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...

LUCY

Just thought I'd blog about some of the changes I am seeing in Lucy. She's almost 5 months old and in the past week I have really noticed her chewing on her toys. She tries to get her thumb/fingers and a toy in her mouth at the same time. This week she's also discovered her feet. Now when I change her she's grabbing at her toes. She is also rolling onto her side and sleeping that way at night. I was thinking that she would start to roll over soon, but I think it is still going to take her awhile. The doctor said not to worry if she's late doing that. She said bigger babies are slower to roll over. I am actually ok with her not doing it. Once she starts I'm afraid she'll do it at night and then get mad that she's on her tummy. We're all sleeping so well, I am preparing myself for a few bumby nights once the rolling begins. Lucy has also found her voice. She "talks" all the time and is always making noise. I think she just likes to hear herself.

I took a really funny picture of her the other day. I don't have it loaded on my computer yet, so when I get that done I'll post it.

Never say never

I am sure that before each of us had children we would say things like, "I'll never let my child do that", or "I will never give my child one of those" etc... I've tried hard not to say too many of these types of statement because I may end up eating those words some day. However, I do know that I have very clear goals for myself as a parent.

Ok, having said all that. I will never let my 3.5 year old drink from a bottle. In case you're confused, Leah Reminy in an actress from the tv show King of Queens. Yesterday she was on the Rachel Rae Show talking about life with her 3.5 year old daughter. I sat and watched this show with disbelief. Her daughter is 3.5 years old and still drinks from a bottle. She still gets up 6-9 times during the night to give her daughter bottles filled with water. 6-9 TIMES! These people haven't had full nights rest in over 3 years! The thing that really got me though was that Leah didn't see anything wrong with an almost 4 year old still taking a bottle. One of the things Leah said was that she just hated taking something away from her baby that gave her so much joy! Um, she's not a baby anymore.

I just kept thinking to myself, that girl is going to Kindergarten with baby bottles in her lunchbox.

So if Lucy is still taking a bottle at 3.5 years. Someone slap me. PLEASE.

Our new home

Just in case you're curious what our new house looks like, here it is.

Music to my ears

Here's cute clip of Lucy. Dan was making funny noises and she laughed at this one so he kept doing it. She really got worked up.

We are moving!

It's official. Dan, Lucy and I are going to be moving to Mt. Zion.

house update

We'll we still don't know if we got the house. The couple selling it are out of state and the husband is very hard to get a hold of. We put in our offer yesterday and they countered today. We sumbitted another offer and we're still waiting to hear. The realtors did a walk through today of our house. The original listing agent of our current home did a walk through assessment as well as our realtor. He knew what the house looked like when we bought it. I think he was somewhat impressed with all the work we'd put into it.

No turning back now...

Today Dan and I made an offer on a house. We haven't heard back yet, so we'll see what happens tomorrow. AHHHH. I can't believe we're actually doing this. I almost got teary eyed while going through all the paperwork today. I'm going to be an emotional basketcase in the upcoming weeks if this all happens. Pray for me!

Pros and Cons

There's a good chance that our family might be moving. I never thought I'd leave this little house, especially after all the hard work we did to make it our own. I really don't want to move because, and I say this with no apologies, my house is cute! I love this house. For those of you who haven't seen it, it's a 1920's bungalow. It has so much character and charm. It has beautiful, thick crown molding and base boards, real wood doors, an amazing glass built-in cabinet in the kitchen and built-ins in the hallway. So, if I love it so much, why are we thinking of moving? I am asking that question myself. However, I know that realistically, we can't live here forever. The house is simply not big enough for the size of family we want to have. We would have to move at some point and I keep telling myself that moving with one child will be easier than moving with 2 or 3.
The house we are seriously considering is in Mt. Zion.They have really good schools and we could send our kids to public school. If we stay here, Lucy would be attending Decatur Christian -we won't do Decatur Public Schools. This "new" house is in a really nice subdivision, but it doesn't look sterile like some of them do. There are well established trees and also the houses are not all cookie-cutter style homes. This home has an attached garage which is something we currently don't have. It also has laundry on the main floor where as now I have to go to the basement and it's getting harder to do as Lucy gets older. As she becomes mobile, I won't be able to leave her for a few minutes to go change out the washer. It has a nice covered deck and a big back yard. It also has a big kitchen. It's not really my style, but I can live with it for awhile till we can make some improvements. It has lots of counter and cabinet space which I am currently lacking.
The downside? It is a newer home and has the inexpensive trim and the hollow doors and it lacks history and character. Some of those things can be changed. I keep telling myself that. It's also a great time to buy a home. Interest rates are low and we can get more for our money at this time.

