Christmas In July?

This is so unlike me, but today I have been in the biggest Christmas mood. Don't get me wrong, I do not...I repeat...do NOT want the summer to end. It is my favorite season and I really do enjoy spending time outside, especially in a pool. I got to reading blogs this morning and came across a blog about quadruplets and I saw some Christmas pictures and they were absolutely adorable! I fought back tears as I always do when I read about babies, but ever since then I have had this song stuck on my head:

It's Martina McBride's "Baby It's Cold Outside" I have never been in a Christmas mood in the summer, but I find myself with Christmas music pulled up in iTunes as I work hehe. There isn't a whole lot going on in me and Maddy's life...just the same routine stuff day in and day out.  I do enjoy my life for the most part...I love being a mom! I do find myself having baby withdrawals quite frequently, but I just remind myself of all my freedom I have at this stage in life. I do pray that I am able to meet my partner and we can have more children, but if that never happens I am truly ok. I must admit I do like the single mom life even though it is extremly difficult some days and twice as tiring, but me and Maddy make a great family...oh...and Manny...he is the man of our household lol. I hope you all have a great rest of the week. I think me and Maddy are headed back to a local amusement park (Lake Winnie for all you Chattanooga people) to see Sidewalk Prophets in concert, but also to ride the rides we missed. So excited!

Fourth Of July

I was so excited for the fourth of july to come this year. This would be the first year Maddy would get to ride the kiddie rides. The day did not go anywhere near as I had planned it in my head because my oldest niece was just convinced we were only at Lake Winnie to let her ride everything she wanted, instead of letting Maddy and my other niece ride the kiddie rides first then on to the thrill rides lol. I plan on taking Maddy back this summer so she can get to ride all the rides she can. This post will mainly be of pictures so here we go:

This was Maddy's first ride and I got so nervous she would not like it. She can't talk and tell me if she likes it or if she's scared...she can only cry and once the ride starts there is no stopping if she wants off. She was extremely nervous. She kept chewing on her paci and I just kept talking to her and asking if she was having fun. She wanted to hold my hand the entire time and I also had my arm wrapped around her tightly. When the ride took off she was unsure. She saw some ducks in the lake and once she saw those she got ok with the ride. I was so relieved she didn't want to get off before it was time.

Sara and my step-dad on the sea warrior

We were all decked out in red, white, and blue :)

All three girls had matching shirts

Maddy on the train. She got bored on this ride lol

Sara on the carousel. Maddy rode on the chariot

Maddy driving the antique car.



Abby

Maddy was so cute during the fireworks. She would watch and then look at us and then look back up. At one point she started doing her "twinkle twinkle little star" finger motions. I asked her if it was twinkle twinkle little star and she said yes. She was so tired by this point and was just acting silly.

It was a fun time and I can't wait to take her back and let her enjoy the day :)

Aria's First Birthday

Baby Aria has had an amazing journey in life within her first year.  I was not faithful in blogging during her birth so I will try to shorten the story.  Her mom was a week past her due date when the doctor decided to go ahead and induce.  I was able to go the hospital with my mom and sit with my cousin and the rest of my family while we  anxiously awaited Aria's arrival.  My mom, step dad, sister and her two girls, and me and Maddy all went to O'Charley's to grab a bite to eat.  Right as we were getting to ready to pay and leave my mom received a phone call from my grandmother who was in tears telling my mom to please pray for Aria something was terribly wrong. All we knew was that Aria was having trouble breathing.  In my mind it was no big deal...my grandmother exaggerates as it is...and the nurses had a real hard time getting Maddy to breathe as well.  I shrugged it off and was like yeah, whatever...baby is fine.  My grandmother calls again to say it is bad and we need to pray.  Well, by this time I am shocked and had a bad feeling this baby would not make it.  We all go to the hospital and hear the news that Aria might not make it.  We had no idea what was wrong other than they could not get her stabilized and she was having problems breathing.  My aunt was just boohooing and told us the experience she just went through and that after they took Aria to the NICU, the nurse came back to the room and told my cousin that she needed to pray for this baby.  For a nurse to say that tells you something is really wrong.  They told my cousin that they weren't sure if they could keep Aria alive long enough to make it to another local hospital (T.C. Thompson).  Because they could not get her stabilized they called for the staff of T.C. Thompson Children's Hospital to come to the hospital Aria was born in.  By this point we are all just so overwhelmed with sadness and shock and I felt so guilty having Maddy there because I really felt Aria was not going to make it and my cousin would go home babyless and here I have my perfectly healthy baby. They allowed my cousin to go back and see Aria, which was another sign that they thought she would not make it as well.  The other hospital staff arrived to work on Aria and were successful in getting her stabilized.  They hooked her up to an isolette that was on a stretcher and wheeled her off into the ambulance.  Seeing her wheeled off like that is just something I will never forget. Babies are so innocent and helpless as it is and seeing her lifeless body on that stretcher was just too much.

