Update on the Pluids

In 13 days our little girl is going to be ONE YEAR OLD!! I just can not believe how fun and crazy and unexpected the whole experience of being a parent has been. If you have read my blog posts before you will know that it has not necessarily been the easiest journey but it has by far been the most wonderful thing I have ever done! I have a fun party planned on the Sunday before her birthday to celebrate with our family and and a few close friends and am hoping that she will have fun and not be too overwhelmed by the madness! I will take lots of pictures and share the day of the event after it passes =).

I am now 18 weeks pregnant and we have recently found out that we are HAVING A BOY!!! I thought Josh's jaw was going to hit the floor he was so shocked! I can not believe that we are lucky enough to have one boy and one girl! I am due January 4th but since I had a c-section with Harper, I will be having another one with baby boy Pluid and will most likely have him right after Christmas around the 27th or 28th. Kind of a crummy birthday but I am very excited to be big and pregnant during the fall/winter with boots and leggings and sweaters instead of in this ridiculous heat. Plus I will not feel guilty (as if I do anyway) stuffing my 8/9 month pregnant self with all the yummy holiday food!!! Josh and I have been having a difficult time deciding on a name for this little boy! I had about a million girls names that I had on a list but for some reason boys names are not peaking my interest as much. The name that we both like the most is Paxton Joshua Pluid. I like the alliteration of the P's. Paxton Pluid....cute huh?

I can not believe I am only 2 weeks away from being 1/2 way finished with being pregnancy. Yet this go around has been much harder on my body. I have gotten sick 3 times from strep throat, colds, throwing my back out, etc. which is very uncommon for me. I am never ever sick! The past few days I was having terrible stomach issues but fortunately today I feel back to normal....yet Harper is now sick with the sneezes & snots! It's always something isn't it?

Lastly I will give an update as to what Harper is up to these days. Mostly for my benefit so I can remember since I am oh so good at updating my blogs hehe =)

*Last doctors visit she weighed 20lbs 7oz and was 27" tall
*Loooooooooves books.
*She now hands things to us and gets great joy out of it, unless its something she really wants and then she plays a sneaky game where she holds it out and then snatches it back as I go to grab it.....she thinks shes pretty funny.
*Plays peek-a-boo by bobbing up and down or hiding under her blanket
*Starting to put together words that we can understand such as: bye bye, baaa (sheep sound), bow wow wow (dog sound), night night, mama, dada, nana (banana), wuv woo (love you), hahahaha (mocks my laughing) & screeches with joy anytime she sees a picture or actual animal.
*She can point to when I ask her where it is: her belly, foot, leg, head, closes her eyes, heart and on occasion her ear, and waves byebye.
*She is obsessed with this Step 2 kitchen my dad & stepmom gave her and plays in that all the time
*She loves it when we chase after her to tickle her and she tries to scurry away
*Cruises all over everything & crawls like a mad woman. She has not had much interest in walking since she has become so confident in crawling
*Eats just about anything & everything

Well that is about it for now. I am sure there is much more but I won't make this post any longer than it already is!

3 years of wedded bliss

On our 3 year anniversary at The Arcadian Inn Bed & Breakfast!

I had the pleasure of planning Josh & I's anniversary fun this year. Usually he is the one that comes up wit a plan or surprise but I asked to take over this year and I feel as if it was a success! We wanted to do something fun & simple so I asked my mom to watch our sweet little Harper for the night and booked us a room at the Arcadian Inn Bed & Breakfast. Neither of us had stayed at a bed & breakfast before so it was a fun new adventure! When we arrived to check in they had a chalkboard out front welcoming us with our names on it. Then we went to check out our room and it was so pretty & quaint. We got dressed & ready for our dinner reservations I made for us at Signature Grill. We had been there one time before and it was such an unbelievably yummy experience! It is definitely a special occasion type of restaurant with the prices but for foodies like us, it is well worth the money! We sat and talked at dinner for quite some time so we ended up calling it a night after we ate. The next morning the owners of the Inn brought in the most delightful breakfast ever!!

I had one more surprise planned for us & had a couples massage scheduled to come and give us the massages in our room at the Inn! It was a perfect way to end our small getaway celebration!

