One Month Wrap Up

I can't believe it's already been a month since our cruise. I don't know why it took me so long and 3 entries to write about it haha. Of course so much has happened since we got back!

Unfortunately the combination of Adam being sick and being confined on a germy cruise boat caused Cora to get sick too. She's had little bouts of sickness before, but it's just been stomach related. This time it was an all out flu, complete with fever, coughing, and vomiting. It was so terrible! Cora is an incredibly happy baby but this sickness really took it out of her. She cried a lot too, I felt so bad. There were so many times when she'd cry and I would cry with her. She didn't want to play with her toys or do any fun sensory lessons. She just wanted to sleep a lot, cuddle with Mama, and zone out. We watched a lot of TV. I always feel bad if I let her watch too much tv, but she really didn't want to do much else.


My poor sick baby, refusing to smile
Initially when we went to the doctor her fever was mild and she was acting pretty happy, so they wanted her to just ride out her fever. Even though she was coughing and vomiting, they weren't concerned since her chest sounded clear and she didn't have any congestion at that point. Her vomiting was due to her gag reflex. That night though her fever shot up to 103 degrees, so we gave her tylenol and a tepid bath to help bring her temperature down. Her fever was so crazy. It definitely stayed with her for a few days, I think 5 days total! At one point it got up to 105 degrees! I felt very lucky to have my dad and sister to call for medical advice when I was very worried and couldn't wait for her doctor's office to open or wanted a second opinion. Luckily we never had to take her to the ER, even with her crazy high fever. Adam and I had some very sleepless nights though since she would cough in her sleep and end up vomiting. Even with a sheet saver under her head it would still sometimes get on to the sheets. We would have to get up at least once a night to change the sheets, but there were a couple nights when we had to do it more than once! Needless to say our washer and dryer were put into overdrive that week. I woke up even more during the night though to continually check her temperature with her hand and see how hot she was. She likes sleeping on her side, so her side exposed to the air would be fairly cool, but her side laying on the bed would be so hot. I would flip her and put a damp wash cloth on her to help cool her down. Finally at the end of the week her fever finally broke!


Making up for lost time and playing with all her toys!
While we were on the cruise she started reaching for us. It felt so great to actually be able to see when she wanted to be with us or held by us. She has also started to be cuddly with us! I love when I'm carrying her and she will just lay her head down on my shoulder or chest. She'll put her head on my chest too when she's being bashful. Sometimes she'll turn her head away from whoever she's being shy of, put her head down, and just smile. It's so cute, I love it! She will also sometimes put her arm over me when we're laying down and it really feels as if she's cuddling me!


Cuddling with Mom and cuddling with Dad!
She has also really started to show interest in walking! She can't crawl or scoot or anything yet though. She loves to stand with our help already and now she loves to walk with our help too. Pretty much any time she is cranky it can be remedied by letting her walk around the house. We try to get her to cruise on the couch, but she can't do it still. I can tell that she wants to crawl, but for some reason she won't. I've seen her kind of crawl backwards though! I guess it wasn't so much crawling as it was her scooting herself backwards on her tummy. I've also seen her turn herself while she's sitting to face another direction, so I know she has it in her! My mom said that I skipped the crawl phase and that I went straight to walking at about 9 months, so maybe that's what will happen to her too!


One of Cora's first walks around the house
Cora has really started to appreciate her reflection in the mirror. We have played in front of the mirror before, but now every time we put her in front of a mirror she goes to kiss her reflection. It's so cute! And I guess she's not really kissing it since she doesn't know how, but that's the best way for me to describe it haha. She's just so happy to see herself, or I suppose her adorable baby friend that does all the same things she does. It's so weird though because she doesn't react the same way when she sees herself on the phone. She is still happy to see herself most times but she never tries to kiss herself.


A couple of examples of Cora kissing Cora
She has also started to notice the art work around our house! Adam's mom, Marianne, is an artist and we have a nice series of seasonal paintings hanging in our living room. One day she started smiling and squealing when she saw one of them. She wanted to go up to it and see it up close and feel it. She still smiles a lot and wants to interact with it when it catches her eye. Marianne painted a cute elephant painting for Cora's nursery and Cora loves it too! It's so funny to think that she is just now noticing something that's been there for her whole life ;)



Another fun thing she's started to do is pulling things out of their bins or boxes. Now she goes through her little toy bins and pulls out whatever she wants. I think that led to what I feel like is probably a kid rite of passage: pulling DVD's off the shelf. Always a fun activity!


Cora in action!



