One room done

We have been working on the house again this week, Thursday, Neil grouted the tile, Friday and Saturday I painted. Kynlie was not very cooperative yesterday though so most of my painting was done with her in my arm. Here are pictures of the living room, that will be the dining room when the carpet is installed downstairs. It's still a mess but you get the picture.

After I got done painting yesterday, Kynlie and I went to church in Marmarth with a friend. She definetly made her presence known. She needed to eat at 5 when church started so I thought it would work out perfect, we'd set in the back and I'd start feeding her right away. Well, it was the Palm Sunday service so Father had everyone stand facing the back of the church at the begining of the service. I kept Kynlie quiet, but when I finally could set down to feed her, she was so worked up that I knew I wasn't going to get her fed without giving the guy sitting next to us a show. Also, as Father walked by to go to the front of the church, her monitor beeped loose lead, which was very very loud. We went to the entryway and I fed her, then when we went back in, she got the hiccups, very loud hiccups! Then she wanted to start being chatty and was talking. It was pretty interesting venturing out with her. I am excited though that sickness season is almost over and we will be able to start taking her more places with us.

Look Who's Smiling

Oh, Yeah!!

Cheese!

I can't reach it mom.

Kynlie and Sterling took a nap on the couch together while I was painting.

Sterling is soaking up the sun and enjoying no snow.

Good News

Kynlie had a busy couple of days the beginning of the week. Monday, she had an eye appointment. Dr. G said that her right eye is perfect and the spot of blood in her left eye is half the size it was 2 weeks ago. We don't have to go back to see him for a month now and it will be only for her left eye.

Tuesday Kynlie had appointments with physical, occupational and speech therapy. They just wanted to see if there were any milestones that she was behind on for her adjusted age or if her movements weren't like they should be. They were very impressed with how well she can hold her head up, they said it was more at a 2 1/2 month level instead of 1 1/2 month. They were impressed with how well she can track toys with her eyes and said that she shouldn't be doing that for another few weeks as well. They gave us some exercises that we can work on with her to get her to switch focus from one toy to another or track a toy from one side to the other and for getting her to hold on to her own toys.

She had an appoitment with Dr. Ocejo after her therapy appointments. He hadn't seen her since the day she was discharged so it was pretty neat to see his reaction when he saw her. He was very impressed with her progress. He said she is still very proud of her big belly. Kynlie had to get 4 vaccines, one oral and 3 shots. It was pretty sad when they poked her but it was nice because they had 3 nurses in there so she got all 3 shots at one time. She has to stay on the caffeine for a week after the vaccines because they can cause apnea spells in preemies. After we take her off the caffeine, she will have to be on her monitor for another week, then we can take her off the monitor. If there is still a lot of RSV going around though, he wants us to leave her on the monitor because if she gets RSV , we will know that it is that, not a cold because she will have a lot of apnea spells. She weighs 7lb 7 oz and is 21" long. We ran up and saw her nurses after we were done with her appointments and I am glad we did because there were some that were working that hadn't seen her since before she was discharged. We have to go back to see Dr. Ocejo and all the therapies in 2 months.

Kynlie is still getting packages from people, which just amazes me, all the people that are thinking about her. She got a package last week from one of my cousins with a bunch of adorable outfits in it, this ladybug outfit is one of them. Thanks Chris & Rose!!

Things are coming along

Last weekend was spent working on the basement project again. Neil tiled the stairs and got all the tile laid, now it just needs grout. My parents and sister and nephew came in to get the bassinet for Gina's baby that is due any day now and brought us supper. Gina got some more cuddle time in with Kynlie because she said she probably won't get much when her baby comes. It is going to be interesting to see Gina's baby and Kynlie together, they will probably be about the same size, but Kynlie is almost 6 months old!

Here is the wall going downstairs and the steps

Here's the stairs and landing at the bottom

Friday was my last day of work, which is very exciting. I will be able to be home with Kynlie now. The timing was perfect because Gina's doctor told her on Monday that she could have her baby any day now. We are all hoping that he will wait until his daddy is back, which is very shortly, but the baby's going to come when he's ready I guess!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

I have to be honest here, these pictures weren't taken on St. Patrick's Day. Neil got up and fed Kynlie early on St. Patrick's Day and put her in this outfit. He came back to bed and laid Kynlie down in her vibratey chair, aka, her bed, and she puked all over her shirt. So, she wore another green shirt that day, but I had to get some pictures of her in her outfit for the day.

7 pounds

Little Miss Kynlie is finally 7 lbs. We weighed her on Thursday before she got her bath and she was 6lb 15.5 oz. I told her that if she had puked up one less bottle, she would have made it! She was 7 lbs at bathtime tonight though.

Uncle Jordan finally got some quality cuddling time with Kynlie this weekend. Every other time he has held her has been during a quick stop in Dickinson on our way back and forth to Bismarck for her appointments.
Here she is in her boppy pillow watching her dad lay tile.

Really concentrating on what her dad is doing.

She slept in her swing most of the afternoon yesterday when I was taking wallpaper off and Neil was getting ready to lay tile. Today, she wouldn't let me put her down without crying, so her and I sat on the couch and watched Neil lay tile together!

She always seems to be holding her hands cute when she is sleeping.

