First Trip to Buffalo

Today we went to Buffalo.

It was our first trip there since Cassandra was born. The last time we went was mid-January, about two weeks before her arrival.

We decided to wait until after she received her first set of vaccines to go. Mainly because I knew my Mom would invite people over to meet her and with it being winter time, I didn't want her getting sick! 

Yesterday was my Mom's birthday and today is my Aunt's, so another good reason to go this weekend!

Avery got all dressed up for the party:

I asked her to strike a pose and this is what I got!

When we got to my  Mom's, it was pretty much a revolving door of people all day long. Starting about an hour after we arrived until the time we walked out the door, someone was there!  It was very busy, but very fun seeing everyone and having them see the girls!

Uncle Joe and Aunt Marion

Jean

Taylor and Rachel

We got a lot of nice gifts, both for Cassandra and Avery....including bunny ears!

Avery and Noah

Mom and Leigha

Avery and Taylor

Megan, Leigha, Cassandra and I

We had a really nice visit! And both girls slept from door to door....woke up and went right back to bed...perfect!

Ready for Easter!

Someone is ready for Easter!

Can you guess who?

Yesterday we dyed Easter eggs. Avery was bugging me all day long to do them so after dinner, we got them done. Avery did most of it by herself once I showed her how to do it. She put the egg in the dye....

 

And after letting it sit, took it out!

Look at the pretty eggs!

Yes even Jerri the cat has one!

Our egg kit came with stickers too so of course we had to add those once they dried off!

She had a blast! After doing a dozen of them, she wanted to do more! And she was asking me all day today to decorate eggs again! Sorry kiddo....we'll have to wait until next year!

Room Updates

My Mom came out last night and is staying until tomorrow.

As part of her Easter gift to the girls, she got them some nice decals to decorate their rooms!  She put them up today so that when Avery got home from daycare, she'd have a surprise waiting for her! 

Here is Avery's room:

And Cassandra's room:

I love the way they turned out! They just spruce up the rooms a little bit! I'm hoping to find something similar to use to put their names up on the walls too.

Two Months Old!

Yesterday, baby Cassandra turned two months old!

She had her two month check up earlier this week. She's 21 1/4" long (15th percentile) and 9lbs 8.5oz (25th percentile)....still a peanut! She also got her first set of shots. She screamed her little head off, but was really good the rest of the day. She slept like a champ that night and only woke up once to eat...it was heaven!

She is still wearing some newborn clothes and is still in newborn diapers!

She's still eating every 2.5-3hrs during the day now. She is doing one longer stretch after she goes to bed and then after that it varies.

This girl is on a nice bedtime routine. She started getting really fussy one night around 7:15. She just cried and cried no matter what. I tried feeding her and even when she finished she kept on crying. So for the hell of it, I said I was putting her to bed. We went upstairs, I swaddled her and the kid passed out and I didn't hear from her until 2am!  So believe it or not, every night she goes to bed between 7-8pm now! She's usually up twice to eat overnight-once around 1-2am and once around 4-5am. Then she's up between 7:30-8:30 in the morning for the day.  Naps are hard to come by-she loves being held when she sleeps. Put her down and she wakes right up. It's somewhat of a pain! I'm hoping that changes soon...as much as I love holding her my arms can only take so much!

Cassandra has started smiling and cooing at us-it's the cutest thing ever!  She has also found her hand and loves sucking on it. She makes TONS of bubbles with her mouth and drools like crazy-Avery never did it to this extent! 

Here are her photos!!

Avery took this pic all by herself!!

My faves:

Just for kicks, here are Avery's two month pics!

The 'Do

You are going to be so jealous....

And you are going to want it....

The hairstyle of the decade....heck, the hairstyle of the century!

The baby mullet!

And my little girl has one that she is rockin'!

Bald up front, party in the back!

Take a look for yourself:

We never experienced anything like this with Avery. That girl came out with a full head of hair and even though she lost some, it just thinned out a bit. She never went bald. Her sister is taking a different route with the hair though! We'll see how long it takes her to get a full head full of lovely locks!

And I had to post both of these because I don't have many of them....pics of me with both of my girls!

St. Patty's Day

Yesterday was good ol' St Patty's Day.

Yes, I'm Irish-a very tiny smidge, but hey, it counts!  My Dad came out for a visit and we decided to hit up the parade! 

The last parade we went to was Memorial Day last year.  There were not a lot of people, we had curb side seats and the parade lasted a little over an hour. I expected the same thing for this parade because I just assumed the Memorial Day parade would be a bigger deal. 

I was wrong.  Waaaaaay wrong!

The parade started at 12:30 and we got there around 1pm (we sat towards the "finish line" of the parade route). There were so many people that you couldn't get near the street! It was insane! Avery had to go on Gabe's shoulders just to watch what was going on (see the crowd??):

Cassandra was wide awake and kicking away-I think she was excited from all of the noise!

