October 7, 2013

It's Been 9 Months...

this will be short...
apparently having 4 kids is very time consuming. so much so that i don't have time to write anything at all, and then i'm left to play catch up from the last 4 months in a very long winded blog entry. well, it won't be long today, i still don't have time for playing catch up. until i can get around to it, this is all i have...Miss Pink went from 6 months to 9 months in the blink of an eye. she went from not being able to sit on her own to almost walking, which causes concern in a house with 2 sets of stairs. yes, we have baby gates everywhere, but she has still managed to fall down the stairs twice. you would think after the first time she would see that it wasn't a great idea in the first place, but being only 9 months old, she easily forgets the feel of her head on the hard wood floor. i adore her stubbornness determination, she definitely gets that from me...



(someone please tell me how to take better pictures. i can't seem to get the lighting right and it's driving me crazy!)


July 10, 2013

six months...


i have gotten really bad about posting. i'll blame it on the fact that i have a six month old to keep up with, because now at 6 months she's on the move. she officially started crawling almost a week before she even turned 6 months. Miss Pink has grown up way too fast and i really need her to slow it down a bit. i just can't get enough of her (all 15 pounds of her). at times i do feel guilty that i treat her slightly better than the boys, but 1. she is a baby and 2. she is the only girl, but i still feel guilty.

so yeah, a lot happened in the last few months for her. there's the crawling thing and then there's the whole eating thing. girl is a pig! so far we haven't found anything she doesn't like. it seems she has inherited my love of food, so i only hope she also inherits the love of athletics to go along with it. you can tell by the pictures that she is a ham in front of the camera. and it's no lie, she's happy all the time. i know i am a very lucky mommy to have such an awesome munchkin. so far, the only thing we've found that kind of pisses her off is pinching her nose, but really, who likes that anyway...





March 30, 2013

roly poly...



now that she has the rolling over figured out, she manages to get herself "stuck"...

(oh, and FYI: i will never make it big in Hollywood as a movie director)

it's been 3 months already...

i really thought that i would have had a little more time on my hands to sit down and keep track of Miss Pink's life, but i guess that those high expectations went out the window, along with my sanity, on the day she was born. okay, okay, it's not entirely her fault, but she's young enough that i can still blame things on her and not just my laziness. quite a bit has happened since we finally got settled in. i'll just stick to the highlights, since not everyone really cares how many times a day i'm changing poopie diapers. 

by the time we took Miss Pink in for her 2 month check up she had gained almost 4 pounds! well crap, 4 pounds may not seem like a lot, but for her, she gained more than 1.5x her birth weight (imagine gaining 1.5x your own weight in just 8 weeks...ewww). i really thought she was looking chubby and huge, but HA! she was still so much smaller than the boys at that age. she really is a peanut compared to other babies. 


since i am not a professional, and my kids would never sit still long enough if I told them to, i had a friend come and take the boys first pictures with their sister. (thanks LWP)
so, like i said before, a lot has happened in the last 3 months. NoNo turned 5! i can't believe he's 5! starting kindergarten in the fall (less than 5 months away) and i'll be home with a munchkin. a super cute munchkin.

i really thought that being a mom for the 4th time would wreak some serious havoc on my psyche, but surprisingly things have been pretty mellow. i think that being a little older and having had done this 3 times before, i'm just taking this whole new mother thing pretty easy. i'll giver her some credit though, she's an extremely easy baby. she started sleeping through the night right around 6-8 weeks, and last night even slept for 10 hours straight! she's been giggling and cooing since she was about 7 weeks old and right at her 3 month birthday she figured out how to roll over. she's perfectly perfect...






February 15, 2013

and then this happened...

you would've thought that having a newborn would be enough excitement for one family to handle, but apparently not in the McCool house. just 12 days after Miss Pink exploded out of my belly, i started to notice a stiffness in my elbow. i just assumed it was part of the new "mom arm" i was acquiring from the constant feeding and carrying, but once the pain started and the swelling...yikes! i like to think i'm pretty tough, but after letting it go for a few days, it was obvious i had to do something other than popping the leftover pain meds from the c-section.
after a call to a friend (who just happens to be family with an orthopedist) we were immediately on our way to get some answers. the first diagnosis was severe arthritis (aka tennis elbow), but even the doctor wasn't 100% on that. he knew it didn't look right, and just having had a baby just complicated things. i was sent home with instructions for ice and ibuprofen. well, a couple days later the swelling and pain just got immensely worse. it was to the point where i couldn't hold Miss Pink, i couldn't burp her, i couldn't change a diaper, i couldn't even get myself dressed. my arm was so jacked up, and did i forget to mention that on top of the pain and swelling, my arm was pretty much immobile. so, after another call to the doctor, we were off for an x-ray (which didn't see much) and then for a MRI. i'm going to skip over the MRI description, because it was by far the most painfully horrific experience i have ever endured. still with no answers to what was going on, we headed to an E-care place to get some blood work done. well, i guess i looked pretty bad, because after 3 hours at the E-care place i was put in an ambulance and shipped off to the closest hospital.

