December daily day four

Today we had Clara's first sickness, we feed her bottle and she proceeded to throw it up all over Jeremy. After she threw it up she was all smiles and acted like it did not happen. She fell asleep and after her nap we gave her another bottle, about an hour later she threw that on up to. We called the nurse line at fort hood and they said to give her some pedialight. Jeremy went to the store and I did laundry that Clara threw up on. We gave her some pedialight then eventually 2oz of her bottle that she did not throw up, an hour later and 2 more oz. Our first sickness passed well and I am glad we got over that hump.

December daily day three

 Our Christmas tree

December Daily day two

Today marked the end of our two week vacation in Oregon. We had to go during thanksgiving because Dad was unable to leave during Christmas due to work obligations. However, we had a lot of fun and introduces Miss. Clara to a lot of new people including her great-grandmother, great-grandfather, and her two uncles.

Today we also visted all the states that our family of three have been born. Our first stop was Oregon where dad was born, we then had a layover in California where Mom was born. The nice thing about the layover in California was that we did not need to change planes and deal with all the Clara gear (which is a lot of gear). Our last and final stop was in Texas where Clara was born.  After getting all our luggage we made the 1.5 hour journey home, where Mom started laundry and Dad cleaned the forest that grew in the fish tank.

December Daily Day one

I have decided to participate in December Daily this year. I figure that instead of stressing myself out having to print pictures each night, that I would put it here on my blog so that it is written down and I just have to copy and paste. :)

Now that Clara has discovered these amazing things called hands she is into grabbing everything. Including mommy's hair, her toys and her blanket. Lately when she is going to sleep she likes to get her arms under her blanket and put it up over her face. Now I only let her do this during the day when someone is watching her at all times, but it is so adorable and a quirk from her daddy as I cannot stand to sleep with anything on my face.

 

I was shopping in a little baby store what we saw about a week ago when I got this little hat for Clara. I thought that it worked perfectly since she has been putting the blanket over her eyes. The closed eyelids are essentially a mask that helps keep the changing light from waking Clara up. When she is awake the mask part flips up and it is just a normal hat. We have been using it the last few days and it is amazing, she does not wake up when she moves from the car to inside and back. Hopefully it will work good on the plane tomorrow.  

I have no association with this website but here is the manufacturer of the hat: hat

Visit to the pumpkin patch

On Saturday Jeremy, Clara, Diana, Tom, and I went to a pumpkin patch in Eglin, Texas at the Eglin Christmas tree farm. After paying a small fee we were granted access to the farm and everything on it was free (besides the pumpkins), we stopped at the animals to pet them. There was a baby goat (what are baby goats called?), a calf, a donkey, and various other animals.

 After petting some animals we rode on the hay ride around the little farm. Part of the hay ride included a little haunted like area that had some ghosts acting out various different scenes.

 We then took Clara to a height chart that the farm had, hopefully we see more of these and track her height over time.

 The  farm also had little plastic duck races that worked with hand pumps, Jeremy beat me both times but Diana beat Tom once.

 The last thing that we did was pick our pumpkins as you can see I tried to get a picture of Clara among the pumpkins but as you can see to do with it. Though I love the picture anyway because it is her personality at the time.

Here is a picture I took on my phone of Clara sporting my sunglasses. I "urbanized" it with guidance in my ella bootcamp class.

blast from the past

This is a layout about my love for reading. Ever since I was a little girl I loved to read. In fact I bought these stamps made by hero arts/studio calico because they were about reading and books. Once again this was an idea from ella publishing boot camp, this time about creating your own backgrounds.

I even remembered to write down the supplies I used. The I love books stamp by studio calico., the book shelf is also studio calico though I cannot remember which month it came in. The cardstock is bazzil who knows what colors though. The pattern paper is by best creation called once upon a time. The two inks I used are Jenni Bowlin stick candy and Tim Holtz barn door.

More layouts

Another layout featuring Clara!! She is just so darn fun to scrap book. I started this layout with just the photo that I put into photoshop and made just the pink tutu stand out. Then I had a prompt from ella publishing bootcamp to pull out pattern paper that is solid, geometric, and non-geometric. I cheated a little and out a print instead of a solid, the brown paper is a woodgrain so my non-geometric, and the pink dots are my geometric.

The layout is about how at her two day check-up Clara had a touch of jaundice and had to hang out in the sun to get rid of it.

A before and after picture of my wedding using steps from my bootcamp class.

A layout that I completed off of a prompt from bootcamp at Ella Publishing. This one is grammar free journaling. They layout is supposed to be who Clara got her features from myself or Jeremy.

            On Wednesday August 10^th 2011, I had my 39-week appointment with a mid-wife. She updated my physical chart that the doctors had been neglecting. It seems that they had been updating my computer chart but not my actual physical chart. She told me that because of all of this work she was doing that I needed to have the baby while she was on duty and that she was one duty Friday and Saturday night from seven pm to seven am.

            I went into labor with Clara at one am on August 12^th 2011, at first the contractions were off and on and I was able to sleep until three am. At that point the contractions were intense and were about ten minutes apart. I let Jeremy get some more sleep and went to the living room to watch some television and time my contractions. I had and app on my phone that allowed me to time how long the contractions lasted and how far apart they are. I do have to say that the books lied, they said the contractions would increase in intensity, well they did not they started out strong and stayed strong.  At about nine am my contractions were three to four minutes apart, we decided to head to the hospital.

            At the hospital we went to the women’s health center, and were at the wrong part of the hospital. We walked through the hospital to find the bank of elevators that would take us to the second floor and the labor and delivery floor. Once we found the right spot we went to check in, they sent me to the waiting room as they were to full to even check me at that point. There was one other person in the waiting room with me who was also sent there by the admitting staff. While in the waiting room my contractions were still super intense and the birth certificate ladies called down to the admitting room and told them they needed to take me now. They finally decided that I needed to be checked to see how dilated I was and if I was in active labor. Once that was all finished they brought me back to the admitting office and tried to tell me that they would have to send me to another hospital. However, the finally asked me if I was active duty and I said yes, well being active duty they were unable to send me to another hospital and had to admit me there.

            I was admitted and finally in my room where I would deliver Clara, they were trying to ask me questions to finish my admission that Jeremy had to answer for me. Finally they brought in the Anesthesiologist, who gave me my epidural. I was in such pain that Jeremy asked if he could sign the consent form for me. The doctor laughed and him and told him I had to sign it.

             Once I had my epidural I was fine, just read my book, watched TV, and played with my phone. At 4:45 pm I was told that it was time to push.  I pushed for about 2.5 hours and Clara Lynn Gray was born at 7:11 pm (just in time for the midwife who fixed my chart to deliver her), weighing 7 lbs 7 ounces and 20 inches long.  Once she was born my nurse was told that had to hurry up because they needed the room. My epidural did not get a chance to wear off before I was in my post-partum room. The one nice thing about them being busy that day was the only post-partum room available at that time was a single room so I did not have to share with a roommate. 

 Clara's stats on the monitor

 Clara getting cleaned up

 New mommy

 New daddy