Happy 7 Months!!

The Latest:

~weighs in at 23lbs 13 oz (as of last Wednesday), not sure of his length

~Can fit into a size 24 months shorts, although they look a lot like ankle capri's on him...

~wears 18 month shirts

~still in a size 4 diaper, surprisingly

~Is rolling easiest from back to tummy. it happens almost immediately after I lay him down.

~Eats oatmeal for breakfast most days, but only if paired with a fruit, such as applesauce, and tries a new food every 3 days. Today and the next 2 are pears! He loves them so far!

~Nurses exclusively (with the exception of Saturday's when i work for a few hours)

~mom is the only one who can put him to bed at night. everyone else can forget it

~kicks his feet ALL the time, and watches it too. He thinks it is the coolest thing ever. (mom loves it too)

~Loves to dance when dad plays his guitar

~really enjoys the pool if it is luke warm to warm water only...

~doesn't like to be held by people he doesn't know, or at least without mom in sight

~sits up really well! he's getting there! still learning to stabilize all 24 pounds in such a compact body

~is allergic to cats

~talks ALL the time! still loves "bah bah bah" and loves when you do it back to him

~holds his mouth open for long periods of time without saying anything- its pretty hilarious!

~sleeping through the night, for the most part, now we're going to work on naps!

~still co-sleeping with mom and dad

~mom finally lets him play with other babies in the nursery at church (3 weeks in a row so far! woot woot!)

I love you, Roman, with all my heart! God has given us a great gift in you. Thank you for being such a great baby!! You are so stinking fun right now! I can't wait to see what the next months will bring!

did he get ANY good from me?!

My poor little baby. He got all the crappy things from me. Sensitive skin (as you saw in the previous post), and now allergies.

Last week I was privileged to be a labor coach for a friend of mine from high school. She had a beautiful baby girl, Elana Rose. Wednesday, Roman got to spend a few hours at my moms while I went to Sarah's (my friend) at her request to help give Elana her first bath. It was so awesome and weird at the same time. Awesome because i guess I'm a somewhat 'seasoned' mother, but weird cause Elana is SO SMALL!! And what's weirder is that Roman was smaller than Elana when he was born... now look at him! :)

Anyway. Sarah has 2 cats and a dog. What I forgot is that I'm allergic to cats, although, I remembered as soon as my lips began to itch and feel as though they were on fire! I can take it though. I'm used to it. Yeah, it's uncomfortable, but whatever. What I failed to realize is that I would be covered in cat-ness all day, thus transferring it to whomever and whatever I came into contact with that day.

I get back to my mom's house and forget all about the cats until I notice Roman rubbing his eye profusely. I was about to cut my mom's hair when I looked over at him and dropped everything. His left eye was swelling and he had welts all over the place. I immediately called first nurse and she told me to take him to the doctor right away. I called the doctor, told them his symptoms and was told a nurse would get back to me. Feeling a sense of urgency, I asked how long it would take to get a call back and the receptionist told me that she would make it a priority. Well, I wasn't about to sit and wait for a phone call (sometimes it takes them a while to get back to you)! I packed Romans things up, got him in his car seat and drove to the clinic. We got in right away, but not with our normal pediatrician -which I wasn't tooooo thrilled about, but I'd rather get right in.

I explained to her that I'm allergic to cats and I had been around them and have a gut instinct that this is what is causing the reaction. She looked him over and determined that he has PINK EYE!!! what?! are you sure? are you serious?! are you sure? really? hmm. I was and still am skeptical about his diagnosis. She told me that if it were an allergic reaction to cats that it probably wouldn't be localized in just one eye, and the tissue underneath (inside) his eye was super red which is consistent with pink eye. (yeah, but he's also been rubbing it for the last 45 minutes to an hour...). I kept asking her if she was sure it was pink eye. She kept saying yes. I kept telling her that I'm allergic to cats, and this hasn't happened ever before, and the only difference in the day was Roman being exposed to cats, through me. She told me again that it was pink eye. !!!!!! ok fine. Instead of prescribing the usual eye drops for it, she wanted to put him on amoxicillian. Weird, but okay. I guess that saves me the trouble of trying to put eye drops in his eyes. thanks.

So we leave and head to the drug store to get his medicine. I decided to ask the pharmacist what he thought (knowing he couldn't diagnose anything...but just for some perspective). And I talked to my friend Laura who is a pink eye expert. ;) (2 babes = lots of pink eye). She said it didn't sound like pink eye, and the pharmacist agreed.

