all is good

angel Hayley 

Even though I had gotten a really good nights sleep thanks to my husband taking care of Hayley the night before, and my cold seemed to have improved, I was still in a down mood. I was letting the stress of everything get to me, I guess. I felt like I was behind on everything and I was never going to catch up, and now to make things worse I was getting a cold. Due to my cold I was taking things slow in the morning and Hayley had been up for a while when I decided to top her off with some formula. While she was feeding she fell asleep in my arms, and I looked down at her and she just looked so beautiful. She looked like a perfect little angel; a true gift from heaven, and I just couldn’t feel sad anymore. “Suck it up!” I said to myself. “People have it a lot worse than you. You have a great husband, a job that you enjoy, a beautiful house, a wonderful family and now you have this beautiful child. What’s your problem?” Her beautiful little face put things in perspective for sure, so when I laid her down in her crib, still looking like the beautiful angel she was, I just had to snap a picture of her, and then I ran into our room and kissed my husband. All is good.

skin so soft

soft Hayley 

time to rest

Resting Hayley 

formula hopping

plastic bottles 

I had hoped to exclusively breastfeed Hayley until she was about 1 year old, but already I have failed in that goal. Due to a combination of going back to work with limited times to get away and breast pump and Hayley’s increased appetite, I was forced to supplement with formula. I know many people advise that to supplement with formula is the surest way to decrease you breast milk supply. But its kind the chicken and the egg thing with me, I’m not sure which came first. Truthfully I had been a bit suspicious of my milk supply for some time. When Hayley was younger and she required about 3 oz a feeding my breast were barely keeping up with that demand. As her demand increased, my breast milk supply didn’t. More and more Hayley would fight on the breast, or continuously latch off. Other times when she did latch on well she would breast feed on one breast for like an hour! Breastfeeding was becoming frustrating and exhausting, but I was determined to keep my goal. This past weekend, all of my husband’s family came to see Hayley for the first time. His parents and his sister with her husband and two children stayed with us. It was a hectic weekend; we were planning a party after Hayley’s christening on Sunday. The weekend was filled or errands and discussion about what kind of plates to serve the food on (plastic vs. “real” plates), and what kind of desserts to have (just cake or cake and something else), and sorts of things like that. I didn’t have time for Hayley to breast feed at an hour at a time, and with a house full of people I would have to seclude myself away in the nursery when I did feed her. I never could get used to the whole breast feeding in public thing, and my in-laws are from India and very modest. I just couldn’t see myself breast feeding Hayley while I discussed plates with my father-in-law, even with a blanket draped over me. I really didn’t feel I had the time to breast pump either, except maybe at the end of the day when all the errands that could be done were done. So I fed Hayley bottles of formula, and now I think I screwed myself for sure. I pump today at work and I get drops. I have f ailed as a mother. I can’t even provide breast milk for my growing baby. I suck at this.

What’s more I suck at formula feeding too. When I first started to supplement about 7-8 weeks ago, I had her on Similac advanced, because that was what the hospital had given me to give her. At the time they wanted me to supplement with formula until my milk came in to feed Hayley more so she would clear elevated bilirubin levels faster; she was a little jaundice. But my milk came in within a couple of days and I shunned the formula back then. I also had gotten a free trail size in the mail, along with a trial size of Nestle Good Start and Enfamil. Hayley took to the Similac with no problem, so my husband and I decided we would just keep her on that, until we ran out of the trial size and we went to buy some at Giant. Whoa! It ain’t cheap. But we sucked it up and bought a can, with the hope that I would increase my milk supply with more pumpings, and drinking more water. Well we ran out of the bought can of Similac pretty fast too, so fast that I ran out before I planned, so instead of running out to Giant to buy more, I used the Similac soy formula that also came with the trial size of the regular Similac,. The Similac soy is supposed to be for gassier, fussier babies. “Hayley is pretty gassy” I thought “If anything this would be better for her”. The soy formula smelled awful. It reminded of this baby bird food I bought to feed this baby swallow I found in my parking garage when my husband I were living in apartment. It had fallen from its nest that the swallows made in the rafters of the garage. I tried to keep it alive until it good fly off on its own. It lasted about 3 days, until I went on our patio and found it dead. Anyway, Hayley drank down the Similac soy like no tomorrow as well, and I was going to keep Hayley on it until my husband worried that it might make her lactose intolerant, so we bought a another can of regular Similac, and once again I ran out unexpectedly. I kept hoping I would get more breast milk and my need for the formula would decrease. “Try the Nestle Good Start” my husband said” I hear that suppose to be good and we have the free can”. From the Nestle Good Start, we went to the free Enfamil trial. Hayley drank all down like a trooper. So much for my goal of just finding one that she likes and sticking to it, so as not upset her stomach. The rationale behind going to Enfamil was we discovered we could buy big cans of it at Costco. It still wasn’t cheap. The big can of Enfamil lasted about a week, including this weekend of exclusive formula, so yesterday I was off to Costco again, to get more Enfamil. Next to the Enfamil was Kirkland formula it was about a third cheaper than the Enfamil. It even compared itself to Enfamil as far as nutrients and it seemed about the same. Frankly they all seem about the same; they all have DHA and ARA and claim to be just like breast milk. So being the bad mom that I am, I bought the cheap formula. Today during Hayley’s fourth month check with the pediatrician, I casually asked, “So are the formulas really all that different, I mean they all seem to be comparable nutrient wise, as far as could tell, but is there any one that you recommend?” “Well, I think the only one I would really avoid is the generic Costco formula.” He said. “My face dropped. Hayley was already on the generic Costco Kirkland formula for a few feedings now. When I told the pediatrician that this he clarified with “Anything out there today is probably a thousand times better than the formula we had as kids, but I just wonder about the quality control with some of those more generic ones. It’s probably okay for this one time, but when it’s done I would go back to a name brand.” The formula hopping continues, looks like next week it’s back to Enfamil. Come on breast milk perk up!

