4 month turtle update!

tess the turtle had her 4-month visit on july 23rd - two days after daddy's 28th birthday! ...though i had full-on mommy brain and thought his birthday WAS the day of her appointment and so actually missed the day - bad wifey :-/

here are the stats:
weight - 13 lbs 11 oz and 50th percentile!
height - 23.25 in (4 inches larger than her birth height!) and in the 15th percentile - shorty like her mama :-)
head - 40ish cm? i think? and 30th percentile - who cares about this one?

tess is also still very strong for her age, and has decided that rolling over and crawling are lame, and she would like to skip to standing and walking. she spends most of her day trying to stand, and does a pretty good job! she has the musculature down, she's just working on the balance, and when you lean her a direction, she takes steps. i know, she's a rockstar.

she has been to the pool several times and loves "swimming" by doing doggy-paddle motions. she hasn't gotten the breath holding part down though and still tries to drink the pool. she doesn't like sleeping alone, and while we can get her to nap in her bassinet or co-sleeper, if we try to do it at night, she wakes up at least every hour, and this makes mommy miserable, so she's still sleeping with me.

[please ignore that this pic of me is horrible.]

i am TRYING to work on it, but when it comes down to it, i'd rather get 6-7 hours of uninterrupted sleep with her than 45 mins of sleep with her in the crib. she does the cutest thing though, and if she's sleeping on my chest and i start laughing, she laughs with me. it's precious and unlike anything else in the world.

tess is still breastfeeding without any formula supplementation and has begun eating every 3.5-4 hours (instead of every 2 - hallelujah!) and is grabbing at our food every meal! we have tried rice cereal several times (ok'd by the pediatrician) mixed with breast milk, and she LOVES eating it, but she does seem to spit it all up each time. not so sure what that means, but last night, she begged for some of my butternut squash, so i let her taste some off my finger. she not only LOVED it, but she did not spit it up. perhaps we shall switch to veggis soon? that was also pediatrician ok'd.


speaking of the spit-up, we have officially stopped the prevacid. i got sick of giving it to her, and she got sick of taking it, so we decided to try to go without it, and while she still spits up a lot more than some babies, she doesn't scream afterwards, and the doctor said as long as she's not in pain, we're a-ok. thank goodness, that was obnoxious! tess still screams the whole time for most car rides, despite everything we've tried, and since we live out in the middle of nowhere, we are toying with the idea of getting her a portable dvd player for the car rides. i HATE the idea of "babysitting" my child with a tv, but it is absolutely torturous for me to hear her so upset and screaming for 45 mins straight (and no, it doesn't matter how many times we stop, once you click those straps and start driving, the screaming resumes).

lastly, tess has now turned into tess the TALKING turtle! she loves to coo and shriek and babble, she loves to interrupt mommy on the phone, she loves to smile and giggle and chortle, and she is especially talkative on the changing table - perhaps she just feels freer? who knows, but we love to listen to her! she's just the best, most precious and adorable thing that's ever happened to us, and we are so blessed to have her!

*trying* to implement the thumper rule

which makes a blog boring... but to save you the complaining and keep with the thumpering (mostly), i will just make a list:

1. water - no pressure = no hot water, salt in the water, salt corroding my nice faucet and newly acquired (from my parents) waffle iron, dirty dishes, dirty clothes, dirty mommy
2. house - nothing works, nothing's finished, no way to ever make it feel clean and comfy and like home
3. child - still won't sleep off me, screams the WHOLE car ride almost every car ride, and isn't into entertaining herself, making #2 a bigger challenge
4 money - there is none, and these problems aren't free to fix

i guess i fail at thumpering. oh well, at least it was brief. i'm not looking for sympathy, i'm just trying to get it out. sorry.

Work

So since Emily seems to have things covered on the baby front I thought I'd blog about our latest project at work. We recently did a large project for Underwriters Laboratories in collaboration with the NCSU School of Design. UL opened what they are calling UL University. It is a space at their RTP campus where they will do training for people to become certified UL testers or something. The project started with UL asking the design school to help "flesh out" the space. So a few students became the designers on the project. We became involved when they needed a firm to actually produce everything they designed. For us, the project was a lot of wall graphics, etched vinyl, acrylic signs and some custom work in the lobby.
Overall it was a fun project to work on but somewhat stressful since the designers from State hadn't had real world experience. We found ourselves guiding and changing a lot of what happened.

