After working during any available free time for months, doing several equations that he explained to me, and STILL had me looking at him like he was crazy, testing and retesting, Marshall finally finished and put his Iphone application up for review to get into the app store.  Well on May 10th, after almost a week of waiting, DartPal was finally accepted!   Not only did he make the application, but as his job, he also makes the platform that helped him make the app.  Heck, he’ll probably get it up on Android in a week or so as well.  He did an awesome job and I am very proud of everything he’s accomplished.  If anyone has an Iphone and uses the Dart, you should really check it out.

Find it at the App Store:   http://itunes.apple.com/app/dartpal/id370850740?mt=8

And you can follow DartPal on Twitter:  http://twitter.com/DARTpalApp

Or go to the software website for DartPal:  http://hot-tea.org/

Also look out for something about DartPal in an upcoming article of the Pegasus News.  (That’s right, 2 days and it’s already going to be in the news.)

Alright, obviously it was Mother’s day on the 9th which was last Sunday.  Last year on Mother’s day I was in my second trimester of my pregnancy and I remember teasing Marshall about how I deserved a gift because I was on my WAY to being a mom but he didn’t buy it.  Heck I didn’t even get a “push” gift.  (A gift given after giving birth.) Women have manufactured many ways to get gifts out of our men, I think it’s only appropriate we get one for enduring 9 long months and then hours in labor for bringing a child into the world.  Kind of a “good job” and “thanks” for bringing my progeny into the world.  Although I do think the men deserve something too for dealing with hormonal women wanting all manner of food at odd hours.

After only being a mom for little over 6 months, I completely get why they gave us a DAY.  This year was special though because 7 years ago, on Mother’s day, Marshall and I were married.  Meaning not only was I celebrating my first official Mother’s day, I was also celebrating 7 wonderful years of marriage on the same day.  It really was a big day for us.  So what did we do?  First Marshall actually woke up early, (It’s a miracle!) and we had breakfast at my favorite place for pancakes.  Old West Cafe was packed and we had to deal with people standing around our table that were still waiting to get a seat, but the specialty pancakes are definitely worth it.

Later that day we packed up Kayla’s bag, and the kitchen sink, and headed to the babysitters; Gmama and Papa Joe.  I’d have probably felt a lot worse about having her watch Kayla for us if we hadn’t already celebrated Mother’s day with her last week, but it still made me laugh a bit.  “I appreciate you, and all you’ve done in raising the son I married, but can you babysit?”  It also figures that Kayla seems to be eating a lot more lately, which could either be a growth spurt or she’s just reached the point where she needs to eat more a day but is still hasn’t taken to the spoon and solids quite yet.  Either way it made for a fussier Kayla who seemed to want to eat way too often.

We went to a wonderful hibachi restaurant called Kyoto Japanese Steakhouse and took a our time actually eating and talking.  Something we haven’t had the privilege to do since Kayla’s birth.  I tried my first piece of sushi, red snapper, and it wasn’t bad actually.  I expected to eat half and give the rest of it to Marshall, but it wasn’t the cold, slimy, fishy taste I was expecting at all.  After our leisurely dinner,  we made a quick stop in to Gmama’s so I could feed Kayla, she had played for a while but mostly just was testing her grandparents patience, then we went to see Iron Man 2 in IMAX.  I had almost forgotten how great it is to see a movie in a theater, it was a great movie even though we were packed in there like sardines.  We rushed back to Kayla to find she fake cried mostly and calmed when she watched the “Ladybug Picnic” song from Sesame Street a dozen or so times.  After I fed her she was out for the count.  I could have held her upside down and she wouldn’t have woken up.  I guess keeping up her “upset” facade for Gmama and Papa Joe wore her out.  A big “THANK YOU” to them for watching her (and dealing with her) on our big day.

On a side note, the Friday before Mother’s day, we had good news.  In March, we had put in a order for a Chevy Equinox and it finally arrived!  Oh yeah, the geeked out mommy mobile was here.  We swapped the cars, signed the papers and we drove home in my new car.   We weren’t expecting it yet, but it was a great gift for our dual event.  It kind of makes the book I got Marshall (Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share) look pretty pathetic in comparison…

I remember the first time I saw Kayla reach out for a toy and bat at it like a cat.  I thought it was adorable.  I was proud when she grabbed that toy, pulled it closer and shook it for all she had.  I melted inside when she reached out for me wanting to be held in my arms.  It was cute, made me proud, and made me feel like I had the best life in the world just by looking at my sweet little angel reach out.

Now, as I try to feed her she’s almost completely backwards in her chair trying to get napkins or anything in range really.  As I hold her on my hip she’s trying to drop down and almost tackle the dog sitting at my feet.  If I leave her range of sight she’s screaming with hands reaching towards me and well.. it’s not as cute anymore.  Of course it’s cute when she’s in a good mood or when she’s trying to get a toy and not the remote away from you, but I’ve realized I have officially passed into the phase of parenting where you just give up whatever it is they want just to stop the screaming.  Nothing is mine anymore.

