Take a seat!

This week Caitlin started sitting on her own for longer periods of time. Although we still stay close by just in case she tips over to one side, for the most part she's sitting and balancing all by herself. She has started playing with toys now more as well. From books and toys that make noise when she squeezes them to the laptop she's playing with in the pictures, she definitely got more interactive with things this week.

She is also getting closer to being mobile. When we place her on her stomach now she actually lifts herself up with her arms almost like she's doing a push-up. She is now rolling over quite a lot if we lay her down and if we hold her standing up, she even has started taking steps! She's a ways off from walking on her own but she's definitely heading in that direction. Looks like we're going to have to start baby proofing the house within the next couple of weeks!

As for eating, Caitlin definitely does not like the baby food. Any time she sees the orange vegetables she'll start gagging and has even spit up once before even eating any of them. We've been able to get her to eat her rice cereal only when we place the bowl of it next to our food so she thinks she's eating what we're eating! Today we took Caitlin to see Nana Bev and Grampa Bob for lunch. We had a nice visit and we were able to get Caitlin to eat at the table because she thought she was eating what we were eating. :)

This week should go pretty fast. We are supposed to close on our house tomorrow but the bank seems to be dragging their feet so I'm not sure if it'll actually happen tomorrow or not. Hopefully by the end of the week it'll be done though. Hope everyone has a great week!

Super Bowl here we come!!!

Okay, so maybe we're not making the trip to the Super Bowl but it's the next best thing! The Steelers beat the Ravens last night to advance to Super Bowl 43! I think I'm a lot more excited than Caitlin is at this point but I think she'll enjoy some bonding time watching the Super Bowl with her daddy in 2 weeks!

In non-football news, last week saw yet another change for me - my schedule has changed again to the early shift of 7:30-4:30. It seems okay. I had really gotten used to the late shift so it's taking some getting used to. Today I was off for the holiday and spent the day with Caitlin. She gave me a couple of exploding diapers but other than that, we had fun. Yesterday we went to lunch for Grampa Joseph's birthday. I think Caitlin enjoyed getting out and we all had a nice time.

Caitlin continues to try to use her hands more and more every day. She's started grabbing at things and trying to put them in her mouth. She gets very excited when Toni calls Grampa Andres and puts him on speaker phone. She's fascinated by our cell phones and when he starts talking, she starts smiling and laughing and usually tries to bite the phone. :)

The only other development was at day care. They told us that Caitlin is doing extremely well and they are extremely impressed with her development. They've told us that as soon as Caitlin is crawling, we can move her in with the toddlers if we'd like. It would be a couple of months earlier than normal but they said she is pretty advanced in her development so the option is there. I think she'll probably start crawling pretty soon. She is rolling over and propping herself up when she's on her stomach so she's definitely getting stronger. She now really enjoys being in her exerciser toy where she can stand and turn 360 degrees to play with different stations. She definitely has more control over her balance than she did even a couple of weeks ago.

Well, I'm gonna keep it short today. Hope everyone has a good week! We should be closing on our refinance this week so it should be a pretty quick week!

6 months old!

Today Caitlin turned 6 months old and like so many other monthly milestones for her, she got to spend her special day visiting the Doctor. Needless to say, she didn't like the appointment. They had to give her 4 shots so it wasn't much fun for her. Everything at the appointment went well though. She is now off the Prevacid for her acid reflux and her ear infection has cleared up. She's also grown quite a bit. Here's how her growth has stacked up after 6 months:

8lbs, 11oz at birth. Today - 17lbs, 15oz!
20.5 inches tall at birth. Today - 27.5 inches tall!

We also got the go ahead to start her on baby food. We get to start with orange colored foods like squash, carrots, and sweet potato. Then move on to green colors like peas and green beans. She also can have oatmeal instead of her rice cereal so hopefully she'll enjoy the variety more. :)

After the doctor we took her to have lunch with friends from my old job. We had a good time and for the first time, Caitlin got to sit in a restaurant high chair and eat with everyone. (usually we leave her in her carrier and she would sleep or cause such a commotion that we'd have to take her outside). I stayed home the rest of the day with her and she kept me busy most of the day. Back to work tomorrow! Hope everyone is having a great week!

Grabbing our attention

This week Caitlin started taking a definite interest in her surroundings. For the first time, she consistently started grabbing at things. It started the other night while I was drinking a glass of water. Caitlin seemed captivated by the glass and started trying to grab it with both hands. Ever since then, she's been trying to hold everything from our cell phones to our clothing. Toni was carrying her and went to get me some medicine from the bathroom and when she came back out, Caitlin was holding the box! She has also started reaching out to let us know that she wants us to pick her up. It's so cool to see her face light up when she sees something new and she tries to interact with it.

This week was pretty uneventfull otherwise. This weekend I was sick so we just stayed in and I watched football and slept. In the picture above, Caitlin is rooting on the Steelers with me holding her Terrible Towel. (It's a towel that Steeler fans wave at the games). We spent this afternoon watching the Steelers beat the Chargers 35-24 to move on to the AFC Championship game. If they win that, they're going to the Super Bowl! :)

This week should be fairly busy for us. I'm off Tuesday to take Caitlin to the Doctor for her 6 month checkup. I'm taking the whole day off and am going to have lunch with friends from my old job. We may also have to go sign some paperwork for the refinance of our house. Wachovia has an employee mortgage program where I was able to get a 4.5% loan with no points! The loan will save us a couple hundred bucks a month so I'm excited to get everything signed as quickly as possible. If we don't get it done this week, it will definitely be done the following. On the job front, I've applied for another job with the school district that I think I have a pretty good chance of getting. Hopefully I'll hear something soon and get an interview. It sounds like a great job doing things I really enjoy and the schedule is great with a lot of time off. Speaking of schedules, this week I will be starting my new schedule of 8:30-5:30. It should be alright. Even though it's during rush hour, it should only increase my drive time to around 20 minutes.. I'll try to post on Tuesday after Caitlin's appointment to let everyone know how she makes out. Hope everyone has a great week!

