Tornado preparedness, with a baby

I can't really post today without getting emotional. It's a sad day in Oklahoma as we watch our neighbors in Moore deal with the devastation from the very deadly tornado that hit. If you want to help, there are lots of ways--even if you aren't in Oklahoma.

• Money is always needed and disaster relief organizations could use your help. One of the easiest ways to help is to text "REDCROSS" to 90999 for a $10 donation to the Red Cross or "storm" to 80888 to donate $10 to the Salvation Army (you will then receive a free message that asks you to confirm your donation). The donation is then charged to your phone bill. Feed the Children is another non-profit organization, actually based in Oklahoma City, that accepts donations online.
• For those in or near Oklahoma City, Feed the Children has locations (29 N. McCormick and KOCO 5 News station) accepting donations of bottled water, sports drinks, diapers, canned food, boots, work gloves, and tools. The Salvation Army will be collecting donation at the KFOR-TV station.
• For those on campus, you can stop by the OSU Campus Life office Tuesday-Thursday to drop off personal care items (e.g., toothbrushes, baby diapers/wipes/formula, soap), batteries, hand sanitizer, and other necessities. Other companies in Stillwater are also arranging donation drives. For example, the 19th Hole has already loaded up a truck of supplies and taken them to Moore.

All evening I have struggled. I am so heartbroken and am also so very grateful for my family and friends who are safe. We are especially thankful for our precious little girl--who loves the wind as much as her momma. She doesn't yet know the damage the wind can cause.

So many of our friends and family get nervous when they see tornadoes in Oklahoma so I thought I would take a little time to talk about our preparedness. Around this time of year, I get a lot of texts and emails asking if we are safe or paying attention to the weather (and thank you so much! It means a lot that you care!). We are very "weather-aware" and don't take storms lightly. The one thing I think most people don't realize is that, out here, we get a lot of lead time before a tornado outbreak occurs. I knew last Thursday that we would be glued to the weather on Sunday and Monday. We typically even have a good idea of what time bad weather may hit, for example, I knew to watch the weather today between 1-5 pm and around 9 pm. I am very, very amazed with meteorology. While I sometimes complain about rain predictions, having the NWS in your state makes you pretty spoiled to good estimations for severe weather. Chad and I are pretty prepared for various scenarios. If we are both home, we would load up Alaina, the dogs, and our supplies (more about that below) to take to the university. If we are at work, Chad would pick up Alaina and I would pick up the dogs and we would meet back at OSU. My office is in a building that is a "shelter" so it's one of the safer places to be in Stillwater. It only takes about 8 minutes to get there so we generally have plenty of time. We would huddle (/have huddled) in the lower level/basement in an interior hallway.

Every spring, Chad and I have discussed having a storm shelter installed. People (including us) have been surprised to hear that most homes in Oklahoma don't have basements (clay soil/water line = bad combo for basements apparently). However, you can get a storm shelter installed fairly inexpensively. We have looked into getting one put in our garage. This is nice because that way you don't have to actually leave the house and you are less likely to have "critters" taking up residence in your shelter in the off season (I would imagine they are less likely to get leaks and such as well). The only downside is that you could be stuck under the rubble of a house. But that seems worth it to me. Now that we have Alaina, this seems like it may be more of a priority.

As part of our tornado preparations, I like to get things ready so that we can just grab our bags and get the family in the car in just a few minutes. This includes some water, granola bars, raisins, and other snacks, the iPad or laptop, our phones, and the chargers as well as the dogs' food and a couple of bones. I keep a spare kennel in my office closet that is big enough to fit Jasper and Madeline. I should note, we have been fairly well insulated from severe storms where we live so I tend to just take enough for us to spend an evening at the university. Most emergency kit tutorials suggest packing 72 hours worth of supplies. This year I created a mini-bag for Alaina as well.

We included:

• Water
• Sippy cup
• Snacks (baby goldfish and puffs)
• Diapers
• Wipes
• Easy squeezable pouch food
• Toys
• Bib
• Spare sleeper
• Blanket
• Wash cloth
• Baby tylenol and medicine dispenser
• Bottles for milk

I'll keep the bag packed for the remainder of tornado season and hopefully next year we can just store some supplies in our new shelter. If not, I'll rotate things to make it more developmentally appropriate.

