Life with Bug, Bean and the Boy

So it has been a while since we have updated and just thought it was about time. Amelia turned a year old on the 10th of December and we celebrated with a small party and a small cake for her. She loves cake....our little lady did not hesitate in tearing into the cake, frosting and all. I have to admit i was a little unsure of giving so much sugar and such to our little girl so i decided to make her cake with pumpkin and leave out the oil and eggs she did not seem to notice.
Amelia's birthday brought about another big milestone for her and really for me. About a week after her birthday she enjoyed her last nursing session. I really wanted to breastfeed for a full year and was willing to follow her lead after a year. Amelia decided a year was enough and just didn't seem interested the last few days so i took her cues and she is now on whole milk from a sippy cup. I thought i would be relieved especially now that i am 51/2 months pregnant and i am in some ways but as Amelia has become more active and curious, nursing was one of the few times during the day that she sat still enough to cuddle. I guess this is just the first of many times to come that she is telling me to I have to let go... just a little. Weening her does actually give me a few months of "freedom" of which i am sure i will be grateful.
She is pulling up on everything and cruising like crazy and i am sure walking is just around the corner. She is truly a joy and has quite a personality that is alot like her mothers... good and bad. Amelia is over being fed by us and really loves to feed herself so we have moved to steamed veggies and pasta and she even shared a piece of tofu meatloaf with me at whole foods a few days ago. She is pretty good with a spoon but will use her fingers when she is really hungry. Her one year check up with Dr. Warner was great and he was impressed with her health record and pleased with her development. What more could a mother ask for.
Baby number 2 or "bean" as we refer to the new baby is also doing great. I have been feeling great in the last few weeks going to prenatal yoga and a prenatal water class... oh and keeping up with a very active 1year old. I had my first ultra sound the day before Christmas Eve and everything looks great...it looks like I am right on track for a due day of May 7th although my midwife seems to think i may go a little early as i did with Amelia...we will see. As far as the sex of the baby goes....we are having...........a surprise, once again we chose not to find out the sex of the baby..after much debate and thought. Shawn thinks it is a boy and i am leaning towards girl...really just hoping to prove him wrong.
We had a very blessed but busy Christmas travelling to see both our families. Santa and the grandparents were very good to Amelia and we didn't do all that bad ourselves...i am not sure how much work around the house will get done now that we have a Wii but Shawn and I can work in shifts. Since we were in Ohio for Christmas Eve we were not able to attend out regular church for service. Instead my dearest and best friend ,Kelli ,invited us to her church with her family. Kelli sang a Cantata with the choir a\and I along with everyone in the Church could feel the beauty and the joy of Christ as they sang. It is small church and a choir of only maybe 25 people but their voices, joy and love could have filled a cathedral. I was truly moved and blessed to be a part of such a beautiful and heartfelt celebration. Thank you, Kelli and I love you.
We are looking forward to a happy New Year and all the changes, blessings and excitement it will bring.

p.s. We have lots of pictures we will post...it has taken me a long time to find a quiet moment and I was too lazy to find the camera...i promise pictures will follow soon.

So as some of you may know... Shawn and I love being parents so much we thought we would do it again! Much to our surprise and excitement we are expecting a brother/sister for Amelia in early May. So far this pregnancy has been much like my first which for me means alot of "morning sickness "or really I should say "all day sickness". I will be the first to say that it is totally worth it and a very small part of what I remember about being pregnant with Amelia. But I will also say that it is my least favorite part. I am happy to report that I am over that for the most part. I have also started to get much of my energy back- nursing and pregnant make for a tired mama. Shawn has been great and taken on even more than his fair share of work around the house including making time for me to get my much needed naptime. We really couldn't be happier. We may have a few concerns about time and space but in the end the idea of one more little, beautiful, happy, crazy, busy, loud, sticky, stubborn child couldn't sound more perfect. Please pray for us.

p.s. You may have noticed that I have just discovered tickers. Thay are cute ,but for me serve another purpose. I am horrible at remembering dates and filling in calendars, I do not know why but it is almost impossible for me to keep track of days and even weeks. This way I have a cute visual reminder. Enjoy!

Well, it has been entirely too long without an update here. We have tons of stuff we keep meaning to post, but amazingly enough, time really gets away from you with a 10 month old in the house. So today I had a break in the action and thought I would quickly jot down some goodies and load up some pics. I absolutely can't believe we are so close to her first birthday, the growth and change and fun we have had with her so far is amazing!! Here we are on a hike at Natural Bridge- she LOVED it. She loves being outside in general.

As i have mentioned before i love research. Even before i got pregnant i would ask questions of friends and relatives about anything and everything to do with pregnancy and childbirth. I felt that if i had enough info making good decisions would be just that much easier. When i actually got pregnant i realized i had not even scratched the surface of what i needed/wanted to know because after i gave birth it struck me that the hospital expected us to take the baby home and become parents...forever.

