Josey and the sweet potatoes AND Lindy and the pig

I have done a bad mommy thing. I did not do what the pediatrician told me to. I gave Josey baby food. She LOVES it. Her ped. told me not to give it to her until she was 4 months. She will be 4 months on Feb. 8th. Then I was supposed to only give her baby cereal until six months and THEN at 6 months she could start fruits and veggies. Maybe I'm a bad mom-BUT she HATES the baby cereal. I don't blame her. I tasted it. It is disgusting and bland. She liked the applesauce ok. She LOVES sweetpotatoes. She seems much more content getting to have a little real food each evening. I'll keep y'all posted on what she is eating and how it goes. I'll try to get a pic this weekend.

On to the pic posted here. My cousin, Lindy, has a pet wild pig that she is raising on a bottle. Riley (27 months old) loves her. Her name is Monica but Riley can't say that so she calls her Bacula. Here's a pic of them with the pig. Maybe my family is redneck but I feel like this is all completely normal.

Red shoes

This outfit here was a gift from my stepmom and sister for Christmas. I love it! The only problem is that Josey is growing so fast that it isn't going to fit long. Check out the red shoes. They were a gift from Jim and Susan and they are ADORABLE. She is getting so big. We go on the 9th for her 4 month checkup and shots. :( Nathan is getting pretty sick of sitting in the house with his leg propped up but he is trying really hard to be easy to deal with. Hopefully they will tell us Monday that it will not require surgery. I'm looking forward to the weekend. I'd love to just sit around but I have to take a certification test Saturday morning and we are going to a wedding Saturday afternoon. Talk to y'all later.

family health update

Well, good news- Josey is well- I think. We haven't done any breathing treatments since Saturday and she seems fine. Thank goodness. We are so lucky that it wasn't worse. Now on to the bad news- Nathan has broken his leg. He went to see Dr. Veazi (an orthopedist) on Friday and he put a hard cast on it. He got blue- I told him pink would be so cute and he was not convinced. He has to go back on Feb 2nd and they will tell us if it is going to require surgery or not. Pray that it will not, please. He is being really easy to deal with so far about this but I know he is going to get so sick of being in the house with his leg propped up. He is such an outside person and this will really take its toll on him. Last night he did crutch his way outside and talked to me while I fed the animals. Of course, crutches are surely awful and he can't get anyway to quickly. I know he'll be so sore soon from using them. Josey does not understand why he cannot walk her around the house now and it aggravates her. Not to sound selfish, but it's hard on me, too. He can't do anything right now, so I have a lot more work to do. Josey and I went with Mom yesterday to cube the cows at the Windmill place. The first time she got to go she was about 2 weeks old. She loves it. It is so funny because she likes to look out the window like she is actually trying to count calves or something. She is getting so vocal now. She likes to talk very loud now when she is happy. By talk I mean say "AHHHH" or "BLAA" BLAA". She used to only make noise when she was mad, but now she does it all the time.

Josey is 15 weeks old today!

Josey is much better. I took about a million pictures of her last night. I was just in the mood and she was being so happy. I'll be posting a few for the next few days for y'all to see. Hopefully we won't have to do the breathing treatments very much longer. I got stuck waiting on the train to go by today so I was almost late for work. I think that trains should not be able to move between the hours of 6:30 am and 8:30 am. This probably never occurs to people who do not live near train tracks but I cross them several times each day going to and from the baby sitters and work. Speaking of baby sitters, Nathan and I have been so lucky to find a great one. Rachael has been better than I could ever have dreamed. She washes all the bottles for me, so I don't have to drag them back and forth all them time. She is wonderful. I hate leaving Josey but at least I have someone I can trust to leave her with. We are so lucky that she didn't have to go to day care or a place where someone keeps several kids. On most days, Josey is the only kid there. Mom's birthday is Monday and she said she might stay home for her birthday and keep her. She so enjoys getting to keep her and it's nice for Josey to get to spend time with her Mama Cannon. A friend of mine was telling me just a minute ago that the song "Your gonna miss this" had made her cry recently. Her little boy is 11 months old and we were both agreeing that time goes so fast. I feel like just yesterday we were anxiously awaiting Josey's arrival and now she is almost 4 months old. It goes so fast.

Josey is not well, but better

Josey is a lot better. She is getting more used to the breathing treatments, too, thank goodness. At first, she would scream and wiggle a lot, but now she is pretty still. I am concerned that she may be getting an ear infection. She is pulling on her right ear a lot. She is not running fever and she is still eating good. I think that maybe she has just realized that she has ears. She is so very hilarious right now. Last night I told her how pretty she was and she started grinning at me and laughing like she knew what I said. Too funny.

