Baby Babble

Those pearly whites

krishill — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 23:28:48 +0000

Today Ellie and I took Lyla for her first dental appointment.
I filled out some paperwork then we were called back.
The dentist started out with some questions about pacifier use and bottles and some other stuff I actually don’t remember because I was trying to take pictures. This was a FIRST! I can’t believe it, but, I became that parent.

In any case, my wonderful dentist wants us to try and wean Lyla off the pacifier (fine by me) and the bottle (also fine by me).
Now, I have tried to get Lyla to drink out of sippy cups. Seven different kinds of sippy cups in fact. Sigh. So, the dentist suggests giving the bottle only at bedtime and sippy cups at meals and snack times. That’s with milk. She can have a sippy cup with water whenever she wants. This all sounds good to me. She also suggested against giving Lyla juice. This is, again, fine by me. I don’t drink juice anymore. It’s too sweet. So, if I think it’s too sweet then it’s got too much sugar for my kiddo.
Then the dentist looked over Lyla’s teeth — she has about eight at this point — and did some things with a wipe that I apologize and feel horrible for not paying more attention to what she was doing. I do know that she got a fluoride treatment and can’t get her teeth brushed today.

We were also informed that Lyla needs to have her teeth brushed at night, as well.
I admit, my dental education was not good, so I really don’t know what is the right thing to do for Lyla. Thank goodness we have a great dentist. Anyway, I had no idea little miss eight teeth needed to be brushing at night, as well. You learn something new every day.
Ellie held Lyla while the dentist had Lyla’s head in her lap.
Lyla did not like being restrained. She cried and squirmed. But, we were informed no kid likes it and Lyla was quite mellow compared to other kids. OK. Well Lyla is pretty mellow so any grumpiness is a lot for her.
The whole thing was over in oh, 10 minutes, including the questions and information.
Here is Lyla trying to get a grip on what just happened.

After we were done, Ellie let Lyla walk around in the waiting room, I handed over some paperwork that I had filled out and signed a form I didn’t see on the clip board then we made another appointment for the kiddo for August.
Overall, I feel pretty good about it. I’m not sure how getting Lyla to drink from a sippy cup is going to go because my girl is stubborn. Ellie said it may take a few days, but, Lyla will take to it once she realizes she doesn’t have any other choice. Ellie thinks Lyla is the smartest kid on earth and who am I to ever disagree with her. Not that I’m biased or anything.
Next up is another doctor’s appointment for Lyla in a couple weeks. I am hoping she is up to 20 pounds so we can turn her car seat around to forward facing. I’ll keep you posted.

More?

krishill — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 00:09:03 +0000

People ask me often, almost daily in fact, if we’re planning on adding to our little family.
When we were in Portland, we visited Rob Kugler, a former professor of mine from Gonzaga who is now at Lewis and Clark College. Toward the end of our visit — he officiated our wedding and we hadn’t seen him since our wedding day so we had quite a bit to catch up on — asked us if we were thinking about having more kids, saying something about how it may be too soon to ask.
Oh, gosh, no. Ha!
I don’t remember when people started asking me if we want more kids but it really wasn’t long after Lyla was born. I’d say when she was about two months old.
Now, I tell people I decided while I was pregnant I would be willing and able to do pregnancy one more time, and I would love for our little girl to have a sibling.
Jason has taken a wait and see approach. I believe his exact words have been, “Let’s see how this one goes first.”
He has a younger brother, David, and they are six and a half years apart.
I have an older sister, Elizabeth, who is nearly 12 years older than me. We are half sisters.
My thinking has been that if we do have another one it would be good for Lyla to have a sibling closer in age than either of ours.
I have, believe it or not, actually researched what is the ideal amount of time between kids that is most beneficial for the children, their adjustment to one another, as well as for the family.
According to this article “a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that parents should wait 18 to 23 months after a full-term birth before conceiving again. The average age gap between siblings in America is about two and a half years – which means that the average parent has been following this advice.”
That’s about the spacing my friends with more than one kiddo have gone with and I think it makes sense. And like the article goes on to state, the study is talking more about health of the kids than anything else, but parents have other factors to consider when they are looking to expand their families.
For me, I would like to be done with pregnancy before I turn 35. I am 32 today. I will be 33 in September. Because I am already high risk due to my type 2 diabetes, it seems wise to not push it more by entering the “advanced maternal age” category, as well.
So, that means I have a fairly narrow window in which to get pregnant with a second child. I have promised Jason that we don’t have to make a decision until Lyla turns 2. I feel like that’s a reasonable point at which we can discuss it and go from there.
There are days where I look at my family room and think that Babies R Us exploded in it. Those are the times I think, “You know, Lyla is plenty.”
But there are other times I look at her sweet smile and ponder how she would do with a little brother or sister, what would it be like to have one more amazing kiddo to make my life that much brighter, that much more amazing.
I feel so lucky to be Lyla’s mom I’m not even sure I deserve to have another gift like her.
Still, I do think that’s something I want to do.
A long time ago, when Jason and I were first married, we had agreed than when we did have kids we would have two at the most. Surprisingly, I still feel like that was the right decision for us as a couple, and for our family.
Also, given the fact that another pregnancy would mean all of the trials and tribulations of high risk, I don’t think I could put my body through that again or my mental health. It was worth it for Lyla.
That’s the choice we’ve made and I am totally cool with it.
I am never offended when people ask if we plan to have more children though I think sometimes people worry if it’s an appropriate question to ask.
I promise, it would take so much more than that to offend me, so feel free to ask that or about anything else. If I’m not comfortable answering a question, I’ll tell you, but generally speaking there’s only two subject areas I won’t talk about and kids or families aren’t in there.
And don’t worry, if I do get pregnant again, I promise my dear readers you will all be among the first to know. After, of course, we tell our families and immediate friends. And that’s assuming I know I’m even pregnant before the first trimester ends. Heh.
I’ll keep you posted. Promise.

Lyla travels well

krishill — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 01:14:32 +0000

We already knew Lyla did well on road trips thanks to the drive we took to Portland over Labor Day weekend.
When I found out I’d be going to Las Vegas Jan. 6-9 for the Consumer Electronics Show (hi, my name is Kris, I’m a technoholic) to do some blogging for a cell phone website I’ve been involved with for more than seven years, I figured I might as well take Jason and Lyla along with me, after all we did live there for two and a half years while Jason finished his business degree at UNLV.
We still have friends there, including Mike and Emmily, who have an eight month old cutie named Kate. Emmily and I used to work for competing weekly papers and endured marathon city council and planning commission sessions at the same table at Henderson City Hall. Now that we both have kiddos who are just six months apart, we have had a whole different area of life to bond over, which is pretty awesome. We got to meet Kate in Portland (our friends were up there at the same time we were) so Emmily was a great resource in planning our trip to Vegas since she had flown with a little one younger than Lyla.
I took her advice and bought tickets on Southwest Airlines. It was spot on. We had a good experience both ways.
But, I am a little nuts. For financial reasons, I chose to fly out at 6 a.m. for our outbound trip to Vegas. For Lyla, this worked out fine, she slept most of the plane ride there. We didn’t buy her a ticket because it would’ve cost a whole lot more (I set this all up last minute) for her to have a seat than for her to be in my lap, which was free. And since she slept all but half an hour of the plane ride it worked out fine for her to not have her own seat.
We did bring our own car seat on the recommendation of my good friend Bambee, who has traveled extensively with her kiddo, McKailen. It was good advice because though we could have rented a seat from the company we rented a car from, Bambee pointed out that we would have no idea of the history of the seat, where it had been or what kind of shape it was in. Bambee knows car seat safety inside and out so I trust her expert opinion on the topic.
The first night Lyla struggled a bit with sleeping in a strange place. We stayed with an old friend of Jason’s, a woman named Julie whom he has known for 15 years, going back to when he started college at Montana State University in Bozeman, Mont. Julie had a pack and play, which was handy, and a nice sized guest room.
Lyla slept fine the rest of the trip but that first night she had a hard time settling down. I’m not sure what it was about it but I can only guess it was due to a long day traveling, a new place, and so on.
I was super nervous about this whole trip with Lyla. I didn’t know how she’d handle the plane, how she’d handle being somewhere else, how she’d do being around completely other new people, but she was a rock star.
While we were in Vegas Lyla and I had an awesome play date with Emmily and Kate. Yes, I flew 1,600 miles to Sin City on vacation to attend a convention and scheduled a play date for the time we were there. That’s how you know you’re a parent.
Lyla and Kate played really well together. Thanks to Emmily for the photos.

The other cool thing about the play date, aside from giving me a break from the insanity of CES (more than 100,000 attend the show), was it allowed Jason to have some grown up time with Julie. They went bowling. He got a chance to hang out and be an adult. It’s good to have that balance as a newish parent.
One thing I learned not to do is rent a small sedan when you have a car seat. A Chevy Cobalt just isn’t big enough! Next time I’ll rent an SUV. It made me appreciate our Jeep that much more — as did driving in the snow the night we got back after going to a basketball game at Kentlake — as a family car. It’s just so roomy.
On the other hand, I also realized that from here on out, I’m going to rent cars from Enterprise. I’ve had nothing but good experiences with them. That’s a free plug, by the way, I was not compensated in any way for that endorsement.
The plane ride back was great, too, Lyla slept most of the way and as we came into SeaTac she looked out the window enthralled with the scene unfolding below. I really could not have asked for a better experience.
In any case, I think our next family vacation that includes travel will be a road trip to Yellowstone National Park, most likely in September. I like to take time off the week of my birthday. That should be fun. I’ve never been to Yellowstone so I’m looking forward to it.
All my friends who told me on Facebook months ago that traveling with your little ones early on helps them get used to it and makes it easier as they get older were absolutely right. It’s good to know Lyla handles it so well because I want to travel with her as much as possible as it provides invaluable life experiences that will broaden her world view and hopefully help her become a well-rounded person.
Yeah, everything’s a teachable moment, even walking through the Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.

Hurricane Lyla

krishill — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 21:49:31 +0000

As Lyla approached her first birthday, she began experimenting with a little skill we all call walking.
Within a month, she had definitely moved into the ‘toddler’ category, as she was toddling all around the house choosing to walk more often than not.
On Christmas Day she was walking all over my in-law’s house. One of her favorite activities was to remove all the fake votive candles from the candelabra on the coffee table in their living room, then remove the votive jars, then put the candles back on the candelabra. Or on the table. Or the floor.
During the holiday celebration, Lyla sat with Jason’s mom, Gale while we opened gifts. She kind of got the idea of unwrapping but she wasn’t totally sure. By next year she’ll probably unwrap just like I do… as if her hair is on fire and inside the paper is a jug of water.
And that’s probably about the longest she’s stayed in one place since.
We’ve baby proofed our family room and living room, but, not the entire house because we gated the family room. Lyla, however, doesn’t always want to in the gated community so she’ll grab my fingers and get very annoyed if I don’t walk with her out of the family room to the freedom of the rest of our house.
I was excited for her to start walking. I envisioned it happening in one fell swoop. One day she would just stand up and walk across the room.
Instead, it happened over the course of a month, as she took three steps, then five steps and then would go from the living room to our bedroom in short order.
Now that she’s walking Lyla is more like a tornado than a toddler.
In fact, while we were in Las Vegas at the beginning of January, our friend Julie started calling our darling daughter “Hurricane Lyla” because she would do laps around the house, grab anything within reach (like business cards, ID badges, coasters, remotes, just to name a few) and either put it in her mouth, throw it or scatter it to the four corners of the Earth.
And remember when I was pregnant with her? I would go to the OB for the non-stress tests and little missy was not one to cooperate?
Well, she can be stubborn and uncooperative now with her new found powers of walking. A few weeks ago I decided to forgo the stroller while shopping in Old Navy to get a few more items to wear while in Vegas.
Oh, that was a mistake. If I had Jason with me, it would have been fine, but trying to shop and allow Lyla to have a little freedom as a burgeoning walker at the same time without help was not wise. Not wise at all. For a few moments she would hold on to my finger with her surprisingly strong little death grip but then when she had gathered up enough confidence she would take off on her own.
I was so not ready for this early claim of independence. Thankfully she did not protest if I picked her up and carried her around the store.
So, even though she’s a capable and confident walker, my little toddler will be in a stroller or store cart or our Kelty backpack carrier more often than not.
It’s just crazy to see her getting bigger, becoming more independent, using her creativity and acting on her curiosity. It wasn’t that long ago she started crawling. It wasn’t that long ago she started sitting up on her own, eating solid foods, smiling, laughing.
It wasn’t that freaking long ago that I was pregnant with her!
Oh. No. It’s been 14 months since she was born. It’s hard to believe.
And now she’s my little hurricane. But, in truth, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
If you want to see videos of Lyla’s early attempts at walking, go here.
I’ll try and get some newer videos up soon.

I need a personal trainer

krishill — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 22:47:52 +0000

Or something.
I need to start exercising again. I was doing pretty well before the pregnancy and up to the third trimester. But, eating right and exercising has gotten increasingly harder.
In all honesty, I have not really made much of an effort to exercise at all. I have investigated my options (Stroller Strides, gyms, local personal trainers) but found that trying to squeeze something into my schedule is tough or more money than I can justify spending.
But, I recently went back to my endocrinologist and told her about the struggle I’ve had with doing things right in the health department. I knew my blood sugar levels haven’t been as good as they were the first six months after Lyla was born. I was right. Throw in the holidays and a recent vacation to Las Vegas (which I’ll tackle in another post, traveling on a plane with the baby for the first time) and I am just glad I didn’t gain more than a few pounds since last May.
So, now that I’ve had my wake up call, I have to figure out what to do.
First, I need to find something that fits in my schedule and preferably something I can do with Lyla.
My doctor suggested putting Lyla in her stroller and walking after work. I think that’s what I’ll have to do to start. My awesome friend, Emmily, who was running and doing all kinds of amazing fitness related things before her daughter, Kate, was born last May, has started the Couch to 5K program again recently.
I’ve looked it over and maybe that’s what I should do.
I would LOVE to be part of the local Stroller Strides class Kristy Fassio runs as an instructor and franchise owner, but, for now it’s too late in the morning. I need to be exercising between 7 and 8:30 a.m. or after 6 p.m. Morning would be better for me. By the time I get home from work I don’t have the energy.
Another option I am looking at is using my Wii Fit balance board and software to exercise. I was doing that and walking leading up to getting pregnant. Between those I lost a significant amount of weight.
Weight loss will help with blood sugar management which prolongs my life and puts off those nasty complications of diabetes.
I just need to develop a strategy of when to exercise, what activity will I be doing, then do it. It would be nice if Jason, my wonderful husband, could exercise with me but his schedule as a retail manager is even more insane than mine.
If anyone wants to give me a treadmill or stationary bike, though, that would be handy.
I’m not one for new year’s resolutions, so, though I have known for a while I would have to tackle this issue I won’t set myself up for failure by setting unrealistic goals. So, I’m going to get started one way or another. I think. Soon. Yes.

Finding mom community

krishill — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 22:39:20 +0000

During this past summer I was at the Maple Valley Farmers Market on a lovely Saturday morning with Lyla. I believe it was Kids Day in July. There were booths for groups like Kinderswimmer and a local stay at home mom’s group, among others, but those were definitely not catered toward working moms.
And there’s nothing wrong with that at all.
I did feel like I needed to find some kind of group that had play dates and programs for working moms.
To Google search I went!
And I found the Maple Valley-Covington Area Moms on Meetup.com which I immediately applied for approval so I could get involved.
A couple of the mom organizers on the site knew of me because of my columns in the paper during my pregnancy. I even ran into Amy Shadd while working on a story about a martial arts instructor and the programs he offers through the city of Maple Valley. Her son was in the class.
Turns out the MVCA Moms had a booth at Kids Day and I just didn’t see them. Figures.
So, I was approved and perused the calendar. There are two events I try to get to regularly each month: coffee and conversation at Cutter’s Point by Home Depot in Covington and a recipe swap play date hosted by a mom in Black Diamond.
I went to my first play date/meet up in late August. It was great to just meet moms with kids of all ages and talk about mom stuff with a group. There’s something about talking with other women, whether one-on-one or in smaller groups, about pregnancy, the challenges of parenting and the wonder of having kids.
I love the recipe swap play date because Lyla gets to play with other kids and we get to try new food. Since she is down to try anything once it’s a great way to encourage her adventurousness while also allowing her the opportunity to work on her social skills with other children.
I have mom friends whom I talk to regularly on Facebook, via e-mail and text messages, but the meetup group has been nice because it makes it easy for me to find activities for Lyla and I to go to together all in one place. And these moms are local, too, whereas my mom friends on Facebook are scattered all over the region and even the country.
Sometimes you just need to get together in person with other women and their youngsters and have fun.
They also have dad’s night out, mom’s night out or in, and other activities that are kid-free as well as stuff for the whole family.
I just have so much appreciation for this group and what it has added to our life.
Are there are other opportunities out there for activities with Lyla on weekends or weeknight evenings that I’m missing out on in the area? Let me know!

cake and turkey

krishill — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 00:26:42 +0000

It is mind boggling to me that Lyla is a year old now. I was keenly aware of the day’s approach from the time she hit six months of age… back in May.
We scheduled her 12 month well child check on her birthday because it happened to fall on a Thursday. Because of my work schedule, Thursday is the best day of the week for doctor’s appointments, but a friend of mine reminded me that it would be wise not to schedule such appointments on her birthday in the future because then she’ll associate it with getting shots. Good point, Stephanie.
I was excited, like always, to find out just how much she’d grown since her last appointment as well as to find out what new things we could introduce to her diet and make sure she was progressing nicely.
Lyla was 17 pounds, 15 ounces on her birthday, having put on a little more than two pounds since her nine month well child check. She was 28 1/2 inches long, meaning we really ought to get her out of the infant car seat and into the larger convertible car seat, since the Graco SnugRide is officially too small when a baby is 29 inches tall.
She is in the 7th percentile for weight and the 32nd for height.
Her small stature does not prevent her from being a fearless adventurer, however, which along with giggles of joy when discovering new things, climbing cat towers or walking farther and farther also brings quite a few bonks on the head. But, that’s another blog post for another time.
Lyla is healthy, progressing nicely and the doctor told us again that everything is going well and we’re doing a good job. Yay, parenting gold star! After he left, a nurse came in and gave Lyla four shots, including a flu vaccine. She was not a fan and it took a little bit longer to calm her down but this time it was a stuffed animal, a bunny, that did the trick. We’ve moved into that phase, it seems, where stuffed animals are comfort items. The bunny, by the way, is already getting dragged about the house by its ear or leg.
We then loaded up the Jeep (oh, I forgot to mention, we finally bought a “family car” in August, a Jeep Grand Cherokee, makes getting around much easier) and headed to Bellevue to visit our friend Stephanie and purchase a Kelty frame backpack carrier. There are places where the backpack carrier is more convenient than a stroller.
Next up was a trip to the waterfront. We had lunch at Elliot’s Oyster House and the nice server brought us a creme brulee for Lyla’s birthday dessert. Very sweet. We gave her some, too, and given her completely love of yogurt (I’m going to start calling her Michael Weston since, like the character from the USA show “Burn Notice,” she could likely live on yogurt alone) it is not surprising she likes the sweet custard. We don’t often give her sweets but it was her birthday. Why not?
So, with Lyla in the backpack, the three of us walked to the Seattle Aquarium. We were sent passes after an employee of the aquarium read my Father’s Day column and thanked me for the mention of our visit back in June. I never did properly thank her … but we used the passes to take Lyla back because she really enjoys the experience. I hope as she gets older we can encourage her adventurous nature with future trips to the aquarium because I think the tide pools with all the cool sea creatures you can gently touch would be right up her alley.
And that was how we spent her birthday. It was nice that Jason and I could take the day to spend with our daughter.
The following Saturday we celebrated with our immediate family and friends with dinner, gifts and cake at Jason’s parents’ house. My friend Libby had signed up to make cupcakes and a smash cake, but, got snowed in up in Bellingham so we went with plan B. I got a smash cake at CJ’s Bakery in Black Diamond (it was called ‘Pretty in Pink’… oh, the irony) then we picked up an assortment of cupcakes at New York Cupcakes in Crossroads, my former stomping grounds, and we all had fun trying the different flavors. I’m sure Libby’s cupcakes would have been at least as awesome but sometimes Mother Nature wins.
Here is Lyla before she made a mess:

What pleased me most about Lyla’s birthday was she got a whole bunch of books. She loves books. Jason’s grandmother began reading to her immediately upon taking over childcare for us while we’re at work. From seven weeks old, Lyla has been read to on a daily basis, and that has truly fostered a love of books that I hope we can continue to cultivate. As a writer and bookworm, it makes me happy to see her enjoy books so much, so it can only get better as she gets older.
A week later, to the day in fact, was Thanksgiving. We loaded up Lyla, the two beagles, food, books, supplies, then picked up Ellie on the way up to my brother-in-law’s house in Gold Bar. Jason’s parents brought a baby gate, so we blocked off the stairs, then closed the doors on the upper level of Dave and Mel’s house. Lyla crawled around, cruised on the furniture, walked all over while grasping fingers of family members and generally enjoyed exploring.
At 4 p.m. she finally passed out for a nap, just in time for dinner to be served, so we all ate then she woke up an hour later and we offered her all the goodies from the table. She wasn’t too keen on turkey but she liked the dressing my husband made and adored the yams my mother-in-law made. That’s my favorite dish, too, so my girl has good taste.
Last year, Lyla was barely a week old and slept through the entire holiday, so it was fun to see her take it all in this year.
And now with Christmas just two weeks away and Lyla on the verge of walking full-time, well, things are just going to get more interesting.
I’ll tell you about the professional first birthday photos we had done in a day or two to round out the information on the birthday activities because I should have those pictures tomorrow at the latest.

