Baby feet

About a week before Mother's Day Dan asks about what I would like as a gift. What I really wanted was for him to come up with a creative gift all on his own. Dan has a sensitive, romantic side and has wowed me with surprises in the past. But, with all that was going on this year, he needed a little help. I didn't get this on Mother's Day because it was a last minute request and he had to make time to do it, and then we all got sick, but here it is. My Mother's Day gift. I LOVE it and I LOVE my husband for doing it. Thanks Honey!



Dan says he still needs to do a bit of tweeking on it. And he hasn't signed or titled it just yet.

For Sale

Our home is officially on the market. As is turns out there are 2 other houses on our street for sale. One of them is right next door. We had a last minute realtor walk-thru on Thursday morning and I was here while they did it. Homeowners are not usually present for these things, but because it was last minute and I had Lucy, I got to stay. It was interesting to hear what people had to say. All the comments were good and I heard a few say that our house is the nicest they've seen for sale on this end of town. That's encouraging. We love our home and all the improvements we've done to it, but to have that affirmed by 15-20 realtors is a good feeling.

If you want to see our listing you can go to brinkoetter.com. Click on the detailed property search and put in Cobb. You should get our listing -246 Cobb - and our neighbors-256.

If I were more computer savy, I'd put a direct link in here, but I don't know how to do that.

Anyone want to buy a house?

Teeth!

About a week ago I noticed that Lucy had a tooth poking through on the bottom. I checked in her mouth today to assess the progress and surprise! there was another tooth. So now she has 2 little teeth coming in on the bottom. She hasn't acted like they've bothered her too bad. Thank goodness!

I took some pictures this morning. I loved the new outfit I put on her so I had to take her picture. Here are a few of my favorites


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She loves to look at herself in the mirror. I read that they won't recognize themselves till about 7-8 months of age, but she gets a kick out of something.

Channeling Davey Milligan

This post will not make any sense to you if you did not grow up in Mt. Auburn. For my fellow MTA friends reading this, I think you'll get a laugh.

This week Lucy has been "talking" much more. She makes all kinds of sounds and noises. Tonight she made me laugh when every so often the sounds "woo-woo" would come out of her mouth. All I could think of was good old Davey.

What a week!

This has been a rough week in the Niebrugge household. I am glad things are slowly returning to normal.

It all started last Thursday when I noticed that Lucy was coughing/choking while she was sleeping. It scared me to death. She'd cough and then it would sound like she was gasping for air. I checked on her every time and she seemed to be fine, but I called the doctor and made an appt. for the next day. So Friday I took her to see Dr. Newcome and I am glad I did. As it turned out, the doctor thought it sounded like she was starting to get the croup. The doctor gave a Rx for Lucy and she warned me that this medicine tasted especially awful. She suggested putting it in her bottle if we couldn't get her to take it straight. So I dropped off the Rx at Walgreens and asked to have it flavored, hoping that would help, and later that evening we began the task of getting Lucy to swallow the awful tasting medicine. This turned out to be a bigger trick than I bargined for. We had a syringe (did I spell that right?) that came with her medicine so we tried the tactic of squirting it in her mouth. Poor thing, she kept shuddering as she swallowed some of it. Most of it came rolling right back out her mouth. We decided that the next day we'd try putting it in her bottle. That didn't work either, she took a few drinks and realized that it tasted bad and then refused to take anymore. So we went back to trying to squirt it in her mouth. We just weren't having any luck. She'd get some down, but most would come running out the side. On Monday I called the doctor back because I knew Lucy wasn't getting a full dose and I didn't know what else to try. They decided to redose the medicine, which meant that we had to start all over again! UGH. I aslo asked if we could divide the dose - I thought maybe that might work- 3/4 of a tsp at one time was too much.

So what finally worked? We divided the dose into 1/4 tsp and gave it 3 times. I also mixed up some sugar water to squirt in her mouth after to help her swallow and get rid of the horrible medicine taste. She seemed to be ok with taking it that way and did much better with it after that.

