Bunco Blast

I decided it is sad when your husband tells you he goes to Facebook only to see what you have posted and what you are thinking about because you no longer blog. So...I am going to try to start blogging again. I love mommy blogs that are REAL and aren't about how amazing they are and how amazing their kids are. A friend of mine from high school is author of HoneyBearLane. Check it out. It is a great blog. I love reading it because she is totally real and doesn't sugarcoat her life. I want to be a mommy blogger too. Why not right? Because I am a working mom? Who cares, I can still do it. At least I think I can. I don't even know if anyone ever reads my blog, but maybe if I blog more, I will have more traffic. No one reads an outdated blog.
So, here are my thoughts for today:

I have bunco at my house tonight. I have been in a bunco group with my mom and my sister for the last several years. Before I got married and before I went to school in Idaho, so I think the group is going on ten years. I enjoy playing, but our group has started dwindling. For some reason we have a lot of flaky people. So we really only have 5 to 7 regulars. One quit when I sent out reminders (super thoughtful) and one has class this week so I had to find a few subs this week to make 8 or 9 so we can have even tables. We started with 12.
I have bunco at my house tonight. And because I think I have to be amazing, I just went over budget on food for these ladies. Who-ever set the president that you have to have enough food for people to skip dinner and eat at bunco when the budget is only $8 or something for food should be shot. I am making black bean and corn salsa and cinnamon bun caramel corn (one of my favorites). But, I am also going to have watermelon & cantaloupe and carrots and cucumbers with dip. I think I am also going to cut up some apples and make fruit dip and make some yummy Chrystal Light Appletini drink. Yet, I feel like that isn't enough. I don't feel like it is going to be amazing, just ok. But I guess ok will have to do because I will only have about 45 minutes when I get home to get it all put together. It is a good thing my hubby and I spent some time cleaning up the house last night. He is so good to me.

It's been a year already!

Taylor is a year old already. It is so hard for me to believe.

12 Things Taylor Loves:
ICE
Watermelon
Kiwi
Strawberries
Peas
Daddy
Mommy
Straws
Music
Baby Einstein
Climbing the stairs
Outside

12 Things Taylor doesn't like so much:
Getting changed
Getting cleaned up from dinner
Sitting in the car
Being hugged
Beans
When her toys don't do what she wants
Being hungry
Being tired
Being strapped down
When she can't have ice
Being let go of when she is holding on to us
Dresses that are too long to crawl in

She is getting to be such a big girl. She is not walking yet, but she has taken up to 11 steps in a row and randomly stands up and walks on her own. She doesn't like it if we hold on to her and help her walk and then let go. She is stubborn (shocker!), and wants to figure it out on her time and do it on her own. When she stands by herself she claps. She is super excited about it, but she isn't going to do it on anyone else's time.
She says a few words now, and we are working on more. She currently says: dada, mama, go, hi,wow, oh-oh (not quite uh-oh), and what.
Taylor started going to a new day care on her birthday. So far, are really happy with where she goes. She was going to someone with only a couple of kids and she got a lot of individual attention and that was great for when she was a baby. Now that she is a little bit older and learning a lot of new things, I think this new place will be better for her. There are a lot of kids, but the babysitter is totally on top of it and I think she manages them well. She has a curriculum and food is included in the price. She has a huge back yard with a ton of kid toys out there and they go out several times a day. Taylor loves going outside and it makes me feel better about not having a yard because she still gets to spend a lot of time playing in one. The price is actually cheaper than what we were paying and that is always nice as well. Her old babysitter was good for her then, and this new place will be ideal going forward. I am happy with it and I believe Taylor is too.

Baby Girl at 11 Months

My sweet baby girl is getting closer to being a toddler than a baby. I am sad about it, but my husband reminds me that she will be more fun. Toddlers are more work, but definitely more fun as well. She is already such a joy and I can't get enough of her laughter. Taylor currently has 12 teeth. Yes folks, TWELVE. It is crazy to me that she has that many. Babies much older don't have that many teeth. She has 4 molars already. Two of them are completely in on the bottom, but the two on the top only have the main pointy parts through. The bottom molars usually come in between 14 and 18 months. I think she is getting some more right now because she decided to bite mommy twice yesterday, and she has never bitten to be mean or because she is mad. She bites because her mouth hurts. At the rate we are going Taylor will have all 20 teeth by the time she is 18 months old. My guess is she probably won't, but I wouldn't mind being done with the teething. It's not my favorite.
Taylor is at a weird stage where she doesn't love to be spoon fed anymore. She wants to finger feed herself. She will tolerate a few spoonfuls of pureed food, but even the rice cereal and oatmeal that she loved aren't her favorite anymore. She wants peices of food she can shove in her mouth and gag on. She doesn't gag very often, but she does seem to think she needs to have everything on her tray shoved into her mouth at once. Guess she will learn. I am struggling with knowing how much to feed her now though. Guess I will learn too.
There are a few things Taylor loves to do: climb the stairs, play in the dishwasher, and pull the dvds and blurays out of the shelves. Why does she have toys? Who knows. She does enjoy a little house with shapes (I know that doesn't make sense, but if you saw it it would). She also loves her books. But she doesn't love being read to. She wants to look at her books alone. She gets too impatient when I read them.
She has started making an "O" sound and making that shape with her mouth and pointing to things.