I had to feed her during the parade and after, my Dad held her for awhile-and she slept through quite a bit-even with all of the bands playing and sirens blaring! Oh to sleep that soundly!

Avery took a quick (very quick) seat on my shoulders too!

After we were there awhile, some people left so we did get to sit curb side which was nice.

We stayed until around 3:30 and decided to head out-and get this....the parade was still going! Yes, two and a half hours later!  Like I said....waaaaay wrong!

After the parade, we grabbed a bite to eat then headed home. My Dad left shortly after, but we had a nice visit with him!

Happy St. Patty's Day!

ENT

Yesterday I took Avery to the ENT...it was quite the day.

I got both of us ready and out of the house on time (yay!).  On the way, Avery kept saying, "Mommy?  I want to go nite-nite." I kept telling her to sit back and relax.  About a mile away, she starts to cry.  Two blocks away I turn to look at her and she's puking everywhere!  She has never gotten sick before so she was choking, etc.  She threw a fit when she saw that she puked on her beloved bear. 

I'm rushing to get there and realize I have nothing with me...no diaper bag, no change of clothes, etc.  So I get there and park. I find 5 napkins in my glove compartment which had to suffice. I get Avery cleaned up the best that I can and get her seat cleaned up as best I can.  Mother of the year takes her into the ENT's office with her outfit soaking wet in puke!

The appointment itself was very fast. Avery did great as usual-sat in the big chair all by herself and opened her mouth, stuck out her tongue and said "Ahhh" like a pro! The doc checked her out and, like expected, wants her tonsils out. I didn't schedule a date yet because I want to talk things over with Gabe first. One of the dates is right before Easter (boo!), but I would still be on maternity leave for her recovery, which is a plus. We'll see.

We get home, my Mom leaves (she was still here visiting) and I take Avery upstairs for her nap. She goes to her room and I go to the bathroom. I go into her room and she had peed the bed!  The sheets, comforter, and mattress pad all needed to be stripped as well as her clothes of course. So I left her in her room to rest with a bare mattress and a pillow. She never naps so I didn't think it was a big deal.

After about 20 minutes I did a poop check on her (she's known to poop at naptime) and sure enough she pooped. I change her and her diaper had leaked all over her clothes! Of course when I go to take them off, her legs are covered in poop! So there was another outfit change for the day! 

Luckily Cassandra slept through most of this but woke up shortly after. I went up later to check on Avery and this is what I saw:

Yep, napping on the floor right in front of her door!  It figures that the one day she decides to nap, she has a bare bed! I felt terrible!

The rest of the day went fine, but man it was a heck of a morning!

Sleep Study Results

Yesterday we had our follow up with the sleep clinic for Avery's sleep study results.

We talked a little bit about her bloodwork.  We hadn't started the prescription iron and wanted to see if there were any other options. We hate to pump her up with prescription drugs when she doesn't really need it. We came to the decision that we're going to try a multivitamin with added iron for now. She'll take it for 10-12 weeks then will get her blood drawn again to see if it's making a difference. If not, then we'll bump up to the prescription iron.

Then it was on to the actual sleep study results.

And.....

She has sleep apnea!

They found that she has a decent number of arousals per hour, and a lot of them during REM sleep. Whatever number they use to determine it, she was just above the cutoff of having moderate sleep apnea.

So, now we have to see an ENT about possibly having her tonsils removed.  If they don't think the tonsils are an issue, then we explore other options-medicine or a CPAP machine (can you imagine?!). I actually called the ENT right after our appointment yesterday and they got us in today already which is super fast! 

It's just funny how we ended up where we are....we went to the sleep clinic because we had issues getting her to fall asleep (which the NP told us today was probably "just a phase") and we're leaving there with possibly 2 medical diagnosis....restless leg syndrome and sleep apnea.  According to the NP, we would have ended up there somehow....if it wasn't now, it would have been in the future because of some other issue this would have caused.  It's just funny how things turn out sometimes!

Peanut Butter Pie

I looked through my recipes on here and I can't believe I haven't posted this one yet!

This is an all time favorite in my family and bonus-it's super easy to make! So what are you waiting for??

Peanut Butter Pie
2 pints vanilla ice cream, softened
2 cups cool whip, thawed
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup chopped nuts
1 pie crust-baked and cooled
hot fudge sauce

1. In a large bowl, mix (with a mixer) ice cream, cool whip, peanut butter and 2/3 cups chopped nuts until well blended
2. Pour into baked pie crust and spread evenly. 
3. Freeze until firm
4. Once frozen, melt hot fudge sauce and spread over pie. Top with remaining chopped nuts.
5. Freeze until firm
6. Before serving, let thaw 15-20min so you're able to cut it.