Again, we are so thankful to be safe and are grateful for all the thoughts and prayers for us and for Oklahoma.

May days

We had a nice, laid-back Mother's day weekend. Chad got me a sweet card and a lovely "sweet pea" necklace and Alaina gave me lots of cuddles and love (of course some of those cuddles were at 2 am on Sunday morning...).

Saturday we spent the morning at the farmer's market and running errands. She liked playing on the weird swing. It made her super tired.

Then we went to OSU's botanical gardens. Alaina thought she was hot stuff with her sun glasses and hat.

When she isn't outside, she really enjoys looking out the door and windows. She likes hiding behind the curtains and watching. Silly girl.

I am loving her adorable curls. They are in two layers. The top of her hair is actually starting to get really long.

And hi to Jasper. :)

This picture made me laugh. My immediate thought was "somebody didn't read the 'do not operate heavy machinery' label on their medicine this morning..." Chad wasn't that amused.

In general, Alaina is such a funny girl. I'm sure everyone thinks that about their babies. She's hilarious, though. She loves to be chased and she is very patient at waiting behind corners to giggle when you come get her. Tonight we were laughing because Chad asked her to give him kisses (one of her newest things) and she just shook her head and laughed. When I picked her up, she gave me kisses and smiled at him. Such a trickster (for the record, she did end up giving him a kiss after that). My favorite moment of the week happened this morning when I went to wipe her nose with a kleenex. As soon as I got the tissue to her nose, she blew puffs of air out of her mouth, simulating the sound of blowing your nose. She practiced wiping my nose (with a new tissue) and thought that was really funny. This made her nose cleaning routine much easier since she thought it was pretty fun. Chad and I groaned a little saying she definitely has picked up on nose-blowing because of all of our allergies this spring (fyi, I still cannot hear out of my right ear)!

I couldn't snap the above picture fast enough but she had taken out her boppy pillow and wrapped it around her waist and was doing a hilarious bounce-crawl. And yes, she put the dog's ball in her mouth. We immediately take it away but of course, that makes it more appealing to her...I figure that is her way of getting Jasper back for eating the ears/tails off of several of her Noah's ark animals...

We have been getting a kick out of her latest "bear crawl". I caught a few seconds of it on video. Blogger is being *very* difficult to add video though for some reason. I am not sure why it let me embed a video earlier but won't now. Hopefully you can just click the link.

Alaina also loves drinking water out of my straw cups. But she still takes bottles (we are up to 3 ounces of whole milk per bottle now!). She will be moving up to the toddler classroom the first week of June so I know we eventually need to transition her entirely to cups.

I am a little sad that she is leaving the infant classroom because we really love her teachers. But hopefully she has a smooth transition. She loves to play and she loves being outside so hopefully that helps. Her new teacher seems nice.

One year stats

Isn't she just rotten? Love it!

Alaina had her 1-year-appointment today. She was 29.5 inches long (52nd percentile) and 21 pounds and 12.2 ounces (55th percentile). Her head was 18.11 inches (71st percentile). I think she had a little growth spurt recently because a couple of weeks ago she was barely eating but in the last few days we could barely shovel food in fast enough! She is doing great developmentally. She has a few consistent words (mama, dada, nite nite, yay, yea), a couple of signs (eat, all done, and one that sort of means more but can also mean milk), and some nonverbal gestures (waving, clapping, pointing). She isn't walking yet but she gets all over the place cruising and crawling. Her favorite thing these days is to crawl really fast into the entrance of another room and wait for you to come "chase" her. She laughs hysterically. I must get this on video. Her face looks something like this, when you "catch" her.

She was really good at the doctor's office, which is impressive considering that her teacher had forgotten I was picking her up at 2 and had laid her down for a nap at 1:45. Eeek. Alaina was a little unsure at first, holding tight to my arm when the nurse took her vital signs. She had two shots today and she was upset by them. I talked her through what was happening and she calmed down, only to have to go down to the lab and get her finger pricked for a blood test. As soon as we got in the lab room, she looked around and started crying. Poor thing was really upset when the nurse (phlebotomist?) kept scraping her finger to try to fill the vial. And oh the bandaid. The bandaid with cotton was just too much.

