Super Sadness

So not only do we have our 15 month appointment tomorrow, but I think Mia is cutting TEETH. Not just a TOOTH, but TEETH. When I looked in her mouth the other day I saw what I THINK was a lateral incisor on the left coming in right between where her regular gum-line meets her front clefted gum-line. Besides that, I see one lump where a molar is thinking about coming in as well as the two bottom canine teeth and maybe the top two canine teeth. That would make - if you're counting - SIX new teeth that are in different stages of coming in right now. Only one of those (maybe two) have cut through and she's seemed pretty miserable.  :(  Tonight she woke up after being sound a sleep for a few hours and was just fussing miserably. We waited for a little while to see if she would go back to sleep, but the pain must have been keeping her awake, so I went in and gave her some acetaminophen and some teething jel and then planned on snuggling her back to sleep while we waited for them to kick in and work their magic. Well Zeus couldn't stand hearing her so sad, so he came down and took over for the snuggling part - good papa!


I also realize that I haven't posted in quite some time and have a ton of photos that I just downloaded from my phone. So if you are anti-photo-mass-posting, I'm warning you now... look away!  :)


The weekend of Sept 24, I watched my friend Michelle's daughter while she had a girls' day out with some of the ladies in her family. It was fun having her and she LOVES Mia which was both a blessing and a curse for a little girl who's use to having mommy and everything else to herself for the most part.  lol

Climbing fun - Mia and Amali

 

Some together time..... and some alone time = happy friends!  lol

What'cha doing buddy?

Wow, this IS fun! Busy little heads together making plans for later.  :)

And the fun just keeps on going!

On a ride in the "buddy stroller" to the pool for some swimming!

Don't even THINK about taking your sucker back mom! MOMMY, GIVE ME BACK MY SUCKER!!!

Happiness, thy name is blue sucker!

Bath-time fun - check out how long her hair is getting!!!

Looking at photos and videos with papa on his phone.

Playing with papa - they have so much fun together!

She was teaching papa how to do THIS cool trick, but once they were both doing it I couldn't seem to get a photo, darn it!

Playing today with Gideon, the little boy I watch twice a week. It's so fun because they know each other now and play so cute together (usually).  :)

I've also been busy coming up with t-shirt designs for my new little side business called ClefTees. When Mia was born I looked all over for some shirts we could get for our family that had something to do with clefts, but never found anything I liked. Well, I made up some designs for a clef seminar we went to last month. I posted the photos on my cleft lip / cleft palate group and people wanted to see more, so I've been working on different designs. It's been a lot of fun, but also taken up a lot of time, which is part of why I've been so lax in updating the blog lately.  My first order shipped out today and I have another one going out tomorrow. I'm excited because I'm donating some of the money from each order to Smile Train, an organization that repairs cleft lips and palates all over the world! You can check out some of our designs on Facebook or by clicking on this link:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/ClefTees/234579949924954.  Here's one of my new favorites.  :)

Man do I miss that beautiful wide mile!  :) 

Silly little monkey

I might have a renter for my Utah house. Hooray! Needless to say, with that good news and a good night's sleep, today is a better day. Thank goodness for small miracles.  

Speaking of small miracles, mine is such a silly little monkey!  :)  Here are some recent photos of her that make me smile.

Look at me mommy! I fit in the big girl car seat!!! ...Mommy, why are you crying?!? I'm growing up, but it's okay! Look, I'm SO big!!!

Hello. Hello? Is anybody there? I got new shoes and I love talking on the phone. Hello...?

Okay, thanks Gid, you hold my shoe while I work on getting the other sock off... Oh, and can you keep an eye out for my mom so she doesn't realize what I'm doing...? She just BARELY put them on me, so she might have mixed feelings about this situation...

Okay, go straight ahead, then left at the corner... 

...What do you mean back seat driver?!? This is my hood, I know the way to the park!  :)

The face of perpetual motion. ...Which is why that's the only part of her that is semi-focused... lol

Little cutie-patootie in her little pigtails and purple Converse shoes.

Look Mom! I have a new trick! I took off my pajamas!!! All by myself!!! Yup, pants AND shirt!!! I've got MAD SKILLS!!!

My saving grace

Things have been rough lately. Everything's seemed hard and discouraging and the hubby's been irritating (as opposed to me being irritating, I'm sure - lol) and I've just been feeling really overwhelmed and really stressed and really ready to throw in the proverbial towel. Today I'd had it so Mia and I went for a drive and where we ended up there was a PetSmart. Mia loves dogs so I figured it would be a fun thing to go and walk through the pet store and look at and talk about all the animals. She got the biggest kick out of the dogs that the owners had brought into the store with them. She starts "ooh"-ing and giggling and gets so excited. She also enjoyed the birds because there was so much movement in the cages. I wish I'd have gotten a video of her with this one lady's Jack Russel terrier, but I WAS able to get this one of her by the fishes but every time I try to upload it, it shuts down my browser! Just my rotten luck. Sigh...

Guess we'll have to go with photos instead, and goodness knows, I've got plenty of those!  :)  Last weekend we went to a UT (no, not Utah, but University of Texas, for all my Utah family who might be confused by that) tailgate. It just so happens they were playing BYU which is a Utah team.  lol  Thus, Mia wore her UT Longhorn orange.  I sent this photo to my best buddy up in Utah who is a BYU fanatic with the following captioning.

Lord, please let my Longhorns beat Uncle Iain's Cougars.  lol

 

Watching the game and excitedly clapping along with the excited spectators - Mia gets really excited when other people clap and cheer and always has to join in.

