What happened to the blogger!?!?

.... well, she became a mommy, fell madly in loooove with her little munchkin (and her little family), realized she only had a few fleeting nice weather days left to do all the fun outside things with a baby, spent a couple of days in the hospital, did more fun things, dealt with a computer hard drive crash (and being the smartest girl in town, hadn't backed up in 5 years sooo much time was spent trying to find the last five years of her life on the internet), spent a couple of days in the hospital with the hubby ... and here we are.  It's November 9th -- and too cold to go play outside, so it's time to catch up the blog! Thanks to my tedious work late into the nights the last couple weeks, I have been able to recover (well ok, re-transfer, they were luckily still in my camera!) all of the pictures of the babe and have re-sorted them by dates, so I think I can catch the blog up on alll of the fun things we've been up to! (Spoiler alert: this post maaay get lengthy!)

Brady was <gulp> 3 months old yesterday!!

Nov. 8 -- Brady, 3 months old!!

Can't believe it! I was just telling Scott the other day, half of me can NOT believe he's already a quarter of a year old, but the other half of me feels like he's been here forever! :)

I also can't believe how much we've done with Brady in the last 3 months!  I was just talking to a friend the other day about having kids and I said "well we knew we wanted to have a baby in the summer" and she interrupted and was like "wait, why?"  Now, let me just clarify, I in no way wanted to do that because I think it's "better" than having a kid at any other time or that my way is the "right" way but only because hello! This is Chicago and I wanted to have a couple of days to enjoy with my baby walking outside and going places before the looooong winter arrived.  In a perfect world, I would have liked to have the baby at the very end of May/beginning of June so that we could really take advantage and enjoy the "summer" buuuuut to do that I would have had to conceive him in Sept. (biology lesson!) and as I was in Miami with my two besties last September (um, girls can you believe it's been over a year since we were wizards!? Let's go back! ;)) and not my husband, that just wasn't going to work! Actually, for those who care and who may be planning in the future, I actually think August is the saddest month to have a baby because you get to spend the least amount of time with your child before they have to go to school -- I'm secretly hoping that in the next couple of years the school systems change the cut off date to August 1st so that I HAVE to keep Brady back a year and get to spend extra lovey time with my baby!

Anywhooooo, we left off at the end of September.  Brady had gone to his 1st Cubs game, had started to hold his head up all by himself (!!), and I had mastitis, again. But I would not let another infection slow me down (probably one of the reasons I couldn't seem to just get healthy, but I had trouble sacrificing my precious time with my baby for boring rest time, didn't I do enough of that this summer!?)! So we pressed on ...

First up -- October! What a month! We started it out awesomely!! Brady got to meet his Great Grandpa and Great Grandma Urbin for the 1st time!

Yea, he wasn't so happy to wake up and take pictures ... and he was desperately hungry poor kid!  Great Grandma, who is super sweet, but getting super old ;), asked if he was a boy or girl and when I said boy, she told me, "It's a boy?! But he's soo pretty!"  Haha, can't blame her, he is! And in her defense, she turned to me about an hour later during lunch and thanked me for the beautiful announcement that was hanging in her room! (See, she knew he was a boy hehe)

After lunch with the fam, we decided to take advantage of a nice fall day (and a free zoo pass from the library!) and headed over to Brookfield Zoo for Brady's 1st visit to the zoo!! :)

Seriously, how big does he look?! Not even 2 months yet!

 Though Brady has some difficulty staying awake for the whole trip, specifically during the awesome Great Bear Wilderness ...

...he did enjoy the giraffes! One of mommy's favorite zoo dwellers (and Brookfield has an amazing amount of giraffes! It's like being on a safari ... giraffes are in safaris, right?)

He was definitely looking at them! Good animals to see again on our next zoo trip! And just for fun, here's my favorite pic, clearly not Brady's, of mommy and Brady just hanging out in the joey pouch!

Ohhh yeaaaa ... good day at the zoo!!  The next day, we hit up one of Mommy's favorite fall fests --- Long Grove Apple Fest!! Apple cider donuts, hot apple cider, brown bag apple pies ... yum yum yum!! And it was a *beautiful* day!

Brady just chillaxin in his stroller waiting for Apples!

And then we randomly found the Wizard of Oz characters -- so we put Brady in the movie! ha!

It was also during this first weekend in October when Brady began playing with his toys a little more on his own! In his bouncer, he learned that if he hits his animals, they move! And he was thrilled with this discovery!