Almost the big day

krishill — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 00:30:57 +0000

Tomorrow is Lyla’s first birthday. I have been wondering to myself where this past year went.
I remember so clearly the early morning drive to Valley Medical Center, parking, walking nervously to the Birth Center under damp, overcast skies, excited and scared all at the same time.
On Nov. 17, I was induced, and I remember the first nurse we met told me it was going to be at least 24 hours before our baby would be born.
Family members were coming and going, phone calls were being made to provide updates, the phrase “No baby yet” was uttered often.
When Lyla arrived it was one of the happiest moments of my life. I even cried.
This first year with her has been amazing.
Before she was even born, I knew she would be stubborn, but I’ve discovered she’s also persistent and determined. She will try and try and try until she works something out, gets where she wants to go or gets what she wants.
Lyla is funny. She likes to make me laugh. She is goofy. She smiles so much. And her laugh is infectious.
My baby girl is adventurous. I have a sneaking suspicion she will like roller coasters and fast cars. It would not surprise me if she wanted to go skydiving someday.
She’s curious about everything. And Lyla enjoys people watching. If she’s in the kitchen, she’s opening the cabinets, pulling out all the items and crawling into a cabinet. When we’re out at a restaurant, she is constantly twisting and turning in the high chair as people walk by, wanting to try whatever I’m eating, drumming her hands on the table or playing with a menu, a utensil, a straw or whatever she can get her hands on. We play a lot of peek-a-boo with restaurant napkins.
She enjoys it when we read to her.
And she loves music. Lyla smiles so big and bops along when she hears music. She particularly likes it when I sing to her which I do often.
Her current goal is to walk on her own and so Lyla will grab your fingers with her tiny death grip so you will walk around the house with her. She needs to practice, of course, and she knows it.
Everywhere we go people fawn over her and think she’s much younger than she is because Lyla is still little. We take her in for her one year well child check tomorrow and I’m curious to see if she’s hit 20 pounds yet. I think she’s finally tall enough to graduate from the infant car seat but if she’s not 20 pounds we’ll have to keep her rear facing for a while longer.
But, she’s so cute people love her. And Lyla is so laid back, she seems well behaved, but she just rolls with the punches.
For example, Jason, Lyla and I went to dinner on Saturday at Mizu in Covington. I love that place. Mmm. Anyway, we had Lyla in this cute little pink wintery knit hat with a puff ball on the top, and she was just charming the heck out of the folks sitting at the table with us. There was a couple, grandparents I think, with three of their older grandchildren at our table. The couple was visiting from California. After we finished our meal, the waitress brought Jason his check card back and said the gentleman who was visiting from out of town had already paid for our dinner. We were floored. That is how cute and awesome Lyla is… nobody would have ever done that if it were just the two of us.
Every day I look at her and I just shake my head at how lucky I am to be her mommy. There are days I can’t believe that beautiful little girl is mine.
She is and I couldn’t be more thankful. I hope to give her all the things I didn’t have growing up, to encourage her to be strong, independent and hard working, to cultivate her curiosity and intellect, to nurture her sense of adventure and her humor so that someday she can make a difference in the world.
On the eve of her first birthday, I look forward to the next year, all the new things I will learn about my daughter and the continued joy she will bring to my life.
Happy birthday baby girl! I love you Lyla!

On the day she was born:

Now:

Made for me

krishill — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 19:23:13 +0000

Last summer while I was wandering around at the Maple Valley Farmers Market one Saturday morning I came across Jennifer Orchard’s booth. She had all these great items she could personalize for baby and kiddos. As an expectant mom, I loved all the different items she had, but I wanted to wait until Lyla was born before I got anything like that. I guess I’m a little superstitious.
So, this summer, one of the first things I did when the Farmers Market opened for its second season was to find Jennifer. One thing I really wanted her to do was a personalized piggy bank. I had spied those last summer and it never left my mind.
I asked Jennifer to do this for me and the next Saturday it was ready.
Side one:

Side two:

And the front:

After a while, I saw that she had bracelets, so for my mother-in-law’s birthday I had her make one for Lyla and one for Gale that said “Grandma” on it. I didn’t snap a pic of the one for Gale but here is Lyla’s.

While we talked over the details for the bracelets via Facebook, I mentioned I wanted a bracelet like that for myself, but I couldn’t order it myself. I mentioned to Jennifer that I had a birthday coming up, so, she contacted my husband on Facebook and set it all up. I was none the wiser until shortly before I got the bracelet. What impressed me the most was that she delivered it to our house just a week after giving birth to her third child, a sweet little girl named Kali, but she also remembered the details I had mentioned wanting on the bracelet.

And here it is… I haven’t taken it off yet.

She also personalized a clock for Lyla’s room over the summer. Keep in mind she did all but the bracelet for me WHILE pregnant. Amazing to me. I love this clock. I think the tick-tock white noise helps Lyla sleep better.

Jennifer, who is an accountant by trade as well as a mom of three cute kiddos, tells me she got into this while she was pregnant with her daughter four years ago.
“I went to a baby boutique and they had these adorable baby bracelets selling for $65 and up,” she said in a Facebook message. “Well they are exactly the same as the ones I make now and I had to have one so I bought it and realized that there are a ton of moms out there that would love to have this unique gift but can’t afford to pay that kind of money. So I bought materials, made up a bunch and opened my Etsy page selling them for half the price.”
Then she started looking for other ideas to add to her Etsy store so she began looking up wholesale companies.
“I came across blank piggy banks and thought ‘Hey I could paint them!,’” she said. “So, I added that to my website and so far my piggy banks are my top sellers but take me the longest to make! Since then I have just kept my eyes and mind open and added things here and there to my inventory.”
Click here if you want to check out what she has as she won’t be at the Farmers Market for the rest of the season now that she’s got her new kiddo to take care of.
I just can’t begin to tell you how much I love these great personalized items Jennifer has made for me this summer. These are great practical items that will later become keepsakes for our daughter. This is one of the things that really makes being a new mom fun.

mobility

krishill — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 21:53:16 +0000

On Aug. 20, I came home from work and in the nine or so hours I was gone, she had started to crawl.
Since she was born people have been cruelly stating things like, “I can’t wait until she’s crawling.”
Even before she could crawl I didn’t want that. I have friends with kids. I know what happens once the freedom of movement occurs. I was enjoying that period where Lyla could sit up and play on the floor or roll around a bit but I knew I could put her down without worrying about her getting into much trouble.
Now, nope, I have to watch her every movement.
Here is a video of her in the early phase of crawling, before she got really good at it, before she could move quickly and before she started pulling herself up with ease.

After two weeks, Lyla was crawling like a pro, but she hadn’t quite mastered pulling herself up yet. Jason and his dad, Art, did some baby proofing around the house, bumpers on corners, covered up electrical outlets, etc.
So, we took the week of Labor Day off, and on Saturday, Sept. 4, we drove down for a few days in Portland. We had just purchased a 2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo after nine months of cramming into my Ford Mustang. It was so nice to take a road trip in something comfortable. Plus, it was fun to go on our first little family trip.
We stayed at a Days Inn hotel and we got a great rate thanks to my sister-in-law, Melanie, who works for Wyndham. It wasn’t a very big room. In fact, I told Jason this is what it would be like to live in a tiny studio apartment somewhere.
Since it wasn’t a very big room we let Lyla crawl around on the floor. One of the side effects of this new found mobility is that she doesn’t want to be held anymore unless she’s sleepy. It’s weird. You get used to hold your kiddo all the time and she seems to like it then all of a sudden she wants nothing to do with it. I wasn’t particularly prepared for so much independence at nine months old.
By the time we left Portland on Tuesday, Sept. 7, Lyla had totally mastered pulling herself up. She could grab onto the bed, a chair, my knee, anything she could get a grip on.
Here’s a picture of her from last week after she had pulled herself up on a Rubbermaid storage bin.

And just in the past couple of days Lyla has started to “cruise” along the furniture in the family room. In other words, she is using whatever she has pulled herself up on to hold herself up while she takes steps.
I know we are now on our way to walking.
Yeah, another thing people have said to me in the past is, ‘I really can’t wait until she’s walking.’
Note that these are ALWAYS people who are related to me somehow but don’t actually live with me.
When she starts walking I can bet that the desire to get out with Jason and have grown up time away from her will increase. And then all the people who couldn’t wait for Lyla to crawl or walk are first on the list of people I’ll be calling in search of a baby sitter.
The time is moving by too quickly. Lyla will be 10 months old on Saturday. Before we know it she’ll be walking, she’ll be a year old, she’ll be getting her driver’s license, getting married, having her own kids…
EEK!

And here’s one more cute photo from our trip to Oregon … this is Lyla meeting Kate, who born May 23 to our friends Emmily and Mike. On a side note, Kate shares a birthday with my best friend Mike Wilson, someone I’ve known since I was 11 years old. I’ll never forget Kate’s birthday.

No needles… this time

krishill — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 20:32:44 +0000

Since our family doctor is basically taking the next three weeks off we got Lyla in for her nine month well child check up today.
It was one of those moments where I can really see how she’s changed since the last visit.
Now she’s sitting up on her own, wants to get into things and is much more squirmy. Last time she was totally cooperative — remember she even opened up her mouth when the doctor came at her with a tongue depressor — but this time she was not as willing and much more curious about everything in the room.
And, of course, there’s the fact she’s bigger. At her last visit she was 25 inches tall and 13 pounds, 10 ounces. This time at nearly nine months old she is 15 pounds, 13 ounces and 26 1/2 inches tall. She’s been eating solids since her last appointment, starting with breakfast and dinner (oatmeal then veggies and fruit) now to three times a day (oatmeal and fruit, yogurt and fruit, then veggies and fruit) in addition to plenty of formula. So, I was kind of expecting a bit more growth but she’s still around the 10th percentile for weight.
Still, I’m not too stressed that she’s remained small. Something that has been a concern since I found out I was pregnant was Lyla’s size. You want to make sure, as a diabetic (especially if you’re overweight as I am) not to let the baby get too big, and the way of doing that is a strictly controlled diet while pregnant.
There’s two reasons for this:
• Big babies are harder to deliver, especially for first time moms
• Big babies are more likely to have weight issues later on in life (take me as an example, I was almost 10 pounds and have had weight issues for much of my life)
So, the fact that Lyla remains small is good. I can only hope that it points to a long term outcome of healthy weight.
Once we got Lyla weighed and measured, our family doc gave her a thorough exam and asked us about milestones such as rolling over, grasping things, sitting up unsupported, food and so on. He checked her sight, her hearing, her hear beat, pulse, belly and so on. While he was giving her the once over she was quite adamant that she didn’t want her ears to be looked at as she kept squirming away.
If she could talk I am sure she would have said, “Doctor, please, don’t touch my ears. No, seriously. Don’t. Um, no thank you, my ears are fine.”
While on the exam table she squirmed, grabbed for anything the doctor was holding and even whined a bit.
Our doc said everything looked good and we’re doing a good job. Yay!
Best part for all involved was the fact there were no routine vaccinations this time around.
Lucky girl, we’re taking her back on her first birthday in November for her next well child check.
Hey, Lyla, happy birthday, have some shots!
Good thing she won’t remember any of this but she can always look back at the blog if she wants to know.

Uh oh

krishill — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 23:48:55 +0000

Last night I was looking at the blog and I realized I hadn’t posted in nearly a month. Uh oh.
My bad.
During the past five or so years July has become one of the busiest months of the year for me. There’s a ton of stuff going on in the area that I write about such as Covington Days and then there are a number of other events that are on the calendar.
Every July the National Hot Rod Association brings its road show to Pacific Raceways. Since 2004 I’ve written about and attended this event. This year I went all out and wrote three stories instead of one. I went and shot photos during Friday qualifying then on Saturday, July 10, Jason, Lyla and I went to the race together. It was a great day, warm, fun and also a bit stressful.
The next day I had hoped to head back with Lyla while Jason was working but something came up and I had to deal with something in Bellevue instead.
And let’s not forget the previous weekend was the Fourth of July.
The next weekend was Covington Days, though I didn’t get a chance to get to it, then there were a ton of other things I was taking care of on weekends after that including regular errands as well as getting ready for my friend Melissa’s wedding and celebrating my mother-in-law and brother-in-law’s birthday (July 15 and July 30, respectively).
Melissa got married to Daniel, who is a Staff Sergeant in the Marine Corps and SNCO at the recruiting station in Covington, on July 31. It was a beautiful day for a wedding. Lyla looked adorable in her little pink dress and she was a hit during the reception.

In the middle of all that I was waiting for my Nikon D80 to be repaired. I shot Lyla’s eight month photos on July 18 and the next day when I was at the groundbreaking for the Witte Road/Southeast 248th street improvement project in Maple Valley my camera quit on me. The shutter mechanism shorted out, it seems, but at least I got Lyla’s eight month photos. I need to run out to Photo-tronics in Seattle tomorrow to pick it up.

But, here’s my cutie at eight months old.

So, I survived July, though I ended up skipping out on the Scottish Highland Games and Clan Gathering. I was going to go on Aug. 1 but I didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to write about Darren Motamedy and the only opportunity to interview him was that morning — which is when I had planned to go to the Scottish Highland Games. Ah, well. It was worth it. And there’s always next year. I wanted to take Lyla to see the Wicked Tinkers, a pipe and drum band that performs there every year. I suspect she’ll enjoy it more in 2011 when she’s a bit older. Or, she’ll hate it.
Then last weekend we celebrated those July birthdays on Saturday. It was nice to spend time with my husband’s whole immediate family. On Sunday the family theme continued when I drove back to Bellevue to take my mom out to lunch. I try to get together with her every two weeks so she can visit with Lyla. Our baby girl has such devoted grandmothers.
This weekend I am going to try and take a breather because tomorrow is going to be quite busy. Lyla’s nine month well child check is scheduled for tomorrow morning — it’s a week early because our family doc will be on vacation the next two weeks, but, that’s fine — then I have a couple of meetings tomorrow afternoon for work.
Because Thursday is going to be pretty busy I will need to spend Friday making sure everything is together for work. And I may head out to the Division 6 NHRA Lucas Oil Series Race at Pacific Raceways (more drag racing, I can’t resist, plus I want to meet up with some of the racers I interviewed in July for the big national event I mentioned earlier) that afternoon before I go home.
Saturday I am hoping to just relax. Then again, I said that about this past Sunday and I ended up leaving the house about 90 minutes after I got up, then spent five and a half hours out of the house with my mom then running errands. Apparently I do not have an “off” button.
Well, I will be heading to the Maple Valley Farmers Market Saturday morning to visit Jennifer Orchard, who I will write a post about later this week. She makes some awesome baby items and she lives in the area. I’ve got her working on a personalized clock for Lyla’s room.
But, after that, I’m going to relax. Yeah. We’ll see if that actually happens.
I better do it now while I can, I’ve got mom meet ups through MVCA Moms and my friend, Amanda, who is throwing a first birthday play date for her daughter, Bella in a couple weeks.
Before you know it my birthday will be here and that happens to be the day after school starts. With that brings high school sports which means I’ll be out shooting and covering those events plus city governments ramp up what they’ve got going in the fall, too.
When people ask me, ‘How are you Kris?’ I always say, without fail, ‘Busy.’
And that is just another hallmark of being a working mom. But, I like being busy, it keeps me out of trouble. And that’s good because Lyla is going to be crawling soon and I’m going to be too busy trying to keep her out of trouble to get into trouble on my own.

Explosives, teeth and more

krishill — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 22:32:28 +0000

Not surprisingly, the past two weeks with Lyla have been eventful and busy.
On Monday, June 28, she cut her first tooth. The whole weekend before she was fussier than usual, crying in spurts of two hours or so at a time on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. She’s not really one to cry for extended periods of time. So, we were a bit puzzled by this.
I went to work that Monday morning having not had much time with Lyla so, when I got home, imagine my surprise when Ellie said, “Your daughter has cut her first tooth!”
We’ve been waiting for this milestone for months. I would guess she had been teething for about a month leading up to the tooth finally cutting through the gum.
Once I got settled in after getting home, I scooped Lyla up, cuddled her and tried to get a look at her first tooth. She wouldn’t let me. Figures. So, I ran my finger over her bottom gum and there it was, a pointy baby tooth sticking up on the lower left side.
It was soooooo cool. It reminded me a bit of when I lost my baby teeth as a kid and my adult teeth started coming in.
And the upside was that the fussiness was gone. Woot!
Just a few days later was Independence Day, Lyla’s first Fourth of July.
In Maple Valley, where we’ve lived for a little more than six years now, lighting off your own fireworks is legal. The first two years we lived here we didn’t light off our own at home but eventually we decided to do like our neighbors and set off fireworks in front of our house.
From my home we can also see to the southwest the city of Black Diamond’s show at Lake Sawyer right over the rooftops in front of us and behind us to the north we can the city of Maple Valley’s fireworks display at Lake Wilderness.
By the time those start, though, things have been booming in Maple Valley since fireworks went on sale on June 28. We only light fireworks off on the Fourth of July, safe and sane fireworks, of course. We like to buy Black Cat products.
I really had no idea how Lyla would handle it because for those of you who don’t live in Maple Valley, let me explain to you what it sounds like on the Fourth of July…
it is as close to a war zone kind of atmosphere I have experienced. I know a couple of Iraq War veterans who live in the area who prefer not to be here on the Fourth because it just brings back unpleasant memories.
And if you don’t believe me, I have videos I shot.