You can see more pictures here and read more about the design school side here. Be sure to check out the video on that site too.
Oh and I'll mentioned that we've done a slight redesign of our website at work so check that out too. You might just catch a picture or two of me in there somewhere.

what have YOU been up to?

so we've been crazy busy here! i've been trying to figure out how to save/make money while staying home and taking care of tess, but so far i have come up empty. i listed some stuff on craigslist but only got one hit, and that lady didn't even come see what i was selling, so since this is the third time we've tried craigslist, i guess it's not something that will work for us. i've also been working at work every monday and every other saturday, and picking up extra projects to work on at home. we were hoping andrew would get a big raise from work, but that doesn't seem to be happening, so i guess sometime soon we might have to look into me going back to work more... i'm still hoping that isn't the case, but it seems we're running out of options.

so that stuff's on the side, in the forefront has been caring for a sweet little 3.5 month old, keeping a house clean, shopping for and making meals that are healthy, tasty, and cheap, and - a fun one - going to the pool! we got a pass to raleigh's pools because it was important for us to have a way for me to stay in shape and for tess to learn to swim from the beginning. we went the past 3 days, and we are both WIPED! i think that's why she's sleeping so much today and i'm actually able to blog! i would definitely post pictures, but it's hard to hold a baby in a pool and take a picture of yourself at the same time! tess is so worn out that she slept late this morning, and she's been sleeping most of the afternoon, AND right now she's even in her crib - craziness!

i guess that's all i have to say for now. i miss you all in blogland, and i wish i had more time to dedicate to blogging like before, but right now i rarely have time to dedicate to brushing my teeth!

no blogs?

so i totally have topics to blog about - gardening (and failing at it), 4th of july parties, daily turtle happenings, paige's baby, and much more, but i have no time! the turtle has been pretty needy recently, so much so that i can't even get daily housework done, and i've picked up projects to work on at home for work so that i can get more hours, so when i'm not actually at work or taking care of tess, i'm working on stuff for work - sad for the blog! hopefully i'll have time soon when she gets over this needy stage... or i'll grow 3 more sets of arms... or create more hours in the day! eep!

and then there was that time the firemen came...

so i've been frustrated with our gas company, amerigas, pretty much since we moved in to this house. they are not good communicators, customer service technicians, or apparently gas people. i was irritated the two times we ran out of gas, and they acted like it was some act of god to get someone out here to fill it up. i was ticked off when i waited all day for them to show up and they never did. i was a touch angry when they told me they'd call before coming and then showed up without calling, i wasn't here, they left, and then we called to find out when they'd be here, and they acted like we'd done something wrong by not just sitting at the house. and i was PISSED when, after i told them i thought the gas gauge didn't work, our gauge went from 40% (of a 325 gal. tank) to 0% in one week... during the summer.

so andrew called them every hour monday morning. 8am - no answer. 9am - no answer. 10am - no answer. finally i think he got through around 10:20. why don't they answer their phone? i don't know. however, after andrew got nowhere by talking to the rather rude receptionist/service call lady, i decided a little momma-ain't-happy-so-you-won't-be-either-till-you-fix-this attitude copped on the company owner might help. i called and asked to speak to the owner directly and was told by rude receptionist that, "uhh we're a national company"
"ok, well you have a manager or branch owner, or someone who runs this place, don't you? what's his name?"
pause. "lou pickford"
"ok, please let me speak to him."
pause. "ok."
i mean really lady, did you not get that that's who i was asking for anyway? sheesh.
so i get on the phone with lou and unload my situation and tell him i'm frustrated. at first he is rude too and doesn't even respond. i ask if he's still there. he is, so i proceed with my "request" that he figure out what is going on. eventually, he agrees that we need more than just a refill. he says they will bring a temporary above-ground replacement tank (with a working gauge), get information off our in-ground tank, order a new gauge for it, pressure test it again, and have people out within the hour. score. emily 1, amerigas 0.

so they come out... late, and wake up the baby who has been fussy all morning. then i give up on her sleeping and decide to do some housework - oh wait, i can't, there's no gas hooked up now for hot water for laundry or dishes or a shower, and i can't cook because there's no gas hooked up to the stove either since they're working. so i give up on that idea and just sit outside in the rocking chair rocking tess and watching them use the crane to almost slam a 120 gal. gas tank into our car. then, they get the tank in place, and i hear them get an emergency call to go see about a commercial gas leak. great. so they leave, but before they do, i ask if i still have to be there when they come back. "oh, do you need to go somewhere?" larry asks (yes, his name is really larry). uh, well i'd like to not be stuck here for the REST of the day, i think to myself, but i say instead, "well since i can't cook or clean -" "oh you can do that! you should! then we won't have to burn so much off!" he tells me.

so they leave and i start cooking, of course they show back up when i have 20 mins left for the lasagna to cook, but that's ok. i go out, sign whatever it is i have to sign so that when they are ready to leave they can without bothering me. they finish up, and all is well, except, oh yeah, they have to come in and test the stove before they go, so they wake tess up again for that.

but what about the firemen? you ask. oh i'm getting there...