And the end result!
The biggest development for Cora is that her teeth have started to come in! We noticed both her little bottom teeth towards the end of July. For the most part she has been dealing with them very well! There was only one night where they were really bothering her. I definitely cried with her! She was crying like I had never heard before, it was so terrible. I felt so bad for her. It was already late at night and we didn't have anything to remedy her pain. She was also on a nursing strike since it hurt for her to suck. I felt so bad because I could tell she wanted to nurse to eat and for comfort but she couldn't. She would get up to me, eager to nurse, but as soon as she tried she would start wailing in pain. I ended up having to pump. The upside of that night though was that we got her to drink milk from a sippy cup! It felt like such a triumph since she refused to drink milk from a bottle and has always nursed on me. Once she drank the milk from the sippy cup she fell asleep. I was so relieved that she was at peace again! Luckily her nursing strike ended after 20 hours and it was back to normal. I am happy I was able to pump a little supply though for next time!


Check out those little chompers!
I have been doing some more simple sensory/exploratory play with Cora. In this last month we've done cornstarch and water (so messy!), warm water with frozen shaped baby food and ice (also so messy!), rice with hidden objects, and a simple ribbon pull from an empty wipes box. I'm planning on picking up a box of fun pasta shapes for her next. Any other suggestions on some fun sensory play for her? I think I have a ton of things on Pinterest I want to try, but it's always fun to hear about other babies' successes.


So messy with her cornstarch!


Frozen star shaped baby food in water. Cora decided to try out some frozen carrots, and was not pleased!


Someone decided to make a mess with her rice and hidden objects! Oh well, at least she was able to keep exploring!

Cora has been fortunate enough this last month to have some great quality time with her cousins! Adam's twin brother, Andrew, has three children: Caylin, Ellie, and Addyson. Addyson is less than 4 months younger than Cora! We hope that they grow up to be close to each other. Addyson had her baptism at the end of last month and just last Sunday we had a big Phelps family get together where Cora got to play with Caylin and Ellie. It was so sweet to see Caylin trying to play and share with Cora! She was so excited to help her walk around. Ellie, who is turning 3 this December, was so sweet with Cora too. She asked me if she could pet her, it was cute. I really loved seeing them all interact with each other! I really hope they grow up having fun together.


Cora trying to snatch Addyson's headband after her baptism.


Cora getting help from Caylin to walk around


Ellie getting ready to pet Cora while Cora plays with her and Caylin's flip flops
As for me, I finally reached my pre-pregnancy weight! Before I got pregnant I was 132 pounds. As of yesterday's weigh-in, I am 131.5 pounds! Woo hoo! I still have a ways to go before I get to my desired weight though, but who knows if I will ever get there haha. I think my desired goal is 120, but I will probably be ecstatic if I get into the 120's at all. I really need to start exercising again, which I plan on finally doing starting next week! We will see if I really commit though. I am really thankful that breastfeeding has helped tremendously with my weight loss. I am certainly not dieting. I'm not going crazy with food, but I pretty much eat what I want. And I have definitely been eating Trader Joe's mini peanut butter cups as if I can never get them again. Don't get me wrong though, just because I am less than my pre pregnancy weight does not mean I look the same! I still have my baby pouch I need to get rid of. I can wear all my pre-pregnancy pants, but it is pretty much just muffin top city. Unless I kick myself into high gear with working out, I think my days of low rise pants may be no more! I finally understand why mom jeans are so darn high!

Cora's Big Adventures - Part 3

The day after Skagway was just a day at sea. We all got to sleep in and just be leisurely about our day. At this point in the trip, Adam had been sick for days already. It had started out as what he thought was just allergies but then quickly turned into the flu complete with fever and cough. I kept trying to tell him to rest throughout the week but he wouldn't have any of it. Going to Alaska has always been one of his biggest dreams so he didn't want to waste any of it recuperating in bed. I was happy when we finally got our day at sea so he could take it easy!


Cora and I booked it to my parents' cabin as soon as we woke up so we could let Adam rest!
The day was mostly uneventful for Cora and me. I think the rest of my family had fun going around the boat, but really besides eating I think Cora and I hung out in our cabin for most of the day! I think all our being out and about during the previous days really tired Cora. We were a little more active that evening though. For dinner my family decided to try out the Brazilian steakhouse. It was pretty terrible. The service, the meats, everything was just not good! We were most excited about getting some picanha (which is usually the signature meat at Brazilian steakhouses, so crispy and flavorful!), but even that was not good. Probably the best part of the meal was dessert! I think we will probably stick to the great Brazilian steakhouses available here in DFW from now on!


At least Cora found something tasty to munch on!
After dinner we went to the Spinnaker Lounge to watch my little sister do karaoke with the cruise band. It was fun to be up there and to see her perform! Cora of course got tired and cranky though so we went back to our cabin. Luckily we got to see Khloe perform twice. This night was actually the first night we weren't in our cabin during turn down service so we had a towel animal waiting for us! Our room steward made a little monkey hanging from the ceiling. Cora was so interested in it! We held her up to it so she could touch it. She ended up pulling on it and its head fell off haha.