In any case. Roman is on antibiotics for 5 days, cause apparently he has pink eye.

I now know how it feels to know your child better than anyone, and not have the person who can pretty much save a life (doctor), listen to you. It is the most frustrating feeling in the world.

*Oh and by the way, as I was packing things up to leave the doctors office is when the nurses finally called me back....*

at the doc's in the waiting room-what you don't see is that it's incredibly red and still has welts all over, but you can see how swollen it was. :(

before getting checked

on the way home.

poolin' it up!

It is dang hot here in Iowa. And since the last couple of days have been ridiculously hot, and the coming days promise to be as well, Roman and I decided to pool it up with our good friends Wendy and Savannah. They have a fancy blow up pool with a palm tree (canopy-like) over top of it to shade us from the sun. This was Roman's very first time in a pool. At first he wasn't so sure about it. It actually took us 3 trys and he was okay with sitting on the edge (as shown in the following photos). The pool water was nice and cold...but maybe that's what Ro wasn't so sure of. Either that or maybe it was Brisco (their dog) who felt the need on several occasions to make sure everything was going alright in the pool. What matters is, eventually we had a great time!

Roman liked to chomp on this here butterfly.

But whenever Savannah noticed he had this amazing butterfly, she decided she needed it (there were 3 other beautiful butterflies floating nearby her) :)

I also had to hold his feet up out of the water most of the time

so we gave her the fanciest of toys...a cup! And after a while, decided to go back inside to the air conditioning!

This is what my poor baby looked like afterwards. And no I didn't allow him to get sun burnt! This is a reaction to the sunblock I put on him before we went over. poor little man!! Guess we're switching brands!

fun at meme's

Roman spent some time at my moms last week. He loves it there! (she has an in-home daycare)

playing

more fun

"i love it here!!"

Gotta eat!

Gotta nap!

I love being a mom!

Let me bring you up to speed on the last couple days.

Yesterday (sunday) was kind of a big day for me. I decided i was going to be okay with putting Roman in the nursery at church. haha. It's taken my 6 1/2 months to get to this point, but I finally did. But let me back up a bit.

Sunday morning rolls around, and for the most part they are pretty lazy; which I enjoy a lot. Jeff had gone to a bonfire the night before because a friend of his was in town after not being in town for a long time, and he wanted to go say hi. Off he goes. :) He left at about 10pm. I tried to stay up and wait for him to get home, but it was 11:56 and I was tired! So i snuggled up next to roman and went to sleep.

In the morning, Roman wakes up at his normal 6:30/7:30 time. I'm more tired than normal cause I went to bed round mid-night, and i notice jeff is still snoozing next to me. Well, in the morning, Roman is a loud talker. So poor jeff didn't get sleep much longer than we did. He slowly wakes, and i ask him what time he 'decided to come home' (kind of giving him a hard time, jokingly. This was night 2 of late night-ers for him) He said 1am!! i was pretty impressed. We're 10pm go-to-beders normally.

So we just all decide to lay in bed for who knows how long. At some point Jeff looks at me and says, 'are we going to the 9am service?' i say, 'are you kidding? it's 10 til 8 and i need to shower and get ready still! Not to mention get Roman ready too.' So, we decided to go the 11 o'clock one.

Here's where the day begins:

We're in the car almost to church and i hear roman in the back chocking. Now, this is kind of normal. He chokes on his spit a lot. However, today was different. My motherly instinct tells me something is wrong. I whip over, come to a screeching halt and jump out of the car. I open Romans door and sure enough he's having a hard time breathing. I dont think i've ever removed him from his car seat that fast before and i started whacking his back. (I already did a finger swipe JUST IN CASE). As soon as i have him in my arms, though, he seems to calm down and be able to breath normally. Jeff comes around to where we are and takes him to check him over. (Jeff has just been American Red Cross CPR certified and know's what to do...haha, but thank goodness he does!) Everything is okay. I buckled him back in his car seat and we arrive at church.

We take Roman to the nursery and I hand him over. I'm feeling at peace about it all so far. I've done a lot of praying about it. Jeff and I walk into the service, i've got my pager in my hand (it never left my hand, and i think i looked at it every 5 minutes or so). We enter in to worship and the message and about 45 mins - an hour into the service THE FIRE ALARM GOES OFF! are you kidding me?! My heart starts racing! all i can think about is Roman and how to get to him. Now, the alarm at church has gone off once before that i can remember and it was a false alarm. So our pastor was thinking this was another fluke, and he was making some jokes, trying to keep all of us calm. Normally, it probably would have worked. But i have a baby now. It didn't work.

