A month of visitors!

For some reason I was under the impression that by being a stay at home mom would slow things down a little, but boy was I wrong.  It seems like we've been going a mile a minute around here these days.  I think a big piece of the busyness is due to a recent change in Tym's office.  On March 24th, Atlas Spinal Care said good bye to C.A. Maria.  It was hard to see her go as she did an amazing job at ASC, but we are so very happy for her and know that she has a lot to look forward too in her new job.  We found an amazing replacement for her, Kristin (great name don't you think), that has made the transition as smooth as possible.  But with every transition there is new learning to be done, which has made Tym a little busier than normal.  Thank goodness for all the family support we have!

In addition to the transition we've had a number of visitors.  First was Ms. Wendy Matheny all the way from Washington D.C.  She was here for work and had planned to make it a long weekend, but had to cut the trip short due to the passing of her grandmother.  I'm so glad we got to see at least a little of her and Ms. Amelia sure was excited to meet her.  

Next came part of the Lahman family.  John, Deb, Aaron and Sara made a short trip to CA for a quick check up with Dr. Flory and to meet Amelia.  Deb and John were the photographers and I somehow forgot to grab the camera.  Whoops!  We'll have to make sure to get some pictures next time they come into town.

Following the Lahman were the Thompsons.  Amy and Kent spent spring break in Palm Springs and were kind enough to extend their trip a couple days so that we could hang out a little.  Again, no pictures on my end which is awful, but nonetheless it was great having them.

Finishing off the visitors was Uncle Matt.  The bi-annual NUCCA conference happened to be in our neck of the woods this year so he was able to kill to birds with one stone.

It also happened to be the weekend after Grandpa Al's 63rd birthday so we were able to have a little family get together as well.

It sure was fun having friends stay with us and we feel so blessed to now have the space to accommodate visitors.  However, it sure is different entertaining with a baby.  Before Amelia, I would spend hours late into the night talking and hang out with Wendy, Aaron and Amy.  The addition of the little one and late night wake ups prevented this from happening and I was a little bummed that I was so exhausted throughout a lot of their visits.  Hopefully the next time I see these awesome friends, I'm not so tired and our little one will have better sleeping habits.  

Thanks so much for coming friends.  We really enjoyed your visits!

Amelia's 2 Months Old!

It's amazing how quickly the time passes with Amelia.  Yesterday she turned 2 months old and my how she has changed since her birthday 2 months ago.  The biggest change is in her personality.  She smiles a lot these days and is quickly figuring out who her mommy and daddy are.  I'm afraid the attachment phase is starting to settle in.  She use to go to anyone and now she's starting to get a little apprehensive around strangers.  I suppose this means we'll need to start getting out a little more so that Amelia learns that being shy is not an option in this family!  

Another milestone is Amelia's ability to hold her head up for longer periods of time.  She's always been strong, but she is now able to spend more and more time in her bumbo without getting upset.  Unfortunately she is still not a fan of tummy time.  We're building on our tummy stamina everyday, but not making a ton of progress.  If anyone has any tricks to making tummy time more enjoyable please let us know.

Another unfortunate milestone this month was Amelia's first funeral.  My great aunt passed away a week ago today.  Although it's never fun to lose a relative I think we all would agree that Auntie Fat's passing was a blessing.  Her husband died over 10 years ago and since then she hasn't been the same.  Being with him again is what she wanted and we're pretty sure that's where she is.  To help ease the pain Amelia became quite the "happy" distraction.  My grandma "my aunt's sister" needed the distraction the most and Amelia was happy to be there.

On a side note my grandma has taken to calling Amelia "Amy Jo".  My grandma has a track record of creating nicknames that end in "y".  For example she's always called me Krissy much to my mom's dissatisfaction 27 years ago.  Lia is what we like to call Amelia for short, so Amy unfortunately won't be on our list.  However, I figure if you make it to 89 you should get to call your great-grandaughter whatever you want.  So Grandma Sweetheart you can call her Amy Jo if you want.  

