Life is Settling Back Down

I am starting to feel human again. I had 5 nights in a row of getting essentially 2-3 hours of sleep per night and I felt like I was losing my mind. I have had sleeping problems for years now, and sometimes it is way worse than others. I think that the worst has passed though and I got a beautiful and peaceful night of sleep last night. My mom even had to come down and rescue me for a few days. Moms are the best, especially mine.

I believe that more teeth are on the horizon for Miss Lucy. For many nights in a row she was up a lot of times, which obviously was not helping my sleeping issues. I believe that she is feeling a million times better as our nights are getting easier again. I pray for this trend to continue. I can't wait for those two top teeth to pop through. Teeth are so adorable on babies, but man, they are a lot of work to get here.

Lucy has decided this week that she wants to change her schedule, much to the sadness of her mother. She was taking about 4.5-5 hours worth of naps a day for quite some time. Now she is only taking a short nap in the morning (30-45 minutes) and about a 1-1.5 hour nap in the early afternoon. By the time bedtime at 8 rolls around, I have a very tired and sometimes grouchy little one on my hands. The up side to all of the this is that she is usually so exhausted that she passes out while I rock her with her evening bottle and lays right down. That is nice. Very very nice.

About the standing in the crib, I think we have this under control. She has mastered the art of both up and down with no problems at all. YIPPPPPEEEEE!!! I am not at all kidding when I say that she wants to stand absolutely all of the time. She has had many falls and she never cries about it, just figures out the quickest way to get back on her feet. She is a climber, ALREADY!! As you can see in the pictures, after studying what her best options would be, she finally got herself into her toy bins. Silly silly girl. Of course once she got there and was laying across the toys, she had no idea what to do with herself and got mad. I have a 7 month old climber. What am I in for next? By the way, on Monday my little baby is going to be 8 months old already. Can you believe that? It sounds so old to me.




In other news, she is now eating Cheerios, yogurt, biter biscuits, and the regular old baby mush (which she is not at all a fan of). I am slowly introducing more and more solids because she is much more interested in eating them. As far as her milk goes, we are still on the soy formula. I really do believe that she has just gotten 3 miserable colds since we returned home. She passed the last one on to me and I am still not 100% over it, so I know she felt rotten. I think that allergies could quite possibly be playing a part in all of this as well. Who knows??

The weather has been amazing here lately, so we have been taking lots of walks and enjoying it as much as possible before the miserable summer heat hits. It has rained the last two days, so we could get out for our stroll. I love all of Lucy's summer clothes and dresses, so I can't wait to have them all out everyday!! I also can't wait for it to be time for pool time because this girl still LOVES the water. She is going to be so excited about the pool.

We are going to a wedding in Houston tomorrow that Justin is in. I am excited for Lucy to get to meet a lot of people who have not yet gotten the chance to meet her yet. It should be fun.

Standing ALL the Time

We have a new problem, Lucy now wants to stand in her bed all of the time. If she is not dead asleep when I lay her down, she immediately flops over and makes her way to the side to stand up. If I leave her in there, she freaks out when she is up and can't get back down. Bed time used to be really easy. Now not so much. Last night this went on for 2 hours!!! It has already been going on for an hour tonight. I will bounce her to sleep but the second she hits the bed her eyes pop open and her legs start kicking. I will leave her for a few minutes until she starts to freak out and the whole thing starts again. Should I leave her bumper pads in or take them out? I don't want her to hit her head while she is learning to get back down, but she uses them to assist her in her mission to stand. She can still get up without them, but they are helpful. How long does it take for babies to learn to get down and not be obsessed with standing??? I am tired. I would love advice from you experienced mommas out there.

Lucy is scared of nothing. She will crawl over anything, stand on anything, and nothing gets in her way. I can't believe how much she has changed in just the last week. She is a real handful. I have some videos, but haven't had the time to get them uploaded yet. Will work on that soon.

Update on Lucy

Thank you all so much who have commented with advice or just well wishes. We really appreciate it.

We went to the doctor yesterday. Other than a really crusty nose, Lucy was feeling much better and we could tell immediately when she woke up in the morning as her normal happy self. We were going to the doctor anyway. He said that he could for sure rule out any of the scary things, like whooping cough or pneumonia. He said that the fact that she was sick and then totally well in between the episodes was not consistent with a soy allergy. I am still not 100% convinced, but do understand what he was saying. He said that it is bizarre that she would get three colds in such a short period of time, but that it was certainly not impossible. He also said that coughing until vomitting is a symptom that they see in young children with colds all of the time. What I wanted him to say was, here is what is wrong and here is how to fix it. Then we could be done with this. Here is my question for anyone who has had experience or knowledge with a soy or milk allergy, were the symptoms present 100% of the time?