It is pretty funny, and she also does a lot of the wide open mouth smile when she sees something she likes. It is still a lot of fun to pick her up from somewhere and have her get excited and give me that grin. Makes my day instantly better.

She is never thrilled about having anything in her hair...bummer

She has this crooked little grin too, and I adore it.

Fake smile, just showing off the teeth

We are alive and around, are you?

I have been SOOOO ridiculously busy the last couple of months between not having time to take lunch breaks at work, and having sick family over and over, and doing my first Bridal Fair, and sadly selling my car, I haven't felt like I have had much time to breath. I missed my post about Taylor at 10 months and now too much time has passed to even remember what was going on that time. But I will post about her at 11 months soon.
I have really neglected this blog in the last 6 months or so and I am starting to wonder if anyone is even reading it. Probably not, because there isn't much to read anymore. I want to start blogging about my thoughts and feelings more, because those are the blogs I enjoy reading. The random every day stuff that people don't really talk about much, but do blog about.
Anyway...my thoughts for today are:

I sold my car yesterday and I am VERY sad. I honestly was close to tears twice. Anyone who has known me a long time knows I am a habitual car buyer. I have never kept a car for very long and I usually don't care much when I get rid of them because before this one, I always bought cheap cars that ended up having problems. I had the longest relationship with this car. I loved it. I was emotionally attached. There have only ever been two cars I loved. This one, and my first car that I managed to total when I was 19. That was the car I owned the second longest. But anyway...
I sold it because I leased it and then bought it and I was upside down in it and it wasn't going to get any better and we will need a new car in the next year or two and the value is going to keep going down faster than I pay it off. So unless I wanted to keep it for at least 3 more years, it was better to get rid of it now.
But that doesn't change that fact that I was extremely sad to see it go and I sold it to someone that I am sure is going to wreck it within a year. She is from Chicago and has only been driving for 3 months and this will be her first car. She has been driving friend's cars and rental cars, and when she test drove the car, I was scared for my life. So sad. I will miss that car, and I am sad for it's future. I feel as though I betrayed it...On to bigger and possibly better things I guess.

9 Months and Counting

Where have the past 9 1/2 months gone? I can't believe me little one is getting so big! She is a big baby for her age, but still. I have mixed feelings about her getting older. I LOVE the toddler stage and can't wait for her to talk and say funny things regardless of the trouble she will get in to. But she is so cute and fun right now, I wouldn't mind keeping her at this age too. I love watching her learn. I also enjoyed when she was super new born and would actually cuddle, which she hasn't done for about 8 months. She is just not a cuddler. She wants to be held, just don't try to hug her.
Anyway, about Taylor at 9 months: She is 20 lbs 3 ox (74%), 30 in (99%) & has a 45.5 cm head (88%). She is just a big girl, but I think she is perfect and I can't get enough of her smiles. When she turned 9 months she had 6 teeth, and she seemed to have slowed down on the teething (I was wrong, but more on that at 10 months). She is still very very happy most of the time, but she can be very dramatic. She handles bonks really well, but if she doesn't get her bottle or her cereal when she wants it she puts on a nice show. Can't wait for that fun when she gets older. She is starting to pull her self up to walls and let go very briefly. She still mostly likes crawling though, and I think it is faster for her so she sees no problem with it.

I just thought this picture was cute. She leans on her side a lot when she is playing and doesn't want to sit up. She just looks so big in this picture.

This is Taylor enjoying one of her favorite things - the dishwasher - I never thought I would have to tell my baby to get out of the dishwasher, but I do it a lot.

Another one of Taylor's favorites - shoes. She just loves shoelaces and shoes and she used to play with ours, but now that she has her own, they are much easier for her to play with.

This is Taylor on Christmas day. I love this picture.

She is still a very good eater and she absolutely LOVES any baby cereal. When I am mixing it up at dinner time she gets mad until I get it in her mouth. She is so funny like that. She has also started enjoying a little bit of real food, but I need to get better at introducing things into her diet. She mostly just eats baby food, baby puffs, and cheerios.
All in all, we love her to pieces and are happy to have her around. She is a lot of work because she NEVER stops moving except to eat, but I wouldn't have it any other way. She is busy busy busy and I love it.

