Adventures of Marble Balls

Where has the time gone? It's been such a long time since I wrote last, I think it was around August or July. I guess I just forgot about the blog. Things in my life have been somewhat hectic and I guess I failed on my blogging duties.

I will write more in depth posts about the fun things that have happened in the past few months but for now here's a little recap!

Allie is mobile! She crawls, she crawls so fast it's hard to keep up with her. She can pull herself to standing and cruises on the furniture. She will be 9 months old on January 17th. I can't believe how fast time has flown by. We had an awesome Christmas and although we planned on being at our own home in North Carolina, we decided (at the last minute) to stay in Ohio. It was a lovely time and Allie is such a spoiled little baby! She got so many new toys and clothes and books! She received so much stuff that Matt ended up taking a car load down to NC and we are staying at my moms house until the 18th.

We are just hanging out and enjoying time with my family. Allie is not exactly used to all of the commotion. I mean, she's used to our quiet little house with just me, Brite, Sabby cat and we would see Matt only a few hours out of the day. The only time it would get loud is if I had the tv on and Briton started to bark. She's not used to 3 other people and 4 dogs, plus many other loud noises. It's messed up her sleeping schedule. Hopefully she can get back into her groove soon. Mommy is very tired!

Although I am having a really great time here, I miss my hubby. I am very excited to say that I am starting a new adventure into the cloth diapering world. I am a bit obsessed but I think that's okay! I have even started a second blog for it! Read about my cloth adventure

It's getting super late and I should try to catch up on some sleep but I will leave a few pictures.  

Super cute pjs!

She was a sock monkey for Halloween!

Cutie Patootie!

USMC Ball in Myrtle Beach

Best Christmas present ever

Oh, Santa Baby!!

Our little family's stockings!

Allie's first picture with Santa!

Where Does The Time Go?

Wow, It's been nearly a month since I wrote last. It's crazy how fast time flies by. Things have been crazy here, Matt has been working from about 5 am until 630 or 7 pm so Allie and I are barely seeing him. I feel like I have so much to write about, so many things that are driving me up the wall lately. I have too much to say for this one blog so I am hopefully going to write once a day or at least once every other day. I've also decided to add a section to every new blog entry, "I'm thankful for..." Every day I will write something I am thankful for, I feel like I can be ungrateful for the things I have in my life and hopefully this will force me to slow down and give everything some thought.

I can't believe Allie is about to be five months old. Where did my wittle tiny baby go?! She's been scooting around on the floor for over a week now and is getting really efficient at moving her body, especially to "interesting" items. These items are usually things she shouldn't have. I swear children are drawn to things they should not have like plastic bags, power cords, and my cell phone. I think it's like hardwired into their brains, ha.

I don't really have much else to talk about other than Allie since she's basically the only person I interact with all day every day. Recently I had an experience, I'm not ready to discuss on here yet, but it opened my eyes to how much I've really changed since giving birth to Allie. I'm a completely different person, I view life through mothers eyes and that softens my heart but it's also made me more judgmental in a way. I'm now viewing everything in the sense of "aww, that's someones baby..." which leads me to crying a lot. On the other hand I have changed into someone who expects more, I guess judgmental was the wrong word to use. I expect so much more out of people, I expect the very best for my daughter and I won't settle for any less.

A mixture of all of these things have lead me to losing all of my "friends" that I had previous to giving birth. It seems as though once I found out I was pregnant people distanced themselves from me. I know this isn't true for everyone because I did turn into a hermit when I was pregnant and pushed many people away, but I could tell that some people were already gone long before I cut myself off from the world. Other people stuck around for a little while but I could sense they just kept in contact for info about my personal life, they wanted to spread gossip. These people annoyed me the most. They wanted to know every little detail about mine and Matt's lives but they didn't care at all. Then there are the very few people that were still there. I could have sworn we would be great friends forever but I guess sometimes things just aren't meant to happen. I guess being away from home for months and being away from the drama, fake people, and bullcrap has changed me but I'm not going to blame myself for certain peoples actions.

Clearly I'm very irritated about certain people but I'm still too mad to let it out without sounding insane, ha. I just looked down at the clock and it's already 2 am, seriously, where does the time go!?

I'm thankful for...

I am extremely thankful for a healthy baby. I continue to see so many facebook groups and pages for terminally ill children or children that have been severely injured. It breaks my heart. These children are always on my mind and I've spent countless nights bawling, wishing I could take away their pain. All I can do is rock Allie and thank God she is healthy.

Alexandria Rose

Oh, Allie. My Squish. My love. My poop monster. My everything.

I thought I knew what love was until I had my daughter. It wasn't that "the moment I laid my eyes on her I fell deeply and madly in love with her" like everyone is always spewing. It took some time and a lot of hard work for me to realize how much of a huge impact this small child has had on my life.