Just a little background, when we got Lucy in Vietnam and for her first few weeks at home, she was on milk based formula. It did not seem to bother her other than the fact that her dirty diapers were always really loose. The ped said to try soy and see what happened. Well, it fixed that problem and she seemed to be fine with it, until the colds started. I know that it has been cold season and so I am hoping that the doctor is right and that the poor thing just kept getting colds. Now that it is getting warmer, hopefully we will be done with this for a while, or forever! I am going to end up being one of those moms who freaks out about germs because when she gets sick it is so awful.

Today she feels really great. She slept in until 8:45 this morning. Yeah for baby and mom and dad. She woke up smiling and ready to go. She is eating pretty well again. Every time after one of these sicknesses, she sleeps so much. I feel like her poor little body is catching up. She is napping right now.

In really really good news, her bloodwork came back normal!!!! I breathed a huge sigh of relief when we got that news. I was tired of worrying about it.

And as far as growing and learning goes, she is still hard at it. She now wants to pull up on everything in sight. She usually only gets to her knees, but sometimes she gets all the way to her feet. She is still really unsteady on her feet for the moment, so I have to be really close to her all of the time so that she doesn't fall and bust her noggin. However, yesterday when she was supposed to be napping, she was in her crib just singing herself some songs. I went to peak and see what she was doing, and low and behold, she was standing up in her crib! When she saw me she grinned the biggest smile. You could just tell how unbelievably proud she was of herself. She then lost her balance, plopped back without hitting anything, and laughed about it. As far as my reaction, I thought oh great, what has she started now. She could really hit her head hard, so she is going to have to be watched until she can easily get up AND down without hurting herself. It gets a little crazier around here with each passing week.

HELP!!!

We got the bloodwork done. It was an absolutely horrible experience again, but it is done. We should have the test results on Monday. The lady from the lab even called to check on Lucy it was so pitiful.

She is sick with a cold/cough again. This is the third cold in less than two months. The problem is that with the coughs comes vomitting. Major vomitting. For a couple of days she can hold almost nothing done because right after she eats, she has a big coughing fit and everything comes back up. She won't drink Pedialyte. So I am constantly worrying about her getting dehydrated. I know all of the signs to look for and she has never shown any of the signs. This time has been her worst cold yet. She is usually still in good spirits when she is sick. Not this time. She is very irritable and sad. Usually the vomitting lasts for exactly 2 days. Not this time, it is lasting longer. I don't even know what to do at this point. We are going back to the doctor tomorrow. They know about every time she has done this and the doctor has said that she has a sensitive gag reflex. Well, I think it is time we dig a little deeper. This does not seem right to me. I am starting to think she might have a soy allergy. She shows most of the signs of being allergic to soy that I can find online - the runny nose, the cough, vomitting, a rash (ever since she switched the skin around her mouth is really red if I don't keep Aquaphor on it all of the time). The throwing up episodes did not start until after we switched her to soy. Do any of you have any advice on this? I am open to hearing any of your experiences at this point.

Please say a little prayer for Lucy that she starts feeling better and that we can figure out what is going on - without having to do any more bloodwork.

Sad Sad Baby

On Monday Lucy had a doctor's appointment to start her first round of vaccines. The shots did not settle well with her, at all. She spent a day and half as a very upset baby girl. It was awful to watch. She had a fever and was overall just unhappy. She woke up this morning feeling better, and we had to go and upset her all over again. When we got her bloodwork done a while back, two of her tests needed to be rerun. The doctor told us not to be alarmed at this point, but that he wanted to test a couple of things again. He said that most likely the first result was from poor nutrition. So, we took her back to the lab this afternoon to get it over with. Can I just say, that it was the most awful, pitiful, and sad thing that I have ever witnessed. It literally brought me to tears. They could not find a vein, but they looked forever. They pricked her once and missed, gave her a break because she was so freaked out, then pricked her a few more times and could never get the blood to flow well enough to get what they needed. This went on for a very long time until we finally said that she had had enough. The nurses were so sweet and felt terrible about all of this. Lucy was terrified, mad, clearly confused, and overall miserable. It really did break my heart. She screamed the whole ride home and then passed out for 2.5 hours. She woke up mad. We took her for a walk and she perked up. She ended the night on a happy note. The worst part of all is that they never got the blood. So, we have to go back again on Friday. She is going to flip out. I would if I were her as well. I am almost crying now just thinking about putting her through any of this ever again. I feel like she is not going to trust me because I keep putting her in these awful situations. I wish that we didn't have to do this, but it is a must it appears. Is she going to hate us? This is so terrible.

I'm a BIG Girl Now

I have several exciting things to report for the past week. We were in Nashville this past weekend for my sister's 30th birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY HOLLY! While we were there, Lucy got her first injury since she has been with us. It was nothing major, but she hit her head on the coffee table and it split her forehead - not deep or anything, but I thought I should document it. She did not even cry or make a peep when it happened.



