Snowy Daze

Jessy celebrated her first birthday on 2/5. Um, where did the time go?? Anyway, we had planned/envisioned having her first birthday party ON her birthday. How sweet would that have been? Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other plans:

Instead, she dumped tons of snow on us, instigating Snomageddon 2011.

Dude, where's my driveway?



While most of this cold, wet stuff melted off by the big day, we still voted to move the party up by one week, simply because of the sheer volume of the frozen stuff that hung around. We usually don't get this much in NTX, so this was a huge deal. HUGE, as in Dallas and Fort Worth (and needless to say, surrounding areas') schools closed. Those two cities never close their schools, unless Mother Nature is having major PMS. End of story.

We finally had the babyjess's party a week later, when there was nary a sign of any of Mama Nature's antics from the week before. It was a bright, warm and sunny day. Typical for Texas weather, if you don't like it, just wait a few minutes. It'll change.

Without further ado, The celebrity babyjess!

Is that a toof?

...but...but...but daddy!

Is this what I am supposed to do? Mommy, you're laughing awfully hard...

The unsuspecting cakes before

3 generations, engrossed in Jessy's toy drum.



Happy (belated) Halloween!

Yeeeeahhhhh, I've got some catching up to do. But, two blogs in one day? Man I must be on something. OK, I promise- I'm not. Jessy had her first Halloween this year and while she didn't actually go TOT'ing (yeah, I got lazy on that), she still had the opportunity to answer the door and had out candy.

In true snowflake fashion, Jessy dressed up as Snow White. But trust me when I say that finding a Halloween costume for this child was no easy feat. I visited many a store and came up empty-handed. Either the costumes were too big, too small or just too expensive and even Jessy was becoming impatient. I finally resigned myself to no costume for our adorable little snowflake.

And of course, after I resigned myself to not finding anything and just dressing jessy up in the garb Grammy bought her, I saw it: the somewhat-big (or so I thought) Snow White dress. And it was only about $8. That was more like it.

Without much further boring rambling, behold! Jessy the Snow Princess.

And the verdict is...

5 inches (as mesured on the hood of my car)! However supposeldy, we got 7 inches in our town.

5 inches! And this was a couple of hours after the snow started melting...

And the snow princess is chillin' after all her work this weekend.

Speechless Sunday Spring Snow!

Snow What?!

The icky weather came back today :( so it was cold and gloomy out. We interviewed the two daycare prospects today... of course the one we like better doesn't mesh well with our work hours. Hence my need for a new job. Something with more traditional hours.

As for the providers, they're both in-home daycare providers. As a kid myself, I attended an in-home daycare for a while, so I like the familiarity of the concept. Not too bad. Of course, I am the best candidate to take care of my own child, but have to delegate the task while I am at work. We have a plan in place to spring me from having to work. I had toyed around with the idea of running an in-home daycare myself, but our house's floorplan just doesn't support such a venture.

Ok, off that tangent.

Yesterday my baby turned six weeks old. Time to go back to work, as I did not get a real maternity leave- just enough time to heal. Big whoop! My kid isn't ready to be dumped off with strangers just yet, but I digress.

I had my six-week postpartum checkup on Thursday. The doctor said I healed nicely and did the typical, lovely GYN checkup. I'll spare ya details there but it was pretty boring there. :)

We also picked up Miss Jessica's birth announcements today- yeah, several weeks late :D but better late than never, right? They look great! Pic of the pics to come soon.

And tonight... just when we thought it was over... the SNOW came back! This year, er, winter, has brought us a record of the second snowiest winter for DFW. In fact, when our own little snowflake (Jessica, of course) was a week old, we had our now-famous deluge (is that the right word?) of snow- about 10 or so inches on average of snowfall. Tonight's snowfall didn't reach near that for us, but it definitely brought back memories! But wait... didn't spring start- supposedly officially today? Yesterday was a warm and beautiful, winter day, but today- a cold and snowy spring day? Ironic. Only in Texas.

This is what our snow princess sent us at a week old.

And this is what she brought us tonight! A much lighter dusting but still beautiful.

My, how time flies! One month already!?

My little Jessica Nicole turns one month old today. That's right- one month ago today, I was in epidural heaven in L&D just waiting for the good word to start pushing her out, which was very close at this time. Once all that was said and done, I held a beautiful, 8 lbs 2 oz , 20.5 in. long little girl in my arms.

Today, that not-so-little girl has blossomed up to 9 lbs 12.5 oz, 21.5 in. long and has a 15-inch head! Yikes! I know it's just a matter of time before I'm posting here about her first real attempt at crawling. Lately she has been shimmying (is that a word?) up and down Daddy's and my chests when we hold her in the evenings.

She is becoming more alert these days, with the exception of today- she had her second Hep B shot. It stung her like h-e-double hockey sticks and seemed to make her sluggish today- Her Snowiness had a few choice words (which I will kindly omit here) about it, but once the pacifier was advised by mommy all was ok. She will get a few more shots next month at her two-month visit (but not all 7- mama's skeered of her having a bad reaction to that many viruses in her system. Let's not overload her!). Gotta think about the long term here- she'll be immune to these awful diseases!  Please note that this topic is not open to debate, though... we have made up our minds on this. :)

It's just so hard to believe that this is what she looked like exactly a month ago (OK, minus a day... I had NO energy for pictures right after she was born.. lol).

And this is Her Snowiness today:

Look at how much wider-open those eyes are today!

No Dreamin' Needed

Our snow from last night stuck around long enough for us to officially have a white Christmas! This would be the first white Christmas I've ever seen, well- down here in TX anyway... Not sure about New York- I was too young to remember when I lived up there.

In case you're wondering, all of these pics were taken from inside the house. No way I was getting out in that cold just to snap pics! LOL

Crazy Snowflake at it again!

So I had my 15-week checkup today and all went well! Weight gain will not be published but BP was good. We visited with the Dr. D's assistant today since Dr. D was out of town this week and things went smoothly. Of course, Snowflake was in a froggy mood and decided to dodge the doppler once again, so after trying on a nervous me we retreated to the u/s room.

Once we got past my full bladder, we were able to see the little snowflake moving around in there and s/he even gave us a wave! Then it was on to thumbsucking- sooo awesome! The heartbeat looked good and strong.




Nothing like a moving, wiggling, waving snowflake to make my morning bright!

I was offered the infamous triple-screed bloodwork which screens for possible birth defects, such as Spina Bifida or chromosomal issues such as Down's Syndrome (AKA T21), but I turned it down, since there is a HUGE rate of false positives associated with the test. Even the PA mentioned about the false positives and the staff were very respectful about my decision, which I liked. There has already been one lady on our expecting club board who had a false-positive for SB, and another whose b/w pointed to a strong chance of Down's (she's having an amnio tomorrow- her odds came back at like 1/7 or something like that).