This Weekend...

I will be doing some shopping!! Woo hoo! Our tax return came and Marc got paid. It mostly goes towards bills, but it is Marc's birthday tomorrow, and there are some other things we need, so I get to go shopping.

I get to go shopping this morning with just the baby, since Daddy is busy and Grandma and Papa took Vinny to Disneyland. They enacted his fantasy this weekend. He loves to play at their house and pretend that he is at preschool and then Papa picks him up from preschool, and then they all go to a hotel and then go to Disneyland. Well, they decided that they could make his fantasy a reality, so Papa picked him up from preschool and then they surprised him by taking him to a hotel last night and to Disneyland this morning. They also made reservations at the Blue Bayou. I am officially jealous. Also very excited for him, but a little jealous. My kids are so lucky to have such awesome grandparents.

Last night, Marc and I were at Kohl's and Marc picked up a massage lotion called "Peace Potion," made with chamomile and lavender. He thought he was being thoughtful.

We got home and he offered to give me a massage. Just a few minutes into the massage, my entire back started burning and tingling and I felt like I wanted to rip my skin off. I rushed to the bathroom to frantically wash it off, but too much of it had absorbed, so my back was burning and tingling until I finally fell asleep last night. I was trying to remember the last time I had felt that way, because I knew I had felt that feeling before.

So, I look it up online, and... did you know chamomile is a ragweed?  Yup.  I'm allergic to ragweed. Severely, actually. It is why I spend the majority of the Fall sick with hay fever.  When I had felt that feeling
before?  Allergy testing. The week they tested ragweed, my arm itched and burned and tingled like crazy. The nurse had to rub the Benadryl cream all over it right away. Yeah, the allergy test was like a few drops of it injected just under my skin on my forearm. I will let you imagine how much worse having it absorbed into my whole back felt. Wanted to just rip my skin off. Miserableness.

Tiana is so adorable. She is sitting here next to me just smiling and cooing. She slept in her own crib last night. We have been co-sleeping up until this point. I recognize how many naysayers there are to co-sleeping, but you know, it worked for us. She had reflux until she was about 4 months old, and slept better propped up in my arms. We all got more sleep that way, and the close relationship I have with my daughter is very special to me, in a way I never had with Vinny. I think it is such an American thing, or at least a Western thing, to feel like babies need to be so independent, that they even need to be on their own when they sleep. It seems strange to me when I really think about it. Why do we want to insist on independent sleeping situations for these little creatures who are anything but independent in every other way?  I understand that some people think it is for safety purposes because of SIDS, but there has been just as much research done to show that babies are safer with their mothers. Most SIDS deaths occur when babies are in cribs by themselves. I am truly not saying that one way is better than the other- Vinny slept better in his crib (which was in our room though), and Tiana slept better in my arms, so we did what worked for us. I think people are too judgmental about this stuff in general.

Anyhow... so it is time for her to move because she is becoming too roly poly. She seriously moves so much now. Changing her diaper is quite challenging, since she will not stay still. This is not a problem when she is asleep, but she does wake up sometimes. In addition, I have been known to roll over with her to feed her (in my sleep), and I don't want to risk falling asleep with her on the outside instead of in the center and then rolling off the bed. We had the bassinet pushed up against it, or sometimes a pillow, but now it really is seeming like a safety concern. I figure we have two choices... buy a co-sleeper or put her in the crib. We are going with the cheaper option first. So far, so good. She went to sleep in her crib around 10pm, and woke up once at 2, but I nursed her back to sleep and she slept in her crib until 5. Not bad, eh?  Eventually, I will try to get her to drop that middle of the night feeding. I honestly don't know if she normally wakes up that time to eat or if it was just because of the change. Marc says she does sometimes, but I wouldn't know. I honestly thought she was sleeping through the night every night, but Marc swears she wakes up about half the time to eat once or twice. I just feed her in my sleep I guess, because I honestly didn't know that until he told me.

Well, we will see how the next couple of nights go.