As you can see, Lyla wasn’t fazed by the fireworks at all, in fact she fell asleep around 9:30 p.m. She woke up when I took her out of her stroller after we were all done around 11 p.m. but she was out again about a half an hour later and slept until 10 a.m. the next day. Which is crazy. She never sleeps that late!

This past weekend was pretty eventful as well. We took Lyla to the 23rd Annual NHRA Northwest Nationals at Pacific Raceways. It’s probably the biggest event at Pacific Raceways each year and tens of thousands of spectators attend the race. It can be loud, especially with the nitromethane-fueled funny cars and top fuel dragsters which run at 300 MPH and generate 7,000 to 8,000 horsepower. My friend Bambee lent us a child size headset to protect Lyla’s ears.
We slathered her with 100 SPF sunscreen and sat in the stands for about an hour and a half. She did pretty well but eventually due to the fact she couldn’t really get a good nap (I knew we should have brought the stroller!) and couldn’t hear much due to the headset she finally had enough. Once we got a little bit of distance between us and the drag strip, we took the headset off, just as a pair of nitro funny cars did their burn outs then made the run down the strip.
My mini adrenaline junkie smiled, giggled, kicked her legs and waved her arms in a display of what I can only describe as joy. That’s her happy dance. Heh. It will be interesting to take her to the track next year when the NHRA comes to town and she’s almost 18 months old. By then she’ll surely be walking.
In fact, I think it may be sooner than later.
Lyla hasn’t really expressed much interest in getting around on her tummy, no crawling, creeping, scooching, nothing. She’ll roll around and even lay on her belly, push herself up off the ground, kick her legs and look around before rolling over onto her back.
She does, however, love to stand. She’s been bearing weight on her legs since she was barely two months old.
On Sunday, Lyla and I visited my mom in Bellevue. We had lunch, I took my mom to run an errand then we went back to the condo she shares with my sister, Elizabeth, and my sister’s boyfriend. For months my mom has been trying to get Lyla to take a step or two while standing supported. Basically baby girl would just get all stiff and stand there.
This time, though, my mom stood Lyla up on her bed and she voluntarily took a few steps while grasping my mom’s fingers. It was SO cool to see.
For the past month Lyla has been sitting up really well on her own. It’s only a matter of time before she starts pulling herself up on the couch and cruising. She may still crawl since unsupported sitting is a key milestone to hit before crawling but it’s apparently common for babies these days to skip crawling altogether.
I showed Ellie this trick this morning before I left for work and I wouldn’t be surprised if she works with Lyla on taking steps and learning the basic mechanics of walking during the coming months.
I was walking at nine months. I won’t be surprised if Lyla is, too, but I won’t be disappointed if she doesn’t walk until later.
Either way, baby mobility is looming near and I really need to get cracking on baby proofing.
Life is just always busy with Lyla and it stands to reason it’s only going to get busier. I can’t say that I mind.

Dental Work

krishill — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 00:18:38 +0000

This morning I was laying in the dentist’s chair — actually, he’s a specialist of some kind but let’s say dentist for now — waiting to have my aching upper right teeth looked at in order to figure out why they’re aching.
The dental assistant, Hannah, was asking me if I had any work done on that area lately and I said, ‘No, my last fillings were on the other side of my mouth. I didn’t have any work done there last year because I was pregnant.’
And before I knew it we were talking about babies.
Hannah said the dentist she works for (who was minutes away from torturing my aching teeth) has a 2 year old, so, she’s heard about parenting from him thereby getting the dad’s perspective. But, she was curious, as a woman, ‘how much of it is instinct?’
For me, so much of it has been instinctive, and whatever I didn’t know I could look up on the Internet.
“The first time we gave her a bath,” I told her, “I looked up a video online on how to do it.”
It’s true! We set up the infant bath tub on the dining room table just as the video instructed us, then we took the laptop over to the tub, and went through it just as the video instructed.
Hannah thought it was brilliant yet amusing.
As we were talking, the dentist comes in and asks, ‘Are we talking about babies?’
Oh, yes. And to be honest, I love talking about being a mom so much I can’t help but work it into conversation more often than not.
“Coming from someone with a two year old,” the dentist said, “it just gets better.”
We talked about various other things after that, but, my favorite part was impending mobility.
“When she starts to crawl, knock her over, don’t let her walk until she’s 12,” he said.
His daughter, he explained, starts running without fear the moment you pull her out of the car seat. She has no concept of consequences, he explained, and an insatiable curiosity.
For example, he and his wife and daughter rented a house in Chelan, and next thing he knows his toddler is climbing up the ladder to a top bunk.
Horrifying enough as that is to this dad, it was watching her try to get down without understanding how to go in reverse, that freaked him out.
Luckily, he was there to catch her when she miscalculated her ability to reach down two steps instead of one.
Dude, we really need to get cracking on baby proofing the house.
Oh, and I get to have a root canal. And I need a crown, too.
At least I can learn more about life with a toddler next week when I go back for the root canal.
Sigh.

Father’s Day column

krishill — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 18:47:40 +0000

I am putting this on my blog for those of you who may not read the paper regularly, either because you don’t live in our circulation area or because you don’t pop onto the website, because I wanted to share this with you all. I just read it again (I wrote it last week) and I have to say I got a little choked up. That’s a rarity, to be sure.

Father’s Day through different eyes
This Sunday is Father’s Day and this year I am looking at it in a whole new way.
After my dad died in 1986, Father’s Day became a non-holiday, there was no reason to celebrate it.
My husband’s family has embraced me from the start, so by my early 20s I came to look at Father’s Day as a bittersweet time. We would celebrate my father-in-law by grilling delicious hunks of meat, corn, eat potato salad, pie or cake or ice cream and generally have a great time. My father-in-law would get tools and barbecue accessories or firefighter paraphernalia — he retired May 3 after 25 years as a professional firefighter — or a Home Depot gift card, maybe something for his Jeep, the kind of stuff you’d get a man’s man.
Quietly I’d think about my dad, try and remember him, all while chuckling at the fun gifts and silly cards and recovering from a good meal.
In some ways this year will still be bittersweet because my dad, whom I adored and whose death broke my 7 1/2-year-old heart into tiny pieces, is not here to celebrate as a grandfather.
But in other ways it will be completely new and wonderful because we can celebrate my husband. It’s his first official Father’s Day. At some point when my father-in-law can mesh his schedule – which is filled with a mile long honey-do list – with that of his sons, it looks like they’ll go for a round of golf. That makes me happy because my husband loves to golf and I don’t want him to miss out on those things just because we have our pretty baby girl, Lyla.
I am looking forward to celebrating Jason as a daddy. We’ve always been a team, trying as much as possible to split things down the middle, though it hasn’t always worked out that way. When it comes to parenting, however, my husband is a great teammate.
Before Lyla began sleeping through the night — blessedly that started when she was 10 weeks old — we would take turns getting up with her for the 2 a.m. feeding and the hour and a half rocking her back to sleep.
There were some moments of strain due to sleep deprivation, but generally speaking we worked together pretty well through that period.
Now we take turns feeding her, changing her, getting her dressed, carrying her around, we work together to bathe her, but there are some special daddy and Lyla moments.
Every night he rocks her to sleep and puts her down in her crib. That’s daddy time and he loves it.
Jason has a goatee, which I love, and nowadays he will rub his beard against Lyla’s neck to make her giggle and squeal. Funny thing is when he kisses the back of my neck it tickles me, too.
Earlier this month Jason and I took a week off. We took Lyla to her first Mariners game. Daddy carried her all around the ballpark strapped into a baby carrier, her head to his chest, her feet dangling around his belly button. She enjoyed walking around the ballpark looking at everything from the viewpoint of chest high on Jason, who is 6 foot 3.
On a side note, the Mariners were really awesome to us. When we got to the park, the folks at the gates asked if it was her first game, and because it was they directed us to Guest Services. Once there, the nice Mariners employee filled out a certificate for her baby book with the important details about her first game, as well as gave us a Mariner Moose card.
“Oh, look at you,” the woman said, “all pretty in pink!”
Yes, she was wearing a pink Mariners ball cap, a pink Mariners onesie, jeans and pink socks. Pink is officially a neutral color to me these days.
Later on we visited the Moose and snapped a few photos. The nice person in the Moose costume even sat down and held Lyla, who was enthralled with his nose, so we could get a photo of just the two of them together.
The next day, June 1, we took her to the Seattle Aquarium after lunch at Elliot’s Oyster House on the waterfront. Again she was strapped onto Jason’s chest in a baby carrier.
Lyla loved the fishies and I think she really enjoyed being close to her Daddy all day. She would reach up every now and then and touch his beard just, I think, to be sure of him.
Another cool thing my husband has done for Lyla was make from scratch her first solid food — oatmeal seasoned with cinnamon.
Lyla took to it immediately and Ellie, Jason’s grandmother, tells our little girl that “Daddy made this oatmeal just for you. Yummy”
Oh, I wish you could see the look on his face when he holds her, when he makes her laugh, when she’s sleeping in his arms. It’s wonderful.
My husband is a great father and I don’t think Lyla could ask for better.
Now, when he grounds her again for getting into trouble when she’s 15, Lyla may feel otherwise.
But this year, on Father’s Day, I am thrilled to celebrate my husband, the father of our beautiful daughter.

Getting mushy

krishill — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 21:00:15 +0000

Solid food has begun!
Well, in truth, baby’s first foods are not solid… they’re just less liquidy.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I spent quite a bit of time thinking about the transition to Lyla’s first solid foods, and talked about making some of my own.
Jason, my awesome husband, made a big batch of oatmeal using steel cut oats. He said he used the recipe on the package of oats, added just a touch of cinnamon for flavor, then divided the batch up into eight little re-usable plastic containers.
On May 21, just a few days after Lyla hit six months, we put her in the brand new high chair I bought a couple weeks earlier and gave her some oatmeal.
Well, Ellie fed it to her. I missed it. I was in the shower getting ready for work. I have, however, fed her oatmeal often since then and she took to it quite quickly.
Here she is in her high chair the first time… but before we gave her oatmeal.

After that we went to peas, then carrots, which I haven’t fed her personally yet but Jason’s grandmother, Ellie, says Lyla loves carrots and enjoys the peas, too. They just need to be warmed up a bit.
I did get some Gerber Organic baby food because I found it for a good price. And just in case she didn’t like what we made.
Jason recently made a batch of sweet potatoes, though, and on Sunday I picked up fresh carrots, green beans and two avocados. On Sunday I mashed up the avocado and fed her some around dinner time to see how she’d take to it.
Lyla wasn’t terribly keen on it. I think it was the texture. Next time, I’ll puree it.
Last night I steamed then pureed the carrots and the green beans. I got four small containers, about two ounces each, of carrots and four containers of green beans. That should last a while. Jason just needs to make another batch of oatmeal. But, that first batch lasted a month, so I am happy with that.
Carrots before being steamed and pureed…

Carrot puree for Lyla!

I am not sure how Lyla will take to the green beans but we shall see.
Here they are before:

And here’s the green bean puree:

All together it took me about 30 minutes to whip up eight containers of baby food. I am really stoked about how easy and fun this was plus it’s cheaper than buying the food. Commercial baby food these days really is just fine, especially with first foods, but I feel like this is something we should do for Lyla so that eating food we make at home will be second nature. That’s what we do, we cook our own food at home as often as possible, it’s healthier, more cost effective and it’s even fun. Looking down the road at the commercial prepared foods for older infants and toddlers, I think that I want to avoid going that route, it looks more processed and frankly some of it looks gross. So, I think it’s good for us to get in the habit of making food for Lyla now, then it will be second nature for us, too.
The coolest thing I’m discovering is that many of my mom friends make or made their own baby food, too, so they are great resources and support. Plus there are tons of resources on the web and great books out there, so, there’s really no reason not to do it ourselves as often as possible.

Let’s catch up a little bit

krishill — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 23:02:55 +0000

Man, I’ve been slacking lately and I apologize. The end of the high school sports season (I spent a lot of time covering softball games) was kind of crazy and took up a lot of my time.
I’ve got a few different blog posts stored up but I figured I’d start with a recap of Lyla’s six month well child check. OK, I know, it was a month ago but better late than never, right?
We took Lyla in for her six month check up with our family doctor on May 20. She weighed in at 13 pounds, 10 ounces, was 25 1/2 inches long and her head was 16 1/2 inches in circumference. She’s still hovering in the 10th percentile for weight but approaching the 40th for height.
During the exam, she was down to her diaper as usual, and Jason was holding her in his lap while he sat on the exam table.
As the doctor approached her with a light to look in her ears and check her vision, Little Miss Grabby, I mean Lyla, was reaching for the light and grabbing at his stethoscope. It was kind of hilarious.
Then the doctor grabbed a tongue depressor and as he approached Lyla, she opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue, all she left out was saying, ‘Aaahhh.’
“Wow, normally babies aren’t this cooperative with me,” the doctor said.
We talked with him about the fact we were about to start solids. He advised that we try one new food a week in case she’s allergic to something it will be easy to isolate and identify what caused the reaction.
He also reminded us not to prop up a bottle while feeding Lyla formula. I mean, that’s just common sense, right? I had to stop myself from saying ‘Duh’ but obviously there’s someone out there who has done it (and if you’re reading this and getting annoyed with, I apologize, but come on, you don’t want your kid to choke, right?) so we have to be warned accordingly.
And it’s important to be sure to give her an iron fortified formula. As far as I can tell, they all are iron fortified, however I could be wrong.
Otherwise, the doctor said she looks great, and that we’re doing a great job. Yay!
Then came the shots. First she got an oral vaccine then two shots, one in each thigh, and I held her down gently on the exam table while the nurse administered the shots. Jason is a bit squeamish when it comes to needles and I know it must be hard to watch her get shots, so, since needles don’t bother me and I am able to stay calm while Lyla gets them I hold her.
It works out, then, because Daddy gets to make it all better when it’s all done. I couldn’t get her to calm down right away or as easily as at the four month check up so I handed her to Jason and she calmed down almost instantly. We are already playing good cop, bad cop as parents. Oh, boy.
So, we’ll take her back in late August or early September, depending on our doctor’s schedule. We can’t take her in at nine months as recommended because our doctor will be on vacation. The nerve! I’m kidding, of course, we all need time away from our jobs.
Next post I’ll talk about making baby food and starting solids. After that I am going to share the column I wrote about Father’s Day.

When I think of Mother’s Day I…

krishill — Sun, 09 May 2010 22:17:47 +0000

So, this is part two of my Mother’s Day themed posts this week. Up until about two weeks ago I hadn’t been thinking too much about Mother’s Day.
As I mentioned in my previous post this week, I realized that I don’t really want much for Mother’s Day, just to be acknowledged. Oh, and someone to clean my super dirty Mustang.
This week I also asked my mom friends on Facebook to finish this sentence: “When I think of Mother’s Day I…”

There is something bittersweet about Mother’s Day for two of my friends who responded and another friend whom I talked to a bit about Mother’s Day this year.
For some moms, it’s harder than others.
My friend, Rachel, for example is having a bit of a rough Mother’s Day weekend. Her response wasn’t sentimental about flower bouquets or handmade cards. But, it was real, and I appreciated that.
When Rachel thinks of Mother’s Day she feels “very alone and forgotten. As the single mother of a young child, I get looked over on this day.”
Well I know that she is loved but right now she is in the middle of moving into a home she just bought while her significant other and his kids are far away. It’s rough and I hope she has some sweet surprises on Mother’s Day because she deserves it. Her little boy, Chase, is very loved. I’ve sent her Disney DVD codes so she can get him movies and merch for free. It’s a win-win because it makes her son happy and she doesn’t have to give up her hard earned money.
Another friend of mine is going through a divorce. She had been a stay at home mom. Like Rachel, she is working hard to take care of her son on her own, and she doesn’t get to spend time with her son, the reason she celebrates the holiday because she has to work to pay the bills.
On the other hand, the holiday can also bring back fond memories.
This is what Karen Evans said in response to my request.
“When I think of Mother’s Day, I remember my first Mother’s Day when my son Matt was born. For the first 1 1/2 weeks he was fussy and could not be put down without crying. Even when held he would cry, so I had to walk with him all of the time. On that first Mother’s Day, I sat in a rocking chair with him, eyes wide open, calm and not fussy. I felt like I had gone to heaven! We rocked like that for over an hour and a half. It was a miracle!”
When I think of Mother’s Day, I will always think of last year, the excitement of sharing the news that I was pregnant with our families. We celebrated on Saturday with Jason’s family and shocked everyone at the table when gifts were open after dinner.
I found my mother in law a Winnie the Pooh photo album, and on the front it said, “Grandma’s Brag Book.”
At first she was confused when she looked at it then I saw the light bulb go on over her head.
“Are you pregnant,” she asked.
All I could do was nod and grin like a fool. She almost had a heart attack and cried tears of joy.
It was totally awesome.
Ginger Passarelli, whom everyone simply calls “Mama,” Mother’s Day makes her “think of how thankful I am that mine are grown and making me grandbabies!”
And boy does she have some cute granddaughters. I met one of them last summer while I was pregnant. I was writing a story about the ladies of Baked Goodies who were one of the many wonderful vendors during the inaugural season of the Maple Valley Farmers Market last summer. They used Ginger’s kitchen at her restaurant, Mama’s Steak and Pasta in Black Diamond, to bake their tasty treats they sold at market. So, I visited one day while they were baking up a storm and Ginger was there getting ready for the dinner service and one of her daughters and sweet little granddaughter was there.
Just look Ginger up on Facebook. You’ll see I’m not exaggerating. She has cute grandbabies!
For my friend Emmily, the response was a reflection on the past and an opportunity to ponder future Mother’s Days.
“When I think of Mother’s Day I feel joy and excitement for the first time in my life. I am due to become a mother on May 21 (but maybe any day now!). I could hardly sleep last night just thinking about meeting my new baby and the transition into a whole new role and life! But the flip side of this is that this comes after a lifetime of difficult years and now estrangement with my own mother. Typically, Mother’s Day was one of heartache for me because of how damaged and dark that relationship was/is. I wish things were different, especially now as I approach this new chapter in my life. It hurts when people ask me, “Has your mom been helping you get ready?” That’s not my path. But what I do know is I won’t let that happen between me and my child. And I am already so filled with love for my “Little B” that I know it never will.”

To all my mom friends, I want to wish you a Happy Mother’s Day, whatever stage of parenthood you are in now.

A year ago I could never have guessed how amazing it would be to become a mom. I knew it would be awesome but I had no idea how awesome. I’m looking forward to spending the day with my mom and sister eating Indian food for lunch then do dinner with Jason’s family. It looks like it’ll be sunny and warm. I couldn’t ask for anything more.

Well, except for a clean car. Oh, and one other thing — could somebody else go to Costco for me next time? OK. Thanks!

