St.Paddy's Day

Now that I am a stay at home mom, I am trying to find lots of different things to occupy my time. I try to vacuum and do dishes every day and make sure Matt comes home to a nice dinner. I have come to the realization that we were making the same boring things over and over for dinner. I have tried making up by own recipes. Nothing major yet. Usually I search a bunch of different recipes and mix and match things that I like from them and what I have in my pantry and come up with my own thing. I'm also working on making things more from scratch. Tonight in honor of St.Paddy's Day I am making a Shepherd's Pie and a Bailey's Irish Cream Pie for dessert. I've already made the Bailey's Pie and I'm letting it chill. Unfortunately I don't measure too much, but here's the recipe:

Homemade graham cracker crust:

Put graham crackers in food processor and make sure they are finely ground up. I would guess about 2 cups

Sprinkle a little sugar in with it. About 3-4 tablespoons

Mix with about 1/3-1/2 cup of butter or margarine. I melted some of it but most of it was just the smooth, spreadable butter.

I mixed all of this in my stand mixer for a few minutes. Press it into a pie plate (mine is about 9 inches) and make sure to get it up the sides too. Chill the crust for about an hour

Bailey's Filling:

2 packages chocolate pudding mix

2 1/4 c milk

1 c Bailey's Irish Cream

8 oz container of Whipped Topping/Cool Whip

I again used my stand mixer and mixed all the ingredients for about 2-3 minutes. Pour the pudding mixture into the pie crust. I had some pudding mixture leftover so I just put it in a container in the fridge to use or eat later. Put wax paper over the pie and chill until firm.

Hopefully it'll turn out well!! Once I figure out how I'm going to do the Shepherd's Pie I'll post that recipe too!

Today I am rocking the Moby wrap. This is the greatest thing. It's literally a REALLY long piece of fabric that you wrap, cross, and tie around your baby to hold him hands free to your chest. On days like today when Bradley doesn't want to be set down but I need to eat, do dishes, vacuum, etc. it's great!

I saw this link on a friend's facebook page. I completely agree with this teacher's assessment of kids these days. I'm not going to be a "mean" mom, but I do have high expectations of my child. Polite, respectful, a gentleman....I think other parents should have these expectations as well, but I don't think most do. Just look at the teens on tv these days. You don't have shows that show "good kids" anymore. With our parents there was The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family and we grew up with Full House and Saved by the Bell. Those shows had kids and teens that were faced with a moral dilemma but chose the "right" thing to do. What's on tv these days?? 90210, Secret Life of the American Teenager, Teen Mom. Shows that have teens doing drugs, cheating, lying, talking back to their parents, and having sex. And let's not forget the "roll models" out there.

I think this will be the hardest part of being a parent. Right now is the easy part. I'm worried about when he's older and has to deal with bullies and peer pressure to drink, do drugs, or have sex. Being a parent has definitely made me feel bad about any worry I ever put my parents through! He's not even 2 months and I'm already stressing about all of that!!!

Anyway.....Bradley has been staying up late but sleeping in late too. He still wakes up once or twice through the night to eat, but for the most part is sleeping through the night. I just need to figure out how to switch his schedule to get him to go to sleep earlier! He's been falling asleep around 12 or 1 AM and will wake up between 5 and 6 so we'll bring him in our bed and I'll feed him and just let him co-sleep with me for another few hours. He has been sleeping ALL day today though. I'm hoping he'll sleep tonight too.

Is it Spring yet???

I am so ready for nice and warm weather! I'd love to get out and walk around the neighborhood or take Bradley to the park. With all the rainy, cold weather lately we've just been stuck inside. It's also been giving me headaches which makes it a little more difficult to do stuff. I'm starting to go a little stir crazy. This has been VERY hard for me since usually I'm out and about and running all over the place. Getting out is also difficult with a baby. You can't just "run in" anywhere anymore. It's a huge production. You have to first get yourself ready, then the baby ready, make sure he is full and has a clean diaper, get him in the car seat, make sure you have a diaper bag with enough diapers, wipes, bottles, burp cloths, etc, and then finally get both of you in the car.

Hopefully this week we'll be able to do a little more. We've been invited to go to my youngest sister's class on Friday for Special Friends Day. I'm very excited to be her special friend!! Although, I guess Bradley is really the special one! And on Saturday afternoon Matt and I are going to attempt to go to dinner and a movie for Valentine's Day. We'll be leaving Bradley with my dad, stepmom, and sisters, so he will be well taken care of and get lots of attention! Even though I know he's in great hands and won't know we're gone, I am nervous and already anxious! Hopefully I'll be able to enjoy our time out!!

Last night Bradley hosted his first Super Bowl party! We had some wonderful friends come over and he loved getting held by all those pretty ladies =)

We're also starting to think about vacations for this year. We're planning on taking a trip to St.Louis in mid March for my cousin Jessica's wedding. I'm super excited to go to St. Louis and see family, but a little nervous about the long car ride up there. Bradley is SUCH a good baby, but that will be one long car ride! We'll definitely be making lots of stops along the way! We're also thinking about going to D.C. at some point this summer if my family goes and maybe to the beach with friends since we didn't get to make it last year.

