Father's Day and The First Cold

Howie's FIRST Father's Day went well. I woke up at 6:45 am to go to the grocery store to buy him balloons and cake. I also looked for hash browns for his breakfast but they didn't have any in the store for some reason. I decided that I'd head over to McDonalds and get ghetto hash browns. Ghetto or not, they're good! After my early morning shopping spree I came home, put things away, and crawled back into bed. When Aislinn woke up I got her dressed in the cute little Ralph Lauren dress someone gave us that we haven't had an excuse for her to wear until now. Howie was awake so he came downstairs to open his gifts.


Aislinn with Howie's stack of Father's Day gifts.


Howie with his new XBox HD DVD player.


A new camera bag that will hold all of the extra lenses he apparently needs for the camera.


Mets tickets for the last game of the season, which is also Howie's birthday. It'll be Aislinn's first baseball game. Woohoo!


A book that I made for Howie on Shutterfly.com.

I then made him scrambled cheese eggs, bacon, and heated up the hash browns. YUM! The rest of the day was pretty laid back. We took a walk in Westport, had some bitchin' pizza, then we came home. Aislinn slept, ate, played. For dinner we ordered Chinese food and for dessert we had chocolate cake.





So what else has been going on while I should have been blogging about Father's Day? We cleaned the house, searched for jobs, I worked, and Aislinn came down with her first cold. I feel so bad because her cute little nose is stuffy and running and she's all congested. I wish I could just make her better. I hate seeing her sick like that. We took her to the doctor in the beginning when the cold wasn't that bad. She told us that if it were worse she'd have us give her something, but it usually just makes babies more fussy or something. So instead she told us to steam up the bathroom and bring her in for a few minutes. I turned the hot water on full blast and closed the door before her bath. I was going to go in there and change the temperature to fill up her actual bath once the room was all steamed up and then I was going to use the baby vapor bath soap to wash her. While I was getting her ready for her bath I asked Howie to go in and fill up her tub. He went in the bathroom and there was so much steam that his glasses fogged up and he said it was so hot he could barely breathe. He left the door open to let out some steam before I went in. He couldn't fill up the bath because he couldn't see so I went in to do it. It was pretty warm in there and it was very wet. My hair started to curl up and I started to sweat. I filled up her tub and left the door open for a few more minutes. I think the steam and the vapor bath helped. We used the snot sucker to get the snot out of her nose but she only allowed that about 10% of the time. A bunch of people told us to put a pillow under her mattress but when we did it looked like bad news to me. I pictured her turning the wrong way in her sleep and rolling down the "hill" in her crib. We decided that it was probably best for her to sleep in her swing since she likes that and she can sit up while sleeping without rolling away. Howie brought the humidifier downstairs and placed it near her swing. That seemed to work well. This cold started on Monday and it seems to be much better now. It isn't over but it's better.

She has been all about me lately. Daddy makes her feel better too. Howie's parents were over on Thursday and she just wanted me to hold her the whole time. It made me feel bad and I figured they were just thinking that she was favoring me because I breast feed her and they think that is keeping her from bonding with Howie or anyone else. Whatever. I was surprised when they said it was probably because she was sick and just wanted her Mommy. I really expected them to attack the breastfeeding like they usually do. It is sweet that she wants to be with me and that I make everything all better for her, but I do feel bad when she cries when other people are holding her. Oh well, someday she'll be 16 and she won't want me around at all so I am going to just love this time I have with her right now.

As far as unemployment goes things are the same. I'm working just enough to keep our health insurance. My former boss told me that if Howie and I move back to VA that I'd have a full-time job. I was tempted to go back because I miss living there and I really miss my friends, Bren, Les & my brother's gf, "J". Of course I miss my boss "D" and the rest of my co-workers. For the past month I think it has seemed like we were on vacation and the whole unemployment thing wasn't real. Howie is growing a beard and I only shave once a week. Howie's becoming an online poker champion and getting really good at cleaning the house. I have been doing busy work for my company just to keep our insurance and have started expanding my TV viewing with shows like Engineering the Impossible, Design Rivals, Flip This House, Flip That House, Hey Paula, and Kathy Griffin: My Life on the d-list. I figured I need to keep things balanced between learning and garbage TV. It's going well. If the housing market was better I could easily flip a house, and I'm amazed that it took 3 times as long to build Chartres Church than it did to build the Great Pyramid of Giza. WTF? Are you serious? I also enjoy watching Paula Abdul act like a stupid spoiled crack head when crying about how her two assistants didn't pack her a pair of sweat pants for her to wear on her flight. Anyway, I think the vacation will soon come to an end and the panic will truly set in. I still have faith that everything will be ok and work out. It has to.

Before I go I just want to send all y'all over to Les over at In Search of a Baby Ug to send all of your good vibes and wishes to her and her little embryos. Good luck Les! I love you!!

I Should Be Fired

Not from the job that I was already fired from but from blogging on my blog. I SUCK at keeping up with my blogging at the moment and I keep saying that I'll get better yet here I am posting a month after my last entry. Reasons I have been too busy to blog:

1. Completing all the work I had left before what should have been my last day of work.
2. Keeping up with all the new work from many random people who were bullied into giving me busy work by my former boss who was worried about me, Howie and her "AGD" (Almost Granddaughter) after learning that Howie was fired from his job on the first day of my unemployment.
3. Aislinn is getting to be a big girl and wants to explore new places beyond her tiny playmat on the floor. That means that it's not as easy to get things done because when she does her little inch worm move off of the mat onto the rug she cries because the rug hurts when you slide your head across it. More details about this subject below. The main point is that all of this exploring that she does keeps me busy because she is no longer just hanging out in one spot enjoying her toys.

