Whew! What a month!

Busy doesn’t begin to cover it. This mama is burnt out and running on fumes. It’s been a very trying, difficult month with a lot of changes in a very short amount of time.

We started the month with our favorite senior kitty’s 15th birthday.

We didn’t go out for the 4th of July — we weren’t feeling very festive and the neighborhood fireworks scared Roxie (bad enough she refused to go outside and when forced, she hid under the deck).

Baby Girl had a rough few weeks. Growth spurts are hard, and this mama thinks she has some silent reflux, making her extra miserable. She started to get congested and had a raspy voice from all the screaming between weeks 6 and 8.

Then it was 2 month check-up and vaccines. As you can imagine, that was not her idea of a good time. We did convince the doctor to give us some meds for reflux to try, though she wasn’t very convinced that it’s reflux and tried to blame colic…*sigh* Poor baby let her banshee screaming speak for itself and we are testing out some Pepcid/famotidine.

Baby Girl now weighs 12lbs 7oz and is almost 23.5 inches long — that’s the 90-98th percentile. She’s giving her brother a run for his money in that department. Despite all the tummy issues, she is a growing girl.

The only silver lining with her check up struggles was that her first Imagination Library book from Miss Dolly arrived that day.

Little Man got enrolled in kindergarten (preschool was full) and had to have an eye exam where we found out he has astigmatism in both eyes and is a little bit far-sighted in one eye. He will be getting glasses for school work and tablet/computer time. He didn’t seem fazed at all by that. We’ll see when he actually gets his glasses.

Mid-month came and completely flipped the script. We did our last Clarksville Lowes project, picked up our last set of comics from Rick’s, and (finally) went to Children’s at Vanderbilt for Baby Girl’s audiology appointment.

Thankfully, the audiologist found that Baby Girl’s hearing is perfectly normal and she was not concerned in the slightest. Halle-freaking-lujah! The stress over this whole thing has been at the forefront of my mind since tge day after she was born.

It’s frustrating that it took so long (and we had to jump through so many hoops) to have someone actually take the time needed to get a proper test done. The audiologist was super patient with our fussy kiddo and was more than flexible to get an accurate result (we were given time to get her calm and sound asleep before even attempting to start testing).

We followed up with a phone appointment for Baby Girl on the 28th for her reflux. While the meds might be working, there’s still a lot of horrible screaming about once a day for an hour or two straight. The follow-up was a waste… They’re still convinced it’s colic. Which to me means they don’t want to take the time to dive any deeper into what could be going on. Yay, American health “care.” *eye roll*

Then, at the very end of the month, we packed up the kids and critters and began our move back to Nebraska. The movers are scheduled for the beginning of August and we’ll be putting our household goods in storage while we decide where we want to live. Until then, we will be living with my parents. It’s an adjustment, but we are excited for the next chapter being closer to part of our family.

It’s a mixed bag of emotions. We’re leaving behind our first house — one that was all ours. We brought both our babies home here, said goodbye to our sweet Audie boy here, celebrated so many holidays/birthdays here, brought Roxie home here…

But Clarksville doesn’t hold the same pull. Traffic has gotten astronomically worse, everything is more crowded, our routines have become monotonous and stale, we’re so far away from our families and most of our friends.

I’m sad to say goodbye to the special people we’ve come to know, but going home means precious time with part of our family that we weren’t getting being so far away.

That said, our whole world is being flipped upside down.

This is the first time in 21+ years the Mister will have a say in what comes next: work-wise, location-wise, choice-wise.

Little Man starts full-time school and we’ll have to see if he’ll still be able to do outside speech or if he’ll get it at school on its own. His routine is already shot with everything going on.

Baby Girl will only have to get used to the new surroundings since her world is still basically all mommy. Small blessing in that regard.

We’ll be missing out on some of our favorite pastimes in the coming months. No Highland Games or Trail of Tears PowWow, no Dia de Los Muertos festival at Cheekwood or Oktoberfest at Beachaven…I’m still trying to convince the Mister to let us go back to Clarksville for Santa photos with Bri and maybe make a weekend out of it so we can do Zoolumination too. We’ll see if that comes to fruition.

Whatever comes next, we’ll take it in stride (I hope).

Here’s to the coming new chapters.

Until then,