The rest of the weekend...

We got to Kansas City Saturday afternoon and checked into the hotel.  Hubs and been holding on to some Hilton rewards points for a while so we booked a room at the Hilton down town for free! Oh yeah! We got all checked in and fed Evelynn and then it was time to go pick up dinner for ourselves.  We stopped off at Waldo Pizza where I may or may not have run into a friend from high school.  Across the bar there was a guy who looked familiar but I couldn't quite be sure. He said, "HI!" in a way that made me think that I must know him. I said "Hi" back and asked how he'd been. The generic conversation went on like that until my pizza arrived and I pretty well ran out of there before I had to acknowledge whether or not we actually knew each other. I know.  Cowardly. But to be fair, I actually was running late and had a fussy baby waiting in the car with her daddy.  But just in case, if anyone sees Mike McNary send my apologies for running out on him, if it was, in fact, him.

Moving on. I was running off to Krista's house because she and Sarah had so kindly volunteered to babysit for us while we went to the wedding (see below).  Had a great time at the wedding. On the way out Nikki called a KCMO police officer that was escorting us to our cars (bad neighborhood) a jerk. Yes she said it loudly. Yes he heard her. But she was joking and he was in on it and we all laughed.

Little Miss hadn't got to sleep when we arrived back at Krista's house to pick her up. Bad news. She passed out in the car but woke up when we got to the hotel. About the time we got to the room around 11:30 the fussing started and escalated.  She finally passed out from sheer exhaustion around 1AM only to wake up crying again at 2:00. I'm sure the people in the rooms next to ours loved us. We got her back to sleep by around 2:30-2:45 but she was awake again at 5AM. I'm tellin' ya. This kid does not like to have her schedule and routine messed with.

So, after a horrible night, the calm. She was a perfect angel all day long. She took her regular morning nap right on time and woke up just as we were sitting down for lunch.  Lunch was fantastic. Mostly because my dear dear friend Jade was in town and she met us. I hadn't seen her since before I got preggers so over a year!? Really?! That long? Wow. That's too long Jadely. It was the first time we got to introduce her to Evelynn and they got along great. Evelynn tried to eat Jade's hair and Jade didn't even seem to mind. What a girl :)

After lunch we went to visit my old next door neighbors. We stayed with them for an hour or so while Evelynn ate her lunch. Then it was back in the car. Right on schedule with afternoon nap time, Evelynn fell asleep and slept the whole way home despite the very loud pouring down rain all the way. It was so nice. She was good all evening and even went to sleep in time for me to catch the end of Dexter.  Ahh... We paid our dues last night but I must commend the little girl. Today was quiet pleasant. And now, off to bed for me!

5 Months

Evelynn turned 5 months old yesterday.  I go through this every month when I realize how fast time is going by. She's growing so quickly! She now weighs 15lbs 12oz. That puts her in the 74th percentile on weight. And she's 26 inches long. That's the 90th percentile on height.

She seems to be learning so much every day and new skills happen at lightening speed. She can easily reach and grab her toes. Though, she does not bring them to her mouth yet. And she can reach across her body now- right hand to left foot. She can hold a toy and pass it to her other hand too. And she reaches for what she wants and is very curious about the world around her. She loves to grab faces. She also loves to feel different textures. She'll rub her hand across your arm to feel the difference between skin and fabric. She's really starting to like the kitties. As a result, I think they like her less. She's pretty good about petting until she gets excited and then she grabs a big fistful of hair and sometimes skin. Kitties don't care for that game very much. Lucky for them, she's not mobile yet!

She still hates her tummy time. But she loves to sit up and stand. When she's seated she often falls forward while reaching for an object. Then she ends up falling into tummy time and gets mad. Part of me hopes that will motivate her to learn how to coordinate that whole crawling thing. But the other part of me hopes she won't get it just yet, because it's so much easier when I can put her down and she stays in one place!

She can roll over from back to tummy. She just won't. She'll easily roll to her side to work her way around her toy gym but when she starts to fall towards her tummy she sticks her foot out to hold herself up. She does NOT want to be on her tummy!

