more to share

Here is a bit more from our St. Louis trip...
We got to spend a great night with my good friends Tracy and Brad. Sam was not sick yet so it was actually a good time. They got Sam the best music set, which Sam loves already. Its a bit noisy but I think that is what they wanted!!


Today was a big day....to end 2008 Sam waved goodbye (or hi I'm not quite sure!) to me and she CLAPPED!! And not the kind of clapping where her hands just happened to come together but she slapped them together on purpose!! I am so proud. We have tricks now!

Okay, SO LONG 2008 and HELLO 2009!!! Have a fun and SAFE night everyone.

home!

I have two homes.
There is one home where I grew up, have more memories than I can count and always feel comfortable. I spent the last nine days at this home. It was wonderful to be home. I got to spend real quality time with all of my family, cook with my mom, shop with my mom and sister (grocery shopping counts!) and party with lots of people. Sure there was an ice storm, sick/crying/fussy/out-of-control kids, two trips to the emergency room, two trips to urgent care and sleepless nights for everyone but it was still a great visit. It wasn't the perfect Christmas and will probably always go down as "2008 The Sick Christmas!" but we made the best of it. I just hope we all recover quickly and get back to life as normal. But with all the problems, I sit here in my current home and want to get back in my car and go back to the comfort of being close to my family. I miss them immensely already. I hope they know how much we appreciate them, love them and are grateful that they let us invade their lives for nine days (Chris and I are pretty sure we wore out our welcome on day six or seven!!).
Here are some of the great moments from the week...



We are home now, unpacked, showered and getting ready to eat dinner. Chris and I are both sick (probably just colds) and Sam is still coughing really badly. I am hoping that the antibiotics will kick in soon and help her find some relief.
More to share but I am too tired so it will have to wait till tomorrow.

christmas blues

I look forward to the 23rd, 24th and 25th of December all year long. They always prove to be three of my favorite days of the year; filled with family, love, peace, excitement and tradition. This year however things are not going exactly according to plan.
My nieces and nephew are sick. Okay, I know that for those of you that follow my (whole) family you know that this is nothing new. But this time Bailey has pneumonia, the docs are thinking Parker may have asthma which is causing her two month old cough to keep getting worse, and Grayson just spent last night in the ER and now we know that he has RSV! So my nieces and nephew are REALLY sick. We know that when family around us is sick there is a very good chance that one or all of us is going to catch what they have but we didn't drive all the way down here to not see them and I am not afraid of catching a cold. It makes me a little nervous for Sam to catch RSV but if it happens we will deal with it; it still won't make me not spend time with my sister and her family during Christmas. But for my sister when your children are sick, when you are getting NO sleep because of fussy, not sleeping kids, when you spend five hours in the ER on the 23rd it kind of puts a damper on your Christmas spirit. I hate that her family is not perfect right now; it breaks my heart. But she is the strongest person I know (proven last night when she held her son as he had tubes stuck up his nose and was just screaming, she sat there very calm and comforted him knowing that it needed to be done to help him...I would have NOT been able to be there for my child the way that she was for Grayson. I am just not that strong) and she will make it through this hard time and still make memories, have fun and keep a smile on her face.
SO sick kids have changed plans and made things a bit more complicated for the family but the weather is also not helping the holiday spirit. An ice storm hit this area on the 23rd (which is the night that our WHOLE family, mom's side, gets together; a huge party that we spent all day getting ready for) and so only a handful of the family was able to make it out for the party. There are people that have not met Sam that I was so excited to see and now I don't know when we will see them. Just a bit disappointed. But we made the most of it and some other family and friends came over instead. It was great to see them and we still ate great food and played games.
I am trying really hard not to get too down. I want to still enjoy our holiday, have fun with my family, my husband and make memories on Sam's first Christmas. But I have the Christmas blues. Things are not perfect and I know it will be 364 days before I get these days back again.
Tonight is an amazingly quiet dinner with just my parents, church and then off to sleep to wait for Santa. As long as I don't ruin the traditional Christmas eve bread things should go okay tonight. (keep your fingers crossed about the bread!)
I am going to get the Christmas spirit BACK, not sure how but I swear that I will.
Hope your holiday is illness and ice free!!