So i, two weeks away from my due date, started reading parenting books and boy was i surprised at how much was out there. And i used to work at one of the biggest book stores in Lexington so imagine my surprise that i seemed to have missed the huge area titled "Parenting". I read expert after expert some made sense, some did not and some i did not even make it past the table of contents. We had already decided to breastfeed and use cloth diapers and a trusted friend recommended i read a book about Attachment Parenting. I do not remember the title but it was one of the books that i will admit that i did not read past the table of contents. It just seemed a little to much for me and a little too well "hippy". We kind of abandoned our search with a little frustration because nothing really struck a chord with us and we figured when the baby arrived we would revisit some of the books again.

In the meantime i went on a search for a good sort of baby book, like a how to or a manual that would sort of include the basics in care for the baby we were awaiting. I found one and also picked up a breastfeeding book. I was standing at the checkout when a former co worker and new mom mentioned that i should look as the Dr. Sears Baby Book. She was quick to mention that it had both the baby care basics and great breastfeeding info and that she had loved it and still used it. So i bought it and read it and Shawn read it as well. Amelia came a week early and away we were on our journey as parents.

After bringing Amelia home a strange thing started to happen. She was a great eater from the beginning and i wanted to make sure i had the supply to keep up with her. So i drank lots of water and rested and checked the Dr. Sears book to maybe get a few more pointers. It suggested napping close to baby. It made sense to me so i tried it and my supply seemed great. Amelia was a little fussy in the beginning after Shawn went back to work i tried a few things to soothe her, a few suggested by other moms and a few suggested by other books and none meet with great success. My goal was to be able to maybe make myself a sandwich or read a book without the baby getting fussy...i kept think if only i had two more hands i could hold Amelia and do a few things around the house and so i went back to the Dr. Sears book for any advice. He recommended a baby sling or carrier. That made sense to me so i started using my little peanut shell sling and started "wearing" Amelia during her fussy times. She loved it and i felt a little more human.Then came the big one, one night maybe 3 weeks after she was born Amelia had a very fussy night and all she wanted to do was nurse and so after maybe trip number three to get her out of her bassinet we put her into our bed and all 3 of us slept like babies. The next night we put her into her bassinet and after her first feeding she was back in bed with us. We kept the bassinet in our room as sort of a way to ignore the fact the she was pretty much sharing a bed with us. We had adopted practices that worked for us at the time.

As i read further and further in the Dr. Sears book i came upon a section about Attachment Parenting and as i read i came to accept that we indeed had become "those" parents in many ways. Things that seemed so way off before we had our baby had now become almost second nature. And yet i was still hesitant to use that label. As with all labels i feel they are limiting and a little misleading. Do i still breastfeed and intend to for a least a year or more....yes. Do we share our bed with Amelia...yes. Do i wear her in a sling whenever possible on our outings...yes. Does that mean that now we must follow every little nuance and idea put forth under the Attachment Parenting guidelines.....NO. We will continue to do what we feel works best for Amelia and our family. I know that the way we do things may be a little different than some as well as very similar to others. I am very proud of the choices Shawn and I have made for our family even if it has taken a bit of time to "come out" about them. I fully respect the choices other parents make for their children and family i only ask for the same in return. As parents all we can really do is what we feel is best for our children. I pray daily and some days hourly for the courage and strength to be a good mother and these are simply the tools i feel God has given Shawn and i to do that.

I am not apologizing for the way we parent just like i would never expect any of our friends and family to apologize for the way they parent. I have seen parenting differences come between friends and family and i only hope that we can all find it in ourselves to be supportive and loving of each other.

A sampling of the many faces..or moods... of Amelia

Revelations

As I was driving to work yesterday, running through my mind all the worries and work I had on my plate and bouncing around on Shannon’s IPod, I had one of those moments of clarity that seem all too infrequent. I stumbled on the song You Are My King, this version by the Newsboys, and it hit me that I had driven nearly all the way from home to work and hadn’t seen anything outside of my own head. It was a beautiful spring day- one where the slight haze of the morning sky was even pretty as seen through the slew of McDonalds and gas station signs that so adorn the Hamburg Shopping Center here in LexVegas. But it WAS pretty, and I realized how amazing God was in what he has given me. I am struck all the time by how blessed I am with Shannon and Amelia, but it is like I shut down for work and fall into just getting it done. I can see how easily the rat race can consume someone- not by choice but just by a slow and steady encroachment on all the parts of your day. So I am trying to remind myself ongoing, even in the midst of work, what is truly eternal and important.