I am SUCH a mom.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Momma in a Mustang

krishill — Wed, 05 May 2010 05:17:50 +0000

Up until a few days ago I hadn’t thought much about Mother’s Day as how it pertains to me as a mom.
Then I realized no one had asked me what I wanted to do, if anything, for Mother’s Day. And I realized no one asked me if I wanted a gift for Mother’s Day.
And I started to get annoyed.
This is my first Mother’s Day as a mommy.
OK, I was a mom-to-be last year but I had just found out I was pregnant and we were so focused at that time on breaking the news to our families not to mention the impending joy of being parents as well as the insanity that my high risk pregnancy was going to be for the next many months.
Last year I wrote a story for our print edition that came out the Friday before Mother’s Day. I visited with a co-op group who was touring a fire station in Maple Valley and asked a mom who was pregnant with her second child and was in the group with her pre-school aged daughter about the holiday.
She basically told me that even though she’s a mom the day is still more about her mother than a day to celebrate her mommy-hood.
At the time I didn’t get it.
Now, though, I totally do.
I’ve just been pondering how to celebrate with my mom as well as Jason’s mother and grandmother.
But, I do want to be acknowledged. I don’t want some great big party. Up until this morning I wasn’t really sure I even wanted a gift.
Then, as I got into my filthy 2000 Ford Mustang this morning to head to work, I realized what I want for Mother’s Day — someone to thoroughly and lovingly detail my beloved Mustang.
This car is 10 years old. It has nearly 150,000 miles on it. And it is not a family car by any stretch of the imagination. It is, however, my dream car. I was 23 when I got it, just three months after I was diagnosed with diabetes while living in Las Vegas, and for years I had driven junkers and hand me downs.
This is the first nice car I’ve ever owned. I love my Mustang. And now that it’s paid for, I want to take care of it, but it’s hard as a new mommy. It gets regular oil changes and all but hand washing the exterior and carefully wiping down the interior is quite low on my priority list.
So, it would be super awesome if someone would be willing to detail my car and make it sparkle like a blue jewel.
Yeah, I’m a momma in a Mustang. When I drive around with my baby I want it to look gorgeous.
Now, to point Jason to this blog post… a nice subtle hint for what I want for Mother’s Day. Heh.

Parenthood has …

krishill — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 22:53:15 +0000

Something I’ve recently noticed is that being a parent has brought out two things in me: my inner crafter and my inner coupon clipper. Allow me to explain.

The inner crafter
During the holidays shortly after Lyla was born I got into making stuff. Crafty stuff. The kind of stuff that requires going to Jo-Ann’s or Michael’s. I’ve bought things like stamp pads and scrap book paper and the like.
For example, with the stamp pad I took a picture frame that had some spiffy matting with pink highlights and a white space to the left of the opening for the photo. So, I put a photo of Lyla and put that in there, then I took her footprint with the stamp pad and put it on the white side of the matting. The finishing touch was her name in black letters that I grabbed from the scrap booking section at Jo-Ann’s.
Another thing I did with the stamp pad was make a footprint “Daddy” tie for Jason. I got a lilac colored silk tie from the Nordstrom Rack at the Super Mall and put Lyla’s footprint on it. He loved it. And I think the whole thing cost me about $12. Oh, but, I’ll get to the cheap skate, er, I mean inner coupon clipper in a bit.
I had also hoped to make a blanket for my sister-in-law for Christmas. Got all the stuff for it, but, just didn’t get to it. Maybe I’ll get it done by her birthday in October.
About a week ago I took some of the wallet size photos of Lyla from the Our 365 photo shoot and made a photo collage. We had purchased a bunch of frames for the photos from that session. One of them was for an odd sized 10 by 13 photo collage so we bought dusty rose colored mat board so we could custom cut it for a frame. Jason cut the mat out and put that together. There was a square of board left so I decided to make the photo collage. Got my hands on a glue stick, more scrap booking stickers, and put it all together. I posted a photo of the finished product that I put in a floating frame and offered it up. My sister claimed it.
My next little project will be putting some iron-on transfers I got from Jo-Ann’s onto onesies and T-shirts for Lyla. One says, “Party At My Crib.” Another one has guitars with the necks crossed and so on then it says, “Sleep, Hugs and Rock n Roll.” Totally cool.
I haven’t done this much arts and crafts stuff since I was a teenager working as a counselor at Camp Orkila. If I start trying to do pottery again, someone haul me back from the edge. OK?

My inner coupon clipper
I have always been a fan of scoring a good deal but I found clipping coupons or buying gently used stuff generally abhorrent.
Then I had Lyla.
Buying stuff for a kiddo can really leave a hurtin’ on your wallet, especially if you buy everything new.
Luckily I did a story on Kid to Kid in Covington shortly before I got pregnant. That has been a great resource for all kinds of cool stuff. I’ve saved money on clothes and other items there, not just for myself, but for friends who have had or will have babies in recent months.
I’ve also signed up for the coupon savings e-mails through Carter’s, Osh Kosh B’Gosh and The Children’s Place. In mid-March my mother-in-law and I went shopping for clothes for Lyla to wear from six to nine months to add to the handful of things I had already. Beyond newborn and three to six month stuff, bigger clothes were few and far between, something I suspect a lot new parents encounter.
We got Lyla plenty of clothes during the shopping spree to get her through spring and summer. The way she outgrows clothes is in height. She’s not yet been too heavy for anything. Even now, as she approaches five months old, I’m starting to think I’m going to have to move her to six to nine month size clothes because quite a few things are not long enough.
Anyway, I had coupons and there were a bunch of sales going on. For me, I have taken bargain hunting to a whole new level.
With how quickly she’s growing at this point, it makes no sense to buy everything full price, to not take advantage of coupons and sales. It’s simply smart and cost effective.
Since Lyla is also formula fed, I’ve signed up for Similac’s Strong Moms program. Basically, that entailed giving them some personal information online. In exchange, I’ve gotten about $30 worth of formula from them and already $10 in coupons, which I will use next time I buy formula for her.
Maybe I should sign up for coupons from Pampers, too, since babies go through a couple thousand diapers in the first year of life, give or take a few hundred.
Next, though, I’m trying to find the best deal I can on the high chair I want to get. I foresee a trip to the SuperMall in the near future as a trip to Kid to Kid was unsuccessful and searching on Craigslist didn’t turn up what I was looking for, either.

It’s interesting to discover the ways in which parenthood has changed me or brought to the forefront qualities I had but in ways I never would have previously imagined.

It might be a little ambitious

krishill — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 05:09:51 +0000

Lyla will be five months old this Sunday which means solid food is just a month away.
I am a planner. I like structure. I am organized.
Therefore, this weekend I am hoping Jason and I can make some first foods for Lyla and put it away in the freezer so we can have it ready to go in May when we decide to start feeding her solid foods.
So, here’s my plan, and I am hoping it’s not too ambitious.
After doing a fair amount of reading (remember how obsessive I was while I was pregnant, reading books, articles on the Internet, mommy blogs and so on? Yeah, so, no surprise here, right?) on first foods I’ve made a few decisions after talking it over with Jason and our family doctor.
Our family doctor told us we could begin solids at about five months if we wanted to, though I told him we’d rather wait until six months, which he said was just fine.
I also told him I’d rather do oatmeal than rice cereal and he was also fine with that.
So, I’ve looked up how to prepare baby appropriate oatmeal. Jason likes to cook. He is a big fan of Alton Brown’s show, “Good Eats,” which is on Food Network. There is an episode of “Good Eats” about oatmeal so Jason has an oatmeal recipe. Turns out we even have rolled oats in the kitchen. Awesome!
All Jason has to do is grind up the oats to a finer consistency then cook up a batch. We can season it with some cinnamon, maybe some allspice, and then I’m thinking we can divvy it up into little containers then pop them into the freezer.
Next one should be fairly easy. I love bananas and they are another doctor-approved, baby tested and mom endorsed first food. Fantastic. We always have bananas in the house because I like to eat at least one a day. I also like to give the really ripe ones to my beagles as a treat. Everybody loves bananas!
We’ve got a food processor. So, just puree some bananas, spice them up just like we plan to do with the oatmeal, divvy up into containers and there is another great option.
Finally, I want to get a sweet potato, steam it, mash it then puree it. Sweet potatoes are really good for you. Tons of great vitamins and minerals, just all kinds of healthy goodness, and seasoned right they taste delicious
We had sweet potatoes for Easter dinner at my in-law’s house. I love sweet potatoes. Mmm. Mashed up with cinnamon and brown sugar, my father in law also used Splenda to sweeten it, then some marshmallows on top. I don’t like marshmallows much unless atop sweet potatoes or in s’mores.
After we finished eating I put the tiniest dab of sweet potato on my index finger and gave it to Lyla to see what she thought. OK, maybe an ill-advised experiment, but I was curious. She pushed it out of her mouth. A few minutes later I tried one more time and she tasted it but I didn’t see a significant reaction one way or another.
Maybe she’ll be more into it next month.
But, that’s my homemade baby food plan. Now, I’m realistic, I know that we’re not going to be able make food for her all the time so I plan on getting some Gerber Organic food, as well. I just really feel like it’s important given the extensive history of diabetes on my side of her genetic balance sheet to be careful about her food now.
The other part of this puzzle is finding a high chair. I have one in mind but I am always open to suggestions.
And I know I got some baby spoons at my shower but I have no idea where they are … well, I know they are in Lyla’s room, I’m just not sure where they are in her room.
But, I guess I have a month or so to find them, so I should be fine.
I suspect, however, I will tear her room apart this weekend to find them.
I have mentioned I’m a little obsessive, right?
OK. Good.
I’ll let you know how the baby food experiment goes this weekend. I’ll try to take pictures, too.

my love/hate relationship with doctors

krishill — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 20:17:27 +0000

Note: I wrote this post about a month ago, not aware of the swirling controversy regarding the impending vote in Congress on health care reform. I wrote another blog more specifically about Lyla and posted that instead, hanging onto this for another time. I’ve decided to finally post this now that things have quieted a bit on the health care reform bill as I am not keen on making political statements in the interest of maintaining my objectivity. In other words, I have no political opinions, so please don’t ask. But, as you will see, I have strong opinions about our health care system. So, keep that in mind. Thanks!

Doctors were a big part of my life last year.
If I counted right, I saw at least nine different doctors last year, though most of that was related to my pregnancy.
On one hand, I like the doctors I deal with regularly, especially my OB and our family doctor. I am not too fond of my endocrinologist and am seriously considering firing her and just having our new family doc here in Maple Valley manage my diabetes.
On the other hand, though, dealing with doctors drives me crazy. I am always asked to show up 10-15 minutes early to fill out or sign paperwork as well as deal with anything else that may come up.
Then I wait. Sometimes it’s just a few minutes. Other times it has been as long as an hour. Usually I wait about 15 minutes on average to see any of my doctors.
And then if I’m lucky I get about five to 10 minutes of the doctor’s time. I give up a lot of time to get to the appointment, to be early, to fill out paperwork, to wait, to then only get a little bit of face time.
During the third trimester of my pregnancy I spent some time really reading up on what a doctor has to go through just to get to a point where he is allowed to practice medicine, particularly the training required for an obstetrician/gynecologist. I realized I didn’t really have a clue so I started reading up on it because that’s what I like to do with my free time and the Internet enables this obsession. Thank you, technology.
So, you spend four years as an undergrad, three years in med school (I think), then another four years in residency after which you go out and make your way in the world as an OB/GYN.
Now this gives me a greater appreciation for my OB, of course, and doctors in general. Then I read about the fact that med school grads have upwards of $100,000 in debt. Yikes.
While I was on maternity leave I read an article that I can’t find now that said something to the effect that doctors have to see 20 to 25 patients a day to make any money.
Then I read this blog by Dr. Vance Harris which outlines how much money he gets for dealing with various patient scenarios.
Wow.
Another article that turned up mentioned something I’m seeing that I had no awareness of is this growing shortage of primary care physicians. Up until last fall when I went looking for a doctor for Lyla, I basically just saw my endocrinologist as my PCP, and if I got sick I’d just make a quick trip to the Urgent Care center at the MultiCare in Covington. It’s been a while since I was really sick, about four years, and needed to go to urgent care in Covington. Yay?
So, I was reading this article on Mother Jones online about health care reform and so on, and it was pretty eye opening.
It’s no wonder I have a love/hate relationship with doctors. And all this reading has led me to realize that I have no idea how to make this system better. Some of the stuff I’ve read has raised more questions than answers because as someone with a chronic disorder, I am between a rock and a hard place, I need my doctors to stay healthy.
In order to see them, though, I have to put up with the fact that I will only get 10 minutes of their time if I’m lucky.
In fairness, our new family doc spends quite a bit of time with us when we take Lyla to see him, which is really nice. He’s soft-spoken, laid back and has tons of experience. I know I can trust him with Lyla’s care. So, I put up with it if he’s running a little late.
And it seems like I’m not the only one based on this series of surveys on Gallup’s Web site about patient satisfaction.
One of my favorite doctors ever was Dr. Ashit Patel out of Proliance Surgeons in Bellevue. I was referred to him by a PCP I was seeing in Bellevue shortly before we moved to Maple Valley in 2004. I had a bulging disc in my lower back between my L4 and L5 vertebrae. It’s an old injury that I re-injured twice, in 2000 and 2003, before I finally had surgery in 2006 to repair it.
Dr. Patel initially did the fast-talking-I-need-to-see-10-more-patients-today thing during the first couple of visits. But over time he started asking me questions and when he found out I’m a reporter, we started having conversations, and I actually enjoyed seeing him. I feel like his understanding of and interest in what I do for a living helped him treat my injury better.
So, I was saddened to receive a letter 18 months ago from his office that his practice had chosen to no longer work with the insurance provider my company was using. Luckily, I had just completed the last round of physical therapy post-op and my back was feeling awesome, so I decided to cross my fingers and hope I wouldn’t need to see him again.
Recently our company changed insurance providers. Our new cards were sent out a couple months ago. And, of course, mine got recycled on accident. While digging around on the new insurer’s Web site to find out some information I looked through the providers list and saw that Dr. Patel takes my new insurance provider. Woohoo!
For the past month or so, I’ve been thinking I really need to do some core work to strengthen my abdominal and lower back muscles, having a baby can really mess up your core function!
But, I didn’t know if I wanted to go to a gym, just look up some exercises online, find some other solution or what. Now I’m thinking I may just go see Dr. Patel and see about some physical therapy. It seems to me this would be good preventative medicine. Getting stronger post-baby would minimize re-injury of my back during any kind of exercise program I may start up someday when I find the time.
So, I will go through all that insanity of calling to make an appointment for a month out, drive to Bellevue, fill out paperwork, sign stuff, and wait around to see him.
It’s worth it, though, right? I mean, it’s become clear to me the system needs help, I don’t know how to fix it so I guess I’ll just make the most of it by finding good doctors who are worth the time and effort of working within the system to see.
This way Lyla has the healthiest mommy possible.
And the love/hate relationship continues.

Did I mention it’s awesome?

krishill — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 04:54:05 +0000

I remember reading an article covering Steve Sarkisian’s first press conference as coach of the University of Washington football team. As a graduate of UW, I was keenly interested in what this guy was like since I knew so little of him, aside from working for Pete Carroll as offensive coordinator for USC.
What I took away from the story was that Sarkisian likes the word “awesome.” The reporter may have been exaggerating, but, I seem to recall him writing that Sarkisian said “awesome” upwards of 50 times in the press conference.
I’m starting to feel like Coach Sark these days.
Whenever anyone asks me about motherhood — What’s it like being a mom? How’s the baby? How do you like motherhood? — I say almost automatically now, “It’s awesome!”
There’s no other way to answer the question.
I mean, I love being a mom, I love Lyla more than words can convey but it’s so freaking hard to say that succinctly.
Think about it, when people ask some variation of that question, they don’t really want every little detail. I could literally talk about Lyla for an hour. More if prompted with the right questions.
But, the socially correct thing to do is to just say something short yet packs a powerful punch in order to get the message across that I am head over heels in love with being a mommy.
Anyone truly interested in knowing more will ask pointed questions like:
• How big was she when she was born? What’s she up to now?
• Is she sleeping through the night?
• Have you thought about solid foods yet?
• Are you nursing? (And, that, of course generates a half an hour long explanation…)
• How did she do at her last doctor’s appointment?
• Is she rolling over yet?
• Have you gone back work?
• Oh, so, who takes care of her when you’re working?
• And my personal favorite… Are you thinking about having more kids?

On that last one, I decided I wanted to have another kiddo while I was in the third trimester with Lyla. Pregnancy wasn’t too bad. I would like to give our little girl a sibling since Jason and I both a sibling growing up. It’s just a matter of how long before I start working on Jason about future offspring. We will only have one more. We agreed long ago that we would have two kids and with my diabetes I think that’s about as much as I could handle physically.

Every moment with my daughter is amazing. I just adore her. I have eight pictures of her in my wallet. One photo is the wallpaper on my computer at work and I have four others on my desk. And don’t forget that I have her name tatooed on my left shoulder. And as I have mentioned before, she’s just an awesome kid. Oh, there’s that word again! But, it’s true. In the morning she wakes up laughing and chattering happily. When I lean over her crib she smiles and squeals with delight at the sight of my face. And she’s been sleeping through the night for two months now. How can I not love being a mom?
Being a parent is amazing beyond anything I could have imagined or hoped for and I hear it’s only going to get better.
As Sark would say, it’s “awesome!”

So, funny story …

krishill — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 22:49:28 +0000

First, I have to apologize for not blogging in nearly three weeks. Everything has been crazy busy here at work and crazy busy at home. Being a working mom has taught me the true meaning of “busy.”
I do have a funny story for you, though.
On Feb. 23 we had a photographer named Chris come to our house to shoot some more photos of Lyla. I freely admit I’m a sucker at times. He’s with the company Our 365 which shoots newborn photos at Valley where Lyla was born. So, apparently they have a free sitting and 8×10 deal they do anytime after the baby is a month old. Now, obviously the idea is to come take photos of your kid, then sell you a package of adorable, “awww” inducing photos.
Even though we had just gotten photos taken at Yuen Lui when Lyla was two months old, well, I’m just a sucker.
So, Chris came in, got set up in our formal living area that we never use — it seemed like a great idea to have that when we bought the house — then went to plug in two studio lights.
He promptly blew out a number of circuit breakers in the house and we weren’t able to get our hallway, dining room or laundry room lights back while he was there.
After getting some great photos of Lyla with Ellie, Jason’s grandmother who also takes care of our baby girl while we’re at work, Chris decided to put her on her tummy.
The next 20 minutes or so were totally downhill because she loathed being on her tummy at the time and just melted down. Somehow, he managed to get some awesome photos of her, especially with my husband.
Two weeks later, a nice woman named Robin came back to the house and we dropped $400 on a photo package, got a bunch of wallets, 8X10s, the works. We’re nuts. I mean, we’re first time parents of the first grandchild and niece for either side of the family, photos are in high demand.
At that point, we still hadn’t gotten the lights working again.
For more than a month, I did laundry in the dark.
We had been giving Lyla baths in the baby tub on top of a towel on the dining room table but no dining room light meant after about two weeks I finally moved the tub to the sink and scrubbed her down by myself while Jason was at work. On a side note, you would not believe the amount of gunk that can accumulate in between a baby’s toes, fingers, under her neck or arms. I had no idea something so tiny and immobile could get so dirty!
Finally, my father in law brought his friend Steve Montgomery down to our house to see if he could shed some light, literally, with his greater breadth of knowledge of electrical stuff. This is one area my very handy father in law, Art, doesn’t know as much about. Thank goodness for Mr. Montgomery, who has been a friend of Jason’s parents for years, going back to when his son was in Boy Scouts with Jason.
Finally, at the end of March we had light again, and a week later the photos arrived via UPS at our house.
This past week I’ve spent framing up all the different photos from the Yuen Lui and Our365 shoots for display in our home as well as to give to family members.