cousins 

lost mind lost keys

I think the more stuff you have to think about the greater the potential is to lose your mind. And as you get older the number of things that you can be thinking about at any given moment before your mind shuts down completely decreases dramatically. The number one victim in all of this: car keys.

Yesterday my husband and I took his car to the dealer to have a paint chip repaired; it’s a small thing but it been bugging him for sometime. It was a simple enough operation, getting the car there, I mean. I dropped Hayley off with the nanny (we nanny share with a couple about 5 minutes from our house; this month the nanny keeps the children at their house), then I swung back home where my husband was waiting in his car, and off we went to the dealer about 10 minutes away. After he made the arrangement to have his car repaired he got in my car, drove me to work and continued on his way to his work. All was well…until this morning, when we are rushing around, late again to drop Hayley off with the nanny, and gathering up our various crap, I mention “ Oh yeah babe you have my car key.” “No I don’t”, he responded. “Yes you do”, I said firmly and I proceeded to explain that I had used my car key of course to drive Hayley to the nanny and when we switched as drivers at the dealership we didn’t switch keys, so logically he had my key. He refused to accept this. My husband is a stubborn man. He claimed he didn’t have my key and he has no idea where it could be. “So you lost it!” I said raising my voice. Okay I yelled. I yelled right there in the foyer of our town house with Hayley waiting patiently in the car seat only 2 feet from us and this argument. Later in the car my husband brought this up, and I responded “She is way too young to remember any of this anyway.” But in truth I felt bad. I felt guilty. I had vowed that I would never have a screaming match like this with my husband in front of my children. The fact that it was a screaming match was a bit rare for us all together. Usually I’m the one with the great tendency to scream and my husband is really opposed to screaming, so over the years I have tried to keep my tantrums to a minimum. But today he was screaming right back, which is something he has never really done. I think his mind is going too.

It’s only Wednesday and it hasn’t been a great week. It’s hard to explain but it just seems karmically things are off. Just a lot of little things going wrong, but it’s during a time when we have so much to do. Hayley’s christening is this upcoming weekend, and my husband’s family is coming down from Canada to stay with us. His parents and his sister with her husband and their two children who are 4 and 10 months. Of course I want the house to be perfect, and I want Hayley’s christening to be perfect. But of course this week Hayley chooses to be her most absolute fussiness in the evenings, leaving me no time to get all the laundry done, or figure out how I’m going to bake a cake for the party to follow, or to de-clutter our house or the growing lists of trivial things that I feel compelled to do before they arrive, like hang pictures in the hallway, or painting Hayley's diaper genie to match the jungle theme of her room. Stupid stuff I know, which is why I’m losing my mind. But I don’t know why my husband is losing his. Maybe because his family is coming, maybe because he’s finally going to check out this MBA program tomorrow, I don’t know. Maybe we got into this screaming match because with everything we got going on we had a housekeeper (who we used before) coming in today to clean our house, and we discovered that we are out of paper towels. She needs paper towels to clean the house. So on top of everything else we had to stop by a grocery store on the way to drop Hayley off with the nanny, and then double back to the house to leave the paper towels for the housekeeper. Something that was suppose save time for us, was making us late for work. For me the third day in a row. UGH. Plus we have to leave early to get my husbands car from the dealer. DOUBLE UGH, which, to give an example of how karmically off things are for us this week, should have been completed yesterday afternoon, but they spent the whole morning repairing the paint on the right side of his car- there is nothing wrong with the right side of his car!-the chip was on the left side!

Anyway one of the last things my husband said to me in the car before we stopped speaking completely, was “You better not find the keys in your coat at work!” Consistent with the bad karma thing, when I rushed out to meet him picking me up at work yesterday, I forgot my coat in my office, which had most of my keys in the pocket, my car key I keep separately because it has this big lock/alarm things attached. Horror swept over me…I remembered that while waiting for my husband to make the repair arrangements,I did get out of the car to gather up the trash that had been growing under the seats...did I take out my key and put it in my coat pocket?! With all that I have on my mind it isn’t clear to me now if I left my key in the ignition when I was cleaning the car…

I’ve had this Rob Thomas song in my head for the last day. I was surprised it was a Rob Thomas song because it kinda has this Latin vibe, I think. I saw the video yesterday, and man Rob is looking pretty hot. Anyway I keep singing these four lines...