“Parents aren’t interested in justice – they want QUIET!”  -Bill Cosby

Lots has been going on in the last couple weeks.  Some of which I couldn’t talk about yet.  Two weeks ago on April 21st, Marshall and I packed up the baby and met his siblings out at Fujitsu field to remake a 18 year old photo of all of them in the Bluebonnets for a Mother’s Day gift.  We got together Sunday to celebrate and we of course gave her the gift so now I can finally talk about it.   Marshall and I got there first, because we agreed to make sure the field had the requisite flower since none of us had actually been there yet.  Since we got there before anyone even left, we had lots of time.  Which is also why we took Kayla’s Easter dress and set out to get some of the standard “baby in the Bluebonnet” pictures.  We forgot her Bumbo seat, so she would have to sit up on her own and did so wonderfully, and without a fuss the entire time.  Well, she tipped over once and in the process almost ate a flower.  (Daddy had to dig the petals out of her mouth.)  Needless to say the pictures are precious.  Why doesn’t every state do this?  It’s too cute.

The pictures for the siblings were great as well!  They made sure to get everything as close as possible to the original and it turned out pretty awesome if I do say so myself.   I wrapped the old and new picture in their frames and we all got together Sunday to wish Mom a happy Mother’s Day at Spring Creek BBQ and give her the present.  She was thrilled with it.  I’m glad we could all coordinate our schedules enough to get together and get the picture.

On April 28th, Kayla turned 6 months!  The day after I noticed a white spot on her gums, and since we had her 6 month check up the next day her doctor confirmed it, she’s officially cutting teeth.  She is also in perfect health.  I don’t know how we’ve have such a healthy baby, but so far we’ve had no ear infections or even the slightest sniffle. Not that I’m complaining but I keep wondering when the other shoe is going to drop.  She’s evened out in the length department and is now in the 50th percentile at 25½” inches, gotten chubbier in weight (It’s all in the cheeks! I swear it!) at 15.1 pounds which puts her in the 40th percentile, and she still doesn’t have Marshall’s massive head since she’s still in the 55th percentile and holding.

Yesterday we all had a busy day.  Since the baby turned 4 months and she decided sleeping was going to be sporadic, I’ve fallen behind on the normal household chores.  Since this house is so big, I kept looking around at everything I had to do and just about hyperventilating.  As sort of a Mother’s Day/Anniversary gift we got a maid to come in and do a spring cleaning.  I also took the dogs in to get groomed since (one of the things causing me stress) Odin was leaving “puddles” of black fur all over the house.  It was just EVERYWHERE.  You’d think the long haired dog would be the one we would have to worry about.  I guess we know better now.  I also ran several errands so every nap Kayla had yesterday was in the car.  Marshall was busy working on a software release for his company, so he was hard at work plugging away at his computer with his head down all day.  The house looks wonderful and the dogs look.. well, Odin looks slightly funny since he got shaved, but both look pretty spiffy.

Kayla is fascinated with electronics.  When she finally learns to crawl or walk I’m almost 100% sure it’s going to be in pursuit of something shiny, with lots or buttons, and probably a LCD screen.  Or maybe a tag.  Don’t know get how the last one is at same level of a IPhone or Harmony remote either, but for Kayla the draw is the same.  While just holding her on the couch we have to hide any electronics so she won’t physically lunge for them.  The first time she got out of her bumbo seat was a cunning maneuver with the remote as her goal.  That incident only yielded her turning on the PS3 before we came to her “rescue” and left us with a fussy baby because we took away the fancy toy.

My IPhone has become our child’s pacifier, Marshall’s laptop her “whack-a-mole” game and the Harmony remote her rattle.   We seek to save our precious electronics of course!   To that end, we’re thinking of buying one of those cop-out baby toy laptops or cell phones, but I have a feeling she’ll just end up throwing those on the ground after she flails it around like the 3 sets of keys she has, thinking it funnier to watch Mommy play “fetch and sanitize”.  I seek advice.  Should we buy these bright, big button “replicas” or just get used to her slobber on pretty much everything expensive we own?  I really hope warranty plans cover “acts of children”.

You know how when you leave high school all these friends you had just seemed to drift apart? How everyone is working on different things in their life and while you shared some in common and were friends at school, it almost seemed like high school might have been the only real thing keeping you together as friends? It’s the same for jobs. I’ve worked different places where I didn’t really connect with anyone and I knew it, but it’s hard when at a different job you think you did connect with people and after you leave, it’s just like high school all over.