Lastly, today marks the day I was suppose to go back to work.  Two weeks ago I came to the conclusion that leaving Amelia was just not something I was ready to do.  Staying home with her was the easy decision, but letting my principal, colleagues and students down was the hard one.  Lone Hill is an amazing school with an awesome principal and great teachers.  In accepting the job this summer I had promised my principal I would be back in March and had every intention in keeping that promise.  Breaking that promise was extremely difficult.  I've never had a principal that I felt truly appreciated me like Kenny and I hope and pray that I haven't ruined our relationship.  He was very understanding of my decision, almost too understanding, and has even allowed me to take a leave until the end of this year so that I can still come back next year if I want too.  Talk about amazing!!!  I also had an amazing teaching partner, that made my job so much easier.  I never thought I would find a teaching partner like Jason after leaving all my amazing friends and colleagues at Green Gables and so leaving him for the rest of the year was also hard.   However, he too was extremely understanding and so happy for me that I was able to stay home with Amelia.  So although the decision was hard to make, I feel blessed that the decision went as smoothly as it did.

So now I try a dose of "stay at home mommy".  I'll keep you posted as to how it goes.  With a face like the above I don't why I would ever want to leave.  But then again teaching is my passion and if I could find a way to balance both, I think I might just be the happiest person alive!

Our amazing little NIGHT time sleeper!

Since the very beginning Amelia's been an amazing night time sleeper.  Even in her first week she would sleep 5-7 hour stretches at night and if it was closer to 5 hours I could feed her and she would immediately go back to sleep.  I'm not sure how we got so blessed in that department, but as a new mother I certainly appreciate the ability to sleep long stretches especially at night.  Lately she's been consistently at the 7-8 hour mark waking up at exactly 6:30 am.  This gives Tym just enough time to say good bye before he leaves for work at 6:45.

Day time sleeping on the other hand is a completely different story.  Unless this little darling is in someone's arms, nap time is extremely short making for one grumpy little Amelia.  I've found tricks that seem to help a little.  At night, Tym swaddles her really tight, so I've started doing this during the day.  It works part of the time, however most of the time I walk in and find her completely unswaddled.  Sometimes I think she hasn't taken a nap at all she's simply spent the hour (if I'm lucky) playing Houdini and made her way out of the swaddle.  If she weren't sleeping at night I think I would probably pull my hair out, but we'll take the night time sleeping for now and keep working on nap time.  We're bound to figure out some kind of routine eventually!

(This isn't the best picture displaying her little trick, but it at least shows her not swaddled anymore.  That bunch of blanket by her left ear is her left arm.)

It's been a while!

There's nothing like deciding to start a blog then not updating it.  I apologize to all of you readers. Any of you mom's out there that have blogs will need to help me out.  When do you find the time to update your blogs?  I have plenty of time to read while I'm nursing,  but actually updating is a whole other story.

I will say that we've been a bit busy around here.  On January 25, Tym turned 30.  Amelia and I made a trip to his office to surprise him for lunch.  He was very excited to see us.

That night Grandma and Grandpa Frick offered to babysit so that Tym and I could go out to dinner to celebrate.  We decided to head to a little Italian place and absolutely love the food.  It brought back lots of memories of our trip to Italy 8 years ago.  My has the time flown by.

On January 27, some of Tym's family came to town from Indiana.  We enjoyed hosting his cousins Danica and Wendy, while his aunt Bev and Grandma stayed with his parents in Apple Valley.  We enjoyed our time with them and I'm pretty sure they enjoyed their time with Amelia.  It was sad to see them leave after a good week and half together.

Since our visitors left we've been trying to find some sort of routine.  Amelia is a great night time sleeper, but we can't seem to find any kind of pattern during the day especially when she prefers to nap in someone arms.  I'm thinking this week we'll start trying to nap in our own bed so that mom can get some things done during the day!

We'll end with Amelia's one month picture.  It's hard to believe that a month has already gone by.  She's 

growing so quickly and we're trying our hardest to enjoy every milestone.  It's amazing how much more alert and active she is after only a month.

