Month 1

1 month

Today is officially one month since our second beautiful daughter was born.  After waiting so long to have another baby, and almost giving up that we'd ever have another, she's been such fun since we brought her home.  Going from this little, do nothing but eat, sleep and pooh baby, to a more wide awake baby with her own little personality emerging and somewhat of a regular schedule.  Her Dad and I aren't strict with a schedule so she'll probably adopt her own at some point that follows ours.  We can't wait to see how different she looks and acts at the end of month 2!

Happy 1 Month Birthday, Mikaela Frances! We love you!

How fair is this?

United States is the worst when it comes to family values in the work place

I saw this report on the news today and then went to www.abcnews.com to read the story.  Something is backwards in this country.  Why do we live in a country that doesn't support family values, yet that's all you hear about when presidents are standing at a podium trying to get our vote? In Sweden, they are paid 16 months of leave, with two of those months specifically set aside for fathers to take leave.  Shouldn't we too care that much about our employees to allow the same thing?  While I understand it might put certain companies under hardship and perhaps each individual case should be considered, for most women we work for years at a company, only to find out we only get 10 weeks of disability and/or 12 weeks of Family Leave ( this is the case in NJ ). Oh and if you work for a company that has less than 50 employees then you don't even qualify for NJFMLA.

Here's what I find ironic:  If I had been laid off from my job, I could stay home for two years collecting unemployment.  File once, get approved, start collecting, when it runs out I can file for an extension which will be approved and I could stay home another year, take care of my kids and not have to send my newborn to daycare of any kind, thus saving my family money, until she's 2 years old.  However, because I work full time I only get approved for 12 weeks of FMLA, have to return to work when my infant is less than three months old, taking her to daycare where she's exposed to germs she would not have been exposed to if she were home with me.  This means unplanned trips to doctors, and prescriptions for antibiotics and/or medicine of some kind, and a cost to healthcare.  Explain to me how someone who lazily chooses to keep collecting unemployment gets to stay home for two years and I have to return to work 12 weeks after having a new baby with no option for extension that is paid?

Saturday night dinner

www.facebook.com/Dannys-Pizza-Pizzazz

If you are looking for a good place to eat that is local to the Franklinville, Clayton, Malaga area, or out and about and feel like a drive to south Jersey, Danny's Pizza Pizzazz is a great place.  Their prices are good and their food even better.  Bob's favorite is the Sicilian, it's nice thick crust is just to his liking.  I tried a new kind of pizza this past Saturday night, the Pizzazz White which has fresh garlic, broccoli, spinach, tomatoes, ricotta and mozzarella cheese on it.  Yummy to say the least!

A New Look

Our puppy, Remy got a hair cut this weekend.  Poor guy had been a little neglected since Mikaela was born so Bob took him for a cut.  He was a mess.

Before

After

As you can see, he looks like an entirely different dog!  However, I think Bob has given in to the idea of clothing for a small dog, poor little guy was shivering like a leaf in the wind today.  

Baby weight

It was 3 weeks ago this past Tuesday that I gave birth to our second daughter, Mikaela.  I gained a lot more weight with her than I did with our oldest daughter and have been stressing over how I am going to lose it. Now I realize that last week when I tried to put on my prepregnancy jeans I was asking too much of myself and really should not have been disappointed when they didn't even go over my thighs .... -_- .... however, I stepped on the scale this morning for the first time since the doctors office and was pleasantly surprised to see it was 27 pounds less than I was 9 months pregnant.  Now before anyone gets their panties in a bunch, yes I realize that most of that was water retention along with all the other baby related weight, but still, 27 pounds sure made my day!

Suggestions

After recently having our second child after a 14 year hiatus, my husband jokingly suggested we  create a website chronicling our kids lives for our friends and family to visit.  The idea being that the people who don't get to see them as often as they and we would like, or who might want to see what our family is up to, can just go to the internet and click on a website to visit them virtually.  So for the last three weeks or so I've been wracking my brain about what kinds of things we could put up on the blog that would capture an audience without being too personal yet personal enough that people can relate. We as a family have interests that cover a wide variety of topics so my hope is that we'll all contribute something.  So here we go .... off to the blog races!!