Not to say you don’t see or talk to ANY of them ever again, there are always the select few that you keep in some contact with.  The only problem is those people might be in different stages of their life or live farther away and that contact is seldom.  I guess when I left my last job about a month before I gave birth, mainly because I was working so much and I never had time to get ready for the baby, that it didn’t really occur to me that the same thing would happen again.  This was a big step in my life; I wanted those people I shared the last 3 years of my life seeing day in and day out to share in it with me.  I knew it wouldn’t be as much because new moms typically have a lot on their plates for quite a while and to be honest I’m not the best at keeping in touch myself.

My baby shower was days before my scheduled due date and invitations were sent via email (which I know a few got lost and I had no other form of contact) with plenty of time to spare.  I had tons of people ask when it was going to be because they were so excited and I thought I’d have a wonderful turn out.  Imagine my surprise when only 2 that still worked there showed up.  The other 2 had left long before and were in different jobs now.  It hadn’t even been a month since I had been working and it was already happening.  While I did receive some notice from people of why they couldn’t make it the majority was silent.  We still had a wonderful time and I had more people than just friends I had met through work but honestly I had been expecting so much more then the meager few that showed up or told me they couldn’t make it.

The whole issue hurt, and after I had the baby my attention was diverted for a while.  After Kayla got a little older, I was getting a little more sleep, and the holiday’s had past, the situation I was in became more apparent.  I barely had any grownups to talk to, that I could go out with, or wouldn’t invite me to things that with a new baby just weren’t feasible for me to attend.  It was a sad situation that Marshall could relate to and so lately we’ve decided to get out more.  We’re making a decided effort to find friends with similar views and ones in the same stage of life so that they won’t seem to disappear on us because we’ll have more in common than just “we work together”.   It’s odd having a fuller social calendar then I have in the last 6 months but I’m getting out of the house for something other than shopping or family functions but it’s definitely something I could get used to.

I’m not saying any of this to make anyone feel badly, because as I’ve pointed out, I’m not great at communication either.  I’m just stating a fact of life.  Friends drift apart, no matter the situation it always hurts to realize you weren’t as close as you wished to be.  These people will always be my friends and while I was sore on the issue for a while, I’ve gotten over it and I wish them the best in all of their endeavours.  I’m just posting this to note a change in my life and of my goals in the future.  I’ve got a great family, a beautiful baby girl to look after and husband who is always there for me.  I’d just like to add a few more lifetime friends into the mix.

While I don’t like waking up all throughout the night to comfort or feed Kayla because I know she can sleep longer, last night was not how I wanted to accustom her to getting back on that schedule.  At about 4am, I gradually woke lying in bed thinking odd sleepy thoughts before the jolting thought of… “Why haven’t I heard Kayla?  Has she really slept this long?” so I turned over saw the time and that 6 hours had passed since I put her down.  Most glaringly of all though was the monitor was devoid of lights showing that it was NOT on.

This puts me into a flurry of movement to grab it and make sure it’s even switched on, which it was on and even on the loudest setting. I grab the power cable and plug it in and as soon as it gets some juice the video monitor flickers on to pure white, and more importantly Kayla crying drifts through.  I turn it off and rush to get to her.

Now that I think of it I’m actually glad I didn’t get the chance to see inside the crib via the video monitor because I probably would have freaked out even more.  Why you ask?  Kayla wouldn’t have been shown on the screen.  Now as I came to get Kayla her cry wasn’t really “distressed” when I first started making my way to her but quickly went to “pissed off”.  I found out as a looked in the crib at the sleep positioner I use and see it devoid of my daughter.  She has gotten her hands free of the swaddle and squirmed her way up and flipped around, then moved to the other side of the crib.

I scooped her up making my apologies as rocked her and finally sat there and fed her.  Still feeling bad as she ate I’m cooing endearments and just comforting her as much as I can.  She seemed more interested in… Well eating.  She went to bed easy enough, not as quick as usual, since she was more awake than usual, but that was to be expected.  As I put her down and I went to bed, I was flooded by thoughts like; did she roll from back to belly while waiting for me? (And I missed it!), How long had she been awake?, and Is she going to wake up screaming when she realizes she’s alone in the crib again?  Well, she didn’t.  She slept the rest of the night, woke up at the normal time not distressed at being in the “Land of No-Mommy”. I however took forever to get back to sleep because I kept checking the monitor and worrying about absolutely nothing so I find it ironic that I was more upset over the whole issue then she was.  Stupid monitor.  It really should make some irritating beeps when low on battery.

A lot of things have happened since last I posted.  First off, we tried solids again with a much more receptive Kayla to the idea.  Although some of those faces she made stated otherwise.  We have a video post of that and of a cute mini typing lesson daddy have Kayla earlier that we hadn’t uploaded.