Forever

I had the coolest thought the other day while I was bouncing and playing and tickling and laughing with our little darling. I was telling her that I am her daddy, and that I am proud of her and she is smart and beautiful and funny. And then it came to me- a thousand years from now, no matter what I do or say, where she goes or what she becomes, I will always be her daddy. Whether anyone ever remembers our names or that we were ever here, it will not change that for time without end, I am her daddy. Period. I love that. When I get home tonite I am going to load up some pictures of my forever little girl.

More and More travels

The Kettenrings are back in town after a whirlwind few weeks. We spent a long weekend in Chicago for an industry trade show I had to attend. I found out on a Tuesday I had to go..we left Thursday. Amelia and Mommy got to see the Windy City and go to her first Art Museum. She loved it! Daddy left the camera behind, so no good pics there, but they had a good time. I then traveled to Montreal for 3 days to meet with my new boss and the team there. I have luckily been rolled into an existing team there that needs much help- doing exactly what I have been doing, even dealing with the same customers. I am very lucky, as the day before I left on my trip, 5 people were let go from the company in the Lexington office. And but for me and one other, the remaining folks are on short term contracts until the fall to renewed as needed. I am very lucky indeed.

So i have been back and forth about if and what to add to this blog. After many conversations with Shawn about things i wish i had known about being a new mom or wish i could share with other new moms or soon to be new moms i have decided to just kinda put it out there. I thought long and hard about what to say but more importantly how to say it. As as a new mom and/or a very pregnant soon to be new mom i constantly seemed to solicit advice everywhere i went and i do mean everywhere. I received advice from the usual suspects: my mom, my mother in law, my and Shawn's grandmothers, aunts, friends with kids and surprisingly friends with no kids and of course from the random stranger in line for the bathroom. It is not that i did not/do not appreciate the wise advice or the"its takes a village" mentality because i do...more so as a former History/Art History scholar i learn best from research and lots of it. I wanted and still want to gather the most info possible and then kinda go with what Shawn and i feel is right for our family.

I soon learned that while most people gave great advice that i still value highly, a few gave what i thought was advice and what they felt were directives. So while i want to add to the bank of knowledge which new moms or soon to be new moms gather i want it to be understood that this is what works for us right now...it may not work for us later and it may never work for anyone else ever and that is okay. I say this because the other strange thing that surprised me was that for some people if you do not do things exactly as they do/did you are telling them they are horribly wrong. That simply is not how i think, i think that everyone has a unique view and/or experience and that makes us all better people and better communities. All that said i will be adding info from time to time that i would like to title "In my/our experience" and it is exactly that, just one more perspective of the fun, exciting and sometimes scary world of being a new mom .....so here are a few to start the ball rolling.

In My Experience
The most important thing thing that i have learned is this....
i am the mom...i need to trust my instincts ...i have them for a reason and i refuse to apologize for them.

Try using a wipes warmer.. i thought they were a little silly at first but... middle of the night diaper changes seem to go better when i do not put a COLD wet wipe on a sleeping or half asleep babies butt. and if your are using cloth diapers and wipes having a wipes warmer has saved us time and water since we do not have to go the sink every time we want to wet a wipe.


We love love the Bum Genius pocket diapers...they are easy to use, easy to wash, dry more quickly than other diapers we have tried and can be stuffed with extra inserts for overnight or heavy wetters....Amelia has yet to "blow out" of one. They also grow with baby but we have yet to use the "bigger snaps"

I also love baby slings..another one of the things i was not sure of at first. I have a Hotsling and used it almost everyday the first two months...Amelia loved to be held super close and with this sling she was always near me but i could go and make myself a sandwich without sending her into a fit.. she would be asleep a few minutes after i put her in the sling no matter how fussy she was at the time..as she is now about 14 lbs and loves to look around i have taken to using a wrap sling which holds her more upright and distributes her weight over two shoulders and across my hips. I use a wrap like a Moby wrap...but i made it myself. This site was a great help and offered links to even more info about different ways to carry your baby "http://www.thebabywearer.com/"

If you breastfeed and store extra milk we have found that the bags work really well when freezing milk. They seem to thaw a little quicker and fit better into mugs of hot water when we are out at restaurants.

That is it for now...Amelia is ready for her midnight snack...feel free to ask any questions ...i am an open book...

Two posts in one day- crazy, huh? You'd think we're actually on top of things at this rate! (Don't check out our Kettenrings on the Web site or you will lose the grand illusion...) I had some down time after work, so thought I would put up some pics of our little lady in her own little chair. We got her one of the Bumpo seats the other day and she loves it! Except in the one photo, where she looks like she's about to throw a left hook if we don't put the camera down...

With the "gigantic" winter storm that only graced us with 4 inches or so at home (curse you Louisville and your foot of snow...) we still thought we would take miss Amelia for her first snow outing.

Here she is expressing her great pleasure at being bundled up..