Once I got her cuddled and settled with a bottle, she was much better. We went to visit Chad at work and she really enjoyed that. It was nice to have a visit to the doctor where nothing was wrong! She was a little cranky this evening but it could have also been due to her nap schedule being a bit off. She's been sleeping great tonight so hopefully she doesn't react negatively to the vaccines. She's done pretty well in the past.

So a healthy girl. Her ears are all clear which is nice...Unfortunately, mine aren't! I got my first ear infection as an adult (at least in memory) and boy is it ever painful! I've got drops and am on an antibiotic. The first day was just terrible. I took one of my leftover pills from surgery and it didn't touch the pain. I tried all kinds of tricks I found on google--warm compresses, blowing the blow dryer in my ear, Tylenol, Aleve, Ibuprofen (not taken together of course!). The thing that worked the best was some crazy home remedy--a salt rag--where you put 4 tablespoons of salt in a rag and tie it with a hair elastic (no metal). Dip the salt ball in a bit of water and microwave for 10-15 seconds. Hold that to your ear for about 30 minutes, rewarming as needed. It's crazy how it worked! I also tried dry heated salt in an athletic sock but I didn't have as much luck with that. So yea, the salt rag. My new go-to ear infection reliever. And I hope I never have to use it again!

This weekend's fun included watching the Derby. Sometimes I am overwhelmed with grief at missing the Bluegrass State. Kentucky in May is amazing. I miss seeing the horse farms during spring with all the foals running alongside their mamas. Nothing is more beautiful. I can't wait to take Alaina back for a visit and let her see. The Derby does lots of gratuitous horse farm shots so I certainly got a taste of home. I also brought the derby home a bit, giving Alaina a little Derby style hair accouterment. She didn't get it. Yet. Next year I'm going to have a derby party and Alaina will need her own hat for sure. It's no surprise that Pinterest has tons of pins for crafting pint-sized derby hats...

Of course, Alaina said she was very busy this weekend. She had to help review a manuscript for work. She might be better at spotting methodological flaws than I am...

Speaking of work, we just wrapped up finals week and I finished my online class for teaching an online class. This feels fantastic. Summer as a professor really is amazing. It's the time when I feel like I actually get to spend the most energy doing the things I really want and the things that weigh most heavily on tenure and promotion. And parking is great. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy teaching and really like the courses I have prepped. But not teaching is even better. I'll still be at work most days but I won't have grading, preparing lectures, or faculty meetings. I am serving on three comprehensive exam and one thesis committee that will be within the first six weeks of "break" but all of that is sort of fun (less so for the students!). My lofty goal is to submit six manuscripts this summer. The data is collected for all of them so it is possible. But given how poorly I have performed on my New Year's goals, I am not unrealistically optimistic.
I also need to get my wisdom teeth pulled and go to the eye doctor. A very productive summer indeed...

In other news, Alaina is still trying new foods. We are slowly introducing whole milk and I think she is doing okay with that. We give her one ounce with every four ounces of formula right now.
We tried eggs last week and that did not go over well. She didn't seem to like the frittata I made for her (though Chad seemed to love it!) and really just ate a couple of bites. However, she definitely had a reaction to the eggs. I'm not surprised she's allergic since I am as well and they are one of the high-allergen foods. She has responded really well to things that have eggs cooked in them (like me) so I am not concerned. We will try them again in a few weeks.

However, she loved eating off of my corn cob! It was hilarious. She became obsessed. You can see the tears in her eyes from when we tried to take it away from her.

Man, I guess I have had a lot to update on, I feel like this is the longest blog in awhile. In other news, we got a new convertible car seat for Chad's car. We will keep the infant seat in mine awhile longer. We went with the new Chicco Next Fit and so far I am excited about its reviews and how it looks and feels. It is supposed to adjust up to 65 pounds and will rear-face until 40 pounds. Alaina seems very excited about it and is already relaxing in it and studying all its features.

Whew! So I guess that's all the excitement!

More birthday present fun

I keep meaning to post the pictures and videos of Alaina with some of her newest birthday goodies. Enjoy!

And somehow I missed posting a video from her opening her Easter present. I thought I put it on the blog last month but I couldn't find it. If I did, well, I'm sure no one minds seeing a video of her again. :)