Here are some of my favorites. Oh, one of the perks of the package I bought was all the photos on copyright released CD, so I am going to share with you to make the most of the money I spent. Enjoy!

That pretty dress I bought for her to wear for Christmas was still too big when she was three months old …

Angry Lyla…

My personal favorites!

Sweet sleepy girl…

And Lyla with Great Grandma Ellie — I gave this one and the first one of her in the red dress in a nice frame to Jason’s mom, Gale, on Easter and she choked up over it. It’s a precious memory of the blessing that both Ellie and Lyla are to our family.

Four months and counting

krishill — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:54:58 +0000

Wow, where has the time gone?
Today, Lyla is four months old.
And, naturally, we took her for her four month well child check this morning. She was weighed, measured, looked over and got her shots.
At four months old she weighed in at 11 pounds, eight ounces (there are 16 ounces in a pound for the math challenged) and was measured at 23 1/2 inches long. So, she has put on two and a half pounds in two months and grown two and one-quarter inches since her last appointment in January. She’s still on the petite side, but, our doctor says she’s “gaining steam” and “appears to be thriving.”
Our family doctor also asked us about various milestones such as vocalizing, “Has she laughed yet” and “Does she grasp objects?”
He was pleasantly surprised when we told him she’s sleeping through the night which, of course, is a good thing for our sanity.
She was happy, smiley and pretty mellow. It was great. Everybody at our doctor’s office thought she was cute and sweet.
The doctor mentioned that we could start giving her cereal as a first food in a month or so, but, I asked him if it is OK to wait until she’s six months old before starting her on any solid foods and he thought that was just fine.
He gave us some hand outs on four month olds, which I’m sure will be helpful, then headed out the door to see his next patient. As he left, he told us we’re “doing a great job.”
Yay!
Oh, and a nice girl named Nicole would come in and give Lyla her shots.
One of the three sets of vaccines was in an oral form, so, I attempted to give it to her but while waiting for Nicole to come into the room, Lyla passed out. It was time for her morning nap. So, when I tried to give her the oral vaccine, she just spit it out. We had to get another one and this time Nicole did the job.
Nicole said Lyla was so cute and relaxed, she felt bad giving her shots knowing she was going to make our little darling cry.
I wasn’t too worried because Lyla handled the shots at two months really well.
So, she whimpered a bit after the first shot, then had a full meltdown after the second one. We soothed her and gave her a pacifier and within a minute she was back to happy, calm Lyla.
I suspect that this is one area where being a diabetic pays off for me as a parent. Nearly eight years ago I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. Doctor’s visits and needles are par for the course. Add to that the fact I’ve had an emergency appendectomy and back surgery as well as given birth in the past seven years and the whole vaccination thing is no big deal to me.
Though I haven’t had a chance to research my theory to see if calm parents equals calm baby when it comes time for the shots, I hope there is some empirical evidence out there to support it, if not at least anecdotal evidence.
From my perspective, at least, I figure if we don’t make a big deal out of it and remain calm then, of course, she’ll be calm too.
I took this picture literally two minutes after she got the shots, one in each thigh. You wouldn’t even know it based on this photo.

One of the women in the reception area checking patients in commented on the fact she was so peaceful and calm as we were making her six month appointment.
“Usually babies come out still crying,” she said.
Not our Lyla. I knew from the beginning she was going to be awesome.
Just having Lyla in my life makes me feel like the luckiest person on earth, but, knowing what a calm, happy baby she is really makes me feel blessed.
And I keep hearing it just keeps getting better from here.
Really?
Sweet!

Another eventful weekend

krishill — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:24:51 +0000

Lyla and I were quite busy this weekend while my husband was working.
On Saturday, we went to Ginger Passarelli’s soup class at her restaurant in Black Diamond, Mama’s Steak & Pasta where we learned her famous beef stroganoff recipe, among others.
Ginger is also founder of The Soup Ladies which is a fantastic non-profit I seem to be writing a lot about recently, go here or here to read more about it.
Lyla had a great time watching Ginger cook up four different soups that featured beef and at one point while I was taking notes, she grabbed my pen and examined it closely, trying to determine what exactly that thing was supposed to do.
After about 45 minutes of that, she took a power nap, then woke up to have a little face time with Ginger, one of Lyla’s many fans. Turns out that Ginger’s mother’s name was Lila, so, maybe she has a special place in her heart as a result.
From there, Lyla and I went to Fry’s to pick up a Crock Pot, as I have decided I need to cook up food at home and in the easiest, least messy way possible. I see my mom friends post about their awesome Crock Pot meals on Facebook and figure it would be a good thing to invest in.
On Sunday we spent time with her grandmothers. My mom came down to visit and we had lunch together. After my mom left, my mother in law and I took Lyla to the SuperMall to use some coupons I had for Carter’s.
We put Lyla’s car seat in the stroller and walked all the way around the mall. We stopped at Old Navy, The Children’s Place, Burlington Coat Factor’s Baby Depot and finally Carter’s.
While at Burlington Coat Factory we were looking at pretty Easter dresses for Lyla. I pulled her out of the car seat and we walked around looking at all the dresses and baby clothes. She checked out toys and other children. She seems to be quite the curious little girl.
About halfway through the mall we stopped to hit the bathroom, change her diaper then feed her. After she ate, Gale, my mother in law was burping her so Lyla was sitting on her knee and watching every little thing happening around us. Maybe all babies do that but it was fascinating to watch her people watch.
She seems to do pretty well with running around with me, she didn’t really fuss or cry at all either at the class on Saturday or during any of the shopping, in fact she seemed to really enjoy it.
It used to be that she slept through errands but now she doesn’t seem to want to miss a thing. She smiles and giggles at strangers who coo at her which immediately endears her to anyone who stops to check her out.
So, anyway, we bought a pile of clothes for Lyla. Gale and I split up the purchases but we did quite well. My goal was to stock up on summer essentials and with the sales and coupons we did really well. And, of course, we found her the sweetest dress for Easter. I’ll post pictures when we get her in it.
And, boy did Lyla get worn out. Not five minutes after we pulled out of the SuperMall parking lot she was fast asleep.
When we put her down for the night, it was 10 p.m., and she slept until 7:30 this morning.
I have realized recently how lucky I have been with Lyla. She’s not fussy, she doesn’t mind strangers much, she loves going places with me and enjoys seeing all kinds of new things in new places, she sleeps through the night and in her own crib.
OK, now I’m just bragging. I’ll stop. Heh.
Now we just need to get her into tummy time so she can start figuring out how to get mobile. My mom says I was crawling at about five or six months old and walking at nine months.
I guess while we work on tummy time we should start thinking about baby proofing the house.
Life with Lyla is just one adventure after another and I can’t even begin to say how happy I am to be going on these adventures with her.

growing like a weed

krishill — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:37:45 +0000

Lyla is getting bigger all the time, as any baby would.
It’s funny, though, because she seems so big to me now compared to how big she was at birth — just 6 pounds, 9 ounces and 20 inches long — yet people out in the world see her and think she’s little.
For example, a couple weekends ago I went to a big baby/kid stuff consignment sale at Pickering Barn in Issaquah, and a group of ladies were cooing at her and gushing about how adorable she is and all. This sort of thing happens all the time, of course, and I’m getting a big head about it. Heh.
One of the women mentioned that Lyla was little and motioned her friend over to come see “the tiny, adorable baby.”
People are always surprised when I tell them how old she is because she is still small for her age. At her two month appointment she was 9 pounds and 21 1/4 inches, putting her in the 10th percentile for weight and height.
Lately, though, I’m sure she’s got to be around 11 or even 12 pounds. Jason’s grandmother, Ellie, who takes care of her while we work has thought Lyla was up to 12 pounds a few weeks ago.
One thing that really made me think Lyla has gotten bigger was when I put her in a University of Washington onesie I bought Dec. 22. It was part of three pack of 3-6 month UW onesies that are really cute and even pretty. I am a UW grad, having earned a degree in Communications in 2000, so she’s got to have Husky gear.
About three or four weeks ago I tried to put her in one and she swam in it. I knew when I bought them it would be a while before they’d fit her, but, I figured at three months it would be pretty close.
Yesterday morning, just for fun, I told Ellie to see if one of the UW onesies would fit her. When I got home, there was Lyla, wearing one.

And it fits really well! She still has room to grow into it, though, which is good.

Next Thursday Lyla has her four month well child check up with our family doctor, so, we’ll know then just how much bigger she’s gotten. She may always be a petite girl, or, she may well catch up to her peers. I have no idea and I won’t even try to predict how she’ll grow. I’ll just sit back and watch.
And who wouldn’t want to do that … I mean, just look at this precious angel!

Daddy’s girl

krishill — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:11:37 +0000

Today is my dad’s birthday. I think fondly of him on this day. Our birthdays are exactly six months apart, his on March 8, mine on Sept. 8. For some reason I always thought it was special.
My dad was 39 1/2 when I was born. I am his only child. It should come as no surprise that I was a daddy’s girl. Somewhere among my mom’s photo collection is a picture of me in a nightgown at about 4 years old that proclaimed, “Daddy’s Little Girl” on it.
My parents, who did not marry, split when I was 4.
It’s interesting to me that this year the anniversary of his death in mid-February slipped by without my noticing it, but, even some 25 years after his death I still remember his birthday.
This year on his birthday I wish he could see his granddaughter. I have come to accept that he missed major milestones in my life such as high school and college graduations and my wedding.
But, I think that if he could hold Lyla, he would have such a big smile on his face.
My father was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when he was 12 years old. He lost his eyesight before I was born but he would touch my face and tell me I was beautiful — this was particularly important to me just weeks before his death when I got my first pair of glasses and was suffering taunts of “four-eyes” and the like at the hands of my second grade classmates.
Even though he wouldn’t be able to see her, I know he would touch her face while holding her, and proclaim she’s beautiful.
Who I am was forged by his presence in my life and his absence after his death.
It is unlikely I would be a writer were it not for his insistence on giving me book after book well before I could even read. He gave me Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries, the Little House on the Prairie series, Treasure Island and my favorite, Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein.
I was already well on my way to becoming a bookworm before he died and afterward, I sought sanctuary in books, taking out stacks of tomes from the public library once a month when my mom would take me.
Already I had a temper when he died and afterward, when I wasn’t holed up in my room reading, I would act out angrily. To this day I still have a hard time controlling my temper or being patient.
But all that reading and pent up anger eventually led to writing which in turn became an interest in newspapers in high school and finally allowed me as a sophomore at Interlake to determine this would be my career.
I am hoping that his parenting style will also influence how I am with Lyla, patient, doting, but focused on encouraging her intelligence and natural curiosity. Between time in a montessori school thanks to my mother and the books my dad gave me, I started reading and writing around the age of four. I don’t have those kinds of expectations for Lyla because that’s unfair, but, it would not surprise me if she was smarter than me.
My dad gave me a lot of gifts and I so wish that I could repay him with the gift of his granddaughter.
Today is his birthday and all I can do is say happy birthday, Daddy, wherever you are … with love, from Lyla and I.

Finding her voice

krishill — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 23:10:17 +0000

In recent weeks, Lyla has had more and more to say, that is she is really becoming more vocal. It started with little coos and now she’s added squeals as well as giggles and other noises to her repertoire.
Her jungle animal bouncer is one of her favorite places and last night she was particularly chatty and active, so, I grabbed the video camera I got for Christmas and shot a little over a minute of video. I apologize that it’s a little dark, I’m still new to the video camera stuff, but it’s so much fun watching her. I got a little misty eyed watching it again after I uploaded it.
So, without further ado, here’s Lyla:

Where we’re going

krishill — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:11:58 +0000

A few weeks ago I spent a couple of hours talking with Ron and Colleen Starr, who manage Vine Maple Place here in Maple Valley.
What they do at Vine Maple amazes me. They take in homeless families and they provide transitional housing. Beyond that, they provide child advocates, financial classes, parenting classes, connection to educational opportunities and more for the single parents and even two parent families that seek them out.
This year is Vine Maple Place’s 10th anniversary. For a small, grassroots organization which is supported almost entirely by the community — churches, individuals, business — that is quite an accomplishment.
One of the very first stories I did for the Covington-Maple Valley Reporter was about Vine Maple Place back in September 2005.
I remember when I first sat down with Colleen Starr to learn about the organization, I was blown away by what they were doing, but I also could completely relate to the people they were helping.
Growing up, we very well could have sought out the help of VMP, because we always lived hand to mouth. We were on the verge of homelessness probably my entire childhood.
Carra Purvis, a staff member at VMP who was also part of the meeting, told me that many of the families have moved a number of times and the children had switched schools often, as well. I think I went to four or five different elementary schools. I begged my mom when I was in seventh grade not to move again until I got through high school. We moved twice while I was in middle school, but, I didn’t have to switch schools. I just rode my bike a bit further to get to where I was going, Highland Middle School in Bellevue.
There are times I wish we had been scooped up and transformed by something like a VMP when I was a kid but I think that no matter what, I have a great appreciation for what I did not have, which has given me a strong determination to provide for Lyla all the best that I can offer and so much more than what I had.
And while it is important to me to provide her with essential material possessions such as a nice roof over her head, decent clothes to wear and whatever extras a little girl might want — what is today’s equivalent of the Cabbage Patch Kid? — but I also want to give her the intangibles I didn’t have, like a stable home, two parents who love each other and their child, an extended family that basically gets along despite our differences and opportunities to live life, not just exist day to day.
I see that VMP is doing that for its families and that is why it is so easy for people in the community to support its mission. As of early February, they had helped 191 parents and children, not just survive but thrive by providing them a foundation in all the things they need to be successful in life.
Those were things I had to learn on my own, the hard way, from the mistakes of others as well as my own.
But, don’t take my word for it, read about it right here.

Milestones

krishill — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:56:01 +0000

Part of my job requires me interviewing high schools students fairly frequently and it’s interesting talking to teenagers now because when I first started out in this profession I was barely 22 years old and could totally relate to those kids.
Now, though, fast approaching my 32nd birthday I enjoy talking to teens but I can see the generation gap growing.
One thing I often observe is how much of a rush these kids are to grow up. But, not just teens, even kids I see in grade schools.
I had this revelation a couple days ago that illuminated why kids are in such a rush to grow up — it’s our fault as adults.
Well, this may not be the case with all parents or adults in a child’s life, but with Lyla even now at three months old it seems like we’re all in a big hurry for her to sit up on her own, get her first tooth, talk, crawl, walk, get her freakin’ driver’s license already.
Oh. My. Gosh.
She’s three months old!
But, those developmental milestones have become a huge focus in my life, our life, and it’s funny because Lyla is the only one who couldn’t care less about them.
Everyone else, well, we can’t wait till she’s crawling — that’s assuming she doesn’t go straight to walking — and wow, how fun will it be at Halloween this year and Christmas this year and this summer think of all the things when can do when she can sit up by herself and man, I better start thinking about a high chair and starting her on solids…
Her life is going to go by too fast. One day, I’m going to blink, and she’s going to be graduating from high school.
So, I need to slow it down and enjoy the things she’s doing now, the milestones she’s achieving now at her own pace which is plenty typical of babies her age or else I’m going to wonder if I’ve missed all the important stuff.
This reminds me of a strategy I employed when Jason and I were on our honeymoon in Hawaii nearly 10 years ago. I didn’t take a single picture the whole nine days we were there. Yep. Nine whole days and not a single obligatory happy vacation, look we’re on our honeymoon, photo.
Now, as you know, I like to take lots of photos of Lyla and I promise I won’t stop doing that but I think the idea of no photos from Hawaii was that we were so busy enjoying our trip — it was the first time I’d been to Hawaii — that we didn’t stop to take pictures. We had a camera. We just … didn’t use it.
So, I want to be busy enjoying Lyla grow up, each precious moment, rather than spend all my time taking pictures and video or looking up the next milestone she’s going to reach. Lyla will get there when she gets there.
I mean, she’s in no hurry, so why should I hurry her there?
Then again, that doesn’t mean I won’t encourage her development.
I’m working on tummy time to help her eventually achieve independent mobility even though she haaaaaates it.
I also want to get an exersaucer since she really is getting stronger all the time with her head and neck muscles.
Then there’s this:

It’s a Bumbo babysitter for infants developing those all important sitting up skills.

So, I guess I’ll have to walk a fine line between encouraging her development and rushing it.
As long as I tell her I love her, that she’s beautiful and amazing every day, the rest should kind of fall into place. I think.

An ounce of prevention

krishill — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:25:34 +0000

During the crazy whirlwind that was the first 24 hours of Lyla’s life at Valley Medical Center, one of the bajillion people that came through to check on us, talk to us about things we needed before left, ask us to do this or that, take our picture and so on was a representative from the Pacific Northwest Research Institute.
I can’t remember her name, I just know it was a woman, and she asked us if we would be willing to allow them to use some of the blood taken after Lyla was born for a study on Type 1 diabetes.
I am a big fan of research. My father had Type 1 diabetes, a disease that killed him much too soon, so I am happy to help in any way that I can.
About a week and a half ago we got a letter from PNRI.
“We would like to thank you for taking part in the TEDDY Study on type 1 (juvenile) diabetes. We have the rest results for your child’s sample that was taken while in the hospital shortly after birth.
“Lyla’s blood spot tested negative for the genetic markers of type 1 diabetes. This does not promise that Lyla will never get diabetes. The good news is that Lyla’s risk is not more than that of the average child, who has a chance of about 1 in 300 or .3 percent of developing type 1 diabetes.”
It went on to thank us again, that no further participation on our part is necessary, but if Lyla is diagnosed someday with Type 1 to contact them as it would be helpful for the study.
I was definitely relieved to see that Lyla does not have the genetic markers for Type 1.
Since I found out just how important it was to have tight control over my blood sugar while I was pregnant for Lyla, I have tried to do everything I can to make sure I could minimize the potential she would get Type 2 as well, and luckily she was not a big baby.
And the more I talk to my mom, the more horrified I am by the stuff she did when she was pregnant with me, it’s no wonder I’ve struggled with my weight most of my life and that I developed Type 2 at such a young age.
Now, I have to take responsibility, too as I ate junk food and sweets without thought of the consequences and didn’t stay active when I went to college.
But, it certainly didn’t help that my mom ate chocolate ice cream daily during her pregnancy which led to my birth weight being nearly 10 pounds.
Yesterday she came to visit and was asking me about when we might start Lyla on infant rice cereal.
Mom was telling me that she started feeding it to me when I was two months old because I had such an epic appetite — shocker, I was a big baby who survived on sugar in the womb, hmm — so she had to supplement because breast milk supplemented with formula wasn’t enough.
I told her I wasn’t sure yet, since Lyla seems perfectly content to eat four ounces of formula every two hours, and she’s nowhere near as big as I was so I hadn’t really thought about making any changes to her diet. I did just put her on soy formula a couple weeks ago and that seems to be working well now so since it ain’t broke I don’t see any reason to try and fix it.
I added that we can ask our family doctor when we go in for Lyla’s four month well child check up on March 18.
Later on yesterday I told my husband about it and decided to do some research on the topic.
What I found about infant rice cereal was not comforting. From my perspective, it’s not something I want to give my daughter, who is at risk already for developing diabetes because not only is her mother diabetic, but so are both my parents. Commercially produced rice cereal apparently is just sugar and other junk I don’t want to give her. Some parent testimony I read, including from a doctor, said it is essentially a “rice brick” sitting in a baby’s tummy.
Now, some parents like that it creates a fullness which breast milk or formula can’t provide, as some anecdotal evidence from parents points to that helping babies sleep through the night.
Lyla already sleeps through night and I’m not sure I’m keen on starting her on anything before the six month mark even though plenty of pediatricians say infant rice cereal is fine for babies at four months.
Now, I’m not some kind of organic, whole food freak but growing up with an older sister who is a vegetarian that introduced me to organic and vegetarian food when I was in grade school I do enjoy that kind of thing.
Ultimately, I would like to make Lyla’s first solid foods myself. Things like mashed sweet potatoes, bananas, avocados and the like appear to be good options at the six month mark and if we want to add some kind of grain, homemade oatmeal would be a good way to go.
We do have a Cuisinart food processor. It’s totally doable.
But, maybe not all the time … so, maybe I’ll get some organic baby food, too. I’m not sure, though, since the “organic” label can be misleading. Luckily being diabetic, I am a master label reader, and I have also learned a bit about what to look for on baby food labels, too. So, I’ll be that mom in the Safeway at Four Corners standing there reading the baby food label jars. Probably not the only one, though.
Either way, I plan to add some spices to her food because I’ve read quite a bit that babies who eat flavorful food are less likely to be picky eaters as they get older. Sweet potatoes and bananas can have some cinnamon and maybe a little vanilla, for example, so that’s something we can try.
It just is so important to me that she learns to eat right from the beginning and that she enjoys eating all the good stuff. Plus I would like for her to be an adventurous eater. I don’t want her to turn her nose up at the thought of sushi or Vietnamese food or even leafy green vegetables.
For me, I was lucky that my sister is an adventurous eater and encouraged me to try things outside my comfort zone when I was young. OK, she teased me into it at first, but as I got older I was enthusiastic. I never would have had sushi at 13 for the first time, eaten Vietnamese, Korean, Malaysian, Moroccan or Indian food (with the latter being one of my absolute favorites) were it not for my older sister Elizabeth.
Hopefully I will be a good model when it comes to eating and that will be a major step toward preventing the health problems I’ve experienced in my life.
That’s just one of the ways I want to provide my daughter with the things I didn’t have growing up. My body started to fail me when I was 19. If there’s anything I can do to help Lyla have a healthy life, then I’ll do it, even if it is kind of inconvenient. She is SO worth it.

