To the Zoo and More!

Last night we went to the fireworks, last yr on the fourth torrie was still in the hossy so this year is her first time celebrating the fourth of july! she had a hard time staying up late but it was worth it!

And today! we finally made it to the zoo! we went early since the predicted weather was over 100 degrees today. we had fun, and although torrie wasnt really able to know exactly what was going on she did show signs of interest here and there.

 those were some of a few animals we saw

and this is us at lunch

and here we are acting silly

Bi-Bi discriminant!

For those who arent aware, torrie is biracial, her father is "african-american and indian" and I am obviously white, irish and italian to be exact, so although she may not look mixed she most certainately is. For me, knowing ancestery is important, and I believe for her father is is equally as important, we both plan on sharing with our daughter the social norms/ traditions of our very different cultures. Hopefully this will help her in our country that is very diverse to be a more well-rounded child who can easily adapt and understand the other cultures we live among.
which brings me to my anger, im angry with society- there are so many stereotypes and "social areas" its just -wait a minute im getting angry again and its starting to not make sense.
Torrie had a black doll, it was a cheap one that broke, well actually she ripped its arms out so i threw it away and decided to just buy her a more quality black doll. I travel for work, one of the areas i work in is a well to do area where the population is not diverse as it is 90 percent caucasion. I went to their walmart one lunch break to buy food and also to pick up a dolly for torrie. Not only did they have NOT ONE black doll, but they only had ONE (i think its hispanic) doll. The rest were white, blonde hair and blue eyes, I bought the hispanic one, i woulda bought an asian one if they had it also. I dont care what type of doll it is, i plan on buying her any ethnicity they make for dolls. children need diversity, that is what is wrong with this world. (By the way this has nothing to do with torrie being biracial, because if she wasnt i would still be teaching her that everyone is equal.) I just feel like this is terrible, its so discriminant, and your teaching the children in this area is that basically the most popular this is a caucasion with blonde hair and blue eyes. I just feel sad for these kids and their future, but i also confirm with myself that I am doing the right thing.

I have to move on from this subject, if you dont agree I dont care, I dont even want to hear your opinion, its a sad world out there and all i know is that I have friends in all shapes sizes and colors.

I also went to the doctors for myself, I got a whole mixture of bad news that was expected and I will do a separate post on that when I have more definate details.

And Finally!
can we say bad hair day??

updating

so I havent been on out of pure laziness, we got new wifi which means we got a new keyword so strangers cant get on our network and ive been incredibly lazy that i dont wanna walk downstairs to get the code to set up my laptop. Plus alot of things have been going on lately that have been stressing me out.

With myself, im emotionally and physically drained. all the hours ive been working coupled with the new job demands that i have been forced to cooperate with are killing me, then theres feeling like i have no real home like i used to, and also torries health issues are starting to affect me. I also have a big doctors appt for myself this week that is worrying me, and because of all this ive been stress eating and depressed so i will go back to fit tuesdays when im back to myself again. i have still been going to the gym, mostly for the time away from life benefit and not necessarily the weight loss benefit it should be having.

Torrie- shes sick again, she constantly has breathing problems, that which were expected since she was born with respiratory distress. Its become a mounting task between her Pedi and I to tackle her breathing problems with as little intervention as possible and now the time has come to take it her a specialist. On july 11th she is going to both the ENT and the Pulmonologist, to see where to go from here. its bittersweet for me i really thought things would get better as she got older but they havent, and while its not life or death, its just something that eats at me because it could have been prevented had I stayed pregnant for 10 more weeks.
anyway, she had an ear infection at her 1yr appt, we did the 10 days amoxicillin and then she was still pulling at her ear, so tuesday i sent her back to see if they were still infected- no they werent- by sunday between her terrible breathing and gasping for air and her irritability i sent her back to the pedi on sunday and he put her back on amox. she has no infections but the only time she has been clear was when she was on the antibiotics so the docs said theres enough time between now and the 11th to just try her out and see what happens and I agreed, so here we go again.
I just wish things werent so hard for her I wish i could help or have a miracle cure for her, but I know this is a long road we will travel, and I'm in it for the long haul.

In good news about torrie she is now letting go and standing freely in the middle of the floor, she mostly falls but it is a step in the right direction! the pedi said the way she is forming now may just have her walking very very soon!! whoo hoo!

this is her trying to stand in the middle of the yard.