“I don’t want to be lonely no more
I don’t want to have to pay for this
I don’t want to know that lover at my door
Is just another heartache on my list.”

I’m not lonely and I’m not worried about heartache. No the line that spoke to me was “I don’t want to have to pay for this” If my keys were in my coat pocket hanging in my office the whole time. I would really have to pay for that for sure. As soon as my husband dropped me off this morning, I rushed to my office and checked my coat pockets...The key was not there! So it’s still his fault, its missing. But I guess we will never know what happened to my car key, the innocent victim of a bad week.

gas flower was doomed

gas flower 

“Did you ever have one of those days where you were convinced your computer or technology was against you? I’m having one today.”

This was actually the beginning of a much longer post in which I went into the history of my computer and internet awareness, but as to really stick it to me when I went to do a spelling check in between thoughts, I somehow lost the entire post! I guess it’s just as well, it probably was only interesting to me anyway. But still the entire post!? UGH.

I hate computers. Usually when I try to do something fun on them it just winds up being a big old source of frustration. Yesterday and today are perfect examples. It took me all day to get this blog to look the way I wanted. All I wanted to do was change a few colors, and font sizes really. I have made up web pages before, so I'm pretty good with HTML, but I clueless with CSS. I mean eventually it would be nice to have a more personal layout, but that is for another time, for now this will have to do.

Satisfied with the blog, last night I tried to enter the Photofriday contest. Something that was supposed to be fun and simple enough. This week topic (or actually last weeks topic was “hot”). Inspiration hit, last night while I was heating water to make Hayley’s formula and “gas flower” was born. Anyway, after tweaking it in Photoshop, I logged on to Angelfire, where I have paid account so I can specifically link to photos for contests such as these. (I used to be really into doing Buffy the Vampire blends and submitting to all these blend challenge sites.) But, when I went to the web shell everything was gone. All it had was the index page that was created that day! “What the …!?”, I thought. I had just accessed the page earlier in the day to post a “Hayley and me” photo to link to this blog, (before I figured out how to link to a photo uploaded on the blog itself), so I knew my account was still in good standing. “Maybe Angelfire is having problems”, I thought, and I’ll just try again tomorrow, after all I have until Sunday to participate in the challenge.

This morning it was the same problem. I won’t go into what I think the problem is, but I checked my account and all was good, it had me down as having a paid account and I check my credit card statement online to check that they had been paid recently, which they had. Here’s the most frustrating thing...Why can’t you call Lycos or Angelfire?! I looked for an over a half hour trying to find a friggin number for them on the website, but there is none. I even did a 1-800 search for a number with no luck, so I was forced to leave an email under their help section. Now I wait impatiently for someone to get back to me! In the meantime, I try to upload “gas flower"to this blog, thinking maybe I could use the link here to enter the contest. I try several times to post the photo through “Hello”. Hello keeps telling me that “gas flower” as been successfully uploaded, but yet I don’t see it on my blog and my blog doesn’t register that it has been updated today, even after reloading the page several times. “Well maybe the file is too big or something”, I thought. So I go to open Photoshop to alter the image size and it crashes on me several times as I try to open the program! Finally I give up and restart my entire computer. It’s the only thing I know to do when my computer is screwing with me. I open Photoshop, resized the image, then I try to figure out what is wrong with my “Hello” settings. Turns out it was linked to the wrong “Daily Hayley” blog. Somehow in my attempt to create this blog I created two versions of it. With my luck, I don’t dare attempt to delete the “wrong” version. Finally “gas flower” really is successfully uploaded to the blog! I go to the help section of blogger to see if I can link directly to images file without limit. I remember reading it somewhere what their policy was, but of course today I can’t find it anywhere. So screw it I just decided to take my chances and use the link on this blog to enter the photo Friday contest site...and well they’re on to a new topic now! I must have misunderstood the time period in which you can submit. They say its like from Friday to Sunday, but I assumed the meant a period of like 9 days not 2, because people seem to be submitting all this week. I should have been able to submit "gas flower" last night, if wasn’t for stupid Angelfire, or if I just would have tried it from this blog last night. But I was tired and I thought I had till Sunday, and I thought all would be well today. Boy was I wrong!.

Now I have headache and I'm in bad mood. And it was suppose to be for fun, something relaxing to do before I started the grind of the day. So much for that...

all morning!

Okay it took me all morning to figure out how to edit my posts, and add a photo to my profile...ugh. I have to go do some work, but I want to try out this email posting method first. The whole morning is shot anyway.

I don't know what I'm doing

I don't know what I'm doing about most things in my life right now, most of all this blogging thing. Let's see if this works...