Baptizm

Today was Elijah's baptizm. We chose this weekend because all our siblings would be home from collage and typically we don't travel this weekend. In anticipation of his baptizm we brought an extra white onesie due to the fact, that out of the 5 months Elijah has been alive he has blown out a diaper probably 12 Sunday's at church. Well church started and we were doing good, no poop. Elijah had to stay good and awake until after the sermon today which was when he was actually going to be baptized. About 5 minutes before the sermon was over from a pew away I here a PTHTHTHT (wet fart noise). All of a sudden we all start to giggle and I hear "oh no you better hurry!" So I quickly grabbed his diaper bag and the child, sprint from the first row of the church with the baby in heals and head to the bathroom. I got about half way there and I made the executive decision to change him in the hallway. Why?? Well to get the changing table down and him on it and change him takes 2-3 times longer because they never make changing tables at the height for a short person and its is an acquired angle to do so. Therefore, I changed his massively poopy diaper in the hallway of the church very very quickly and ran back to church. We made it back just in time to get to the front of the church and baptize him. We were good. The pastor remembered his name, Elijah didn't throw up on the pastor and he wasn't dropped by his Godmother. It was all good. Then we went off to eat lots and lots of chili. It was a wonderful day! Elijah is a wonderful baby and we are very thankful for all our family and all our friends.

ZZZ...Gobble...Gobble...ZZZ

Happy Thanksgiving weekend. I was going to post on Thanksgiving about my Thanksgiving, however, I got a bit busy and ended up going to bed instead of posting.

So here is a look back on my Thanksgiving. First of all I am thankful for my husband for sweeping away the baby in the morning and letting me sleep past 7. However, by 7:30 I was wide awake and didn't get much more sleep after that. Then BJ made me breakfast toast with a turkey cut out of it and an egg over easy inside. Real cute and real yummy. Then we headed off to the Okel house to spend Elijah's first Thanksgiving there. Dinner was delicious. Then we headed off to home where I feel fast asleep.

Friday, Mom and Sonny came over to help cook chili for our Sunday family gathering. However, before we started cooking, Elijah headed off to the doctor to get his tushy looked at. Turns out Elijah as a possible fistula and we will be heading off to meet with a pediatric surgeon to see what we need to do about it. Fantastic!! I knew I should have put more money on the Flex Spending Card this year. Oh well, I am sure everything will be okay as long as we get this taken care of quickly.

Saturday, (today) we are doing round 2 of Thanksgiving with the Collins side of my family (Mom, Sonny, Brett, and Kelsey). Who can turn down delicious food? Not me. I am all for it!

Sad baby = Sad mommy

I thought we wouldn't have to worry about tummy issues for a couple of years with our little man. NOPE they have started. I should have known. Like father, like son! That's why I said I should have known. BJ has had issues with wheat and yeast there for, when it is time to start Elijah on rice cereal I should have known that it was all going to easy. So for the first week it went real well. Then we both go sick and the second week he was supposed to be on cereal he wasn't and was strictly back to milk. The third week he went back to cereal and things were good. Then two weeks ago he started to stop pooping!! Yup, the post is about poop! Then after 4 days of no poop we had some explosion. Then 3 days of poop, then 3 days of no poop, then poop. Each time we didn't have poop my perfectly happy little baby boy left and I got a tense, arched backed screaming in pain baby. As the days have gone on his little belly is tight and hard, a slightly raw from all the tummy massages that I have been giving him. I just feel sooo bad. Then as I do the research everything says to give the baby prunes or fruit, but he isn't there in his food exploration yet. So to prevent being "that parent" and call the doctor on the holiday to ask about something as dumb as poop I called today. Turns out we get to start giving him baby water. Really baby water? Now that is a new one even for me. I thought water was water. Guess I didn't realize that there was special water that baby could only drink. Whatever. I also have to take Elijah off of rice cereal and put him on oatmeal cereal, let's hope this works and let's hope for poop.

And so sorry, I will post pictures of Elijah tomorrow. I hope.

