My baby’s big girl room….

I guess it’s time to admit my baby is really no longer a baby.  She is over 2 years old!  We finally finished off the dresser for her room and set it up.  We had planned on finishing off the babyproofing, setting it up as a big girl room but waiting for this coming weekend to transition her to a big girl bed.  Well, we had put the mattress on the floor to decide where we wanted the bed to go and move the other stuff around accordingly.  We decided to leave it there in hopes to get her used to it being there and it not be such a shock when we put her in it to sleep.  HA.  Shock her, apparently not.  Shock us, YES.  She decided tonight at bedtime that she wanted to sleep on the mattress.  She laid down and got all excited so we decided to allow it.  Mind you, Aaron has to go to work tomorrow and Charli and I are going out of town for a couple days, so I didn’t think it would be a good idea to start tonight.  She has been in bed for an hour and a half.  Yes, she has moved around (thankfully the mattress is only a couple inches thick) and just might end up on the floor.  But not a peep and she didn’t once move to get up at all!  MY BABY IS GROWING UP!! 

    

The work to get to the final project

My cutie bug!!

The final dresser project!

It took a couple days longer than I had expected.  But we LOVE it.  Charli kept touching it and saying ‘Peettttyy Mommy!”

I didn’t expect it to feel this way….

So, I just didn’t expect it to feel this way at all.  I’m not sure why I didn’t see this coming.  Whenever you deal with a loss no matter how early it is, you should grieve.  I never did.  Even the day it happened I tried to ignore it and go on with my day acting as if nothing was going on, even though I was in a lot of pain.  For some reason I felt as if I was being punished so I had to just deal with the pain.  Like I must have done something wrong to have had this happen.  Right after it happened, I acted as if nothing went on and it wasn’t a big deal.  I even waited to go to the doctor.  It keeps blindsiding me.  Every time someone else announces their pregnancy, I get depressed.  I am so happy for them but the sadness and depression just creeps in and all the what ifs go through my head. 

I knew from the moment I got pregnant that I was.  This was during softball and all of the girls had figured it out too.  As well as most of the other coaches (even Daddy even though I tried to hide it).  I was so sick all of the time.  Crazy nauseous and dry heaving ALL THE TIME.  I mean all the time.  It was bad.  Charli was constantly worried when I would have to run to the bathroom to dry heave.  I felt so bad.  She would cry sometimes even though I tried to play it off.  Right about the time that most people find out, I miscarried.  I tried to act like since it was SO early on that it didn’t bother me.  It can be a blessing and a curse when you are so in tune with your body.  On one hand, it helps out when I go to the doctor and such.  But when I am in pain or things like that, it sucks.  This sucked big time.  I miss being pregnant.  I’ve been looking back at pictures of when I was pregnant with Charli.  I miss that big ole belly.  I miss feeling a baby moving around inside of me.  I know God has a plan and someway somehow this was a part of it. 

This happened in April.  I keep thinking about how far along I would be…. I would have been around 22 weeks pregnant now.  We would have just recently found out what we were having.  We would have been due around Thanksgiving.  God give me the strength at that time to be able to handle this.  I didn’t really think I would ever put this out there like this… but I am hoping it will be a step in the right direction for dealing with it.

Freezer Meals!!!!

So I finally broke down and tried out the freezer meal method!!!!  I LOVE IT!  I decided to use a good deal of our stock of chicken and pork!  So therefore all the ingredients I ended up needing cost me about 90 bucks!  I ended up with 16-18 dinners (some can be split again depending on how hungry we end up being) and lots of breakfasts!  The day I did it, I also ended up cooking dinner and put half of that away to freeze!  Tonight I also did that and will tomorrow (hopefully).  The bulk of the cooking was done in one day though.  I started at about 1030 in the morning and didn’t finish until around 7ish.  That wasn’t straight through though.  I took a couple little breaks like for lunch and dinner and just to sit down for a minute (to read 50 Shades of Grey!!).  I made a few things that required shredded chicken so I threw a bunch into a crockpot and let that do its magic while I got on other stuff.  I ended up making Skillet Lasagna (was supposed to be Lasagna Roll-ups but let’s just leave it at regular lasagna noodles and I DON’T get along… it was ugly), Egg Muffins (amazeballs!!!!!), Key West Chicken, Crispy Southwest Chicken Wraps (I tweaked it some), Hawaiian Meatballs, Kalua Pork (I pulled the pork and then added the stuff to it), Colorado Chicken Chili (From Don’t Panic- Dinner’s in the Freezer), Hawaiian Chicken (also from Don’t Panic-Dinner’s in the Freezer), regular pulled pork, and Breakfast Burrito (from the same book).  I highly suggest the book!  I can’t wait to get the second edition too!  I also can’t wait to cook a lot more of the recipes!!!!!  All I wanted was to be able to spend more time with my family during the summer and not all in the kitchen!  Mission accomplished!

The Breakfast Burritos!

A good part of the haul….

The Colorado Chicken Chili (with black beans instead of Northern Beans because I forgot to buy them and had the black beans!)  Reminds me of Tortilla Soup now!

So far we’ve tried a couple things and have LOVED everything!  I can’t wait until Fall/Winter to do a lot more soups and chilis!!!!!

I now have a 2 year old!

How in the world did that happen?  Tomorrow she will actually be 2 years old and 1 month.  So clearly I’m a little behind on this blog!  I can’t believe Charli is truly 2 now.  And 2 in every way!  I think she had a blast on her birthday! 

We don’t know why, but she woke up acting very strange on her actual birthday.  By the end of the day she seemed alright! 

By the end of the night she was in better spirits and loving her birthday gifts of sunglasses, a big girl pillow for her crib and I believe coloring books! 

Charli’s party was airplane themed!  CharliAir… where everyone flies first class!! We had an absolute blast!  We only had a few kiddos come so it made it really easy to just let them run free in the backyard with the sandbox and baby pool!  Man was there a lot of sand in that pool HAHA.  LOVED it.  Made me realize I love my house being full of kids!  Beware, hubby!

 

Having a two year old is a whole new experience.  It is as if she changed overnight!  Now she is even more independent and opinionated.  I LOVE IT.  We butt heads but really, that’s to be expected!  She has blossomed like crazy lately.  She has SOOOOO many words and phrases and gestures and quite the little personality.  We dog sat for a friend and she just benefited like you wouldn’t believe by having their awesome dog here!  If only we were allowed to have a dog or cat at our house (the only rule for us!!)  Her speech therapist even said she would seriously benefit from having a dog.  Hmmm, how to work on that one…

We tried potty training a couple times.  It didn’t quite go as planned.  I won’t push it with her though because she is such a hardheaded stubborn ornery child.  She will do it on her own when she is ready.  She is just that kind of kid.  I got told today that it’s amazing I can see that because most parents don’t get that and get so frustrated and make the whole experience that much harder.  That made me feel really good.  That means I have a pretty good understanding of Charli… as if you can ever say that of a parent HAHA. 

Everyday her little personality just shows more and more and more.  I wake up and can’t wait to see what is new with her now!  Just today she started calling me Mommy instead of Momma… it ages her.  It is so cute though.  My little baby girl is growing up way too fast!