gracie and i went shopping together on tuesday, pretty fun event all in all. went to my sister's work which is a beauty supply store/salon. i picked up some much needed new makeup and a hair dryer. then we went to babies r us so i could feed her quickly(they have a room for breastfeeding mothers to feed babies..how cool is that!) and i ended up buying a new baby carrier which is way easier to use than the baby bjorn i picked up at a rummage sale when i was still pregnant. and then we walked around kmart for a while and she fell asleep in her carrier(aww). she was awesome for the whole trip except when i slowed the car down to stop...didn't seem too thrilled with that.

on friday gracie had a doctor's appt. she's 13.10 lbs and 23 1/4 inches long. her doctor says she's doing great and to keep up the good work. then gracie had her first shots since leaving the hospital...she only cried for a few minutes after they were all done. pretty good i think! so today she's pretty sluggish and not wanting to eat much which the doctor said is normal and she'll be fine and back to her cheery self in a few days.

jason went ice fishing for a while on friday after we got home from the doctor, and he caught a pretty big crappie and a perch, brought them home and put them in the kitchen sink...they're still alive and swimming around in the sink...pretty funny. well, we're bracing for a really bad blizzard around here, they say we could get around two feet of snow with east winds of 20-40mph where we are(waukesha, wi...which is just outside of milwaukee.) so i'm gonna hunker down with my baby and wait out the storm. stay safe all.

well, it happened, she spent the night at jason's mom's house....and she was really good!! she didn't scream the whole time, she ate just fine(after she got used to the people and the new surroundings), she played with her 6 year old cousin nyanna, yup everything went just fine. oh that's such a relief!! all those silly worries i had were for nothing. and i didn't miss her to the point of crying, which i thought i would. i was just so happy to have some alone time with jason that i really didn't think about her all that much. i hope that doesn't sound too selfish or anything, but that's how it was. we had a blast on saturday night, went out with my sister and her boyfriend to a japanese hibachi restaurant and then we went to our favorite bar. we both got a bit drunk and ended up singing karaoke, but it was all fun, a night i won't soon forget. and the next day we had our ice fishing competition, i didn't fish, i just hung out on the ice for a while(they weren't catching anything anyway), and after a few hours i went to the bar that hosts the competition and had lunch and bid on a few things in the silent auction they had. i won a photography session for the three of us in our home or the setting we choose. pretty cool because i've been wanting a family picture for a while now and now we can get a pretty nice one! and while jason was fishing his sister called and asked if they could keep gracie for a few extra hours while they took their two kids to a kid themed restaurant...wow! so i said yeah, after i finally believed that they really wanted to take her there, and they dropped her off in the nick of time, i was just starting to really miss her. so i guess that we both can survive a night apart once in a while, and there will be more in the future.  oh yeah, one more quick story to add...this is pretty funny i think... jason was watching her while i was at work on friday and he had his face real close to hers, and she stuck one of her fingers up his nose so far that he got a small bloody nose! sorry if that's not funny to some people, but it made me laugh.

whew! we made it through the first week of mom working...and gracie didn't fuss!! she and jason do quite well together when i'm not home, which is a big burden off my shoulders. it's just so nice to know that those two are finally bonding! work itself is the same old b.s. it always was, but at least i'm getting out of the house and making myself some spending money, now if only it would warm up around here so gracie and i could go places. she goes on her first overnight at jason's mom's this saturday...i have to admit i'm a little nervous about it. gracie hasn't really been around her much since she was born, so there's the whole she could scream the entire time like she did when we took her to my mom's for a few hours....jason's mom never breastfed, and i'm breastfeeding gracie, so i have to tell her how to heat the bottles and to use the milk in order of the date i pumped it on. and jason's mom smokes inside the house(jason and i smoke too, but only outside) and i really don't want her exposed to that cuz my brother's kid's mom smokes around her son and that poor kid has been on an inhaler since he was two weeks old!! other than all that i'm okay with it, jason and i need the time to ourselves. we haven't been...uh...romantic...since she was born and we're both getting kind of rowdy about it. that and we've already planned an evening out with friends and we have an ice fishing jamboree on sunday so i guess i'd better suck it up and realize that everything will be okay! i suppose when i really think about it i'm pretty jazzed about a day with just jason. don't get me wrong, i absolutely love being a mom and all that, but our lives have been turned upside down since she came into this world which is expected but i guess i never realized how much things really change when a baby comes along...silly me. so we'll have our night out and i'll try not to think about all the what ifs that are running through my head(yeah right)...okay i'll try not to call jason's mom every hour to make sure she's okay. hey on a totally other topic i finally figured out how to put a picture of gracie on my avatar...go me! i'm not the most computer savvy person to say the least, so that's a pretty big accomplishment for me. it's my favorite picture of her that we have on here so far and i'm sure i'll update it a lot.  we gave her some baby gas relief medicine today and she hates it, but it helps a lot. she cried really loud when i gave it to her but it's a new taste and she'll get used to it and once she figures out that that gross stuff mommy puts in her mouth makes her tummy feel better she'll be alright. wow this is getting really long! i really need to get on here more and say a little every day instead of writing a novel every week! i'll get better!

wow it's cold here! right now the temp is 14 below zero farenheit and the windchill is around 30 below! the water pipes in our kitchen and bathroom are all frozen except for the shower and the wash machine...so doing dishes and flushing the toilet are major chores now! gracie's doing pretty well. she had a bit of the sniffles for a few days, but we borrowed a humidifier from jason's sister and that seems to help a lot. gracie's gone from pooping once a day to three times every two or three days. that's a little frustrating but from what i understand it's normal so i'm not that worried. she also is starting to reach and grab at toys and my fingers which is really cool. she's more smiley now too. it's so amazing to watch her grow up. she doesn't need to be held all the time anymore(just some of the time when she's awake) which is also nice because my house is pretty messy and i want to catch up. i think in the next few weeks i need to be able to get her to sleep without nursing to sleep so that we can work on going to bed in the crib at night. right now she sleeps on the couch with me, i put the boppy around me and she goes on top and just suckles herself to sleep and i eventually drift off too. all of my aunts and jason's mom's friends swear that this isn't a good idea and i should just  'make' her go to bed in the crib or she'll sleep with me forever but i really prefer it this way...she's happy so i'm happy, ya know? i go back to work in two days and i'm pretty nervous/excited about it. it's just a waitressing job that i've had for two years. it's going to be wierd to be back at work instead of home with gracie all the time. hopefully she and her daddy cope well so i can stay at work part time, i plan to use the money i make to go back to school. i'll be taking online courses to become a veterinary technician. that's what i have always wanted to do and now i am finally making myself do it. (i've gotten lazy and comfortable at the job i have now, which i am way overqualified for) so yeah hopefully the whole me working thing works out because i really don't feel like asking my grandparents for the money.  well, it's time for a nap for mom and baby, so i'll hopefully write tomorrow. i'm trying to write as often as i can, but with the plumbing problems we've had the last few days it's been difficult!