5 months

Wow, it's hard to believe that Elijah has been in our house and lives for 5 months now. A small part of me is surprised that it has only been 5 months, at times I feel like the little man has been around and in our lives for years. But then another part of me can't believe how fast those 5 months have gone and feels like it was just yesterday that I brought the little guy home. Over the past couple of months I can't remember when Elijah learned a new thing, I just realize every now and then something he is doing consistently and I don't remember watching him learn that. For example, I noticed tonight that Elijah likes to hold on to his toes, but today is the first time I noticed that. Did he just learn that tonight?? or has it been something he has been working on every now and then and I just didn't notice his exploration of his toes. It's sad, some days on my way to work or home from work I think about the day we came home from the hospital and how overwhelmed I was and shocked that the hospital staff trusted me and my husband enough to be the sole care takers of that little guy. I guess they were right though since he is the size of a baby moose and meeting his developmental milestones that he should be right on time.

On another note, I was going to post pictures of Elijah, but... he was super crabby and when ever I put him down for 20 seconds he would start screaming. So no cute pictures today. We will try again tomorrow.

Date night

Last night BJ and I went out to dinner and a movie and we left little man Elijah with his grandparents right down the street from the movie theater. While we were at dinner I felt as though the entire restaurant was empty. I thought that was odd, especially since it was about 6 on a Friday night, less than a block away from the movie theater. We then saw The Blindside which is a movie about the pro-football player who had a difficult start in life. The movie reassured a feeling I have had for a very long time. I have always felt that I want to have 2 children then adopt a third.

However, while at the movie, Elijah had a massive gas attack and was very uncomfortable and screaming for about 45 minutes. Poor Dad and Kelly. They tried to call and text, but they didn't go through since we were in the theater. I feel bad. At least he finally went back to sleep. Now I just get to spend the rest of the weekend trying to get the kid to poop.

The Hubbies Turn!!!

So for all of you dedicated readers of littlekellyslife.blogspot.com, this is a new treat for you! This post is coming straight from the hubby. My post today should hopefully make you laugh. Or at least it will if you"truly" know Kelly and I!!!



For anyone who has to operate machinery for work, mainly machines that one must drive, you may sympathize with me. Recently I started my new job and as a green horn I am currently doing labor work. This also entitles me to operating a forklift. If you are not familiar with forklifts, than please listen carefully. There are two gears on a forklift, forward and reverse, as well as neutral. The lever in which you use to switch between gears is on the side of the steering wheel. You move it forward to go forward and backward to, you guessed it, go backward. So now to the funny part of the story! The other day believe it was Saturday, Kelly and I were going somewhere and I was driving. I backed out of the garage and into the driveway. While switching the gear shift into drive, with the actual gear shift of the car, I also managed to turn on the right hand turn signal. As stated before, the gear shift for the fork lift is on the column near the steering wheel. Yep! Same exact place as the turn signal lever on a car!!! So while driving my car I managed to think that I was actually in the fork lift! It would have been fine if that was the only time I had done it, BUT I did it again while leaving work today to come home! Maybe I should just drive a forklift all the time!





Okay now for the second story and to give you a taste of what I got myself into by marrying Kelly!!! When she gets bored, she thinks of interesting questions! Things that no one in their right mind would probably ever think of! So... Last night we were watching TV, I think the news was on, and out of nowhere she asks me one of her questions! I am going to try and word it exact so here goes.


"With there being less use of the US Postal service, cause less people are mailing/shipping things, Do you think that the number of mailman babies has decreased? You know what I mean? I mean there are less mailmen walking around and more mailboxes like ours (mailbox with all of our neighbors as well in a center location). Also there are more female mail people, Do they ever have mail babies?"

I might have missed some of the question but I think I got the most of it! REALLY, someone please tell me how I am supposed to answer that! I will try to steal the blog away from her if she is to ask me any other off the wall questions. Than again maybe I will just make it my blog now since I get at least one of these questions a day!!!


Hope you all enjoyed and I hope that I gave you a good laugh or two!!