On Friday we got to eat lunch with Susan who is going to be travelling to Vietnam within a few weeks to get her precious Lily Ana. This little angel is really special to our family because she is from Que Son, where Lucy is from. We got to see her and love on her while we were in Vietnam. Susan is about to pop she is so ready to get her baby girl. We are praying for her travel approval to come NOW!! We had such a wonderful time getting to finally meet Susan in person. Lucy was so sweet all of lunch and let Susan hold and love on her.

Then on Saturday, Sherri and Grace drove over to see Lucy and I. It was so amazing to see Sherri, Terri, and Gracie girl!! We travelled to Vietnam with them and they made our trip so much fun. Grace was Lucy's roommate for her entire life. Lucy lived the first 5 months of her little life with Grace always being about 1 foot away from her to her right. Grace means so much to us. She has the best momma in the world. We really do appreciate them making the long drive over to see us. The girls just looked each other down. I know that they don't understand now, but they will grow up always knowing how important they are in one another's lives. We can't wait for the next reunion with Lily Ana and all of the Que Son girls will be together again!!!

Grace, is that you? Where in the world have you been????

The girls are back together - finally!

Lucy is crying and saying that she doesn't want to leave Grace yet

Me with my two favorite girls!

Could Grace be any more adorable?!?!


Also on Saturday, right before we left to meet Sherri, we realized that Lucy's two bottom teeth have poked through!! She was a little fussy that day, but nothing that was too terrible. We noticed how much she had been drooling last week, and now we finally know why!! She is biting everything as hard as she possibly can. She will hold something in her mouth and bite it until she shakes and then pull it out while she is still biting down.

In other development news, for the first time ever, she crawled over to a toy basket and pulled herself all the way up to her feet. I could not believe it. She has only done it one more time since then. We have to baby proof our house this week! She is into everything. She will wave when we wave to her. She was waving to everyone in the airport today. She will shake her head to say NO! And she is now saying mama all of the time and does not have to be fussing to do it. I swear I really could hear her say it all day long. I LOVE IT!!!

Here are a few more really adorable pictures to enjoy.

Lucy and John getting read to by their PaPa - notice John's arms behind his head!!


Lucy in her bloomers

Cutie Pie!

Is this not the coolest picture ever? It is to me and I love this so much. It is a huge 20x30 print on a canvas and is like a gorgeous piece of art. My friend Sarah, the photographer, is the greatest!!



Here is Justin's family from the baptism. Lucy crawled over to her cousin Austen and gave him a big ole kiss on the head. It was so adorable and sweet.





And this is just a cute picture of Lucy. She LOVES the new packages of diapers. She learned the other day to crawl over to the package, get both hands up on it, get up to her feet, and then end in the sitting position. Needless to say, her mother was more than impressed. She is so strong and when she is laying on the floor and I hold her hands, she pulls herself all the way up to her feet. This is a new trick and one that makes her very very proud of herself once she is on her feet. I will get it on video because her little face just lights up once she is up.



And in the biggest news of all, she has now said mama for me many many times!!! No one seems to believe me when I say this, but my mom and my dad have both witnessed it multiple times. She really only does it when she is whining or fussing. She actually laid in her bed singing for a while tonight and my mom and I heard her say it while playing in her bed. I swear I am not making this up. What can I say, the girl loves her mama!!!!!!

Happenings in the Life of Lucy

Well, we have been quite busy since my last post. Lucy had her first experience at the zoo. We went with 2 of my good friends and their kids. Lucy just stared down every animal and seemed to take it all in. I think her favorite was the monkeys. They were really active while we were there, so they kept us all entertained.

Lucy and I at the elephants


Lucy with her Aunt Amy and the flamingos


Lucy was baptized this past Sunday. Both my family and Justin's family were in town. It was so wonderful to have so much love and support for her at such a special occasion. The whole thing brought me to tears. I felt so overwhelmed with emotion as our pastor baptized her. God has really blessed our family. She wore one of her Ao Dai's that we had made for her in Vietnam. She was so adorable. When the pastor held her up to show the congregation, she kicked her little legs in delight.

Justin, Lucy, and I with our Pastor after the service

Lucy looking adorable in her Ao Dai

Lucy and her Aunt Amy

My side of the family - I will post one of Justin's side as well once I get my pictures uploaded

Lucy being tossed around by her Aunt Katy - this is her favorite thing in the world


Lucy has unfortunately come down with another bad cold. Poor baby is totally stuffed up and getting another cough. Let's all pray that the cough til you throw up is not back. She is a pretty good trooper when she is not feeling well. I just feel so badly for her. I hope she is well soon. Her appetite is way down and she is a bit fussy. She seems to really really be a mama's girl when she is not feeling well.

Other than that, life goes on as normal for us.