Moments before the monkey decapitation

Our final stop on the cruise was in Victoria, Canada. I think all of us were actually not that excited for this stop, thinking it would be a boring little town. It was actually a really great place! The downtown area was so nice and everything on the water front was so picturesque. In the end we all wished we had more time to explore the city. While we were there though we just took a walk to downtown and had some dinner at a Tapas restaurant. Here are some great pictures Adam took while we were there of some houseboats, what I'm assuming is their capitol building, and a fancy hotel on the water front.




The weather was absolutely beautiful that day and we didn't even need our coats. The sun was out and the temperature was perfect. Cora was good and rode in her stroller on our walk to downtown. It is funny, but Victoria was actually the only place on her whole trip where Cora didn't get a single compliment haha. Ah well, perhaps the standards of cuteness in Victoria is higher ;)


Cora enjoying her stroll
That night not only gave us a big blast out that night, but she also vomited! I started to get nervous that she was getting sick since Adam had been sick the whole trip and we were in such close quarters. We had to get new sheets from the room steward after she had her blast out. After she vomited we didn't want to call the steward again so we ended up removing the sheet from the bed and putting towels down. I don't know why we just didn't call the steward haha. We had already put our luggage out for easy debarkation the next day so we had to just strip Cora down to her diaper for the night. Cora was very upset that night and I was worried for her. I was happy though knowing we were on the boat with several doctors in our group that could help if necessary, and I was happy knowing we were getting off that boat the next day! Luckily the next morning Cora was back to her usual happy self!



Cora's last morning with my parents!
Kharmene, Jonathan, and Khloe didn't have flights out until later so we said our goodbyes to them on the boat and headed to the airport with my parents, Khristina, and Khristian. We got to have one last lunch with them in the airport before we had to say goodbye to them as well.

Cora did pretty well on our flight back to Dallas. Luckily no big blast outs this time! She got a little cranky and cried a little bit here and there, but nothing that we weren't able to handle. At one point she woke up from her nap and started crying immediately. She saw a pack of our Kleenexes and as soon as she put it in her mouth she fell asleep! At the end of the flight the lady behind us told Cora that she was such a good baby, so it was good to hear that Cora did a good job!


Ha ha
Unfortunately, Adam didn't do as well on the flight. He was still sick and congested, and his ear drum popped! I felt terrible because I was so sleepy that I wasn't even awake to be there for him while he was in pain. Although it did hurt him, he said he felt a lot better after it popped!

Finally in my next entry I can tell everyone what we've been up to since the cruise! Lots has happened since then since it's been almost a month already, so it'll be a full entry! Hopefully I can publish it this week if I have time!

P.S. Today is Cora's 8 month mark!


Happy 2/3rd birthday to Cora!

Cora's Big Adventures - Part 2

I forgot to mention in my last post how big of a hit Cora was on the cruise boat. She was such a little celebrity! Granted, there were a lot of Filipino employees on the boat, so they were probably a little biased since they knew we were Filipino too. But there were still lots of non-Filipino employees and cruisers alike that always cooed over Cora. The few times Adam and I left Cora with my parents we would get stopped and asked where the baby was. Maybe they were just concerned for her well being haha. Towards the end of the trip though, employees who had not seen her before would come up to us and say, "Is this the one? This is the one!" So I guess the other employees had been telling their friends about her. Also, one of the mornings I went to breakfast with my sister, Khristina, and we had to sit in the overflow area. Adam came up later with Cora but couldn't find us. As he was getting ready to leave the employees at the entrance stopped him and told him they knew I had to still be at breakfast because they hadn't seen me leave yet, so they escorted him around the area until they found us! It was just funny how many people knew who we were all because of cute little Cora!

Day 4 of the cruise was a stop in Juneau. We didn't purchase an excursion through the cruise and decided to go over to Mendenhall Glacier. There are buses at the port that will take you $8 per person each way, so that was a huge savings compared to $80 per person going through a cruise excursion! I really wish I could put into words how breathtaking this glacier is. I am definitely not a nature girl, but Alaska really took my breath away. Of course we took tons of pictures, but really even the pictures don't do it justice.


Mendenhall Glacier
Like I said, this picture does not do it justice. It was really quite gorgeous. My family broke up into two groups: one group that hiked Nuggets Falls trail to get to the waterfall and one group that stayed behind at the visitor center. It was pretty cold, so I stuck at the visitor center with Cora, Khristina, my mom, and my dad. It was pretty neat at the visitor center though. We got to learn about the glacier and the wildlife in the area. Luckily none of us saw any bears while we were there, but apparently it is not a rare sighting! They had a mini-museum in the center and showed a movie, although we did not go watch since I was afraid Cora would become disruptive.


