Motherhood Monday: Natalie is Seven Months Old!



Natalie... you are seven months old (a few days ago, but Mommy is a bad blogger)!!!

You weigh 15 lbs and 4 oz, not sure about length!

You are officially in 9 month clothes and wear a size 3 diaper.

You breastfeed about 7 times per day and have solids once or twice a day. Your favorite foods are broccoli, chicken, and rice cereal.

 

 

 

 

You sleep about 12 hours a night and take 2 naps. You have been sleeping straight through or waking just once for a little while now so here's hoping that continues!

 

 

 

You are a happy little girl as long as you are being held. Although, you can sit well and even army crawl, you mostly just want to hang out on Mommy's hip!

 

 

 

You've added "mamama," "dadada," and "gagaga" to your vocabulary :)

As I said before you sit really well now and you're on the verge of crawling. You seldom practice though because you STILL hate being on the floor.

 

 

 

You are starting to be such a little grabber. I have to be very careful because if I'm not paying attention you will seriously snatch anything right out of my hand. You are beyond OBSESSED with my keys.

 

 

 

You and I have gotten to spend a little more one on one time together now that big brother is in school and it has been a lot of fun. We are definitely starting to see your little personality come out. You are a high maintenance princess for sure, but you are also quick to kiss and have the sweetest giggles.

 

 

 

Love, love, love you baby girl!!

 

Motherhood Monday: Much Too Fast

My little peanut has been hitting some big milestones lately, y'all, and it's been a lot for this Mommy to handle.  He is potty trained (obviously this is a VERY big one!), he sleeps in a toddler bed, and today he left to go on a trip without me!  I've left him once before when he was 20 months old to go to London with my mom and one of my sisters.  That also happened to be when I weaned him just because the timing worked out so well.  You can imagine all of the emotions involved.  I nursed him to sleep for his nap one last time before I left.  I usually only nursed him at bedtime, but I just had to squeeze in one last time.  Talk about tear fest!   For the record, he didn't bat an eye and never asked to nurse again.

He loves to be my helper, especially with cleaning :)

Today, though, he left ME!

Brian took him with on a short overnight trip to visit his Grandmother (Phillip's great-grandmother).  I know he will do great and he adores his Daddy, but I started crying after they left this morning.

He REALLY loves to be Daddy's helper. Working here on his new room!

I've also just recently begun the search for a Mother's Day Out program for him to start this September.  I know I'm a bit behind the times as almost everyone seems to start preschool well before 3, but I just love having him home with me.  I feel like he has the rest of his life to be in school and go somewhere structured all day long, and I have such a relatively short period to be the number one influence in his life.  I visited a school today that I feel really good about though, and I think he will love it.  Fingers crossed he gets in!

Just hanging out with his best bud.

Of course he still has his fair share of foot-stomping two year old moments, but I'm in awe of what a sweet and smart boy he is becoming.  And he really is a boy now... not my baby anymore!  

Motherhood Monday: Natalie is Six Months Old!

Happy Monday everyone! I had such a wonderful and relaxing weekend thanks to my husband and mother in law. I was able to sleep in until 8:30 am both days!!! The sad thing is, I still don't feel that well rested. I guess it just takes longer than two days to catch up on the sleep deficit I have.

Natalie actually turned six months old on Friday, but I wasn't able to take her picture until Sunday, so hopefully she didn't age too much, hehe.

Natalie - you are 6 months old!! 

You weigh almost 15 lbs and we head to the pediatrician in two days so I will have to update with proper height/weight later this week.

You wear mostly size 3-6 months clothes but they are getting a bit short so we have moved up into some 6-9 months. You are still in a size 2 diaper.

You are still breastfeeding about 6-7 times a day, but we recently started rice cereal.  We are taking it slow and you get about a tablespoon once a day.

You sleep about 11 hours at night and take 2 naps.  Sleeping through the night is officially a thing of the past!  You usually wake up twice.

Aside from a setback a couple of weeks ago, you are generally a happy girl.  You love to smile and stick out your tongue when you're happy.  You've also started "talking" a lot.  "Blah, blah, blah" is your favorite thing to say and you and Phillip have a lot of conversations that consist of just that :)

You roll over both ways and can push all the way up onto your hands and knees.  You will army crawl when you REALLY want something.  You can sit on your own now, but only for 5-10 seconds, so we have to be really careful with that.  