Big news though was that our air conditioner went out downstairs.  As soon as we get nice weather I can’t even enjoy it from the safety of my cool house.    Since Kayla’s room and mine are both downstairs we weren’t the happiest of people.  Kayla has to be swaddled when she sleeps, (this included naps too) so when it’s uncomfortably warm I didn’t want to get her too hot.  She ended up naked a lot of this week during sleep time or in a short sleeved onesie just trying to cool off with mommy under the fan in the living room.  We got it fixed yesterday.  Apparently we had a leak in our AC unit and it had completely lost it’s freon.  I’m just glad we hadn’t spent our tax return yet because it was a bit pricey.

Since maybe 2 or 3 weeks ago it began being glaringly apparent that Kayla is out to grab EVERYTHING.  While it used to be easy to hold her while maybe eating or writing a check, she’s no longer content with sitting still.  She must have whatever is in front of her.  Most of it ends up in her mouth, if it can get there (my shopping list being one of them) or on the floor.  She almost poured my soup in my lap too!   Since she always is after things to play with we bit the bullet and got her an activity jumper.  Her feet barely hit the floor but she’s happy with all the toys surrounding it and can play for a while and be quite content.  She’s even starting to get the bouncing thing going.  Also, this way I don’t have to keep picking up the toy she just dropped to keep her from screaming.

Last but not least, today is Easter.  That of course means we had a get together with the family.  When I was a kid, I always got a Easter dress every year that made me feel like a princess, so I’m continuing with the tradition with Kayla and she showed her cute dress off today.  I made cupcakes that looked like Easter baskets for the occasion, which had a ton of candy to eat on top before you even got to the cupcake.  I also provided the dessert of chocolate fondue with all the fixin’s that we ate after a delicious roast beef Kayla’s Gmama made.  Kayla even got a small “Pat the Bunny” book from her Gmama that she tried to eat a few times.  Only damper on the festivities was the lack of some of the family.  Shannon was out in Nashville winning a dance competition (GO Shannon!) and spending time with her dad, and Ryan got very sick the night before so, him and his little family didn’t attend either.  I hope you feel better soon Ryan.  We missed you all today.

As I’ve said before, being a mom you really learn something new every day about your child or about how to care for kids in general.  The epiphany for today?  Babies are confusing.  I’ve posted about Kayla suddenly going to a horrible sleeper and my struggles with it, and it was slowly getting better.  Night time sleeping was progressing but naps were a battleground.  Last night she decided it was time for sleep apparently.  She had a nap in the car on our 45 minute drive back from a surprise birthday party and when we got home  we did her bedtime ritual, and put her to bed.  She ended up sleeping 10 hours with one quick snack after the first 7 hours.  I was dumbfounded this morning.  Refreshed, but dumbfounded.

Went about my day and after being awake two hours I put her down for her first nap for the day.  Cue the first two hour nap.  Couple hours later after running some errands, cue the second 2 hour nap for the day.   The naps gave me another bit of sleep (after all that sleep deprivation I figured I could catch a few more Z’s too) and a chance to make a really nice dinner.  I felt like Supermom.   I don’t know if at the switch from 4 months to 5 months changed something in her but it was wonderful.  Makes me completely realize that there might be a ton of reasons your baby is or isn’t doing something but one thing is for sure, babies just do their own thing.  Even if it makes you the most confused mom in the world.  I swear she’s mocking me.

On another note, we had a great couple visits with family this last few weeks.  Celebrating Ryan’s birthday (Happy Birthday again!) where the cousins got to meet up again and just be so darn adorable.   Shannon (or Shay to her hippie friends) made us all an awesome dinner while we watched Baylor beat some insignificant team in a landslide (a good portion of this night was occupied with Kayla screaming because she was hot and just wanted to be naked) and a surprise party for Mollie’s brother last night.  Maybe seeing all her crazy family members made her just want to sleep.    Let’s just see if she keeps it up.

Kayla has been keeping me up pretty much all night.  After what I’m pretty sure was a growth spurt, she slept like a rock for a week and then she took a turn for the worse.  Waking up every 2 hours, when she previously at least slept 5-6 hours, took one feeding then slept the rest of the night.  Now I’m getting up 3-4 times.  I’ve tried to let her “cry it out” when she woke up too early but after she went to sleep instead of waking up every 2 hours she woke every hour.  Not really an improvement.   I’m now trying a few things to try to get her back into old sleep patterns but if anyone knows any good tips or baby sleep books let me know!

On Kayla’s last check up we also talked about starting to try solids. This way I may be able to get a nursing reprieve.  (Nap time!)  After forgetting things several times on trips to the store I finally had everything I needed to try solids with Kayla.  I busted out a bib, sat her in her bumbo and got the rice cereal ready.  After all this prep work, exactly what I thought would happen did.  She spit it all out.