I got your crazy

I posted a blog similar to this one back when I was 8 months preggers here and I must confess, I really thought that would be the end of the "crazy."  Or so I thought.  Addie-cat is gonna be 15 months next week... and me, well, I still have a few, some, ok, more than my fair share of "crazy" moments still.

Truth be told, I hate it.  Absolutely hate how I feel out of control sometimes.  How I have the patience of a toddler in the midst of their terrible 2's some days.  How I can get worked up and actually angry over something as simple as a decision my poor husband made that he thought would make me happy but obviously didn't.

I blamed it on the hormones for a long time.  Probably longer than I should have.  In all reality it probably is a combination of a few things - some lingering hormone imbalances, a lot more stress in my life, a ton more responsibility in my life, and less sleep than I'd rather.

But it doesn't really matter.  God's pretty clear on this one - "Be thankful in all circumstances for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." (1 Thes 5:18)

Thankful when I come home to a pile of dirty clothes, dishes, and dog hair everywhere....yeah, not so much.
Thankful when Addie reaches out to pat my hair with hands full of spaghetti sauce...cute, but thankful?
Thankful when bills outnumber the advertisements in my mailbox.... uhm....

So I started looking online - not sure what I was looking for, but I came across 30 Day Challenge to Wives   Being one that can't resist a challenge I'm going to try to do it - Maybe I'll conquer my "crazy" moments once and for all and return to nice, happy, calm, fun-loving, energetic, thoughtful Crystal of  old.... gosh, looking at that list, I sure thought well of myself back then ;-)

"Call me crazy?  I gots your crazy!"

just hopefully not for long

Almost a year later...

AI've put off writing this post for quite some time, mainly because I wasn't really sure what to say.

People ask you a lot of questions when you are pregnant/a mother. Lots of the time I just make stuff up to say - half of the time saying something off the wall to be a smart alec and to point out the inappropriateness of asking such personal/random questions of people. (spoiler alert), yes, that means that no, I really am not waiting for Addie to clean my entire house, nor do I expect her to actually speak her mind to tell me what she wants -it's just way easier to say than the obvious - yes, I am aware my house is a wreck and the floor needs to be dusted/vacuumed/mopped - and if I knew why my daughter was crying don't you think I would be doing what she needed to stop it?

Seriously, people ask the most random of questions. But I really didn't have much of an answer to these so I just dodged them - how did it feel for you to have your daughter in the NICU for a week? What was it like for you to go home without your baby? Aren't you worried about her having more seizures or having lasting damage from them? and the most recent - Have you been thinking a lot about where you were at this time last year now that Addie is about to be 1 years old? To be blunt, I try not to talk too much about that week for a plethora of reasons. 1) I feel badly talking about it because so many others parent's stories are way worse than mine and ended up badly... I got my baby and she seems fine - so I feel guilty about talking about it. 2) Speaking of guilt, I feel a lot of that - whether or not I really could have done anything about it, the fact remains that I feel guilty - for being stubborn about a C-section, for not switching doctors at the beginning, for not saying something to the nurses sooner or not demanding they watch her more... for a lot of reasons really. It was so weird today - one of our friends had a baby at the same hospital that we had Addie. Addie and I went up to see them and it was surreal. They had Andrea, the same baby nurse that Addie had. The whole time there felt so odd - the drive there was familiar - we drove it more than 20 times in a week. Everything seemed the same, like time had stood still - yet things were drastically different. I wanted to take her to the NICU to see Ms. Donna - to remind her how much her work means to people.

11 months and 2 weeks ago was one of the best days of my life - regardless of how it happened, we go to meet our little girl and I thought that the "hard part" was over. Not that that I thought parenting would be easy, but that since her birth was so difficult, the "drama" was over and we could go home and just be happy together. Flash forward to day 2 of my life when within the period of 30 min we went from putting our new baby into her car seat to go home, to watching her be whisked away by a team of physicians going to perform a myriad of tests on her and we could just " go grab lunch or take a walk..." Right. It felt like a never-ending sucker punch to the gut. Honestly I didn't talk a lot about it because I didn't have the words to say - everything I could think of seemed undeserving of the situation. It was surreal and odd and unnatural to go home and sleep at home for longer than I did when I was at work. I came home the first night and closed her door and didn't' reopen it until we came home later that week, baby in tow.