The year in review

Happy New Year everyone! We hope everyone arrived in 2009 happy and safe. Our New Year’s Eve was pretty boring. I worked until 7 and we were in bed by 10:30. While Caitlin slept through her first New Year’s celebration we were kept up by our loud, drunk neighbors up and down our street who insisted on setting off fireworks in the street while drinking and yelling profanity laced seasons greetings to their friends. Thankfully by 12:30 they had pretty much cleared out and we were able to sleep. As we start the new year, I’m going to dedicate this post to looking back over a year that I can only describe with 1 word – tumultuous.

2008 saw more changes than either of us expected at the beginning. Of course, we knew 2008 would be a year of change for us with Caitlin coming but we had no idea how many other changes were waiting along the way. At the start of the year, you may recall that I was working on getting my weight under control and being healthy. 2 years ago I was weighing in at 223.8 , last year on January 1st, I weighed in at 197.8. Today – 187.8. J I’m a little upset that I’ve actually gained 4 pounds since Caitlin was born but given all that has changed and learning how to be parents, I’m not too upset. This year I intend to find time to continue what I’ve been doing and reach my overall goal of 178.8 (50 pounds lost since my highest weight of 228.8).

The first quarter of the year was exciting in both good and bad ways. Toni started dealing with diabetes brought on by the pregnancy and was then taken off the medication until the end of the pregnancy by controlling it through diet. Our early appointments ranged from diabetes training, warnings about down syndrome and birth defects to the incredible moment when on February 29th, we saw Caitlin through a sonogram for the first time and it was confirmed that we were having a girl. We had already picked out her name even before we found out Toni was pregnant so it worked out well. We hadn’t even thought about boys names. If I had to pick out one day from the first 3 months of the year that will stay with me forever, the day of the sonogram would be it.

The second quarter seemed to drag at points. It seemed at times that the pregnancy was going to last forever! In April, I finished work on the nursery. It came out exactly like we wanted and it was a good multi-weekend project that took up pretty much the entire month. We also started shopping for baby stuff in April with our biggest purchase being Caitlin’s crib. In May, we hit a bump in the road when I lost my job but the thing I will remember most about April, May and June was the incredible baby showers given to us from my good friend Karen in San Antonio and by Toni’s family in Brownsville. What I will also remember about this time was that Toni really started showing. She had what I can only describe as a glow to her and as “The belly” continued to grow, I remember how beautiful I thought she looked being pregnant. June was filled with Doctor appointments and change. Our induction date was changed and we got to go on a 9 hour class to prepare us for the coming delivery. A class by the way that if you are a first timer I highly recommend if your hospital offers it. As Toni continued to get bigger, the diabetes was no longer controllable by diet alone and she was put back on insulin at the very end. Twice a day we gave her shots at a very low dosage but with the end in sight, Toni pushed through it like a champ!

The third quarter of the year was dominated by Caitlin’s arrival. Just days before Caitlin’s birth in July, I was offered a new job with Wachovia. The first 10 days of July were spent at the doctor doing stress tests to make sure Caitlin’s heart sounded good and measuring the rate of contractions that Toni had started having. We also lost our Doctor who left the practice in early July to move out of state. Despite changes with a new Doctor and the induction date, we finally arrived at the hospital on July 13th at 6:00AM for the induction. It is definitely a day I will never forget. It was without a doubt the most stressful day of my entire life but so worth it. It was nowhere near what either of us expected either. We were both expecting the emotional moments you see in the movies and it wasn’t like that at all. Toni wasn’t cursing in multiple languages at me during the delivery and seeing Caitlin for the first time wasn’t the emotional rush we were expecting. We both expected to be crying and emotional but it actually turned out to feel surreal. It was almost like watching everything as it happened through someone else’s eyes. I was more relieved that everything had turned out well and in awe of the entire situation. I think we were both speechless. All of the tests turned out great and Caitlin and Toni were released from the hospital and went home to relax. Our early days were spent getting little sleep, trying to recover, going to doctors appointments and lactation departments and trying to figure out what we were doing. I will forever remember the feelings of helplessness and being clueless as to what to do. Feeding and changing diapers dominated much of our time. I remember having my shirts covered in poop, pee and/or spit up on more than one occasion. Exploding diapers and spit up were daily occurrences in the Vargas household. Toni spent much of the 3rd part of the year on maternity leave and 2 weeks after Caitlin was born, I started my new job.

The end of the year seemed to go faster than the rest of the year. Watching Caitlin grow has been amazing. Caitlin got to go to a pumpkin patch for Halloween, Brownsville for Thanksgiving and to see Santa for the first time for Christmas. I think she’ll enjoy these things more next year when she’s older but watching her sit on Santa’s lap and refuse to let go of his real beard was priceless.

2009 promises to be another exciting year. I’ve got a couple of promising leads with other companies that I think may work out. Either way, I’ll find something. It’s only a job. As always, I’ll continue to update the blog as often as I can. As much as this has been a great way to keep in touch with people, it’s also been a great tool for chronicling our life. I continually backup the site so that someday when Caitlin is older she can look back and see what she and her family were like. I hope everyone has a safe, happy and healthy new year!