First easter!!

Torries basket finally came!!

No more children!!!!

So today Torrie's nana (g's mom) decided she wanted professional pictures done with her children and her granchild (torrie) which was fine, but g and i also volunteered ourselves to watch my friends son (5months old) during the same time as we had to go get pics. I figured it would be fine since g's family would be occupying torrie and i would deal with baby josh. Boy were we mistaken, two babies under one is tough!!! I dont want another baby, unless or until torrie is 2 or older and she can help herself a little more. She also had pictures with the bunny for easter. But now baby josh is home with his mommy and me g and torrie are hanging and im hoping the two of them finally let me lay down!! My head is spinning not to mention i forgot to take my blood pressure meds this morning!!

Torrie's first easter outfit before pics

Torrie with the creepy bunny

Baby Joshie <3

Is it Friday Yet?!

I just want to cuddle up and snuggle with my baby boo all weekend and create an igloo with no exit. weird i know but i so wish it was the weekend and i could put Saturday on repeat for a zillion years and still roll in my weekly paycheck without actually going to work. Ive been lazy with posting lately but i just don't have much to talk about, I've been busy preparing for the march of dimes walk and Easter and such, that the whole week has been a blur, not to mention me and G are not on good terms right now, and surprisingly his mother is more on my side then his, so that's great, at least i know I'm not terribly out of line here.

in other news, Torrie made me her first picture at school, I'm so proud of my future van gogh

i love it i just love it!!!

and we are anxiously waiting for the bunny rabbit to come for Torrie's first Easter!!

lmfao i don't know how or when her face got so fat lmao, okay that's just mean, but shes so damn cute.

The picture i promised

Of my new source of organization. Likey likey?

Manic monday

well, lets say  today did not start off so great, torrie woke up just as miserable as she went to sleep. then we got to daycare, at 12:42 pm i got the dreaded phone call- torrie is sick and needs to be picked up, oh and the real jab in the gut "and she cant come back for 24 hours"

so what do you think i did- i got my ass on the phone with the pediatrician and had my mom jet packed her over there to make sure this "sickness" wasn't the antibiotic kind.

meanwhile, my uncle goes to pick her up, of course i cant pick her up and of course its on the day I'm working about 40 minutes from where shes at.

so i'm kinda mad, i have to arrange childcare for tomorrow. but oh well, my aunt and uncle are splitting the day half and half and i am sooooo happy and grateful for that.

btw, when i got home to her she was chillin in the high chair eating cheerios happy as a clam. bull- but she cant go back tomorrow, ugh-

anywho last manic monday i posted about my organization needing to be better, well my bank managing needs to be better too but that's another subject all together, I finally have this cork board up but i haven't taken a picture yet, i will after this little she-monster goes to sleep. I am currently typing this in the dark.

also the walk is coming up for march of dimes. its becoming overwhelming, i really dont think i knew what i was getting myself into. i mean i want to do this but the planning the posting the advertising!!! omg!! what the heck was i thinking!

anyway for anyone reading this the link to donate is

www.marchforbabies.org/torrie67  :)

i cant think straight right now, ill post a pic of my board later.

tootles.

Dear Torrie

Dear Torrie,

First off, id like you to know that i love you more then anything in the world. You are everything mommy always wanted in a bouncing baby girl, you stop people everywhere to say how gorgeous you are, you attract everyone with you're beautiful smile and you amaze everyone with how far youve come since your 3lb days.

But today little one, you were one stop short of sending me to the looney bin. I know theres alot going on in your body, like teeth and poop and pears and peas, but there was no reason to whine for hours on end and virtually sew yourself to my hip. Many people offered to be your bff today, including your father and you just werent having it. It was mommy love me day. And even after many reassuring hugs and kisses you still would not let me take a little cat nap, why oh why.

And then, on top of it all you cried for 2 hours until you finally went to sleep and are now snoring happily in your crib.

Mommy is sad that our day had to end like this, yesterday we were such great friends, can we please go back to that? I promise i wont feed you breakfast 30 mins late ever again on a sunday!!!!

Love you always, no matter how big of a migraine you give me
-mom

Beach day!!!

The things we do for our children

Torrie gets a special preemie shot for her lungs every month for five months during the winter.
she was scheduled for one today, but since i work shitty hours i couldn't take her but low and behold my darling little sister was on spring break so she could take her!
one problem- my sisters car.
she doesn't realize that he car is a detriment to society, and one of the many causes of pollution and the fact that you can't go over 60 or it breaks down is a real big deal.
she sees nothing wrong with her car, also called Daphne (DA fa knee)- i call it an abomination.
so the night before (Monday night) my mother agreed that my sister would take my moms car, and she would take the abomination.
yay- problem solved.
i know your thinking what a selfish bitch i am for not letting her use my car to drive my kid around but shoot me, I'm being very vain right now.
well guess what god had other plans and my mom forgot and took her own car. which left me to either
A. switch the car seats around and let Torrie go in the abomination or
b, be a big girl and let sister drive baby in new safe car.
ugh whyyyyy does my conscious always have to kick in.
thus, i drove in this, almost got blown up-abomination.

not so bad from the outside huh? can you see that the drivers door has no handle!! yea i have to hop over the seat to drive!

we must accent the ridiculousness with the dice AND a sign that says no farms no food. yea great and don't forget the Hippy air refreshers or the CD changer that does not work.

yea. so I'm done whining about the abomination, if i didn't love Torrie she would be riding in this chitty chitty bang bang car. but, on the bright side, i drove home quickly at lunch time and swapped my car out.