Places I want to go before I die:

At BJ's old job he placed temp. lab workers all over the country. When he was let go some of them sent him personal e-mail saying that they missed him. One of them even sent us a package from Hawaii. That made me think where are the places in the world that I would love to visit some time in my life. (Not in any particular order)

1. Great Wall of China (need to get over my eating things I don't know fear first).

2. Eiffel Tower

3. Egypt (all of it).

4. San Andrus Fault

5. Rome

6. Hawaii

7. Dallas

8. Grand Canyon

9. Las Vegas

10. Maine in the fall

11. Aruba

12. The place where the Mississippi river meets the Gulf of Mexico

I'm sure there are more, but I just realized how geographically challenged I am. Hmmm, I guess I'll figure it out later in life when I need to plan a trip.

You're kidding right?

Little man Elijah is getting baptized the weekend of Thanksgiving and BJ and I are trying to get everything together for that day. One of the things that we are trying to figure out is his outfit for the day. We first thought, lets go traditional outfit... yeah that didn't last long. One look at the price tag and I was shocked. $50.00 for the cheaper outfit. An outfit that the little man will only wear one time and he will possibly poop in or spit up on before the actual event. The second thought was that we would get something that our second child would wear but then we would have to be okay with letting our boy wear a dress, or guarantee us having another boy. Still couldn't bring my self to spend that kind of money on a white outfit.

The second option was to get him a little suit that he could wear again around Christmas. But it didn't look real baptismal.

What we decided: He will be wearing a white long sleeve onsiee, (we bought a 4 pack so if he poops and explodes his diaper we have backups) and will be wrapped in a very soft, white knit blanket that was given to us for a shower gift from the pastors who married us. Very sentimental and symbolic to us.

Carefull the first step is a doozie

This weekend BJ and I slacked a bunch and really didn't do our typical weekend house work. Therefore, at about 7:30ish I realized that none of the laundry had been done. This used to not phase me. However, since having a kid I have a limited number of pants I can wear and I can no longer wear a pair of pants multiple times due to every pair of pants get some sort of baby fluid on them by the end of the day. Anyway, there it is, 7:30 and I need to get 3 loads of laundry done before I go to bed. So I started the loads, but since we hadn't put away the laundry from last week I had no laundry basket and just carried the loads down one at a time as they were ready to be washed. On my third trip, now were talking 9:00ish, I had all the rest of the clothes and I was heading down the stairs. About 4 steps from the bottom, I'm not sure what happened, all I know is one moment I am walking down the stairs with dirty clothes, the next I'm sliding down two or three stairs on my but with dirty clothes everywhere. My initial reaction was, "Owww, I think I need to cry." My next reaction not even half a second later, "Oww that really sucked and I can't believe that just happened." Followed by about 3 minutes of laughing. BJ who watched the whole thing took his time coming over to me to see if I was okay. Probably had something to do with the fact that I was sprawled across the stairs laughing. Once he did, he dug me out from under the laundry, and gave me a hug. Then being a guy patted me on my butt to say you will be okay, however, hit me right on the spot I just fell. He therefore got a punch to the gut. Oh well. Oh and the picture is where I found Rescue on Saturday trying to take a nap. Weird dog.

Oh and Elijah's update, still no poop. We're still waiting. I'm giving it one more day before I call the doctor.

The Cost of Gas

Yes gas costs a lot up here in the Chicago suburbs. Specifically, gas costs between $2.59 and $2.79. However, that's not what I was talking about. I'm talking about baby boy Elijah. I have a feeling tomorrow is going to messy. Today was obnoxious. Poor kid, he hasn't pooped in over 24 hours. Yes, I have become a true parent. I am now blogging about my child's poop (or lack there of). So yeah, little Elijah has been full of gas all day long. He has been a bit fussy too. That's the real issue, our happy baby has to be held, and preferably standing. Well our baby is not so little and he is difficult to hold for that long of a period. Like I said, tomorrow will be messy or tonight, one of the two. I see poop in my future. I also see pictures of baby on the blog. Here are a few from the day, before he got to fussy from poop.

