Romney News

Oh, life has been so eventful lately! A little too eventful for my taste, but things are hopefully finally settling down!

Here's a little update as to what's been going on with our family:

I got mastitis again a few days ago... either that, or it was the same bout of mastitis as before, and it just never got completely wiped out. But I'm on new antibiotics and am starting to feel better again, so hopefully this will be the last time! I've been to see a doctor 5 times in the last 18 days, to 3 different buildings, to see 4 different doctors, so I'm really hoping that things are finally taken care of.

Jacob started classes for his spring semester at Mizzou last week, and he had his first day of his clinical rotations yesterday. Naomi decided to wake up at the break of dawn (we don't have curtains yet for her room, so that's what happens), so I was already up when Jacob left in the morning. Our camera's battery is dead, but I got a picture on the cell phone of my studly man in his scrubs & lab coat! (Sorry the quality and lighting is so crappy... I should have gotten the real camera ready, but I was too sick to care at the time! Also, please excuse the mess... we are still not unpacked!)

Naomi is now sleeping in her very own twin bed! She had been sleeping in the pack 'n play (because we already raised the mattress in the crib to the highest setting for Aleta), but on Wednesday night when we put her down for bed, she somehow climbed/fell out of the pack 'n play and sat there on the floor crying until I came in to get her. So Jacob & I decided it was time for her real bed. We were both expecting her to have a hard time adjusting to the new bed & new room (she had also been sleeping in what will be Aleta's room), but to our surprise, she has transitioned very easily to sleeping in her new bed! On Wednesday night, Jacob laid down with Naomi for a little while before leaving her room. When he left, she cried for a few minutes but then fell asleep. When I checked on her later, she was curled in a ball on the very bottom end of the bed, which was the only part of the bed that didn't have a wall or a bed gate blocking her from falling to the floor. Luckily, she didn't fall out! Every time since then that we've put her down for bed or for a nap, she has gone to bed happily without crying at all. So we have been very happy with how well Naomi has adjusted to her new sleeping arrangements! Right now, Naomi's room has no furniture except for her bed, which has no cute bedding--just white sheets--but as soon as we get her room looking prettier, I'll take some pictures.

Aleta has started smiling and cooing a lot, which I am enjoying! I think she sleeps better at night than Naomi ever did, which has been nice for me. Naomi woke up so often to nurse for the first year of her life, and I never got any sleep... it was awful. I'm hoping Aleta will continue to be a little easier on me as far as sleeping goes!

Our new place is still a disaster... I'm actually surprised we've gotten as much done as we have, considering I've been sick almost the entire time we've lived here. My amazing sister-in-law Rachel spent a few days here with us when I was sick with mastitis and we had just moved in, helping with the kids & helping us get things unpacked. We wouldn't have gotten anything done without her, so we really appreciated having her here with us! Naomi loved having someone to play with and give her attention, too, since I had been too sick to play with her. Thank you again, Rachel! You are awesome!!

Once we get all of the boxes & bins unpacked and put away, I will take & post some pictures of our new place. But it may be a little while, so be patient with me!

I will leave you with a few more photos of terrible quality from our phone from the past few weeks... I wish I had had our camera charged & good to go, but that just was not a priority at the time with everything else going on!

This is the bedding I ordered for Naomi's bed from Target (on clearance!! 29.98 for the whole bedding set)

This is a picture of part of our living room in our new place, right after we moved in. Our box spring sat there at the bottom of the stairs for 3 days before we finally asked the maintenance guys to help us. They had to take off our front door and scrape up the walls/ceiling a bit to get it up the stairs.

Naomi started sitting in the stroller in the living room to watch her movies. Jacob finally folded it up and put it in the kitchen so it was out of the way, and I walked in to find her trying to sit in it while it was still folded up!

Naomi has also started crawling in the basket under the stroller and trying to hide.

Aleta had her first real bath here in our new house. I expected her to scream the whole time, since that's what Naomi did when she was a baby, but she actually was pretty calm. She didn't seem to like it, but she didn't even cry or fuss... she mostly just lay there in her tub looking like this:

What a week...

Note: I wrote this post on the 17th but didn't post it right away, and then we lost the internet we had been using and didn't get internet again until a couple days ago. So I wasn't able to post this until now.

The past week has been a pretty crazy one for our family! I don't think I'd want to repeat it even if you gave me a thousand bucks. Last Monday, we got the call from our new housing management telling us to come in the next day to sign the lease & get our keys. So we made plans to get the Uhaul and have help come on Wednesday to make the move. We didn't have our stuff completely packed up yet, but I knew we could have it done by Wednesday if we worked hard.

