A week of firsts

Before I offer you up some adorable pictures of Sydney and tales from her first Nats game, I will give you my rants on a few things. One, I thought there was an ordnance somewhere that states you have to smoke at least 25 feet away from entrances/exits of buildings. This apparently is not the case at my job and when you walk in or out, it’s like stepping into Spicoli’s van at the beginning of Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Not fun! I am only 32 years old. I do not need or want black lungs because some people have a habit that I personally find disgusting. Second, I understand we are in a predicament with our economy, but when I go to Subway and pay over $5 for a meal, I expect to get more than 8 shredded carrot pieces when I ask for them on my sandwich. I kid you not. I think I had even less green peppers and onions! Come on people. It’s shredded carrots, not truffles. Don’t be stingy with my toppings! And third, on this same visit to Subway, there was a nice fellow in front of me who saw me come in and totally out of character for 99.9% of the people in downtown Washington, D.C., he politely greeted me with “How are you today?”. Being the southerner that I am, I politely acknowledged back that I was fine and asked how he was doing. That was my mistake. For the next 10 minutes in line he proceeded to talk to me about his thoughts on all things presidential and his love for Bill Clinton and Obama. Not that I mind that he loves them, but come on. Because he was chitchatting, I couldn’t bring myself to interrupt him and politely ask the lady making me sandwich to give me more carrots and peppers! OK, rant over.

Now onto Sydney news…

This week was filled with firsts. First time riding Metro, first MLB game (Nats vs. Padres), first time pulling herself up from sitting, and first time visiting Mommy at work downtown!

Here’s Sarah, Logan, Ethan, Doug, and Sydney walking from the car to the trains at Branch Ave. Surprisingly, Doug didn’t get lynched for wearing his Eagles hat to the game. There were quite a few other brave fans at the game showing off their green as well. Speaking of “brave” fan, though her shirt is covered by her bib, Sydney was donning her Atlanta Braves t-shirt that Aunt Kate gave her. Go Braves!



Mommy, I think we’re moving! (Notice the Braves shirt!)



Posing at the Navy Yard.



View from our seats near left field aka foul ball territory.



What is Sydney looking at you ask?



The Padres leftfielder and bullpen…that’s my girl!!!



Mommy, I love baseball even if it isn’t the Braves and your hot dog costs $5.



Speaking of hot dogs, can I have a bite of yours since I have two teeth now?



The shade FINALLY showed up around the bottom of the 7th inning.



Like I said, Sydney also pulled up for the first time by herself this week! Of course, we were too late to get it on video and she had no interest in giving us an instant replay. Needless to say, the video camera and my digital have been at the ready ever since.

No decision has been made on Halloween costumes yet. I’m thinking we should decide soon before they are all sold out of her size. She was at the doctor Wednesday for what we feared to be another bout of pink eye (fortunately it was only congestion combined with teething), and she’s up to 21 pounds!

And guess who paid me a surprise visit at work yesterday? That’s right. Daddy and Sydney came to wish Mommy a Happy Anniversary and swept me away from the office a few hours early. It wasn’t quite Officer and a Gentleman dramatic, but it definitely put a smile on my face! And Sydney dazzled a few of my coworkers in the process. I couldn’t have asked for a better gift. Thank you sweetheart for 4 wonderfully exciting, happy years. I’m looking forward to many many more!

Why can't little girls just be little girls?

I got an email this morning from the gap letting me know their new fashion collections were here. When I opened the email, it featured this outfit. Yes, it is a totally cute outfit but I’m curious. Can anyone tell me why a toddler would possibly need to carry a purse? Sure, it’s great for playing dress-up with friends and cute that she wants to be like mommy, but I don’t think that the fine folks over at the gap are necessarily playing it from that angle. Maybe I’m just being prudish, but I don’t want Sydney carrying a purse until she’s in junior high. And in that purse she will carry her library card, some gum, her lunch money, and maybe some lip gloss!

What do you think? Am I’m being too unreasonable or overprotective in not wanting my daughter to end up like half the twats in Hollywood, hell, even Disney for that matter? Of course, I’ve got a little time to change my mind about this seeing as how she’s still in diapers and barely crawling, but I don’t think I will.

Decisions decisions

I know it's still September, but all the websites and stores I visit are flaunting Halloween costumes. They are all adorable and I am indecisive so I thought I’d poll everyone to see which costume they think Sydney would look cutest in.

Pink leopard



Tinker Bell


Super Girl



Snow White



Wonder Woman



Wonder Bread. Seriously?




Spider



Flight Suit Up!



And then there's the most beautiful angel costume that is slightly out of our budget...but really, would Sydney not make the most beautiful little angel ever? Not that she already isn't my beautiful little angel :)



So what do y'all think? What should Sydney be for her very first Halloween? And of course Mommy and Daddy will have to dress up as well. Any ideas for our costumes?

Month 7 in pictures

Here’s Daddy assembling a garage sale find. Remi makes a pretty good supervisor don't you think?



