i just need to let everyone know that i am NOT cut out to be a work-out-of-the-home mom. i have been working at THQ this week (my summer gig, don't ya know!) and MAN! it's really REALLY hard to do that and still be a mom! and what's worse is that this week i am a single mom b/c robert is out at camp! so it's a double whammie!!!! but man, kudos to all your work-out-of-the-home moms out there. it's really really hard!!!

abby was playing on the floor with some of her toys that she loves playing with this afternoon. i looked over and this is what i found! poor girl still doesn't feel good. she's NEVER fallen asleep like this!

 

i didn't need this tell to tell you this!!!

28 As a 1930s wife, I am Poor Take the test!

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SHE SAID "MAMA"!!!!

i've been saying it to her ALL THE TIME for the past...oh....2 months! but today, on skype with sarah, she said it!!!! and sarah can attest to it!!!!! YAY!!!!!

i woke up this morning at 5.15 with a migraine. i can't remember the last time i had a migraine!! it's crazy how they just hit without warning! i have no idea what brought it on...but i still feel like crap 9 hrs later. it's not as strong as it was, but DANG! migraines really knock the life out of you...especially when you have an 8 month old around as well!!!

here's hoping tomorrow will be better!

i had a dr appt today and while everything is great, i left completely brokenhearted. i'll spare you the details, but just know that just because a dr tells you something doesn't mean you have to follow it. if your instincts say to do otherwise, do it! or at the very least, get a 2nd opinion. you have a right as a patient, mother, whatever to do what you feel is best. if you don't agree with the dr, get a 2nd opinion. trust your instincts.

i certainly wish i had.

as a part of my cloth diapering addiction, i have delved into the world of wool (much to my husband's dismay). i got abby's first wool shorts and pants today and i am TOTALLY in love!!! i mean, tell me these aren't the cutest things in the world!!! technically they are supposed to be used as covers for prefolds and/or fitteds (those diapers are not waterproof - they need a cover to keep from leaking) but i think i will just use them as pants and shorts. they fit over her regular waterproof diapers and really, they are just too freakin' cute to mess up!!! i LOVE them!!!

WE'RE HOME!! we had a great time in dallas. saw mom's new house (it's beautiful!) and saw some friends! abby got her 2nd tooth and learned how to sit up all by herself!! she's growing up too fast!!!

while we were in dallas, we met lori and brenam for the first time face to face! that was the highlight of the trip for me! lori and i have been friends online since our girls were born. they were both premature -- due 1 day apart but born 8 days apart. so lori and i went through the NICU stuff together. it was awesome to be able to meet her in person finally!!! here are pictures from our time together!

well, abby is doing just fine!! the dr said she looks "remarkably well" for sustaining an injury like she had!!! however, she can't fly until tuesday. they don't want them to fly within 2 weeks of head injuries. so abby and i will be flying to dallas on wednesday instead of tomorrow. which gives me a bit more time to do the laundry! ha!!! then we have to take her back in 4 weeks to get one more CT Scan just to make sure that all the fluid (blood, etc) in her head is draining/absorbing properly and that she doesn't end up with hydrocyphalis (sp??). he is not concerned about it -- but it's precautionary. which i appreciate.

so all in all she's doing well!!! thank you, lord!!!

abby is doing much better!!! you can't tell she was hurt at all!!!! she has an appt with the pediatric neurosurgeon tomorrow morning (i'll update you!) for a follow-up. i'm hoping it will be in and out!!!

for your viewing pleasure, here are some recent pictures from the snelson household!!

