HIP HIP Hooray! (Or maybe not...)

About a year ago Brad started to have pain in his hips. Although both hips were giving him some problems, the left one was significantly worse. Becoming a manager for Wal-Mart and being on his feet for 12 hours a day (on concrete floors) only made things worse. A few months ago he decided enough was enough and finally agreed to go to the doctor. We started at the family doctor who quickly sent us to an orthopedic. The orthopedic then sent him to a hip and knee specialist. One x-ray by this doctor was all it took for him to have an idea of exactly what was going on. Brad has what's called impingement. Basically his hip "ball and socket" are causing a pinching. Both areas had bone growth making them grind together instead of rotating smoothly. The options were pretty simple: either surgery to try and correct this or put it off and need a hip replacement in 2-5 years. We opted for surgery!

Brad went in Friday, November 6 for this surgery. It was our 5 year anniversary....and we spent it in the hospital. (Hippy Anniversary!!...ok, that's the last hip joke I have). We had to be at the hospital at 5:30 am. We waited until we were ready to walk out the door to get Haylee up and put her straight in her carseat. She went right back to sleep until we got to the hospital. When we arrived, however, she woke up and was her bright and cheery self. Here she is at 5:30 am wishing Daddy good luck.

Anyway, surgery went well and Brad did great! The doctor said he also had the beginning of arthritis in that hip, caused by the impingement. He is home now recovering and will be on crutches for at least a week or 2. He's on leave from work for 6 weeks and will hopefully be more mobile soon so he can enjoy the vacation! Haylee did absolutely wonderful the ENTIRE time we were at the hospital...and we were there ALLLLLLL day. I was so proud of her! Everyone at the hospital had fun with her. She smiles at everyone and she's started to wave too which makes everyone smile. We love our little girl! :) I'm so proud of Brad also and wishing him a speedy recovery!!

Trick or Treat

On Saturday we put Haylee in her costume and took her over to see both sets of grandparents. She did great and didn't mess with her hat at all!

At my parents house she helped herself to several dum dums. I stopped by the basket and told her to take one (joking of course) but sure enough she grabbed about 6 for her trick or treat bucket. I should have known since she ALREADY shares her daddy's love of suckers! After visiting for a bit, we headed over to see Brad's parents. We decided to walk around with cousin Jackson and let Haylee trick or treat a little bit too. She had a BLAST!!!
I think the highlight of her evening was when her Papa Dave gave her a sucker. We had to pry it from her hand when mean 'ol mom decided that was probably enough sugar since her tummy's still so "young". Here she is sucking away.
She also enjoyed taking a ride on Daddy's shoulders.
We all had a great night! Having a child puts so much fun back in the holidays that I really didn't know was missing before until now. I was more excited this Halloween than I have been in a while and I can't wait to see so much more through Haylee's eyes!!

Haylee's 6 Month Pictures

6 Months Old!!

One of the things you get tired of people telling you when you have a baby is how fast they grow up! I don't mean that in a bad way at all, it's just something you hear from almost everyone. I now know why...it's so true!! Our precious miracle is 6 months old already and so much fun!! She is the happiest baby and smiles all the time. She loves to sit and play with her toys, look at her books, and interact with other people. We had her 6 month doctor's appointment yesterday and she's definitely getting big! She weighs 22 lbs 8 oz and is 28 1/4" long. We are actually supposed to try and cut back her formula a little bit to stay on top of her weight. It's easier to do now that she enjoys eating "regular" food so much. She LOVES her veggies (esp. green beans, sweet potatoes, peas, and squash). Surprisingly, she's not too fond of fruit right now. She will eat some bananas but the rest of them she could pass on. I'm sure that will change over time.

We took her to the Fall Festival at our church this past Sunday and got some pictures at the pumpkin patch. She is obviously too young to really enjoy those events yet but she had a good time playing with the pumpkins and looking at the petting zoo animals. Here's some pictures we took.

My Dearest WW

Dear Weight Watchers, I cannot begin to express how sorry I am for cheating on you. I was purposely unfaithful to you for an entire week. I thought that it would be worth it, but it wasn't! I know now that I need you in my life. I'm not the same without you! Please forgive me and take me back. I promise to stay true to you from now on.

Love,
Cindy

Big Girl

Haylee is growing...growing...growing! My 4 1/2 month old is in 9 month clothes. I'm not sure who decides what is appropriate size/age matches though. It seems like they NEVER correspond with any child!! She is in the "greater than 97th percentile" group in both height and weight so I guess it's only expected. She turns herself in her crib while she's sleeping. We dress her in "warm" pajamas each night so that we don't have to worry about a blanket since she moves so much. The only problem now is that when she turns 180 degrees she gets stuck because she is head to toe sideways in the crib. Every once in a while we'll hear "uhhh.....uhhh...." in the middle of the night. It actually makes us laugh because we know she's stuck and just needs to be turned. She always goes right back to sleep. Haylee has always been a GREAT sleeper (just like her parents)! We lay her down like this:

And find her like this:
She's starting to show a real interest in table food. Since we started rice cereal, she usually eats about 5 bites before becoming very uninterested in the rest. However, yesterday she ate the entire bowl! Today when I put her in her chair and put the bib on she got a big smile and opened her mouth wide. I'm not sure what changed but she likes it now. We were eating lunch with Brad's parents the other day and she reached her hand in Papa Dave's chip bag. Brad's a big tootsie roll pop addict (like we buy them at Sam's kind of addict!!) and Haylee would really like to have one of her own.

Now if she could only figure out how to get the wrapper off....

4 months

Haylee is 4 months old today! We went to the doctor this morning and she weighs 18 lbs 13 oz already and is 26 1/2 " long. She's definitely a healthy and growing baby! Last week we took her to the zoo and she really enjoyed looking around at everything.

She even knew the difference between the monkeys and the zebras and actually said "elephant". Ok so I'm kidding, but she definitely took in all the new sights. While we were in Houston we went to the zoo there, but she was much younger and successfully slept the entire time.

We gave her rice cereal for the first time yesterday just to see how she would react. I don't think she really knew what to do with it, but she had fun trying something new! I smelled it and it definitely doesn't smell tasty! She got a weird look on her face during each bite (almost like the bitter beer face), but she smiled after each swallow as well. She's probably thinking "geez mom...can't we just start with bananas instead of this sandy stuff??".
Oh yeah, we were having problems with our computer and a friend was working on it for about a week. I don't have an excuse for not blogging the other week. Therefore I only take half responsibility so it's no big deal, right?!? :)