Here is one AWESOME moment from the party last night -


Note - Just to prove how strong my sister is go here to read just how she is NOT letting her sick kids take away her holiday spirit!

she just wouldn't bleed!

So yesterday Sam had her nine month appointment. It was just Sam and I because they said that she wouldn't need any shots this time so I told Chris he didn't have to come (yes I am a wimp and like to have back-up when my daughter has to get shots!). Well they were WRONG!
They did all the usual stuff (head = off the charts!; height = 29inches, 90th percentile; weight = just over 20 pounds, 75th percentile) and then said that they would need to prick her finger for a blood screening and she needed the flu shot. Damn it I had to do the hard stuff by myself. But okay, I can be a strong mom and get through this with her. The nurse came in with to do the finger prick and Sam didn't cry at all...but she also didn't bleed! No kidding the nurse held the tube under her finer for over five minutes and barely got a drop. The room was so cold and Sam's poor hands were so frozen that the blood was just not flowing. So the nurse gave up and said she would have to draw her blood for real from her arm! Now, getting blood drawn makes me cry, yes every time I cry! But you don't understand...my veins are very weak and it can sometimes take 2 - 3 tries per arm before they finally find a vein that will fill the tube. So I was scared for Sam. While that nurse went out to get the blood drawing stuff another one came in to do the flu shot. She was great and super quick but of course Sam screamed. I got her calmed down from that and in walks the other nurse to draw her blood. She couldn't find a vein. Never stuck her, thank goodness. She never even saw one in her arm well enough to stick the needle in anywhere. So she gave up again. Left, again, and came back with a hand warmer to try and get the blood in Sam's finger flowing. So we sat and chatted and let Sam play with the hand warmer for a few minutes. Then she pricked Sam's finger, this time Sam screamed and the blood came flooding out! Blood actually came out of both holes that she had poked and was dripping all over the place. Sam continued to scream.
All in all we were there for over an hour and Sam was not a happy girl but she made it through it all and so did I.
Good grief!

Enlund family moments

And some of the funny moments from the weekend...

Who needs presents when you can have BOWS!





How about a little dog butt in your face?





Notice how excited and enthusiastic about the slogan I sound...Sam not so much!!

Enlund Christmas 2008

What a great weekend!! So much to share from our Christmas celebration with grandpa and Nana.
It was great to see them and spend the whole weekend doing nothing but catching up, eating great food and playing with Sam. It was a wonderful Christmas celebration. And the presents weren't too shabby either! Sam had presents to open not only from her grandparents, but from the great-grandparents and her Aunt Lori and Uncle Carl. So many new toys!
Here are just a few...
This was the first gift that Sam opened on the Enlund Christmas morning. It was a Baby's first Christmas ornament that she got to then hang on the tree. So cute.

Two Plan Toys from Aunt Lori and Uncle Carl that are just amazing.

She got a book of the ABC's of golf from grandpa and Nana. It is pretty surprising that they didn't really have to stretch to get most of the letters. Okay, X and Z were pretty big stretches but other than that most of them actually worked!!
Love the Disney princess bike that grandpa and Nana gave us, but the batteries my need to come out!
Here is Sam testing out the slagon (sled+wagon=slagon! is what we decided to call it) in the living room.

Chris and I got some pretty amazing gifts as well. I got my dream vacuum the Dyson DC17. It can suck up anything and I have already vacuumed the whole house. I love it!!
Then we also got this AMAZING stroller. Apparently my sister helped out with the selection of this bad boy (THANKS AUNT JOJO!) and I don't think it can get much cooler. They also got us the double stroller converter kit so that we can still use it when we have a second baby. Both gifts were such a surprise and I can't wait to test out the stroller when the weather warms up.