She has started smiling at people this last week. They are still few and far between, but they are happening. Her new favorite way to be held is with her standing up facing you, preferably bouncing. She has been sleeping great at night, one night not waking up for 9 hours. We had decided that we were going to let her wake us up instead of waking her up to feed her at night, but 9 hours is a little too long for her to go without eating. We set our alarms for 5 hours now and she seems to be doing well with that.

I have one week of work left, then Kynlie and I will get all of our cuddling time back! I'm so excited to be able to be home with her. On the 23rd, we go back to Bismarck for some appointments. Kynlie will see Dr. Ocejo for the first time since she got discharged and will get her next set of vaccines, then she has physical therapy, occupational therapy, an eye appointment. It's not going to be a very fun day for her.

Why do we always get ourselves into this

Neil and I thought it was about time to take on another house project. It seems like we always say that the one we are working on is the last, then a few months later, we take on another one. This one involves some tile, carpet, lights, removal of wall paper border and painting. We tore the carpet off the stairs and wall going into the very bottom level and are putting ceramic tile on them. We will tear up the carpet and put new down, put recessed can lighting in and paint all the walls. This was the "game room" and is going to be our new living room. Oh, yeah, and the pool table is going bye bye!! I'm very excited about that. Here are some pictures from the project, before ones of the room and progress on the stairs. I scraped the wallpaper border up on about half the room, then remebered that Neil had got me the Steam Shark handheld steamer, so I got that out and steamed it off the walls. It worked amazing. I told Neil that if I never use it again it was worth it for this project.

The Game Room Before

The stairs that are getting tiled

The computer desk

The walls getting tiled.

Stay tuned for more after pictures.

5 Months

So, once again, I didn't plan ahead and get any pics uploaded, but I'll get some on here soon. Yesterday was Kynlie's 5 month birthday. She weighs 6 lb 13 oz, is 21" long and her head is 14". She is in the 10-25th percentile for length and less than 5th for weight, from a chart I found online! She is going to be outgrowing some of her newborn clothes before too long, which I thought would never happen.
She had an eye appointment in Bismarck again on Monday. Dr. G said everything still looks the same and we will go back again in 2 weeks.
Kynlie has been eating a lot lately. The last 3 nights, she pretty much ate constantly from 5-8 pm. I'll nurse her, bottle feed her, nurse her some more. I know I'm making milk because I am pumping all day at work and we know how much she is getting by bottle so she is just eating a lot. She must be trying to make up for all the times that she didn't gain any weight! We decided that since she is eating and gaining so good that we would not wake her up in the night to eat, we just wait for her to wake us up, Monday night, I got 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep!! It was great and I could definetly get used to it!
I turned in my 2 weeks notice at work on Friday. Gina is going to be having her baby soon and will not be able to keep Kynlie anymore and I don't have anywhere else I can take her. I had planned on quitting when I was pregnant with twins, but we want to have more than one child and as expensive as In-Vitro is, we didn't think that we could do it again on Neil's salary so I was going to stay working. We decided that it would work for me to quit and stay home with Kynlie. I'm very excited, 7 days of work left, but who's counting?
Neil and I also are going to be doing some changes around the house, we got stuff to get started in Bismarck, but then have been too busy to start the projects since we got home. I'll try and remember to do some before and after shots so watch for those in hopefully the near future!

Back to the Real World

Sorry it's been so long since my last blog post. I'm in my second week back at work and we are still trying to get our routine down. Neil has been getting up for a night feed, then he takes Kynlie out to my mom & dad's for my sister to watch her. I go pick her up after work, come home and feed her, then Neil is home. I am really missing all my cuddle time that we had, but I know that she gets a lot of love from Gina and Matthew. She has been eating good, getting at least 75ml feeds now and her vomiting has slowed down a lot. She had a couple of Apnea and Bradycardia spells last week so I called and they wanted to increase her caffeine, but when we did, her heart rate increased and she was very restless until she ate the next time so we cut her back down to her previous dose.

Neil still has his cold, so he is still wearing a mask when he is in contact with Kynlie. They still like to cuddle on the couch and Sterling thought he'd join in too.

Matthew is coming around to liking Kynlie a little better now. He doesn't mind sharing his Poppy with her. We decided that Kynlie is going to have to call grandpa whatever name Matthew has given him at the time. He used to be Papa, then Pop, now it's Poppy.

When she's been cuddling and has a full belly, when we lay her down in her vibratey chair or swing, she doesn't move at all.

She is in her milk comas quite often! It's cute to see her be so sleepy that she doesn't even move.

Here she is sitting in her boppy pillow, waiting for Neil and I to get ready for work.

She is really smiling a lot more lately, not really at anything but it's sure cute!

This is from last week when she hit 6 pounds!! That's right folks, we have a 6 pounder!

We went to Billings last weekend, Neil went skiing and Kynlie and I just hung out with Gina and Matthew. It was a long weekend, Kynlie didn't sleep very good, hopefully because of the increase in caffeine and just wasn't happy at night. I'm glad she's back to herself at home because I would be a zombie if she was awake every night until 1.

I am going to try and be better about posting more often, it just takes so much time to get my pictures uploaded that it's easier to just not post! If I would plan ahead, I could start uploading, do something else, then come back later and type my post. That would require planning and doing things in advance, which I struggle with so we'll see how I do!