Alexandria Rose Burmeister was born April seventeenth two-thousand and twelve. She was eight pounds fifteen ounces and twenty-one inches long. She was a hefty baby but she was mine and she was perfect in every way. Matt was away on a deployment, he left when I was four months along and didn't return home until Allie was two weeks old.

Moments after she was born. Matt was on that phone listening to everything.

At the time I was living in Ohio with my mom at her house. Things were so chaotic at first. I barely slept, I was so sore, and somehow my perfectly organized room was trashed within a few days of her being home. I felt like a wreck and I missed my husband. Thankfully I had my family there to help me. I still recall one of the first times I had a complete meltdown, it had been a LONG day and my normally happy baby was really crabby and even a tubby, which normally relaxes her, made it a million times worse. I was trying to dress her and I was looking down at her, she was hysterically crying and so was I. My mom knocked on the door and saved me. I left the room and just wept, I cried because my baby was upset and there was nothing I could do but I was also crying because I couldn't believe my life was this different.

Just a year ago I was a carefree girl, running around and doing whatever I wanted. I took nothing seriously. I loved working, the money was okay but the people kept me going, and I was just getting by in college. I refused to move with my husband because I didn't want to give up the life I had in Ohio. I know it was a very selfish thing to do and looking back I can't believe how blatantly selfish I was but at the time it was what worked for me. Wow, did things change when I got pregnant within the month of moving in with my husband. Everything went from being about me me me to being about our baby, which at the time we were positive was a boy, ha.

The first half of my pregnancy was a whirlwind and pretty much horrible. I had terrible morning sickness (it should be called all day sickness!) and Matt was stressed and busy with his upcoming deployment. I traveled from North Carolina to Ohio and back a few times and wow those trips were unbelievably bad!

The day Matt deployed I realize two things, I had to be strong for my baby and I just knew she was a girl. I could feel it. When I was bawling and couldn't get myself together I swear I felt a sense of calmness, like someone or something was telling me it would be okay. I know it sounds crazy but at that moment I knew she was a girl, she was caring, loving, and hopeful.

The deployment went by a lot easier than Matt's first deployment, even though we weren't able to talk as much as we did with the first one. I felt grounded and calm most of the time, although pregnancy turned me into a person full of rage. I wanted to fight everyone and everything and I'm kind of happy Matt wasn't there because he's my favorite person to start arguments and fights with.

The pregnancy was going really well, I didn't have any complications other than having pica. Oh my, that was bad! I would stay up at night crying because I wanted to eat soap! I would scrub the floors with mass amounts of pine sol just so I could have a reason to smell it. Other than that I loved feeling Allie moving around even though she loved to kick me in the ribs really hard.

Allie has always been a big baby, she measured two weeks ahead throughout my whole pregnancy and now at four months she's twenty pounds. It's no wonder though, I'm five foot nine inches and Matt is six foot three inches. We are big people so I expected a big baby although my OB thought she was some kind of giant monster baby, ugh.

Thirty-Eight weeks

The day I gave birth was amazing. It was the day after my older sister, Chrissy, birthday. My family had went down to the cafeteria to get lunch and before they left they asked the nurse if I would be pushing anytime soon "Oh no, we're hoping for a 7 or 8" WRONG! The doctor came in, checked me, and it was time to push! I was pushing and calling my family and trying to email Matt to call me. The doctor said my family reminded him of the Kardashians, I didn't know whether to take it as an insult or a compliment. I gave birth about fifteen minutes later and that's when the fun started. They couldn't control the bleeding and ended up putting a balloon in my uterus after trying to get it to stop for almost two hours.

I was too happy to finally have my baby in my arms to even care, I was high on every emotion. Allie was a champ at nursing and she was perfect in every way. Ten perfect fingers and ten perfect toes. I loved that little girl so much and every day I love her even more! I can't believe it's been over four months since she was born. We are now settled down in North Carolina after a long vacation to Ohio, my mom brought us home last week.

Sometimes I still can't get over how much my life has changed though, for example, I've been trying to write this post for the past two days but Allie has some kind of sixth sense and wakes up from her naps every time I start typing. I look at her and how precious, amazing, and beautiful she is and I know this is so worth it. She is worth everything and I will do anything to give her the best life I can.

Settling Down

When I first thought about making a blog I had no idea where to start. I pushed it off and procrastinated for quite some time. I finally sat down last night and made this, I'm not exactly sure what it is or what it's going to become but it's something, better than nothing I guess.

Let me start off by telling you about myself and my family. I'm Sarah, I'm twenty-one, and I'm married. My husband's name is Matt, he's twenty-three, and he's a Corporal in the Marine Corps. We were blessed with our daughter, Allie, four months ago today, she was born April seventeenth two-thousand and twelve. My husband is currently stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

I've been traveling from our hometown in Ohio to North Carolina for the past year, coming and going every couple months. I'm finally HOME and I'm staying here until we move in October or November. We are hoping to move closer to Ohio, we want our daughter to grow up with a strong sense of family.

My little family