Birthday Weekend:)

I had a great birthday weekend.  I got to go to one of my friend's weddings, and another friend from high school church did some amazing photography of baby Alice.  I've only gotten to see 7 or 8 of them so far, but they are all wonderful.  It's something I would never be able to do on my own, I'm amazed at her skill, and what she is able to capture with her camera.  (This was my birthday present from my dad this year).  My mom is making me a wet bag (for the diapers), and some soil for the tomato plants I'm trying to grow, I'm hoping they don't drown in the Monsoon going on outside.  I can't wait to post the pictures, but it'll be a little while more I think.  Tomorrow is my orientation for an externship I'm doing, I'm going to have to take Alice with me, b/c Elliott still hasn't worked out with his work whether or not he is allowed to use the day care center.

I'm starting to miss having Kasi around, i'd gotten used to having one of my girl friends around all of the time, and it'd be nice to hang out with her when I'm not all stressed out.  All of my high school church friends and I are getting together to go to the lake this weekend, I haven't been together with them all since high school!  I can't wait.

A post about Cloth:)

This is the vanilla, snap diaper

The butternut ?  I can't remember it's name, but I love its bright color, I looked it up, it's the mandarin

This is my favorite diaper of all, the wildflower! (I'm pretty sure that's its name)

Elliott and I decided when we first got pregnant that we would be cloth diapering our LO.  We do not have a ton of extra cash lying around, and it doesn't add excess waste to our landfills.  The search began for the perfect diaper.  We eventually narrowed it down to choosing between bumgenius and grobaby (grovia now).  Elliott loved the AI2 design, he thought it was silly and wasteful to wash a shell everytime she just peed in the diaper, aka, he didn't want the extra laundry. 

I realized while going through my pictures that I have hardly any of her in her fluffy adorableness.  This situation will be remedied once I have recovered from the post final coma that I have been in.  We just got some of the AIOs after the latest sale, and I am in love with them!!!!  I'm hoping that the daycare she will have to go to next year will use them, but we will see.  I don't want to have to pay for diapers in addition to the expenses of daycare. 

Kasi likes our cloth too:)  (She's our nanny if you are unaware).  I believe her favorite diapers are the wildflower and the AIOs (they are so easy and trim to use!).  We use the AIO and the vanilla snap for our nighttime diaper, we haven't had any leaks in a few weeks, and she stays in it for about 12 hours.  My smart little baby can take off the velcro and the disposables, let's just say it's not what you want to wake up to in the middle of the night.

With our skinny baby the excess bulk of her cloth makes her clothes actually stay on her body, when she wears disposables (my mom prefers them, I'm working on her though, hopefully she won't buy more once she runs out of her current box), her pants have to be rolled to fit.  Alice had actually moved to the second snap in the grobaby diapers, but she is back to the smallest size on both the grobaby, and our newer grovia diapers.  I think she is thinning out as she walks more.  She has some pockets that are much bulkier though, and they give her this huge fluffy bum, which I love to death, but I really like how trim her grovias are.  I easily see these diapers making it through potty training, and another LO, since she hasn't even moved up to the second snap now.

I will say if I had it to do again, I would have only gotten snaps, those diapers look like new still, while the velcro ones kinda' look picked over...  When we bought them, I don't think the pretty colors were available in snap form though.  I've also discovered Grovia has tons of sales throughout the year, and I could have stocked up more during some of them and had more of the adorable prints that are now available.  I'm still stalking the airplane diaper, maybe someday I can convince Elliott of the need for it..

I think I have an "Easy Baby"

Currently Alice is running back and forth between our bedroom and her room.  Her room is currently set up as my office, both are very baby proofed, so I know I don't have to worry until she starts being quiet.  She is singing though, so I know whe isn't doing something that requires a lot of concentration.  Burbur just ran in here with a shoe, Alice was fast on her heels to get it back.    I love watching her play and grow into such a smart, sweet little one.   

