Merry Christmas!

So this was Ella's first Christmas and I have to say - I think she had a great time!

We started the week off rough because when we came back from Wisconsin Ella was congested. That cleared up but then she got super fussy and was grabbing her ear. So Monday morning I called and got her in and sure enough - she had a double ear infection. I was glad that I took her in because I almost didn't and then she would have been miserable over Christmas while we were traveling. So she started antibiotics Monday and I was hoping by Christmas she would be in better spirits. She was moderate. Not super fussy but not the happy Ella we had the last time we were at Grant's parents house. None the less being with family was wonderful and her cousins were sooo sweet with her.

On Thursday we got to have lunch and see some old friends of ours that moved to Johnson City and it was so nice. They have a son that is 10 months old so we had a lot to talk about! They were actually the first people we told we were pregnant outside of family because we were in town and she was pregnant too and I just couldn't help myself! After a nice visit we went to the Christmas eve service and I was really worried about Ella. She was still fairly fussy and I didn't know how she would be. Luckily she fell asleep right away in my arms wish is very rare and super sweet... it was an early Christmas present! Of course she woke up during communion though and was fussy at the end but overall she did great.

That night we got all of the presents ready and had a nice time with the family. Christmas morning was wild and fun and Ella got more toys then she could possibly need! She had funning grabbing the paper as we pulled the gift away so that she "opened" her own presents. It was fun.

We had a few unexpected visitors during the days we were there. Tuesday Grant's "Aunt" (mom's cousin but we call her aunt) came by even though she lives in Virginia. They were traveling and decided to make a 200 mile detour to visit the family. It was so nice because we had not met her husband yet and they had not seen Ella. Then thursday morning Grant's mom's sister and her husband stopped by unannounced but we missed then since we were visiting our friends. Last but not least on Christmas day Grant's uncle stopped by. He had been invited but we hadn't heard anything so we assumed he wasn't coming. It was nice to see all of the unexpected visitors but kind of funny that all these people stopped by without even calling.

The day after Christmas we spent the day at home and had some other family over (expected) and had a nice time playing games with the kids. Sometime during the evening I noticed that Ella was getting super fussy and felt warm. Sure enough she had a low grade fever. Not what I wanted to see since she was still trying to get over the ear infections. We waded it out and by morning her fever was better but she started getting a very runny nose. I thought maybe she caught a cold. She got so congested that one time when she woke from a nap in my arms she started crying immediately and choked on her mucus and threw up. We were about to get in the car to go home so we were concerned. Luckily she slept the whole way home. While getting her ready for bed I was sure she had caught something but wasn't sure what was going on. It was obvious she was miserable. When we woke up Monday morning she was worse. She was so fussy that I couldn't set her down. She didn't have a fever but was really congested and I could tell did not feel good. I didn't really know what to do. I hated to go back to the doctor's office especially since I thought it was just a cold, but she was so bad I didn't know. So I called and talked to a nurse. She thought she should come in to be checked. They wanted to make sure her ears were clearing up and to confirm that it was just a cold since she had so much junk in her head.

Well we ended up with bad news. She has RSV. Apparently nothing can be given to her to help her unless a secondary infection starts. It's pretty much a horrible cold that lasts for weeks and is highly contagious. I'm to look for a higher fever or troubled breathing and to take her in if either of those things happen.

I want my girl to feel better. I want to see the happy girl that we had a short glimpse of a few weeks ago. I want to sleep though the night. All of those things are so selfish though because Ella is the one who is really suffering. I feel so bad for her. I want to clean out her nose but she fights me when I try to suck it out. She struggles to breath while she nurses and is sneezing and choking a lot. Despite it all she is in fairly good spirits especially in the morning. She gets worse as the day goes on. I've started having her nap in her swing again because it's elevated and I can keep an eye on her.

Sorry for the lack of pictures. I'll get some on here soon - I wanted to go ahead and post though.

I hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas! We were going to travel to my parents' house for New Years but have cancelled that because of the RSV. The next few weeks are going to be challenging. Not only do we have the RSV but Grant starts teaching for this semester and we have a wedding show on the 24th that we are building a whole new booth for. I'll be happy when January is behind us. These wedding shows always stress me out!

Catch up with photos

So an entire month has gone by and I can't believe it's been that long since I blogged. A lot has happened in this last month - a lot of good. :)

Shortly after our trip to Florida we got the house ready for Thanksgiving. We had 8 adults here and 5 kids for 4-5 days. My parents stayed in a hotel but the rest of the group was here at the house and it felt like it was coming out at the seams! We had a wonderful time though.

My mom brought a ham and got a turkey breast from Honey Baked Ham so we avoided cooking a bird. Then we pre-assigned everyone to different things and I have to say - I think this was the easiest Thanksgiving that we've had here. I only got moderately stressed out. :) So the food was good and then the next day we did Christmas with my side of the family. It was really nice and I think the kids enjoyed it. We managed to get a tree up and lights on it and I grabbed my bin of balls, but we did not put any other decorations on it because of time. Little did I know that we would not get everything else out so even still that's all we have up. It's kind of sad considering how much we normally decorate for Christmas, but this year with Ella it's just really hard.

Ella LOVES her new toys!

Somebody missed Ella...

A full living room!

Um... cute!