We've tried solid foods again recently with slightly more success. I won't go so far as to say she likes it but she doesn't cry anymore. Getting her to open her mouth for the spoon isn't all that easy though. She really likes to sit her in high chair while we eat dinner. I think she likes being included at the table.

I think she's beginning to understand what we say a little more so it's time to start introducing a few sign language words. She started imitating me the other day when I stuck my tongue out at her. So cute! So I think she may be able to start imitating signs too. We want to teach her a few basic signs like "More", "Milk", "Eat", "Drink", "Hot", "Cold", and "Pain". I have a friend who has done this and it has really helped their communication before she can talk.

Oh yes, and I made her another little hat:

I think she liked it. What do you think?!

Things I Know For Sure

I've been pretty good about not wallowing in our recent string of bad luck. I haven't even had a good cry about it all.  But I feel like I'm on the verge of a Class A breakdown. It's not any one of the individual events really, just sort of the combination of one thing on top of another. But mostly it's the uncertainty of it all.  When and Where will Hubs find a new job?  How long can we afford health insurance and the mortgage in the meantime? Is it irresponsible to buy Evelynn a new winter had (especially when I want this one) when I could just knit or crochet her one myself and save the $15? Have we really come to the point where I'm VERY concerned with $15? Will we have to sell the house? Where will we live? Will we have to move somewhere where we don't know anyone at all? Will I have to go back to work? Will we have to move somewhere cold? I really don't want to live somewhere cold. It's enough to make anybody cry.

So, in order to help hold on to my last shred of sanity I've decided to make a list of the things that I do know for sure.

1. I love my husband and daughter.
2. They love me.
3.  No matter what else happens, we will always have each other.
4. We have amazing friends for support.
5.  We have a terrific family that won't let us starve or be homeless.
6.  This too shall pass.

That feels better. The other thing I know for sure:  There's a gift certificate for a massage from the wonderful Alicia Burk that I've been saving since Mother's Day sitting on my dresser . It may be time to cash that puppy in.

Well that sucks.

Just a couple days ago I was telling my wonderful husband that I was scared things were going too well and I was wondering when the other shoe would drop.  Consider it dropped.

My husband's company decided to throw a wrench into our perfect little world.  Completely out of the blue this morning they laid him off.

He just started this job in April a couple weeks before Evelynn was born.  It was perfect.  No travel (his old job had him traveling nearly 50 weeks a year). He was doing what he loved and he got a 30% raise. Essentially the same amount both of us had made combined.  GREAT!  I quit my job when Evelynn was 3 weeks old.

So, this morning I was loading the dishwasher when I heard the garage door open.  Um.. After last week's break-in I pretty well jumped out of my skin. Then I heard the door open and it's a good thing there wasn't a knife near by. But then Mike came around the corner I was ok, if a little confused. His office was 30 miles away. What was he doing home at 11:30AM?   He'd been told to clean out his office. Not. Good.

So, what do we do now?  Well, he got a little bit of severance, not much. And he gets to file for unemployment. Joy.  But he was told to consider himself lucky. See the VP of another plant in the company wants him to go to North Carolina and interview with that plant on Monday.  Um. Ok. So, the job they want him to apply for is essentially doing the same thing he does now, but not a management position. So it pays less than he makes here but the cost of living there is more.  We wouldn't be able to live on it, especially not with all the medical bills from Evie's birth still hanging over our heads. Besides that, we'd have to move half way across the country away from our friends and even farther from our family.

He's searching Monster and Career Builder and Linkedin, and any other job site he can find. We'll see if anything surfaces. But so far there doesn't appear to be anything around here. So chances are we'll have to move. I just hope we can move closer to family rather than farther away.

I don't want to move. I love my house. We JUST renovated the bathroom and I LOVE it. I don't want to give it up. I have trees planted in the front yard that are supposed to grow with Evelynn. I have plants stolen out of my Mom's yard at her old house. I'm comfortable here. And I just got rid of tons of junk so it's much more comfortable now. Besides that, the house isn't ready to go on the market. We need new carpet and new paint all over the house. I hadn't planned on doing any of that for a while.  I always thought it was stupid when people painted their house just to put it on the  market. I always thought if I painted, darn it I was going to enjoy it for a while. Guess not.

This sucks.