It was fun, a lot smaller than I expected. I think we went through the whole thing in about 20-25 minutes. Of course, having an older child that could walk around at their own pace, do the fun activities (getting their picture taken in the bubble they can pop their heads up through to look like they're in the aquarium) playing on the playscape and petting the jellyfish would have taken more time, but still a lot smaller than I expected, especially for the price, 20 bucks per adult and thankfully Em was free, but I am sure 2 or 3 and up is a charge.
But, it was a very cool aquarium. Unlike say, the Shedd in Chicago, it isn't just a big building of aquariums. It's small and intimate, and a very cool atmosphere. The aquariums are all surrounded by what looks like coral and rock caves....one of my favorites was a room that was in a circular shape with aquarium all around you and the swarms of fish all swam in the circular motion. If I were rich I would have that in my bedroom, how relaxing to watch.
I also loved the sharks. Most aquariums only have nurse sharks, but this one had black tip, hammerhead, and one other I couldn't identify. I know I know, the shame I feel as a self proclaimed shark nut, to not be able to identify one. It kind of looked like a small bull, but I doubt those would fair well in an aquarium. Hmm, the website doesn't help any, all it mentioned was the blacktip when I know they had others. Maybe it was just a black tip and I didn't notice the tip.
I wish an aquarium could have Great Whites. I would travel great lengths to see that. Diving in a shark cage to see white sharks has always been on a fantasy bucket list of mine, but now that I have a kid I am not so sure I still want to do it. That and skydiving. I know I am more likely to get into a car accident, but still. Plus, non-family friendly vacations aren't really a possibility anymore.
So after the fish we walked around the mall some and rode the carousel. Emily loooves the carousel. She went on one for the first time when she was about 6 months old and the first thing she did when I set her on the horse was grab on to the pole....she's so smart :) She doesn't act like she loves it during the ride, but once the ride ends she always cries. After that we had lunch at the Rainforest Cafe. The food was good, and I like the atmosphere. We were sitting near the fake elephants and about 3 times during lunch the lights would dim, and there were stomping sounds and the elephants would flap their ears and make the noise they make, lol, I don't know what it is called. Like a champ, Em sat through it, interested while lesser children around us cried, haha.
We had to pack up most of our lunch and take it home cause it was going on 1:30 and Emily was melting down. She slept almost the whole 45 minutes home, and then we got cupcakes on the way home. This place is known for their interesting cupcakes with chunks of cookie on top, or frosting in the middle, so I had Ryan get the plainest one he could find, which was a Mountain Dew cupcake. Strange....the cake part was dry and the frosting was weird, she dug into it a little but I don't think she liked it much. After cupcakes she opened her present from us which was a Cabbage Patch doll we named Amelia Marie and gave her the same birthday as Em, she seemed to like it, though she is almost the same size as the doll. But she plays with my old one so I wanted her to have one of her own too.
After that grandpa came over for a bit to snuggle since he had been up north all week. Her party was Saturday, it was a lot of fun. We had a good turn out, everyone except for three people came, but that was our niece's dad, his fiancee and her daughter. We got party subs from Tubby's, I made some pink candy popcorn which was a big hit with the kids, my MIL brought a fruit salad and my dad brought potato salad. It was a nice change to not really have to cook a lot, and we barely had any dishes. We got the basement all cleaned up so people could mill around between there and upstairs, so it wasn't too over crowded. Then we had cake, Emily really dug into hers, she was so cute, such a mess. Her whole face was covered and her hands and arms. But really once I cleaned her up and got her bib off, she wasn't messy anywhere else.
We had a small #1 candle in her cake and then on the big cake we had this special candle that you light the middle, it shoots up like a torch and then it lights the small candles all around, which make the petals drop to look like a flower and there was a lit candle on each petal. It was supposed to also spin but it did not, but judging on the reaction from the crowd, it was pretty cool. After cake we opened presents....she got lots of good stuff. Two baby cell phones (that's cool, one can go in the diaper bag), a cd player, stacking cups, tool bench, clothes, puzzles, a book, some fake food that is sooooo cool. It's all in sections and stuck together with velcro and comes with a cutting board and a wooden knife and you can "cut" the food apart. Where was this shit when I was a kid?
