ccard 2

Pop Art Ornaments Christmas

Make a statement with personalized Christmas cards at Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

Almost 1 year ago....

Almost a year ago!

I have a very pregnant friend that's air conditioner has gone out not once but twice now on her! And it puts me back to almost a year ago when this happened to me. I wanted to show her this lovely video (NOT) that Tyler took of me and I guess this is the only way to do that. So please no pressure to view this NOT lovely video ;)

Oh and hopefully more of and Emmett update to come soon. But if you haven't heard yet - He's WALKING! Walks everywhere and all the time now! And he cut his first two teeth. yay! Also I think he's trying to sleep better at night. We were kind of forced to incorporate some formula feedings, so that may be the culprit!

I have only 2 1/2 weeks left of his first year and cannot believe myself when I think it or say it! Time flies way to fast, but he's so fun and carefree and learns so many new things daily that it's a great stage to be in with him.

Stay tuned for another update! (yes, it'll probably be in another month! ha!)

Almost 10 months old...

Took some of Em's 9 month pics at the cabin

Seriously?! For those of you who would know,
doesn't this look just like Tyler when he was little?

Also had to throw in the cousin fun at the lake!
How fun to have 7 grand kids together!

I cannot and do not want to believe that my baby is almost 10 months old! But he is showing every true sign that he is indeed leaving babyhood and entering toddler world. Em loves to eat, and eat, and eat. Can't fill that kid up, but it's fun trying to think of new things for him to try. I would never thought he could eat so much of so many different things without any teeth! I don't even see teeth trying to come in yet. Sure are taking their time ;)

Em is now standing up lots on his own in the middle of the floor. Took one sort of step tonight, just to test the water. Loves his new daycare situation (not that he didn't love the old one), but is having a BLAST with cousin Gabe and Aunt Ju. Still manages to see Nana/Papa and Aunt Sue from time to time too.


As for the rest of our household:

I recently went back to work at the Hospital and left my short stint at the clinic behind. This move this time was more personal fulfillment than anything else. I am already some moments thinking "what did I do?!" but still realize that I need to be busy and challenged in my work, even if it means sacrificing the cushy schedule... And the worse schedule means more 3 and 4 day weekends!

Tyler is busy busy busy at work, hence why he hasn't blogged in months. This is his busy time, but I"m sure he is saving up some blog posts for you all to read later.

Not much for updates, but thought I'd throw it out there! We're doing well, blessed beyond our wildest hopes, healthy, and loved.

-The Tracy's

Bath time with Emmett

Good things can come of the husband running the errands to Walmart...

Tyler was given a list of items to buy and on that list was a net for Emmett's bath toys. Tyler also came home with a cheap tub basketball set for Emmett. Who would have known what a riot Emmett would have thought it was?!

Couldn't get any cuter!

After a rough night away from home, this is what I got to wake up to ;)
We pulled him in with us as he was clearly adamant about not sleeping alone that night!

So precious when he first wakes up!

Grandpa and Grandma came to visit

Emmett's first boat ride on Lake Lida!

The pictures above are a short glimpse into what's been happening the last month and a half with Emmett and the Tracy's since I last posted. Tyler's been too busy with Babe Ruth to post anything lately. I've been told he has posts waiting in limbo ready for his Aug/Sept return to the blogger world!

Emmett has done so many things to amaze us these past weeks. He is now crawling like a speed demon, climbs the whole flight of stairs, loves to eat finger foods by himself and loves to try new foods. We have been to the lake twice now and went to Tyler's cousin's wedding in South Eastern Minnesota. I took a position back on my old hospital floor and will be done at the clinic the last week in June. I was able to gain better hours (for the hospital) and will be going down to 32 hours/week so I have 1 more day/week with Emmett. I have begun training into the charge nurse position and look forward to this new role and responsibility along with the return of the old challenge and fast pace the hospital holds.

Back to Emmett, because that's really what it's all about, right?! I think I usually give updates on:

Sleeping: still not through the night. Decided to read "the no cry sleep solution". In this book she makes the statement that if you are reading this book, you probably won't have time to because you are sleep deprived and your child doesn't sleep, hence not having time to read the book. So true. I'm 1/3 way through. It's not bad and the premises is that you help your child sleep better and do not have to do the "Ferber method". BUT I find it very hard to take advice from this woman as she was still breastfeeding her 1 year old every 1-1 1/2 hours during the middle of the night?!