Thank you so much Grandpa and Grandma Hill, Aunt Lori and Uncle Carl and Grandpa and Nana!!!
Merry Christmas Enlund Family!
More to share from the weekend...be back later!

just fun stuff

She has learned how to stand up in her crib now and when you go in there after a nap or in the morning she peeks her head over the tail and just smiles at you so big. She seems so proud to be standing there. I just love it. So this morning while I was taking Polly out Sam was waiting patiently for me in the family room. She crawled her way over to the door and discovered that the door was cold and apparently delicious! (I actually went back inside, got the camera and then came back out to get a picture of her licking the door!!)
Sam's favorite hair style right now (okay, the easiest hair style for me to do!) is one sprout directly on the top of her head. This is a picture of what her hair looks like when the sprout comes out at the end of the day. Last night at dinner her hair and face were such a mess we just had to get some pictures!

And here is what had both Chris and I cracking up last night during bath time. Sam not only finds glass doors delicious but bath water too!



In about an hour Chris's parents will be arriving for the weekend. We are doing Christmas with them this weekend. I am so excited for them to see all the new things Sam has learned how to do and for Sam's first time to open presents for Christmas. I think she is going to sit in my lap, pull open the paper and be so excited when she gets each gift! hahaha okay maybe not but I am thrilled to have some new toys for her (or me!) in this house.


Merry Early Christmas Everyone!

PawPaw's Birthday!!

I think one of the fun things about being a parent is watching your own parents play the role of grandparents. My dad loves being PawPaw. With his in town grandkids he needs "fixes" of them every few days or he almost goes through withdrawl. And when we come in to town he soaks up as much Sam time as he can. I just love watching him play with her, hold her, talk to her and love her. So, here is Sam's life with PawPaw so far...

Happy Birthday PawPaw!!
We love you!

proud mom moment

I wanted to show off her new skills of crawling, pulling up and playing with certain toys. I have not been able to capture the true crawling yet because whenever she sees the camera she stops and stares at me. But today I finally got her to pull herself up and play with her little activity table. I decided not to go with the videos that showed off her amazing ability to drool, fall over (several times before we got the good video!) or just sit there staring at the table but not willing to put forth any effort. I went with this one instead.

okay maybe life is not so bad

So I have decided that MAYBE I just MIGHT be a little melodramatic! (Refer to several previous posts in the last few days!)
I am not sure why but since becoming a mom everything seems life and death, stuff that needs to be done MUST be done now. I don't seem to have great control over my feelings. Yes, Sam is having a difficult time with naps and sleeping right now but once she gets to sleep she sleeps through the night pretty well. Do other people have sleep problems WAY worse than that...YES! Should I feel blessed with the full nights sleep that I get most nights...YES! But sometimes in the middle of the day when I want to get stuff done it is really hard to feel blessed. I do know that my life is still really easy compared to many others and I feel terrible sometimes complaining at all about my small problems (burning Christmas cookies...does that even really count as a problem?). SO I am going to try harder to just let the little things go, to enjoy life for what it is right now.

Okay, so in that spirit...on to more exciting and interesting things, like baby toys! Have you heard that my sister and I have become obsessed with wood toys; I mean like sustainable, good for the environment, endless imagination, heirloom quality kind of wood toys. Get back to the basics! I have just totally fell in love with the simplicity, the options for imaginary play, the endless fun and the quality. Check out Plan Toys at www.plantoys.com or Haba at www.habausa.com . They have wooden toys even for newborns. Really, go check it out!

shovel some snow

I think shoveling snow could be the solution to all the world's problems. I mean it really is a wonderful chore and can take your mind off of anything.
Problems at work? Or just hate your job? Go shovel some snow!
Daughter refusing to nap and just crying in her crib because she has learned to stand up in the crib but not how to lay back down? Go outside and shovel some snow! (oh wait, I think that is called neglect...)
Sick family that you want to take care of but can't go home to be with? Go shovel snow!
So much cleaning to do you don't know where to begin? Shovel some snow!
Burnt the Christmas cookies? Go shovel some snow!
Well, it may not be the solution of everyone but it is what I have resorted to today. It has just been one of those days so I am taking my frustration out on the snow outside. In twenty more minutes Chris will be home, he can sit in here and listen to the screaming and I will really get to shovel the hell out of some snow! Although I am probably destroying the work that my chiropractor has been doing for the past week and a half but right now I do not care.
God - please just let me survive today and I am sure I can make tomorrow be better.

snow...Snow...SNOW!

It is currently snowing and is suppose to snow all night and through to tomorrow morning. Goodness.

