We need some cheer in the title

Man, my last couple of posts have been depressing. I guess it's alright though, because life is not always cheerful. Here is what we are doing right now: Watching videos and hanging out. It's a little hard to give yourself freedom to do that at your own house. We usually go to Cleveland to visit Brian's aunt and uncle between Christmas and New Year's and do all kinds of nothing. But at your own home, it's just not that easy. Laura brought over a couple seasons of a very funny tv show called Arrested Development, that we have been watching. The kids have been enjoying The Polar Express, Ratatouille, and Dora the Summertime Explora.
It's certainly fun to not have to be anywhere or do anything, but also hard for someone like me who feels like a good day is getting all things checked off my list. I just don't feel productive.

A Christmas Nightmare

You might be wondering why there are no cute pictures of the Greene children proudly displaying their Christmas toys today. Well, it's because there are no pictures. I got food poisoning on Christmas Eve and started throwing up about midnight. It continued all night long and through Christmas day. I couldn't even keep water down. I didn't go to Grandma's, I barely made it to the couch in our living room to watch the kids open gifts here. Today, I am fine. It is like it never happened. Thankfully we have wonderful family to come to our aid. We couldn't have made it without them!!

It's right around the corner!

Only 2 days left until the big day. Brian and I went out yesterday to buy all the kids' gifts. Yes, all. We are not usually procrastinators about this, but it just keeps not working out to get to the store without children in tow. All of us have varying degrees of sickness, Mary and Brian have probably got it the worst. This has made night time our least favorite time of day because of the amount of sleep we are not getting helping sick children or taking care of the baby. Last night Mary slept with Brian on the couch for half the night and then later in the night came in crying that she "spit up" (I almost had laugh in spite of it all). There was indeed throw up in her bed, so for the second night this week I found myself stripping her bed in the wee hours. Around 6 am she wanted me to rock her in the rocking chair. On top of it all, Emily is a very good baby, but doesn't care so much for sleeping on her own. She is quite content to be held all the time, which is why I am typing this with one hand right now. As soon as I lay her down her eyeballs pop open. She has got a bit of a cold herself, sneezing and congestion. So sad in a little baby who can't blow her nose. She barely protests when I do the nose suction on her. Unbelievable.

You've heard of Christmas in July

What about July at Christmas? We're trying to stay busy here at home. Mary found the pool bag and the kids have been "jumping off the diving board" ( a chair onto a rug) and having swim lessons for the last 2 days. It's a good thing for them that we have cranked the heat up since Emily was born.

Bathtime!

It's a big day at the Greene's. Emily's cord fell off and she got to take her first bath with water. She had an audience and didn't cry at all. Here are a few highlights of the drying off.

Fun Family Day!

We had a really fun day yesterday hanging out at Grandma Susan and Bob-o's house! Aunt Nancy, Uncle Al, and Sam visited from Cleveland for Laura's Purdue graduation. This is the first year that we are not going to their house for New Year's in several years. Everyone was feeling pretty sad about not seeing each other, so they decided to drive down for the weekend. We enjoyed a whole snowy day of togetherness.




Grandma Susan and the kids put on a singing show for us.
Aunt Nancy holds Jonathan
Aunt Laura with Jonathan , Aunt Meg with Emily
Grandma Daryl and Mary in their matching sweaters

FREEDOM!!!!!!

Today was my first (okay, second- I snuck out yesterday) day of freedom. I drove myself out Christmas shopping this morning and took Emily for her 2 week check up. It made me feel like a normal person again to be out in public and I am finally getting some Christmas gifts bought.

Emily weighed 8 lbs. 10 oz. (not quite back to birth weight yet) and was still about the same length (21 in.). She is doing well. The nurse suggested trying to bump her feeding schedule to every 4 hours during the daytime. She said her experience has been that babies who breastfeed less frequently tend to nurse longer and get more of the protein-rich hind milk that keeps them satisfied longer and they end up sleeping longer at night. I haven't heard of this before, but it makes sense and I am willing to try it. She has been waking up almost every hour between 1-5 am for the last few nights. So, I'm still getting several hours of sleep, but not in big chunks.

In other news, Elijah went to see the giant Christmas tree at Purdue today on a field trip with his preschool class. He described it, "as tall as our house." He said the real Mrs. Claus was there--she was wearing a nametag. It was definitely the real Mrs. Claus.

New baby pics

Wow, I got almost a full nights sleep last night. Which also means that this morning I got a shower, dried my hair AND used hairspray. I am wearing jeans, not pajama pants. The kitchen is clean, there is a load of laundry going and I am getting some computer work done. It also helps that the kids are at preschool/daycare today. I think I am also anticipating the fact that I am leaving my house today!!!! Tonight we are planning to take the kids out to Frankfort and Rossville to look at a couple of big Christmas light displays.

I took a couple pictures of Emily this morning. You know how babies change so rapidly especially in the first few months, but when you see your child every day you don't notice it. So here are a few new pictures of week old Emily.

Happy one week birthday, Emily

I love to think about things in terms of time--to say for example, " one week ago at this moment, I was...(fill in the blank)." One week ago at this moment I was still throwing up every time I tried to sit up (thank you spinal block--I am glad I had you when they were cutting my insides out, but not so much when I couldn't get out of bed for 24 hours). Emily was 12 hours old one week ago at this time. She already seems like such a part of our lives, hard to believe it was just a week ago she was still inside me.

Today was a big day--my first day to leave the house and venture back into the world with help from my chauffeur, Bethany--remember, no driving for two weeks. Of course it was the day that we get 5 inches of snow and half the schools around here were delayed, but we went out anyway. The top priorities for today included:

* getting the staples removed from my abdomen
* getting milk so that we can stop drinking green kool-aid
* pick up Elijah from preschool

Man, did it ever feel good to just walk around the grocery store. I am a homebody, but this is ridiculous. Emily slept through all of it. In fact, she slept through the whole day today. I hope that doesn't mean she's going to be up all night tonight!!

What's in a name?

We had a hard time picking this little girl's name for a very long time. We were debating about whether to choose her name based on her "saint" name of the church or give her a more modern name and then choose a different saint name for her. I had wanted the name Emily for a long time (it is my middle name) and we always try to pick names that are meaningful to our family in some way. So, I was very happy to find this when I was doing some name research. It seems that St. Emila was quite a woman of God and it made my heart jump for joy to choose that name for our daughter. Ruth is the middle name of Brian's grandmother (pictured above) and it seemed to flow nicely with Emily. So that is her name story.