Growing Pluid Family

my little water bug

This summer is hot! I know that it is hotter than normal & my apologies go out to all my friends who are 7 months pregnant and due in August because I am SO thankful that it is not me this time! However our big news that we did find out recently is that I am actually pregnant....AGAIN! Yes I said it. I am with child and due January 4th 2012. This was a very unexpected surprise and honestly I was in denial in the beginning but once we finally go to go to our doctor here in Duncan and see our little Lima bean on the ultrasound I fell in love all over again. Now I am not saying that all my nervousness has been thrown out the window because it definitely has not. Especially over the past few days while Harper has been dealing with 3-4 new teeth breaking through and has been extra fussy, napping poorly, and more accident prone it makes me realize everything I will be having to face again. I will have to be up in the middle of the night, working on cry it out to establish a nap routine, starting to breastfeed all over, work extra hard to get the baby weight off. There are a lot of things that I would not necessarily say I am looking forward to BUT then I think about how every morning I wake up so excited to go in Harper's room to wake her up and have her quickly scurry to the crib and pull herself up and to see that sweet goofy big tooth smile and my heart melts yet again that morning. Overall I am very excited & I know it may be a bit crazy for a year or two but it will be so fun to have them hopefully be best friends and close to each other since they will only be 16 months apart!

My sweet Harper is 10 months old now and is learning and growing so crazy fast. Some of the things she is doing now is:

Cruising all over the furniture
Waving bye bye
When I ask her she can point to her leg, belly, heart, head, ear
Can put her arms up when asked
Can sign to tell me she wants "more" or "all done" when eating
Pulls herself up on any and every piece of furniture possible
Learning to say bye bye, duck, and baa (what a sheep says)
Always says dada and mama
Obsessed with books. I read the same 3 books probably 10 times a day...at least
Loves watching her Your Baby Can Read video
Eats pretty much anything
Feeds herself peas,bananas, bread, green beans, etc.
Knows how to ham it up to strangers
Talks/yells/babbles constantly. She loves to hear herself
Pets the animals

Well I have so much more I wanted to say but looks like those teeth are bothering her again and she has woken up early sad from her nap so I will cut it short this time and hopefully write some more this week.

making a blueberry mess sucking on frozen blueberries to help her sore teeth =(

time stopping moments...

perfection.

Ok so just to forewarn you I about to get all mommy gushy & emotional on you. I am sure you all have those times where you really stop and soak in the moment you are living at that very second. It seems as if I never really remember doing this until I met Josh and we fell madly in love & even more so now that we have Harper. I just had one of those moments and I realized how happy I am with my life and I am so lucky to have all that I do.

Harper and I decided to drive and have lunch with Josh this afternoon. We went and had some Mexican food which is my favorite. Especially on a gloomy cloudy comfort food kind of afternoon. Josh works about 30 minutes away from where we live so it gives Harp and I some girl time in the car. On our way back home I looked in the mirror that is attached to her headrest so I can see her since she has to sit rear facing. She was just as happy as a clam playing with her stuffed blue frog that her Mimi bought her. I thought to myself that not too long ago she could not even stay awake for the entire drive to or home in the car. She would always fall asleep. However, she is now 8 months old and such a big girl and can keep herself entertained for the entire drive. One of her favorite things to do is to turn her head up and to the side so she can see what I am doing. I am usually singing to the latest weeks performances of American Idol and she doesn't mind that I may or may not be a fantastic singer =). Anyway, on our way back I saw her looking up at me and I reached my arm back towards her car seat so I could touch her. When I did this, with her tiny little soft hand she grabbed my fingers and just held on. This was when I had that time stopping live in the moment kind of feeling. Her tiny little hand made my world pause and realize how amazing it is that this little girl is mine, how special she is, how much I love her and how fast she is growing up. Only a month ago she could not stay up for the drive, two months ago she was just starting to sit in a highchair during lunch and four months ago she would have been asleep in her car seat during all of lunch!

Now, I loved Harper from the moment I looked at the little stick and saw a plus sign indicating I was pregnant. I loved her a little more the first time I found out she was a girl, heard her heartbeat, saw the little lima bean on the ultrasound, or met her for the first time in the delivery room. My love then however, was nothing compared to what it is today. Now that she has her own personality, her deep raspy voice, her crazy wiggles of excitement, her love for animals & her dislike for most green foods. Now is the moment that I love her more than I thought I could ever love anyone or anything in my life. It is unimaginable. It is indescribable. It is perfection.