She is letting me hang out on the bed, opps, she got quiet...  she had found the box where we keep her hangers, no biggie.  Now she just figured out how to dump out her box of blocks.   Our house needs cleaned desperately, but I think it may have to wait until tomorrow, I washed all the dishes, but it really needs deep cleaned, it's such a nasty day though that I don't want to move.  I like to clean with all the windows open and the sun streaming in. 

they were sitting next to each other and looking adorable, of course as I took the picture they both took off.  Lauren actually has very pretty green eyes

At graduation in her princess dress!

running down the hallway in her shorties!

Bedtime with Dada

she loves to eat!

These two play together all the time, Alice even pokes poor Burburs eyes, and she just takes it

The only thing Alice likes to do that is really a problem is grab my computer cords!  and type on the computer, and rip up paper.  I'm sure you can see why it is too hard to study with her around now.  If I could get her to understand there was absolutely no touching the computer, life would be so much easier!

Now she just got mad at burbur (I think burbur was nibbling her toes, which sometimes makes her giggle, and sometimes mad.)  i think Alice felt bad about it though because she tried to give Burbur these nail clippers that she had taken away from her a few minutes ago.

At the end of this she found my thermos bottle that I put some juice in, she is thrilled and rapidly drinking it down.

SUMMERRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!

Can you tell I'm just the tiniest bit excited?  I'm finished with my last block exam of the year, and I did so much better on it than all of the other ones.  I think the key was no neuro, the best biochem teacher in the school writing most of the questions, and Physio having endocrine as a part of it.  We also had tons of practice problems that were actually representative of the test.....  isn't it weird how when that happens, that everyone does so much better?  I love my Medical School class, everyone seems to genuinely care about each other, maybe one day I'll learn all of their names.......  That would require more people to come to school each day though.  Apparently next year our schedule is only allowed to have 17 hours of lecture in it at the most, this makes us lose ICM week, but I think it'd be worth it, if we get each afternoon off, like we are supposed to have.

I went out to eat with a great group of friends tonight, it was a delicious hibachi place, so tasty and so much fun.  I get into this funny conversation with a friend, she remembers nursing at 18 mos old.....  I plan on continuing with Alice until she is 2, and then slowly weaning her off.  Which should be easy since that will be 3rd year, and she will probably forget my name during the surgery rotation (I already want to do that one first).   I'm continuitng my goal to educate my fellow medical students about breastfeeding. 

Here are the current misconceptions I have heard:

 When they can eat food they should stop:  I hope this will be remedied during some class, or rotation, but babies start food around 6 mos, we started Alice off on table food, I think steak was her second food, or maybe brocolli was...  not sure.  The AAP recommends babies be fed until at least 1 yr, the WHO recommends at least 2.  I think the world wide average is actually 3 or 4. 


They are too old when they can ask for it.....  Babies ask for it the second they are born, they make this uh, hu, uh, hu sound.  It sounds completely different from a cry, At a LLL I heard every baby under 2 mos make the same sounds to get fed.  Instant happiness.  At one year, Alice makes a sign for milk, and requests num, num.  She loves to eat, and everything is num-num to her, including the rocks outside, which she calls, YUM!  I certainly do not think a 1 year old is too old to be nursing.

The random things we have learned about in school tell us just how important having a healthy gut flora is to the digestion of food, we don't want all those..  firmicuites?  Right?  You can tell just how much I learned during C and K's crazy method of biochem instruction.  Basically those type of bacteria break food down so it is absorbed by the gut more readily, and actually contributes to obesity.  They have tried fecal transplants in rats, and it has been successful at establishing a healthy gut flora.  I wonder how many people would be willing to do this........

The other one is the way people think nursing here takes tons of time.... 
I'm going to bet they have never tried to put a screaming baby to bed at 3 am when they have a quiz at 8 am the next day.  I'm willing to do whatever it takes to get the rest I need to succeed and give Alice a better life.  This does not include letting her scream herself to sleep.  Though if I sleep in a different room, it takes her a while to wake Elliott up and she will put herself back to sleep about 50% of the time.

