More pictures to jazz up this blog

We love the "Chub cheek" face.It makes Claire's eyes look beady.

Sean and Sian at an "80's rock" costume Birthday party for a good friend in our ward.

Claire with her Speech Therapist named Claire.

I left Claire in the room on this blanket laid out flat for probably two minutes.

Buster loves it here.
He gets a great view of all the juicy birds, squirrels, and rabbits.

The end

April

It is such a nice and fun place to live.

We moved on April 4 to our new rental home. Up until recently I've felt completely disorganized physically and mentally. I have a good system of paying bills and mostly keeping up on things at our apartment, but here I've had a rough time. We had a very very high phone bill. Lets say around $472 worth. Yeeeeaaah. That was a big oops.

We just started with a new phone company and had the same exact plan as with T-Mobile, but cheaper. The problem is that I must have been talking with a lot of T-Mobile users, plus I talked a lot around my birthday. Fortunately I was able to get Sprint to drop the overage charges. Woo hoo. I am very careful about talking during peak hours now. Lesson learned.

Back to, us moving. We really love living in a house. We have lots of extra room to spread out, a garage, and a yard. We are so grateful to the Holmans for letting us stay in their house.

It's great to not deal with loud noises, cigarette smoke, dents in our car, three flights of stairs, and irresponsible neighbors. Example of irresponsible neighbors: We got three dents in our car while living at our apartment, which really sucks. One of the dents we figure someone kicked in, because there isn't a scratch.

(I am really going off on tangents.) Speaking of dents, Sean got rear ended on his way back from the store on my birthday. That was really not fun to deal with for him, but the person at fault's insurance is great. I've been tempted to switch to American Family Insurance, because they are so easy to work with. (I should get paid for these endorsements for Sprint and American Family)

So, the new place is great. The owners put a lot of hard work into the home, and have put some really nice things in. Like: new windows, really nice looking sinks and cupboards in the bathrooms, really nice ceiling fans, and fresh paint. Our dark wood furniture looks a lot nicer here, because they play off of the wood floors. We love, having a yard. We started a garden with a lot herbs and a few zucchini plants. Mmm, I really love zucchini bread. I gobble it up.

Living in a home is quite a bit more work and money, but it is really rewarding. We will be trying to save like crazy to be able to buy a home when lease is up, because I really really don't want to live in an apartment again.

So a few weeks back we had thought our cat Lucy had accidently gotten spooked and ran away while a door was open. It was ten at night when we noticed. We searched high and low, rechecking the same places. We looked outside and called for her. Nothing.

After exhausting all effort, I set about writing a lost cat flyer in our computer room. Amidst tears, I hear a meow. It sounded like a Lucy meow. Sean had heard it too, he thought. So, I raced around again trying to figure out if somehow she had gotten in the heating vents. I kept worrying that we were going to have a cooked kitty. Then I heard it again. Meow. I couldn't tell where it was coming from so I went into the kitchen to turn off the dishwasher. Meow. Turns out that Lucy found a loose metal plate in the crook of the bottom of the cabinets, and squeezed herself in and went behind the dishwasher somehow, then squeezed again under a four inch rise. So we set about trying to figure out how to get her out. Finally we pulled out the dishwasher and I grabbed her by the noggin to pull her out. This happened two times more before Sean remedied the problem. Even though we love our Buster and Lucy, I think we can all learn a valuable lesson, don't get cats.

Can you believe she fit under there? I did the dishes earlier that night, not a peep. What a little turkey.

Other updates:

Ms. Claire has been better. She has gotten sick three or four times in the last month and a half. Once with a flu, another with a diaper fungus. We had to put athlete's foot creme on to cure it. I think Claire has been sneaking out to sit diaperless in gym lockerrooms.) She has had two colds, and just recently her first ear infection treated with amoxicilan, which gave her the baby runs. She is still having that problem. I wonder if she has developed an allergy to milk? I don't know.

A sorta smile at the Dr.'s for ear infection. She looks like H.I. Junior in that jacket.("Raising Arizona" the movie)

Hearing Aides

So, to continue on my catching upness. (No, upness isn't a word) Claire went in to her school, Central Institute for the Deaf, on March 16 and received some loaner hearing aides. They set the aides to a fairly low setting just to test things out.

First day of hearing aides

Claire had previously been tested at her school several weeks before and the staff concluded that on that day Claire only had minor to moderate hearing loss. Which was different to the previous diagnosis of moderate to severe hearing loss. Now, this news may or may not mean anything, but it is a glimmer of hope that Claire won't have to work so hard to be able to speak clearly. The reason why is that she is diagnosed as having Auditory Neuropathy. This broadly means that the nerves that connect her ears to her brain don't fire correctly. Sometimes they can fire extremely well, other times not at all, and anything in between. So, with all the knowledge of her condition, the second diagnoses may have been on a good hearing day.

During the first few days that she had her hearing aides, Claire was a huge crab. I wasn't sure if it was due to teething, or if it was the hearing aides. I talked with Claire's Speech Therapist, also a Claire, and she said to limit the hearing aides to a few hours a day. She also arranged to pick the hearing aides up that Sunday on her way home from her church, so that they could set them to an ever lower setting. Adult Claire thought that maybe with being able to hear so well, when Claire was unable to for so long, it was overwhelming for her brain.

The rest of that first week was pretty rough. I got some sort of extremely horrible flu for a day and a half, and Claire got sick shortly after for about three days. Yeah, that didn't help her crabbiness either. I got sick on a Wednesday night and was up throughout the whole night, sicking it up. Oh man, to my recollection, I've only been that sick once before and that was when I spent the night at Utah State with my friends from high school during conference weekend. I spent the night sleeping on the ground in the dorm hallway. Fortunately for me this time Sean, my sweets, stayed home from work on Thursday to take care of us. This was despite the fact that he went in the hole for time off.

