Birthday Pics

A party summary in pictures...

The spectacular cake...

Pretty party dress...

Who says you can't ride an ATV in a pretty party dress?

Singing "Happy Birthday"

Then the screaming started...

Then she tasted how delicious it was...

Time to open presents...

Then it was bed time, and Mama could start to party.

Thanks to everyone who helped make Aria's 1st birthday very special!

Looong Week

It has felt like the longest week ever for me. I am definitely not used to working everyday. But now I have a 3 day weekend. Less than 24 hours to Aria's big birthday bash. I can't wait to see how much fun she has. I am just as excited to see the cake that Auntie LeAnne is making. I am sure that will take the cake...haha pun intended.

Happy Birthday Aria!

I can't believe she is 1!! Where did the past year go? She obviously has no idea what today is, but I am super excited for her party on Saturday! I will be she to post lots of pics!

She's Walking

Unfortunately I didn't get any video of her walking really good. She started taking more steps today. She can actually walk 5 feet before falling on her butt. I am going to try my hardest to get some good video after work tomorrow. Yep, I start work tomorrow. Kids are going to daycare. I am excited and really sad all at the same time.

Nighty-Night, big day tomorrow!

Not a fan of ER's

I spent the majority of today, and a good part of last night in 2 different ER's with Aria. It all started with a low fever over the weekend. Then all day Sunday, she wasn't herself, fevers continued. So finally we (me and my whole family, and some non family members) decided she needed to be seen ASAP. In the half hour it took to leave the house, get to the ER and see a nurse, her temp jumped from 102.5 to 105!!! Ummmm, I would want to die if that were me, poor baby. It was a long night full of blood draws, catheters, x-rays, and drugs. All to be sent home with this tidbit of info, "She has an infection, we don't know where. But we don't want to give her antibiotics yet as it could mask something more serious down the road, like meningitis. So follow up in 24 hours and have a good night." Are you effing kidding me?!?!?!?!?! So I take her home, wake up to a 104.9 temp. Back in the car, this time headed to Children's Hospital. More of the same, with the addition of an IV and antibiotics. Dr says, "She has an infection that we still can't pinpoint, here is a prescription for amoxicillin (sp?), call in 48 for test results.......SWINE FLU RESULTS!!! Double are you effing kidding me?!?!?! By baby has swine flu, MAYBE!! It is good to have spies in the lab there that can give me info sooner than 48 hours. She does seem better tonight, but we will have to wait and see how she is when the drugs wear off again. I haven't slept much since Saturday night, so I am praying all is ok.

Nighty-Night!! And Oink-Oink!

First Real Steps

11 Months

We are officially one month away from Aria's first birthday. Everyone says it will go by fast, but it is going at warp speed with two kids. Aria is FINALLY sleeping through the night consistently. I believe she is only days away from walking by herself. She was taking 2 steps today before realizing no one was holding her hand, then crashing to the ground. Still no teeth that can be seen. I swear I will wake up one day and she will have a mouth full of teeth. She was really crabby and whiny today, so maybe those suckers are fixin' to bust through. It doesn't stop her from eating french fries, lasagna, apples, grapes, ravioli... pretty much anything that is on my plate has become fair game for her too. Oh... I think I finally got her to get over her hatred of shoes. I got her some really cute Nike's yesterday that she can't get off on her own. She is readjusting to crawling, standing, and walking with them on. I even left them on during her nap, I am sure it was absolute torture for her. But at least she is used to having shoes on her feet, and just in time for walking.

Tomorrow is Mother's Day. I am sure it will be amazing just knowing that I have the most amazing kids in the world. But I can't help but be a little sad given my current situation. Good thing we will be busy busy most of the day.

Aria's First "Steps"

She is a walking machine with that thing. She sees it and goes right for it, pulls herself up and takes off. It is hilarious how upset she gets when she crashes and gets stuck. She will be walking on her own soon!

Night #2

We are definitely getting somewhere. I believe I got up around 11:30 to give Aria her nookie and that's it. She did wake up and did her interment yelling/crying for awhile around 4am, but I could tell she still had her nookie. Sure enough she fell asleep on her own. Only 2 nights in and we are certainly making progress. Mommy is very happy!!

First Night---Okay

I put the pack and play in the living room last night for Aria to have her first night without Mommy running to her every whimper. Midnight rolled around, so far so good. She slept right through the time she usually gets up the first time. Then Mommy was in the bathroom for the next 2 hours because an alien decided to have a sleepover in her tummy. By now it is 3am, I am finally able to get some sleep. 3:15 am, the crying starts. Usually I would get up and give her a bottle. The crying isn't even that bad, not her usually blood curdling screams, but more of a sporadic cry and whimpering. At 3:45 it is starting to get bad and Robin says "I can't take it anymore, she's been crying for 3 hours!!" Ummm, he must have been dreaming or something because it has only been a half hour. Anyway, I gave in and gave her her nookie. Once again there was silence. So all in all it was a good night. She got up a little after 6am, I gave her a bottle, then back to sleep until 8:45. I expected much worse, I just wish she could fall back to sleep without her nookie. One step at a time...We will see what tonight will bring.