J's 30th birthday

My handsome hubby with his birthday cake!

We kicked off the month of April celebrating Josh's 30th birthday! We invited some of our close friends and spent a weekend at the Hard Rock Hotel in Tulsa gambling and partying the night away! We had such a fun time and it was also the first time we left Harper to stay overnight with my mom for a few nights & she did fantastic. Josh was able to take off 10 days for a little R&R vacation/birthday time so after we got home from the party weekend we spent the rest of our time hanging out and doing a small celebration on his actual birthday. It started out with a home cooked breakfast with blueberry pancakes and bacon. Then we went with Josh while he golfed (which was not a great idea to bring a baby on a very windy morning......). That afternoon J took me out to the gun range so I could experience and learn to shoot a gun. OH MY GOSH it was so emotional. I don't know why but the second I took my first shot I just started tearing up. It was loud, it was powerful, it was overwhelming. Don't get me wrong I am a moderately emotional person but I am not one to just break out in tears for no reason. I told him that I didn't want to shoot it anymore but I decided to put on my big girl pants and tried firing a few more rounds. I became a bit more comfortable the more I shot but still, guns are scary to me. I am not about killing anything, even if you are going to eat it. I am not a vegetarian either but just the though of actually killing something makes me sad. I remember the first time J went to buy a rifle at Bass Pro Shops. The salesperson who was trying to explain the different bullets pulled out this super pointy one. He explained that it would be good to shoot dogs with. The second that sentence came out of his mouth I again just started crying. Now I am not sure if he meant actual dogs or if he meant coyotes or something else but the thought of an actual pet dog getting shot broke me down. I literally had to leave Bass Pro while he finished up his purchase. Wow I kind of went way off track with my gun stories but oh well!

After the gun adventure we went by the meat market to pick up king crab and steak for dinner and it was sooooo delicious! I had not eaten crab legs since the beginning of my pregnancy and it was amazing. I was glad that I didn't ruin it for myself because the smell of crab when I was pregnant grossed me out so much and I never wanted it at all. I also baked a delicious strawberry cake and bought our favorite champagne Sophia. This champagne is what we drink every time something special goes on in our lives! We had a really fun day and I am so glad we were able to spend the entire day together because I am a sucker for birthdays. =)

7 months of parenting fun!

We love to put down a blanket, bring out the toys and play outside in the afternoons. We have had some pretty incredible weather lately! And this sun hat is probably the cutest thing EVER!

Today my little girl is 7 months old! You will hear every parent say this but oh my I can not believe this much time has passed & we are getting closer and closer to her being 1 year old!! I thought I would update on Harper's progress on this post and then in the next few days I will update on our life in general. =). After my last post, my "tell all" that very day I had so many of my mommy friends contact me. I think possibly they were worried. That was not my intention with the post. I just wanted to be honest about how things have been and to inform people on the good & the not so good of parenting. However, a good friends of mine Jessi actually called me that day and informed me that her son has Acid Reflux as well and we were able to share stories and tips to each other that made me feel a million times better. It is always nice to know you are not alone.

Anyway, on to the fun stuff! Like I said, Harper is 7 months old today and these are the things she is doing now:

• She is starting to mumble words together such as babababa & dadadada
  
• Sitting unassisted for a little over a month now (boy is that a game changer with her being able to entertain herself with toys!)
• When on her stomach she can scoot herself in a circle going counter clockwise and we are working on clockwise
• She recognizes & absolutely adores the animals. They gravitate towards her and she mostly loves our cat Dexter. She pets him quite a bit throughout the day & he loves it.
• She can feed herself puffs and actually makes it in her mouth 50% of the time
  
• She is starting to work on getting to the stomach position when sat down somewhere to play.....my days of plopping her down somewhere and knowing she will be there when I get back are nearing an end
• She can support herself standing up when holding on to the coffee table or furniture (yet has not grasped the concept that when she lets go she will fall)
• When we hold up her hands and she is standing she is working on taking steps. Now I am not saying she is anywhere near walking but she seems to be more interested in this than the whole crawling/scooting business (this could be because of her stomach issues & not liking the pressure of being on her tummy?)
• She smiles A LOT! She is a very very happy child now that we have the reflux under control. Every morning she is so happy when we come get her and same with naps!
• She is eating solids with every meal and loves to eat bananas, pears, peaches, plums, kiwi, sweet potato, avocado, butternut squash, acorn squash, carrots, summer squash, & spinach. I do lots of combinations with these and her favorite seems to be banana/avocado (Thank you Katie for this suggestion!!)