Sleep is a precious commodity

krishill — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 22:06:05 +0000

Everyone has heard the horror stories, er, the tales from parents about the joys of the early days that are defined by sleep deprivation, lack of time for hygiene or food, and a renewed appreciation for coffee.
My mother-in-law, Gale, for example has said often that the only way she could get my brother-in-law to sleep was to spend hours in her rocking chair. Often, her mother would arrive on weekday mornings to find Gale and Dave snoozing together in the rocking chair.
With both Jason and Dave, my mother-in-law recalls being exhausted, and just trying to get through work in a zombie-like state for the first nine months of their lives.
Now, my mom has long said I was a good sleeper, and that I was sleeping through the night by about three months old.
During the past 10 days or so, Lyla has gone from sleeping six or seven hours after being up well past 1 a.m., to conking out for the night around midnight and sleeping about eight hours. Sometimes we’re lucky and she sleeps a little more.
Up until two days ago, she had slept in our room in a bassinet, which was graciously provided by a friend of Gale’s. Had we not been given a bassinet, we wouldn’t have had one, as I had no intention of spending the money. I am quite thankful for the gift as it has been well used.
She has pretty much outgrown the bassinet. Lyla is a bit bigger now than she was in this picture, which was taken Feb. 9. Well, she’s longer, taller.

So, two nights ago Jason put her down in her crib. This is how I found her around 7:30 this morning. She fell asleep for good around midnight. She was still asleep when I left the house around 8:20.

It’s weird that she’s not in our room. Especially now that she’s sleeping pretty well — a trend that I hope continues — we had adjusted to her sleeping in the bassinet.
Last night after we crawled into bed, Jason was initially on high alert for cries of distress coming from Lyla’s room, but whatever noise he heard was likely one of our beagles or our evil orange tabby cat.
I think we should invest in a baby monitor now.
I am glad, though, that she’s finally in her crib and in her room.
But, now this really forces me to clean it up. Her clothes need to be reorganized as she’s outgrown all the newborn stuff finally and I need to get a few other baby items put away. Plus we have stored our Christmas wrap under her crib but it so doesn’t work because the storage boxes don’t fit underneath it. So, you have to try not to trip when approaching the crib.
In the end, though, I guess these are all good problems to have.
And maybe now that I’m getting more sleep I can wean myself off coffee again.
Ah, the joys of parenthood.

Who does Lyla look like?

krishill — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 03:22:43 +0000

Since she was born, friends, family and co-workers have looked at me, looked at Jason, then looked at Lyla and pronounced whom she looks like.
Jason’s grandmother, Ellie, says simply, “She looks like Lyla!”

But, what do you think?

Here’s Lyla, snapped with my cell phone camera just moments ago:

Then there’s me. Both photos were taken when I was four months old. This one is with my mom at Christmastime. I hear I was nearly 10 pounds at birth. So, compared to Lyla, I was huuuuuuuuge!

And this one is with my dad, Nick. I hear I loved riding around in the backpack with him.

And then there’s my husband, Jason, when he was a baby. Turns out he was 8 pounds, 3 ounces when he was born. I’m not sure how old he was in this photo but I’m guessing about three or four months old.

So, now that you have seen the photographic evidence, who does Lyla look like?

Busy weekend

krishill — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:19:03 +0000

Lyla and I had a busy weekend.
On Friday, she spent some time with her grandparents, Art and Gale. She hadn’t seen them in a couple of weeks and she cried a bit when Gale held her so I guess she’s at a point where she doesn’t like being held by whoever wants to hold her. I guess after a while she settled down but it was a little tough at first.
As you can see in this photo of Lyla with her Grandma, she was just fine…

Friday evening my sister, Elizabeth, drove down to visit us. We had dinner at Hacienda del Mar and then went back to my house just about a mile away and hung out. We talked and talked, my sister and I, which was great. Lyla was very unhappy. The first two days or so on the soy formula, our little girl didn’t like it too much as it constipated her a bit, but by the end of Sunday she was fine. But, unhappy Lyla didn’t want to be held by her auntie, either.
Saturday afternoon I ran down to Mama’s Steak and Pasta (formerly Mama Passarelli’s Dinner House) in Black Diamond so she could meet Mama herself. She did pretty well getting a little time with her honorary Nona Ginger, who got her smiling and giggling, but she did seem a little unsure at first. Ginger is clearly an experienced Nona (I understand that’s the Italian word for “Grandmother”) and I look forward to Lyla, Ginger and I having lunch together sometime soon, especially so we can talk about The Soup Ladies (an organization Ginger helped start a few years ago to feed emergency responders who handle disaster response) who will be recognized for work they did in Pierce County in the past year.
Coming soon will be a photo of Lyla in her very own Mama Passarelli’s onesie.
On Sunday my friend Nancy, her husband Ryan, their son Tannis, 8, and daughter, Jerrin, 6, came over for the Super Bowl. In addition, my friend Bambee, and her three year old son, McKailen, also came over. We ate, we drank, but Lyla still didn’t want to be held by anyone else.
Jerrin wanted to hold the baby, so, I had her sit on the couch and she did a great job holding her but after a few minutes the crying began so I took her back and she quieted right down.
Later, I handed her off to Bambee so I could have something to eat, and she cried the whole time. Within moments of me taking Lyla back after I finished scarfing down some of our tasty Super Bowl food she settled right back down.
It was one of those days where I just couldn’t put her down. It was all about mommy. I even tried to put her down in her crib after she passed out. As soon as I did that, her eyes snapped open, so I picked her back up and by the time I had gotten back out to the family room to sit down and watch the game she was asleep again.
I keep reading that you just have to follow your baby’s lead and this was one of those times where Lyla was happy only in my arms. Alrighty then.
After everyone left, I watched some of the Super Bowl highlights to catch a few big plays I missed while tending to my little girl, thank goodness for technology and our desire for on demand everything and instant gratification.

On another note, I wanted to show you a couple of other photos.

Here’s one of the pictures from our photo session a couple of weeks ago at Yuen Lui:

And this is Lyla laying on her new quilt, handmade by Victoria Laise Jonas, Maple Valley Deputy Mayor and driving force behind the Maple Valley Farmers Market which started last year, something I’m very excited to take Lyla to on Saturdays this summer and fall. She went with me to almost every market over the summer, anyway, while I was pregnant.
Anyway, I just wanted to share a peaceful Lyla and her quilt. It’s a sweet photo.

Bits and pieces

krishill — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 23:56:37 +0000

I promise all is well in the land of Lyla, I’ve just been crazy busy recently, so I apologize for not writing a blog post in almost two weeks. My mom and husband’s birthdays are just four days apart so the end of January is always nuts. Tack onto that the fact that I’ve just come back to work and get busier here with the paper with each passing day, well, it’s been hectic.

I don’t really have a theme for this post, I just want to post about some things that have been going on to just so everyone knows what’s going on with our kiddo.

Food
Now that I’m back at work, I’m eating much better than I was while on leave because I have structure to my day and I don’t feel guilty taking a break from work to eat, because work doesn’t mind if I put it down. Granted I eat at my desk most of the time, but, at least I eat.
It kind of pains me to admit that I gave up nursing about four weeks after Lyla was born but she wasn’t gaining weight and I just wanted to her to be able get enough to eat, which wasn’t happening with nursing. She’s a stubborn girl, like mommy, and I think the tongue tie issue just set us on a different path from the start whether I liked it or not.
So, we started out with this ready to eat formula that they sent us home from the hospital with:

But it’s $10 for a box of six bottles, which lasts about three days now — Lyla’s drinking four ounces per meal now, yay — so we switched to the powdered version.
Basically this (I don’t have my own image, so, I grabbed this one from another photobucket account)

Today I picked up a soy based version at Costco because Lyla gets really uncomfortable gas and even with burping and passing gas she can be pretty fussy. She fusses badly when she’s hungry and has painful gas, otherwise, she’s a pretty happy baby.
So, this is what I got today (thanks Mom, for the $100 Costco card for Christmas)

We’ll see how the soy based formula works. I’ll report back on that in a week or so.

Development
Jason’s grandmother, Ellie, has been taking care of Lyla while we’re at work which I have previously mentioned. Every day when I get home, she tells me all about Lyla’s day, new things she’s doing and all the things she does with Lyla.
She puts Lyla in her activity gym so she can work on developing her coordination and plays music to help stimulate her growing brain.

Ellie also is doing a little bit of tummy time with Lyla every day so she can build up strength in her neck and arms so that she will be able to eventually sit up on her own as well as roll over. These things lead to eating solid foods, crawling, and all the other skills Lyla will need to be a self-sufficient person. My mom and Ellie think Lyla will be walking early and suspect she’ll skip over crawling altogether.
Lyla already has awesome head and neck control for her age. She blows me away.
Ellie told me yesterday that she is surprised by how alert and active Lyla is at 2 1/2 months old. Usually babies her age spend most of their time eating and sleeping, she said, but not our girl. She’s curious and looks around as well as just likes to see what’s going on.
Lyla likes it when Ellie reads books to her. Jason’s parents got her a box of “Baby’s First Books” with small cardboard and bath safe books.
A new favorite activity is playing with her pink elephant rattle which plays music when you pull its tail. She smiles and giggles at that.
Many mornings Jason and I will sit with her on our bed and sing along with music on the radio or his iPhone. We just got a Phillips alarm clock radio with an iPod/iPhone dock so we can play her our favorite tunes or the playlist Jason made while I was pregnant called “Lyla’s Songs.” It starts off with, “Lyla,” a song by my favorite band in the world, Oasis.
Jason was telling me this morning that he was singing to her yesterday and she really enjoyed it, she was laughing and smiling at him. That makes me happy. We’re both musicians (he played clarinet and I played viola — he plays guitar now) so she’s going to grow up with lots of music. I hope she takes to music and wants lessons of some sort when she gets older.
And we know music is good for her … I play jazz and Mozart for her, especially when we’re in the car, we listen to Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk.
Every day is so exciting with Lyla.

People ask me all the time how she’s doing and I could talk endlessly about everything she’s doing since every day is a new adventure. There’s a reason the blog is called Baby Babble!

Growth
This is the last thing I’ll talk about today. Lyla is getting bigger all the time but she seems to just be getting taller more than anything. She’s finally outgrown her newborn clothes and is filling out 0-3 month size items.
A growing Lyla also means making a change in her sleeping arrangements. We got a bassinet from a friend of my mother-in-law’s before she was born. I had zero intention of her sleeping in our room but once we got her home there’s now way I could let her sleep anywhere else.
Ellie has been putting her down for naps in her crib the past couple weeks so that when we do start putting her in there at night it’ll be an easy transition. Right now, when Lyla stretches her arms out, her armspan is too wide for the bassinet and in a couple weeks she’ll be too long to fit in it.
I had planned to put her in her crib last Friday night but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it! At this point I don’t wake up every couple hours to make sure she’s breathing — I’m such a new mom! — but we don’t have a baby monitor system so I’m still kind of nervous letting her sleep in her crib at night even though she’s only about 15 feet away from us.
Pretty soon, though, I won’t have a choice. I better get a monitor so I can better handle the transition. She’ll probably be just fine.

So hopefully in the next day or two I’ll post some videos of Lyla here on the blog so you can see why I am already planning to sign her up for martial arts — Bill Woodcock suggested tae kwon do, of course!

Till next time.

The question of the week

krishill — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:52:50 +0000

It’s been almost three weeks since I came back from maternity leave and whenever I talk to one of my regular sources, I get the same question:
“How does it feel to be back at work?”

Every morning I have to tear myself away and go to the office. This week my husband suggested I get up half an hour earlier than I need to so I can spend some time with Lyla before I leave. Jason has been off for the past three weeks spending some quality time with our daughter since he only had about four days with her after she was born. So, that gives him a bit of a reprieve in the morning while I change her, get her a bottle or feed her so he can get a little extra sleep or do a couple other chores around the house.
I have found that it’s a bit easier to head out the door after taking the extra 30 minutes or so to spend with Lyla.
Once I get to the office and get focused on work, and I hope this doesn’t sound horrible, but for a little while I forget I’m a parent.
During the past three weeks I’ve been getting re-connected with the communities I cover and all the wonderful people I work with as well as meeting new people. I am reminded daily what I love about my job.
Basically I get paid to talk to awesome people about awesome things they are doing or awesome things that are happening in the community, take pictures, write about all of it then put that work onto a newspaper page or upload it to the Reporter Web site.
For me, there really isn’t a better job.
And at the end of the day I get the reward of going home to my beautiful daughter and wonderful husband.
It keeps everything in perspective and so far, I seem to be finding a balance.
Have I mentioned how lucky and blessed I am lately?

Busy day for baby

krishill — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 05:55:24 +0000

There is probably nothing more startling for a baby to wake up to than a needle being jabbed into her thigh.
And that is exactly what happened to Lyla this morning after she got the once over by our family doc for her two month well child check up.
After she was weighed and measured — she’s 9 pounds now and 21 1/4 inches — our doctor checked all her vitals, reflexes, we talked about how she’s eating, various developmental milestones, whether or not the water at our house is fluorinated (probably not, it turns out) and other important baby health issues.
After he left with instructions to come back in two months, we had a bit of wait, then the nurse who weighed and measured Lyla returned to give her the immunizations — a pair of shots and then an oral medication.
From there, we headed home and left Lyla in the care of her great-grandmother, Ellie.
We got our hair cut, then I grabbed lunch then headed to the office. While I was working Ellie was able to get Lyla to nap in her crib. That’s a pretty big thing since she’s primarily slept in her bassinet or cuddled with a family member. We’re hoping daytime naps in the crib will help her transition to it more easily at night because she’s going to outgrow the bassinet very soon.
After work we headed to Yuen Lui photography studio in Kent. My in-law’s bought a family plan four years ago that came with four sittings and we only used one so I figured we should take advantage of the sittings to get a nice family portrait as well as professional photos of Lyla.
While I am a good photographer, I’m not a portrait photographer, nor do I have the equipment to take good portraits or the training, really.
I can’t tell you how much I love the pictures. Technology is great because we were able to view and order the photos 10 minutes after the session was finished. Normally I hate pictures of myself but the photographer did a great job of picking poses that made me look good.
And Lyla looked adorable, as always.
She was fussy and we weren’t able to totally settle her down to feed her but we got her calm enough to get pictures. They really show off her big baby blues.
Once we finished the session, we fed her, and by the time the photos were ready to be viewed she passed out. She’s been asleep since and that’s no surprise considering what a busy day it has been but it was well worth it.
Days like this remind me what a wonderful life I have with my own little family. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

It takes a village, right?

krishill — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 08:06:04 +0000

OK, so, I must profess that I don’t actually know anything about the book, “It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us” by Hillary Rodham Clinton that I referenced in my blog post title.
I do, however, think the concept of having lots of awesome people taking part in your child’s life is important.
Having my family and friends involved in Lyla’s life is critical. When I was quite young, we spent a lot of time with my mom’s family, but as I got older she drifted from them as my cousins grew up and moved away, as things changed and as I grew up. By the time I was 15, I lost touch with all but my most immediately family, my mom and my sister.
I was close with my best friend’s family, Mike is the fifth of nine children and I spent a lot of time with them after we started hanging out in sixth grade.
After Jason and I started dating, I was blessed that his family is so wonderful, now I’m not saying there weren’t bumpy patches since I was 17 when we started dating and 19 when we got engaged but as we’ve grown up our relationships with his parents, his brother and his grandmother have gotten better.
One reason I was so dead set on moving back to Washington state after we lived in Las Vegas (where Jason attended UNLV and earned his business degree) was so that when we did decide to start a family we’d be near our own relatives. We knew there would be plenty of baby sitters.
As I’ve discussed in previous posts, we agonized over what we were going to do about child care.
In mid-December, Jason’s grandmother, Ellie was at our house with one of her sisters, Rae.
During the visit, Rae asked, “have you figured out what you’re going to do about child care?”
Oh, boy. This was a tough question while I was on maternity.
“We’re not sure yet,” I admitted.
“Oh, I’ll take care of her,” Ellie said.
She had a big smile on her face. I was thrilled. Having a family member take care of Lyla would be ideal but Jason and I had thought his mom would have retired (she’s got more than 35 years in with the Bellevue Fire Department) and would be available. We didn’t think Ellie would be available and we definitely didn’t know if we should even ask her to take on such a task.
Believe it or not, up until little more than a year ago, she was working. In fact, she was taking care of Jordan and Madison, providing in home care for those kiddos from the time Jordan was a little boy. They were the ring bearer and flower girl in our wedding.
They’re teenagers now and changes in the family left Ellie without work.
It must have been meant to be … just a few months later I was pregnant.
So, starting tomorrow, she’ll come over and help us out. Jason goes back to work next week so she is going to spend this week with him learning about what we do, where everything is, and so on.
No one is better qualified. She’s the second oldest of eight children, raised two children of her own, helped take care of my husband and his brother then later took care of Jordan and Madison.
What’s more, she only lives about 20 minutes away from us off Issaquah-Hobart Road, about halfway between Four Corners and Issaquah.
I am stoked.
Jason tells me she’s pretty excited, too.
Maybe it doesn’t take a village, it just takes a great family, and I feel so blessed that we can give that to Lyla.