so today tess has JUST gone to sleep after fighting it for like an hour, and the dogs start going crazy. i go look out, and larry and his buddy are back. why? i don't know. why would they tell me they're going to show up at my house again? he yells to me that they're going to burn off the tank now, but that it won't affect anything. ok, no biggie. oh yeah, and they wake tess up again. i start trying to get some laundry done when he rings the doorbell - are you kidding me?? what now? they're going to borrow my lighter to burn the gas... does anyone else think maybe they should have brought their own? hands? yeah. i thought so.

i go to change tess's diaper and see, out our bedroom window, 30 foot flames coming from the center of the field. oh good. now we're going to light the dogs on fire. but our two geniuses seem to have it under control, so i go about my business and do important tasks like putting on a bra. you know, things i do when i know people will be coming to my house.

well a little later, the dogs are losing it again. i go out to the window to see an ambulance, fire truck, and some other emergency vehicle at the end of our driveway. faaaaaantastic. i can only assume that our star students at amerigas did not inform the fire station of their purposeful burn, and that a neighbor called in the fact that our field appeared to be on fire. one of the firemen is talking to larry about how they didn't know what was going on, etc. larry looks stupid. no, not stupefied, just stupid. i am wondering if amerigas will get charged for the false emergency. oh, amerigas, what an epic fail.

on the one hand, i now know my neighbors would not let our house burn (or at least they wouldn't have - now they might feel like the boy who cried wolf and hesitate... ), and that the firemen, though we have not donated to their fund this year, will still show up to be sure we don't die in the house. excellent! on the other hand: holy crap. what a display.

moral of the story? amerigas sucks.
that, and i should grow another set of arms so that next time i'm juggling the laundry, the baby, and the diapers, i can still take pictures of the clusterfuck. (i apologize for the language, but that's just the right term for what went on today.)

three month tess!

well we are confused because if you count weeks, tess was 12 weeks last week, but if you count by month dates, she will be 3 months in two days... so we'll call this a three-month update :-)

no official stats from the doctor for this month because she doesn't actually have to go back until next month, but we did a little investigation of our own, and here's what we came up with: when andrew stands on the scale with her vs. without her he is between 13 and 14lbs heavier (this, of course, includes clothes and diaper weight, so she's probably between 12.5 and 13lbs by our estimation. we also measured her using a measuring tape and laying her on the couch. it seems she is about 22.5 to 23 inches. i did not measure her head because... well that's just strange.

tess has already learned and done several new things, which i will try to remember.

• she is pretty good at holding up her head for a while.
• she has rolled over 3 times i think... perhaps more, but one for sure - i have witnesses!
• she smiles a LOT, especially when she sees people she recognizes. these people include mommy, daddy, grandma, and grandpa on the welch side.
• she has met and will look at the dogs. which means she follows things with her eyes.
• she likes the swing sometimes, the jungle (playmat with noise, lights, and toys) most of the time, and the tv all the time - we avoid letting her see the latter if possible!
• she has learned to "kick, kick, kick!" and will make the jungle play music when she kicks it (video here)
• the other day, she finally recognized herself in the mirror and began laughing hysterically. it may have been the best day of my life. it was certainly the best few minutes i've experienced in a while. we tried to get video, but she wouldn't do it again. she's no trick pony.
• while sitting in the car, she began looking at and touching the flowers on her blanket.
• oh, she's growing teeth. she's been teething for about a month now, and you can see the two bottom ones under her gums. yeah, way early. she's an overachiever.
• she still doesn't sleep alone, but we put her down when she's sleeping a lot more. we tried the "cry it out" method and forcing her to sleep other places, but it didn't work for us. we're taking our time and hoping she decides to be more independent soon.
• the prevacid is still working (hallelujah!), which means she spews spit like it's going out of style, BUT she doesn't scream afterwards.
• she may or may not have said the word "hi" - as in... she made a noise that sounded like "hi" and we're going to call it a word.
• she has several friends and play buddies: graham (and his mommy, heather), fiona (and her mommy, jennifer), and madeline (and her mommy, allison)!

AND we went to the pool for the first time today! madeline and allison invited us to go for a swim, and we had a great time! tess fell asleep getting ready for the swim on allison and justin's bed, (we got pictures on allison's camera) then while we were putting on her sunscreen, she rolled over right in front of everyone! we did not get a picture of that - sad. then tess peed in her swim diaper... it got all over the car and me and her, but we laughed and went to the pool, pee and all! for the most part tess did great at the pool, she was not too scared, and the few times she did get fussy, she was either hungry or sleepy. after that, we went to grandpa's house (grandma is at the beach) to wait our the traffic, and tess learned the macarena, which we got a video of! all in all, it was a really fun day! and oh yes, we have pictures!