And the finished product…a little princess tent with a sleeping bag. How cute is that? I foresee us playing lots of Peekaboo in the not-to-distant future :)



Look who can hold herself up now…



Good to know we buy multi-purpose toys...



Showing off her first tooth…



Post-emergency room/eye drops/antibiotics picture (you can almost see tooth #2 coming in on the bottom)



Sydney being all roly poly after her bath…



More please…



Sydney making another fabulous mess while trying to feed herself dessert :)



I was trying to get a picture of her crawling, but all she wanted to do was roll over and stare at her bird…

Siyonara Sudafed

You're not going to believe this, but I think our family may be healthy again and I couldn't be happier! Three weeks and counting is just TOO long to have a summer cold/allergy flareups/pinkeye. What I am looking forward to most besides being able to smother Sydney with hugs and kisses, taking walks and actually leaving the house, is the return to non-antibiotic diapers! I'm sure our daycare will be happy when Sydney is off her antibiotics too. I will spare you the details, but suffice it to say, the last week has been pretty atrocious as far as poo was concerned...hard to imagine something this sweet could do something so foul :)

You'll have to pardon the blurriness. My cell phone doesn't always take the best pictures.



And another...isn't she sweet?



I promise to post more pictures this week now that I am feeling better!

Why is it that when you really hope something doesn't happen, it's usually the first thing that does happen?

Doug was still quarantined this weekend in hopes we wouldn’t keep passing our cold back and forth to each other. I woke up Saturday night to the sound of Sydney in all her snottiness-breathing glory through the monitor so I got up to check on her. She was lying on her stomach and when I picked her up I saw she had the most awful runny nose imaginable. Not to gross you out, but it was caked all the way from her nose to her lip. I’m honestly not sure how she was able to breathe at all since she is still a nose-breather. I turned on the light to start cleaning her nose (you can only imagine how much she LOVED that) and that’s when I noticed all the goop on her eyes. And her eyes weren’t opening. Yes. She got pinkeye too! I yelled for Doug to come back to her room and he did. I called both my sisters to see what I should do (I figure between 5 kids they’d have a world of experience with this) and they suggested a warm washcloth. OK, so we got her nose clean and her eyes opened. Now what? We called our doctor, got an answering service, and an hour later FINALLY got a call back from a nurse. She said to have her checked in the next 24 hours (great, because our doctor doesn’t have Sunday hours AND he’s closed for Labor Day). So we decided to wait until Sunday morning to take her to the emergency room. I’d say a half hour passed before we decided there would be no sleeping that night, we may as well head to the ER right then. We debated taking her back to the same hospital she visited when she was only a week old – our decision was made after Doug called to make sure the whacko doctor we saw that time was NOT on call. There was no way we were going to deal with her again. I mean, who orders a catheter for a 7 day old baby? She also had an IV and I can’t even tell you how many times they did a heel prick. God bless the lady from the lab. She finally put her foot down and told the crazy doctor she wasn’t doing anything else to my baby girl! And she stayed with us most of the night to make sure we were ok. That was the most AWFUL night of my life.

So back to this past weekend, we got to the hospital at 2:52 a.m. and there wasn’t anyone in the waiting room. We thought we’d be in and out. Wrong. We got called back at 3:30 a.m. and a nurse came in to tell us there would be at least a 1-2 hour wait before we saw the doctor. Let me ask you, if we’re going to have to wait that damn long, why even call us back? Why not let us linger in the waiting room where we at least had a television to watch? I got over it as soon as Sydney sneezed and nailed the nurse all the way across the exam room. Is it bad that I laughed a little, especially after the look on his face when I told him she had pinkeye? I don’t think he could have made it to the sink any faster than he did…it truly is the little things that give me the greatest pleasure.

We finally saw a doctor at 6 a.m. Sunday morning. Yep. She looked at Sydney for a grand total of under 10 minutes, took a culture of the eye goop, gave us two prescriptions, and sent us on our way. She didn’t put drops in her eyes or give her some of the antibiotic she prescribed. No, we would have to wait another 5 hours for that when our pharmacy opened. We got home at 6:30 Sunday morning, cleaned Sydney’s eyes again, and put her back in her crib to get some sleep. When she woke up at 9, her eyes were completely swollen and folded in on each other. I tried to comfort her and talk to her because she couldn’t see me. It broke my heart to see her trying to feel for me, her little fingers reaching out, not knowing where I was. Thankfully, the swollen shut eyes didn’t last, her nose started to clear up, and she’s back to normal.

And for something completely unrelated but funny (well Doug found it funny at least), last night I was in bed and I felt something crawl on my belly button. Naturally, I swatted at whatever it was, jumped out of bed and turned on the lights to see what was accosting me. This scared the bejesus out of Doug, well, the whole being blinded by the lights thing, and he asked what I was doing. When I told him what had happened, he just laughed. Apparently a ladybug crawling on me is funny. I don’t see the humor!!!