The Unexpected Christmas Gift

Well we definitely got an unexpected Christmas gift this year. We got a nephew.

It all started on Christmas Eve when we went to my brother-in-law's house for Christmas in Kearney. We did the whole eating thing and opening gifts. After everyone had left except me and Dave, we watched some movies together. I think we got done watching movies around 11:30 that night, and when everyone started getting ready for bed, my sister-in-law started acting a little odd. Well Dave and I crawl into bed and my brother-in-law says they are going to the hospital and we find out her water broke. This was very unexpected since the original due date was January 20th and they were going to have their C-Section on the 12th. Needless to say they weren't ready. I think they were really glad that we were there, since my sister-in-law's water never broke with her first child. We were able to reasure them that everything would be fine and that we went through this with Lexie. We followed them to the hospital and around 3am my brother-in-law came in to tell us that everything was fine and then we all decided to go home and let the baby and my sister-in-law get some rest.

Since they weren't quite ready I set myself to work to start getting some of the baby clothing washed and ready for them. I got most of the clothing washed the next morning and we took a bag of baby clothes to the hospital the next day. I always wish I could have done more and that I didn't have to work all weekend, maybe I could have helped out more.

Today we go back to Kearney to see my nephew and let Lexie stay with my in-laws for awhile since my mother-in-law has Christmas break. I'm pretty excited to see the nephew again he is so cute.

Landon Pete
Born: December 25th, 2008 at 1:38am
Weight: 6lbs 3oz
Length: 20in

Topic of Conversation..Babies

How my husband randomly brought up the topic of having children is beyond me, but he did. A little bit a background here, before I talk about the conversation. Before we decided to move to my hometown, we had planned to either try and have another child around the time that Lexie was between 3 and 4. I wanted to make sure she was out of diapers. And our side plan in case we didn't get a boy the second time around was to have one more, but the 2nd and 3rd would be a bit closer together. Of course planning for children isn't easy, and we sure didn't 'plan' to have Lexie, we just didn't prevent it from happening.

Now since we have moved our plans have changed. When we first moved here we were just going to push the next baby to happen when Lexie is around 4. Unfortunately I wasn't lucky enough to find a job here within my career field. As some may know I have now started to pursue a degree in Registered Nursing, and at this point if thing happen fast enough the soonest I could start my actually nursing classes is in Fall of 2010, which would push my graduation to Spring of 2012. We had hoped that we could get in early, so I could graduate in Spring of 2011. Either way Lexie would be 5 or 6 before we could have number 2.

On to the conversation, we are driving home from Dave's work. I had my test on the side of town he works on so it was pointless to drive home and them drive right back to the opposite side of town again. But as we were driving home he just says out of the blue, 'We could just have the one child, I'm not sure I could go through this again.' He means the terrible 2's. They truely are a bit rough, but not every child will be the same, especially if we have a girl. Then he shocks me and says 'Why don't we just have 3 so at least 2 are closer in age.' I think I have always like the idea of 3, though sometimes the middle child seems to get the short end of the stick. To me I just don't want one child. But it also really pains me that my 1st and 2nd child could potentially be 6 years apart. I also desparately want a boy, and I guess I will know for sure how I feel once my nephew comes into the world.

I guess I just thought I would share, since I never thought these words would come out of my husbands mouth.

Positives and Negatives of the Weekend

As I had mentioned in my previous post I was to take the ACT on Saturday. Well needless to say it was a fiasco. I was horribly stupid and thought that my phone is on silent, since it usually is on silent. I usually forget to turn the ringer on, not the other way around. Any way I got through all of the English, Math and half the Reading when my dad called my phone. He thought I had called to have him pick me up, when in reality I had called him the night before. So as you can guess my phone rang during the middle of the Reading test and I got kicked out of the ACT. Not one of my finer moments. Alas the money spent on the ACT wasn't a total waste. Even though my test is void, I can retake in February and not have to pay again. Now since
February is after school starts, I will be taking the Compass test for free tomorrow morning and I get my results right away.

The good part of the weekend was the baby shower I hosted for my sister-in-law, my brother-in-law's wife. She will be having a C-Section the same day I start classes, on January 12th. They will be having a baby boy that they plan to call Landon. Any way the shower was wonderful and I got lots of comments. I wish I could have done more, but with working part-time, money is on the short end. We played 5 games, Nursery Rhyme Jeopardy, Baby Word Scramble, Guess the Baby Food, Old Wives' Tale Trivia and a game where you write a typical first time mom question, then pass your card on and then you write your questions answer on the new card you have. That probably doesn't clarify it, but it was pretty funny. I also had each person right a special note to my sister-in-law saying something special about her and the coming bundle of joy. Here is a picture from the shower.

The Life and Times of a Blackberry and other things..

It seems like so much has happened since I got my job offer last week. So far I have worked 3 days. It is definitely what I thought it would be, but it's also not what I thought it would be. There are so many types of geriatric care facilities and everyone is different. I am only in assisted living and it's nothing like a nursing home or other similar places. We do limited ADL care, since they have to be able to care for them selves a certain amount in order to just be in assisted living. Though we don't do as much as a nursing home they still keep us busy that's for sure.

I have been exhasted after work each night. And I'm glad I got to switch to evenings instead of nights but I'm used to going to bed at 10, and sometimes earlier than that. Now I work till 11. But it's good to just be able to not have to learn to stay up all night and try to go to school full time. The only thing that isn't so good about working nights is that I really miss my baby. When I work nights the only time I see her is in the morning when I am getting her ready for school.

