remember that time it was Easter?

this post has been sitting in my draft folder for a month!!  sorry!!

Happy Easter!!

This year was so much fun!  [and also a little sad because John had to stay in Utah.]  But little miss Ruthe Clementine sure had a great introduction to the wonderful world of marshmallow PEEPS!!

[and she LOVED them!]

That was Ruthe's treat, instead of a cupcake, for her nine month birthday.  I don't think she missed the cupcake very much, but she did have a little more trouble grabbing onto the peeps... the plastic tray and sugar sparkles make those Peeps some slippery little guys!

As always, my family spent Saturday at the Valley of Fire.  It's a 55-year strong tradition, and honestly, it doesn't really feel like Easter if we have to miss it.  We always go to the same place, at the same time, and do the same things.  It's perfect!!  Several years ago we started having an egg decorating contest and it has been getting steadily more and more competitive.  It's also nice to have something else to do since I'm too old for the egg hunt and Ruthe's not old enough! 

We had gotten a little pop-up shade tent for Ruthe, to keep her out of the sun, but the weather was so beautiful and there was plenty of shade by the picnic tables so we put it away and just let her hang out with everybody!

Unfortunately, none of our submissions for the egg contest won.  My mom and I are convinced that the voting pool of random-passers-by is rigged!!  

After the Valley-o-Fire, we headed home and took some hilarious pictures of the baby...

I was a little disappointed that she wasn't more upset about being buried in plastic eggs.  We did this to my little cousin like twelve years ago, and he was so mad about it!!  I don't think we even have one shot of Ruthe so much as frowning!  

On Easter Sunday we got up and got dressed and went to church.  Ruthe's dress was soooo adorable!!  There has got to be another reason for her to wear it... Anybody wanna throw a bunny-themed party?!

Ok, that's pretty much all I can remember from Easter.  I REALLY need to get back into the habit of blogging regularly!  But Ruthe just woke up, so you'll have to wait around for the rest of April, our trip to Laguna, and Mother's Day!!

my little hobbit.

Ruthe's gastroenterologist (GI doctor, for her g-tube) recently changed the way we feed her.  Ok, so I might possibly have been feeding her less than she's supposed to be getting - but she stopped spitting up after every meal, so I figured it evened itself out.  The whole story is long and boring and involves a lot of math, but basically after I weaned her off the pump she lost the equivalent of one feeding.  So her GI doc said that we need to get another full-volume feeding into her schedule.  That means waking up extra early for me, and a whole new round of spit up for the baby.

I used to feed her about 175 mLs every four hours - at 9am, 1pm, 5pm, and 9pm.  It took about an hour to feed her (on a good day) but she was doing really well and tolerating all the force-feeding really well.  The thing about having a baby who's been tube-fed for her entire life is that she really has no idea what it means, or feels like, to be hungry.

Since her visit to the doctor last week I've been trying to squeeze another feeding into Ruthe's day.  It's not really that hard, but it's altered our schedule quite dramatically.  Especially the waking up part...  this is what her schedule looks like now:

7am -- breakfast + meds
11am -- second breakfast
3pm -- lunch
7pm -- dinner + meds
11pm -- elevensies

Because I think her doctor is training her to become a hobbit, and eat seven times a day.

utah, again.

I am a really bad blogger.  

I have good intentions, I swear!!  But it seems as though every time I sit down to write a post about what we've been up to, Ruthe decides it's a good time to spit up/cry/poop/need to eat... you get it.

Anyway, let's maybe just recap with pictures, okay?  Because I'm pretty sure that's all anyone really wants to see.

We went to Utah to spend a week with John at the end of March/beginning of April.  It was a lot of fun!!  Ruthe still had a funky cough, and I was a little sick the first couple of days, but it's just nice to be together as a family, so we toughed it out. :)

While we were there I tried to get a little more decorating done, and organize the tiny space a little better.  John and I are starting to realize that we really spoiled ourselves with our apartment in Idaho... you never realize how much of a blessing a second bedroom is until it's been turned into the nursery and you have to share closet space with a stockpile of diapers.  BUT how cute is the baby's room looking?!

I just LOVE those gold dot stickers!!  I did this wall, and I'm going to do the wall to the left with the closet doors.  I'm hoping I'll hate the closet doors less if they're fancied-up a little.  We still need to look into better lighting.  That's a $12 lamp, and the little shade things are always falling off.  It's just so bizarre to me that there aren't any ceiling lights in the bedrooms.

While I was there I got to meet up with my roommate Brittney!!  My roomies are some of my favorite people, but we all live so far away now that college is over. :(  So, if anyone would like to donate to the next Roomie Reunion, we'll accept all major credit cards and/or frequent flier miles!!  (because as much as we love you, Mikey and Meg, we are NOT driving to Alaska or Chicago. sorry!)

John also convinced me to buy a new couch while we were there.  He's been complaining about our couch since he moved there in August, and it was a little big for the space... I don't have a picture of the actual couch, but I did snap this cute shot while we were shopping!!

Those cheeks... they're irresistible.

Ruthe and I had to occupy the rest of our days with trips to Target and Netflix movies while John was at school.  We also took a lot of naps...

My mom and Teri came up to spend the weekend and drive home with me and the baby, and we had a lot of fun shopping and eating and playing with Ruthe!  By far, the best part of the weekend was going to The King's English Bookshop in SLC and meeting the author of some of the cutest baby books in the universe!!  

Ruthe now has the entire collection AND five of them are signed!!  Jennifer Adams was so sweet, and told us about two new books coming soon!  We can't wait to add them to Ruthe's library!

As wonderful as it is to spend time in Utah, our first priority is Ruthe's health, so we had to head home for a week full of appointments. :(

Luckily everything is still going well with her heart!  Her cough is finally fading away, and she's growing, so we're hoping to make it through April before her next surgery.  We do kind of need it to be done soon, so she can be cleared by cardiology to have her cleft palate repair done before she turns one.  If we have to wait too much longer than that Ruthe could struggle with even more speech and/or eating delays.  So keep your fingers crossed we get into surgery in early May! (that sounds awful, to be hoping for surgery... my, how our world has changed!!)