Eating: As mentioned above, Emmett loves to eat. This has not change and probably will not change. If I had enough space for more pictures I would have posted a picture of him with his first helping of mashed potatoes where he ate himself to sleep!! And we do not have teeth yet, but seem to be perpetually teething. I am told this will not go away for years...

Emmett and Brody have continued to get closer and become great buds. Emmett feeds Brody from his highchair and will jump on Brody if Brody is laying down resting. He also does not feel the need to go around Brody but rather climbs over him if he is in his way.

Emmett and Gabe are also still good buds and brothers at heart. They fight and play and smile and laugh together and do everything you want good buds/cousins to do!

That's all folks!

I like to move it, move it...

Emmett decided to show off his moves!

Updates!

Easter Sunday and My birthday

First day out at the cabin!

Acting way older than his age...

What do rat poison, hydrogine peroxide, a farm house, and the Roadhouse all have in common?

They are all part of how I spent my last Saturday!

So I once again have not blogged in awhile. It is so far and few inbetween that I surely doubt anyone reads this anymore! Well for those of you who do:

This past Saturday marked the first day at the Stroh Lake/Farm house and what a day it was! Tyler worked all weekend, but I needed a break from Fargo, so Emmett, Brody and I traveled with Nana out to the cabin. Friday night went off better than I thought and I was thinking it wouldn't be so bad trying to wrangle our crazy 2 year old Golden Retriever by myself. Um... wrong. Not even 45 minutes after we had been awake does my Brother-in-law come inside (he was nice enough to let Brody run around outside while he was out there) and tell me that my dog may have eaten rat poision.

Let the fun begin.

I called the only Animal hospital in the phone book and found that I needed to bring him in for a shot and some medicine (Like that's going to be cheap). Problem #1: They were 2 hours away. I then re-looked in the phone book and found a closer animal veterniarian that was even open on Saturdays! Woo hoo! That gal told me that I needed to given him a hydrogine peroxide mixture and that it would make him throw up. Problem #2: Did not have any hydrogine peroxide and was not sure how to tackle a #72 pound dog for this task...

Luckily, Brody drank it without problems (weird dog - who does that?!), and proceeded to empty his stomach for the next 10 minutes while I bawl my eyes out because I made him sick.

All was well and we avoided a trip to the vet. And Emmett and I had a great day at the lake. OH and we got to eat at the yummy roadhouse!

And of course my Emmett update! He is now 6 months - will be 7 next week! I seriously cannot believe this.

Emmett now loves to eat cereal and puffs. Not a fan of his juice cup yet. Loves all of the vegetables. All of them. A co-worker asked, "So you must just have ate all vegetables when you were pregnant?". Um. I think I ate corn a few times. That's about it! Who's kid is this? He does not like any of the fruits yet. There's still hope, I hope.... No teeth yet. Sleeps better at night. We no longer let him eat from 11-5am and this has gone well, but he still wakes up and fusses until we put his pacifer back in.

Has really gotten the will to crawl, but has not quite figured it out. Does this scooting thing where he basically turns circles on his bottom until he gets where he wants to be. Emmett can also pull himself up when holding things such as the bath tub or saucer! Oh how the time flies...

6 month pics!

Check out a sampling of Emmett's 6 month pics at:
ljcreativecaptures.blogspot.com/2010/03/baby-t-6-month.html

Ulgh - Tax Time!

Time to do taxes again... April 15th can't be put off much longer.

What I seem to struggle with is that I get older and life gets more complicated, so do those darned taxes! I long for the day when I'd hand my dad my single W-2 and bam! I'd get $100 deposited into my checking account.

There's also the time when I filed my taxes myself over the phone and just pressed a few buttons and received my tax return a few days later.

Then. I. got. married.

And since this momentous occassion, taxes have been a luming plague over our heads and something we dread. We end up having a pile of roughly 30 pages of "stuff" to bring into the taxman. Who knows what all this means or if it is even relevant, but it gets sent to us with a stamp on the envelope urging us to save it for taxes.
Two years ago our tax lady spent a good portion of the meeting bashing my new place of business as I was just starting as a nurse at MeritCare and she continued to tell me why Innovis is better and why she does not like MeritCare. Meanwhile also adding comments in about why my husband and I have so many W-2's and why everything was such a mess. Hence, why we went to see you in the first place lady! Having a young married couple with one in school just trying to stay afloat financially, we're sorry if it's an inconveince for you to file our 8 W-2's! And yes, it's just as frustrating to us that PRACS does not tax their checks and that my husband enjoys being a lab rat to benefit us greatly in the short-term but bite our tax paying booties in the long-run... Oh how we were saved by the education credits that year and didn't have to pay in but did not get much of a return either!