I've been thinking about exactly "how I feel" about Addie turning one. I was telling Lee the other day that I think the appropriate word is oddly "relieved." Most blogs of moms that I read say "scared" or "sad I'm losing my baby" or something to that aspect. I say relieved because I think that this next year will be the start of something new. Because of the seizures and because of the drama of her birth, Addie was left with 2 spots on her brain that are dead - and no one knew what ramifications (if any) they would carry. I feel like I haven't really breathed in the past year - every twitch, every odd cry, every milestone, I feel like I've watched every move she's made and checked off an imaginary checklist. Sit - check. Crawl - check. Words - check. Steps - check. And finally walk - check. I finally feel like we can be normal and not be hypersensitive about her development. I heard the doctors last summer when they said that we didn't have to worry- but at that point I was over pretty much anything the doctors had to say looking at their track record.

So relieved that this past year is almost over. It's been a great one. I really never knew that I could be so happy and that I'd actually be ok with and almost enjoy having to get up early on a Saturday. There is nothing like rolling out of bed and walking into her room to see her smiling face pop up over the crib railing. These next few years will probably be my favorite until she is in high school - and I couldn't be more excited to live life with my little girl, hubby, and pups.

Some women say they are born to be mothers, others say you learn as you go. Me, I was thrown into the deep end - but I've learned that I can swim.

11 Months

It was slightly strange to realize that this will be the last "month" celebration of significance... next up 1 year old! Holy. cow. ... Ok, past that, we officially have a toddler on our hands - Addie started to toddle around somewhere around 10-10.5 months... and started taking steps somewhere after that.

However, her preferred method of transportation remained crawling... until Thursday. 12 consecutive steps later, she know prefers to crawl to something, pull up, and then walk until she falls again. She's getting pretty good at it too.

Her favorite things to crawl to are...the puppies obviously. (what, did you think I would say Lee or I? ha!) no such luck, Addie waaay prefers the pooches to either of us.

In other news, she's learning to use a spoon - I use that term loosely. Mainly I mean her stubborn streak is apparently here to stay and she refuses to allow us to feed her... but it takes about 2 times the amount of food with her "feeding herself". Oh well, what extra we spend on her food we are making up by less to have to feed the dogs.

She's around 30.5 inches and 23 pounds. Stats to come for the grandparents after she turns ONE YEAR.

In and Out

No, I'm not about to quote Kevin Kline's 90's movie "In and Out" . Today marks Addie being "out" in the world a few hours longer than she was "in" me. It is crazy ridiculous to believe that she has been on the outside longer than the time it took her to "bake."

It has been the craziest 9.5 months... I didn't know that I could be so tired, happy, and terrified at the same time. We have been so blessed by a generally happy and social baby and can't imagine life without her at this point! The past 9 months have completely put our lives in a 180 degree turn - it is almost funny to think of what I did before I had her in my "spare time."

In other news, she had her first case of pink eye last week, cut 2 teeth, and has learned to blow kisses back to you. She has got a stubborn streak like no other too - no idea where that could possibly come from. She is proving to be a charmer though, she has already learned that if she caught doing something she is not supposed to - she will crack a smile or blow a kiss to see if that will change your unpleased facial expression. ha! We are in for it!

9.25 months old

Apparently I am only going to be updating at month milestones, or at least that's been the pattern thus far. As much as I wanted to be "that mommy blogger" that we all read, I'm ok with sporadic updates on here so cherish this for what it's worth! Ha!