Better Late Than Never

I've been a blog stalker for awhile, never feeling like I had enough to share to start my own.  But with little Miss Amelia in our lives and our family and friends spread out across the country now seems like as good a time as ever to get one started.  I'll start with Amelia's birth story and then we'll see where we go from there.

 Amelia began her entrance into this world on Monday, January 3, 2010 at 4am with what the midwife referred to as prodromal labor or "false labor".  My contractions ranged from 6 min. to 15 min. until about 4pm in which Amelia decided she was done and needed a break.  Mommy and Daddy were a bit disappointed as we were exacted to meet our little bundle of joy, but Mommy was also glad for a break from the contractions.

The next day contractions started up again and lasted until Thursday at 9pm.  This time the contractions were different and centralized in my lower back ranging from every 10 min. to 45 min.  It was at this time that we realized the baby was posterior or "sunny side up" which was causing the excruciating back pain.  If there are any women out there that have experienced this I have a whole new level of appreciation for you.  Holy cow is it painful.   Sleeping was quite rough.  By the time I would finally relax enough to fall asleep, another contractions would start.  The only time I could get any sort of relief was when Tym would jam his fist into my tailbone.



By 9pm on Thursday the contractions started to get closer together and stronger.  We called the midwife and she arrived around 11pm.  By 1am I was dilated to 6 cm and in excruciating pain but excited that we where making progress.  By 8am I was dilated to 7cm but my water still hadn't broken.  To help speed things along we decided to go ahead and break my bag of water.  Unfortunately it didn't seem to help speed things along as much as we would have hoped.  At noon the midwife checked me again and I was still at 8cm.  At this point I was pooped and about at my wits end.  So we decided to blow up the birthing tub in hopes that it would help get me those last two cm.  Unfortunately that didn't do the trick.  It got me to 9cm but no more.  At about 3 we decided we had tried everything possible at home and decided to head to hospital.  


When we got to the hospital they checked me and I was back to 7cm.  I'm not sure how you digress, but apparently when you transport that can happen.  It was probably a good thing because I'm not sure they would have given me an epidural if I was still at 9cm and at this point I needed the epidural.  Boy was that epidural amazing after 5 days of back labor.  It's funny because once the epidural set in I started feeling the contractions in my stomach which I hadn't actually been feeling because the pain in my back was so bad.  


So I continued to labor at the hospital with the help of the epidural.  By midnight I had made it back to 9 cm and it was looking hopeful that I was still going to be able to have this baby vaginally.  However then the contractions started to slow down.  They gave me some pitocin in hopes that it would speed them up again, but that didn't seem to work either.  Evidently our little Amelia was stuck and there was nothing that my body or hers could do to help her out.  At 3am Sat. morning we decided it was time to get her out of there via cesarean.  It was such a hard decision to make, as Tym and I both wanted so badly for this to be a natural experience, but it was a decision that had to be made.  By 3:30 I was in the delivery room and by 3:53am she was here.  All 8lbs 2oz and 21 inches of her!  Which was much more than Mommy had expected!!

Once she was out it was evident that she had been stuck in the birthing canal.  If you look carefully you can see the circle on the top of her head.

Once I saw her I knew we had to name her Amelia.  Amelia was a name that I had loved since the beginning, but upon learning of it's meaning "industrious and hard working" Tym and I decided to move away from it.  However, her birth was certainly a difficult process for her and I and therefore what better name to suit her then one that means hard work.  We decided by pairing it with Joy, it sounded a little happier, as it was certainly joy filled work that brought her into this world.

The grandparents were VERY excited to finally meet her and to have everyone safe and sound.  I'm pretty sure the week was just as stressful for them as it was for us.


We had 3 days of recovery at the hospital following her birth.  The nurses at Pomona Valley were so nice and we both feel blessed that the transition to the hospital went as smoothly as it did.  In choosing to go with a midwife we knew we where taking a chance in not knowing who our Doctor or nurses would be if we had to transport, but everyone was just wonderful.