Followed by acceptance of her fate:

And after gathering cameras, hats, glasses, gloves and a very expensive custom made extreme sports sled.....she was asleep before we were out the door!

Action shot- note the way the extreme sports sled hugs the hill with highly engineered perfection through even the most speedy of passes...
Finally, me and my girls!

Nothing too new and exciting to post today, but I thought I would load up some of the latest pics of our little bundle. We have more pictures after 2 months with her than we do after 2 years of being married- awesome!! And for all you family and friends who are keeping tabs on the Kettenring's on The Web page, I promise I will have new galleries and info up soon...really...I swear....


you are my sunshine....my only sunshine....



ready to hit the road!

Play time...see you all soon!!

If anyone happened to be reading our posts, I figured we should post an update. Our house didn't blow up- it just turns out the previous residents never put a filter in the furnace, so God knows how many years of dust and ick had built up on the blower motor. What we smelled was it about to smolder, or burn out the motor. Luckily we had turned everything down and saved the motor from burning out. A quick filter and all is set. No pics to add, as I am posting from Ohio- we dropped Shannon and Amelia at her parents as I was in Montreal the last 3 days meeting with the new team of folks who bought our company. Good meeting, good folks- it is a REAL business, so it is nice to be in a real professional environment again.
On the baby front, she has been a smiling, cooing, holding her head up beauty for the last several weeks. Her 2 month shots went better than expected, I had to look her in the eye while someone hurt her, which broke me inside, but then after about 3 minutes she dozed off and slept all day. She is a good kid- we ask a lot of her with our hectic schedules and constantly having to travel and be out and about. She handles it all better than we deserve. She is amazing....

I'm sure there will be much much more to post soon, but for now that is it.

It is 11:30 on a Thursday nite- do you know where the Kettenrings are? You would hope we are snug at home settling down for the night- you would be wrong, but you can still hope. Nope, here we sit at a hotel out at Hamburg for the night. Why you may ask? Because the Kettenring curse has struck again. It seems just when we are recovering from one annoyance/pain/emergency/money pit, another strikes.
Around 7 PM this evening our furnace began emitting a wonderful burning/smoking smell. I said to my self, self...that ain't right. It was severe enough that it woke up Shannon, who had been dealing with a major headache and nausea all day, from a deep sleep. We made some calls to the rents, and to my uncle who is a plumber and used to work in HVAC and we were advised the furnace may be busted and may be filling our house with carbon monoxide- perhaps the reason for her sudden blinding headache and nausea?. Awesome. So we grab up the baby and our gear and head out on a little family adventure. After everything we have dealt with lately, we are actually laughing about this and I think we have finally just given up trying to figure it all out. I will recap more later, but here's a little look back at the last 9 months or so for us (the birth of our beautiful baby trumps all this pain, but I just feel the need to share the sheer lunacy of all that has happened)
May- my truck needs new brakes. $400
June- the Rodeo we have had less than a year dies on Shannon in the pouring rain on New Circle Road. No one stops to help the pregnant lady in the downpour. New alternator-$400
August- the Rodeo's glitchs continue, we begin looking at getting a new ride.
September- we trade it on on our Durango which, knock on wood, to this point has been great.
October- my truck's clutch goes out. A full repair would be $1500. We can get by with fixing the cylinders only for now- $450
January 15th or so- right outside my office, my truck throws a rod, blows the engine and leaks oil all over the road. After 8 years, 209,000 miles and a lot of fun, she has died.
One week later-it is announced my company has been bought..job security is scary, but seems hopeful still. (ask me on Monday for sure)
One week after that- our house blows up.
I am sure there is more, but for now...you see what I mean

Captain Obvious speaks great wisdom- Alot can change in a very short time. It seems not too long ago that anything going on at 3:30 AM would involve several adult beverages, some rowdy friends and several embarrasing stories. Fast forward a few years and I'll paint you a picture of 3:30 AM (now) for new parents- take one beautiful, wide awake 7 week old, add two backs tired from walking laps around the house for 45 minutes, add in a dose of resignation to no sleep, a bag of Baked Ruffles , some toast with jam and Lego Star Wars II (mommy's favorite video game), and here we sit.

So maybe that is an atypical 3:30 am for all new parents, but it is working for us. It is hard to believe our little peanut has already been with us for 7 weeks- it feels like we have known her forever, and it also feels like we just got home from the hospital. I wish I had been better about posting some notes in that time as it has been a great adventure already. When I am more coherent, perhaps I will add in some retrospective ponderings. For now, I will commit to more frequent posts- for my own record of what this has been. We are loving it..we are worn out..but we are loving it. For now- enjoy a pic or two of little Miss Amelia engrossed with some video gameage (Daddy is very proud- Lego, Star Wars and video games..she's off to a great start!)