Cora checking out a black bear pelt in the visitor center
On our elevator ride up to the visitor center, there was an elderly couple cooing over Cora in her little rain jacket. I noticed the man was wearing an SIU jacket so I mentioned that I graduated from there. I am always tickled to find people from SIU since it's not very well known. It turns out that they were actually originally from southern Illinois, and they even knew about little Hardin County! They said they used to love to eat at the E'Town River Restaurant. They ended up leaving southern Illinois though to move to Waco, Texas to be closer to their grandchildren. Such a small world!

While we were at the visitor center, Adam, Khloe, Khristian, Kharmene, and her husband, Jonathan, did the hike to Nugget Falls. I think they got pretty close up to the glacier and the waterfall! Khristian, Kharmene, and Jonathan had waterproof shoes so they were able to cross the water to get to the sand bar and even closer to the waterfall. In retrospect I do wish I had gone with them, but my boots weren't really made for hiking, I was cold, and I knew I had to stay back with Cora. Oh well, at least everyone that did go got some great pictures!



We had to book it back to the cruise ship pretty quickly since our ship was scheduled to leave at 1:30. We had a great bus driver on the way to the Mendenhall though so we got to learn a little bit about Juneau with some humor mixed in. The area we were in by the boat was really tourist-y so I don't think we missed too much by spending all our time at the glacier. Cora was getting pretty cold and cranky too so it was time to get back on the boat!


That evening the boat cruised past Sawyer Glacier. We took advantage of our parents' cabin and hung out in there instead of going to the Lido deck to view the glacier. The guys went up to the top deck for a little bit but eventually we all just hung out together. It was a little nerve wracking seeing all the little icebergs in the water as we were cruising. They were all pretty tiny but I think we all were kind of thinking, "But WHAT IF one is just big enough and we all go down?!" Obviously there were no issues with any little icebergs. I actually didn't see the glacier! I guess I was too busy hanging out. I did get to see a seal though!


Sawyer Glacier


An obviously very candid shot of all of us hanging out in Mom and Dad's cabin!


The seal!!! So cute just hanging out on a little iceberg!

The next day we had a stop in Skagway, Alaska. We booked an all day excursion through the cruise line that took a bus up through the Yukon into Canada and then the White Pass Railway back to Skagway. It was so exciting to go to Canada! I've always wanted to go since I was a young teen. I will admit that I did sleep a bit on the bus ride haha. The scenery was beautiful, but put me in a moving vehicle and I am out almost instantly!


In the Yukon!
Our first stop was at a resort called Caribou Crossing. It included a lunch and admission to their museum and petting zoo. They had horses, goats, little miniature horses, a donkey, and tons of dogs! They breed sled dogs there so we saw a bunch of athletic dogs. They had goats up on a bridge that knew how to pull up a can if you put some feed in it. At one point the donkey was just walking around freely. It was weird haha, but fun. I was hoping Cora would get excited over all the dogs since she was so happy to see Adam's parents' dog Angus, but she was pretty subdued about it. I think the dogs were everyone else's favorite part of the stop though haha.


The goats on the bridge!


Cora trying on hats in the museum gift shop.
We had a short stop after that in Carcross. It was a very small town. I didn't get off the bus for some reason, I think maybe Cora nursed, but she's actually in pictures in the town, so I'm not sure! I guess my pregnancy brain is still alive and well! Anyway, the town had a little beach area with a gorgeous mountain back drop. We wouldn't have seen it if the bus hadn't taken the short drive around the town!


After that was the White Pass Railway back into Skagway. We got to see even more beautiful scenery. If you've never heard of this railway, it is a narrow gauge railway that was built in 1898-1900. It travels on the edge of the mountains so it is kind of scary if you are afraid of heights! My poor dad was terrified, but insisted on staying on the scenery side of the train instead of the mountain side. What a brave guy ;)


A shot of the train in front of us! Click on the picture if you want to zoom in.


Cora with my parents on the train, with me photo bombing in the back.
Once the train got back to Skagway we had to go back to the boat immediately to make sure we got on before it left. We were all sad that we didn't have time to explore downtown Skagway! We got to see it on our bus ride back to the boat and it looked so cute. I wish we would have been able to check it out.

This entry is getting long so I think I'll stop here! I still have two more days of the cruise to document. I promise the next entry will be more Cora-centric :) Until then, here's one of the pictures my sister Khristina took of the sunset on the boat, with no filter applied!