A little catch up...

Oh, it's fun to be one! Charlotte Rose turned one year old on December 22, 2007. Her first year was thrilling, lovely, exhausting, joyful, chaotic, confusing, overwhelming. Nothing grows you up like having a baby. Adam & I have been talking lately about how we don't even feel like the same people that we were 13 months ago...going into parenthood. I LOVE being a mommy - it's so rewarding...and so challenging...

My mom came and spent three weeks with us after Charlotte was born. When she left, it hit us - we're down here, in south georgia, just Adam & I, alone with a baby - are we going to make it?

It's hard not having family right around the corner, I know for them and for us. So I started typing up a weekly "dose" of Charlotte Rose, with pictures and news from the week before. It became almost a journal entry for me. So, I've decided to keep it up, just instead of doing it once a week in an email format. I'll type little notes here and there when I have the time. Friends & Family - ya'll just check in when you feel like you need a dose of Charlotte Rose.

So I'll start with hitting the major events, to sort of re-cap and get ya'll caught up:

We had a rough go of it for a while. Right after we got moved into our new place here in historic Savannah Charlotte came down Roseola. She had, what we thought, was an upper-respiratory infection, then she had a really high fever and then she broke out in a rash all over her body. It was terrible. And then I made the first-time novice mom mistake and just 5 days after she was considered "recovered" by her pedi I hauled her to softplay at the mall, one of her little friend's going away party. Softplay, otherwise known as a germ cesspool. Her immunity was down!!! She had been fighting Roseola and then I take her to a germ cesspool! So, the following day she started throwing up. Within 8 hours she had thrown up 20 times. I had been talking to on-call Nurse 1 - at 1am it had been 8 hours since her last wet diaper and she was crying, but no tears where streaming. So, they told us to take her into the ER. We rushed to the car and to the hospital.

I've endured a lot in my life. Nothing has been as bad as having to stand by while your baby suffers. She had to be catherized, they drew blood and started an IV. I had to help hold her down. It was heart-wrenching...Adam was crying in the corner...And then I couldn't nurse her, all she wanted was her mommy and I couldn't even give her that. She took her first bottle that night. After several hours of not vomitting, they gave her a little bottle of pedialite...and she took it. I was telling everyone, 'look, her first bottle, she's drinking it!' One nurse looked at me, wide eyed, and said, 'what? she doesn't have any teeth yet?' Oh yes, she has 9, one's a mollar...am I a saint, or what?

It was hard. Luckily, Noni & Popi arrived first thing...and Noni said she'd stay and help for several days. Bless her heart, now she is a saint...

Adam was wonderful, a trouper, there for his girls, and his dogs. Amazingly, he didn't get sick. I did, pretty early on, while we were still in the hospital. Our second night there, Noni laid down with Charlotte and Adam took me down to the ER. It's part of nursing, I guess, I got dehydrated and had to get fluids. Having a sick baby, and moving is hard, my parents had been on me about not eating enough, Adam had been on me about not taking enough time for myself. When they weighed me at the hospital, I was a good 20lbs under my pre-pregnancy weight. Whew, wake up call. Not to worry, Lisa came for Christmas with our traditional Christmas cookies...I put 10 pounds back on in no time...

Charlotte was released and we got to go home and her spirits lifted almost immediately> It still took her a while to get over her virus, her pedi said to go ahead with her party...

Okay...we've moved, we've been sick...we've got guests coming into town for Charlotte's birthday AND we've got Christmas right around the corner. I thought my head was going to explode with everything that needed to be done.

I'll save the Birthday Party for the next post...