Sooo we were all having a grand ol' time ... we were enjoying our time as a family, Brady was discovering new things, I was still nursing exclusively with the 2 month mark days away .... and then, of course, drama.  I got super sick, ended up in the ER, and 8 hours later, ended up in the hospital with no discharge date in sight! For the record, I think if you are trying to keep a new mom from developing post partum depression, you can start with not taking said mom away from her baby for days! But that is what they did! For a couple of days, I stayed in the hospital while they ran tests, Scott stayed with me like a good hubby, and Brady got a crash course in sleeping at Gramma and Grampa's AND being formula fed! Yea, remember my earlier post about the guilt of not nursing and how I was secretly hoping for a "good" reason not to nurse that I had no control over so I wouldn't feel so guilty .. yea, well be careful what you wish for! Being unexpectedly and quickly thrown into the hospital leaves you no time to plan.  I had only a few breastmilk bags frozen in the freezer, not nearly enough to get Brady 5-6 bottles a day for the next 3 days sooo he quickly got switched to formula! Luckily, he did awesomely! Because then the doctors decided I had c-diff, a highly contagious bacterial infection of the colon that apparently I got from the mastitis antibiotics I had been taking.  Ironically, this is also treated with antibiotics and on these, I could not nurse Brady.  So they told me to "pump and dump" for the next 10 days as often as I would nurse. Ha. Yea right.  One doctor actually told me to set an alarm, in the hospital, and wake myself up in the middle of the night to pump.  And then throw it away.  So I'm away from my baby and I can't even get some sleep out of it! Soo not happening.  The *only* "upside to being kept away from your 2 month old is that you get some long stretches of sleep that don't end in someone screaming for you to help them!  And the stupid ER nurses had already left me to sit in the waiting room (and thus, away from my breast pump) for over 8 hours so I was already way off my breastfeeding schedule!  Long story short, I pumped a little (not pumping would cause my ducts to get clogged up basically promising me yet another case of mastitis), but once I was released from the hospital and feeling better, I wanted to make up for those days that I lost with Brady so we were out a lot and like I was going to stop at the pumpkin patch to find a place to pump! Excuse me, pump AND DUMP! I couldn't even keep the milk! Yea, so by the time I was off my antibiotics, Brady had little interest in breast milk and I had very little left to give him.  Flash forward to right now, I haven't pumped in a couple of weeks (I just cleaned my pump and packed it away the other night actually, tear.) and I'm pretty sure I'm out of milk ... BUT my boobs are back to a non-playboy model size and my shirts fit again! Whoohoo!  I do feel a little guilty, but after all the trouble breastfeeding caused this time around, I believe it's better for us all that I stopped.  I did do it almost exclusively (minus maybe 2 bottles) for a few days short of 2 months and that was longer than I originally thought I'd last so I'll chock it up as a success ... and work harder with the next one! :) It was either Brady got breast milk for a few more months or a healthy momma to hang out with ... and well, I think the right choice was made! :)

I got out of the hospital (after some begging and crying!) on Brady's two month birthday!! They tried to keep me and I was like "um, no" and apparently they "can't keep you against your wishes" so I was free! :) And Brady was *thrilled* to see Mommy!! He looked so much bigger, it was ridiculous what 2.5 days away does! 

Brady -- Oct. 8th -- 2 months old!! (Can you tell Mom was in the hospital and thus, Daddy and Gramma picked out his clothes? It pains me to see him in "random" unmatched pieces of clothing.)

Yay! Mommy's home!!

The weekend Mommy got home from the hospital was a simply amazingly gorgeous weekend weather wise -- and we couldn't go out and enjoy it because of the "recovery."  UGH! I was soo upset.  And then the universe listened and Scott got a couple of days off during the (still warm and sunny) week (ah, who needs a paycheck right?).  We started with a trip on up to the pumpkin patch! It was a beautiful, not at all fall (I could've used more sweatshirt weather), sunny day and the patch was nice and empty -- which left us tons of opportunity for pictures! Here's just a couple ...

Brady's 1st Pumpkin!!

Haha our "wee" one ...

He's SO big!

These make me laugh!

Brady was really into the pumpkin patch! (And by really into, I mean he was awake the whole time!) :) It was so fun to take him someplace that I remember going so often during my childhood! I'm sure if I search enough I can find pics of me by all of the same cutouts I took pics of Brady with! And he picked out (with a little help from Daddy) his very first pumpkin!

The next day, we continued the fun with a trip to the Shedd Aquarium with our cousins from California!! John and Tegan got to finally meet Brady and it may have been my favorite thing how much they loved him! Breaks my heart that they won't grow up together like me and their mommy did! But always good to spend some time together when we can! Brady was awake all of the time at the Shedd too and even spent time watching the fishies swim! Can't wait to take him back when he's old enough to really care! :)

John sharing his penguin friends with Brady!