Addie is now 9 months 1 week old and it has been quite a ride since my last post. At almost 8 months to the day she began to crawl, and then within that week began to pull herself up to standing. By the end of the month she was completely pulling up and holding herself up on everything...crawling still has an appeal and she is pretty good at it - but standing is apparently where it is at! Then, at just over 9 months, she started to stand on her own and can now walk behind pretty much anything. Of course she likes to walk behind her walkers and stuff, but she works with what she has and has been spotted pushing her highchair, bumpo seat, and even the dog's toy basket around the kitchen.

She continues to be social and smiles and sometimes waves. Her current favorite food is Gigi's baked ziti which is where one of these pictures came from :-) She is her daddy's daughter and pulls her shoes and socks off at a moment's notice.

Now for the important stats:

21.3 lbs (75 - 90 %tile)
29.5 inches (95%tile)
44 cm head circumference (50%tile)

7 Months

Well I have been struggling with the whole blogging thing (if anyone even reads this thing any more). I remember watching my friends who were pregnant and then had their babies. They blogged the whole way through it and I remember loving to read their updates and trying to make mental notes of things that I wanted to do once I had a baby of my own. Namely, monthly updates, funny anecdotes, you know... the stuff people actually care to read.

Flash forward to 2011. Addison is 7 months old... the last blog post I wrote was when she was 7.5 weeks old... I barely have any video of her (although Lee likes to say that my facebook is "littered" with Addie pictures).

I have had many a blog post in my head.... some even witty I might add. But somewhere in the shuffle I kept not posting... and then it was too late... who posts a 6 month update 3 weeks afterward?

I started to feel really guilty... I'm not really a "cute" scrapbooker - I did do Addison's first scrapbook with her birth, NICU, and her first week at home... but it all stopped there (as evidenced by the massive pile of "keepsakes" that are on my ever growing scrapbook pile!)

I'm not one for New Year resolutions... mainly because my ADHD self hardly ever keeps to them after the first day or so... what can I say? But if I've learned anything since becoming a parent - it's to try to chill out and just enjoy life.

I can say that though I feel guilty because I didn't blog like I set out to - but I did spend the last 7 months thoroughly enjoying Addison and our new life together.

I've loved watching Lee become a Dad and how enthralled he is with Addison.

I love walking into her room on weekend mornings and seeing her smile when she sees me and kick her feet.

I love taking time to do things with Addie - go shopping, cook, roll around on the floor with her.

I can see all of the blog posts that were "meant to be" in my head anyways... and have countless amounts of pictures to catalog the first 7 months anyway.

So suffice it to say that I am probably going to continue to choose to spend my free time with Addie - and not feel guilty for not blogging or doing more of the things that "the good moms" do. I'm not a real fru-fru/granola-y type anyways :-)

But I would be remiss if I didn't post some info about our baby girl...

7 Months:
28.5 inches
19.2 lbs
still has a little "peanut" head

learned to hold her own bottle around 6 months
eats pretty much anything but especially likes black beans, peas, prunes, bananas, avacado, teething biscuits, alphabet crackers, and baby cheese doodles.
can almost pull herself up to standing from the floor
can pull herself up to standing when sitting on a toy
sat up 3 days before 6 months
tries really hard to feed herself but is doing more to bond with the puppies than gain any sustenance

sleeps from 730/8pm until 8am
takes 1-2 naps a day

laughs, giggles, plays peekaboo, likes to be tickled, and loves her jumperoo still, loves the puppies and smiles and laughs when they walk by; coos and babbles when she is excited, bored, or happy

3 Months Old!

A day in the life of Addison:

Mornings are tough! Gotta yawn really big, poop really smelly, and wiggle while Mom and Dad change me... Then I'm ready to start my day... I take this part from Daddy... no way Mommy could ever smile this much in the AM hours!


Tummy Time... I can hold my head up for about 5 seconds but I'm still not a huge fan of tummy time after the first 10 minutes or so I start to cry.

But looking at myself in the mirror helps alot...


I feel pretty, oh so pretty....
That's a whole lot of work.... then it's time for a bottle and a nap!

I post all of my pics to facebook, primarily because it's easier and can upload an entire file, however, for Caleb and Adrienne and my mom, here are a few pics on the blog too :-)

Daddy Can Shave Now!!