Lost Car

If you have ever gone to the airport and had to park your car, you know the joy that comes along with trying to find your car when you are done with what ever you are doing. Well BJ has been to the airport for 3 days in a row to work an 8-2 shift for a marketing company. On the third day he had a moment that I would have paid to see. He was getting off the elevator and walked to the row and the spot he thought he had left his car in. Wasn't there. He looked up and down the row and didn't see his car. He then was really smart and hit the button on his car remote to lock his car and listen to the beep. He could hear it honking but couldn't see it. So he walked down the row and hit the button again, no noise. Walked back to the spot he started in hit the button heard the honk. Still didn't see anything. Walked in the opposite direction and pushed the button. No honk. Again walked back to where he started, honk. After about 5-10 minutes of pacing back and forth it dawned on him. The car was on the floor above him. In the exact spot that he was standing in.

BJ's response to the experience: The cards that are at the elevator for you to take to remind you what floor you parked on, you should take.

Possible New Job

BJ has been picking up some hours with a marketing company which he is really really enjoying. However, this new past time comes with some downsides too. Some of these include, all over body pain from standing all day long, and being over exhausted from getting up at the crack of dawn and driving all over the city. On the upside BJ gets to people watch all day long. Slightly jealous can't lie.

Today though, BJ got a call that he will be doing labor for a new food manufacturing plant that is getting ready to open in our area. This job has a much bigger opportunity for a long term career. I enjoy new beginnings even if I'm not the biggest fan of change.

Complaints

I have been receiving some complaints lately about the pictures/or lack there of on the blog. I know, Elijah hasn't had his picture on the blog in over a week. I know this, and I'm sorry. I have an excuse though!!! My excuse is that I am a full time Speech therapist and BJ is keeping busy outside the house looking for a job. I think I have figured it that I am only spending about 4 hours with my son a day when he is actually awake. If I figure him waking up about 5:30 I hang with him for about 20-30 minutes while he eats, then I stick him in his bouncy seat and I jump in the shower. I then sit with him and talk to him while I do my hair and makeup for the day. I then get him ready to go and we head downstairs. He hangs in his highchair while I put the dog out, pack my lunch, make breakfast, get his food ready, put my pump together for work and load my car. If It is a good day I will eat Breakfast. By 7:15 we head out the door and off to daycare. (Up to about 1.5 hours together).

When I get home from work (most days Elijah is already home) around 6:00, I grab the baby and talk with him for about um.. 15-30 minutes then head off to get his dinner ready. I heat up his food and make his rice and spend at most 30 minutes feeding him. By about 6:45-7 he gets real cranky and it's off to bed with him. I can't remember a day when he is awake past 7:30. Then I step back and realize I didn't take his picture today and I will never have that day on film.

We are getting closer and closer to Elijah's 5 month birthday and I at times feel sad already. I'm sad that I spend over 50 hours a week away from my baby and am missing all the cool little things he does during the day. With him being so young he could do a new skill every day but since I'm not on the floor playing with him every day I could miss some of those things. I mean he is such a happy baby and so curious about life I feel one weekend I will be with him and he will just up and walk a way. However, at the same time, I still enjoy working and would miss it WAY to much. Sucks being a working parent, I don't think this part will get any easier as he gets older. Maybe once he gets into school I won't be so sad.

Our Dog Rescue

I wasn't blogging over the time when we acquired our .5 child, AKA our doggy. Let's start at the beginning of this story and after BJ and I bought our house we were ready for our next big acquisition, a dog. In March we went on our last big vacation before we got a dog and then BJ went on a business trip in the middle of April. The weekend he got back we went off to the pound to check out the cute doggies there. The problem was that I wanted a dog between 30 and 50 pounds, one that was around 2 years old, and one that was good with young kids since we wanted to have one soon. We were having problems finding a dog that met those standards for us. Most of the dogs we were finding were over 100 pounds or under 15 pounds. Others were not recommended for children at all or children over the age of 9. I was getting a bit frustrated with what our options were. Then we found Rescue The Wonder Dog.

She was about 30 pounds when we found her but they thought she would gain about 5 more pounds, the thought she would be good with kids and they recommended that she go to a home that could spend time with her because she was very skittish with EVERYTHING. So we got her and brought her home, once we would get her in the car. Found out she was scared to death of cars and refused to get into the car. She barfed doggy bits in the car on the way home and that should have been our first clue we were in for a bumpy ride.

