It's hard to be a single parent

This was a hard week. My hubby has been looking for a new job for a few months now. He currently has a job, but he would like to find something where he has an opportunity to move up (and a little extra money always helps!). Where he is now, there is not really much room for that. Unfortunately we have put a ton of resumes out there....and no one has called. So we sat down a couple weeks ago to decide what we should do. It's not an option for me to look for something new because we have our health insurance through me....and there are some benefits that I don't think I would get anywhere else. After much consideration we decided that one of us would get a part-time job. Since I don't drive (long post for another day), my hubby said he would do it. He started the part-time job this week. Well....it has definitely been a hard week. When you are so used to having someone help you with taking care of your child, it is definitely an adjustment when you start doing it on your own. Our after work, making dinner, feeding the child, playing with the child, bathing the child, dressing the child, feeding the child a bedtime bottle, and finally rocking and putting the child to sleep routine has been hard!!!! I have never been so busy the whole time since little man was born. Having two hands to take care of all of this stuff is so wonderful. Single parents are awesome!!!! How they do everything in their day is baffling to me. Do they even have a minute to do something for themselves? If so, I don't know how they do it. My three-hour routine has left me exhausted!!! As soon as I put little man down to sleep, I sit on the couch to wind down myself! I would look over at the computer and attempt to come over to put up a new post, but I was stuck!!! I didn't want to move!!! My hubby is a great husband....this week has really shown me how much he does and how much I appreciate everything he does for me and little man. So...thank you hubby for allllll you do for us!!! I don't know what we would do without you here!!!

On a side note....my hubby got called for an interview for one of the jobs he applied for. He goes for his interview on Tuesday....keep your fingers crossed that he gets this job!!! He said, after he got off the phone to schedule it,"It figures. The week I go get a part-time job, is the week that someone calls me for an interview for a full-time job!!" Isn't that always the way???

New Pictures

(Suck a simple pose, background, etc....I fell in love with it!!!)

Along with my little seeing the cardiologist yesterday, we also had his Easter pictures taken. In the past we have gone to Walmart, but we decided to try another studio. My hubby's work had given us a booklet of coupons before little man was born, so we figured is was about time we used them!!!! Nothing like waiting a whole year and a half!!! : ) We even went out last minute and bought him a new outfit. I figured it would get dual purpose....new outfit for pictures and he can also wear it for Easter. Hubby kind of bought my reasoning. It was originally $29.99, but with 50% off and an extra 10% from a coupon, we only paid $13.49. A heck of a deal for a 3-piece outfit!!! Anyway....I got off topic. The place we got little man's picture taken is the same place we had our engagement pictures taken....plus my family has used them quite a bit over the years. They give you a ton of poses and a variety of packages to choose from. I always have such a hard time deciding what pictures I want to order......how could I possibly live with pictures using just one pose when he took sooooooo many cute pictures? Little man did really well. They even included a real, live bunny in some of the picturss. He did really well with that....but he has had a lot of practice with his three kitties at home!!! Sitting at the computer and sorting through all the pictures was soooo hard. I don't even know how many pictures they took, but I loved them all. I was good though. I made a list of the pictures I really liked. then went through each pose to find which one I liked best, and then chose from there. We actually got three poses....and a free CD with all the pictures they took. It's a low-resolution CD, so when you pull up the pictures one by one they are really kind of fuzzy. BUT....today when I put in the CD, I figured out they had done a slide show with all the pictures, full size, great resolution, set to music. Now I can't print these pictures or anything, but it's a great memory to be able to pull up and look at. As I watched the slide show a couple times today, I realized there are a couple poses that I really want to go back and order. The nice thing is that they keep them on file for a year...so any time I think I want to order something, I can. We'll see though.....I need to consider how much we paid for these and go from there. Well, I think I've babbled enough. I'll close with some of little's man poses. Enjoy and leave some comments if you'd like!

It's always a scary day.

(Little Man - the day he was born, in the NICU)