Well, it's time to go be a little productive and make dinner! It's one of the few things I make sure to get done every day!

Finally!!

So I obviously didn't keep up with this too well! It unbelievable how tired you get being pregnant and working full time! Now that Mr. Bradley is here and I'm not working right now, I want to try to start the blog back up. This entry is going to be a little long. I'm going to try and summarize the pregnancy, labor, and first 4 weeks of being a mom.

Honestly, I hated HATED being pregnant. I was nauseous for all but about 6 weeks of the pregnancy. Everything made me sick. I had to stop wearing my invisalign braces b/c they made me nauseous, taking pills made me sick, and even brushing my teeth just made me throw up. It was awful. Even through all of that though I felt blessed. Feeling your little one move and kick inside is such a crazy feeling. When you first start feeling those kicks you relish every one. Then by the end it starts getting a little annoying lol! When the baby is all up in your ribs and kicking your bladder it doesn't feel like such a blessing at that moment!

Towards the end of the pregnancy I was SO DONE being pregnant and the little man was measuring big so my doctor decided to induce me a week and a half early. Being induced was the best way to have a baby! We were told to be at Northside hospital around 6 or 7 to be admitted to a room. We were able to stop and fill up our car with gas and go to Target to get some last minute things and then head to the hospital. We still had to wait about 45 minutes to an hour to get into a room because they were SUPER busy! I guess that's what you get from having your baby at the baby factory hospital lol! We were finally admitted into a room and they put me in a hospital gown and at about 10:30 gave me cervidil which thins out the cervix. (You can read more about cervidil here.) After that we just hung out in the labor and delivery room and watched Valentine's Day and slept. I didn't really watch the movie so I'm actually watching it again while I'm writing this!

About 7:30 the next morning the nurse had to come in and fix the monitors they had on my belly. There are 2 monitors: One to measure contractions and one to follow the baby's heartbeat. They have to move the one that watches the baby's heartbeat somewhat often since the baby moves around in the womb still. That kind of woke me up so once the nurse left the room I decided to get up and use the bathroom. Well, when I rolled over my water broke! At first I didn't know if it was my water or if I had accidently peed in the bed lol!! I called the nurse back in and she confirmed that my water did break.

I don't remember too much for the next 2 hours. All I know is that after my water broke, my contractions started coming fast and hard! They were having trouble monitoring them because every time I had one I wanted to lean forward and that would move the monitors. I was begging for drugs! Contractions were AWFUL! They came and gave me morphine which didn't make the contractions necessarily hurt less, but drugged me up enough to not care! The nurse came and checked me at that point and I was 8 cm dilated so they went ahead and ordered the epidural. And God bless the epidural lady. It didn't hurt at all going in and that is the best medicine in the world! It took about 10-20 minutes before I didn't feel anything, but after that I was MUCH happier!!

After I got the epidural it was fairly uneventful until right before Bradley was born. The epidural slows down contractions so they did give me pitocin which speeds contractions up. ( You can read more about pitocin here.) About 1:30 that afternoon I was dilated to 10 cm and was ready to push. I thought this was slightly uneventful too because you only push while you're contracting so you may push for 30 seconds and then have to wait for 5 minutes to push for another 30 seconds. This part wasn't too bad for me. Again, THANK GOD FOR DRUGS!!! I was totally joking with Matt and the nurses while I was pushing and saying "this isn't bad at all! I could totally do this again"

The hardest part was the last 15 minutes or so of pushing. It still wasn't horrible, but it definitely got a lot harder and more emotional for the last part. At 3:08 pm on December 28, 2010 Bradley Joseph Coleman joined our family! He was 7 lbs 13 oz and 21 inches long. I am so glad I was induced! If I had waited until my due date he would have probably been close to 9 lbs! Matt was such a good sport throughout the entire labor and delivery. He stayed nice and calm and was such a great support!

The past 4 weeks have FLOWN by! I can't believe I have already had this wonderful little boy with me for almost a month! Bradley is such a good baby! He doesn't really cry or fuss too much. The most challenging part of being a mom so far I would have to say would be breastfeeding. I wasn't prepared for it to be such a challenge, but it is! The second hardest part is probably getting used to not sleeping! Bradley isn't an awful night sleeper, but we're working on getting on a better schedule for sure.

I feel like I've settled into "mommyhood" pretty well. It all feels so natural! It definitely helps having such a good boy!! Matt seems to be settling into his new role pretty well too. Although he just happens to sleep through all the night time wake ups!

Bradley is already growing like a weed! In 3 weeks he had already gained over 2 lbs! As of last week he was measuring 22 inches and 9 lbs 14 oz. He looks like such a little kid already. He looks EXACTLY like his daddy. Although lately people have been saying he has my nose. His hair is turning more blonde, but I don't think it will get as blonde as Matt's was. It's so incredible and indescribable watching him grow already.

Since the kid is waking up from his nap now, I guess I should wrap this up. Hopefully I'll update much more often!!