January should be an adjective

The title says it all. January should be an adjective. The weather is January. Or a feeling? I’m feeling quite January-ish today. It happens every year. The Christmas tree, lights, music, and fun are over. School is back in session. The house feels bare without the school-goers and Christmas decorations.We keep getting insurance statements forecasting MORE bills for Amber. The weather is gray, cold, and bleak. It’s January outside and in.

Boohoo!
[Am I the only person who takes pictures of my kids crying? I think they are so cute when they’re sad! Then I comfort them, I promise]

Only two things help lift my January drearies: good conversation and cute pictures. Today my Mom and I set a new phone call record: 1 hour and 42 minutes! Part of me feels like I overindulged and should’ve done something more productive with that time, but most of me feels so happy and optimistic and GLAD that we got to talk that long. As a dedicated introvert, there is only a small handful of people that refresh me when we talk, and my mom is at the top of the list. The phone call was much-needed and quite rejuvenating. It did wonders to dispel my January-ness.

Cute pictures also help with the January mood.

For you far-flung family members who love my babies, I thought I’d post a long string of the latest Amberfaces. She turned two months old this week and that brought on a photo-taking spree (as if I need an excuse to take hundreds of pictures of her). Seriously, I started a separate folder in our January photo file, called Amberface. It has 193 pictures in it already! In my old age I doubt I’ll regret taking these pictures in their volumes, so I continue taking them. They make hard drives with terabytes of storage now, so I think I’m safe.

Amber had her first shots this week. It required extra snuggling, which I think is another way to keep the January drearies at bay. Squishy baby snuggles—add it to the Cheer-up list: good conversation, cute pictures, and squishy baby snuggles. Yes.

Those CHEEKS! Amber had her first ride (of many) in the double jogging stroller this week, while we walked Jay to school. I think I bundled her enough.

Bare baby! She’s so soft. She weighs 11 pounds 9 ounces and is right in the middle of average for her weight. Somehow she’s only in the 27th percentile for height though, little shorty. She started sleeping for 7-9 hours per night this week! We’re going on 3 nights in a row now. [I hope I didn’t just jinx it]

I love it when she gets so happy she squirms.

She lays in my lap a lot. My little heater.

Help!

A little comparison of Jay, Rose, and Amber at 2 months old.

Smile comparison

That’s me in the top left corner. We don’t really have many pictures of Jeff’s babyhood, and the few we do have don’t have accurate dates on them so…

Here’s baby Jeff at an unknown age.

I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day…

Lazy Sunday

This year we have switched to afternoon church at 1pm. Since having a small baby makes me far less of a morning person than I normally am, this is fine with me. However, time changes with church always take some getting used to. Mostly it feels like I spend all morning getting ready for church without actually getting ready because I’m constantly looking at the clock trying to figure out when to start getting ready so we aren’t pathetic and late when church starts so late in the day. Does that make any sense at all? It did in my head.

In spite of the constant twitch I developed checking the clock every ten minutes this morning, we were able to do plenty on our long Sunday morning. I kept taking pictures of it all because it was just such a luxuriantly lazy morning with cuteness all around.

We woke up this morning to a white world of almost an entire inch of snow. Jay and Rose bounded out into it right after breakfast and played, played, played.

I tiptoed out in my slippers and took a quick picture.

Of course hot chocolate was the next order of business.

They watched Jeff play a game of Ticket to Ride on the iPad…

…and things quickly degenerated into a wrestling match with a bit to much screaming for my liking.

We were visited by a princess. Amber liked that a lot. She looked and looked at those sparkles.

Jay looked at a camera AND did a real smile all at once! I can’t remember the last time that happened. Of course I was still in my ponytail-PJ phase of the day when it happened.

Jay wanted me to take some cool blurry pictures of him dancing.

Eventually, but still too early, we got all cleaned and dressed up for church:

My girls. The sisters.

This year Jay is in the CTR 5 class in Primary. All week in his prayers he said he was thankful that he gets to be in CTR 5.

Miss Rose is finally in Primary as a sunbeam this year. She was so excited to go to Primary with Jay. I think she’s the tallest sunbeam in the history of the church.

And of course there’s little Amber-girl, who is not quite ready for Primary yet.

*fistbite* That bow is a tad out of control, but I couldn’t resist. Glam girl.

The big brother: Jay looked and for-real-smiled AGAIN! Twice in one day! These pictures are true treasures.

Man I love these three. This picture is a miracle too, by the way.

A year of afternoon church is going to tempt me into taking a hundred Sunday morning pictures every week!

AMBER

Our sweet baby. Our expensive baby.

 

She’s the first baby we had without the magical medicaid medical coverage, and boy are we feeling it, right in the middle of our savings account. Actually, more like right in the bottom of our savings account.

 [all the insurance statements from my pregnancy and delivery]

We have a very good health insurance plan through Jeff’s employer, with great coverage. My individual deductible is $4100. We maxed that out in like the second week of my pregnancy, so we thought we were safe from any surprises. Right when we thought we had received all of the baby bills, however, WHAM they plunked another fat one in our mailbox yesterday. It turns out that once the baby is born, she counts as a separate person with a separate deductible, which started ticking away in the hospital.

It cost me, an adult, $4,000 just for hospital room and board when I had Amber. They charged an extra $3200 for a healthy baby to lay in my hospital bed with me for two days. WHAT? I am very grateful for insurance that paid for about 94% of these sky-high medical bills. It makes me feel lame for complaining about the 6% or so that we did have to pay. Thankfully we will squeak by and pay all the bills. Amber is completely worth it all and more, of course. 

The insurance statements were fascinating and eye-opening and intense and slightly humorous, all at once. For fun, I kept a spreadsheet with a running tally of each insurance statement with one column for what we paid and one column for what the insurance company paid:

Clearly, Premera paid FAR more than we did. But $5,576.84 is still a lot of money. Our savings account is crippled! Decimated! (word inspiration credit: Helen) Three years ago we bought a house (well, we paid a down payment on a house). Two years ago we bought a new central air unit. Last year we bought a baby. This year I think we’ll rehab our savings and not buy anything.

All these big expensive numbers made me think that Amber must literally be worth her weight in gold, so I did a little research…

A mathematical interlude, for fun:

Amber was 7 pounds 9 ounces when she was born. That’s 121 ounces. Out of curiosity I peeked at the current gold rates and amber (amber as in fossilized resin from prehistoric trees) prices online. Currently, gold is about $1,200 per ounce, and amber is about $425 per ounce.

$1200 x 121 oz =$145,200

$425 x 121 oz = $51,425

The total cost of bringing Amber into this world = $87,942.86.

So, technically speaking, Amber is worth more than her weight in amber, but less than her weight in gold. The funny thing about gold and amber prices, however, is that they vary greatly based on the quality and purity of the piece.

I’d say that the quality and purity of our sweet baby Amber make her priceless.