Festival of Trees

The first week of December was fun for us this year, or should I say last year since it is now January... anyway, December 1st was my fun day in the hospital, December 2nd was my work Christmas party. They had Comedy Sportz as the entertainment and gave us all gifts. This year I got a bunch of gift cards. I was really happy about my gift. They do a really good job.

December 3rd, my sweet husband decided to indulge me and take Taylor and I to the festival of trees. I have been wanting to go for the last couple of years since I haven't been in quite a while. I just couldn't believe how massive it was. In my opinion it has really gotten a lot bigger than it used to be, but maybe I am just not remembering clearly. There was so much to see, we didn't even try to see it all. We skipped most of the quilts and the wreaths. There were just so many trees.

I was sure that Taylor would love the trees and want to grab them all, but she really wasn't all that interested in them. She was happy as usual, but was more interested in people watching (kinda like her parents). We managed to forget the stroller, which I think was ok. We switched back and forth holding Taylor. And I saw so many people there holding there kids and pushing an empty stroller I felt like we were smarter not to bring it. Especially since the crowds were hard enough to navigate through without it.

There were some really creative trees. I am amazed at the talents and imaginations of people. We really enjoyed the golf tree and we are going to try to copy some of the ornaments. We have a golf tree already, but not as cute.

I also really liked the UP tree. I was not the biggest fan of the movie (purely because the kid needed some serious discipline), but the tree really was great.

After the festival of trees, Scott took us to his favorite hole in the wall diner in Midvale, and Taylor ate her dinner and had her bottle...

She cracks me up that she does was is most convenient for her.

Following dinner we headed up to temple square, but just drove around it instead of getting out because it was just too cold. It's ok that we didn't see the lights very well this year. But we did see an interesting sign by the carriages: "Overworking and depriving horses of their natural habitat is not romantic." Something along those lines. People are crazy.

My Emergency Room Visit

**WARNING**: If you are squeamish about blood or lady problems...you probably don't want to read this post.

I had a really nice visit to the Emergency Room on December 1st. I felt foolish even going there, because I was not dying. I didn't even feel sick. But I was having some serious problems. I had been bleeding off and on for about 6 weeks. It was a nuisance for sure, but nothing I was super concerned about because I had gotten an IUD in 6 1/2 months before. From what I read, IUDs take 6 months to a year to even out the cycles and the flow. So I tried to just deal with it.
But...it started getting heavier. I bled through my pants 3 days in a row in just a few hours. I was starting to get concerned. So, I scheduled an appt at my doctor's office and saw the NP. She told me it may be the IUD, and that they would schedule me for an ultrasound the following Monday.
The major concern started when I changed my tampon at quarter to 6 and left my house to go to bunco. I had to stop at Smith's in Orem on the way, and when I got there I felt damp. It had been maybe 20 minutes. I drove to the house we were having bunco at and gave Taylor to my mom (Scott was working of course, isn't that the way it goes) and went into the restroom to try to figure out what was going on. I took out the soaked through tampon and something plopped into the toilet. It was a large clump of blood. At this point I was concerned that maybe I had somehow gotten pregnant and I was having a miscarriage. I called my mom to the restroom and asked her if she thought I should be concerned and we decided I should probably call my doctor the next day. So we left Taylor with some of the bunco ladies and went to my mom's house to get some clean clothes for me. By the time we got to my mom's house, I was feeling like I was dripping. My mom's house was only 6 blocks away. That was when I was REALLY concerned.
I called the on call doctor and when I didn't get a response very quickly, we just headed over to the instacare, where they proceeded to tell us that I needed to go to the emergency room. So that is how I ended up there. I called my hubby when we went to the instacare, and then called him again when we got to the emergency room. He made it there right as they were taking me back. They did an exam and took some blood and did an ultrasound. What they discovered is that my IUD was not in the correct place.
Apparently my uterus is severely tilted back to the point where it almost makes a U shape. The IUD either didn't get place all the way up to begin with or, it slid down and attached itself to the uterine lining, which was causing all of the bleeding. They cleaned me up quite a bit and ended up scheduling an appt with my doctor for the following day to get my IUD out and get a new form of birth control. They kept telling me they were glad I came in, but since I never felt sick or had a lot of pain, I felt really stupid being there. I guess it was better safe than sorry.
The following day I went to my doctor in the afternoon and got the implanon (birth control in the arm), and the procedure to numb my arm was painful, and it was sore for a several days, but so far it has been just fine. My doctor made sure to tell me that I am not a good candidate for an IUD. Really?