Updating on the reflux:
After we saw our pediatrician here in Duncan for the first time she prescribed her Prevacid. We were on this for a little over a week or two and decided it was not working well for us and honestly it was more of a hassle than the Zantac. It had to be taken on an empty stomach so when we woke her at 7:00 she had to wait 30 minutes to eat. The tablet was not intended to be cut in half and we had to do so for her dosage so we had problems with it crumbling to pieces, etc etc. After her issues of spitting up and fussiness came back we went back to our pedi and put her back on the liquid Zantac 2x day 1.5mL . What we also decided to do was give her solids with each feeding. Harper is on a 3.5 to 4 hour schedule eating at 7:00am, 11:00am, 3:00pm & 6:30pm. After I breast feed her she eats some solids after and this has seemed to really help her stomach! Also I will be honest that she naps in her car seat for her daytime naps and then she is in the crib during the night time. Having her sit upright in the carseat has really helped her. I do think she now could go to the crib for daytime naps but it is one of those things that I don't want to mess up something that is going so well! She takes a nap from 9:00-11:00am, 1:00-3:00pm and a short cat nap around 5:00-5:30. Another big help is having a schedule for her naps & feedings. She knows what to expect, we know what to expect and it just makes life a bit easier. We still deviate some days but in general having some kind of structure has been a great thing for us. =)

Playing outside with daddy

Our newest bump in the road has been teething....yuck! I will say that Humphry's teething pellets are a huge help (Thank you again Katie!) Harper has one little bottom tooth that has broken through the gums and is working on the other one now. Of course she is the baby that is super affected by the teething process. She was up from 2am-4am the other morning crying in pain and was very fussy for a few days along with a fever. I will admit that the tiny little tooth is just so cute!!

Chewing on frozen blueberries to help sooth the teething pain. This mesh thing is AWESOME & pretty messy!

My tell all of my parenting experiences thus far...

Playing in her exersaucer her papa and nana bought her for Christmas! This has been a lifesaver to help me get things done around the house while she plays in it!

Ok.....so if any of you reading this are somewhat close to me and talk to me occasionally you will know that I was blessed with a BEAUTIFUL baby girl but not an easy baby girl! Harper is almost 5 months old now and I will admit that this parenting gig has been more difficult than I was hoping, but not expecting, for. Things started off strong after she was born. She quickly slept pretty well during the nights and when she would feed at night she would go immediately back to sleep with no problems. I read many books and decided that between BabyWise and The Baby Whisperer were my two favorites. So of course I thought that as long as I followed these books ideas and suggestions that I would end up with an "easy" child. Things were going pretty well and I thought I was on the right path to easy parenting when all of a sudden she was crying nonstop! I would lay her down for her naps during the scheduled time and she would SCREAM! I thought that she was just testing me but it just would not stop. If you are a mom and you have read these books then it will tell you that yes it is difficult to allow your child to "Cry It Out" but things will get better with time. This was not the case for me. I recall one day Josh was working and Harper and I were at the house. I tried all day to lay her down for naps and it was unsuccessful. The poor little girl was crying so hard and so loud and I was doing everything in my power to make it stop. I would rock her, walk with her, bounce her, feed her, whatever came to mind I tried but none of it helped. I will tell you that I ended up in the closet with the door closed in the dark holding her as close to me as possible and we were both crying. At this point I knew that this could not be a normal thing. I understand that babies cry, but not to this extent.