i'm not going to lie, i was pretty damn scared at this point. not knowing what's going on with your body is pretty scary, especially when you have a 2 week old baby at home. the first night in the hospital wasn't so bad, except for the constant monitoring from the nurses, having to get up and pump & dump (just another painful thing to do with a 2 week old) every couple hours, and the constant beeping from machines. i was seen by 3 different doctors, an internal medicine doc, an orthopedic surgeon, and the infectious disease guy. talk about fun times. the consensus was that i had some kind of infection, but no one knew what kind or from what. i stayed on IV antibiotics for the next 4 days. by the end of the week, the surgeon said they were going in to surgically drain the fluid from my arm and remove and infected areas. what the what?! exactly what i said.

let's just say that surgery went extremely well. they removed the bursa from my elbow, which was the most infected area. i was told it was septic bursitis and cellulitis, but still no clue how i got it. after a few more days of IV antibiotics, the swelling finally went down. i spent 7 days in the hospital from some freak unknown infection. i was away from my family for a week, and it wasn't even a vacation. you know you've been in a hospital too long when the food there actually starts to taste decent. i will say that i was lucky to have the best family a girl could ask for. my mom was here, my mother-in-law came, and my sister left her own family to come take care of mine. and i can't forget the awesome group of friends who also helped take care of my family. i might have been eating some fabulous watered down mashed potatoes, but the rest of my gang was happily eating some well prepared meals from some very caring friends. 


i've been home for a couple weeks now, but it's been tough getting back into the swing of things. surgery alone is tough to recover from (and don't forget i just had a c-section a couple weeks before this), but then throw in a newborn and 3 active boys...WTF?! wonder what the rest of the year has to offer...


February 7, 2013

it was a surprise birthday...

it was a Friday, the Friday after Christmas. the boys were home and bored, so what else do you do on a Friday afternoon, you head on down to Target wasting time "finding something for dinner". we didn't stay very  long, which is unusual for a normal trip to Target, so, we then headed on over to Chick-fil-A for a little snack (mommy wanted french fries and sweet tea). i'm a mom, i should've known something wasn't just right that day. i felt weird all day. and by weird i mean i was having contractions all day. contractions are nothing new for me. i have them all the time, but when i noticed they were 4 minutes apart and not stopping, i probably should have called someone (like a doctor).

by 3pm i decided to lay down and watch a movie (The Descendants to be exact) thinking this would be relaxing. it should have been. C was the only one home with me. the other 2 yahoos were over at P & E's house, so taking a nap should have been a no-brainer. i probably got up to pee 3 or 4 times in between the contractions, but i never really had to pee. actually watching the movie became difficult, and guess what? i never finished that movie. during one of the sappy hospital scenes where everyone is mad and crying, i felt something like a karate kick to my hoo-haw (from the inside!). i actually managed to pause the movie right before the giant explosion. and yes, it was an explosion, like 5 water balloons had just popped and i was the one popping them (you get the idea). it was barely 5pm and at this time no one was in the house. i remember rolling off the bed and scurrying to the bathroom while trying to undress at the same time all while screaming for someone (that someone would be baby daddy) to come help me. luckily C came in the bedroom while i was hunched over the floor barely covered with a wet towel. surprisingly he stayed calm and i gently (with a mad squirrel look on my face) asked him to go find Daddy. i could here him running to the garage telling The Husband he had to come inside, where he was told, "i'll be there in a minute." and then i hear, "NO, DADDY, NOW!"

my ever so calm baby daddy then helped me finish undressing, shower, redress, and get in the car all while talking to the hospital in less than 10 minutes. if you've ever seen The Husband drive, you would know that making it to the hospital in record time is no miracle. the next hour or so was pretty much a blur. i was lucky enough to have my best friend there (in the room) taking pictures the entire time and The Husband so graciously recorded the entire delivery for me to watch (that video will not be posted to the interwebs btw - gross!). all i know is that my water broke around 5pm and Miss Pink made her appearance at 7:16pm. i'll let the pictures tell the rest of the delivery story...


























February 6, 2013

let's just say things got a little out of hand...

i'm going to make this as quick as possible. considering i haven't posted anything in the last 3 months, there's just too much that has happened to write it all down in one post. i last left off back in October (that was last year!) with a birthday, homecoming, and getting ready for baby. well, since then we've had Halloween, a trip to San Francisco, Thanksgiving, another birthday, Christmas, and a BABY!! so, yeah, things got a little out of hand. we'll just skip over November (but i'll include a couple photos of our surprise trip to San Fran) and move on to Christmas...



ok, now on to December...

the month of December is always busy. it's that way for everyone i'm sure. with holiday parties, birthdays, soccer tournaments, basketball season starting, and of course Christmas, it's no wonder there's usually tons of drinking involved (well, for everyone but me that is). for us Christmas is pretty low key. we stay at home by ourselves, open presents, and laze around the house all day. we did get a surprise snowfall this year that was an added bonus for the boys. like i said before, this is going to be quick and dirty (we all know what's about to happen a few days after Christmas  so i'll skip to that as soon as SHE stops screaming at me from the other room)...