i have debated posting about this but we've had so many phone calls from people who don't know the end of the story that i thought it would be a good idea. so here we go:

i went to north carolina to help a jaime and wendy with their 2 month twins for 2 weeks. (yes, crazy in itself, i know!) it's about 5 hrs from my house. when we got there, i went to get abby out of her carseat and into the ergo. i put her on my left side to get her in and was putting my right strap onto my right shoulder and she kicked/stretched and when she did, my left arm slipped and she fell backwards, flipped in mid-air and landed on the gravel face first. i (freaking out!) immeadiately picked her up. she was bleeding pretty badly from her mouth and her face was bleeding on her forehead, nose, cheek and chin. i ran to find my friend and she drove me to the closest ER which happened to be a po-dunk little place but had adequate equipment for a CT Scan. so the dr did the CT Scan and said she had bleeding on the brain (subdural hematoma) with old and new blood. that meant that there was this injury and a previous injury that looked like it was from 4-6 days ago. this of course baffled me completely b/c i had no idea where she would have gotten an injury like that! the dr there said that she would need to be transported to the closest children's hospital to be looked at there, with possible surgery. so we were transported by ambulance to Brenner's Children's Hospital inside Wake Forest Medical Center in Winston-Salem, NC. they put us in the ER there and had 2 neurosurgeons look at her CT Scan. they both confirmed that there was, in fact, 2 seperate injuries in her head, and so CPS and the Child Abuse Drs had to be brought in. abby was admitted and observed, all the while, they were trying to get the pediatric neurological radiologist to look at the Scan. also they were doing full skeletal x-rays and head/neck x-rays looking for other signs of abuse: fractures, breaks, etc. they did a complete physical exam looking for abuse, including sexual. (that was the hardest for me --- they did all this in front of me.) we had interviews with the hospital social worker and 2 Child Abuse Drs. finally the pediatric neurological radiologist read the scan and said that it was misread: children's heads/brains are very different in sustaining injuries than adult's and there was only 1 injury present and that was the fall on tuesday. this cleared us of all abuse allegations and we were sent home.

abby is doing well. she is and has been acting normally. she is very tired, as you would expect, but is doing well. she did vomit yesterday morning all over me (and i didn't freak out!!!!!) which was a concern for a minute, but it was a one time thing so they weren't too concerned. it will take approximately 2 weeks for the subdural hematoma to absorb back into her system. there is no treatment or medications that she needs. she does need to be re-evalutated by a pediatric neurosurgeon and opthamologist here within a week or so just to make sure everything is healing properly.

honestly this was the absolute scariest thing i've ever been through. robert was not with me until 11pm on tuesday. he and my mom drove up from atlanta as soon as i called them to tell them that she had bleeding on the brain. the drs were all fabulous - no one ever accused me of abuse, but they had check into it by law. now i am very nervous when i hold her and walk but i HAVE to do it. i am making myself. i'm not beating myself up about it - there was nothing i could do. but i do relive her falling over and over. i watched it happen -- it was very quick but felt like slow motion. so i see it all the time. abby has only wanted me to hold her for the majority of the time. but she has stayed my happy little girl, playing and loving on everyone around her. in fact, during one of her x-ray sessions, she was strapped down completely to a board and flipped on her side (not very comfortable) and she was laughing with the technicians who were doing the x-rays!

so that's basically it. i'm glad it's over and i'm VERY glad that she is okay. we had so many people praying for us - literally within 2 hrs the whole salvation army world knew about it. i honestly believe that the Lord kept my daughter safe and i give Him all the praise for doing just that. i believe that this happened for a reason and that through this He will be glorified.here are pictures of her for your viewing...pleasure?? again, thank you all for your thoughts/prayers! and to top all this off, in the middle of all this, she got her first tooth!!! wow....

well, our crazy weekend is finally over! i am completely exhausted and am glad to have done nothing today!! but tomorrow i hit the road running again --- i'm going to CWJ to keep jaime and wendy hood's twins. which means that i will have 3 infants under 7 months old. i know, i'm crazy. but i'm actually excited!!!

right now i'm completely wasted so i don't have the energy to make a full post - but i'll leave you with abigail's 6 month pictures, even though tomorrow she's 7 months. wow....

wow. just wow.

http://motherhooduncensored.typepad.com/motherhood_uncensored/2008/05/youll-always-re.html

i've had a lot of questions or curiosity about why and how i use cloth diapers with abigail. i'm going to explain a bit, but before i do i want to make it clear that i'm not doing this to step on anyone's toes or say disposables are bad or anything like that. i've just been asked a lot and i'm answering those who have asked. plus i just like talking about them. if you have an issue with whatever my reasons are, sorry. so here goes:

the first time i thought about cloth was when i was pregnant and katie showed me how to use them with brett. i thought the idea was kinda wierd but hey, it was cool! when abby was born, we had so many people give us diapers that i couldn't buy any cloth ones because we had SO MANY diapers as it was. well, about a month and a half ago or so, i decided that i really wanted to make the move to cloth. i borrowed some of katie's to find brands and types that i liked and jumped in with both feet.

why? you ask. well a bunch of reasons.

