Sleeping Through the Night

Filed Under Breastfeeding, Milestones, Sleep, Toys | 4 Comments

I just realized I never posted the results of our crazy sleep training experiment. The reason I probably never posted? There was nothing to complain about. I am way too good about whining on my blog but not so good about posting normal blah kind of things.

It has been almost two weeks now, that Bailey has been sleeping through the night. The first night was a Friday. She went down like normal around 8:30 pm. I tried to give her that supplemental bottle at bedtime and make sure she was really full so that I would KNOW it wasn’t hunger when she woke up crying. The ped said that she didn’t physically need to eat during the night anymore. She woke up around 2:30 or 3, like normal. She cried louder when I didn’t go running in there. So I went in after like 10 minutes and just patted her and shushed at her. She wasn’t a big fan of that and yelled louder. About ten or fifteen minutes after that, it was Jonathon’s turn only he just stepped into her room and talked to her from near the doorway, I think. She yelled for about a half hour or so after that, and then fell asleep and slept until 8:30 a.m.

The next night, she woke up around the same time and fussed for about ten minutes. That is what she did for the next few nights, only at random different times and only for two or three minutes each time. Since then, I think she has only woken up during the night once in the past week. She doesn’t really cry- like mad cry- during the night when she wakes up. It’s more like she’s rolling around and fussing trying to get herself comfy again. I love that she can get herself back to sleep.

What’s it like getting a full, uninterrupted night’s sleep? I kind of take it for granted again. It already seems like so long ago that I was up four times a night. Sometimes I think I miss it. The other night before I went to bed, I went in her room and picked her up and held her in the rocking chair forever while she slept. It’s just about the only time I can get some serious snuggles from her now that she is so busy The only thing that sucks now, is that my boobs leak in the morning. I have been trying to pump before I go to bed around midnight, but the pump just doesn’t get ANYTHING anymore. My body never responded super well to pumping, so I think now that I am doing it only once every day or two it is even worse. I get like a half ounce, total, after about fifteen minutes. So most nights now I don’t even bother.

Bailey is now going to bed between 8 and 9 pm and waking up between 8 and 8:45 a.m. Except for this morning, she woke up at 7:30 screaming. I think that Jonathon went in her room to empty the diaper pail before he left for work, because today was trash day. I am going to question him about that when he gets home tonight. He is really obsessive about “collecting” all the trash on Thursday mornings. But he needs to stay out of her room, especially within the half hour or hour before she gets up, because she’s in a really light stage of sleep. I needed those extra few minutes I brought her into my bed and nursed her back to sleep for maybe a half hour.

Oooh, then my mom and I went to the toystore and I bought Bailey this for Christmas:

Wordless Wednesday- Funny Baby

Filed Under Seven Months, Wordless Wednesday | 4 Comments

Ready, Set, Bumbo III Preview

Filed Under Video | Leave a Comment

This one looks like it will be great as well. If you haven’t seen the other Ready Set Bumbo videos, check them out on YouTube.

Housekeeping

Filed Under Blogging, Input Needed | 3 Comments

‘Scuse me while I try to find a new template I like. I want to go with something Christmassy. If you use Blogger, what templates do you use? What have you found are the easiest? And do you lose all your customizations every time you change or is there a way around that?

Anyway, I couldn’t deal with the Fall orange one anymore. So we are in girly mode until I find a suitable holiday theme.

Christmas Photo Bloopers

Filed Under Posing for Pictures, Seven Months | 5 Comments

Last night, we had such a horrible time trying to take Christmas pictures of Bailey that I thought I would share the pics just so everyone else could laugh too. It started out bad and just got worse and worse. I thought it would be cute to get a few naked booty/Santa hat pictures but that didn’t work out so well either. Then at the end, we tried to take some family pictures. Between my three chins and Bailey’s tongue, none of those are going to work. Boo.

Hello, blogland

Filed Under Complaining, Seven Months | 6 Comments

I just wanted to pop in and say hi. I have been kind of blah lately… not sure why. This weekend has been rather uneventful since Thanksgiving. Hung out with my parents and Jonathon some more, and went to church. Tried to take cute Christmas pics of Bailey today and failed miserably. Went to meet some friends at Starbucks, we were running late, paid $8 for drinks for the two of us, and everyone left soon after we got there. Now I am listing some stuff on Craigslist and just took a quick break from that. Do you think women’s lingerie has a good resale value? LOL

Oh, and the bill from Jonathon’s recent doctor stuff came and we owe $450. Merry Christmas. I tore it in half and figure if they want the money, they will send me a bill again next month. And that’s SO not like me, but I’m sick of these bills. If only I was poor and didn’t bother to have health insurance. Those guys who work the system, they’ve got it made.