So there you go. That's why I have been missing. I hope to catch up with all of your blogs soon and keep up on mine. Now that Howie is home it should be getting a little bit easier. How great is that, both Howie and I being unemployed? Both of us let go due to the fact that there is absolutely NO MONEY coming in to pay either of us! Great! Right? I'm semi-unemployed. Luckily I have the most awesome former boss on the planet. I'm like the child she never had. For the past 5 years of my life she has really been there for me, professionally and personally. She is a wonderful person and I love her and miss her so much. She didn't want to let me go, but they just didn't have the money in their budget to keep me. They can barely afford to keep her but since she is the HR Manager they really couldn't live without her. She was trying to find some work in the office for me to do but considering she has a whole lot of work and not much help she hasn't had time to hunt things down. As soon as I told her Howie lost his job she ran around the office finding work for me from projects that have some extra money in their budget. It's not full-time work, but it's enough to make a little bit of money and keep my insurance for another month. She hopes to find some more work for me in July, but can't promise it. I'm searching for jobs and I guess I'll file for unemployment in July. Our parents have offered to help if we need it. We'll be ok. I wasn't this relaxed when he told me. In fact, I wanted to puke when he called to tell me he lost his job. After totally freaking out I decided that everything would work out just fine. I could be in denial. Whatever, I'm sticking with that.

Enough about the unemployment. Bleh! Aislinn has started solid foods. YAY!! She LOVES cereal, squash, and so far seems to enjoy carrots. In a couple of weeks she will start fruit. She is good at eating, doesn't really play with her food but if we don't put that spoon in her mouth fast enough she will grab our hand and guide it in. She likes to hold her spoon herself sometimes. When she has a bottle she likes to hold it herself. She was able to roll from belly to back and back to belly since April 25th but didn't really do a whole lot of rolling onto her belly simply because she preferred laying on her back. She got over that and rolls onto her belly all the time now. She also loves to grab her feet and at times tries to get them both in her mouth at the same time. She has also recently decided that she enjoys eating her hand. She has always liked "chatting" quite a bit but has started trying out a few new sounds. I love her cute little squealy voice. She's perfect! She's trying to crawl right now but it's more like an inch worm kind of move, sometimes it's kind of like a yoga downward facing dog pose. The back end wants to go places but the front end isn't sure how to travel yet. She wants to pull herself along with her arms but that doesn't work. So her legs will get going and her little butt goes up in the air and her front end starts to get pushed along. By front end I don't really mean arms, I mean her head kind of runs along the floor and she cries because her face is getting roughed up. After a while she completely collapses on her belly with her face right into the floor and screams at the top of her lungs. We've laid down blankets around her playmat so that if she ventures off she won't have to get rug burn but it really doesn't make it much better. I think she's frustrated because she knows what she wants to do but hasn't really figured it all out yet. She'll get there sooner or later.

The only other new thing to share is that I have started going to acupuncture treatments. I know that sounds nuts since we are unemployed but the acupuncturist is giving me a deal and our parents are helping us out with some things. I'm going to get help for my PCOS and weight loss. I'm not getting help with my PCOS in order to get pregnant right now, just to regulate my hormones and get my cycle back on track because I currently don't have a cycle. What else is new, right? I felt great after the appointment. The needles didn't really hurt at all, especially after the number of needles I stuck myself with during fertility treatments. There was just one spot that hurt like holy hell and that was my right ankle. There was one in my right foot that hurt a tad, but the right ankle almost felt like it was sprained. She tried to be gentle with that spot but I didn't want her to take it out. It's a big spot for hormonal disorders. Clearly, as if I didn't already know, my hormones are all out of whack. It didn't hurt for too long, the pain eased up after a while. She did go deeper with the needles after 15 minutes or so. When she went deeper with the needle on my right ankle it was too much so she backed it out a bit. If any of you out there are afraid to try acupuncture because you don't want it to hurt don't let that keep you away. It really isn't meant to hurt and other than that one needle it didn't. After some time it shouldn't hurt as much and if it does hurt too much you just have to tell your acupuncturist and they can change the placement of the needles or not go as deep. You really should give it a try. It's well worth it. The needles are very thin, like a human hair. I love it. It's nice to have some time to myself, something that makes me a healthier person. I'll keep you updated on the acupuncture treatments.

So... Father's Day weekend! YAY!! Father's Day is also my birthday. My mom always said that if she knew I was going to be born on Father's Day she wouldn't have bought my father a gift. It's will also be the one year anniversary of when we told our families that I was pregnant with Aislinn. I'm choosing to make Father's Day all about Howie and we're going to celebrate my birthday on Saturday. I want his first Father's Day to be all about him. I'm so excited because I bought him so cool gifts, even though we're poor. Howie always gets screwed when it comes to gifts. His birthday is at the end of September. September is a big month because we have two other birthday and my parents anniversary. Once his birthday rolls around at the end of the month we've had to get other people gifts and pay bills so we're tapped out. We've never made a lot of money because of the kind of work that we do so we've always been pretty strapped at the end of each month. So, here we are in June. Both of us unemployed and it's Howie's first Father's Day. I can't just let that go by. He made sure that I had a great mother's day and he always makes sure that I have a great birthday. He never complains and is always saying that he's just happy to be spending his birthday with me even if we can't afford to do anything nice and I know he'd do the same on Father's Day. Not this time though. I know it's not about flashy gifts or anything, and we all know that Aislinn is a big enough gift for us both. I just want to do something nice for him, so I am. I bought him thoughtful gifts too, not just crap to say I got him something and spent money. I got him things that will make him happy and I can't wait for it to be Sunday.

Well, right now it's 2:00 am and I really should get my butt in bed because I have to get up early with Aislinn and get some work done that I should have had done a couple of days ago. I will leave you with a new picture of Aislinn eating squash and looking completely cute.