Earlier that day we'd gone to a Cleft Seminar near Dell Children's Hospital. I'd been looking all over for some cleft themed shirts and just haven't found any that I liked, so a week or so before the seminar I decided to make my own!  :)  Needless to say, I played with some different designs on the computer - I knew what I wanted it to look like, but it was tricky getting it to look like it wasn't drawn by a five year old. I asked the hubby if he minded if we all wore shirts that were the same, and he wondered if I could tweak something so that they weren't all EXACTLY the same. So, last minute I made a change to the color of the hearts for each of our shirts. Then Zeus said, well can mine be in Spanish? Luckily he got his request in before they were printed and already made. I finally got it all figured out and was finally ironing away like crazy at midnight the night before the seminar conference.  lol 

Unfortunately Mia was way overdue for her nap by the time we got home, so she went down for her nap before we thought to get a group shot. Luckily we'd gotten some of her before and after in her shirt.  :)

I made this shirt for a mommy I've messaged back and forth with a few times on my babycenter.com cleft group who just had a baby girl with a unilateral cleft lip. Since her baby's so new, she didn't make it to the seminar, but she saw the photo of it that I posted on the group and sent me the sweetest text about how she'd seen the post and it'd made her cry and she copied the photo of it to her facebook and it'd made all her lady friends cry, which in turn made ME almost cry.  :)  

I SO wished I'd have had onesies like this to put Mia when she was brand new and prior to her lip surgery. I would have had her wear a different color or design every day!  :)  When you have a baby that's born with something that's a deviation from the norm (I hate the word birth defect, because my beautiful, spunky little girl is in NO way defective), you want other people to see the beauty that you see in them. You want to shield them from all the ugliness in the world, but you don't want to hide them or have others think you are embarrassed of them, because you aren't!  I'd love to be able to give every new-born baby one of these onesies. 

I've gotten some great feedback from them, so I think I'm going to start a mini-small business and make these to share. My hope is to be able to get it all worked out so that I can donate part of each purchase to http://www.smiletrain.org/ to help pay for cleft surgeries. Anyhow, that's the plan.

My old computer is having trouble uploading more photos right now, so I guess that's it for tonight. 

Catch'in Up

It's been a busy few weeks. Arm restraints came off, Mia sprouted a new tooth - on the roof of her mouth no less, we went to a friend's niece's quincenera (sweet 15 type of Mexican party), and now we are battling the "icks". So, here's the past little bit in photos:

This is one of my silly favorites - my new phone screen saver.

Mommy and Mia - quick break from the arm restraints at the restaurant.

Who's that cute little mouse?!?!  :) Costco was selling these huge Mickey and Minnie stuffed animals.

  

We had a fun time ripping paper.

Decided to start trying to climb anything and everything.

Went for a wagon ride with my friend.

Decided to climb some more and give mommy heart failure.

Was super sadness so we went for a walk to check the mail.

Was still super sadness. - She was breakin' my heart! Super snuggly and fussy and so incredibly sad. She hadn't been this sad an inconsolable in a long time.  :( 

Ice cream helped a LITTLE, and that's when I got her to let me take a quick look in her mouth and I spied that darn new tooth on the roof of her mouth - through her newly repaired palate. Sigh...  Apparently it REALLY hurts and for quite some time. My poor sweet baby!

"All you need is love." Mia's new outfit from Great Uncle Harold and Great Auntie Charlotte, as part of a post-surgery care package made us all feel better.  :)  Thank you!!!

Papa and Mia at the quincenera Mass - she loved her shiny black shoes.  :)

And then one with mama and her pink favorite pink blankie.

Family photo at the quincenera reception hall.

Mia LOVED the cumbia music that the band played and was bopping her head along to the music. Here she is clapping away with papa - a huge old grin on her face. We were glad she enjoyed the music, but she just could not wind down - not only because of the music but because of all the people-watching there was. (She is her mother's daughter on that one!)

She finally passed out around 11:30 pm, but unfortunately it was a 30 minute power nap and then she was up until 2 am. Next time we go to a quincenera, mama and Mia are leaving at Mia's bedtime.  :(

More on the over-the-top quincenera that was probably in the $20-30 grand price range later. Yeah, crazy price range!!! I kept telling Mia, "Don't even THINK about it honey!"  Hopefully she won't remember it by the time she's turns 15!  :)

One more day!!!

One more day until the arm restraints come off!!!  

Okay, so I just read that, and had the thought that someone who'd never read my blog before might get the wrong idea of what kind of blog this is!!! 


The restraints I'm speaking of are the ones that little Mia's had to wear for the past two weeks to protect her little mouth after palate surgery from not only her fingers, but from her toys and anything else she manages to grab and stuff in her mouth before someone can run interference and or intervene. We've made it 13 days and tomorrow WE ARE DONE!!!  HOORAY!  (I must admit, though, to being more than a little terrified to suddenly take them off and turn her loose without them.)

Of course, THANKFULLY they don't seem to bother her much.

Nope, not bothered one bit!

Couldn't be happier!

Chilling in the car up front with the AC while we wait for our friend to get home.

Mia LOVING the front seat and chilling with mama.

They don't interfere when playing with a friend...

...or when helping mama go grocery shopping...

...though she has tried on multiple occasions to try and undo the Velcro. Which, would explain why she now has leg warmers on her arms over the restraints so that she can't get to the Velcro.