my sister and her kids and got to do a lot of fun stuff like a beach trip and going fishing which I haven't done in YEARS. Everly got to go to her first small town parade, the Winlock Egg Day parade comeplete with Winlock Egg Day Queen ;-). She watched from her stroller and my arms most of the time but usually my arms as I had to console her after every old car horn honked, every police and ambulance siren went off and every semi-truck in the parade "grunted" as they drove by. She just BAWLED whenever they made loud noises. I have a new respect for parents of little kids watching parades now. She did get a plastic ball that someone threw at her from an antique car and she LOVED that. She got a lot of candy too but she cant eat that so dad and mom helped actually we ran into the streets and got it as well but we can still attempt to claim it was for Everly cant we?! As for the 4th, she slept through most of the fireworks and then finally "gave up" towards the end trying to sleep outside and cried until I just took in her the house and put her to bed for real. She's a good baby though so I can't complain.
As soon as we got back to Idaho she went through a HUGE growth spurt. We had a doctor's appointment the day after we got back and she was about 19 1/2 pounds and 27 inches long. She was 50th percentile for weight but only 25th percentile for height but I swear in the couple of weeks after that appointment she has made up for it. She used to have these chubby rolls on her thighs and almost all of them are gone except for these small ones on each side up by her diaper. I can tell her shins especially have gotten longer as well as her head has gotten even larger if its possible to say that. Some of her 6 to 9 month baby clothes I cant use anymore on the grounds her head is too large to fit through the opening. Oh well... she has always had a larger head so who am I kidding. It just must mean she is VERY intelligent right?
She not only has grown physically but when we got back she has also started saying new babbles. She now can say "daah daah daah" (long "a" in the middle there) which does NOT sound like "da da da" and she can say "muh muh muh" NOT "ma ma ma". She has started crying and saying "muh muh muh" which breaks my heart when she is upset. She has also started stretching out her little arms and fingers while she cries "muh muh muh" which makes it even worse to witness because she now knows how to get you to pick her up. She has also really started shrieking to communicate. She can shriek in babble for hours its amazing. Sometimes I think she sounds like a baby kitten but she's always really happy when she's shrieking away! Sometimes I wonder when she will actually talk and MEAN what she is saying.
And the kid LOVES food... she can now eat a whole LARGE jar of baby food in one sitting and will munch on crackers and baby cookies all day long. She is being more adventurous when it comes to food choice but she's still pretty plain jane. I made fudge brownies last night and she thought those were okay though ;-) She took her dad's empty bowl and her little fingernail and scraped these teeny tiny brownie specks off the bottom of the bowl and then she'd have to "taste" her fingers. Such a funny kid...
Lastly she really likes to pull herself into a standing position if you give her a finger from each hand. She can not stand on her own, pull herself up, or crawl (army or otherwise) but she likes to pull herself up in front of you and she has also learned if she's sitting next to you to lean over with her upper body until she can "grab" you by your clothing or skin and then she attempts to stand up that way as well. I don't know where she learned that but 20 pounds of baby can almost rip your clothing off when she tries to use it as leverage to get her behind off the ground!
I have to ask - WILL THE TEETH EVER STOP COMING IN????! She has been in misery for several days now and completely sad and needy. I know she is working on some upper teeth. I cant see them so who knows how long they will be but she is crying all the time with fingers in her mouth and drool everywhere. At times like that all I want to do is snuggle and rock her in a rocking chair with a blanket but a) she isn't quite a snuggler (too curious even in her pain to sit still) and b) I have to work most of the day when she is not feeling well so Dave (Mr. Mom) has to fill in for me. I hate having to work while he gets to stay home with her but that's life for right now. I am just lucky to still have my job in the airline industry the way it is going these days.
We FINALLY got her a crib that is ready to go and set it up in the back room which is also the "office". We had been graciously given a family crib before she was even born but it turned into a WAY larger project both time wise and definitely money wise to fix up to be able to make it kid worthy. Every can of stripper for the old crib was around $20 and then you had to buy mineral spirits and scraping and sanding stuff and this crib we bought used with a mattress for only $50.00 and all I had to do was wipe it down to clean and disinfect it. Well that and install all the fish tank crib toys she got that we couldnt attach before because she didnt have a crib. It looks really official like we have a baby in the house now. I guess live and learn though as far as stripping goes. We had no idea how time consuming and expensive it can get refinishing furniture.
Everly had her first night in the crib last night. Its been harder to get her to stay asleep in it because she falls asleep in our bed and because the walk from our room to hers is longer than it used to be from our bed to the foot of our bed where her old bassinet was, she wakes up en route and then we have to start the whole process over again. Dave put in a ceiling fan in her room though which was nice (he's a pro now at installing ceiling fans) so that makes her room warm (light wise) and cooler (heat wise). I love the new fan. Its the same brand as our others but its a newer style.
My last tidbit on Everly is a funny/sad story from a couple of days ago. When Dave installed the new fan in her room/the office, he made quite a mess with the drywall and attic insulation that fell out of the ceiling. I decided to use the vaccum to get most of it up off the wood floors. Because we have wood floors throughout the house we very rarely use the vaccum and since Everly was in the same room I decided to flip it on and off real quick to make sure she was okay with the noise. She seemed fine with initial test phase so I turned it on and the proceeded to watch my daughter fall to complete and utter pieces. She started shaking, literally SHAKING her little head from side to side and then the buffalo tears came and the sobs. I started laughing like a bad mommy because it was so funny to watch her fall to pieces over the vaccum but I turned it off and comforted my distressed child but you should have seen her face shake. It was almost just like in the movies when someone gets scared to death.