Once transported to the other hospital it was determined she had a diaphragmatic(sp?) hernia and something else...i already forgot what it was. They said diaphragmatic babies usually do not make it so once again odds against Aria were not good at all. After an hour or so at the local hospital, it was determined she would be transported to Egleston's Children Hospital in Atlanta, GA and placed on an ECMO machine.

Here she is in ATL hooked up. The amount of machinery that was attached to her was unreal. I will post a pic of that as well.

All those monitors were for this one baby...Aria. Her hernia was causing her heart to be on the wrong side...they were not sure she even had both of her lungs and her intestines were pushed up into her chest. They found she did in fact have both lungs, but underwent surgeries to correct the hernia. She spent like 50 something days in the NICU I believe it was and she was able to go home sometime in July i think. Aria has defied many odds and has been a proven miracle. On May 23 we celebrated her first birthday at Harrison Bay State Park. I will post the pics now.

J-Fest 2011

This was Maddy's second year attending J-Fest.  Last year she was still eight months old and not all that mobile. This year she was 20 months old and very mobile lol.  At one point I thought I was going to pass out from the heat because I was constantly chasing her around in that hot sun.  I love being outdoors, but it was so extremely hot that day and all I wanted was a nice cool pool. When we first got there Maddy took off and because I wouldn't let her go exactly where she wanted she decided to pitch a fit right in front of the sheriff's van of all places lol.  She was tired from the very beginning, which made for an interesting day.  My mom took these pictures and I'm glad she did because even if I had a camera with me...I wouldn't have gotten any pics, except for the back of Maddy:)

this is Jenny (I think) from Addison Road.  I absolutely loved their concert and would really like to go see them again.  I like all of their songs and she was very energetic.

 Here I am trying to prevent Maddy from pitching a fit in the middle of the aisle lol.  She wanted to go up the steps to the stage and security kept standing next to me at one point. I wanted to tell him not to worry that I wouldn't let her go past a certain point, but decided against it. She did not want to leave and was starting her fit process.

here is another fit lol...poor Maddy...she was so tired and hot



She finally told me she wanted in her stroller...didn't take but maybe 10 seconds and she was fast asleep with her drink and baby lol.

Francesca Battastelli

Big Daddy Weave

Deer Maddy

I'm not sure if I talked about Maddy getting to pet a baby deer or not, but as you can see she did lol.  My stepdad found this baby deer just laying in the middle of the road.  He knew someone else might run over it as well as the fact that my mom would be in heaven if she got to pet it.  My mom came in the house and told me I needed to go look outside and by her tone I knew it was something big. When me and Maddy went outside we found my stepdad holding this baby deer.  This baby deer was so precious and cute. After Maddy got to pet it and my mom got to hold it, we took a walk back down to where it was found and went into the woods to let it go back to it's mom.  I have never in all my life been that close to a baby deer in the wild, let alone pet one.  Maddy was able to accomplish this within a year of her life lol. Maddy loves animals...especially dogs...so she really enjoyed being able to pet it.

