The end of a (very short) era.

So I have to put this blog to rest, at least temporarily. I thought I would be able to keep up with posting current pictures of Miss Alma Jay for friends and family to see but our life seems to always be spinning out of control!

Between Alma being a high needs baby, battling wicked eczema and having to try a wheat/dairy/soy/egg/peanut free diet I have little spare time on my hands. I do finally have a Facebook account so you can friend me there or I will try and get a Flickr account setup so I can at least have a place to just dump photos. If that happens, I'll let you know.

Plus, it turns out that I don't really like blogging. Huh.

But here's one for the road...

take THAT, stairmaster!

Yesterday I did four loads of laundry, and since I did this while wearing Alma in the carrier I was only able to carry one load down to the laundry room at a time. I was also only able to carry one load UP at a time. And with the amount of stairs one has to climb to go from our basement level laundry room to our third floor apartment, I figured out that I climbed 720 stairs yesterday, just doing laundry! No wonder my legs are akin to that of a supermodel.

Today we're moving on to diaper laundry. Fortunately this only takes one load. Whew.

Alma is officially two months old today! She went for her two month check up on Monday and passed with flying colors. She has gained three pounds since she was born! This puts her in the 75th percentile for height and the 15th for weight... what a little string bean.

She kind of freaked out all of Monday night in response to her immunizations so I decided to take a bath with her in order to calm her down. I mean, this kid loves baths. All was going well until she got so relaxed that she pooped all over me. I have never had to take a shower in order to recover from a bath until that incident. Gross baby.

No new pics. Sorry. But don't worry - she still looks pretty much the same as she did in the pictures from the last post. Except for her new mustache. Just kidding.

And I apologize for the proliferation of run-on sentences in this post. I type how I speak. Grammatically incorrect.

overalls and our neighborhood deer.

Right out side of our apartment building is a huge field that Boise State owns and is planning to build a big track and field complex in it. In the meantime, it is used as a practice field for the Bronco football team (yes boys, I can watch Kellen Moore from my balcony), a massive goose tarmac and grazing land for our neighborhood herd of deer. There is a family of six deer that have taken up residence at the MK Nature Center in town and they're the most urban deer that I know. On any given day you will literally see them walking through people's front yards or crossing a street downtown, but every morning they can be found in the field outside our apartment, grazing.

Here are five of the six of them hanging out this morning - two of them were babies last summer and we've gotten to watch them grow up!

Alma is grown out of the majority of her newborn clothes (and it's about time since she'll be two months old next week!) and while I was trying to figure which of her clothes fit her now, I realized that she (kind of) fits into these awesome overalls! Granted, they have to be rolled up but they're still pretty rad. You can't see it from the picture, but they have a tiny moose embroidered on the bib and it says "baby moose" below it. I love them.

Alma says, "Pardon my huge, mostly bald head. It's very hard to hold it up."

I realize that this picture is very fuzzy, but this is what she does every morning when she wakes up and we un-swaddle her. Raise 'em and praise 'em!

And lastly, I tried to upload a video but that apparently exceeds the Rachel-internet-savvy capacity. So instead you have to look at a picture of me cooking dinner and that chaos that ensues in our kitchen when that happens.

new pictures!

Gramma and Grampa Goochey came out to visit Alma last week and she received lots of cuddling and napping time with them. This also provided some much needed rest for her dear old mom. Speaking of rest, what the heck am I doing blogging this at 4am? I wish I knew. Woke up to feed this silly baby and I just couldn't fall back asleep. I am really going to regret this at about two this afternoon.

The weather is finally warming up here so we are getting to wear warm weather clothes! Alma is too small for any of her actual legwarmers to fit her so I cut the sleeves off of a football themed onesie that she has never worn. Go 80s baby!

Her Grampa Goochey couldn't pass up this dog while we were shopping at Target. It is unreasonably cute. Plus, you don't have to feed it, it can't shed and I've been told that it won't pee on the carpet. A miracle! We are trying to think of a good name for it... Wincoln? LiWanda?