Today my little man had to go to the cardiologist. As I wrote in my very first post, little man was born with a congenital heart defect. Unlike some parents, we actually found out about it when I was 36 weeks along in my pregnancy. It was very beneficial because the doctors could prepare for the care little man would need once he was born. He spent the first 5 days of his life in the NICU in the hospital where he was born and the next 16 days in various areas in the hospital where he had his open heart surgery. It was such a scary time for me and my hubby. While I was optimistic, I often wondered what our life would be like in the future with little man. Flash forward 14 months to basically his one year, post-op cardiology appointment. One of the first questions the cardiologist always ask is "If you didn't know little man had open-heart surgery, would you know there was anything wrong with him?" We always answer no to that question, and today was no different. Little man is your average 14-month old little boy. He plays, he crawls, he chatters quite a bit, he eats...and eats....and eats. You would never know there was anything wrong with him. Even so, I worry whenever I have to go to an appointment. It always starts out with the doctor examining him, checking his heart to see how it sounds, and checking the pulses in his legs. That's a funny thing about little man. O.K., maybe not funny, but definitely interesting. When they fixed his heart, they had to use the arteries in his arms to fix it. Now the interesting thing about that is he no longer has very good pulses and they wouldn't be able to obtain a good blood pressure using his arms. Whenever we go see someone new, we have to tell them to obtain proper readings by using his legs. This will be a vital piece of information we need to tell little man when he is old enough. Therefore when someone new goes to check these things, he will be able to tell them how to do it properly. O.K., I've kind of ventured off the topic. Anyway....everything with the doctor's initial exam was excellent. Another thing he checks in the appointment is to give little man an EKG to see if there have been any changes since the last one....and again, he is doing excellent. The nurse was a little worried as little man is getting a little older, and he has a tendency to move around....ALOT. He actually was very good and sat in my lap, very still, until the EKG was done. It is actually a very quick test....so we lucked out!! The last thing that needs to be done is the echocardiogram. Now if anyone has ever had one of these, they take a little bit of time. Now making a 14 month old lay down for any extended amount of time (other than bed time) is very difficult. Little man only took a short morning nap, so we were hopeful he would be extra tired and fall asleep during the test. No such luck. He did good for probably the first 15 minutes. We would distract him with different things....a Blue's Clues video, the overhead mobile, and especially daddy's cell phone, which he loves. After 15 minutes he wanted none of it. The nurse decided to give him a break and wait for the doctor to come in and finish the test. It gave us about 10 minutes between my hubby and me to get little man to sleep. When he finally fell asleep, we were able to set him down on the exam table. Just then the doctor came in and finished up. After all the tests, the doctor was very pleased with what he saw. The main concern with little man is if one of his valves becomes blocked. Fortunately right now it looks just as it did when he had it repaired. The doctor always qualifies it with "that could change in a year, ten years, when he's in high school, or it may never change." So I am remaining optimistic at this point that little man is a healthy little boy....and I'm still going to continue to enjoy every waking minute with him!!! He has been my little miracle baby since the first day I found out I was pregnant....and he lives up to that every day. Well, this post has gotten much longer than I intended, but I guess I just needed someplace to talk about all of this.

I need to get this going....

Well, I really need to get this bloggy thing going. I started it last summer with good intentions of doing it fairly often, but it didn't work out so well. I've written here and there, but I've never really gotten into the groove of things. This is very reminiscent of my journal writing skills when I was younger. I would write in it for a week, then I would forget about it for a month or two. I would find the lost journal when I was finally cleaning my room and would always start off those journal entries the same. "Wow, I can't believe it's been so long since I've written in here. I really have to try to keep this thing more up to date." Then the cycle would start all over again. I really want to use this (as do a lot of parents) to keep family and friends up to date on my little man as he grows and changes. He's now 14 months old, so I have a lot of catching up to do!!!

1 year+

Matthew is officially one-year-old. Well, to be technical, he is one year and thirteen days old....but who's counting? Here's a picture from his birthday party:

What a cute little birthday boy he made, but I may be a little biased!!! A fun time was had by everyone who attended his party. Next year I think we'll make it a little easier on Mom and Dad....Chuck E. Cheese, here we come!!!

so much to do and so little time to do it

Fa la la la la, bah humbug, and all that good stuff. Christmas is six days away and I have toooooo much to do. I have almost all of our presents bought. I think the only person left on our list is my mother-in-law. We know what we want to buy her, it's just a matter of getting to the store to do it. Oh....and I should probably finish shopping for my hubby. Next...I have to wrap all the presents. If it was just a couple, it wouldn't be bad...but there's alot. I think I may put my hubby in charge of this. What else? I have to box up some presents to send to my sister-in-law and her family in NH. I have to finish baking my cookies. And in between all this I have to clean my house. UGH!! Then I have to get ready for my little man's first birthday on January 6. We're just going to have a little get together, but I'll probably go overboard like I usually do!! Oh well....they only have this first birthday once!? So if I make it through Christmas and my little man's first birthday without going crazy, it will be a miracle!! Well, it's almost time to leave work for the day, so I better try to get something done. TTFN!

Matthew the Model

Well, I'm a very bad blogger. I have not posted on here since July 2, but since nobody knows about my blog yet, I think I'm ok!!! Anyway, my little man is almost 11 months old. Where has this year gone? We finally took him to get his pictures taken (for the first time~I'm a terrible parent!!) in October. The results were great. You're never sure how kids are going to react...but my little man couldn't have been better! The first two pictures were taken this time.As you can see from the pictures, he was all smiles the whole time!!! These two have been voted the favorites...what do you think?

We then took him to have his pictures taken AGAIN this month, only this time was for Christmas. Yes, once I start doing something I can be a little, ok a lot, excessive!! As not to spoil the wonderful pictures I'm going to be sending to family and friends, I'm only posting one from that session...the bottom one.. The second time went well, but by the end my little man had had enough and was ready to roll off the "stage" and crawl to his stroller!

My little man's 1st birthday is coming up in a little over a month, and I'm already planning what we can do for those pictures. We won't be going to the same place we had these two sets taken. My hubby's work gave us gift certificates to go to another studio, so we'll see how those turn out when we have them done.

Well, it's getting late, so I'm going to leave for now. I'm going to try to make it to this blog a little more frequently than once every five months. Until...tomor....next time.