So on to other things...
Yesterday was a great day. We got some stuff done around the house in the morning, including the grocery store which always makes me feel productive. Something about the full refrigerator makes me feel like we have accomplished a lot.
Once noon came around we went over to our friend's house to watch football and eat some great food. We hung out, watched the game, watched Sam play with her friend Darren (my friend Darcy has a son a bit older than Sam and it is so fun to watch them play, or rather just steal each others toys!) and had a great time.
Sam got fussy and ready for a nap at the end of the first game so we headed home. It started snowing; the big fluffy kind of flakes that are beautiful to watch and don't accumulate too much. We got Sam down for her nap and we started making christmas cookies. It was so much fun to have football on the tv in the kitchen, Sam sleeping and the smell of cookies filling the house. I just don't think there is anything that smells better or makes my heart fill with wonderful memories than the smell of Christmas cookies.
It was really a great afternoon. And as my sister was quick to remind me I should enjoy it now because the second that Sam starts talking and we have a second kid (don't get any ideas, nothing happening on that front just yet!) we will never get days like that again! What's up with people killing my buz today?

Hope you all had a great weekend.

Here are some pictures from our weekend.


Sunday morning - playing around in their jammies!!

Nick and Steph hanging out with Samantha.


Our friend Brandon playing with Sam at the football party.
Sam having some dinner. It is a pretty cute picture but do you see something unusual?
Yes, she has one of those pinwheel cookies stuck in her hair!!

6-10 and I am spinning

Right now we have about four inches of snow, I would guess, on the ground. On the radio this morning they are predicting another 6-10 inches for tonight!! AWESOME! It's pretty but really just a pain in my a--! Not to mention that after the horrible winter we had last year with all kinds of water leaking in three different locations in our house (which of course we were HORRIBLE home owners and this summer did nothing to fix our roof!) I am not excited about a ton of snow this winter. But here it comes whether I want it or not!

So my morning started out hilarious! (at least to me)
I was on my way to work and in order to get to my parking spot on the street I cut through a parking lot on campus. This morning the parking lot had been plowed but not very well and was surprisingly empty. As I turned down one of the aisles in the lot my car began to spin out. Since that section of the lot was very empty I decided just to go with it and have some fun! So I took my hand off the wheel and my feet off the peddles and let the car spin!! I got about 270 degrees around before the car finally stopped. By this point I was cracking up at the whole thing. When I looked up (while laughing hysterically!) I noticed a car straight across from with a woman in it. She was starring at me with her eyes open very wide and her mouth open! I can only imagine what she thought of my laughing and my spinning car. Boy did I give her a great story to tell her friends today. When I was still amused by this story and talking to my husband this morning he first asked "How fast were you going in the parking lot?" and (before I could really answer) "Do you drive like that with Sam in the car?". He totally killed my buzz.

Be back later with pictures and to tell you all about the incredibly cozy and wonderful Sunday we had.
Hope your morning is going well.
Happy Monday!

scary mistake

I dropped her. Yesterday I dropped her. Don't worry she is fine; no real damage done.

We were walking in from the store and I had her in the car seat hanging on my arm. We got into the house and I don't know how but the car seat slipped off of my arm and landed on the tile floor in our entry way! She immediately started screaming. I, however, did not/could not go to her aid because I had dropped the car seat directly on my left foot!! I have never felt a worse pain in my life; labor wasn't even that bad. I thought for sure my foot was broken. I dropped to floor and started crying (yes I am a big baby but DAMN DID IT HURT!). Chris came running in and came immediately to me. I told him I was fine to check on Sam. He picked her up and got her calmed down. She was fine, just really scared and shaken up. I was still in real pain. My foot wasn't broken, just badly bruised and I will most likely loose my big toe nail. You should see it today...DISGUSTING! The whole thing was terrifying. I was worried for her, that I had really hurt her. Chris very quickly reminded me that the car seat is made to keep her safe in car accidents so a drop from two feet is probably not going to do any damage.
Later in the evening I started feeling really guilty that my first reaction was to recoil in pain and not immediately go to Sam's aid. Isn't a mom suppose to not even feel their own pain in situations like that and only be concerned about their child? Why did I not have that instinct? When my sister was eight months pregnant with her first she fell down an entire flight of stairs and the whole time she was falling she had her arms wrapped around her stomach, completely protecting her unborn child. She didn't care that this meant her legs and arms were getting stripped of skin as she continued to fall, she was only concerned about the baby. Those are real motherly instincts. Where the hell are my instincts? I feel like I failed, in a tough situation I failed Sam. No, she wasn't really hurt. But in that moment, when I was on the floor crying on the other side of the room, and she was screaming in her car seat, I didn't actually know for sure that she was okay. I really feel horrible about dropping her but feel even worse that I was more concerned with myself in the moment than her.
It is really getting hard to not just feel like I totally suck at this whole mom thing.

