8 Months Old

Julia turned 8 months old on September 24.  I can't believe how fast the time is going, yet it is hard to remember what it was like before she was born.  She is still growing super fast.  I think she weighs around 22 pounds and we estimated that she is around 26 inches tall.  We won't know for sure how big she is until Halloween, when she goes to the doctor again. 

She has the greatest personality.  She is always happy and loves to play with her brother.  She is a tough little girl too.  Alexander can get pretty rough with her and she never cries.  She just laughs and laughs when they are together.  It melts my heart.  I told her babysitter that she is a rough baby and she told me that that is the biggest understatement ever.  Julia isn't allowed to play with  the other baby because she is too rough.

She is starting to enjoy food more.  She loves baby cereal and yogurt.  We are still working to get her to enjoy the fruits and vegetables.  She hates jars of baby food.  She likes the homemade stuff better.  She still won't take milk from a bottle or a cup.  She will only eat from me, which means that she eats in the morning, before bed, and in the middle of the night.  We taught her how to drink from a straw a couple of weeks ago, so she drinks water in restaurants in a kid's cup.

She is on the move constantly.  She is crawling all over the house and getting into everything.  She also crawls somewhere, then immediately pulls up on whatever it is.  She really wants to walk, so I think she is going to walk early.

She also has 6 teeth now.  We started giving her some food that she can chew because she has so many teeth.

We really couldn't be luckier.  We have really great kids!

Crazy Day

I wanted to put pictures in this post, but something is not working with that, so here is our story without pictures.

On Saturday, we took a day trip to the beach.  I thought we were pretty crazy to attempt such a trip, but it actually worked out.  We left at a little after six and reached the beach at around 9:30.  We went to breakfast at an awesome restaurant and got crepes with fruit and chantilly cream.  Even Alexander got to enjoy the fruit and cream!  Then we hit the beach.  It was a perfect beach day.  It was 78 degrees and sunny.  However, the water was frigid.  I couldn't even stand to put my feet in it.  Alexander didn't think it was that cold though and he spent about 15 minutes playing in the ocean.  He was cold when he finished playing though.  We told him to play in the sand to dry off and he had a great time playing with his sand toys.  Then he went on a seashell hunt.  He brought about 20 shells home with him.  At that point we had to leave the beach because the wind was blowing so hard that we were getting exfoliated by the sand.

We decided to walk the boardwalk for awhile and visit some arcades.  Before we could do that, someone told us that they were giving away free kites, so of couse we had to get a free kite for Alexander.  When he got to the people giving them away, he had a choice of pink or purple.  I guess all of the other colors were gone by then.  He didn't care though.  He chose purple and we went onto the beach to try flying it.  It was a great kite day and his kite took off.  He loved flying it and was so excited.

Then we started walking again and went to an arcade.  Alexander got a couple of prizes.  At this point, both kids were really tired, so they took naps in their stroller and we started walking back to the car.

We went to Philips Crab House for dinner and had crab legs, shrimp, and tons of other seafood from their buffet.  Then we left the beach and went home.  We got home at around 9:30 and both kids were asleep.  We transferred them to their beds and then we went to bed.  All in all, it was a really great day!

Random Thoughts

• I have not had enough time to write lately.  School has started and I am so tired.
• Julia is getting more teeth.  She already has 4 and I can feel 2 more popping through.  It explains why we went from getting up once during the night to 3 times.  I can't believe that she is going to have 6 teeth before she is 8 months old.  Alexander didn't have any teeth until he was 8 months.  She will be able to eat real food soon!
• We raised the training wheels on Alexander's bike this week.  He is getting so big!  When he talks to us, he sounds so grown up.  Time needs to slow down a little bit!
• Pumping at work feels so pointless.  Julia isn't eating milk at daycare and I end up freezing most of the pumped milk.  However, I have to keep pumping because she does eat on weekends, so I need to keep my supply going.  My freezers are overflowing, but I can't bear to throw any milk away.  It feels so wasteful to throw it away. 
• Julia is standing all the time now.  Again, time needs to slow down!
• Now I need to get tons of school work done.  It is never ending!

Sickness

The last few weeks have been incredibly busy here.  School started, so I have been back at work for the last couple of weeks.  Last week was the first week of school and the week before that, we had work days and a meet and greet with the students.  The day before the meet and greet, I went to work to try to finish up getting ready for school to start.  I felt really tired and kind of achy all day.  I thought that I was tired because Julia was up 3 times during the night.  I went home, cooked dinner, and ate with the family.  Then I sat down and I felt like I couldn't get up.  I felt like I had a fever because I was cold and couldn't get warm.  I took my temperature, but it was only 99.  I told Nathan that he had to take care of the kids because I wasn't feeling well, so he took them to Home Depot and I took a nap.  When I woke up from the nap, my temperature was 102.5.  That's when I knew that something was wrong.  My guess was that I had a breast infection and that I needed medication.

Nathan came home and I told him that he would have to take me to the Urgent Care because I had to go to work the next day and it was already 7:30.  Luckily the urgent care is open until 10.  When we got there, I told them what had happened and that I thought it was a breast infection.  They really had no idea what I was talking about.  The nurse even asked me if I thought that they doctor would want to check my breasts.  That was when I figured out that urgent care may not be the best place to go for this type of infection.  The doctor came in and was very nice.  They had done blood work, and it had shown an infection of some kind, so she put me on Augmentin and diagnosed a breast infection, even though she really had no idea.

I went to work the next day to meet the kids and felt awful.  Luckily my boss said that I could leave right after the meet and greet.  I went home and slept for the rest of the day.  Then the next day, my fever was gone!  I had taken 3 doses of medication by then, so I stand by my diagnosis of breast infection. I think I am prone to these types of infections during times of stress. I am really grateful that the infection hit the week before school started and not during the first week of school.  Now hopefully we can all stay healthy for awhile.