1. going with cloth was going to be a lot cheaper in the long run. sure it would be a lot to start with, but considering that abigail will be in diapers for at least 2 years, buying once and washing saves a TON as opposed to buying once a week and throwing away. yes it's more work, but i stay at home with her anyway so i've got the time. and honestly, i LOVE doing my diaper laundry. there's just something about it that's fun.

2. it's better for abigail. there are chemicals and such in disposable diapers that are not good for her. don't misread me: i'm not trying to step on anyone's toes or say that disposable diapers are horrible, but for me, i choose cloth.

3. they are better for the environment. i've never considered myself a "green" person. believe me! but since i started cloth diapering, i've realized just how wasteful things can be! it takes 500+ years for 1 disposable diaper to "decompose" (or whatever they do) in a landfill. that's quite a long time!!! with cloth, i don't have to worry about that! i just wash and the water gets treated as it should. so it really helps the environment quite a bit.

4. they are just so darn cute!! honestly, diaper changes are now so much more fun just because i can pick a diaper to match an outfit, or one that matches her (or my) mood. it's just fun! different patterns, different colors, different brands. you don't get that with disposables.

i have NEVER bought a new cloth diaper. i buy all of them used at http://www.diaperswappers.com/ which is basically a forum where you can buy/sell/trade cloth diapers and everything you ever need to cloth diapers. that has helped keep my costs down A LOT! up to this point i've used Fuzzi Bunz almost exclusively. i love FBs. they are great. easy as disposables to change but oh so cute! however, i've recently decided to change my entire stash to Blueberry's OneSize so that i really can go all the way to her potty training days with the same diapers. and i just LOVE blueberry's. seriously. WAAAAAY more than FBs.

so that's my story. if you're interested, visit http://www.fuzzibunz.com/ or http://www.blueberrydiapers.com/ or http://www.diaperswappers.com/ for more information about cloth diapers.

today we had the memorial service at westview. i went because robert had to be there and i didn't feel like being home alone all day. so i took the opportunity to introduce abigail to her uncle brock.

well, we've got 3 more nights until we are back in our own house. it's both exciting and stressful. i'm stressing about a lot of things right now and i can definitely tell. last night i fell asleep at 8:30 with all my day clothes on in a bed that had no sheets (they were in the dryer) and slept until 8 this morning. the last time i did that i was in my first trimester! i'm just completely wasted. abigail has 4 teeth coming in at once. i am having medical procedures to figure out what the heck is wrong with me. and on top of that stuff we are packing and moving and dealing with my mom moving 12 hours away. it's a lot for me. and i think i'm internalizing a lot of it. i didn't really realize that until this very second that i sat down to start writing. and i'm sure all this is coming out as one big BLAH that makes no sense, but that's how it is in my head. i feel kinda lost at this point. i want to be settled in our house. hopefully once we get in there, things will settle down for me. we'll see....

it's been a crap weekend. huge HUGE changes going on that are happening all at once. mom's moving to dallas, we are having to move back into our house, abigail is 6 months old and is rolling over, we have to buy things for the house that will make it "baby safe" for abby, and about a bazillion other things.

i'm sure i could say a bunch of other stuff but for now i'll leave it all at that.

YAY FOR MANDA!!!!

GREEN BEANS!!
i made abigail green beans tonight and SHE LOVED THEM!! i don't cook - EVER! - so i am very excited that i made her food that she liked!! granted, it's pureed green beans. but still, this is a BIG deal for me!!! i think i'm gonna like making her babyfood!!!