Last year was more pleasant as we went to an accountant that is on the Babe Ruth board and knows Tyler well. Well or so it was supposed to be ;) The person working with us was much more pleasant, but we still had our fair share of W-2's and "stuff" to sort through. As most of you know, I was not in school during the year of 2008, but what can I say? My husband loves his part-time jobs, aka "hobbies" :). We also bought a house this year but did not benefit greatly from this. We ended up getting hit with having to pay in, but were saved by the tax credit for new home buyers (if only we'd have waited one year we wouldn't be paying that back for the next 15 years...)

This year and the prompting behind this post is that Tyler and I believed we would just bring in our batch of "stuff" again as we always had before and then we'd sit through a grueling/embarassig/awkward 1/2 hour meeting until we could find out if we owed more money or happily got some given back to us. However, as Tyler was getting the "stuff" together that morning he came across the 2009 Tax Organizer that our friendly accountant gave to us to prepare our list of "stuff" for him. Now he must have seen people like us coming from a mile away and decided it was about time for us to sort through our own "stuff". This organizer wants everything listed and itemized from what you spent on contact lenses to prescriptions. If I wasn't so intuned to knowing that all these things could add up, especially the expenses of having a child and a husband that got orthodontic surgery and braces this year, I wouldn't have spent the time preparing this stuff and pouring over our bank statements (which I might add were all still in the envelopes and hadn't been opened the whole past year - oops - never would have thought I worked at a bank for 3 years)...

So my question is this - why must one spend good money (We know they're not cheap) to organize my taxes just so that someone with the right software and know-how can imput the data for me and get paid like the did all the hard work?

Answer: Because I just don't have the time?! Oh wait. I just spent an hour putting this thing together - why didn't I spend that filling out my own 1099 form?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And as always: Here's my adorable 5 month old son, Emmett. Can't believe it's been 5 joyous months with him. He has now started to roll over both ways as of last week. He sits up really well now, but we still don't quite trust him alone where he wouldn't fall over. He's doing great at daycare and they say they love how much personality he has.. hehe.

The past few weeks we have been giving him a good helping of rice cereal at night. We know it's early, but he's a born eater - he is a Tracy afterall! He loves to grab the spoon from me and chew on it... Just this past week, he has started to get himself up onto his knees as if he thinks he's going to start crawling! I know he won't quite yet, but it's pretty crazy to think he knows already that's his first step in that process...

Conflicted

Diary of the conflicted:

So most of you know that I recently started a new job with the Internal Medicine clinic (still with MeritCare). More specifically it's with the Resident Clinic which is primarily the group of physicians I have been working for in the hospital.

I did enjoy my past job but it was begining to wear on me. After 2 years there I felt like I really knew what I was doing and was becoming more and more involved on the floor by joining a standards committee, leading rapid improvement events, and orientating a new employee pretty much every shift that I worked. These are all good things which had their downsides too. The more involved you are the more the negatives of management can get to you and that you feel/see your voice isn't heard. And the more I precepted/orientated the later I was always staying after work because we all know that new people are just plain slower! ;)

After too many 12 hour shifts of not seeing cute lil' Emmett awake the whole day and being too burned out from this position it was with some uncertainity that I left his position for a clinic gig.
So far I have figured out what I already knew: the clinic is WAY different and WAY slower than the hospital. Their busy is me having only 2 patients that are walkie talkies at my old job. This comes with good and bad as I am enjoying not passing out after work from exhaustion, but feel I am not challenged enough and feel as if I have "down graded". The people are super nice, but it will definitely take awhile for this to feel like home. Who knew I might acutally miss the place I used to curse going to work at?!?!