Despite not liking to cook now, I LOVED cooking outside as a kid. My favorite mediums were mud and sawdust. The sawdust really helped to hold my mud creations together. I also liked to put water inside those plastic easter eggs and "crack them" open. I would have loved this cut apart food. For now she just chews on the pieces and bangs them together but I think she'll really like them as she gets older.
For her second birthday (or maybe later, we'll see how much she might like it by then) I want to convert an old entertainment center into a play kitchen for her so the food will be awesome. She also has a grill....we actually bought it some years ago for our nephew for Christmas. Before giving it to him I decided he was too old for it so I returned it and got him something else. An entire year later, I came home one day to find the grill on our porch. Walmart had sent it back for no apparent reason, but also didn't charge us for it. A whole year later! And you could tell it was the same exact one because of how dirty and beat up it was. I can't imagine where this thing was for a whole year.
So, we got a free grill. I already faced the hell that is Walmart to return it the first time, I sure as hell wasn't going to waste my sanity when they apparently didn't feel the need to sell this thing for a year, and send it back. So we've hung on to it all this time for our kids. I'll be excited to put it out on the deck so Emmy can grill when daddy does.
She had her one year well visit on Tuesday. Everything went well, the doctor was happy with her height and weight. She is in a high percentile for her height, but the website I was using said she was in the 19th for her weight, which was 19.4 lbs on her birthday, but the doctor said she's in about the 50th, so I feel better about that. She was a little concerned that she doesn't do a traditional crawl, but I'm not worried, I know lots of babies don't crawl. Besides, she does the belly scoot or the butt scoot, so she gets to where she wants to go. And also the fact that she doesn't pull up to stand a lot. I think that is more due to lack of opportunity. I cannot fathom how her tiny hands would get any kind of grip on our furniture. But she definitely is always tugging on us to walk her around, so not worried about that either. Last week she did really well pushing her vtech toy, but she took a bit of a nasty spill and now she seems afraid to do it. We try to keep getting her to try, but she just wants to hold our hands. I don't blame her though, falling is no fun. She was so funny at the doctor. She was standing on the exam table and I had my arm around her and she kept blowing raspberries in my face, trying to steal my glasses, sticking her hand in my mouth....I could barely concentrate on what the doctor was saying.
She's been much more affection lately, giving hugs and kisses...she loves to give kisses, except she gives them with her whole mouth open. So if she kisses you on the lips there is often tongue involved, lol. But it's just so cute and funny to see her coming at your face with her mouth wide open. When I went to pick her up from my inlaws the other day she was very happy to see me and kept hugging and cuddling. I also love that she seems completely at ease with all her grandparents. That was a worry of mine to make sure she sees both sets often enough, but she laughs and giggles and seems very happy with them, so I think we're doing a good job. Plus I see how she is with people she doesn't know well. She does good, but she remains very cautious, I have to be in sight and even then she mostly just stares at them. I have a lot of younger cousins so I played with lots of babies when I was growing up, and I was always a favorite cousin. But it's so nice to be #1, that one person your child wants and has to be near. It's a nice feeling to be so needed.
We started her on whole milk today. She seemed to like it, but not as much as her formula, but she drank most of what we gave her. But then I put her to bed, she had been asleep for a good hour when she woke up puking everywhere. So, not sure what that means. Is she allergic or intolerant to it, or does it just takes some time for their tummies to adjust? I gave her a bath because she was just covered in puke, and she was farting up a storm too. I'll probably try it for a few more days and if she's still puking I'll call her doctor. I think she just needs to adjust to it. I got her all cleaned up and put on fresh sheets and jammies. Lol, my friend gave me an excellent tip, to make up the crib with two layers of sheets and waterproof pads so in time likes these you can just strip off the dirty top layer and not remake the whole bed.