Random updates

I want to start this out by saying WOOHOO!!! I have finished my first two classes of school and feel more relieved than I expected.  After going through those first two classes I realized I needed to get a better plan together if I wanted to successfully graduate.  I have planned out my days and know exactly what I need to do on each day give or take some.  I have completed all but 1 thing on my list today, but I am ok with that. Today was a short breather for me because I somehow managed to get most of my work time done before my Maddy responsibilities kicked in.  After she went to bed I got started on my new classes and am just so proud of myself for staying on task.

I found myself thinking a lot about Maddy's birthday today.  I am so excited because we will be boarding a cruise ship in Miami ON her actual birthday.  I said just last year that I would love to take her on a cruise on her birthday and low and behold that wish came true lol. Most people make a really big deal for the first birthday.  I want to make a super big deal about each of Maddy's birthday's so I am in search of THE birthday outfit.  I want her to have a birthday dress for opening presents and then another casual birthday outfit for the cake. I was able to find some dresses I liked, but everything I liked was $70.  Don't get me wrong, Maddy is totally worth $70 and more but it is out of my price range for the moment.  The dress above is one I am contemplating using.  It runs around $35 and is kinda cute...not really what I had in mind but we'll see.

This is the dress I am talking about.  Since she is turning two there would be two candles on the cupcake and then under it would be her name.  I envision her wearing this with her pigtails and that beautiful smile.  I will post other pics I found too.  I'm not sure how to make the pics all the same size without saving them and tweaking them through an image editor...I do not have that kind of time so I will do my best to make them proportionate lol.

That's about all I can find.  I'm not sure exactly what I am looking for...guess I will figure that out later.  Because we are cruising on her birthday I plan to have her birthday the weekend before.  I'm starting to think about themes.  Originally I was going to do a princess theme, but she is so enthralled with dogs that I'm almost thinking of having some kind of dog theme.  How do you make a dog theme cute for a girl? I haven't figured that one out yet lol.  I'm hoping next year she will be able to help me figure out what her theme will be.  Speaking of Maddy, she is starting to watch more and more tv.  Sunday I think she sat for a whole three minutes...maybe even five in my lap watching the wiggles.  She loves to see wags the dog.  She would point and had a smile plastered on her face. When the camera would show wags again she'd just scream, "DOGGIE!!!" to the top of her lungs...not really the top but really loud lol. I got tickled at her because she thought the show was funny.  I think she is going through her last "mommy" stage and it is breaking my heart.  I got the semi-privilege of taking her to school today. She had an extremely hard time letting me go. Her class was outside playing so I thought that would help her out because she lives to play outside, but as soon as I tried to put her down she clung with all her might to me. I think she likes me taking her to school because I don't get to very often. I wonder if since I pick her up from school she associates me with "rescuing" her from school to go home. I figured she was just happy for me to spend time with her this morning and didn't want it to end. My mom picked her up from school today-she usually takes her to school for me because she goes in town everyday for her job and we live 45 minutes from the daycare, so i struggle getting my time in when i take and pick her up from daycare-and once Maddy woke completely up we played and had dinner and had a good time.  I let her stay up a little later because I did not have to rush to work or rush to get a school assignment done so it was a lot more relaxed.  Around 7:50 I decided she needed to go on to bed so we began our bedtime routine. Here lately that consists of either running away when she sees the bottle, or deciding she wants to eat bite bites, or just simply says, "no." Tonight she resorted to deciding she wanted to play on top of saying no. She is the type of person that wants people right there with her all the time and she includes everybody. So I decided to take her bottle on to her room in hopes she would eventually follow me. My plan worked and she came in and closed her door. She resisted in me picking her up to rock her but she gave in when i offered to sing with her. She drank her bottle as usual and I sang, which is usual but she wanted me to keep on and keep on. I sang for a while and then decided she was looking really sleepy and didn't want her falling asleep in my arms so I told her I'd sing one more time then it was night night. I did exactly what I said and she just started boohooing. She normally just lays right on down and goes to sleep but tonight she sat all the way up with her arms up towards me crying for me to pick her up. I felt so bad because she had real tears and I knew she really did want me to stay. I knew if I did stay she would keep herself awake so I told her I loved her and to sleep good and night night and walked out. She did stop crying, but it broke my heart. "Mommy" stages can be difficult at times, but I am going to enjoy this one because it may be the last time.