I'm so glad that it is summer time, and that I get to enjoy  my lovely, sweet and precious daughter.

The Baby Dragon is 1!!!!!

How did this happen?  It seems like just yesterday I was holding her in my arms and smothering her face with kisses, and just so glad to finally meet her.

It's so weird now to look back on pictures of her before she was smiling every second that you looked at her

 

My Baby Girl is one, and is now a toddler.  She is still nursing at night, but not really during the daytime.  I'm not ready to nightwean because I don't want to have to deal with trying to put her back to sleep without nursing her, right now I can nurse her while side lying and fall back asleep.

Now for some birthday pictures..

Praying for Grades

It seems like such a petty little thing, but it's always my big prayer, it used to be for As, for higher grades than basically everyone because I worked extremely hard for them and I was smart.  While I don't think either of these have changed, my goals have become much lower, all I pray for tonight, dear lord, is to pass my classes, i want desperately to become a doctor, I haven't ever wanted to be anything else, I just need to pass everything, I'm really good at the clinical classes we have, just not at playing the test makers games.  Please pray with me for passing these classes!

Block Week:)

Well, block week has started again, after a half terrible biochem quiz, the first part went really well... the last part, well hopefully it was better than I think.  I cannot understand how they want 8 of us to share a paper, I understand they want us to talk, but really 8 people sharing a paper that we are getting quizzed on immediately afterward seems crazy.  I read it twice, but I just need longer with anything with lots of science in it to be able to discuss the information contained therein.

 After this, I drove home, got Alice packed, and ready to go, and she and Kasi drove off to Lexington.  Alice is having her first sleep over tonight, hopefully I can get some sleep and replenish the glutamate in my neurons (maybe I have learned something in neuro after all).  I'm taking a bit of a break from school stuff tonight, though I'll probably do a little bit more later, but UK is about to play, so of course I must watch!  I'm also going to try to sew together some old wool sweaters that I got at the thrift store and cut up, into a wool mattress pad...  something is coming on Monday, I hope that will need it....

My Child, The Daredevil

Well this week Alice, Kasi (our nanny and a forever long friend)  and I traveled to Florida to see one of our dear friends, Laura, and her family.  Laura and I have been friends since we were in 4th grade, we met at church, and we have spent every spring break since 6th grade together, the only one we missed was last year, since I was way too pregnant to take a 12 hr road trip to see her.  She came to see us in May instead :D

The weather down here has been absolutely gorgeous, it has been at least 70  and sunny every day, which is wonderful after the gloomy cold wet of Kentucky.

Since we have been here, Alice has nosedived off the bed (on purpose, she was aiming for my back, but hit the floor instead, she is fine though), antagonized our Friends' new puppy, Fritz.  Fritz and Alice are quickly becoming friends though since Alice feels the puppy needs to try all of her food out.

We have gone to the beach every day except for one that we were here, and I've even been able to get some studying done.  While at the beach Alice chases after every dog she sees, she spider crawls after them, by spider crawling I mean she doesn't put her knees on the ground, she is very efficient at this.  She also barks at all of the dogs, and tries to catch the seagulls, and the birds that run really fast, sandpipers, maybe?  The child also apparently loves the taste of sand, every time I turn my eyes for a second she has stuffed another handful into her mouth.  Earlier today she was sucking on a shell, like it was a lollipop.

I worked on some biochem and Alice and Kasi dug some holes in the sand, Alice loves this activity, more chances for sand consumption!  She also loves crawling for the ocean, and the second she sees the waves coming for her she sits down, and lets them just wash over here, I thought she would be scared of the water, not Alice though, she has no fear, she loves the water!

Alice would like to share

Alice became very attached to this shell, we brought it home to show to Daddy, she held onto it throughout a submersion and getting carried to the car

I love her so much!

The wonderful Kasi!

Alice with her Laura!

She is extremely content in a pool of ice cold water, she was not happy to get taken out, even though she was shivering

Eating sand in the back yard, with Fritz!

What should I do with this shell?

Eat it!

My little beach baby