Tonight is the Sentry Chirstmas party and while it is not the most exciting night out ever I am really hoping that a night out with friends will get me back in a positive frame of mind.

like a champ

I put her down at 6:15 and by quarter to 7:00 there was not another peep! So the screaming did not last long. YES! Maybe this won't be such a hard habit to break after all.


Advice -
Sam all of a sudden HATES getting dressed. She squirms away and fights with me through the whole process and screams whenever I try to put her arms in the sleeves. Could I be hurting her in some way? Is this a side effect of teething? Or is she just becoming more of a toddler and less likely to sit still?

It is weird, she has been really fussy lately, more so than ever before. And at the oddest times too, like getting dressed. I thought for sure when we got her ear infection cleared up she would go back to being her happy self again but she hasn't. I am hoping this is just teething or a growth spurt and NOT her new personality. She is starting to have attitude already with me and I DO NOT like it. I know what kind of a brat I was sometimes with my parents and I am just praying that Sam does not have that kind of behavior in her. The doctor said he wanted to see us when her medicine was gone to make sure that the ear infection is gone so maybe I will get off my lazy butt and actually take her in just to make sure that she isn't still sick. I would actually love for her new behavior to be caused by something that is "curable" and not that she is just becoming her mother's daughter!!

she screams

I sit here in my kitchen working on our dinner and writing to all of you and she is in her bed screaming. We are breaking her of her bad habit routine that we created. Her bedtime routine for the past 8 months has been dinner, bath, bottle while cuddling on the couch and then she goes to bed. However every night she falls asleep while taking the bottle in our arms and then we just lay her in bed already asleep. It works wonderfully and she goes to bed and sleeps all night. BUT she is horrible at napping. I have to do a similar routine during the day, taking at least a half hour to get her to take a nap that rarely lasts longer than an hour. She cannot put herself to sleep. I am sick of having to spend most of my day figuring out how I am going to get her to go to sleep. I know that this is a horrible time to be trying this, she is teething, learning to crawl, just getting over an ear infection and the holidays are right around the corner where her schedule will get all messed up, but I just have to try. I feel like a horrible mom right now listening to her cry but I HAVE to do this. I WILL DO THIS! And I know that Sam will be okay. But it is still hard.

Our Christmas tree

We got a real tree this year for the first time in a couple of years. For the past few years we haven't even been putting up a big tree because we are normally gone for almost three weeks around Christmas so it just doesn't make much sense. But this year our Christmas vacation is much shorter so we decided to get a real one again. We went with Chris's whole family to the tree farm and picked out our tree. It was so much fun but of course Sam slept through almost the whole thing.



We got the tree home in one piece and spent Sunday afternoon getting it set up and decorated. I just love Christmas trees, everything about having it in our home makes me happy. I really don't even mind the mess from setting it up because the needles that get sucked into the vacuum make it smell good every time I turn the vacuum on!
And here is Samantha standing up against the box from the ornaments. She is pulling herself up now, all on her own! It is quite a huge change for her and something that seemed to happen over night. She was barely crawling when we were in St. Louis a week ago and now she is crawling, climbing and standing up. The bad part about this is that she seems to be falling and hurting herself all the time now. I am not sure how to keep her from pulling up on things until she is steady enough to really stand on her own (unless I really just don't ever leave her side!!).

Here is a very funny/cute video of Sam crawling over Chris. It may not seem like it in the video but she LOVES doing this.