Mean and Alive

I have always loved this song...I love the way the music sounds and of coarse taylor always has some sort of relatable lyrics. I've always envisioned this song in a relationship kind of way, but I have realized it sparks an emotion from me that I had never really realized or thought about. As I listen to this song I quickly realize that I picture my dad. I have a lot of ill feelings towards my dad. I was never good enough for him and I always felt stupid. To this day I struggle greatly with feeling inferior to people and I have a huge fear of looking stupid. There was only one thing my dad never could say anything about...anything negative that is, and I think I subconsciously held on to that and made that a priority to maintain. There are things I know, such as in the Lord's eyes I am beautiful just the way I am, but how to apply that to my life I have no idea. It's like my head knows these things, but I guess it doesn't really know what to do with it lol. I do not like a lot of things from my childhood, but a lot of these things have really just made me a stronger person and has helped me be who I am. It has definitely been in the back of my mind as I raise Maddy. I do not allow words such as stupid or dumb or any other derogatory(sp?) words around her. If someone wants to say stupid, they should say "silly" I know Maddy will hear these words at one time or other but she is too young for all that negativity. I worry a lot of times over her self esteem. I want her to have positive self esteem regardless as to what other people may tell her. I think she will struggle with her esteem some as every teenager does, but I do see her being ok with herself.

This is the last video I will post in this one lol. I was actually at this concert and had no idea this was being filmed. This music video is from when they were in Chattanooga back in December 2009. I am posting this because I have really been missing my friend I have talked about, the one that decided we could no longer be friends. I have had him on my mind here and there and wonder how he's doing. Today someone from work asked me about him and I just felt like saying really? you really had to ask ME this?! He was a really good friend and was often my support system. We really seemed to bond and it breaks my heart that we are no longer friends. There was a group of us from work that would hang out from time to time outside of work and one thing we did that I absolutely loved was rockband night. This is where I realized I was decent on drums lol. We had so many laughs, primarily because one of our other friends is just a nut and attempted to sing songs and it was just hilarious. Our first rockband get together was when I was pregnant with Maddy. I think it was either June or July before she was due. I felt a little awkward because I was pregnant and I was pregnant out of wedlock, but I ended up having a really good time. We had one more rockband night before we were no longer friends and that was my birthday last year. Maddy was 6 months old and was just learning to attempt to crawl. I got to play a couple of songs but the rest of the time I had to watch because Maddy kept getting stuck in a laying down position or she was hungry or just wanted to be held. I tried to drum with her on my lap but she would grab the sticks and I got scared she would get hurt so I decided to just watch. I cannot wait till Maddy can play rockband with me because I think we will have a ball. Once I had Maddy my entire life changed. Friends I was friends with were no longer really friends because they had no clue what I was going through. Even my best friend that I am talking about tonight and mine relationship changed somewhat. We were really close still, but I guess I just felt that nobody understood me anymore because I was a mom and nobody in our group was. This isn't why we are no longer friends...it's just me talking lol. I could sure use a good friend like him right now. I think about him a lot and hope he is happy and doing well. I know he is doing somewhat well because he got out of our work lol. That has to make anybody happy hehe. It has been a huge relief to actually get some of my feelings out even though I still have a lot of school to do. I am going to just make myself make time to have some down time here and there because otherwise the stress bottles up and I melt down like I have been lately.