Nights Away

At the end of the night after lots of wine and food:) This was take #3 with the self-timer on the camera!

On Friday I went to my annual girls' Christmas party and stayed out for the evening! I missed Chase terribly and woke up a few times during the night, but it was nice to get together with the girls. Although some of the faces have changed, a few of us have managed to get together for the past 7 or 8? years. I have to look back at old pics for the exact date:) Daddy and Chase had a nice boys night and I got to bring home a boatload of cookies from our swap.

Then on Sunday Chase and I got to stay in a hotel!! The gas and electric company was doing planned outages and there was no way we were going to spend a cold night in the dark. Jas came to help us get settled in, but then ended up coming back to the house to stay with Summer. Luckily since Jas spent roughly 211 days during 2009(crazy right?) in a Marriott he is a platinum elite member, and we could use some points and stay in a little suite at a brand new Residence Inn. Chase ended up doing great, but couldn't fall asleep because there was so much to look at. I'm pretty sure we paced and dance for about an hour and a half! I've learned you have to be super organized to spend the night somewhere with a baby, but juggling getting ready for work not in the comforts of your home is even more of a challenge.

Lots of stuff for just one night!

Looking all around, so many colors

Tree Decorating

What am I supposed to do with this?

Love the lights

One of my new 1st Christmas ornaments

Combination of a little windburn and just waking up gives me rosy cheeks. Can you guess which side I was sleeping on? I also look very serious because I'm concentrating on sitting up straight. I can do it on my own, put I have to lean forward a little. It is hard work!!

Ridiculous

Since the end of last week I've been battling with a new prescription company about Chase's Synagis dosage. If life worked out perfectly he would have received his dose last week on the 28 day schedule, and all would be peachy. Since I didn't hear from the pediatrician's office by the end of last week, I thought I'd call the script company directly to see what was causing the delay. Apparently because our insurance co. uses a specific prescription company(not where his first dose came from), they decided to switch. Mind you, no one called us...

So after calling and speaking to someone who asked me to spell the name of the vaccination, and then asking me whether it was a specialty drug, she realized I needed to speak to someone in a different division. The next person then told me they were waiting on pre-authorization from the insurance company, and that they would try to expedite the request. I'm generally a very patient person, and not one to get irate with customer service people, but this was getting ridiculous. Pre-auth was already given before the first dosage! Flash forward to me calling our insurance case manager, filling her in, and asking her to light a fire somewhere.

Here we are nearly a week out of the dosage window and now the hold up is somewhere between referrals, authorizations, a "busy" representative, and a pharmacist. Once everything gets worked out the dose still needs to be shipped, so its not like that part of the process is even fast! Not once have I spoken to the same person, even after requesting a contact person. This might have something to do with my needing to go through the stupid automated system every time I call. Each time I say something to the fact that my son was born at 27 wks, weakened immune system etc. etc. The response is, "I understand" or today someone told me "the process doesn't work that quickly". Needless to say my patience is wearing extremely thin.

Thank goodness for our case manager, she is wonderful and working hard to get this matter resolved. I didn't think I'd need her assistance that much, and even initially thought things would slow down since his discharge, but just in the past week I think we've talked at least 4 times. Nothing more I can do now, maybe tomorrow I'll get some good news. Heading to bed, exhausted already and its only Tuesday!!

Tree Time

We always get a real tree, and over the years we go back and forth between cutting them down and just buying a precut one. We figured that since it is going to be Chase's first Christmas we would bundle him up and go to a Christmas tree farm. The one I picked was a hike from our house, and the tree selection wasn't fantastic, but we still had fun.
I was more excited about the old tractor than he was, but you can see his whole outfit. He couldn't really move, but at least he was toasty.
They had a little petting zoo set up in the barn, and the miniature horse was pretty interested in Chase.


Daddy cutting down the tree, and mommy and Chase pretending to help:) We had a bum saw which was taking forever, so we borrowed someone else's to finish the job. It was pretty cold waiting for it to be cut down, but Chase didn't seem to mind. He fell asleep in the bjorn while we trekked all over the farm to find a good one.
The tree selection consisted of either gigantic trees or short fat ones. Neither of which would work for our house. So we ended up getting one that was a little shorter than we'd have liked-oh well.

Can You Believe It's Been 6 months?

Today Chase is 6 months old! He's grown so much, and I wanted to get some pics on his half-year birthday. Here he is before we got him bundled to go cut down our tree.

Doesn't he look like he's standing on his own? I know soon we won't want to see him standing in his crib, and we don't want to teach him bad habits, but he loves standing up:)

I was telling him what a big boy he was and he was squealing with joy. He squirms all over the crib and this is where he ended up before waking up this morning.

Just a little hungry before it was cereal time. He likes to try to get his fist in his mouth in addition to whatever he's eating.

Hmmm. messy goodness

Another Milestone

Chase had rice cereal for the first time last Sunday! I was hoping to post a pic, but I didn't get a chance to work on finding the pictures that are mysteriously missing from my camera. And before I knew it the week got away from me and I didn't get to share the news for four days. Sorry!!!

Fortunately, Jas did take a video which I'll work on posting soon. Chase did really well and seemed to enjoy himself. It was a messy endeavor, and now I know why we got so many freaking bibs!

FYI- I got pretty fired up about the pictures as I don't want to miss a second of his milestones, and many of you know I'm usually not without the camera within arms reach. I thought about posting a rant about technology and how this wouldn't have happened if I was using a good old-fashioned film camera, but after a few days I'm now over it:) After all, we wouldn't have this wonderful blog were it not for today's technology. I'm still determined to find the missing pictures somehow, and of course how-to websites will be necessary tools for assisting in the troubleshooting:)

Best of Friends

I hope when Chase gets older he stays close with his friends from growing up just like his daddy did! Some of these friendships even date as far back as elementary school. From NY to VA, to the shore house, the military, tattoos, and touring with rock bands, to a few marriages and now babies, they still remain the best of friends. You wouldn't know that sometimes the nine of them can only get together one or two times a year, because they fall back into their usual shenanigans so seamlessly! Chase couldn't ask for a better set of crazy, yet wonderful "uncles" to be a part of his life. Love all of you guys:)