Gratitude

SO many things have changed in the past year. Myself included. I have seen such a change in my own personality and mindset during this time. I can say with 100% certainty in this moment that I am satisfied. For the first time in my life I am able to look around myself and feel nothing but overwhelming gratitude. I'll run down a little bullet list of what has occurred this year.

- Gryffin is TWO years old. It is so amazing. He talks constantly, he is healthy and happy and the absolute joy of our lives. He sleeps through the night, he eats pretty good (better for the sitter) and he is just a happy little guy. I have continued to learn and grow and put my entire soul into being the parent he deserves. I am grateful to have been chosen to be his mama.

- I have been at my job for nearly a year. There are aspects of the job that I'm not thrilled about, but I am actually very good at what I do. I get at least 2 emails a week telling me how helpful I am and thanking me for putting forth the energy to get what they needed done. I am grateful to not only have a job when so many others dont, but also to have one that I enjoy and thrive in.

-I have made some of the greatest friends I have ever had this year. My job has brought me into contact with genuinely wonderful, caring, good people. I am grateful for these relationships and their presence in my life.

-My husband turned 30 this year. I will never be able to express the love and gratitude I have for this man. The day I met him was the day my soul woke up. He is the only person in this world whom I know really knows me, and for that I am eternally grateful.

-I have lost 21 pounds since March. I have lost this weight naturally and in a healthy way. I feel stronger and happier and proud of myself. I have 7 pounds to go to be pre-baby weight, and then 20 more after that to be at my goal. I am grateful for the support others have given me and so grateful for the strength to work hard.

Several years ago when I left hair stylist school a classmate of mine, a gorgeous girl named Blake, looked me in the eyes and told me that I would never be satisfied. That nothing in this world would ever make me happy because I didn't want to be happy. I wish I could talk to her now. I wish I could tell her how that statement haunted me and how I feared that she was right. And also tell her how totally wrong she was. That my nomadic soul has settled and I have found peace, and how I wish I would have never worried about her judgements because I know now that there is nothing wrong with striving for more and better. There is nothing wrong with refusing to settle for mediocrity. I hear people complain about work, the weather, their family, and everything else around them and I just don't understand. Be thankful you have a job. Be thankful for a rainy day because the earth needs it. If you have people in your life that hinder you, remove them. I don't believe in being obligated to people, if their presence in your life isn't serving your happiness then they need to go.

In October of last year the person that I thought was my best friend in this world and had been for 12 years, left me behind. She sent me a letter in the mail detailing what a terrible friend I was to her, kicking me out of her wedding and absolving herself of her role as godmother to my child. In the last almost 10 months there has not been one instant where I felt the need to contact her. Not one thing that happened made me think of her or need her. Her absence has had no effect on my life, therefore I know now that her presence had no effect either. This is not a judgement on her, it is simply a fact that we were no longer serving a purpose for each other.

I have chosen the joy in my life. I have chosen my little boy's smiling face, my husband's loving arms, the laughter of my friends, and the strength of my own spirit. I am happy and so very gracious.

Hear that Blake? You helped me get here and for that I am also grateful, but you were wrong :)

im a terrible blogger

so i am trying to type this on my phone which is acting crazy so i apologize in advance!

i cant believe i havent blogged in 5 months! i cant seem to remember or find time to do it!

here is a little update on our baby boy! we are headed towards the 19 month mark! at his 18 month check up he was 26 pounds and 33 inches tall. the doctor said that he is right on the cusp of full fledged speaking! he has 23 words that he uses daily, he can show us where 9 of his body parts are, and he is starting to use phrases including "thank you" "i dance" "all done" and "love you." he amazes me everyday by how smart he is and how much he understands. he has a few chores like picking up his toys at bedtime and putting his jacket in his room when we get home and i think that is helping him learn the concept of responsibility a little bit.
he had his very first dentist appointment this week and she said he has 13 perfect little baby teeth and 4 more on their way.
adam and i feel so blessed to have been given such an amazing child to raise and we such a feeling of duty to do everything right for him. we are constantly learning and evolving as parents. i am currently reading 2 books on toddler behavior and how to deal with their frustrations. gryffin has begun throwing tantrums when he doesnt get what he wants but so far simple distraction or just ignoring him is working perfectly. clearly we are still totally anti spanking and sorry to burst any bubbles but that isnt going to change! i have grown accustomed to being mocked when people find out that i dont believe in hitting my kid. thats fine tho :)
i am looking into a kindermusic class for him and also a toddler gymnastics class. i think he will love that!
gryf has been sleeping wonderfully lately too and we are so thankful! we stick to a firm schedule and i know that helps a lot! we do family dinner at 6 followed by bath at 7 and story and bed at 8. when 8 rolls around gryf gets his baby and heads to his room. we usually dont hear from him again till around 6am when we get on the couch for some mickey mouse and milk :)
thats pretty much all for now! i plan to post a more topic specific post soon!
thanks for checking in!