Big Girl Now?

I've struggled with turning torrie's carseat around, the new guide says its okay to keep them backwards until two, but it really becomes hard to put them in backwards as they get older. So, I turned torrie around, it was becoming too difficult and I also was hurting my back. Ive always had torries carseat in the middle and not on the side, so i justified that it would stay in the middle and that is still much safer then the side and backwards anyday.
and so, of course she loved it because she can see out the window now.

and this is her before hand in some crappy pics i took with her and her bff.

oh and i skipped fit tuesday.


the end.

Speedy Update

I've been so terrible at blogging lately, honestly I just haven't felt up to it. We have been so busy lately, and i keep thinking about you guys but i  just never get around to it.

Torrie is doing new things, its like turning one made her into an all new girl.

much to my dismay she is climbing the stairs, and since our stairs are built awkwardly we are having trouble figuring out a way to gate them up.

She is becoming afraid of things that never bothered her before, its so strange, its like some light bulb went on in her head to make her afraid of weird things.

like the dogs barking- never used to bother her, now she looks at you and cries.

the ocean, never used to bother her and I put her feet in this weekend and she near had a heart attack.

just a whole bunch of weird random things. Its very interesting.

she also tried out her new wagon and loved it!

(don't worry shes seat belted in)

we also still love bath time!

we are working on sign language with her because she seems to be getting frustrated in the communication department.
she already has down the sign for "more"and uses it appropriately at feeding time. we are working on all done, and no.

mostly she is acting like a typical one year old, testing her boundaries and my patience.


I'm just loving this stage shes at right now :) shes a beautiful princess.

My sister works at the daycare torrie attends, she took a bunch of awesome pics that she has shared with me.

 torrie and some kid at the daycare. torrie is not supposed to be playing in that area but apparently she has worked out a bribe.

fresh as usual. and I mean fresh as in misbehaving.

and lastly my sister snuck in on me and torrie- torrie likes to wake up at 7 on weekdays and 5 on weekends, is anyone else seeing the issue here? so I convince her to go back to sleep by laying with mommy. my sister played peeping tom sunday morning.

Fit Tuesday (On a Wednesday)

Goal weight:

120-130

Start Weight:

162

last week's weight:

150

This week

149


I contemplated not posting this week. I'm totally shocked that I lost that one pound. I don't even deserve it which is why I didn't want to post.
My exercise last week sucked monkey balls.
my diet was not a diet,
I stress ate my way thru the weekend.
AND BLAH basically I didn't do anything I have set out to do.

Starting Tomorrow I'm back on the ball. I need to stop. 

Dodging another Bullet

Today the sensory disorder specialist came and evaluated Torrie. Not only did she say Torrie has not one sign of a sensory disorder she said I should pray now for my sanity because Torrie is just one very focused very firm girl about what she wants. she said she will do everything in her own time but she definitely does not display any warning signs at all of sensory disorder.

and so after our zillion appointments- we got her kitchen,

 her kitchen all set up with her doll Ethan waiting to be fed!

Torrie playing with her kitchen. This kitchen actually expands and gets taller as she grows which is awesome and that's why i got it.

Torrie was exhausted tonight and fell right to sleep. I don't feel good my throat is sore and I'm starting to talk like a ten pack year smoker.

I think that's it.

Torrie's Birthday Party!

So, today was the big party, everything was smooth, we had everything we needed and I think everyone had a decent time.
I of course stressed the entire time and didn't enjoy much of it. its so hard to be the host and not the guest, I felt like I missed half of it and didn't get to join in on the chit chat and what have you.

So, lets see I have lots of pics to share, and forgive me I am not the only person who used this camera to take pictures, so viewer's be ware of bad quality.

This is the hall before everyone came. It was set up mostly how I pictured it but if i had a few million more dollars it would have been perfecto.

This is the sign I had made for Torrie, looking back I have no clue why because there's really no use for it :)

these are the candy jars I have been speaking about, which i still have a crap load left that people ate the candy out of and left the jars.

Here is Torrie in her outfit.

we had cake and other things going on.

then we did presents, Torrie got great stuff, she got a wagon, a sand/water table, lots and lots of clothes, gift cards to our favorite place and ride on toys and activity centers. its just so great that she got all of these things.
with her gift cards we are going to get her an awesome play kitchen and maybe some other small things.

overall we are very grateful of the way it turned out.
and now our new year begins!