Notes:  This recipe can be varied and tweaked any way you like it. I typically don't use vanilla ice cream. I like the pie really peanut-buttery so I usually use vanilla ice cream that has peanut butter in it as well. Gabe isn't a fan of nuts in his desserts, so I usually omit them or use something else in their place. For this pie, I mixed oreos in with the ice cream and topped the pie with mini peanut butter cups. I also am not a huge fan of using a regular pie crust so I use the Oreo crusts that they sell. And one other thing-you may need to add a touch more of everything than suggested. Especially with a regular pie crust, if you use the exact measurements, it might not fill up the crust entirely so I add a little bit more of everything into the mix. It's one of those recipes that when you make it enough, you can just eye-ball the measurements.

Busy Weekend

We had quite a busy weekend this past weekend.

Saturday morning we took Avery to get her haircut. She did really great and it turned out very cute. She loves the playroom there so after she got it cut, she played for a good half hour at least.

Saturday evening we went over to our friend's house for dinner. They wanted to meet Cassandra and let the girls play together. It was a really nice time. The girls got all dressed up in princess gear:

We had a really nice dinner and I brought dessert (recipe to come!). It was just nice to get out of the house and visit and have a great meal! 

Avery all dolled up:

And the girls holding Cassandra:

Avery put on this Mickey Mouse crown and it was hysterical-she looks like a hot mess in this photo!

We stayed pretty late so it was bedtime when we got home.

Sunday was a moving day....my In-Laws bought a new house so Gabe, the girls and I went over (along with his sister and her family) to help them move some stuff.  I didn't help much as I was on Cassandra duty, but they got a decent amount moved. They rented a small u-haul and unloaded some stuff they had packed up. We all ended up at their new house to unload, have lunch, and let the kids play around.

We got home around dinner time (we left our house before 11am) and just spent the rest of the day hanging around and getting ready for the week.

Silly Girl

So yesterday I'm on the phone with my Mom. I'm holding Cassandra and Avery is in her room for rest time. FYI she has a gate across her doorway so that she can't escape her room.

Mom and I are talking and I hear Avery playing away up in her room-not a surprise.

What was a surprise was that a few minutes later, Avery is standing next to me (I'm downstairs)! Yes, she escaped her room, gate and all. This wasn't the first time either. Luckily it just means we have to tighten up the gate.

Even more of a surprise? Her outfit:

She had on grey pants and put her PJ pants over them. Then I think she was wearing 5 shirts-the one she was wearing for the day along with 4 others that were randomly on her-most of them around her waist! Yes she has fun trying to dress herself these days!

Silly girl!!

And look at this cutie-patootie watching her mobile in her pack-n-play:

Result 1

Today we got a letter in the mail regarding Avery's blood test results.

They tested for 2 things-her iron level and her ferritin level. From what I understand, ferritin is a binding agent that stores iron in your tissues.

They want her ferritin level to be at 50.  Avery's is 16. 

So they want her to start iron therapy....basically taking two medications daily. Then she'll have to go for a repeat blood draw (oh fun!) in 10-12 weeks to make sure the levels are going up. 

Of course they sent along the Rx's for the meds and a page with all of these do's and don'ts which of course make me nervous.  Vomitting, upset stomach, constipation are some of the side effects.  One of the meds will stain her teeth so she has to drink it with a straw. There are all of the guidelines as far as when she should take it and with what foods, etc.  Seems like a pain to me!

Anyways, we're going to contact her pediatrician to get his take on all of this too just to make sure it's the right step to take. We also meet with the sleep clinic again next Thursday for her sleep study results so I'm sure we'll be talking to them about it as well.

First Blood, First Date

Saturday was a day of firsts for us....

Part of Avery's sleep evaluation was that she needed to have bloodwork done to check her iron levels.  They were suspicious of her having restless leg syndrome (RLS) and the way to partially diagnose that in children is by checking their iron levels. 

So Saturday we took her for bloodwork.

I didn't know what to expect. I know they check her iron at the pediatrician with a finger prick (which she did awesome at!) so that's what I was praying for.

Nope....they didn't do the finger prick. Apparently they only do that up to age 18 months. 

So she had to have it drawn from her arm.  A brief moment of panic came over all of us and we just had to go with it.

She sat on Gabe's lap and he held her arm out with both of his hands. She was curious and watched what they were doing. We just kept telling her that they were going to touch her arm and then it would be over. They put the rubberband on her arm and she didn't even fuss. Made a fist like they asked. And then they did it. 

It took a few seconds for the tears to come....but they came. She cried while the tube filled up but stopped as soon as the needle was out. And she got a nice bandaid too!  Overall she did great as always!! Of course Mommy teared up while they were doing it-I felt so bad for her!!

Later that day, Gabe and I went on our first date since having Cassandra!!  My in-laws babysat both kids and we went out for a little break!

We stopped at a few stores, then went to see the movie "Safe House". It was a very good movie! Of course I had to splurge and get popcorn since we only go to the movies like once a year!  After the movie, we ran to a local Italian restaurant and grabbed a quick bite to eat.

The kids did great. Avery had a little stomach bug that popped up but was in good spirits.  The baby slept most of the time she was there and sucked down a bottle like a champ!  It was nice getting away for a few hours and enjoying each other's company!

Sisterly Love