Poor sick baby.

Gryffin went almost an entire year without so much as a stuffy nose. Then he got sick 2 days before his birthday with his first ever fever. He got over that virus after about 5 days. He kicked anemia in about 6 weeks. Then his first week at the baby sitter's house he got a cold and has had a stuffy nose and congestion for almost 3 weeks straight. Now he has the Roseola virus! I had to go and pick him up early yesterday because he had a red rash all over his trunk area. Took him to the doctor and after I told her he had a fever most of the weekend, she said she was certain in is Roseola. He had a fever friday, saturday and a really mild one sunday night. I thought it was from his molars coming in. The doctor said Roseola presents as 3 days of fever then a rash for anywhere from a few hours to a week. Well we are on day 2 of Rash Watch 2012. It is covering his entire body, including under his hair. The good thing is, it doesnt seem to itch or bother him at all, the bad thing is that I can't take him to the baby sitter's until it is completely gone. He has been playing fine, just a little more tired that usual. I enjoyed the extra cuddle time today but I really hope he is better at least by lunch time tomorrow so I can get back to work and he can get back to normal. Roseola is also referred to as the "three day measels." It's just a virus that kids get between 6 months and 2 years and there isnt anything that can be done about it. I'm so glad I kept him home for 13 months, seeing him covered in a rash is hard enough now, I don't know how we would have handled it at 6 months!

5

I wanted to update my blog but couldn't really think of a topic, so here are 5 random things from today.

1. Gryffin had a check-up today to see where we are with his hemoglobin, and it is up to 11! That is normal! So no more anemic baby. He has gained 13 oz in 3 weeks and has completely regained his appetite. So thankful!

2. My biggest pet peeve right now is this: when talking about my breastfeeding relationship with Gryffin and the amount of time that he nursed, please do not tell me "you are so lucky" or that I should be "grateful that it worked out." Would you tell someone that recently lost a lot of weight that they are lucky? Or would you tell them good job and congratulate them on a job well done? Yes. Having a successful, long term nursing experience is not luck and it doesnt just happen. I find it very rude when people write off my hard work and determination. I wanted it to work and so I did everything in my power to succeed. Don't rebound your own issues on to me and demean my efforts. I have never worked so hard or sacrificed so much as I did in order to successfully nourish my child for 13 months in the safest and most natural way possible. Ok, end rant.

3. I have been taking a women's multivitamin for a little over a week now and feel amazing! I wonder what I was missing that had me dragging for so long...?

4. Watched Wanderlust and The Woman in Black over the weekend, the first one was hilarious, second one has a seriously crappy ending.

5. Since I started working, I have been making our breakfast for the week on sunday nights.
            mini omelets: whip up eggs, splash of milk, salt, and pepper, and pour into greased muffin tins.
                                add whatever omelet toppings you like, I add sausage crumbles, baby spinach,
                                and pepperjack cheese. Bake for about 20 minutes at 350. Bam! You have super
                                tastey, and portable egg muffin thingys for breakfast. I put them in a ziploc and just
                                throw one in the microwave each morning. Good way to start the day with protien.

-R

Working, Weaning, and Winning.

My big baby boy is 13 months old today! The last set of lab work showed a huge improvement in his hemoglobin and platelet levels! So we are quickly getting back to normal and I couldn't be more relieved. In other news, I started my new job at Everlasting Granite. I am actually really excited about this job. I will be working with some great people and with the recent buyout, it is seriously the best company in town. The benefits are wonderful! I was pretty worried about how Gryffin would handle going to the babysitter, since he has only ever stayed with my parents. When we dropped him off this morning he immediately started playing and was not the least bit concerned with us. They said he did great the entire day, which was such a relief to hear! I am so thankful that the babysitter is right behind our house, so we are able to get him at lunch and still have our family meal time in the middle of the day. It is still so important to me to be with Gryffin as much as possible, I hate the thought of handing him off to someone else, but I know the babysitter we have is wonderful and it is a home environment. More baby news: apparently Gryffin has decided it is time to move on from breastfeeding. I always said that I would nurse him as long as he wanted to, and I guess 13 months is his cutoff. He has not nursed in almost 48 hours, and has shown no interest in it. I am not having any pain or discomfort, so I guess my body was ready to stop too. It is a little bit heartbreaking that this part of our relationship is over, and I know I will miss it dearly, but I have solace in knowing that the bond we created will always be there. I can't believe that my baby boy is running around the house (literally), and talking, and going to a babysitter, and has weaned himself! Time really doesn't cut us a break. I am just very thankful and overwhelmed with the beautiful life I've been given. <3