In other news,
i went to the eye doctors, i have shitty eyes to begin with but they're worse, like 60 yr old woman worse. ugh i cant catch a break, and if i cant get my Blood pressure under control she said my eyes can blow up. yea that's what she said, my eyes will b l o w u p. really? come on? so off the the docs i go on Friday to start me on some meds. hooray, not.

here's my degenerative eye

Bugaboo

Manic Monday

I've had these ideas in my head for a while now, but I'm very scatter brained and its taking a long time to make these ideas a reality and the to do list of ideas is just overwhelming my delicate brain now so i must put at least one into play.
i need to get organized. which Ive attempted at in the past, which has not been followed thru.
So. i think i need something to smack me in the face in the morning.
here's the idea- get a cork board and a bunch of obnoxious highlighter colored sticky notes, write one idea per note cork them up there and take it down when its completed.
sounds simple right?
i doubt it, first of all i still have to remember to buy the cork board, then id actually have to follow thru.
being unorganized and scattered seemed to be fine before i was a mother but now it seems a little outlandish that I'm walking aimlessly thru life without an ounce of perfection.

ugh, why is motherhood so difficult!

In other news- Torrie tried to crawl today, and she fell on her face, and i sat and laughed and she laughed with  me. we are a match made in heaven.

Traditions

 intro- I've posted pictures to correspond to what I'm talking about. it makes it no easier to understand but whatever get over it.
So, my family is Italian, i have a lot of relatives who have now passed that were right off the boat from Italy. Now, my grandmother is the oldest (not even old) living member of the original group that was here from Italy. She has the passion to pass down our family traditions to all the women in the family to all the generations including my 9 month old baby girl.

This is Torrie not participating, and eating a plastic cup. mmgood.

Every year for Christmas and Easter we hand make macaronis for a soup we eat on the holiday called couplets (coop-plets). All the women gather together on a Saturday or Sunday morning and make them. Everyone has a job and its very loud and chaotic but we always get it done. It takes several hours just to make them so now the process starts the night before.
The night before my grandmother has the filling all put together and the dough is made and put aside.

this is the filling that is made the night before, and those are my grandmothers hand's folding the tiny roni's!

On the day of, there is rolling cranking filling folding and counting going on. Its an entire process that goes on for hours until we have over 1000 little "couplets".

this is some of the couplets we made, laying out to dry.

We have breakfast first. Always bagels and rolls and usually some other extra things that make their way to the table. Its fun and exciting and always great to catch up with everyone even tho we are already so close to each other.

this is breakfast!! my favorite part!!!

Today we made the couplets, I was late because Torrie decided to nap 10 mins before it was time to leave our house, needless to say, Torrie came and was a huge distraction this time so i didn't get to participate that much this time around so i decided i rather blog about this tradition that is very near to my heart anyway.

me being distracted by the bathroom (cough i mean torrie cough)

At the end of the process, the couplets are left out to dry over a couple days and then they are frozen until the holiday, they are taken out, thawed and made into soup with chicken and carrots. Its delicious but it is difficult to have more then one bowl of couplets because they are so filling and heavy on your stomach but they are sooo yum yum good!!!

This is the finished product of the day, i will take a picture of the soup on easter in a couple weeks so you can see the completely finished product. the picture makes these look large but they are actually only slightly larger then your finger nail.
So i dont want to give all the details of our tradition away because they are ours but sometimes its refreshing to know that in this big world of technology there are still some "old school" traditions happening.


In other news, G and I took torrie to the park today, because it was actually nice out, and what do you know i have pics of that too!! (it was  a picture taking kind of day!)

  getting ready to go down the slide

Wheeeeeee!!

this is slightly out of order, oh well, this is pre-sitting on the slide.

watching the loser kid on the regular swing cry about letting someone else use it.

whoo hooo!!

we also played in the sandbox, that's why she has no socks on if you didn't notice but! it was way to sandy to whip out my camera there.

 

And last but not least i forgot to post this yesterday! Happy ST. Patty's day from my little pot of gold!

 

First day at the park!

So today was torries first day going to the park. The whole week has been sunny and in the upper 60s except today. Today was gloomy and cold. BUT today was the day i had off and we were determined to go to the park. So! Here we are...took a few snaps with the camera and then left hehe. It was a taste test for the near future.

Dear Torrie

Dear Torrie,
I appreciate that you love me soooo much but your new found separation anxiety is killing me.
Love you always,
Mom.