On a different, yet same, note: These feelings have left me conflicted about whether or not I did the right thing. For some reason I have also felt this strong urge/pull to go into Maternal/child nursing - "birthing center". I did my internship in the FBC and even declined a position with them as I felt it would be better to get general medical experience before specializing in a field. I also struggled with helping moms through labor and the pain/emotions when I hadn't felt them myself. (Yes I do realize I haven't felt 3/4 of what my genereal medical patients feel either, but labor is totally different). Now that I have felt that and have so many mixed emotions about my career and being a working mom, I have come to the conclusion that if I'm going to leave my baby to go to work I really only can validate that with leaving my baby to go to work helping other women become new moms. I can think of so many great things with this job: helping moms through labor, cuddling newborns and helping parents learn to take care of them, assisting with surgery instead of letting the surgical techs have all the fun (on birth centers, it is the nurse that assists the Dr. with the surgery, not the surgical techs).

Surprisingly my hair dresser made me think of all this when she told me during my last hair cut that she loves what she does and doesn't consider it work. And she loves her baby girl and I know it's hard for her to leave her to go to work, but how great that she doesn't think of it as work?! I then thought if the same was true of me and sadly it isn't. I feel it is work. Plain and simple.

So my prayer is this: That I feel peace with my current job situation and the choices I have made that have led me here. That I find my purpose in this current position and be an asset to this team as I felt I have been before in my position. That if I am meant to be a FBC nurse that the right position/hours/timing will present itself and that I will wait patiently for that direction.

If you read all this you may have to much time on your hands, but with that extra time you could pray for me! ;)

Priceless

Drive across town - $1.00

Meal for 4-6 - $20

Having Emmett and Gabe bond and become best friends - PRICELESS

Recently we have had the honor of watching Gabe become a little grown-up man. In the past 2 weeks (for Tyler and I), we've seen him develop immensley!

This is really more of a blog that should be on Aaron and Julie's blog, but since they don't update theirs and it involves my adorable nephew and son, I am going to share it!

Scenario 1: Last week we were at Aaron and Julie's house and recently we have started bathing the boys together when we are at eachother's house. So we were once again sharing the night together and Julie went upstairs to start the bath for Gabe. Emmett and I were still downstairs mind you. Gabe proceeded to attempt to haul the baby bath tub out of the Schauer's spare room into the bathroom because he knew that Emmett was supposed to be taking a bath with him!

Scenario 2: This past Monday we had my parents and the Schauer's over for dinner. This time however we were just hanging out in the living room and Emmett was sitting in my lap on the floor. Right on cue (little after 7 o'clock) Gabe starts pulling on Emmett's feet and grunting to try to get him to move to the bathroom with him. When we didn't get up right away, Gabe trotted around and started pushing on my back to get me to go! I then got up and handed Emmett to Tyler and started the bath. As I was doing this Gabe proceeded to pull on Emmett's legs again and pushed Tyler towards the bathroom!

What a smart and sweet child!!! They're on their way to becoming best buds!!!

Emmett Updates!

Grandpa had matching shirts made for all of us!

Still loving the tummy time!

LOVES the Johnny Jump up! It makes him SO HAPPY!

Emmett is already 4 months!

Oh how the time flies when you're having fun and hardly sleeping! ;)

Had our 4 month appointment with Dr. Card today

and these are the things we now know and get to work on!

Emmers is 16 pounds even (75%) and don't remember his height but he was 54% for it.

He's developmentally everything he should be and more.

Mom's getting a little desperate for Em to start sleeping longer at night as he currently only does maybe one 4 hour stretch. So in good advice we started cereal a few nights ago, but decided to sppon feed him it as he sits well in the high chair, etc. It was fun and he's still not sure what to think (maybe dad can upload the video at work later ;). However, Dr. Card disagrees and doesn't want him having it for another month - verdict is still out if we will follow this advice or not...

Sleeping! As I mentioned before Em is still having a little struggle with the sleep catergory and mom was told I must get him to give up one of his night time feedings, so we will begin that hopefully not to troubling task of rocking/shushing/crying back to sleep instead of feeding... More to come on that later ;) We did transition Emmett into his own crib now as we felt he might sleep better there and it will stop mom from picking him up everytime he fusses and feeding him!

Apparently Emmett has rolled over twice for dad, but non for mom and not sure about those daycare providers either ;) But mom sure would love to see it soon!

Well baby's crying as he's up from his 1/2 hour cat-nap.

I'd love to say I'd write more later, but who has the time?

3 Years

3 Years = 8 jobs, 6 cars, a dog, a house, and one beautiful baby boy!

Happy Anniversary Tyler, I Love You!