Well that would have worked great if Ryan hadn't set the wet bundle of dirty sheets on top of the clean one :) But he was a big help, he got her bath ready while I cleaned her up some. He's a good daddy :) I love watching the two of them play together, it melts my heart. So she got puke on both of her teddy bears, one of them being the heartbeat bear. So we took the heart out and tossed him in the wash, and I put her to bed with the heart. She's so funny, she's just laying in there, playing it over and over and putting it to her ear and and smiling.
The other day I was having sharp pains on my right side so I took an OPK...it was positive. I was all excited because I am pretty sure it is my first time ovulating since Emily was born. But then I remembered I started metformin a month ago so that's probably why. But, even though my body isn't doing it on my own, regular is regular, and if I can track O I can use it as cheap, non-hormonal birth control. I jokingly told Ryan I was Oing and asked if he wanted to try. He said we should play Russian roulette. I still don't know if we'll have another baby, but I have never been more sure of anything than the fact that I do NOT want to get pregnant right now.
I'm worried because despite thinking maybe we'll want another in a year, I am now back to thinking maybe we're done. I'm just so scared I still won't know when the time comes. In an ideal world, another would be nice. But the idea of worrying about another early loss, having surgery (this time with a kid at home to take care of) to have the cerclage put in again, worrying about my cervix, worrying about all the other things that can go wrong, worrying about a newborn and SIDS again....it just all terrifies me. I love Emily so much and being a mom is so amazing, but I am just not sure all that worry is worth having another. I mean, when all is said and done it would be worth it, but during? I am not sure. Plus Ryan mentioned the other day how thankful he was that nothing was wrong with Emily, and how he wouldn't know what to do if we ever had another and got a bad diagnosis and we had to make the decision to keep going or to terminate. I know this is all getting the cart ahead of the horse, but when it came to an early loss (I thought I was miscarrying Em when I was 5 weeks along), incompetent cervix, her being healthy....I just feel like we beat the odds and we would somehow be tempting fate for something bad to happen again. Plus add in the fact that next year I will be going on 37, and the odds of actually having something go wrong would be a lot higher. Those risks were all worth it to get Emily....but we got our rainbow, we're parents to a beautiful girl in heaven and a beautiful girl on earth, shouldn't we quit while we're ahead?
Tuesday we remembered our first daughter on her second angelversary. This year wasn't as sad as last, I think because more time has passed and I am not pumped full of post child birth hormones. But then again, I've had days here and there where the grief just hits me out of nowhere for no apparent reason. But I could definitely feel it coming, my heart felt heavy for the last few days. The night before I kept thinking about the time....this time I was headed to the hospital, at this time I was in active labor, and the next morning I thought of her at 10:11 when she was born. I pointed to her clothes in the shadow box in Emily's room and told her that today was her sister's birthday.
Just in time, I received my copy of Mother of all mothers in the mail with Kayla's name on the tribute page. I love it. I cried while reading it, but it's an excellent mantra to read when I need to be reminded that none of it was my fault, contrary to the burden of guilt that I feel. After Emily's doctor appt we went to a late lunch at a Mexican restaurant, and then got some balloons. Ryan got a lawn sign that he wrote on so we put that at Kayla's grave and tied a happy birthday balloon to it. Then we took Emily to a spot away from the trees and set her down and gave her a balloon. At first she just played with it, but we finally nudged it enough for her to let go and released it to heaven. Then Ryan and I released ours. It's so beautiful watching them float away. I am glad Emily got to participate more this year...last year she was only 6 days old and it was chillier so she was in her car seat covered with a blanket. I'll be excited to watch her be able to actually release the balloon and know what it means as she gets older.
Happy 2nd birthday my sweet angel, I love you <3