Call us crazy but we got another dog. She is on a trial basis, and we weren't really looking for a dog or a new pet but she kind of came into our path. I had put Dave's mom's cat in an ad online to give him away because he is NOT working out and I would really really like to find him a new home (you need a cat? let me know!) as soon as possible and I had just checked to make sure the ad posted correctly and what was the ad right above the cat's ad I posted!??!
Well it was for this little dog. In the ad she looked like a Cairn Terrier which was the breed we were kind of looking at for the FUTURE when we got Buddy a friend but we were dumb and decided to go look at her now and the rest as they say is history. She is technically a terrier dachshund mix but I cant really see dachshund anywhere in her. I have forgotten what it was like to have a puppy and she is a WAY WAY WAY worse "puppy" than Buddy ever was. They said she was housebroken but she isn't very well housebroken. She takes all of Everly's toys and thinks they are her own including pacifiers of which she has chewed the "handle" rubber part off of.
Not only that but she went in heat like 2 days after we brought her home. Now Buddy has been neutered since he was like 6 months old and she is about 5 months old and its all I can do to keep her from raping poor neutered Buddy. Also the dog, her name was Noodles by her former owner, got into a tiff with the cat when the cat stole some leftover dinner from the table and it left her (the puppy) with spots of blood everywhere. It was HORRIBLE but I couldn't find anywhere the cat or the dog was bleeding and only the dog had blood on her coat so I have a feeling she took the brunt from Thumper (the cat). And then the dog has no regards for Everly and when she is in bed with us the dog will walk right over her. Also the dog likes to sleep under the bed and then anytime a noise is made the bed "woofs" even after our attempts to quash the "woof". And did I mention she purposely poops literally right in front of our "jerk" of a neighbor's door?!?! I dont know why but she beelines for it like she knows where she is going. Its so strange. I guess I should thank her but we have to pick it up because he is not a guy to mess with. So yeah, I obviously have forgotten what it's like to have a puppy and she is driving me crazy but hopefully spaying her and giving her some training will fix most problems. She has way more energy than Buddy does so she is giving him a run for his money. She is also REALLY uncoordinated and she runs into things all the time. And I thought she would help Buddy with his anxiety and stop him from following me everywhere but it hasn't been a perfect fix yet. Now I have BOTH of them following me everywhere ::::::::slapping hand on forehead:::::::::::::::: - in due time I guess. Just must have more patience. She does help him with a lot of his anxiety though and I think he likes to have an ally next to him in his battle against the cat (Buddy is terrified by the cat most of the time and will even not go down the hallway and become "trapped" and whine for help if the cat is just even laying in his pathway - such a wuss dog.)
As for the adults in the house... Dave has decided to run a marathon. I tried and tried and tried to talk him into starting out with a 5k or half marathon and building up to it a full marathon but NOOOOOoooOOOOOooo he has to do the full marathon first. He has gone CRAZY with books, plans, run logs, new running shoes and planning his trip. He decided his first marathon would be the Disneyworld Marathon in January so we are going to Orlando in January now. It's good for him because it gives him a goal and makes sure he gets lots of exercise but he wasn't even running a few months ago so I worry about him because a marathon is 26.2 miles and that's a LOT of miles to cover for a newbie but according to several people it is possible to go from couch potato to marathon athlete in 6 months so hopefully it will all work out. He says I am "not supportive" because I try to talk him down to something shorter but I just worry. I think that's a wife and mother's role to worry even if we don't want to.
As for me... honestly I have no life right now. All I do is work and go to bed with dishes, cooking, cleaning and doctors appointments thrown in. The only "new" news I have is that I have muscle spasms happening out of nowhere that then require I take narcotics for. That's fun. I drove myself to the Emergency Room 2 weeks ago Sunday because I didn't want Everly and Dave to have to get up. No one knows what's wrong with me and I guess a lot of muscle and joint stuff can be autoimmune which is what my kidney thing is so it could all be related to my body attacking itself in various ways but they may never know what's really causing it or how to treat it except with pain killers when it flairs up really bad. All I know is it started up about 3 months ago and hits TOTALLY randomly. Some days my middle and ring fingers and knuckles will hurt on my right hand. Then a few days later its my wrist on my left. It just keeps moving which makes me feel almost crazy when I have to describe it to my doctor, "so yeah, some days my knuckles hurt then I am fine with no pain for a few days, then my wrist will hurt and then a week after that my shoulders will have muscle spasms." Try not to feel crazy when you have to say stuff like that but the good news is that my kidney doctor told me to go to a Rheumatologist so I am meeting with one next Monday which is good since my family doctor basically brushed me off since my blood work came back "looking normal". Because of the kidney thing I can NOT take Advil or related stuff so I am kind of limited on the arthritis anti-inflammatory drugs. Some times when its really bad I cant close my hand or grab things and I lose strength in my hand. That's when its doing a muscle freakout thing.
Dave has been really good through all of this though. I just tell him which body part he has to avoid for the day and he abides and we move on with our lives.
As I type this last bit Everly is now up and laying in her crib again in the room next to me. Dave just gave her a bottle and now she is examining her fingers with her little toes hooked on the crib rail. She is yet again jabbering away and "Oooing" and making noises that sounds like she is saying "heyyyyyyyy" and now come the screeches (which come to think of it sound a lot like an upset parrot) so I best let you go because I am sure the parrot will demand my attention soon. Until next time I suppose!
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