On another note- I would like to start running some. I have been inspired by Hillary running and I am hoping to start soon. I'll let y'all know how it goes. I really don't have any extra time right now, but I feel like I can try to carve out a few minutes a day. Also, we are playing The Biggest Loser here at school. Should be interesting.

Josey is sick

Josey is very congested and has been gradually getting worse since Monday. I took her to the doctor yesterday. She has RSV, which is like a cold, it is just more dangerous for infants. They gave her a breathing treatment in the office. We had to go and buy a nebulizer and she has to have breathing treatments every 6 hours until she is well- the doctor said this could be anywhere from 5 days to 8 or 10 days- it just depends. Mom kept her yesterday and stayed at home with her again today so she can give her the treatments. I'd love to be home with her but they dock us a ridiculous amount when we stay home from work. Pray for us- it's really scary with here being so congested. She sometimes coughs so bad that it seems like she's losing her breath. I'll keep y'all posted.

reading

Here's a pic of Nathan reading to Josey. She sits really still when you read to her like she is really paying close attention. Too cute. My favorite to read to her is a book of Texas Mother Goose rhymes. It is hilarious.

We are reading Tuck Everlasting with my 9th grade class and it is a really cute book. It's only about 70 pages long so I recommend it for a cute short read.

A few more Josey pics

more pics

Josey sleeping and then one of all of us. Also a pic of Nathan on Radar in the snow a while back.

a little reflection and some new pics

I am going to talk about a little something that I normally don't. Sometimes I am amazed at how God works in our lives. He recently put several new people in my life by way of a new job. Before this school year, I was teaching at Leon ISD. This is my first year at North Zulch high school and I truly believe that God had a hand in me being hired here. HE knew that it would be much too hard for me to be driving back and forth to Jewett with a new baby. I also believe that I was hired here because HE had people working here whose help I would need as a new mom. Two of the women that I work with have been exremely helpful to me. They have been a wealth of knowledge about nursing and without them, I am not sure that I would have been able to do this, even though I really wanted to. Thanks to Boatcallie and Wendy for really being there when I needed y'all.

I also have tons of new Josey pictures that I'll be posting. Some of them are older and some are just in the past couple of days. She's coming down with a little cold, I'm afraid, and she hasn't ever been sick before. Hopefully, it will pass soon. She is too cute in these pics. Check them out.

Long post

It's Thursday so the work week is almost over. Thank goodness. It hasn't been a bad first week back, really. The kids have been a little wound up, but that is to be expected. They've been showing off all their Christmas loot all week and it's pretty funny to watch them.

Nathan has been guiding coon hunts the past two nights for this coon hunting competition. The first night, he won a prize for guiding the hunters that treed the most coons. He was pretty excited. Obviously, the thing is a big deal, because there are people there competing from all over the U.S.

Josey is doing great. It hasn't bothered her near as much for me to be back at work as it has bothered me. She is doing the cutest things now. She likes to rub her blankets on her face and chew on them (well, suck on them because she doesn't have any teeth yet). She can almost roll over. She probably would already be able to, but I hardly ever put her on her stomach. She doesn't like and it makes her cry because I don't do it very often so she's not used to it. She only likes to lie on her stomach if it is on MY stomach and she loves that. Of course, I do, too, so we spend lots of time snuggling like this when I probably ought to be doing laundry or sweeping the floor. The dust and dirty clothes will still be there when she is bigger. She's only this little once.

A friend of mine is into eating organic foods and it's something I am interested in. I'm going to do some reading on it and see what I think. Nathan's theory is that he has been eating regular food for his whole life and it hasn't hurt him yet. I'm not sure what I think.

I need to be dieting again, of course. I know it will make me feel better, but it's so hard. I am going to try to start excercising more, but it's hard with a baby. I would love to start going to the Mommy and Me excercise classes, but they're in College Station, so I'm not sure how often I could go. I'd like to go and see what it's like anyway. I wish we had aerobic classes in Madisonville. I went to them a lot when I was in college at SHSU and I loved being able to go to different ones all the time. My favorite then was the kick boxing class. It really kicked my butt.

That's all for now. More later. :)

back to work

We had a wonderful Christmas and an even better break. I loved being off all day everyday to play with Josey. She's growing so fast and doing new things every day. She can put almost her whole fist in her mouth now. So cute. Also she is really enjoying watching Baby Einstein videos. Back to work now and missing her lots during the day.