Anyway, I couldn’t leave you without any new Bailey pictures

Chatterbox

Filed Under Milestones, Talking | 1 Comment

Today as Bailey sat in her Bumbo, she began pounding the tray and yelling, “Da da da da da da da!” It was while Jonathon was getting her dinner ready, so we are pretending she was yelling at him.

This is the first time she has really done much of a consonant sound/repetitive babbling type thing. Until know, her talking has sounded more like “Glooo big floshbbbbbb fliggle mmmm buggvvvppt” and she says, “Nya nya nya nya” from time to time.

We got it on video, so once I get Jonathon to do all the downloading kind of stuff with it, I will post a video.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Filed Under Family, Holidays, Seven Months | 3 Comments

Hope everyone has enjoyed their Thanksgiving and eaten lots of turkey. We had ham… it was really good! It was just us, my parents, and my grandparents. We don’t really have many aunts/uncles/cousins etc in town, so I am used to small family get-togethers. I always thought it sounded fun to have like thirty people over. Okay, well to someone else’s house, anyway

We had a great day and lots of laughs. I ended up with tons of pictures, so I wanted to share some.

Someone brought this fake bug to dinner and everyone kept trying to scare each other with it. I guess at some point Jonathon thought it would be funny to put it on Bailey’s tray and take a picture.



Attempting to get some pictures in her Thanksgiving outfit, but she wasn’t cooperating very much today. There was a lot going on, she had a snotty nose, and she just wasn’t in the mood for modeling.


I want these shoes OFF, Mom!


Daddy, you’re so funny


Bailey kept getting bread stuck in her snot… gross, I know, but it was worth a picture.

She is getting to be a pretty fast crawler now. My parents put a baby gate up in front of the stairs today. We seriously need to go to BRU and buy a gate. They loaned us theirs to use at our house in the meantime.


Bailey loves doggies. She wanted to follow Koby everywhere and pet him… here they are having a little supervised introduction




Hanging out with Grampa


Bailey is starting to truly enjoy looking at her books. She can turn the pages herself now. Not sure why she has a diaper on her head, though.

Hairbows and Wreaths

Filed Under Crafts | 1 Comment

I have gotten into the swing of making hairbows for Bailey to match her various outfits. I made her a cute kind of sparkly orange one for tomorrow to go with her Thanksgiving outfit. I will have to make sure to get a picture of it, and to take some pics of the other ones I have made as well. I got some great instructions at this Girly Things site.

Another thing I would like to do is buy some wholesale flowers and make more wreaths. I have them for every season for my door- it’s something my mom got me started on a few years ago- but I have considered making them and selling them. Here is the one that she made for my door when Bailey was born:

The Dutchess of… Virginia

Filed Under Food, Friends, Seven Months | 3 Comments

My friend Sarah came into town for Thanksgiving, and got to visit us in St. Louis for a while before heading to her parents house a little south of here. We went to Red Robin for lunch. If you haven’t had their campfire sauce on your fries, you have to try it. It’s the main reason I go there. Well, that and the fact that I am in love with their burgers and fries!


Hanging out at home later that evening…

It was so good to see her. I wish we got to hang out more than twice a year. I have been trying to convince her to leave the boonies of Virginia and move back to St. Louis. (Not that St. Louis is like this huge glamorous city, but the place where she lives is soooo backwards it’s just ridiculous).

Then this morning, Bailey decided to crawl under the coffee table and explore. Oh, she can now go from laying/crawling back to sitting, so she practices that skill over and over. Here she is, sitting and playing under the coffee table. Please don’t mind the drips on it. I know I need to clean.


I thought this was funny. She moved right as I took the picture

You Rock

Filed Under Blogging | 2 Comments

Thanks to Girl, who gave me this award:

I am now passing it along to some of my favorite mommy bloggers. If you have a minute, go check them out. They provide some of my most entertaining reading material.

Mutha, a great friend IRL and an awesome blogger and internet video host/producer extraordinare- Word To Your Mutha

eipwek, we don’t always see eye to eye on parenting philosophies but I love her, and her daughter is just a few days younger than Bailey- Making a Person

Kelli, my friend IRL, a fairly new blogger, and mom to cute little Elle- Kellogues

Carrie, whose daughter is SO cute and just days apart from Bailey- Life In the Soupbowl

Tiffany, because I love to look at the pics of her gorgeous girl Prayse- Clear Epic

Tubeless, who just adopted her long-awaited baby girl Julia, and who I hope to meet up with sometime soon- Tubeless in STL

Christmas Photos

Filed Under Professional Pictures | 3 Comments

Today I took Bailey to Penneys to have her pics done to send out in our Christmas cards. For the first time, I wasn’t thrilled with our experience there. Our favorite lady, Miss Rita, wasn’t there today. I had to make the appointment so stinkin far in advance because of the holidays. Normally I just call on Monday and do the “Hey, what days are you working this week?” thing with her, and we set up an appointment.