Here’s Ellie and Lyla the day our baby girl was born.

Change

krishill — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 23:28:13 +0000

For months people would say to me, “Just wait, your whole life is going to change.”
Duh. Can you hear me rolling my eyes?
Isn’t that the point? To change your life, start or expand your family, and so on when you get pregnant?
People can get so melodramatic when you tell them you’re pregnant. But, you’ve heard all those complaints.
Obviously — and to all of you reading this who told me my life was going to change, forgive me — I just nodded my head, smiled and said, “I can’t wait” while silently dismissing you.
Don’t you know that until someone is in the parenting club there’s no point in telling them that? They’re not going to listen. That’s like trying to tell a teenager there’s no reason to rush into adulthood because there’s bills and work and chores and other mundane responsibilities. All they see is freedom.
And all an expectant parent sees is the wonderful, adorable baby they’ve envisioned in their mind.
So, obviously I was expecting my whole life to be turned upside down, to go through some major upheaval and need beta blockers or valium or both to manage the insanity.
Granted, the first week home with Lyla was challenging, but it really didn’t take long for her to fit right into our life.
Yes, there’s change, but it’s incremental … almost like weight gain, before you know it you’ve put on 20 pounds.
Or, with a baby, before you know it there are toys everywhere, making a bottle or changing a diaper is second nature, you reach into your pocket for something and discover a pacifier and after the first couple trips out of the house that took an hour to get ready, suddenly you can be out the door almost as quickly as when there wasn’t a bundle of joy to strap into a car seat.
Sometimes when people would tell me “your whole life is about to completely change” it almost sounded like an ominous warning tinged with a bit of resentment and wistfulness.
There is something about pregnant women that makes people, especially veteran parents, want to scare the crap out of them. What is up with that?
Parenting so far has been wonderful. I wonder to myself, “Why didn’t we do this sooner?”
And I’m already plotting what I need to say to persuade Jason to go for no. 2 in a couple years. I don’t want to wait too long, I’m 31 and high risk as it is, plus I don’t want to have a huge gap in age anyway. My sister and I are nearly 12 years apart while Jason and his younger brother are separated by more than six years.
So, yes, life has changed. For the better. And in ways I would never have expected, which is what I suspect everyone was trying unsuccessfully to articulate.
I enjoy changing diapers, even stinky poopy ones, and feeding Lyla and trying to soothe her when she’s fussy. Every moment is awesome when it’s challenging.
Therefore I hereby promise to NEVER tell an expectant parent, “Just wait, your whole life is going to change.”
I know better because I have officially joined the parenting club. Like every pregnancy and every baby, every parent is different, and every parenting experience is different so I’ll just let you expectant parents find that out in your own way and time.

And now, pictures of Lyla.

Visions of Lyla’s future?

krishill — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 01:29:41 +0000

On Monday I was at Lake Wilderness Elementary School in Tina Newberry’s fifth grade social studies class. I was there to witness students using netbooks for the first time in the classroom.
It is part of the Tahoma School District’s efforts to help students at all age levels have access to the best kinds of technology tools with the idea that the skills learned will help them after they walk of the stage, diploma in hand, ready to head out into the world that is increasingly wired and wireless.
This kind of thing is funded by a technology levy passed in 2006 — a levy that took three attempts before it finally passed — which over its four year life will collect $10 million in taxes from residents of the district.
I have no problem admitting that as a resident of the district, I voted for the levy, and would do so again. At the time we didn’t have kids and hadn’t decided to have kids. But, there’s a whole lot of kids in Maple Valley, about one-third of the city’s 20,000-plus residents are under the age of 18.
And a handful of them live on my block not to mention the hundreds of youngsters that live in the surrounding neighborhoods.
My thought process then was if the kids who live around me are getting a good education and have plenty of opportunities to do the right thing they won’t go breaking into my car or my house.
Now, though, I realize that someday my own kid will be using these tools. Whoa.
As I stood next to Kevin Patterson, the district’s spokesman, and talked with him about how far technology has come just in the four years since the technology levy originally passed (which I wrote about then, too, and that’s crazy for me to wrap my mind around having been working in this community that long).
Then I thought, man, imagine what kind of cool stuff kids are going to have when Lyla is in grade school. Right now students are using netbooks to draw maps, create PowerPoint presentations — a skill I do not have and I consider myself quite tech savvy — and do online research.
And not just kids at Tahoma High, no, all the kids at the elementary level have access to these netbooks and eventually there will be 1,700 of them throughout the district.
Considering less than six months ago I bought myself a Toshiba netbook to tote around in my camera bag for doing interviews and other handy work-related things, this puts Tahoma on the edge of technology, not quite the bleeding edge because netbooks have been available for a few years now but in the past six months or so have really come into their own.
I am trying to envision what kind of cool stuff Lyla will be doing in kindergarten with technology, in fifth grade, in high school. It blows my mind.
My dad was an engineer, an O.G., and by that I mean original (tech) geek. When I was five years old I was playing video games on a black and white screen monitor on a computer my dad had at home. He had a VCR and a microwave in the early 1980s when they were still novelties.
I remember sitting next to him on the couch when I was 7 years old, watching “Dennis the Menace” on Nickelodeon, nodding inattentively while keeping one eye on the TV as he explained how batteries worked.
So, here I am, 31 years old. My dad is long gone. But the geek factor is clearly an inherited trait.
Look in my camera bag for an example. Inside is a Nikon D80 with an 18-135mm lens attached, a speed flash in another compartment, and a Sigma 70-300mm telephoto lens. Also in there is my netbook, a digital voice recorder (the high tech version of a tape recorder minus the tapes) and my 120GB iPod classic with Bose TriPort headphones.
If someone got hold of my camera bag they would have well over $1,500 in gadgets.
Add to that my love of cell phones. I have the newest BlackBerry available, the Bold 2, which replaced my year-old Bold. I ordered it from at&t with my upgrade the day before I went into the hospital to have Lyla. It was waiting on my door step when we brought her home.
Normally I would have torn into that box right away and set up my new toy.
It took me almost four days. A newborn is kind of hard not to focus on.
Quite a few folks jokingly asked what cell phone Lyla would be getting. Heh.
Oh, I already have a couple cheapo spares ready for her to play with when she starts reaching for my BlackBerry. And she will.
Now I also wonder how much will she be into technology.
According to a guy name Ian Jukes who spoke to Tahoma teachers a couple years ago, kids these days are “digital natives” anybody over the age of 25 is a “digital immigrant.”
Pfft. Not me!
But, anyway, the point is this tech stuff is second nature to kids these days.
So, if I’m lucky, we won’t blame any tech geekiness on my genes and simply say Lyla’s just one of them “digital natives” Mr. Jukes talks about.
Meantime, how young is too young to give a kid their first cell phone?
Oh, you think I’m kidding. Ha. Ha. Ha.
The conversations I’m preparing to have with my daughter. I have to be prepared because every parent I know says time flies and before I know she’ll be graduating high school.
I think I’m going to stop envisioning the future of technology in Lyla’s lifetime and just enjoy her being a baby.
The rest of the stuff, I’ll deal with it when the time comes. Yeah.

Ink

krishill — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:24:56 +0000

Many people say tattoos are addicting, once you get one, you’ll want more.
For me, this has been quite true.
My first tattoo was one I thought about for a long time. When I was 16, a junior in high school, I decided I wanted a feather quill pen on my right forearm. Then I went to college and thought about it some more. I realized I couldn’t have a tattoo there and get a job in an office. Since I decided I wanted to be a journalist before I settled on this tattoo, I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize getting a job in the business, so I figured I’d get the ink on my right arm in the bicep area.
Then I moved to Las Vegas after graduating from college where sleeveless shirts in the summer are a must, at least for women, so I decided the final placement of my first tattoo would be on my right shoulder blade.
With no knowledge about how to select an artist, I went to the nearest place I could find to get the work done, Diversity on Maryland Parkway across from UNLV. Our apartment was just a half mile away.
I set my appointment for my birthday, Sept. 8, 2002. I turned 24 that day. It took eight years from initial thought (though legally I couldn’t get one for two years after I came up with the idea) to finally going and getting it.
Much to my dismay, the kid who did the tattoo showed up an hour and a half late, he barely grunted more than a few words to me during the process and not long into it I found out he had only been tattooing for about nine months. I paid $150 for my tattoo, about double what I would’ve paid anywhere else.

My second tattoo was a much better experience. In October 2007 I decided to write a story about Maple Valley Tattoo next to Gloria’s on Maple Valley Highway. I decided a great way to write the story would be to get a tattoo. I had wanted to get a memorial tattoo for my dad, who died when I was 7 1/2, because my mom scattered his ashes but doesn’t remember where anymore. At the time, she wouldn’t tell me, so I guess I’ll never know.
So, I decided to get a triquetra knot, also known as the trinity knot. It’s common design found in Celtic knotwork. It seems like I have a lot of Scottish stock in my ancestry, particularly on my dad’s side, which seemed appropriate. Another reason I picked the triquetra is because it looks like three fishes, or pisces, and my dad’s birthday is in March, making him a Pisces. Plus, I just liked the way it looked. His name and birth date are also part of the tattoo.
Eddie Campion did the work and I love the way it looks.

My third tattoo was done by Jay Hand in June 2008 while he was at Ancient’s Arts tattoos in Renton. It covers up a scar on my lower back that remained following surgery I had in March 2006 to repair a bulging/herniated disc. By the time I got this piece done I was totally pain free and felt like that was a good time to cover up the scar. It was closure. I just like fleur de lys. I know I had some good reasons for why I picked this, but, first I figured it was different plus there’s some strong connections to this symbol from my teen years as well as some more connection to my ancestry, both French and Scottish.

Finally, another very personal tattoo. I got this one done yesterday. Not long after I found out I was pregnant, maybe a month or so, I decided I would get the baby’s name tattooed on me as soon as the opportunity presented itself. I tracked Jay down at Kya’s Underground Ink in Auburn via Facebook.
I got a time set up with him after talking over the idea on the phone. I told him what I wanted in sort of vague terms and somehow I got exactly what I was looking for from him, but, given how awesome my previous ink came out this wasn’t at all surprising. I love it and hope Lyla does, too, when she’s old enough to realize what it means.

What will I do someday when she comes to me wanting a tattoo? I’ll tell her she better wait till she’s 18. Then I’ll talk it over with her, what does she want, where does she want it, will it have an impact on any future career plans and go with it from there. If she seems dead set on it and it won’t create an obstacle for her, as well as if it means something, then I wouldn’t try and stop her — at least that’s how I feel now. I can only hope that my own thoughtfulness in the process to getting each tattoo will inform her own thoughts on the matter. For all I know, she’ll hate tattoos and never want one. We’ll just have to wait and see.

For now, I can only hope that she understands that I put her name on my shoulder so she’ll always be with me, because I am so proud to have her in my life and that I love her more than I could ever express in words.

Back to the grind

krishill — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 23:06:34 +0000

Yesterday morning I rolled into the office to work for a living for the first time since the middle of November.
It was a little weird to be going work after more than six weeks away from the place but once I sat down and started talking to Dennis about everything that’s been happening around here (and it’s been a whole lot, good, bad and otherwise) it felt like I’d never left.
We went over some of the more interesting stories that broke while I was gone — I swear, all hell broke loose, people getting fired, quitting, resigning mid-term, developments changing their construction schedules, and so on — as well as talking about what we would be dealing with this week as far as getting the paper out.
Dennis is a great boss and definitely did what he could to ease my transition back. I totally appreciate that … but don’t tell him I said that to you. I would *never* give him such a compliment in person because then he’d want to don a cape and mask pretending he’s a superhero. Or worse.
But, I digress.
Colleen Starr from Vine Maple Place stopped in yesterday afternoon to drop off some calendars bearing the name of the local non-profit she founded. VMP helps single homeless parents transition from a tough situation to permanent housing and as a Christian based organization supported by the community and local churches, they help through faith, counseling and education.
One of the very first stories I wrote after we started the Covington/Maple Valley Reporter was about Vine Maple Place and Colleen is one of the first people in the community I met, so, I was happy to see her on my first day back to work.
She asked me how motherhood is treating me.
I love it. I love being a mommy more than I could have ever imagined.
So, as you can imagine, it was a challenge to leave Lyla at home yesterday morning. I have to admit, I had to hold back a few tears, but I took a deep breath and kissed her and my husband goodbye for the day.
There is no doubt that I was torn. I have loved journalism since I first got into it when I was a sophomore in high school. The longer I’ve done it, the more I love being in the business, and I’m thankful to be working here because my office is only two miles from my house. Plus, it’s just fun covering these communities, especially now that I’ve been doing it for more than four years.
That’s why I blogged while on leave. I had to stay connected and keep writing. Ultimately, the core of my identity is the fact I’m a writer, even if I weren’t a reporter I’d still be a writer.
But, now, another significant part of my identity is being a mom.
Somehow, I have to find a way to balance both. I am pretty sure I can do it, especially with the help of Jason, as well as our family. Heck, even our friends are awesome and supportive.
For example, I bought U2 tickets for the show at Qwest Field that’s coming up in June, and I posted on Facebook that I got the tickets. A couple wonderful ladies were offering to babysit when I mentioned I’d need one. It was bordering on a friendly competition. Heh.
Lyla is blessed to be so loved.
And that’s what makes it easy for me to be back at work, the knowledge that she is well taken care of when I’m not there, that way I can make a living to make sure she never wants for anything.
But, she is the wallpaper on my cellphone, because I do miss little Lyla terribly. It’s all I can do not to pester Jason (who is off for a few weeks to spend time with her now that I’m back to work) constantly to find out what she’s doing.
Tonight when I get home from work I’m sure I’ll rush in the door and scoop her up then shower her with kisses and coos and hugs.
That’s me, journalist, wife, working mom. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Six week visit

krishill — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 05:16:25 +0000

It’s been nearly eight months since I first met my obstetrician at Valley Women’s Clinic. I had been a patient there for a few years but my annual exam had been done by a nurse practitioner, Barb, whom I like quite well. Since things generally looked good there hadn’t been a need to see one of the doctors.
Then I got pregnant and after the initial once over by Barb in May, I finally met the OB who would handle my pregnancy, and as I didn’t have a preference they assigned me one seemingly arbitrarily.
Now, I had done my research and not only had I found that I liked all of the docs in the practice on paper, but I’d had nothing but positive experiences with the clinic staff so I wasn’t stressed — especially when Barb reassured me that this doc has a ton of experience with high risk pregnancies, more than 20 years in fact, and that other OB/GYN practices sent their high risk patients to VWC.
Cool.
The first time we were supposed to meet the doc, he got called away to deliver a baby, so when we finally got to (Jason went to all but a handful of appointments with me) meet him it was a relief.
He walked in the room and said, “Hi, I’m Jim Rice,” then shook both of our hands. We talked some things over and from the start he was serious about making sure I got my diabetes under control.
For some time I was sure the man had no sense of humor. I realize now that because of his approach I probably did a better job managing my diabetes and ultimately the pregnancy than I might have with a more lenient doctor.
And now that Lyla is here, Dr. Rice is totally different, well he even showed his humor when I was in the hospital. In fact, I wanted to tell him at one point that it’s nice to know he’s such a smart aleck.
Last Wednesday I went in for my six week post-partum appointment and I would dare say he was almost relaxed.
Right after, “How are you?,” he went straight to asking about my blood sugar.
I paused for a moment, seriously considering bluffing my way through this conversation, much like I have with my endocrinologist over the past three years.
Instead, I realized I respect him too much to lie, so I came out with it.
“I don’t know.”
And he lectured me a little bit but I explained that I had an excuse. I broke the lancet pen on one of my meters and I couldn’t find the other one.
He said that he’d order me another one but he couldn’t because I’m not pregnant anymore. I promised him I would get another one and I would get back to it because he’s right, it is important to keep my diabetes under control still.
Luckily, I stopped at my office that afternoon and discovered that my extra meter was in my desk drawer where I had left it, instead of lost somewhere because I thought I had put it in my camera bag and brought it home before I went on leave.
Had I not found it, though, Jason would have picked one up for me … he can get me a meter for $15 at the pharmacy he works at so no excuse for not testing.
Now, if I could ever get more than quick answers out during appointments, I would have explained to him that I remember vividly how sick my dad was before he died of complications from Type 1 diabetes when I was 7 years old. His feet were purple due to loss of circulation, he was blind, and generally miserable, not to mention grossly overweight.
That is the kind of thing that motivated me to take care of myself while pregnant and will continue to motivate me during the rest of my life. Not only do I owe it to myself, I owe it to my husband and more importantly, to my daughter.
But, I digress…
After discussing birth control — hey, there’s no reason to get pregnant again right away, hopefully everyone understands — and settling on a new method since the pill made impossible for me to lose weight there was the joy of the full on exam. I’ll spare you the details because the conversation was more interesting anyway.
Becky, his assistant, asked how was Christmas with her.
“It was great,” I said. “She slept through most of it and was passed around from relative to relative.”
“I bet she got her weight in gifts,” Dr. Rice said.
“Oh yes, toys she can’t play with yet and clothes she can’t wear, but that’s OK. That’ll come in handy later.”
Something he mentioned related to the new birth control method we agreed on led me to say something about how it would be ideal to have some space between child no. 1 and child no. 2, though it did take me almost nine years to talk my husband into having no. 1.
“Now that you’ve had her,” he said, “and she wraps him around her little finger, it won’t take nearly as long the second time around.”
Sounded like he was speaking from experience. Heh.
Becky also kept commenting on how cute Lyla is — I hear this a lot so my ego gets bigger all the time — and my favorite moment of the appointment came.
“She is precious,” Dr. Rice said.
Yay!
I have to think that getting to this point is one of the reasons he does this job, which from what I’ve read requires some of the most hours put in of any specialty, at least 55 to 60 hours a week on the low end with many OB/GYN’s putting in upwards of 100 hours a week.
At the end he said that everything looked good and he’d see me in a year.
He put out his hand and shook mine again, closing with “Happy New Year” before turning to leave.
What a New Year for me, the first time in my life I haven’t minded watching the holiday season and the old year slip away as I trudge forward into the dark and dreary dead of winter.
And to think, this time last year we were just planning to start trying, with the hopes I’d be pregnant by Christmas.
Now we have our little family, I’ve got the clean bill of health, goals for taking care of myself and I’m happier than I’ve ever been.
Let’s see how long this lovely glow lasts.
Tomorrow, I go back to work.