Poor Jeff. He was probably embarrassed by his wife who was saying over and over, "we need to get to roman, I need to get to Roman, NOW. Let's go get him. Can we go get him now!!"

Turns out we end up having to leave church cause there was heat detected. I'm trying to stay calm as we leave, but as soon as i get out of the auditorium I'm walking so fast to go retrieve my baby I leave Jeff in the dust. When I saw them all outside I instantly calm down and grab my little man and dont let go. All was well. The church didn't burn down and everyone is alive.

The rest of the day involved a walk around Ada Hayden with some great friends, and me going off to a 'wax party' that evening which was a ton of fun! If you have questions about what a Wax Party is, let me know and we can talk! :)

Looking back, my reactions to the events that day were pretty hilarious, 'first-time-mom' type of reactions. But, what can i say. i'm a first-time-mom.

Roman and I met up with a friend of mine this morning at Moore Park to go on a walk! It was kind of weird weather. The type where you're not sure if you need long sleeves or not, cloudy but slightly muggy, but a cool wind; so I brought roman a sweatshirt just in case. We met up at 10am and just started walking and talking! It was great! We ended up walking around the entire park ann didn't even mean to! When we got back to the playground it was about 10:40. Ki really wanted to play (my friends 2 1/2 year old). Then the sun started to come out, so I put Roman's new shades on.

6 months and then some

This is a little late but better late than never!

Roman is now 6 months (plus a week and a few days)! Seriously?! Where did the last 6 months go, and what have i been doing!? Oh yeah, enjoying every minute of them! (but they really did go by way too fast!) So, as a little tribute to my adorable little man, i will give you his stats. :) and then his outfit sizes...

Birth: 6lbs 15 oz 20in long

2 weeks: 7lbs 11 oz 20 long

8/9 week:13lbs 10 oz 22.25 long

4 months: 18lbs 4 oz 26 long

6 months: 22lbs 12 oz 26.5 long = 99% for weight, 60th% for height.

my little chunk. i LOVE it!!!

So, he went from this:

to this:

in 6 short months! so crazy.

As for clothing sizes, lets just say i bought a size 24 months pair of shorts a couple days ago. I think when he finally begins to move (crawl/walk) he will go back to sizes hopefully more true to his age. Or maybe not. Maybe he'll just be huge. either way will be awesome!

I will be posting more recent photos of roman as well as TONS and TONS of videos of him. For some reason this blog wont download them, so i have to use youtube. however i'm not familiar with it yet, so as soon as i get that going (in the next couple days) there will be a massive video explosion! :)

Suuuch a busy day yesterday! Jeff, Roman and I had to leave to wdsm this morning around 8am so Jeff could take his ACE exam to become a certified personal trainer. 

From 9am to about noonish Roman and I visited a good friend of mine who lives and grimes. She has a 18 month old, Caden, and this new 7 week old girl, Mabel. LOVE HER NAME! I worked with Danielle at my old salon. So we spent some good time catching up on the last 6 months. We both love talking about pregnancy and delivery so we pretty much talked about that, as well as out children. I think we're going to try to get together once or twice a month, which I'm super excited about!

All the while Roman and I were having fun, Jeffrey was working his brain on his 200ish question test. Blah! Jeff is so thorough with his test taking that he usually takes a while (which i like about him:)). He didn't think it would take so long though. and by long i mean from 9-12:15. SICK! no thank you. He passed though!  For some reason people like to see the 'certified trainer' even though anyone can become certified without knowing much at all. 

Therefore: Total Fitness Exercise Equipment AND Personal Training is now open for business!!!! call Jeff to get your butt in shape!! :) 

After we got back into town I headed straight to another friends house to co-watch some OTHER friends of ours, children. :) So there were four kids under the age of 3. Surprisingly, it wasn't chaotic at all! Max and Maddy were great! (although i arrived a 1/2 hour late due to Jeff's test). Poor Roman, however, barely got any nap time in today, so I'm hoping he sleeps well tonight!

When we got home we both took naps.  Ro slept for a couple hours and i just closed my eyes long enough to get rested. After Ro woke up, we went and saw Jeff and i actually worked out! My plan is 4 days a week; those days being Monday, Tuesday, Thursday & Friday. hold me too it. 

and now for some photos of my baby

what is this thing doing?

just doing my push-ups

.......

okay, seriously. it makes noise and lights up...i think i love it!

aaand some more push-ups 

(gotta girlfriend in texas so these are necessary)