It was SO busy today. We were the second appointment of the day, and they were rushed. Our photographer was nice, but she didn’t really do a great job getting Bailey to smile. If you know Bailey, you know that just about anything makes her smile. So I don’t really know what the problem was there. Also she only took like four shots in front of the Christmas tree. The rest have a black background.

We ended up ordering just a package with one pose. They are on a black background. She looks adorable. But, it wasn’t what I was expecting. We aren’t going to be putting up our Christmas tree this year, because it goes in our living room and she is officially crawling now. Today she took off across the floor and hasn’t stopped. (Kelli, if you are reading this, I am lying. She’s not crawling at all. She doesn’t need to move up to the next room in the nursery). I am afraid that she would pull our entire tree over on herself. Or all of the GLASS and mirrored and glittered ornaments that I so thoughtlessly redecorated with two years ago.

I know, we should teach her to leave things alone. However, I also like to leave my child alone in a room and be able to go pee by myself. Or check my email. Everything that can really hurt her is out of the way. The other stuff, she will learn not to get into. So that was a really long way of saying, no tree this year. My mom offered to let us come over this weekend and take family pictures in front of their tree for our Christmas cards. I think that’s what we are going to do. I wish I had diamond rings big enough to twinkle in the pictures.

Jonathon told me I could probably upgrade my rings for our five year anniversary. Two years away. Are you sentimental about your rings, or would you trade them? I think I am going to trade in my engagement ring and keep the wedding band. Wow, off topic.

If you made it this far, you deserve a cookie for reading my random train of thoughts today.

Funny Elf

Filed Under Random | 1 Comment

Click here to see our funny little elf:

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=9544623243

(This idea was stolen from Soupy)

I can get my own toys now, Mom!

Filed Under Nursery, Seven Months, Toys | 4 Comments

Bailey has discovered that she can crawl to her various toy boxes (which are those collapsible boxes from Target in faux leather and suede… we have them stashed in each room of the house, in the color to match that room- I love them)! Anyway she can tip them over and then spends FOREVER digging through them, looking at all her toys. We keep different toys and books in each room and try to rotate them sometimes, so she gets to see a variety of them instead of always the same thing. We also try to trade out what’s in her diaper bag and at Grandma’s house and stuff like that, but I notice that we always have “her favorites” in the diaper bag anyway.

Here are some pictures of Bailey after she got into the toy bin in her bedroom. She finally decided on this vibrating frog teether and then spent quite a while retrieving him and chewing on him. She is so much better at keeping herself busy these days.




Why do you keep taking my picture?

Happy 7 Months, Little Love

Filed Under Milestones, Seven Months | 7 Comments

You are amazing. I look at you, and I am just overwhelmed by how much I love you. You are beautiful. You take my breath away. I can’t stop kissing your face, rubbing my cheek against your soft fuzzy hair, and touching your soft little hands. You are growing so fast, I wish I could just freeze time… except every day and every stage is better than the one before.

You are already seven whole months old. You sit up on your own now (you’ve been doing that for a while though). Your new thing is crawling. I think it is safe to say you are officially “a crawler.” If you see something you want, you go for it, even if it’s five feet away. You are still a little slow, and sometimes your feet and hands don’t cooperate, but it won’t be long until you are just racing through the house! I wish you would stay still for longer and let me just snuggle with you. My favorite time of day is in the evening after you nurse and you snuggle up all sleepy on my shoulder. Sometimes I hold you for so long that Daddy comes in and tells me to put you in bed.

You are starting to do the famed pincer grasp with your thumb and first finger. You are pretty early with that one! You can pick up Puffs off a tray now and get them into your mouth, usually You have tried Cheerios and seemed to think they were okay. You love most kinds of baby food, but you hate anything involving peaches, squash, or peas. You still sit in your Bumbo seat for most meals. When we go to restaurants, you sit in a highchair now. We have a cover that we use in there and in shopping carts so you don’t get the icky germs. You got your second flu shot this week, and you weighed about 17 pounds. You are wearing 6-9 month clothes.

Today I watched Alison, and of course brought you with me. You loved to watch her and you laughed so much today. She really enjoyed trying to entertain you and help take care of you. I will be watching her a few Fridays a month now, and I hope that will be good for you. I am afraid I will spoil you with so much love and attention all the time.

You babble quite a bit now. You like to open and close your mouth while saying “Nya nya nya nya” and you still blow lots of raspberries too. Today you were so covered in drool. If I blow on your neck or tickle your ribs, you laugh. You also like being upside down now. Every day is an adventure, and I can’t wait to see what you will do next. I didn’t know you would be this perfect.

I love you.

Love, Mommy