She now loves bath time. As you can see, she barely fits in our kitchen sink, so unfortunately her head is all cocked to the side. It's hilarious to see how relaxed she gets once she's in the warm water. I always imagine that she's like "Aah, just like amniotic fluid. It's good to be back home."

My two favorites. Doing their favorite activity. And holy crap, can you believe that Alex shaved his beard? It makes him look fifteen years younger! Just kidding, then he would only be 11 and that would be illegal for us.

Hanging out in her crib. She likes to hang out in their occasionally during the day but she has made it quite clear that she does not want to sleep their yet. We tried it out the other night and she screamed for about an hour. Oh well, back to sleeping in her bouncy chair and/or our bed every night.

And just a couple of pics of the "nursery," ie: the southeast corner of our bedroom. Yay one bedroom apartments.

Also, a dumb thing that I did: left my wallet with my debit card, driver's license, credit card, LIBRARY CARD, etc in my mom's car and she drove back to Nampa with it - a half hour away. Not having a driver's license really hinders the effort to drive over to Nampa to pick up your driver's license. Of course, chances are I could drive there and not get pulled over, but I could just see it being my luck that the one time I decide to drive without it I get pulled over for something stupid like tailgating a cop (Right Jared? Right?). Dummy Rachel.

a recipe for postpartum depression

1 new mom + 1 screaming baby - adequate sleep for both mom and baby + a string of gloomy days + virtually being chained to one spot in your house because of jaundice therapy + rehoming your dogs = a perfect postpartum storm.

Alright, in reality I'm actually doing ok. We have just had a rough couple of weeks over here in the Goochey home. It started last week by finding out that Alma had some lingering jaundice that her pediatrician was concerned about. Treatment for the jaundice meant that Alma had to lay on a fluorescent blue fiber optic mat, wearing only her diaper, 24/7 until her blood tests said she was in the safe zone. Unfortunately, in order to facilitate this light mat, someone had to be holding Alma while she was wrapped up in blankets around the mat and since the cord for the contraption was only about 4' long, this meant that whoever was holding her was stuck in one place. All the time. While she cried.

PLUS, we kept having to bring her to the hospital to get blood tests done and of course she hated that. But at least she got some cool Snoopy bandaids!

The fiber optic mat made her look like one of those weird glow-worm toys from when I was a kid. This is our little glow-bug.

And this is one of the few times that we got her to sleep and were able to get her situated in her little chair so we could be temporarily hands free.

If that wasn't difficult enough, whammy #2: we decided that we needed to rehome our dogs. Never have I had to make such a difficult decision as this. I still feel like I failed as a dog owner and have this nagging bit of guilt that I never should have adopted them in the first place if we couldn't see it through for their whole lives. After Alma was born, it became very apparent that Wanda's separation anxiety and housetraining issues were only getting worse and because we have no yard and less time to walk them, they were getting restless and naughty. We wanted to do the best thing for our daughter and dogs and that meant placing the dogs in homes that could give them the attention that they deserved. We were lucky enough that our awesome friend Matt wanted to adopt Lincoln, because we think Matt is great and Lincoln is in love with him. It was easier to say goodbye to her last night when he picked her up because we knew that we would see her again and knew exactly what situation she was moving in to. As for Wanda, we weren't able to find a home for her and had to do the awful thing of surrendering her to the humane society this morning. When it was time to walk away from her and leave her there, Alex and I both started crying and it took everything inside of me to not run back inside and say that I had made a big mistake and beg to take her back.

The Lord really blessed us with those dogs. They were wacky and naughty and sweet and hilarious. As my depression has gotten more difficult over these past few years, my dogs were the best therapy and company for me. They put routine into my days, gave me somebody to talk to while I was at home alone and offered affection when I needed it the most. I'm still kind of in shock over being a dog-free home but I think it will be the best thing for Alma.

We spent our afternoon and evening taking down the kennel, vacuuming up dog hair, throwing away old tennis balls and stuffed animals. We just decided that the only way to deal with them leaving was to make as fresh of a start without them as we could.