Anemia

well yesterday we found out that Gryffin has anemia, caused by an iron deficiency. The anemia test is standard at the 1 year check up, but before we even got to that point at his check up yesterday the doctor knew she wanted a full panel workup done on Gryffin's blood.
   About 5 weeks ago Gryffin fell and hit his chin pretty hard and has had a nasty bruise ever since, that combined with some bruising on his hips (lots of tiny broken capillaries) and the fact that he has lost weight signalled some warning signs. Up until now, Gryffin has been above the 90th percentile in weight and above 80th in height at each check up. This visit showed only a 1/2 inch growth in height and an 11 oz drop in weight in the last 3 months. The dr said that she actually isnt extremely concerned about the weight because he was very sick last week which made him basically not eat for 3 days, and she also said babies tend to stop gaining or even lose weight when they start to crawl. The fact that I am working on weaning him may also be playing into his weight loss.
  What she was mostly worried about was his bruising. So, after a really crazy day, 3 shots, 2 toe pricks, and 2 blood draws in two seperate arms, we now know that he is pretty severely anemic. She said that for his age his hemoglobin should be at or above an 11, usually when she sees an anemic kid they are at a 9, and Gryffin is at a 7.
   The good news is that his white blood cell count and his platelets are perfect. So there is absolutely nothing else going on. She said that she and the tech both looked over his results and the tech actually looked at his blood under the microscope and there were zero "bad" cells and everything else was in normal range. So this problem is purely nutritional. Anemia in breastfed babies this age is not uncommon. The iron stores that a baby is born with begin to run out around 6 months, so after that they should be getting their iron from other food sources. Well, Gryffin is a notoriously bad eater so that explains most of the problem. Also, any iron that he should be getting from my breast milk, is honestly probably not there. I do not eat much iron rich foods (no red meat for me, thanks) and the dr was actually concerned that I may be anemic also; and that is not the first time I've been told that....I bruise like an old peach.
   What we have to do now is give him an iron supplement daily, up his iron rich foods any way we can, offer food all day long instead of just meal and snack times, and give him pediasure milkshakes to increase is iron, vitamins, and weight gain. He took the supplement really well today and really loved the strawberry milkshake he had at lunch. I think most of the weight loss happened last week while he was sick. He was feeling so bad he wouldnt even nurse, and that is one of his very favorite things.
   The dr seemed really pleased by his blood work and we are all relieved because anemia can be fixed, the alternatives that we were looking at were much more serious. I am trying to not completely freak out because I know he is a super happy little dude. Despite the lack of physical growth over the last 3 months, mentally he has grown leaps and bounds. Every day he is smarter and more intune with what is going on. He has several words now including, "bye, hey, mama, daddy, ok, up, go" and he shakes his head "yes" and "no" when we ask him something. And he is crawling around the house figuring things out like putting his toys up and getting things out that he wants to play with. He is also a huge mimic, which is hilarious.
   I just hope we can turn this around as soon as possible and get him off the supplement and back to 100% healthy. For now, I will just be thankful that it is "just" anemia. God has blessed me with a healthy life thus far, and a healthy happy baby boy.

discipline

I was watching an episode of Super Nanny the other day and the mother in on the show repeatedly "spanked" and "popped" her 2 year old and 4 year old children. This got me really thinking about how people chose to discipline their kids. I really dont get the whole corporal punishment thing with children. When you really stop and think about it, the parent-child relationship is the only one in which it is ok to hit someone. It's never ok to hit your spouse, your friends, your siblings, you coworkers, you cant hit your parents or anyone else. But when a child does something you don't like, go ahead and hit them...it doesn't make any sense to me. What exactly is the lesson with spanking? When you do something wrong, you'll experience pain? There is no reason or logic to it. At any other point in your life you don't receive discipline in the form of physical pain. The look on a child's face when they are physically hurt by a parent is always the same, they are confused and also emotionally hurt. We teach our kids to tell on someone if they are hurt by them but then we turn around and become the ones hurting them. It seems to me that this is the lazy way of dealing with a child. I know that Adam and I will not be taking this route with Gryffin. I don't want anyone to spank me when I make a mistake so why would I do it to my kid?