Spring Cleaning

Even though it is barely 40 degrees and was snowing this morning, I decided to start packing away all the winter stuff. It is supposed to reach 78 degrees on Friday again, so I don't want to see snow pants and boots when I open the closet door anymore. I also need to get to the store to get a few more storage bins to go through all the kids clothes. The shelves are overflowing in their closets with clothes that no longer fit. I went through my clothes (and some of Robin's) and have a bag of clothes for Goodwill. If I haven't worn it in over a year, its gone! We really hope to move this summer, so I am trying to downsize in advance.

I am at my wits end with Aria not sleeping through the night. I know the problem is that I can't let her cry herself back to sleep when she wakes up in the middle of the night (I don't want 3 kids up instead of one). She is over 10 months old and does not NEED to eat at 2:30am. I really think if I give her 1 week of me not going in there at night, I might break her of this habit. But what do I do with Stephen in the mean time? I thought about letting him camp out in the living room, but will he stay on the couch or air mattress and actually sleep. And then Robin gets up at 5:30 to go to work, will he sleep through that?? Do I put Aria in the pack and play in our room, and we suffer for a week while she screams all night? Do I put the pack and play in our closet (which is huge by the way, our washer and dryer plus a dresser and nightstand is in there with plenty of room to spare) and let her sleep/scream there? HELP!!! It doesn't matter what time she goes to sleep at night, or when she last eats at night, or what her naps are like during the day. Trust me I have tried everything except let her cry it out at night.

Aria is getting really close to walking. Yesterday she was cruising along the side of the couch and bench. And going between the two. She no longer just flops down on her butt, it is a very slow squat down. She is going to be walking before she gets any teeth or sleeps through the night. I think she has her milestones a little mixed up.

This is what I have to deal with:

See the similarity?

Messy Messy

It drives me crazy when she does this with food all over her hands...

Sooo Big

"Look Mommy... I can squish my food in my hands"

As I said in a previous post, Aria has been refusing to eat baby food. She wouldn't eat anything I would feed her, but she would chow down any of her little snacks that she can do herself. I refuse to let her just eat Gerber puffs and Baby Mum-Mums all day long. Now I have a ginormous mess every time she eats. I got those nasty Gerber Meat sticks, and toddler stage veggies that she can pick up and eat, I also got the pasta bites so we will see how that goes tonight for dinner. I figure if she will eat a french fry that her daddy gave her, than I can step it up even though she has no teeth.

To quick

Aria has gotten much to quick for me. She is my little shadow all day. She is a pro at speed crawling and pulling her self up to stand. She has even managed to walk along the couch a few times. Yesterday she threw me for a loop though. I was giving her a bath last night, I turned to grab the towel, in the half second I looked away she managed to pull herself up and stand in the tub. It scared the crap out of me. I instantly had visions of her slipping, knocking herself unconscious, and drowning. Obviously that would never happen because she is never out of arms reach in the tub, but still scary to me. She also loves "so big," looking in mirrors, and what I call dancing to any music (she basically bounces on her but and flaps her arms).

Family Nap Today

It was a pretty busy weekend in the Donchess house. Friday Robin worked some overtime, then we headed to Oshkosh to look at a new place to live. What a complete waste of time and excitement. The place was probably half the size of where we live now, but with a third bedroom, and a frickin dump too. So to lift our spirits we went out for fish-fry. I don't think we have gone out for a nice fish-fry since I was preggo, I loved it!!

Saturday was even crazier for me. We had our last church class. Wooo-Hoooo! Straight from class I headed to work, then Robin picked me up from work to go out for our friends birthday. Another Saturday night at Kodiak's with free drinks and awesome entertainment. So needless to say it was a long night.

Sunday was pretty low key. I did end up taking Lyhna to see Monsters vs Aliens. Overall, a good kids movie. Possibly one to buy when it comes out on DVD.

On top of all the "festivities" going on, Aria was up Friday and Sunday nights with a fever of 101.9 and higher. My poor baby was burning up and snuggling me most of Friday night. But with the help of Tylenol, she was back to normal Saturday. Then the same thing last night. Fever at night, but great during the day. So the reason for the title today. I am going to take a nap now while the kiddos are sleeping too.

9 Months

Well, my baby as been a part of the outside world for as long as it took for her to "cook" in my belly. Where did the time go? She is officially on the move and constantly getting in to stuff. We are still awaiting the arrival of her first tooth. And even more anxious for her to start sleeping through the night. Aria can say Mama, and every now and then I hear Dada too.

9 Month Stats:

Weight-19 lbs 11 oz

Height 27.25 inches

We also got a referal to a dermatologist for a fast growing beauty mark on her back (she can thank Mommy and Grandma for that). I can't imagine they would want to remove it already. But her pediatrican says if you look really close the borders are irregular, so that may mean it will need to be removed. I think we will wait awhile for that though.

What a Frickin Night!!!

Last night was the worst we have had in awhile. Lets some it up by saying I was up from 11:30 until 2am! It was a night full of teething madness. Around 1:00am I gave up and camped out in the living room with the mini-monster. FINALLY she fell asleep around 2 after a good dose of baby drugs and lots of love from Mommy. She was so crazy that even Stephen woke up and told her to stop crying. I don't know what is taking so long for her teeth to break through. I have only been giving her hard toys to play with/chew on to help. I swear Stephen had 4 teeth by now.

Now I have to cart my crabby kids to the grocery store and stock up on food and teething essentials for the weekend. This should be interesting.

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