I also got sick on Tuesday with what I think must have been a cold. But, it was the WORST cold I have ever had in my life. By Wed, I was worthless. Thank goodness Dan works from home on Wed, because he had to watch Lucy and take care of her most the day. My eyes watered so bad I looked like I was crying, my nose was running so bad that I couldn't do anything because I was blowing every 10 seconds and I also had a fever. At 3pm I crawled in bed and stayed there the rest of the night.

I am happy to say that as of today, we are feeling almost back to normal. Dan caught the cold as well, but it hasn't knocked him out yet.

And in the midst of all this sickness there was Mother's Day. It was a pretty good day. We went to church and then headed to Springfield to go to Babies R Us, and then went to my sister's house that evening to spend time with the family. The evening ended abruptly when Griffin my 4 year old nephew got his hands caught in the treadmill while it was running. My sister has a nice finished basement and the kids were playing down there in the playroom while the adults were upstairs finishing their meal. We don't know exactly what happened but one of them got the key to the treadmill and turned it on and poor Griffin was caught. When we realized what was happening, all panic broke loose and people went flying thought the house to get downstairs. Luckily, Griffin still had all his fingers intact. He did have some pretty bad tread burns and he lost some skin from his fingers. Praise God is all I can say!

Whew! I could write more, but I'll save the rest for another post.

I am so thankful for Lucy

A few months back I was doing my usual online surfing. I frequent a few different baby message boards and chat with other moms who have babies around the same age as Lucy. It's a way for me to connect with other moms and talk about what our babies are doing. Well it was on one of these boards that I came across this story. I don't know these people, but when I read their story I was overwhelmed with sadness. Being a new mom, their story is especially hard. I have bookmarked their blog and I continue to read and pray for them as they are trying to move forward. I won't go into details, you can read the blog if you like. I would just like to ask you all to pray for them as well. They are going through a loss that I never, ever want to know. Grab a tissue before you read.

go to: richandjenn.blogspot.com

Chub

Before I had Lucy I was excited to register for one of these Bumbo Sitters. They are a foam seat that helps babies sit unassisted. I thought it was a great concept and was so thanful when my cousins Angie and Jennifer bought this for us. When Lucy was around 3 months I tried her in the seat and she did pretty well, but after a few minutes she cried and wanted out. Since then I have been getting it out every few weeks and trying her in it again. This morning I decided to pull it back out of the closet and try her in it again. She did pretty well and seemed to like it better than the previous attempts. I didn't leave her in very long so I'm not sure how she'd do for an extended time period. It was really funny when I went to take her out and the chair stuck to her butt. She's so chubby that I had to have Dan pull the seat off her. Her legs are so chubby that they are really stuck in there good. Maybe that's why she has never been too fond of this seat. Her chubbiness makes it uncomfortable??? Not sure, but she does look cute sitting in it. *sigh* she looks like such a big girl.

5 months old!

Today Lucy is 5 months old. It's hard to believe how fast the time is going. She is so much fun at this age. She's a happy girl and smiles all the time.

I weighed her today and she's 19 pounds and some change. I wish I had a better scale so I knew how close to 20lbs she is.

She started rolling over a few days ago. I really thought it would take her a bit longer, but once she started rolling on her side, she quickly figured out how to go all the way over. Now we just need to work on getting her to roll from her tummy to her back.



Here is her 5 month picture.

Her hair cracks me up. It's growing in and sticking straight up on top.

There are more pics on my dropshots page. Check them out.

So much going on

I haven't blogged in a few days and it feels like so much has happened-where to begin.
I guess I"ll start with what we saw on our way to church this morning. About 9:30 this morning as we were driving down Eldarado Street we came to the stoplight at Rt51 South. I saw lots of police lights and at first I couldn't quite figure out what was going on. Then as we drove past I saw that down Rt 51 there was snow on the curbs and tons of people. Again, it took me a minute and then I remembered, filming on the movie The Imformant has begun. It's a movie starring Matt Damon about an ADM scandal that took place about 10 years ago. (If you want to know more, check out Becky's blog-she goes into more detail) As we drove past I suggested we turn around and drive down the block for a closer look. We were already late for church, but it's not everyday that we have this kind of excitement happening in our city. Maybe later today we'll go back down and take a closer look. We'll be among the huge crowd of people with cameras taking pictures.


More to come...