But I really love them.

And now I'm sitting at my computer, crying about them again. Big changes are often such a struggle.

we both called alma "wanda".

It becomes surprisingly hard to update a blog when the majority of your day is taken by breastfeeding. I thought that I would be able to do more computer stuff while I was nursing (and I'm sure I'll be able to in the future) but for now I'm always afraid of jostling Alma too much. Plus, I'm trying to be good about just focusing on the baby. As Americans, we have such tendencies to ALWAYS be multi-tasking and while that can be a good and productive thing, I don't want it to interfere in the first few weeks of my daughter's life. But this is me attempting to blog...

And yes, as the title of this blog says, Alex and I have both inadvertently referred to Alma as "Wanda". Poor baby - she is much much cuter than our dog. Agreed?

Speaking of Wanda, we have made the difficult decision to rehome her. I have shed a lot of tears over that this week, but have gotten to the point where I think it's the best decision. Her separation anxiety has only worsened as Alma has arrived on the scene and it's really made our long (very long) and slow (very slow) housetraining progress move back a few steps. We love her so much, but now with a baby we just don't have the resources to work with her like she needs. Heck, I don't even know that we were very good at it before the baby came.

In happier news, Alma's non-shower open house that we held last Sunday was a total success! The folks at the district coffee house were kind enough to let us take over half of their shop for the day and Alma was a total champ and allowed herself to be passed from one person to another without any fuss.

Here she's all dressed up for her party, sitting with her favorite old old man, Grampa Ron.

And this is the first family portrait that does not have her covered in birth goo, Alex having extreme bed head and me wearing a sweaty sports bra and looking very bloated. Too bad, huh?

Alex had the awesome idea to make "it's a girl!" buttons with little cigars on them, so my Mom and I made about fifty and passed them out at her party. It was fun to see everyone sporting these little pink pins and they were awesome to make. If you ever get a chance to use a button maker, seize the opportunity!

Yes, I have tried to make her ride Lincoln. Lincoln was less than pleased with the arrangement, and while I think that Alma was slightly more agreeable, her huge and immensely heavy head made the whole ordeal difficult.

And now Alma says "goodnight!"

seven whole days!

Here we are: February 21. This means that Alex and I have survived our first week of parenting and Alma seems to be tolerating us fairly well. She got her first bath which she wasn't terribly wild about yet she didn't do too bad with it.

Proof that she survived:
At her 2 day check up we found out that she's a little jaundiced so she has been spending some serious time nursing and hanging out in the sun in order to beat that. The nice thing is that since she has olive-toned skin, instead of the jaundice making her look yellow, she just looks like she has a really nice tan. Way to go Alma! Here's my snoozy baby...

She had her first outing on Friday, and has really been out and about since then. On Friday my mom and I took her to the fabric store (of course that's the first place that my daughter would go to!) and got some awesome fabric to make her a travel changing pad. Since then she's been to Target (also an important first), the gas station (awesome, I know. She was quite a hit with all of the weird gas station patrons. But seriously, there is a gas station right across the street from our apartment and we wanted some fancy beverages. What else were we to do?), out for coffee with grandma and grandpa and today she went to her first chiropractic adjustment. I had no idea of what to expect of an infant adjustment but it was awesome. Helped get her feeling good after having to get squeezed out of the ol' birth canal. Alex is jealous because she went to the chiropractor after only being a week old whereas he's 26 and still hasn't gone. Lucky kid.

So here's a picture of her wearing her hilarious bear-suit in her carseat. She is so slumped over, it kills me!

All-in-all, I think we are very blessed with how well her birth went and how easy of a baby she has been so far. I know things won't always be rosy, but she sleeps and eats like a champ so I couldn't really ask for much more (well, I guess I could ask her to learn how to change her own diapers, but that seems like hoping for a bit much).

Now I have to see if I can rouse Alma and Daddy out of their favorite past-time - Alma sleeping on Dad's lap while he reads a book - in order to accompany me for frozen yogurt. Blue Cow, anyone?