Wow.... it has been a week since I last posted! I feel like it has been an entire lifetime since then! Long story made short, Addie started to have seizure activity after being born and the doctors admitted her to the NICU at Presbyterian once they discovered this.... about 5 minutes before we were set to be discharged on Memorial Day.

It's been a crazy week - poor little girl has had a series of tests (CT, MRI, MRA, MRB, Echo, EEG, EKG, Bilirubin... the works) to figure out what was going on. Long story made really short, her labor was really long and really hard and it caused her brain to be deprived of oxygen causing some spots in her brain to be damaged (seen on the MRIs). It was not picked up on immediately because her APGARs were great and she was acting developmentally appropriate. After a week in the NICU and one large dose of phenobarbitol, Addie is seizure free and seems to be developing perfectly fine. She is even attempting to lift up her little head at 5 days old!

While she was in the NICU, Lee decided that he was not going to shave until he could bring his little girl home. Well he stayed with a beard for the first 5 days but had to shave most of it off on Friday because he thought he was going to have to go back to work for a week (so he didn't use his last week of vacation going to visit at the NICU which he could do before and after work). He shaved to a mustache which he is allowed to have at work... only to walk in to find out our little girl was getting out of jail! :-) (no really, the Presby NICU nurses are and were awesome to us and treated Addison (they called her the "big NICU baby" lol) just like she was one of their own).

Saturday was a big day for us... we got to go to the NICU and sign out our little girl! We got her home, she ate (she's eating 5 oz at a time almost and sleeping for 4 hours a stretch praise God), pooped, and then went to sleep.... it was so weird to have her in the house but it was awesome!

The puppies are adjusting well to having her around. I am sorely disappointed in Paige who has all but ignored Addie. She's wagged her tail, licked her once, and otherwise seemed completely apathetic. Brutus has yet to determine how he feels. He is the most interested in Addison's movements... but goes back and forth between licking her and waggin' his tail and barking in her general direction. Andie has done the best... for all of the people who were "concerned" that we were going to keep our Rottie... she thinks she is Addison's mom or something... she follows us around and lays at our feet wherever Addie is. She is not a fan of Addison crying and seems to get upset that we are not "fixing" things quickly enough!

Throughout this entire week we have just been reminded of how great our God is. My friend Lauren sent me this JJ Heller song that pretty much sums it up: "When my world is shaking, Heaven stands; When my heart is breaking, I never leave Your hands."

We are so blessed to have such fantastic family and friends. Everyone has been so supportive of us through the difficult labor and then the week in the NICU. Big shout out to Jason and Alesha for staying at our house and putting up with the puppies :-)

Addison Riley Saunders

Welcome to the world Addison Riley Saunders! 8 lbs 9oz, born at 8:51am, May 29, 2010 was a big day for our little girl: not just Caleb and Adrienne's 6th wedding anniversary, but also Lee's Sgt Tellis' birthday, and the day that Rebekah Goode swore Addie would be born on.

More pics and info to come!

Baby Watch 2010...

Wanted...One Baby to Fill this Nursery:








Well, the nursery is done, the bags are pretty much packed, I even vacuumed and steam cleaned! All that's left is the baby! So far no word on when she's going to decide to come out and meet us...Lee keeps thinking she will come May 25 or 26... who knows though, if she's anything like her parents she'll be stubborn and make us wait! :-)

Until then Lee will keep going to protect the Queen City one hoodlum at a time and I'll keep working at Holt until Addie drops out!

Adrienne and Caleb- it was so great to get to talk to you guys on Friday!! Lee says that you can see this blog so I uploaded the pics here... there will be more on facebook, it just takes forever to post a pic to blogger :-) Love you guys!

Everyone else - fret not, either the blog or facebook will be updated when we go to the hospital to meet Addison....not everyone will get a call from us but anyone in our various family and friendship circles will be communicated with (hopefully)!

Catch you on the flip side!