Curiosity killed the cat

Well, i really started to get annoyed at these people who kept talking about "etsy" and "pinterest" and i had no clue wtf they were. I mean seriously this was like a foreign country to me. So me and my friend google went to work so that i could be in the know with the rest of the cool mommies out there.  And low and behold i am no more knowledgeable nor do i care anymore about these things. Yea they're cool and interesting ideas, but it definitely will not be one of my nightly website rounds.
But- moving on in the world, I've been more stressed lately, mostly relating to my relationship with Torrie's dad. But that's another topic i do not want to dabble in.
Torrie is really working a sistas nerves lately, she has two teeth coming in and she is attached to me like crazy lately. We do alot of reassuring hugs and kisses but that still does not do the trick. Plus this whole time change thing is a little wacky for us, not to mention she probably senses my stress.
I'm babbling to tonight, i shoulda posted my thoughts earlier when they were more organized but my twin sister is here visiting from Washington state and shes never seen Torrie and well she has the energy of a rabbit (I'm sure its due to not having children yet) and so the time change and being 4 hours behind us in general does NOT seem to be affecting her. But her husband does not look like hes feeling all to energetic. I think he woulda liked a nice nap when they arrived.
Last night she took Torrie to toys r us and bought lots of toys! See pics below lol.

new ride on toy!!

Future nascar driver???

P.s i broke my finger today. I will figure out how to type a post tomarrow, today im posting this from my phone!

Little dreamer.

TGIF

9 months!

I want to start by introducing you to a few characters, obviously I am mom, torrie is my daughter, and G is torrie's dad who is in but out of the picture. (hes in her life and participates actively but is not living with or "caring" for her at the moment while he deals with personal issues) he will be mentioned in posts but for the most part unless its relevant (like this post) then he will be left out.

Torrie Turned 9 months on wednesday!! whoo hoo! and two days ago she had her 9 month physical!!
- lets start with her physical
I left the office disappointed. I started at the office happy and excited to see how much my baby girl has grown. me and G took Torrie to the doctors, we have no patience, we arrived 1/2 hour early, the nurses came out to see Torrie (they always come out, they’re amazed by how far she’s come) me and G sat with her played, showed her the fishes in the fish tank, and took pictures of her playing in the waiting area.
at last its time to go back!! g and I race to the room, get her undressed to see how much she weighs on the scale, 18 pounds 9 ounces!! holy shit!! she’s huge!! we laugh, and shes 27.5 inches long that’s the 50% percentile for areas. (at six months for height and weight she was not even on the chart in percentile!!) we are both beaming with excitement
UNTIL- the nurse chimes in “mom” (she called me) we need you to fill out this questionnaire about Torrie’s milestones so far. I say okay and G says that I can do it while he entertains the baby until the doc comes in (gee thanks) so I hop to it.
there were 5 sections, the first section went by with a breeze and I was feeling very confident, and as the sections went on I felt more and more depressed. I felt like I was checking off more “not yet’s” then “does well” and I was getting discouraged. while G sat laying with Torrie still filled with joy and excitement on how far our little preemie had come, my smile slowly started to fade.
what the hell was i thinking? my baby is slower to grow then i thought, sure she’s gained a few pounds, grew a few inches and sits by herself, but what more can i say then that? other 9 month olds are on the verge of walking and here I am checking off not yet on every other question. this sucks. the day i was anticipating, SUCKS.
g asks how i’m doing and i fake a smile and say great. he wouldn’t get it if I told him, and he would be defensive about her delays anyway.  so there is no point in wasting my breath. I finish I hide it in the corner just as the doctor walks in.
the rest of the visit went great, the doctor was extremely pleased with Torrie and her progress, she gave her a hug and a kiss goodbye , we got our shots and left.
so if the doctors not disappointed then why am I?
this is why- I have failed as a mother. i should be doing more for my baby, i should be putting more effort into making her meet her milestones ugh, i have sat and sulked on this for 2 days now, and here’s what i realized.
as i sat tonight playing with my precious baby girl- she was laughing hysterically, from the bottom of her belly, it was adorable it was cute, and ive never seen her laugh so hard at me before. i loved it, and i stared into her little eyes and i thought about my sadness and how she does not feel sad or sorry for herself, how she does not even notice how far behind she is, im wasting my time with her being upset when i could be using it to help her achieve goals. i am failing myself.
she is a fucking miracle, she could have easily given up from day one, she could be paralyzed blind or mutated from being premature but she isn’t. she is PERFECT and she is meeting milestones at her own pace and time, and she will meet them eventually when she’s ready. what is more important is that she is happy and healthy and smart, and she is all of the above, and i love her every single day for that.

 torrie in the waiting room for her 9 month check up :)

So what if i am?

I am a premature parent in every sense of the word. I got pregnant young, unmarried, and raising my baby single and on top of that she was born 9.5 weeks early. But am i ashamed? Heck no, i love my daughter and although i didn't think a lot of things thru beforehand i certainly am trying to make up for that by being the best parent that i could possibly be! I'm trying to learn how to encourage her developmental delays, continue to go back to college to further my education even more and grow as a mom and individually strong woman!!