One of the big memories of this Thanksgiving/Christmas was guns... yes guns. Grant got out his pellet and bb guns and before we knew it our back porch was turned into a shooting range. Quickly the kids got involved and my 2 oldest nieces actually ended up getting their first bb gun while here. E, the oldest is 8 and I have to say - she's a pretty good shot. She reminded me of myself when I wanted to do everything that my older brothers did. I remember learning to shoot at a young age as well. I think we were all proud of her. :) I'm sure some people would cringe at that but oh well. :)

The gingerbread house tradition... this year we had pre-built ones and it was wonderful!

Quickly after Thanksgiving we headed up to Wisconsin to visit my Grandma. She had recently had a hip replacement and was in the nursing home for recovery. She had not met Ella yet and we wanted to get up there before bad weather hit. However, the first week of December is not safe when it comes to bad weather! Literally the day we landed was their first big snow storm and we had to drive 3 hours from the airport to my Grandmother's house in a bad snow storm. Luckily we did fine. We had a wonderful visit with Grandma. One day we spent the whole day with her in the nursing home, except for taking her out for dinner. Then the next day I took her to a wedding shower at her church with Ella and that was the first time she had gotten out to go to church since her surgery. She was so happy to see everyone and I think everyone was surprised to see her... and me! I'm related to almost her whole church so it's like a family reunion to go there. They got to meet Ella and it was nice to chat with some of my cousins who are also recently new moms. It's amazing how much having a kid gives you things to talk about with people you normally don't have a lot to talk about. I liked it though because I used to be closer to these people and I miss that.

A couple great shots of my Grandma's house in the snow.

So this is Ella's 3rd outfit of the day. I only brought 1 extra so when she needed a third we took the outside jumper from outfit #1 and put it with the pants from outfit #2... not what I planned for Grandma's first picture with Ella.
This was our last night there. Grandma's roomate went to bed so we hung out in the common area. We are soooo tired in the photo since it's like 9 pm and Ella was up all night, but we wanted to spend as much time with her as possible.
Ella being a doll for Grandma - actually that's Great-Grandma to her.
I love this photo.

Then after the shower and a lunch out with everyone we headed to Madison to visit a friend of mine. She recently blogged about our visit and I have to agree with her that even though I had not seen her in 15 years it felt like we picked up right where we left off. The only change was we had husbands and children and own our own house! It was a wonderful visit. She looked great (she always had) and her children were super sweet and full of personality. I think they took to me as well so that felt really nice. Ella was a doll our entire visit to Wisconsin until the very end of the night as we were about to leave. She had had enough and it was time to take a sleepy car ride home. :)

Me and Amy. I'd love to find some old pictures of us. I'll have to do that one of these days.

Madeline being sweet with Ella.

If I can figure out how to post a video on here I'll post one of the best things about this trip - Ella laughing! When we were visiting Amy her husband was playing tug-o-war with their dog and Ella thought it was the funniest thing! She has a cute little chuckle that we have tried very hard to get her to do again but have had no luck! If I pretend to growl like a dog we get close... but not quite the full laugh. She's close to doing it more often though. She squeals a lot and starts to kind of laugh but then goes into her silent laugh with a giant smile that she covers with her hands. :) Very cute. It was nice to not only have Grant there for her first laugh but also to be able to catch it on video and share it with friends.

On Sunday we went to church and then to lunch with my friend Jenny. We went to Pizza Hut which I know does not sound nice but I swear, the Pizza Huts in this area of Wisconsin are the best in the nation. Not sure why but they are fabulous and we always go there when we visit. Then Jenny came over for a couple of hours in the afternoon. We had a nice visit and it was great to see her. That evening we went back to see Grandma after Grant shoveled the driveway and sidewalk. Little did we know it was going to snow again that night so we woke up to a few inches of snow where he just shoveled! Oh well. At least we got some salt down and Grant easily cleaned the new snow off in the morning. We left soon after he got it shoveled since it was snowing again and we had a 3 hour drive to the airport.

It was a great a great trip - Ella cooperated in every way, and we got to see family and friends. What more could you ask for! Oh and the day after we left they got like 17 inches of snow... talk about getting out of there just in time!

So that takes us to last week. Since then Ella had a great check up with her new doctor... yes I changed pediatricians. Not because I didn't like the one we were going to but because we saw this other guy for Ella's ear infection because I couldn't get into my regular one, and I really fell for this doctor. He was much calmer and laid back and easy to talk to. A much better fit for me - a struggling new mom. She's weighing in at 15 lbs and 24 inches long. She's growing well and soon we'll start her on some solids. I'm hoping that may help her take a bottle more as well.

Since then we had a Christmas party with our photography friends and have been finishing up on some Christmas shopping, wrapping and just enjoying this time of year.

One thing I wanted to mention here is how much things have gotten easier with Ella. Some time this month things have changed and I'm not sure what it is but it's gotten a lot better. I've stopped walking her to sleep for her naps which has helped because I don't get so angry anymore. I think the mixture of the fact that she naps so much (4 times a day) combined with the fact that she fought sleep I felt like I was dealing with a screaming baby all day long. Now I put her down for a nap. She may cry for 5 minutes but I've leaned to deal with that, and when she's awake I'm able to enjoy her so much more. I think also her age is playing a part. Now that she can play better and entertain herself she seems happier in general. She now also likes to "talk" instead of fuss for her default position... and that is sooo much easier to handle. So I'm happy to report that for me, it took about 4 months to really love being a mother. A little longer than some other mother's I've talked to, but that's okay because I'm here and it feels so good. :)