Pardon the Delay...

Tuesday, October 20
I’m going to attempt to make this blog more interesting. That is a big undertaking, so for my few readers don’t get your hopes up too high! I dated this because who knows when I will actually be able to post this. I have a very good reason, and her name is Alice. Alice is 2 months old today…so Happy Two Month Birthday Alice! I’m going to steal an idea from my sister, Lindsay. She does a thing each week called “7 Quick Takes”, and she got the idea from a few of her fellow bloggers. It is basically a summary of whatever you want; seven somethings to be exact. Seven in fact. So seeing as how I want to post more, I figured I could try to incorporate this idea into my blog. Thereby, I will hopefully post once a week J

7 Quick Takes
1. Today is Alice’s 2 month birthday today. Which means that she had her two month checkup. I am very pleased to report that she is doing awesome! She weighs 11lbs 12 oz and is 23 ¼ inches long. Her head circumference is 38.75. Her height and weight puts her in the 80th percentile of all babies her age. Her head circumference puts her in the 50th percentile. They say that head circumference directly relates to size of the brain (which relates to intelligence); I’m not going to worry that she is just average in head size. She had to get two vaccines today. She was supposed to get three, but we decided never more than two at a time. I will take her back in two weeks to get the other one. The nurse didn’t want to give her the shots. She was all smiles and grins, and was talking up a storm to the nurse. The nurse told me her smiling and talking to her made it harder for her to give her the shots. Most of the time babies are fussing or crying, but not Alice. Alice was all happy-go-lucky. That is my kid! Poor thing screamed bloody murder and cried real tears. She hasn’t cried tears yet. I’m happy to report that about an hour afterwards she was back to her happy-go-lucky self. She was a teeny bit more fussy than usual, but no crazy side effects.
2. I got a call from work today. Seems they’ve had a few changes. They got rid of the inclearing work (our checks that come from other banks), and so as to ensure the full-timers get their hours they moved all the branches to late cut-offs. Most of the branches were already on late cut-offs, but a few were so far out they decided to wait. Well now they all have 4pm or 5pm cut-offs. Great for our customers; bad for me. I’m was already having trouble finding someone to watch Alice (more on this later), now they throw this at me. You may be wondering what I’m complaining about. Before we would work until 8 or 9pm. Later than normal hours, but not so bad. The new hours would be 10-11pm. This is really bad. Yeah, I guess I’ll just throw in the towel on finding someone to watch Alice.
3. Finding someone to watch Alice…where do I start? I basically don’t want to leave her. Nor do I really trust anyone to watch her. There are a select few people that I would trust her with. And by trust, I really mean not constantly worrying if she is being taken good care of. Those few people have jobs. *Sigh* I’d be lying to say that part of me wouldn’t be very upset if I didn’t return to work, but that is a very small part of me. The thought of leaving my baby really upsets me. Sean and I went out to dinner the other night, and Ben and Lauren watched Alice. We were gone for three hours. Three hours! I really think it was about 10 minutes down the road before I started missing her…and worrying (Lauren wasn’t home from work yet, so I was a teeny bit nervous). We could have stayed out longer, but the fact is Sean and I both missed her. So we picked her up and came home; where we cuddled and watched the Yankees/Angels game.
4. There are ladybugs EVERYWHERE! I know that this is the time of year that they start to get out of the cold, but I have never seen this many. There are hundreds! Perhaps thousands! I googled how to get rid of them, but it seems they aren’t actually ladybugs, but Japanese lady beetles (or something-I’m going off the top of my head). They have no natural predators here (that explains the amount!) so they are taking over. The best advice I found was to use a wet/dry vac, suck them up, and then dump them far away from your house. WHAT?!?!?! Thanks internet!
5. I have been trying to lose weight. This has turned into trying not to GAIN any weight! I have never, ever, in my life had a sweet tooth this bad. Is it because I’m breastfeeding? Having Sean around while trying to lose weight makes things harder. He likes ice cream, brownies, cookies, etc. He usually asks twice a week if I will make something (not ice cream though-he buys it). I usually do. And because I’ve learned I have NO willpower I end up eating some. Or a lot. I am pretty good at first, but after a day or two I fall completely apart. Must have chocolate!!! The other reason I’m probably not losing any weight is that I usually don’t eat breakfast. Bad I know. Even worse because I’m breastfeeding. In fact, most days I do not eat until about 2pm. I’m that busy, and to be honest I don’t really get hungry until then and find it hard to force myself to eat.
6. Fall is here! I love this time of year because I can use my crockpot a lot. Who doesn’t love their crockpot? I made the best chocolate mousse last week! I found a recipe online (crockpot365.blogspot.com) to try in the crockpot. It was the best ever. Seriously! And it was super easy. Fall also means apple cider-YUM! It is also the start of cold/flu season (which really has been around for awhile now). I am going to get a flu shot this year for the first time because of Alice. It annoys me that every time flu shot season starts up you start hearing horror stories about why you shouldn’t get a flu shot. It is very unfortunate for those individuals that had horrible reactions and now their lives will be completely different from before. That still doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t get a flu shot. Of course, seeing as how I have never gotten one, I’m wondering if I’ll be in that small percentage that has a horrible reaction. Time will tell.
7. It is now Thursday. I will have to think of a new title for 7 Quick Takes, as it is not very quick on my part. It is difficult getting things done with an infant around. I currently have Alice in her swing. I put this clown that my brother and I had when we were little on the tray. She likes to kick the tray and make the clown move around (there is a bell inside) to hear the noise. All I hear right now is her squealing and the bell. I would take a picture and post it, but seeing as how my sister is deathly afraid of clowns (and she is approximately 25% of my readers) I won’t be doing that. I don’t want to scare away one of my loyal readers.
Well, I will be posting next week for sure. I enjoyed doing this 7 Quick Takes…even if it did take me 2 days! And please feel free to comment…I enjoy reading them!

P.S. I just noticed that I haven’t posted in exactly 2 months. You can thank Alice for that ;)