Watching the fishies!

The fun didn't stop there!! We had a jammed back weekend to get through still! Brady got to attend his 1st wedding -- cousins Jene and Jason at the beautiful Starved Rock on a perfect fall Saturday!  He was only there on request of the bride, I wouldn't just bring my baby to a wedding haha.  The wedding was lovely and Brady was such an angel the whole time -- really quiet, not fussy, and mostly awake! We are so glad we brought him ... not just because it's so fun to dress him up either! ;)

And a bonus picture from the rest of the weekend, Brady hanging with his cousin Kyle!

Aren't they cuties! Well ... this takes us to mid October and Brady at 2.5 months!! See how quickly the days go by!? And it was time for Mom to start going back to work!  It was also time to start Music Class! We started going to the Boogin' Babies class at Musical Magic, this adorable little music and dance studio in Roscoe Village! It is seriously soo hard to find a music class that starts under 6 months and I was super happy to come across these! We sing songs and each song has a puppet or prop that goes along with it and Brady seems to be loving them! He giggles (yes, he giggles now!) and smiles along with the songs and is very interested in the other babies! I'm a major believer that you should start them nice and early with simple things like singing and being around other children ... and it provides some wonderful mommy/Brady bonding time! 

Just as we were getting into our routine and over our bad luck, it struck again! (I guess when you have a perfect baby, you can have good luck and good health too!)  My trusty little mac decided to have a fatal error taking all of my memories with it! We trucked down to the mac store and I prayed and my prayers were not answered.  Harddrive, for no good reason, decided it was done working.  I had all of my pictures from the last 10 years, over 2300 (mostly illegally downloaded) songs, and all of my documents from forever on the computer and now it was gone.  I cried and desperately called data recovery companies who nonchalantly quoted me $1000-$2000 fees for recovering my data.  Scott rubbed my back and said "You know we're not paying that right" and I shed a few more tears.  And then I wiped my eyes and moved on. Got a new hard drive, thanked facebook for storing a plethora of my pictures, dug out some old discs containing all my college papers and pictures, and started to rebuild my computer.  Luckily, a couple of years ago Scott decided we should just buy new memory cards when our current ones were full and keep the cards in our safe box so I had most of the last couple of years on camera cards.  Our wedding and honeymoon and professional pictures were all on discs.  After much searching and weeding through, it looks like I'm just going to loose most of 2008 (whatever wasn't on facebook anyways).  Which sadly, is a lot of pictures from when Maizy was a puppy! :( Not all of them of course, the best were on the internet, but for every picture published, I had 10 more taken. Sadness! You'd think the first thing I'd do is go out and buy an external harddrive (the one I have for work doesn't work on my mac! grrr) but I have yet to do that ... remember to hit me next time you see me! (I swear, its on the "must do" list this weekend!!) And thanks to the amazingly awesome app senuti, for a mere $20, I downloaded the program and it transferred ALL of my 2297 songs off of my iphone and back onto my computer! Take that apple and your copyright laws!!!  My computer is *almost* back to close to what it looked like!

Annnnd, just as I got over that fiasco, Scott decided to add a little drama of his own and landed himself in the hospital for 3 days (oh yea, pretty sure our medical bills are going to bury us this year!) :(.  He chose to go to Swedish Covenant and I'm telling you, if you get a choice, choose Northwestern.  While both ER's sucked, Northwestern still felt much more like a hotel, while Swedish (albeit he was in the old building) felt like county.  It was scary, not gonna lie. Brady and I set up camp by my parents for a few days because on Halloween (it's getting it's own post, it's coming I promise) I decided we should watch Scream 4, which of course means I'm seeing the Ghost Face everywhere now and staying alone in the condo would have led to many more sleepless nights.  And it worked out fine, because I spent most of the days with Scott at the hospital and only got home in time to give Brade his last bottle of the night and send him off to bed.  (Scott doesn't have his final test results yet but they think he caught c-diff from me and for the record, is home and feeling much better now!)  He got home just in time to celebrate Brady's 3 month birthday with us and we are hoping and praying the worst is behind us. (Praying hard because most nurses seem to agree that if we both had c-diff, it's only a matter of time before little Brademan gets it!)

Soooo as you can see, blogging got pushed to the background -- but here it is -- Brady's 3rd month! (Halloween recap is forthcoming, this was long enough!)  He currently loves to play in his Aquarium playmat, sleep in his big boy bed (all night!), grabs and holds his toys, smiles and giggles, and is getting stronger everyday.  It's so amazing to watch his development right in front of our your eyes!

Now if the Moran's could just stay healthy, we'd be in good shape! :P