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Today has gone much smoother than Monday for me. The baby has been so good. It's been quiet - especially without my toddler running around. I miss her though. I definitely enjoyed her as a baby, but I love seeing her run around and all of the little things she does. Yes, even the things that drive me crazy.

In other news... We have been debating between getting a Wii or a Playstation 3 for awhile now. We decided to go with the PS3. Not only can we play games on it, but it can also serve as our blu-ray disc player. We got it last night - and I must say I'm happy with it. We bought several games - I started Folklore last night. I am stopping by Game Stop on my way home to pick up a few more. (Yay stimulus check!) I'm glad we got the PS3 - playing in HD is awesome. We also went to Blockbuster and picked up Alvin and the Chipmunks to watch. What can I say, I love our electronic toys! We spend a lot of time at home so it is just one more thing we can do. After this though - we are going on a spending fast. We just spent enough that we don't need to do anything other than pay bills and buy groceries along with saving. That is IT!

I finished my first and second books. I finished the second one this morning and am about halfway through the third. (Yes, I read fast.) The baby slept for a good 3 hours this morning so I was able to get a lot of reading in.

Life is simple and boring at the moment. It's exactly the way I like it.

I do have to say I am amazed at the amount of comments I have gotten thanks to mommyfest. Thanks for all of you ladies who stopped by (and continue to do so!). I look forward to reading more of your awesome blogs.

The joys of motherhood.

My beautiful little girl has basically been sleeping through the night since before she was a year old. We co-slept with her until she was one and it was her dad and I that suffered from a lack of sleep. She moved around constantly and we both were kicked in the stomach and punched in the face more times than we could count. When she was a year old we had to transition her to her crib and her room - because I was losing my mind at this point. She did fairly well and the transition for us was luckily an easy one.

However, last night was far from easy. We laid her down after we spent some time catching up with Aunt Erin and Uncle Rhyan (who live in Canada) over Skype. (On a completely non-related note, Skype is AWESOME. It's free for us to talk and we get to use a webcam/mic to talk to each other!)

I stayed up after she and Anthony had gone to bed catching up on my blog reading. I was also trying to edit several of the videos I have been taking of Hailie. For some reason the movies I have taken will not let me open them in either Windows Movie Maker or Muvee Autoproducer 6. I'm so FRUSTRATED! I decided to give up and picked up a book (Outlander by Diana Gabaldon). I read about 5 pages and decided to go to bed, or so I thought.

30 minutes after I went to bed Hailie woke up. It was 11:30. She was NOT happy. I picked her up and rocked her and calmed her down. I laid her back down and as soon as I went to walk back out of the room she started crying again. I grabbed a blanket and brought her to the living room and laid down with her on the couch. She kept wiggling around. Took her back to her room, laid her down, and went back to our room to go to sleep. 30 minutes or so go by and she wakes up again. Pick her up because I'm exhausted and take her back to our room. That didn't happen. Wiggle worm was all over the place and would not go to sleep. Back to bed she goes. 1 am rolls around and I have not slept much at all. Anthony gets up this time even though he has to get up in an hour. Tells her to lay down and comes back to bed. Anthony's alarm went off at 2 and I could hear her through the monitor babbling. Anthony took care of her then. She finally passed out.

Of course, I knew she would sleep late so I figured I could catch up on my sleep after that. Not so much. I woke up at 6:30 and it took me over an hour to fall asleep again. She started stirring around 9 so here I am now while she is eating breakfast.

This particular episode really reminds me how far I have come over the last 18 months in terms of patience. I have never been a patient person and have moments when I am quick to snap, even at Hailie. When she was a baby and wouldn't sleep I had moments where I just wanted to run away and cry. I was so frustrated. I was a new mom and felt like no matter what I did I couldn't keep my child happy. The worst was in those first few months when I was dealing with my PPD. I remember having to walk away from her and counting so I would calm down. I just wanted to yell and scream. I had no idea what I was doing wrong. At that point I remember asking myself how other people could do it. I felt like I was failing as a parent and was the worst mom in the world.

I eventually realized that this happens to a lot of people and I wasn't alone. Things got easier as she got older. My patience levels grew and I am much calmer when these types of events happen.

Breakthrough!

Anthony and I (with much prodding from my mom) have taken away the pacifier from Hailie. She is almost 17 months old and we figured it was just the right time to do it since she seems to be chewing on them. She did so well tonight at bedtime. She laid down and fussed a little bit, but went to sleep not too long afterwards. I am SO happy about that. Let's hope the new few days are just as easy. Next on the list is potty training, but I don't think she's quite ready for that.

On another note (an exciting one I think) I was talking to my friend Shellie tonight. She has the such a great sense of humor and outlook on things that I figured I could convince her to start a blog and in addition we are going to do a joint one - still deciding content, etc. I will have the links up once we're ready to go.

Apologies for the ads on the sides - figure since I am spending so much time here I might as well make a little money. So do a poor girl a favor and click on the ads once in awhile!