I woke up sometime in the middle of the night and I instantly knew I was sick. The upstairs in our old place was always really hot, so I never slept with more than a sheet, and even then I was usually pretty warm. So when I woke up covered with our huge, heavy comforter, and it just felt wonderfully toasty, I knew I had a fever. I spent Tuesday in a haze, with a fever that would spike at 103 before it would break (with the assistance of Tylenol & Ibuprofen) and then come down. I somehow made it through what seemed like an eternity of signing papers for our new lease, and I also made it to the doctor's office, where I found out I had Mastitis (as I had suspected). Jacob ran to Walmart to get my antibiotics for me, and for the rest of the day we got absolutely nothing accomplished. This meant that nothing else got packed for the move, which was a pretty big problem considering we were picking up the Uhaul at 9 am the next day.

On Wednesday morning, I tried to convince Jacob to put off the move for a few days because my fever was still shooting up to 103, and I was still completely miserable. But Jacob's mom & brother were coming to help us, and we had already reserved the Uhaul, so he really wanted to get it done. I was pretty much useless, so the three of them did most of the packing and loading up the truck. Since we had gotten nothing packed the day before, we could only load the big furniture pieces and the small number of boxes I had packed for the move in advance. This left a TON of stuff still unpacked at our old apartment, which meant that Jacob & I would have to make lots of trips back and forth with our little car to get everything moved.

By midday Thursday, I was finally feeling pretty decent, but it only lasted about a day. By Friday night, my mastitis was back with a vengeance. My fever was spiking back up to 103, and I was feeling completely awful. Saturday I went in to urgent care, where they gave me a shot of another kind of antibiotics. The doctor also mentioned that the reason I might not have been getting better (or started to get better and then got worse again) could be that I had an abscess. When I asked what could be done if that was the case, she gave me this look and said, "Let's just hope you don't have one." That lead me to believe that it would be pretty unpleasant... haha.

On Sunday, I googled "mastitis" to see if I could find anything else to help me, since I wasn't responding to the antibiotics as I should have been, and in my research, I discovered that the pharmacy had given me the wrong directions for my prescription. I called the pharmacy to double check, and I was right... I had been taking two extra doses every day. I don't think it affected my recovery, but I had very unpleasant side effects from the medication that were probably a lot worse than they would have been if I hadn't been taking extra doses.

By Monday, I felt really weak and still kinda sick, but I was finally starting to feel a little better again. By Tuesday I felt pretty good, but I had to go in to see my doctor yet again because I was worried I had an abscess. After my doctor checked me out, she was also worried that something was going on (either an abscess or something else), so she scheduled an appointment for me at the breast clinic for the next day. By some miracle, by the time I was seen at the breast clinic on Wednesday, the lump that had been present for the past 4 days was pretty much gone. I have no idea how it disappeared overnight, but I am definitely not complaining! The doctor scheduled an ultrasound for me anyway in two weeks, but I'm planning on cancelling if I still don't seem to have a problem.

So there you have it... our crazy, awful week. But I'm finally feeling better, and hopefully things will start to calm down so we can get unpacked and get our new place looking pretty!

2- Week Report & New Year's

We had Aleta's 2-week doctor appointment on Friday. She weighed 8 lbs. 4 ounces (about in the 75% for weight) and was just about 22 inches long (about 98% for length). I can't believe how much bigger she is than Naomi was. She is wearing sleepers right now that Naomi was wearing when she was 2-3 months old. She also has big hands & feet, with really long fingers & toes. Jacob says that will help Aleta in sports... she's going to be our little athlete. :) Naomi will be our little dancer... she's always bouncing & twirling & flitting about like a little fairy.

Aleta's 2-week photo with the caterpillar

Sleeping soundly! (which doesn't happen nearly as often as we'd like)

We spent the weekend at Jacob's parents' house with the family for New Year's, which was fun. We played games and talked and drank Martinelli's at midnight when the ball dropped (although technically, since we aren't on the east coast, we celebrated one hour after the ball dropped... I miss living on the east coast and watching the ball drop live... It's weird watching it an hour after it actually happens).

We also attempted to get a family photo both on Saturday and on Sunday night, but not a single one turned out. In every one, the baby is screaming, or Naomi isn't looking at the camera, or it's blurry, or Jacob isn't smiling... so frustrating. Somehow, someday soon, I am going to get a good family picture!

Here are a few of our attempts: