Ramble On

This past week was all about the Baby Shower. I threw my SIL a baby shower on the 16th and pretty much every waking moment from Thursday of last week until Monday was spent planning the shower, shopping for the shower, crafting for the shower, hosting the shower, and then cleaning up after the shower.

It was a heck of a lot of work but I think she enjoyed herself! Hopefully everyone else did too, but in the end it's all about the baby right?

It was a mustache bash, super fun theme.

We ordered the cake from the local grocery store, we just got it done with the writing, I added the ducks which I mustached with sharpies.


Me, wearing my mustache. We tried to take pics of all the guest wearing their 'staches.


My SIL surrounded by my girls as she's opening her gifts.


I'm still tired! I still love planning parties but it really takes a lot of me now. I don't know if it's because I'm "old" now or it's the heat, or just the fact that my Crohn's has been simmering (more about that later).

Of course I knitted for the shower.


This is a little kimono sweater, pattern from Sweet Mama, Small Sugar. Love her patterns!


This one is my creation, a baby Janye hat knitted in sport weight sock yarn on size 3 needles. I'm planning on making the pattern available soon (free!).

I'm going to post a few more pics of the shower at a later time, after I've recovered! I have a GI appointment on Thursday, which is making me a little nervous, but I'm sure it'll be fine. I'll update on that after it happens of course!

On Monday we had to take Baby Girl to the ER. She was breathing very rapidly and with her stomach muscles, which completely freaked me out. She wasn't turning colors, but I didn't want to take the chance. She screamed through her entire examination (which is a good thing) and she was diagnosed with bronchitis. We were given an antibotic, and an albuterol treatment and sent home. We got there about 11:30PM and we didn't get back home until 2AM. Sent hubby to bed, and fully expected Baby Girl to fall asleep shortly after.

Not the case.

She was feeling a lot better and the albuterol made her hyper. She was literally running around in circles until 5:30 in the morning. Ugh. I laid down on the couch and after she ran a couple more laps and dumped an entire bowl of M&M's on the floor she laid down and fell asleep. She got up at 7AM when the older kiddos came down for school. Needless to say Mama was dragging all day long, Baby Girl was fine though. Go figure, kids bounce back so fast.

I'm so thankful that she's okay. Thank God for that.

Today I missed a party that I had been planning on going to for months. Ironically enough it was a friend's baby shower (I'll get to the ironic part in a minute). The trip would have taken me 5 hours to make and I was more than willing to make it.

Then my baby got sick. She was fitful, coughing, through out the night and I got little to no sleep. My husband had to get up and go into work (odd for him but he had to none-the-less) at 4:30 in the morning so I was on the night shift. I was in no shape to drive and when hubs got home from work I went back to bed...until noon.

I pitted myself. This always happens. I'm the mama so I have to deal with this stuff and I have to miss out on things. Blah blah blah.

Later on the older kids went to bed and I gave my daughter a bath and she did not cough the entire time she was in the tub. As I dried her off she talked to herself in the mirror "Hi! Hi!" and waved at her reflection. Then we sat on the couch together and I watched Paul Blart Mall Cop and she enjoyed the soundtrack. She was smiling the whole time even as her eyes began to get heavy and she held on to her blanket leaning her head against my neck. I may have missed that party but if the only thing that I'm destined to do in this world is to be their mom then I'm okay with that.

Not many of my close friends from high school have kids. In fact out of our little "group" (which consists of four people) I am the only one with kids (so far, the baby shower lady is one of the four and she's due in May). I don't know if it's true for everyone but I'm going to assume that it is, after you have a baby something so strange happens, a primal bonding of spirits and when they are sick or hurting a piece of you breaks. I don't think even if given the opportunity I would have slept last night. It was like I was right back to when she was three days old and I was monitoring her breathing.

How do you even explain this stuff to people who don't have children? I can say whatever I want but until someone has a child they just don't get how emotionally intense this whole experience is compounded further with each child that comes. So I had to tell my friend that I couldn't come, that I was too tired to drive. I just left it at that because my real message should have been this: my daughter was sick and I was heartbroken so I had to stay up all night to make sure she was breathing properly therefore I can't come to your baby party. I don't want people to think I'm insane, but that's the truth of it. I rarely, very very rarely, go out anywhere with out my children. Hubby and I have a "date night" about every six months. Is it hard to not really have a social life(aside from face book and occasionally email), yes. Sometimes it makes me cranky but all in all I chose this life and I love being a mama to my children. Sometimes people ask me what I would be doing if I didn't have kids and I can not answer them I can't even fathom my life with out these people in it. I remember before them, and I was floundering. I don't wan to say that they've given me a purpose in life because I don't believe that I should be putting that sort of pressure on them but at least they've shown me something that I can be good at and that's super important to me. My kids are nice, they are usually polite, they love to dance, do art projects, and they're nice to animals. As much as I think I've failed as a person I look at them and realize that maybe I'm not all bad.

Before I buy anything I always always google for reviews, however I never write them myself. Lazy? Maybe, or maybe because I thought my opinions were sort of worthless (I have issues). So I'm going to start doing these now because I have some products that I freaking love and would love to share with the WWW. I could just start posting *right now* about a list of things but I won't, I think it would end up being too much to wade through at once so I'll just start with the most important thing in world right now. Lotion.

Yes lotion.

My baby is 6-months-old and suffers from eczema. For the past three months (after the eczema just appeared) we've been trying everything to help her out the poor thing was bleeding night after night from just laying on the one patch on her face. I did a lot of research and took the chance on the Mustlea brand of products.


ezcema - by jayamaree on Polyvore.com

Every third day I bathe the baby with the cream cleanser, and wash her hair with the foaming shampoo. Actually, I do that in reverse. I put the shampoo on her hair and let it do it's thing as I'm washing the rest of her body. The shampoo won't work unless you leave it on for the required two minutes. After her bath she gets covered head to toe in the Moisturizing Cream, which really isn't a cream at all it's more of an ointment, it's very runny and makes the baby a bit sticky. This is what's working for us for now, along with a bit of steroid cream (which was prescribed) for when her flares get really bad (I'm really trying to avoid using it but sometimes I'm finding it's necessary).

These products are expensive, but I've found that they really do go along way. I've been using the shampoo since she was born and I'm still on the same bottle. That's three baths a week times six months, well you do the math, the point is it lasts a long time (of course my daughter does not have a whole lot of hair). I've linked to everything in my post but these products are available from drugstore.com, bathandbodyworks.com and some larger B&BW stores locally (ours did not carry them).