Friday, October 26, 2012

Novaley's Closet

Everyone knows that I have a serious addiction to baby shopping. Well it first got REALLY bad when I got back to MN and didn't really have anything to do all day, except wait to go into labor..which obviously didn't happen lol. 

Anyways......Novaley hasn't worn the same outfit twice....yet. It might change in the next few months........but probably not judging from the fact that her closet is busting at the seams and only has clothes from 0-6 months in there lol. 


Okay......Yes there is clothes on every hanger.....AHH!........So looking straight into the closet, the clothes all the way on the left are sets of Kicky Pants...which are the softest and BEST baby clothes if you ever ask me. Expensive, but totally worth it!!! 

If you move more right then you start getting to the 0-3 month clothes she has yet to wear...then a little further and there's a small gap where the 0-3 months clothes that she's already worn starts...


Then continues to the next side.....

Then here are some of her pjs that still fit anyways!

Then looking at the other side is where all of her 3-6 month clothes are...oh and her jackets, sports gear, Halloween outfits, etc. 


Then moving down to stuff on the floor......there's all this stuff that's already labeled lol and then hats and in the blue baskets are about 230948230498 bibs and in the back are burp rags that I made.
 Looking on the right side there's a few boxes from some of her baby equipment, a co-sleeper, her boppy and then that whole bin is filled with blankets.

On the left side we have our old computer desk from our last apartment because in the temp apartment that were in now it has a built in study area with a desk and shelves and everything which is nice. 
And, since we had to leave a lot of our storage organizers in MN since there was no room left in the cars, this was a nice substitute!
Anyway....so there's a bunch of misc crap on here and in all those baskets you see....baby heart crochet "sandals", flower ones...pacifier clips, swarovski pacifiers, etc. and more bibs. Ignore those bows I FINALLY got to hang them up tonight! :)
Oh and there is a jewelry box in the back with some of the gifts she got from her baptism, diamond earrings (YES we're getting her ears pierced), rosary's (one from the Vatican even!), her amber teething necklace and bracelet, etc.  

We also have a safe on the desk in her closet...its kind of stupid because we have the keys right on top of it lol. 
Looking down you can see two...they're actually like jewelry organizers from Charming Charlies...full of booties on the left, and barefoot sandals on the right............the backs are almost full too......yeah I know I have a problem lol. 

Here's a close up of her jewelry box......pretty right? The best part is it plays music!

Here is the bow sign that I made tonight to hang some of her other bows. Those are actually going to be her nursery colors once we move into a house in March and aren't crammed in a 2 bedroom apartment........we're not crammed by any means but it'll be nice to get into a house and not have to live on the THIRD floor. Honestly I will never live on the 3rd floor ever again unless there's an elevator...what's worse is when you have to carry the baby and her 239402384 pound seat up all the stairs and its like 100 degrees out...it really sucks. Don't even get me started on having to bring up groceries, taking out the trash that's all the way on the other side both gates, etc. End rant. lol.

Here is the first "bow and headband holder" that we made...obviously it wasn't big enough and it doesn't have enough room for all of her headbands which is a pain, but I try to make all of them stay on there anyways lol. Her bracelets are hanging on there as well....which everyone knows I LOVE!

 Last thing.....here is the nursery letter we had made for her future nursery...yes it was made by a lady on etsy and it really turned out great! I love it...the best part is that 50% of the money I spent on it was being donated to Baby Easton's fund. The lady is super sweet and basically I showed her my nursery colors and she picked different button colors to match and had me approve them before she made the N for Novaley. 
So, if you want a letter, or picture or really anything you can check out her shop here. 
She's running the fundraiser for baby Easton until the end of this month!

That's all for now.

Tomorrow Novaley is 3 months old! 
Where has the time gone??

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Family Comes to Visit!!

This week my parents and brother Steven came to visit us for a few days. 
On the drive down they stopped to see my brother Patrick who is currently riding in Oklahoma for a few days as well. 
They were here Thursday night through noon today, and it was sad to see them go back to MN. 
Well first they were going to stop back in OK to see Patrick again, so they'll be leaving back to MN tomorrow!

Anyways. So when they came we went out to a Peruvian restaurant that Joe and I like to go to since its right next to his school. 




There's some of the food that we had...my mom thinks its weird that me and my brothers are always texting each other pictures of our food lol. I guess it is kind of weird now that I think of it......but, oh well! 

We went to a few different stores while they were here, but mostly just bummed around.  Steven went swimming a few times.....Oh, and my mom taught me how to crochet. Well she taught me a few different stitches and chains. I wouldn't say I'm even close to being an expert lol. But these are the basics for pretty much any project. 




Joe had to work Saturday school today which sucked.....and he's actually sleeping right now as he's feeding Novaley. 
So I should probably go and put her to bed since it's wayyyy past her bedtime!
Oh and btw she's been sleeping every night until at least 7:30 for the past week now!!! And really the only reason why she gets up is because Joe is so dang loud when he's getting ready in the morning for work! I'm going to see if she sleeps longer tomorrow since he doesn't have to work.........I guess we will see what happens! :)

I finally got around to somewhat organizing Novaley's closet so I'll take pictures of that tomorrow and post them in the next few days!! 

BYE!









Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Baby Shower #4

Two days after Novaley and I got back from MN Joe's coworkers threw us a baby shower!! Joe had told his coworkers that we didn't need one since I already had three, but they insisted!

I thought that it was just going to be a small gathering..maybe with cookies and juice but it definitely was not! Almost all the teachers at his school stayed for it after school and there was a TON of food!



It wasn't very surprising though since everyone LOVES Joe at his school!! 