In other news I have the ACT on saturday and after the ACT I am hosting a baby shower for my sister-in-law(my brother-in-laws) wife. I'm nervous and excited at the same time. I've only done one other shower before and I knew everyone at the shower, this time it will be a bit different.

I guess I should get to the blackberry. Well this weekend my mom had a Mary Kay open house, and so it was just us gals at home. Well near the end of the party Lexie gets a hold of my blackberry and sticks it in a cup of tea. So my blackberry was toast. It couldn't be saved, we tried. Yesterday I got my replacement from insurance, so I'm really glad that my husband got the insurance when it was finially available for the blackberrys.

Things Are Looking Up

I finally have a job. I actually had an offer before Thanksgiving but I didn't get that good feeling from the place. Also I didn't think I would be able to do nights. I will be working nights at this new place, part time but I will be trained for other shifts and may get some extra hours working those too. The administrator really impressed me and it seems like it is a great place to work. So I go in tomorrow at 9am, now I just need to go and buy some scrubs.

A Bit of Background

I decided since not everyone knows what has been going on lately in the lives of the Coakley's, I would give a little background so other posts actually make sense.

My name is Melanie and I am currently the ripe old age of 28. I graduated from Doane College in 2002 with a degree in Information Systems and a minor in English. My first job out of college was at a company called ITI and we just won't go there. I was only at ITI until December of 2002, during that same time I lost my grandmother, which I still have problems with even today. So let's just say it was a very bad holiday that year.

In January of 2003, I started work at a wonderful Christian based company called FACTS as a Higher Ed Technical Support Specialist. I worked at FACTS up until April of this year. I was really sad to leave but some things happened and we ended up moving back to my hometown.

Since then it seems to be an uphill battle finding a job. At first I tried to find jobs in my field and they are very few and far between around here. I was so close to getting a job with a company similar to FACTS but my confidence was lacking a bit in my second interview. After not finding anything for about 4 months, I decided a career change may be in order.

So in September I decided that Nursing might be something I would like to try. The thing my old job lacked was working with customers hands on, and I really like getting in there with people. And so since my hometown has a community college with a good nursing reputation, I decided to go for it. I applied to the college and to the nursing program. They have lots of requirements for the program. In a couple of weeks I get to take the ACT, not looking forward to that since I've been out of high school for 10 years. I also just completed a class to become a Certified Nursing Assitant. A couple weeks ago I registered for some general education classes, I only had 2 classes transfer from Doane. I will be taking Elements of Chemistry, Intro to Sociology, Developmental Psychology and Nutrition.

Now I guess it's time to talk about Dave, not that he is very interesting. Dave is my husband of about 4 1/2 years, we were married on August 7, 2004. We have be together for almost 7 years. It's a bit funny how we met. We met in college obviously if you do the math, but we actually had an english class together. The class was Romantic Literature. Any way I was taking the class for my minor and he was majoring in english.

In May 2006 he finally graduated from Doane College with a degree in English with minors in Psychology and Sociology. After graduating he had a pretty hard time finding what I call a 'real' job, basically something that requires a degree. Any way, earlier this year he had the opportunity to possibly start a restaurant in my home town. He was really excited, and since some other things weren't working out where we were, we decided to move. While the beginnings were still getting worked out, he got a job at the local country club. And what guy could pass up free golf once a week, not mine that's for sure. As we got to around July the whole restaurant thing finally fell through. We thought the second backer really wanted to do it, but we never heard from them again. So now he just continues working at the country club.

On May 12, 2006 we had a beautiful baby girl named Alexandria Taylor, also known as Lexie. My pregnancy definitely wasn't something to brag about, it was bad enough that I'm scared to be pregnant again. I was sick all 9 months, and even ended up in the hospital for severe dehydration. I tried just about anything to stop being sick and nothing helped. The last 2 months weren't nearly as bad, but I ended up having pretty bad acid reflux, since I got sick so much for so long.

Now the delivery on the other hand was probably something more braggable, is that even a word. Start to finish it was only 4 hours, from my water breaking to Lexie being born. I never went through the whole contractions before my water broke. There were the typical braxton hicks, but those weren't anything and half the time I didn't even know I was having them. It is actually kind of funny, a co-worker who was also pregnant at the time dropped me off at home and my water broke not 10 minutes later. She was glad it didn't happen in her car.

So here we are 2 1/2 years later, and I sometimes wish I could skip this stage. There are some good things about it though. But any way, since we moved back to my home town I have kind of been a stay-at-home mom, which I am definitely not cut out for. So needless to say her recent reentrance into daycare has been less than stellar. We even got asked by our first daycare in town to find a new one because they think that she just wasn't happy, and that very well could be. Today she started a new daycare, so we will see how it goes. I sure do love my baby now matter how terrible she can be, she gives the best kisses and hugs around.

Well I think that's enough for now since it will take awhile to read this novel.

Help Me Choose a Picture to put in our Christmas Cards

Her are some photos of Lexie that we took today but I need help picking one.

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A New Beginning

This isn't my first time blogging, and obviously isn't my last. I thought a change of pace would be nice. I have blogged off and on through another site for about 5 years. So I guess I'd like to put some of that stuff behind me as our family has been going through so much and everyday seems like an adventure.