Back to hearing aides. Adult Claire brought the hearing aides back to us the next day when she came over for weekly Speech Therapy. Since then, chubby cheeks Claire has been fairly content. To us the hearing aides seem to be working and help with picking up sounds that she may not have heard before. The thing is though, that deep down, Sean and I wish/feel like Claire doesn't have a hearing problem. It's just so hard to tell either way if an infant can hear. I'll be saying her name and she doesn't look up, and I wonder if it's because she's ignoring me. We still feel like things are up in the air with nailing down how well she is hearing. I'm thinking about calling up a different Audiologist to get a third, but extensive opinion.

Random pics.

Claire earning her keep.
Claire wanted to be held and I needed to dust. So, I combined the two.
Claire kept grabbing at the duster so I just let her have it. She did a great job dusting. With a little guidance.

My brother and sister-in-law, Court and Kari, gave this little piano a while back and Claire loves to play on it now.
Very surprising because the first time I turned it on when she was about two months old, she cried.

Fin.

Champaign

I'm trying to play catch up with blogging, and I should have posted this weeks ago. Oh well.

Three weeks ago all three of us were able to visit our old city Champaign, Il. Sean's was asked by his firm to represent them at the U of I Architectural career fair. We were there from late Wednesday night to mid-day Friday.

We stayed at the I hotel, which is a new addition to the campus. It is a pretty fancy/modern hotel. We were fairly happy with the accommodations. The staff at the front desk when we checked in wasn't too helpful. I felt like they should have at least opened the door for Sean when he was trying for a little bit to push the luggage cart out the door. Some of the decor was dizzying, like the carpet in the hallways. Looking down the hallways made me imagine a little "redrumming" boy on a trike.

Ahhhhh!

We all slept very well throughout our stay. Claire's pack 'n play just barely fit in the bathroom, so her strict baby sleep schedule was left intact. I personally believe I'm a Nazi of sorts with her "sleep schedule." But, she is very consistent with sleep and goes down very easily. We haven't really had to try and let her cry it out.

We felt kind of guilty for our midnight bathroom breaks.

Claire chilling out on the bed with her bird toy.

Thursday was a very busy day for Sean. He didn't get to sit for about six hours and missed lunch, because they were so busy. I was able to go to a baby shower for a friend in the old ward and I got to see a lot of great friends. I really enjoyed that visit, and I wish we could have been there a little longer to see some more friends.



Friday was a lot less hectic for Sean, and there was a good theory as to why. It was "unofficial" day in Champaign. Every year on the first Friday in March, there is a horrible tradition among students at the U of I to celebrate St. Patrick's day twice. Unofficial is the worst of the two. Students dress up in green and get plastered all day long. There are usually a lot of injuries and accidents that happen as a result. Despite that, it carries on year after year. We just happened to be lucky enough to be in town that weekend. So from all this we surmised, quite easily, that everyone came on Thursday, and skipped out Friday. Nice.

Aside from that, our trip was pretty good, and Claire slept the 3 and a half hours drive both ways. Oh yeah!

Tricked out yo!

The more I add to my blog the more I want to add. I added a new background, music playlist, and an age counter for Claire. I feel like eventually my blog is going to be so busy, that frail ones might seize up at first glimpse.

I can't believe 6 1/2 months has passed

Man! Time really passes by in a funny way. It seems like forever ago that Claire was born. Yet at the same time I feel as though time is passing by so quickly with the monotony of daily life.

Lately, Claire has been through some sort of growth spurt and is doing new things.

A week after she turned six months she started eating food, and has been binging on milk since. I wonder if the baby oatmeal is making her thirsty. She is also eating food. She'll eat baby oatmeal and carrots. I tried peas and she gagged twice. I should have stopped at the first gag, I suppose.





She's some kind of eating savant.



She has also started to sit on her own. Well, at least with minimal support. If I plop her on the bed sitting and leave the room for just a moment, I'll come back in and she'll usually be stuck head down on her shoulder.

She has also decided to mess up her sleeping schedule. I think she's feeling like she doesn't need as much sleep.

We've been hermit crabs for the past while, but last week we had a bout of warm weather. Claire and I (mostly I) decided to go to the park near us. It was pretty muddy, but still enjoyable. I got Claire out of her stroller and showed her the ducks that were grazing near the pond. She started marching. (translation: she liked seeing them)


Sean and I have been addicted to a wii game we bought last week called "World of Goo." I'm not into video games very often, but this one has a tight grip on my ability to do other things. I feel an urgency to keep playing. When I first started playing it my feelings were, "meh." Now I feel like a junkie. I have no sense of moderation for playing it when Claire is down for naps.

Sean has been working overtime lately and it sucks for all of us. I'd say mostly for him, probably.

We will be moving soon enough into a rental home of a family in our ward. It is going to be very nice to live in a house and not deal with cigarette smoke permeating our clothes. It's also pretty great, because Sean's bus is getting cut on March 29. Most buses going out here are getting cut, but new rental house's bus line isn't fortunately.

Christmas 2008

I love that she held out her book so well.

Skipping forward in time from the last post. Claire's first Christmas was a lot of fun. She was at least somewhat interested in her gifts. I had to pat myself on the back for that.

Also, for her Christmas present we got her an exersaucer. She absolutely loves it.
The only problem with it is she is cursed by her mom, with short stubby legs.

We found a way around that.