I guess I'm writing this and telling you this because in a sense it's like therapy. I'm probably never going to really be ready to move because of all the sentimental attachment I have to this house, and writing this helps me to convince myself that we're doing the right thing.

*I keep asking Dan if we can use this as a vacation home. He says No. *

We'll see, by the end of this week we have have a new house!

A few pictures and an update

Today was Lucy's 4 month well child check-up. We found out that she weighs 18.12 pounds and is 27 inches long! She is off the charts. She cried right away as soon as they put her on the scale. I don't think she liked laying on the hard surface, or maybe she's sensitive about her weight? I'm not sure. So we were not off to a good start. She cried when the nurse took her temp in her bottom and at the same time she peed all over the table. We finally got her cleaned up and calmed down and she did ok while the doctor checked her over. Then of course she wailed when she got her shots. I hate that part. It's so hard to see them stick her. This was why I made Dan go with me today. She was so hard to calm down at her 2 month shots that I needed back up this time. She's been pretty good today. She slept quite a bit this afternoon. I am hoping she sleeps well tonight.

Here are a few pictures from the last few days.

Her shots didn't keep her from flashing a big grin this afternoon.

Sunday was so nice we layed outside for while enjoying the beautiful weather.




Her 4 month picture.

Calling all Lurkers

Becky and I were having a conversation the other night about our blogs on our drive up to see Michelle. We both were wondering just how many people are reading what we write. I know of several people who read my blog because of the comments I get, but I know there are many more of you out there that just like to remain annonymous. I don't mind that there maybe a friend of a friend that likes to read this. But I'm curious who's out there. If you enjoy reading bits and pieces of my everyday and sometimes boring life. Let it be known!

So, this post is for all you "Lurkers" out there. Those of you who read, but don't ever comment this is your chance. I'm challenging you to come out of the woodwork and make yourself known.

Oh, and thanks Gaye! You inspired me to do this post! :)

4 months old today!

I can't believe how fast the time is going. Lucy is 4 months old already. She is getting so big. We have her 4 month check-up at the doctor's next week. I am anxious to find out her true height and weight. I weighed her here at home and I think she's about 19 pounds! She definately a big girl. She must take after Dan because I wasn't a chunky baby.

After lots of hardwork and prayer, Lucy has become a sleeping champ. I am so glad I didn't listen to the many people who told me "Oh, some babies just aren't sleepers", or "Some babies don't need as much sleep". While it's true that some babies are just better at sleeping than others, all babies do need a certain amount of sleep, in my opinion. Their bodies are growing so fast that they need that sleep. Anyway, I was determined to have my baby become the best sleeper she could be. She now goes to bed between 6:30-7:30 every night and sleeps till 6-7am. She is still napping 4 times a day although her morning nap is starting to get longer and I'm waiting for her afternoon naps to consolidate in one long nap instead of 2-3, 1 hour naps. That will come with time as she gets a bit older.


She is getting close to rolling over from her back to her tummy. I think within the next few weeks she'll probably get it figured out.


I haven't taken her picture yet today. I'll post it later when I get it done. In the meantime here are a few others.

I call this one: My happy little prisoner

Here's a video clip of her playing with her toys.