Anthony is off tomorrow - so my goal is to get my paper written and ready for proofreading and editing. I have almost 3 pages - so only 12 to go! Woohoo. Off to read one of the million books I have to read. Is May here yet? I am officially out of school as of May 3rd, I can't wait!

Stress relief and more of my ramblings!

So over at cr8buzz tonight in the moms forum our topic of the week is stress relief and what you do to relax and unwind and escape from all that unwanted stress. For me lately it has been running. I get on, crank up the ipod (usually something along the lines of Breaking Benjamin, Crossfade, basically something I can rock out to) and just go for it. I feel free and when I get off it feels like I have a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. In addition to this reading is another activity that helps me to relax. I get lost in those pages and become oblivious to the outside world. I can escape, and I love it. I also finding writing stimulating as well - getting my thoughts on paper. Sometimes the thoughts in my head are so jumbled that getting them on paper (or in a blog entry) is the only way that I can make sense of anything. I think a lot of that comes from my overanalyzing everything.

My battle to lose weight had quite the victory today, and I couldn't be happier. I have lost exactly 4.6 lbs this week! I don't know how that is possible. I have been on the treadmill every day, have tried to run around more chasing after Hailie, and even doing some hardcore cleaning around the house. My body already feels so much better. I can't tell you how nice it is to see some progress. I know that I'm not going to be seeing these types of results every week, but it definitely helps keep me motivated. More importantly, I just feel SO MUCH BETTER! I already have more energy and I feel happier. I know that I have to keep this up not only for the next two months, but I want to continue working out and staying healthy while I'm pregnant. If I do that losing the weight after the second baby is only going to be that much easier. I have a goal - and it's to be back down to 140. I have a long road ahead, but I have the motivation and support of everyone around me and that helps.

On a completely different note - I just have to say my little girl is growing up so fast and I am just amazed at how fast she learns. She has begun speaking quite a bit more, not all coherent, but we are definitely hearing her trying a lot more than before. I was worried for awhile because she wasn't saying much other than mama and dada and who's that (sounds more like whosdat in a whisper). She is such a beautiful little girl and I am just so blessed to have her, even on those days I just want to put her in her crib and run away. I better get to studying... It feels great to be blogging again more often. Here are some recent pictures of Hailie.

Frustrations...

I am so aggravated at the moment. I have a refund of my remaining financial aid still sitting in my account at UH. I called 3 days ago and I asked why I couldn't request the refund. No problem, they would do it manually and it would release into my account in 24-48 hours. I am counting on that money to make up what we had to spend on my books, etc already earlier in the semester. We're talking a pretty significant amount of money.

I call back this morning because it still isn't there. They took my phone # and said they are having to go to someone higher up to get it released. This was at 8am. It is now noon and no call back. I'm a little worried - we REALLY need that money. bleh.

EDIT - So I called them again. They are telling me they need to "research" and I should know something MONDAY afternoon. So I had to move more money out of savings. Luckily I should be getting my W2 and I can file our taxes soon.. and I will be able to replace what we took out when that and the refund finally come in.. but sheesh. I didn't want to do that ya know?

Early Wakeup calls and lots of rambling.

So it is 3am. I am awake. Hailie has woken up twice tonight. It's the nights that I really just don't want to get out of bed that she wakes up. So since I am pretty exhausted and combined with the fact that I somehow turned off Anthony's alarm yesterday morning making him late for work I am going to stay up until I make sure that does not happen again this morning.

I am also getting REALLY sick of this stupid cough. It is DRIVING ME CRAZY! I'm congested, but can't seem to get any of the crap in my chest to break up at all. I hate being sick. More than ANYTHING else in the world. Okay, so maybe not more than just anything... but ya know.

I'm rambling, but like I said - it's 3am and I'm tired.

I am slowly starting to get caught up on my school stuff. Between this weekend and my wonderful husband watching Hailie for me I will be caught up before I know it.

I just heard Hailie.. guess she's still up. Not crying so not going to complain. I was going to get up at 5:30 just get to stuff done, but I'm really thinking that just isn't going to happen. Have I mentioned before that Hailie is in love with all things Toy Story? That girl has seen Toy Story 2 literally a couple hundred times. This means of course that both Anthony and I have the entire movie memorized.

On a completely different note I read a news article (yeah it was about 5 months old) that was posted on cr8buzz about this professor from UT (gotta be from my state.. ugh!) says that being a stay at home mom is dangerous and bad for your kids. Um, not so much. She can think that all she wants. I think being a stay at home mom if you have that opportunity is fantastic. In my situation I get to spend the time with my daughter teaching her things and doing things we otherwise would not be able to do. I can go back to school. I can get involved in political stuff. My mom stayed at home with us and it was the best thing in the entire world. I am so grateful for it. My mom is my best friend.. I've been so blessed to have her. Sorry for my tangent.

I better get back in there and check on HB (Hailie-bug for those of you who don't know) and get back to sleep..