The Year Winter Lasted a Day

Now that Ainsley is old enough to really enjoy the snow, we have been waiting for it to arrive.  Oh the irony of the warmest winter I can ever remember.  Then they started predicting snow for last night.  It was hard to believe it would really snow since the day before it was 60 degrees.  We didn't tell Ainsley about the possibility but prepared ourselves just in case. 

Well, we got a whooping inch of snow, but it was really sticky and wet snow, perfect for sledding and snowmen.  So we decided to make the best of it.  I called my neighbor, Marci, who has been giving me a hard time for not getting Ainsley out sledding the past couple years.  She agreed to meet me this morning to take Ainsley sledding. 

We bundled up and we were ready to go. 

 Even David had his snowman outfit on that included boots.  He's pumped.

Marci provided the sled and we were off.  We drove to the library where they have a hill that isn't too big but big enough.  It took one time down the hill and Ainsley was hooked.

She quickly graduated to getting pushed down the hill by herself.

And she squealed with glee on each trip.  At the bottom of the hill, she would say "Let's do it again" EVERY TIME!

I even got to get on the sled with her. 

It wasn't fast enough so we went back to pushing her down the hill.  Side note, only in NC can you wear jeans and a sweatshirt sledding and not be freezing!

And don't think for a second that I wasn't going to teach her that she has to bring her own sled up the hill.

The excitement was all just a little bit too much for David

When we got home we had to make a snowman.  Actually, we made 2.  A big sister snowman and a baby brother snowman.

And what caps off a snow day better than a cup of "Hot Chocolate Tea"?  (We may drink a lot of hot tea around here)

And now it's 12:00 and the snow is almost gone and it's supposed to be 54 tomorrow and 63 on Wednesday, we will look forward to winter again next year.

Sacrifices

When you get pregnant or even dream about getting pregnant, your dreams include things like baby smiles, cooing, sweet little sleeping babies.  Your visions of what life with the baby will be like are all roses and sleeping babies. 

Even though I have had a baby before, my mind blocked out all the hard stuff.  My brain went right to 6 months where Ainsley was smiling and sleeping well.  She was easy to put to bed.  She only woke up once a night and was up for 20 minutes at most. She was just generally a happy baby.

And now reality has hit. David wasn't home a week when he was diagnosed with thrush, which is a yeast infection.  The main symptoms are a white tongue, horrible diaper rash, and gas.  The white tongue we can deal with.  The diaper rash got better with some special diaper cream.  The gas on the other hand was miserable.  When he was awake, he was screaming.  It was down right miserable.  We had a couple nights when we slept only an hour or 2. We would just watch him pull his legs to his chest in pain. At his one week checkup the doctor told me that the best way to combat the yeast was to stop eating things that fed yeast.  Gluten and Dairy.  I told him thank you very much but that's impossible.  I explained that I was a vegetarian and cutting out gluten would leave me with nothing to eat.  I went home and listened to David scream for another week.  It was painful.

At his 2 week checkup the thrush had only gotten worse.  I was again faced with the decision of gluten and dairy free.  And this time, I embraced it.  I was going to try it for a week and see if it helped.  If it did, I would do it until the thrush cleared up.  And so this became my life.

And guess what, it worked.  He's happy most of the time.  There is still a good bit of gas (he cleared out a room yesterday but I think that's more genetics he gets from his namesakes), but for the most part, he's good.  And so I continue with the diet and I am figuring out how to keep myself full.

Sacrifices in life are worth it, especially when it comes to your children.

Boy Crazy

When we found out I was pregnant with David, I asked Ryan if we could wait and be surprised on the sex of this baby.  We had found out that Ainsley was a girl when I was pregnant and I told him that I wanted to try it the other way. 

Secretly, I didn't want to know if it was a boy.  People would ask me if I cared if it was a boy or a girl, and I would give the standard answer of "Just as long as it's healthy, I don't care".  Honestly, I cared.  I wanted a girl so badly. 

I was actually petrified of a boy.  Not only did I not know anything about the anatomy (I'm still asking Ryan questions about "it" regularly!), but I was also scared of boy activity.  Boys are rambunctious. Boys are crazy.  Boys are wild.  Boys are everything my little girl is not.  And if I love my little girl and everything about her just the way that she is, how can I love just the opposite.

Everyone told me that I would love a boy just as much as I would love a girl, but I just couldn't picture it.  How was a boy ever going to fit into our lives?  So I convinced Ryan to wait and not find out the sex of the baby.  I didn't want to dwell on the fact that this baby could be a boy for months.  I knew I would stress and worry like crazy if I knew ahead of time.

With each passing day of the pregnancy, I was more and more convinced that this baby was a boy.  My pregnancies were just so different.  Hardly anything was the same.  And so I started to settle in to the fact that this was more than likely a boy.

Then came birth day.  When he was born, I was privileged enough to "catch" him.  When I turned him over in the water, there "it" was.  His boyness was staring back at me.  And I have to say that I panicked.  When Ainsley was born, they put her on my chest and it was instant love.  My little girl.  But when they put David on my chest, I was kind of in denial.  This boy, and a big boy at that, was my baby? 

While I went through all the post birth things, Ryan held David "skin to skin" on his chest.  He bonded and enjoyed every second of that time.  And there I was just staring at both of them.  Confused of my feelings.  Where was the instant love?

I'm not going to tell you that it was instant after I started breast feeding or after I held him for a bit.  I don't actually know when it happened. But I have fallen so deeply in love with this little boy. 

And I can't wait for the soccer games, the dirt, the trucks, the tree climbing, the legos, and more.  Let the invasion of blue begin!

He's definitely a sweet little boy.  And he's definitely mine to love.