We also got a ton of gifts, gift cards, and about a million diapers! :)





Everyone was so sweet and just loved Novaley! 

 It was a lot of fun and we are both so grateful for everyone coming and for everything they gave Novaley! :)





Monday, October 8, 2012

Shutterfly!


Visit Shutterfly.com to create your own personalized photobook.


I love shutterfly since they give out about 1 million free codes or discounts on stuff...we made 2 books for Novaley's grandparents for grandparents day, and 4 more for both sets of her aunts and uncles...but here is the first of many books we have made for ourselves! 

Enjoy! 

Back in Minnesota and Road Trip to Chicago!

After having a c-section...after my 2 week check up, I had to go back again 4 weeks later for my 6 week check up to make sure everything was healing properly. Including my internal stitches! Fun stuff! Well my doctor had said I could see any OBGYN down here and they could check everything out, but I just didn't feel comfortable with that...so lucky me, I found a cheap ticket on Southwest (love them!) for Sept 19-26. I actually ended up changing it to Oct 1st so I could go to Chicago and see Alex ride at Arlington.  

So I booked the flight and took Novaley to the pediatrician right across the street a few days before we left to check out the noisy breathing she had been having since 2 weeks...no I'm not a bad mom I had taken her in twice before that to have the dr check it out but she only makes the noise while eating and sleeping, so they never heard it when I brought her in...until I got smarter and taped her doing it a few times.
The pediatrician said that she thought that Novaley had tracheomalacia, which was somewhat common but what worried her was that Novaley's was so much louder than most babies she heard so she ordered x-rays and referred me to a pediatric ENT. 
That's one thing that bothers me about the doctors down here in TX...they're always sending you to ten different places for basic things like lab work, or x-rays. They can't just do it at their location. 
Instead of taking her ten different places here in TX by myself, I asked her other doctor in MN if she could give me a referral and if I could have the x-rays done at the hospital right by our house. She did of course so we added that to our list of things to do while back in MN.

A few days later we flew back to MN where both of us had about a million different appointments. 

While we were back I had to go to the dentist to see about getting my Wisdom teeth out...which I was going to do, but then found out I had to go to the GI to get my stomach and acid reflux checked out post c-section.  That took priority over getting my expensive wisdom teeth taken out haha. I went to those 2 places, and of course had my 6 week c-section check up. 

Here she is on our second day back trying out her new bath...

Later that night my mom gave her a gummy worm to hold on to since she didn't have a rattle there haha.

Mixed in all of those appointments were all of Novaley's appointments.  First she had 2 x-ray appointments at the hospital the morning before her pediatric ENT appointment. Those weren't very fun since they had to do chest x-rays and then neck ones. The chest ones weren't bad..but when it came time to do her neck and they had to stretch her neck, she was not liking that one bit!! She cried for a while, and my mom took her back home so I could go to my doctor's appointment which was in the hospital 15 minutes later. 

Later that day we went to her ENT appointment. Again, not fun. Actually it was probably more traumatic for me as a mom then it was for her since she probably doesn't remember what happened. 
While we were there he wanted to look in her nose and throat after he had done a general check up. This required him putting numbing drops in her nose and then taking this small camera tube thing with a light on the end and sticking it down her nose into her throat. His nurse had to hold her head while I held down her arms. 
TERRIBLE!!!!!!!
She screamed and cried until she got back in the car and fell asleep. 

But, the good news was we finally figured out what the noise was from that she had been making for so many weeks. Novaley has laryngomalacia.  She also has acid reflux, so the doctor prescribed Zantac (which Novaley HATES taking..and I don't blame her it tastes terrible!) and she takes that twice a day.  This has since greatly improved her breathing, but she does need to return to the ENT in a month or so.  

 Then, the following Monday she had to see her normal doctor for her 2 month shots! All four of them. Well, 3 of them are actual shots and then 1 is an oral vaccine. 
Before shots:

After:

Haha so she doesn't look to pleased, but she did awesome. Only cried for a few seconds and then fell asleep. 
She's such a good baby!

Later that day we decided to stay a few extra days to see Alex in Chicago since it only cost $40 extra dollars to change our flight...

Tuesday mom had her makeover at Revamp! Salon with Christopher Hopkins! Him and his team did an awesome job! She looks completely different!


Novaley was a little mad we had to sit at the salon for 4 hours.....but everyone loved her!!



On Wednesday she turned 2 months! Here's a pic from my phone...


My parents bought her this piano play mat for her 2 month birthday...it is by far her favorite toy!!



Then Thursday we drove to Winona to surprise Joe's mom for her birthday!

Thursday came...

Then Friday, and it was finally time to drive to Chicago for the weekend!

Arlington!

My grandpa had actually taken me here with my mom about 21 years ago, so I thought that we had to stay so Novaley could go when she was a baby too!! Ironically, my brother Alex had been riding here for the past couple of weeks. So of course we wanted to stay a few more days to see him! 

Here he is on the big screen!


 Some lady taking a picture of him lol.....


 Here I am really happy!! haha.

After the races on Saturday we went to some Mexican restaurant to eat....Steven took this lovely picture:


The next day we went back for the last day of racing!
She didn't really sit in the stroller like this...she's still too small haha. 

After the races it was time to say goodbye. :( 
But we had a great time while we were there visiting with my brother and watching him ride! 



We drove back home that night, and the next day we flew back to Texas! 


Novaley was sad we had to leave Minnesota, but Joe was glad that we were back! 



Now I'm finally almost all caught up, but I still have to write about baby shower #4 that Joe's co-workers threw for us last week! So I will do that tonight or tomorrow! :)