Over the next 24 hours we figured out:

• She had difficulty with transitions. She refused to go through doorways which makes if very challenging to get her to go to the bathroom. (Now she has no issues with them)
  
• She is scared of her leash. We would have to chase her around the house and corner her to get her leash on then start running and get through the door. (Now as long as BJ or I put the leash on her she doesn't mind)


• She had gravitational insecurity. She didn't know how to go up stairs and would only take her front feet off the floor. It took her about a week to figure out how to get up the stairs and for the first couple of months we had to lift her in and out of the car.
  
• She had massive anxiety if you left her. Thank goodness we had a crate or else I'm not real sure what we would have lost. (She chewed a lot of towels).
  
• She didn't like the order of the house and kept trying to attack me. (Training took care of that)
  
• She was scared to death of any motor vehicle bigger than a bicycle, especially buses, dump trucks, tractors, and motorcycles. And when your house has a back yard that is for a construction dump site there are lots of things your dog doesn't want to be around. (Now she chases them as they drive by)
  
• She has no body awareness. She is the only dog I know that takes over a half an hour to pee, and will poop while walking.

Over the next couple of months we went to training school the really didn't work out for us. They even recommended us getting rid of her. That's when we found the trainer that worked for us. We went to 10 weeks of training and by the end we had a dog that trusted us and is not so scared of everything. However, she still doesn't do well with some people. In fact, for some odd reason she is scared to death of BJ's father. No clue why. Now our dog is still weird and here is what we need a doggy Occupational Therapist to work on with.

• Understanding when she is hungry. She won't eat for 24 hours then barf because her stomach is empty.
  
• Pee in less than 10 minutes.
  
• Her attention span

The list has gotten MUCH shorter over the last year and a half and most of the time I am glad we kept her. I do have to say though there are days that I threaten to sell her to the Gypsies.

Pregnacy and the after effects

When your pregnant you expect your body to change in certain ways. However, there are many things that those other people forget to mention. For example, I knew I would gain weight, they said 20 pounds... actual 45 pounds. They said I would have stretch marks, I assumed on my stomach... actual, got them on my back, inner thighs, and calves, none on my stomach. They said your boobs will get bigger... actual they quadrupled in size and are always full. They said it will take time to lose the baby weight... actual, the weight comes off semi quickly, however, all the lose skin sticks around for what feels like forever. What they forgot to mention... your eyes change about 3 months after you give birth so you can't see anything, you lose 3-4 giant fist fulls of hair a day (seriously I feel like a shedding doggy), and you eventually get used to sleeping in 4-5 hour spurts.

Yeah and I'm only 4.5 months out of being preggers. Can't wait for the rest of the surprises to pop up any day now.

Merry Chirstmas

I mean wait... Oh yeah, Christmas is in um a month an a half. I mean get over it. Sitting on the couch in the last commercial break i have seen 3 "holiday" commercials. Really?? Every year there is a longer and longer period of Holiday commercial cheer. What ever happened to advent? Oh right, you can't make money off of the real story of Christmas. I forgot. I think it will be about 5 more years before there will be Christmas commercials year round.

However, with the last two days having temperatures in the low 70's it is hard to remember that it is November.

Fall Cleaning

I know most people do spring cleaning, however, since I was super preggers in the spring we didn't really do much of that. (Ha that's my excuse but in all actuality is we just don't deep clean as often as we should.) Since I know that my house is messy and right after I returned to work from maternity leave I found out we can't roll over any of our vacation time to next year so I would have extra time off. I figured, I'll take a couple of days off and clean the house. Then BJ got laid off and both Elijah and I came down with something so two of the planed cleaning days went down the drain. On Friday BJ and I cleaned like it was no body's business. Elijah went off to daycare and I started on the bathrooms, 2 hours later the bathrooms looked like new. In my own opinion there are several very important areas of the house that need to be clean, they are toilets, showers, and sinks. When we are ready to buy our next house the one deciding factor for me will be how the showers look. If they are not clean at first glance no sale. A dirty shower is gives me chills. Now don't get me wrong I went to collage, I spent 3 years showering in "public/community" showers. But that was enough for me.