Old (and new) habits die hard

krishill — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 02:47:50 +0000

First, let me tackle old habits.
Hi, my name is Kris and I have a potty mouth.
There are a fair number of you reading this who are surprised by this revelation. I make every effort, especially when I’m dealing with sources, the public in general and just about anyone I encounter in my professional life to keep my foul language out of the conversation. I do this because I am representing not only my newspaper, but my company and the profession of journalism and they all deserve the utmost respect. Nothing I do should sully that if I can help it.
But, anyone who knows me outside of work knows that I can curse a blue streak.
It’s an old habit.
Growing up going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings with my mom (she got sober two years before she got pregnant with me) I learned a lot of bad words at an early age.
I didn’t really begin to employ this knowledge until I was a freshman in high school. I was quite the angry teenager and when my fuse was lit generally how I would respond was with some inappropriate outburst of obscenities followed by stalking off with a figurative black cloud over my head.
As I got more into writing and found better, more constructive ways to express myself, this became less frequent. But it took some time.
But, the outside of work version of my speech is still peppered with a lot of bad words, and I worry that Lyla will pick up on that and eventually incorporate that into her own vocabulary.
I’m not so sure I can curb my bad language around her, but, I’m going to try. I know I probably don’t need to worry about it for a little while but I know that little ears pick up on those things sooner than you think.
As for new habits, well, my eating habits that I developed during my pregnancy are sticking a lot better than I thought they would.
Now, with a newborn, it’s been hard to eat perfectly and some days I hardly eat at all because it’s more important to me that Lyla’s needs are met.
During my pregnancy, I couldn’t wait until all the dietary restrictions were off and I could eat whatever I wanted again.
Now I’m finding myself generally making the same choices and eating the same healthy things I was eating for six months to manage my blood sugar.
I have, however, totally embraced caffeine again. Mmm.
But, some of the other things I was looking forward to aren’t as great as I thought they would be, like potatoes. I thought I missed French fries. Turns out that I’m pretty good without them. I’d rather eat fruit or salad than have fries.
Yesterday I was at Target at The Landing in Renton. I love the cheap-o popcorn they sell in the little cafe. I almost always get a bag of it on my way out. Yesterday I had no trouble resisting. In the past, if I tried to leave without buying it, I’d have quite an internal conflict.
Another thing that helps is my appetite is much smaller and it’s easier to eat better when you get full fast. Portion control is critical.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been great about testing my blood sugar. Yesterday I stopped by the office and found my extra meter was still there and not lost somewhere in my house as I had thought.
So, my plan is to start testing regularly again so I can be even better about what I eat now.
This is starting to sound dangerously like a set of New Year’s resolutions as I write this on New Year’s Eve.
But, really, these are long term goals.
I’m sure you’ve realized that I am like any other new parents with the best intentions and these things are motivated out of love for being the best mom I can be for Lyla.
So, here’s hoping that bad habits go away and the new habits stick around, not just in 2010 but for the long term because not only will I be a better person and parent for it but hopefully Lyla will benefit, too.
Happy New Year, my friends.

Obsessive behavior

krishill — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:25:08 +0000

Long ago I discovered “A Baby Story” on TLC. I was in my early 20s, not remotely ready for children and barely married, but I loved the show.
Since then, TLC and its parent network Discovery have added other new baby related shows to its stable of programming, and while I’ve been on maternity leave I’ve been consuming it all obsessively.
Take today. I got out of bed with a very alert baby at 8 a.m. and turned on TLC. The non-HD channel has two episodes of “Bringing Home Baby” from 8-9 a.m. This show documents the first 36 hours a baby spends with its family at home.
Next up was two older episodes of “A Baby Story” from 2000-2003. There goes another hour of my morning. By now, Lyla is passed out after her morning feeding, so I am entrenched on the couch.
After that, TLC in HD is on the East Coast feed, so I get three more episodes of “A Baby Story” that have been shot typically in the past two years.
At one point this morning after flipping to the HD channel, a mom featured in the last episode of the day was pushing, I found myself pushing with her. Ha!
Moving on …
There’s an episode of a show called “Birth Day” to cap that all off but those are eight or nine years old and the shows have more of a documentary feel to them and I find the impersonal touch to be a little off putting.
So, then I flip to Discovery Health to watch “Deliver Me: Home Edition.” This show follows a trio of women who all work together in an OB/GYN practice in L.A. as they work together with their patients while trying to balance their practice with their own personal lives.
This half hour episode condenses a previous hour long show and wraps up with a follow up some months later with patients to see how they’ve adjusted to life with their new babies.
For a break I switch over to Food Network and watch “Guy’s Big Bite” with Guy Fieri, and get a half hour of watching someone else cook, then back to Discovery Health for another episode of “Bringing Home Baby.”
I’m done at that point, so, I have some lunch, take a shower and generally head out to run errands. Or I do chores around the house with ESPN on as there’s about 90 minutes of sports talk analysis shows on that make for good background noise.
If you’re thinking, “Kris, you have lost your mind,” you’re probably right.
I’ve always been like this. When I get interested in something, I develop an obsessive fascination with it, which can be offputting to some people on a personal level but can also be very helpful in my job. I’ve actually had to force myself not to do it as much at work now because it can have a detrimental effect. If I get too focused on one thing, all my other stories can suffer, which I just can’t do working in a two-person shop.
But, since I’m on leave and my no. 1 job is to spend 24/7 with a newborn, this seems like a great thing to be obsessed over.
I just hope I can tear myself away when I go back to work in January.
One thing I do know is that it will be a little bit easier to leave Lyla when I go back to work now that we have the child care issue resolved. We need to work out the details with the person who has offered to take care of my precious baby girl but there’s no one in the world I would trust more with her and I am thrilled. I will come back to this topic after Christmas.
Next time, though, I plan to tackle my bad language or someday I’m going to have to tell Lyla not to repeat what I say because “Mommy has a potty mouth.”

Pretty in pink

krishill — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 04:50:52 +0000

Way back in July when I first found out we were having a girl, I expressed my distaste for pink and my hope to keep the cotton candy color to a minimum, which was like hoping for a money tree to spring spontaneously from the earth in my back yard.
Not only is Lyla awash in pink, I have found myself purposely putting her in pink when taking her out so that people have that visual cue she’s a girl, plus I have even happily purchased outfits with pink in them while exclaiming to my mother in law “Isn’t this so CUTE?!?”
Holy cow.
I’ve never liked pink. I’m a tomboy. As a fifth grader I was so deep into tomboy world that I wore my hair short, played football with the boys in my apartment complex and often was mistaken for a boy. As I got into middle school and pre-adolescent pressures to conform began to set in, I tried to be girly, something I so am not.
So, I got my ears pierced and started wearing pink, too much pink.
By freshman year of high school I swung back the other way and realized that wasn’t the path to acceptance which also resulted in my loathing of pink being further cemented. I was getting to a point where I was more comfortable in my own skin and pink was never a part of that. I wanted to be myself and not worry as much about what my peers thought.
But, the reality is that when shopping for baby clothes for a little girl or receiving gifts, pink is just part of life.
I’ve had to do a couple of trips to buy clothes for Lyla. Remember at 37 weeks the ultrasound technician told us Lyla was estimated to be about 6 pounds, 14 ounces? Well, if she was that weight and gained half a pound a week, then doing the math we figured she’d be about eight pounds.
Most of the clothes I received at my shower were for three to six months and even items my mother-in-law and I bought toward the end of my pregnancy were in that range because we thought for sure she’d be able to fit into those items right away.
Plus, I’m diabetic. I’m supposed to have a bigger baby.
Ha! I did SUCH a good job managing my blood sugar, Lyla was a dainty bundle of joy.
And, um, as a result she had next to nothing to wear.
Oops.
Luckily Fred Meyer in Covington has a nice selection of baby clothes and there’s a Carter’s outlet store in the SuperMall. A trip to each got me plenty of nice newborn items that should get us through the first couple months.
When shopping for baby clothes it quickly becomes apparent that the folks who design (for lack of a better word) this stuff generally stick to the “girls wear pink and boys wear blue” edict.
So, yeah, I have intentionally purchased pink items for Lyla because a) it’s readily available and b) admittedly pretty darn cute.
Sigh.
I’m hoping there’s greater diversity in toddler clothes.
In the meantime, if you have any thoughts on finding someone to watch Lyla when I go back to work, that’d be awesome. I’m still looking into that and forming my thoughts on the topic.

Eating and sleeping

krishill — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:10:26 +0000

Giving birth was much easier than I thought it would be while breast feeding my daughter has been an epic challenge which I wasn’t expecting.
After having Lyla’s tongue tie fixed last Monday by Dr. O’Hara in Seattle, I thought, ‘Sweet, now we’ll just get right to nursing.’
Nooooooooo.
It was a struggle after her tongue was clipped (the flap connecting her tongue to the bottom of her mouth was “clipped,” that is) to get her to eat. At all.
So, I called the lactation specialists at Valley and took her in last Thursday. Lyla had dropped down to six pounds before we saw the specialist and I was concerned she would lose more and I couldn’t have that.
Jane, the lactation specialist, was awesome. She gave me some great tips. I went home, tried some stuff out, and I thought we were on our way.
But during the past week it was hit and miss. One of the things that I thought worked, the nipple shield, became an obstacle instead of a help.
Lyla started eating, though, with a little time to heal her tongue and a little children’s Tylenol. It just wasn’t nursing every time, but, I tried not to stress too much because she was eating a ton and I had a follow up appointment with Jane yesterday.
First thing Jane did was get a weight check on Lyla, who had put on eight and a half ounces in a week, which was awesome.
Jane and I talked about the challenges I was still experiencing, that sometimes Lyla was all for nursing and other times she hated the very idea of it, and I also asked what other things I could do to manage some of the other obstacles I’ve encountered.
I felt a lot better after I left, knowing it would take more time and practice to get Lyla nursing, and now that I knew exactly how to work the Medela breast pump I am renting from the hospital (thankfully the insurance company is covering the rental cost through mid-February) that I could move Lyla away from formula and to regular consumption of breast milk.
So, yesterday was great, then this morning I try to do stuff on my own and I struck out. I have to remember I am determined. I am persistent.
On the other hand, I have times I want to just give up. I’m going to keep trying to nurse and pump for another week. We’ll see how it goes and I’ll decide where to go from there.
As for sleeping, well, that’s a question I get from everyone.
“How are you sleeping?”
The first week, well, we slept awful. We just didn’t know what we were doing. I mean, we sort of did, but now we’ve got a handle on sleep. We’re lucky that Lyla sometimes sleeps six or seven hours at a time, but, usually we get four to five hours of sleep then either Jason or I get up with Lyla in the middle of the night, feed her, change her and get her back to sleep. We’re trying to take turns so that we’re not both sleep deprived. When Jason has to be at work early, I get up, and when Jason has a day off, then he’ll get up. It seems to be working so far.

Next thing I need to tackle is child care. I’m leaning toward a babysitter or nanny. I just need to find one.
Then there’s the issue of clothes. Particularly the fact that no matter how much I hate pink, it is now part of my life, and since Lyla was way smaller than we anticipated I’ve been buying clothes to get her through the winter. Pink clothes. And I kind of like it.

Care and feeding of baby … and mom

krishill — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 06:15:48 +0000

Shortly after Lyla was born I tried to breast feed her but it wasn’t successful. During the first 24 hours of her life I tried repeatedly to nurse in the hospital but she just couldn’t seem to latch on.
I was determined to breast feed so I remained persistent.
But, Thursday morning as I was getting ready to be discharged and she still wasn’t eating, a lactation specialist came to see if she could help. She discovered that Lyla has a webbed frenulum, also known as being tongue tied, which was preventing her from latching on and nursing.
I was referred to a specialist in Seattle to get her tongue fixed, a quick procedure that would alleviate the issue that kept her tongue anchored to the bottom of her mouth, and I got an appointment set up. Lyla handled it beautifully, getting “clipped,” so to speak and moments later we were able to get her to nurse. She still needed some help with the supplemental nursing system I was provided at the hospital. This is basically formula provided through a tiny tube so you don’t have to use a bottle which still allows her to practice suckling using a finger or breast.

It’s going to take some practice to help her get the hang of nursing but we’re working on it. I am determined.

Meanwhile, I’m adjusting to the diet of a diabetic who isn’t pregnant. It’s weird. I can eat whatever I want now.
Wait. Let me back up a bit.
Before we were discharged from the hospital, my OB stopped in and among his instructions were to go see my endocrinologist in a week to work on the transition from insulin to oral diabetes meds.
Forgive me, doc, but I ignored that suggestion. I dumped the insulin the day after we got home from the hospital. I still haven’t been to see the endocrinologist, heck, I haven’t even called her office. I’ve been more focused on taking care of Lyla and, honestly, I don’t think it’s necessary.
Oh, I will call her this week and set up an appointment. I do plan to see her before I go in for my six week post partum check up with my OB. But, that’s the only reason why … for some reason I’m more likely to be compliant for my OB than my endo. It’s terrible.
In any case, I haven’t tested my blood sugar in a while, either. I broke the lancet pen that goes with one of my meters and totally misplaced my other meter.
I feel fine, though, and I’m basically back to the pill regimen I was on before … half a 5 milligram tablet of glyburide (a pancreatic stimulant) and 1,500 mg of metformin a day.
While I am treating myself to things I haven’t eaten in six months, I have made a point not to overdo it as I might have before, plus the weird thing now is that the change in hormones after giving birth has killed my appetite. Well, coupled with being focused on taking care of a newborn, I seem to forget to eat.
I got so used to being ravenously hungry all the time during the third trimester that not having an appetite is strange. Hopefully when I get to a regular nursing routine with Lyla that will change.
Taking care of myself and Lyla is still a roller coaster ride with its ups and downs, but, it’s a different ride than the one that we call pregnancy. But, it’s only been two weeks, and there are still more ups and downs, loop de loops and hairpin curves to come. Or, so I hear.

Catching Up

krishill — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 03:33:39 +0000

I apologize profusely for leaving you all hanging the past two weeks. Life has been busy and hopefully all my friends and followers understand. I’ve also been hoping the tingly fingers caused by pre-natal carpal tunnel syndrome would improve but I’m still waiting for that to go away completely. Since everyone has been waiting for a full update I decided it was best to just catch everyone up now.
On Tuesday, Nov. 17, I was due to be induced at Valley Medical Center. Being a Type 2 diabetic, my obstetrician was worried about letting me go too far past my due date.
At 6 a.m. I called the Birth Center as instructed. The charge nurse asked me to call back at 9 a.m. with the hope that they’d have a C-section “under their belts” as well as getting a few patients discharged. In other words, they were busy and didn’t have room for me.
We were both thankful for some more sleep. Facing the unknown of parenthood for the first time we both tossed and turned. We were both a little freaked out.
An hour later the phone rang.
“How soon can you be here?”
We were at the hospital at 8:30 a.m. We checked into the Birth Center. We had pre-registered so it was a breeze. We were directed to follow the signs but turned one corner and a nurse whose name I have now forgotten flagged us down.
“I think we’re waiting for you,” she said.
She showed us to our room, introduced herself and another nurse, Jehna, and we got settled in.
After a lengthy admitting assessment, getting into the gown, the nurses got to work. Instead of 3.5 cm dilated like my OB thought at the last appointment, they thought I was only 1 cm dilated.
I was disappointed.
Jehna told me to expect to have the baby in about 24 hours … that was about 10 a.m. on Tuesday.
Oh, boy.
Eventually a medication to induce labor was provided, it’s called cytotec, feel free to look it up if you want to know more. It’s a bit too graphic to explain how it works.
I started feeling stronger contractions but I wasn’t really dilating further. The nurse who came on in the afternoon decided not to do the second dose when my doctor wanted it to be done because I was experiencing strong contractions close together. She was concerned I would hypercontract.
But, as it became clear later in the evening that I was not progressing, I was given two more doses of cytotec about four hours apart, around 8 p.m. then midnight. Somewhere in all that Jason and I went walking on two separate occasions.
Jason and I tried to get some sleep. I had been on a monitor tracking the baby’s heart rate as well as my contractions pretty much the whole time I’d been there.
At 3:30 a.m. the overnight nurse, Celina, took me off the monitor and I was checked again by the resident, Dr. Heather Something Something. If I remember right I was 2-3 cm dilated at this point.
It was suggested we walk around again. I just wanted to go back to sleep. Jason had passed out in the fold out bed next to the hospital bed. I decided to lay down next to him for a while.
Half an hour later things started moving. Serious contractions, about 90 seconds apart, give me something for the pain, please.
Happily I was given a dose of fentanyl “to take the edge off.”
Cool by me.
Around 5 a.m. Dr. Heather checked me again and now I was making progress. I was 4-5 cm and the resident said I could have an epidural at any time if I wanted.
Sweet.
I chose to try another round of fentanyl. That lasted about half an hour, or so it seemed, and I requested an epidural.
At this point things start to get fuzzy. Time passes in a blur after I got the epidural. I basically passed out.
But, after a while I could feel the contractions again, not to mention that I was uncomfortably aware of the Foley catheter in my bladder.
My OB came to check on me. Side note, my super serious OB clearly loves being in the hospital, he was cracking jokes (he’d popped in three or four times and he started off with, “I told you that you wouldn’t be pregnant forever.” Smart aleck) and smiling, at least until he realized early on that my body just wasn’t ready to go into labor.
Luckily pitocin never came into the picture because that third dose of cytotec kicked things into high gear.
It was around 7 a.m., I think, when the OB checked on me. He had to head out to deal with some patients at his office but he said he’d try to be back in time to deliver the baby.
But, uh, I was 7 cm dilated. He missed her arrival by about half an hour.
Anyway, I was trying to explained through the drug haze to my OB that I wasn’t feeling so awesome, but I suspect I wasn’t terribly coherent.
In any case, the nurses got the anasthesiologist back into the room, and he initially tried to explain to me that I had to suck up and deal with the Foley catheter discomfort. Then he decided to do the epidural over again and in the process realized the pump with the epidural meds had clogged up somewhere, hence the problem.
During this I had three strong contractions and was relieved when the epidural kicked in again. Jason helped me focus on breathing — that birth prep class was worth every penny just for the breathing exercises! — to get me through it.
I was knocked out again, the epidural made me barely functional, but next thing I knew I felt the urge to push.
After watching what seems like a million episodes of “A Baby Story” on TLC I thought I would recognize this but I blame being zonked out of my skull for not realizing what was going on.
I told the nurse that no, I couldn’t feel the contractions, but man did I ever feel the urge to push — something out.
This was a good sign, I was told, and all I really remember next was a flurry of activity as the team prepared to deliver the baby.
Flat on my back, feet in stirrups, somehow I thought to have Jason go get his mom. Everyone else had been cleared out of the room except for him and my mom. I had promised my mother in law she could witness the birth of her first grandchild and I was going to make sure that happened.
They got back just in time.
Jason was on my left side, and he took over the oxygen mask duties before I began pushing, putting the mask on my face between pushes. My husband hates hospitals and kind of freaks out at the sight of blood. On this day, he was awesome, just as I knew he would be and he kept me calm and focused.
Then the nurses and the on-call OB, who thankfully I knew a little bit because he is part of the same practice as my OB, told me to push.
About a half dozen pushes and 10 minutes later, with a little assistance from the vacuum as the baby experienced a little bit of distress at the end, our baby girl was born.
All in all it was seven and a half hours of active labor then 10 minutes of pushing. It was almost too easy and I barely felt a thing.
At 11:04 a.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 18, Lyla Elizabeth Hill came into the world. She weighed 6 pounds, 9 ounces and was 20 inches long.
Because her heart rated dipped a bit during labor, a neonatal nurse and doc looked over and cleaned her up, so I had to wait a bit to see her but oh, I could hear her cry and it made me cry, too. It was a joyous noise.
When they laid Lyla on my chest wrapped up in a receiving blanket I couldn’t believe how tiny she was after all the worries we had about her getting too big. I was convinced she was going to be at least a pound heavier.
I was blown away by how adorable she is, yes I’m biased but I really wasn’t prepared for this, and everyone who sees her just fawns all over her now. That’s not good for my ego. Heh. But, that’s a topic for another blog on another day.
Our family has fallen in love with her and I can tell they’d do anything for her.
So, that’s how she arrived in our life.
I’m going to tackle a couple other things in the next post tomorrow including the challenges we’ve faced in feeding her and what we’ve done to resolve that as well as the transition from insulin to oral meds.
For now, that’s enough and hopefully my recollection was clear enough to put you there.