I, for some reason, did not want to be perceived as the mom that freaks out about everything. I didn't want to take her to the doctor and be the crazy lady that thinks everything is a bigger issue than it was. However, I recorded her meltdown that day with my iPhone and showed it to Josh when he came home so he could understand what was going on and why I was so incredibly stressed out. We decided to go ahead and make a doctors appt for the following day (she was around 5 or 6 weeks old). When went to our pedi's office the next day he said that her symptoms were most likely from having acid reflux. Are you kidding? A tiny little thing like this can have acid reflux?? Well, apparently so. Along with her prescription of Zantac that she takes two times a day, I have had to change my diet since I am breast feeding. NO dairy, NO caffeine, NO spicy foods. The caffeine & spicy foods were no big deal to grasp. Dairy though, that has been a struggle! I absolutely love milk, cereal, cheese, ice cream, yogurt, cottage cheese....you name it and I love everything else that falls in to the dairy category. But to choose between continuing to breast feed my daughter or giving up a food group, I decided to sacrifice the food. I mean I had already given up some of my favorite things, i.e. alcohol, sunny side up eggs and processed meats while I was pregnant it was just a new adjustment.

With the medicine she is on it is very weight sensitive. As she gains weight her dosage needs to be increased. Unfortunately, I have to find this out the difficult way when she needs her bump in medicine by going through a few hard days of her throwing up, being very fussy and not napping much at all. The nice things is that the pediatrician I was seeing in Norman has triage nurses on call 24 hours a day. I would simply call the nurses & tell them what her symptoms were, they would contact our doctor and then they would write me a new prescription with her increased dosage. We have not yet gone to meet our new pediatrician in Duncan but I am hoping things are as easy with him/her!

My next biggest battle that is correlated with the acid reflux is our daytime napping. I have talked to so many of my other mom friends and their kiddos nap like a dream! Three to four times a day for 1.5 hours to 2 at EACH NAP! I am quite lucky if Harper naps for 2 total hours throughout the day. I am so extremely lucky that I get to stay at home and take care of my little one, but I feel like a failure a lot because it is very hard to get all the chores done around the house, have the errands run, dinner on the table when she does not sleep much. Fortunately she is beginning to get to the point where she can entertain herself for a little bit of time so I am able to get things done. Again, since my friends little ones were napping so well I figured it was something wrong I was doing so I gathered all the information and decided to try the Cry It Out Method again. You see Harper will go down for a nap just fine but she wakes up after 30-45 minutes and will not go back down. Like I said, I decided to try the CIO method and that lasted only 4 days. She was a wreck, I was a wreck, and my poor husband was wondering what in the world was wrong with us! She would cry until the time she was "supposed" to be getting up and it never improved. Because she was crying it would make her spit up and the back of her hair was wet & again, I knew that this was not right for us.

With some additional research online I have found out that it is very common for babies with acid reflux to only want to nap for 30-45 minutes. Their reflux will wake them up and if you try to let them CIO it only aggravates the reflux and makes it worse. So I just have to come to terms that I do not have the "easy" child. She will probably not nap as well as I would like her to until she gets over her reflux issues (they can start disappearing around 5-7 months and typically do not last past 1 year).

What I can say is that although being a mom has not been a walk in the park with my little cutie Harper I have found that when I relax, stop stressing over what a book tells me to do, and just take her for what she is I realize that I am the most blessed person. Harper smiles ALL THE TIME, she giggles, she loves music and dancing, hearing herself talk and is a very happy little girl. Being a first time mom is hard but at the same time it is the coolest thing to be. To see the day to day progress of her learning and developing is simply amazing.

I know this is an long blog post, it is just something I wanted to get out there. I want to end this post by stating that I truly have the most amazing husband that I could ask for. He has never made me feel bad for not getting something done around the house when we are having a bad day and he does such a great job of helping out when he is home with us. I hope Harper understands that she has a dad that loves her more than she will ever be able to imagine. She has already has him wrapped around her little finger and he will do absolutely anything for her. I just wanted to say....Thank you Josh!! Thank you for cooking me breakfast on your days off or going to the store to get me a Sierra Mist Natural. Thank you for playing with Harper in her room so I can try and get in a nap. Thank you for understanding when you come home and we have had a bad day. Thank you for being you and for honestly being the perfect husband, best friend and dad Harper and I could ever ask for. I love you so much and I love our perfectly imperfect family!