It's funny though, with the house this clean, I feel as it isn't really my house. I'm sure I will get used to it.

Word of the day...BLAH

Yesterday at 6:00 am we get a phone call from Elijah's daycare saying that her daughter was super sick and they were rushing her to the hospital, therefore, no daycare today. about 3 hours later, I started to not feel so hot but it wasn't anything to worry about. Progressively throughout the day I felt worse and worse, Elijah's low grade fever came back and the the daycare providers daughter was admitted to the hospital. Today, I'm not feeling any better, nor is Elijah. But my thinking back in September was that I would take 3 days in November and really deep clean the house, now that it is November and I'm off work, I just want to curl up on the couch and sleep and try to get solid food into my system. Either way, I wouldn't be working today so at least I had planned a head with my clients. BLAH

Little Piggy, Little Piggy let me come in.

Some time in the past 7 days I told Elijah the story of the 3 little pigs as we were going to bed. He didn't seem to like the part when the houses got blown down. Flash forward to yesterday, I get a phone call from daycare saying that Elijah has a fever of 101.5. Awesome, couldn't have come on a worse day. Luckily, since Elijah goes to an in home daycare and ALL the kids were sick (including her own) there were really no kids at daycare so she let Elijah stay there today. Very helpful so I could get to work and BJ could take care of his job interviews. Now piggy get out of my house. (Elijah has not had a fever since 2:30 am and he did lots of sleeping today.)

What I found in my car

For anyone who has been anywhere near my car in the last, um... 3-4 years, you will know my car seems to be a black hole for crap. Now BJ likes to say excuses and butts are basically the same thing, everyone has one and they both stink. Well my excuses for my car are:

A) we never take my car so why should it be clean?

B) I have a lot of stuff to bring back and forth why not just give it a permanent home in my car?

Well It finally came to a point (BJ told me I had to or he would do it) that I needed to clean my car. I thought It would be funny to share all that I found. HA you ready.

2-child puzzles (1 floor puzzle, 1- 9 piece wooden one
1- coloring book

2- sets of stickers

1- hot wheel car

1- Fisher Price car with baby in the back seat

1- unopened deck of cards

3- pairs of socks

1- cat puppet

50- wedding favor bubbles

8- reusable bags

1- pair of mittens

1- water bottle

3- expired vehicle registrations

2- emissions tests (made me realize I missed my last vehicle emissions in 2008)

7- expired insurance cards

1- bag of popcorn (not sure why)

1- hair claw

2- uppercase living catalogs

3- Mr. Potato Head bodies (no parts)

3- Baby potato head bodies (again no parts)

1- giant potato head, with parts

1- CD

1- half drunk Iced tea

1- Tupperware with a science experiment inside

1- hand held AC adapted vacuum cleaner

1- mini brown paper bag

1- bag of garbage

1- pen

1- travel bottle of contact solution that expired in 2002

1- Christmas Chocolate

1- speech developmental chart

1- gift card to Target

1- phone charger to a phone I don't have any more

1- tum

directions to two places and 1 dead June bug. Ha and that's not including the car seat base, stuffed cow, umbrella (that is never used), atlas (that has never been opened), a box of tampons, a tire pressure gage and 3 travel sized packs of Kleenex. I know, I'm a slob. now my car can go to the Doctor and get it's axel fixed.

Happy Halloween and All Saints Day

Yesterday we celebrated Elijah's first Halloween. In the morning we just sat around the house and took pictures with our pumpkins. The little one is Elijah's pumpkin that I carved for him, the big one is BJ's pumpkin he carved for his favorite team, and the medium pumpkin is mine that our neighbor carved for me since I had Elijah. That night we drove to the city to visit two of my old co-workers who just moved and actually moved less than a mile of each other. We ended up doing drinks and appetizers at one house, then dinner and dessert at the other. We walked between the two houses because we found a great parking spot and didn't want to have to give it up. As we walked between the houses all dressed up families were handing us candy. So even though Elijah was sound asleep for the walk his first trick-or-treating experience was successful in getting mommy and daddy candy.