 

I just cannot believe how quickly the last six months have past and that before long you'll be crawling around and into everything.  I just can't wait to see how you grow and change and how you and Phillip become friends.  He just adores you and you LOVE to watch everything he does.

I love you more each day and I'm so lucky to be your Mommy.  Six more months until you are one... better start birthday party planning!!!

Motherhood Mondays: Sorry for my absence!!

I'm so sorry for not posting on Thursday and Friday y'all, but last week was TOUGH. Natalie was very sick with an ear infection and to make matters worse, she also had a major relapse on her reflux issues.  Luckily we now have her on a new medication that seems, at least for the moment, to be helping things.

Friday I really thought I was going to lose it.  Natalie went 12 hours DURING THE DAY without eating. My breasts were engorged of course and I was just really worried.  I was at the point where I just wanted to quit (as if that was even an option). Thank God, her pediatrician was able to fit us in and things have been better this weekend. 

Friday night, while researching her new medication, I came across a bunch of forums about infant reflux.  I could have written some of the posts.  Others were titled things like "Losing My Will to Live" and "I don't know where to go from here..."  This is seriously some rough stuff.  So sad, but at the same time it made me feel a bit better that I'm not the only mother out there who feels like this is just too much to handle sometimes.  There is just something so awful about not being able to feed your child.

Along with her new medication, the pediatrician gave us the go ahead to start some solids because she is almost six months and apparently it can occasionally help things.  We started rice cereal on Saturday and she actually loved it!  I was so shocked.  We never even did infant cereal or baby food with Phillip, but I'm just too exhausted to be uptight about what I think is the "right" way to do things.  If there's a chance in heck this will help our girl, I'm all for it.

We also started full throttle with potty training Phillip and it's going great!  I tried once before to potty train him when I was eight months pregnant... let's just say it did not go well.  He was clearly not really ready and I was unbelievably hormonal.  I am doing a very hands-off approach that puts the decision in his hands this time (he can be quite stubborn if something is not his idea).  I'll share more once I feel that it has been completely successful, but so far today we've had ZERO pee accidents and even successfully peed in a public bathroom.

Oh, and someone may or may not be on the move now!!!

I'll be back to regular posting tomorrow and again I apologize for my absence.  Thanks if you're still reading!


 

Motherhood Mondays: Kids in the Kitchen

I've been thinking a lot lately about pinterest, crafts, cooking, decorating, and all of the distractions I have pulling me away from my children.  Pinterest is an amazing resource but it is also such a time suck for me.  Rather than looking for crazy creative ways to fulfill myself and my children, I've been trying to get back to basics lately.

It's so hard I think, as a mother, to remember that my children are not keeping me from what I need to be doing. Of course, part of my job as a mother is to feed my children and little hands can seem like quite a nuisance when you are trying to fix a meal, but my greater job is to teach my children to feed themselves. 

When I first started letting Phillip help me in the kitchen, I planned a meal in advance, maybe once or twice a week, that we would cook together. I would think about what tasks I could give him. Now it's quite natural and he joins me in the kitchen almost every day. I try to take care of dangerous things, like chopping, while he is napping, but if that's not possible I just push his stool a couple of feet away and engage him in something else.

Naturally, I cringe when Phillip dumps an entire container of garlic salt on a single potato or stirs flour out of the bowl and all over the floor. But I always want my children to feel that they are welcome in the kitchen with me, especially as they grow older and they may be less eager to help.

I feel like there is so much pressure these days to be constantly providing children with stimulating and interesting projects and engaging them in certain kinds of play, but I'm pretty sure time spent cooking with me or helping me with laundry is just as educational and probably more useful.  The takeaway here though, should not be that if you are a mom and you aren't cooking with you're kids, you're screwing up!  It should be that you should take the pressure off of yourself to constantly entertain your kids.  Incorporate them into the things that you love to do.  For me, one of those things is cooking and baking.  I'm very at home in the kitchen and sharing that with Phillip has been wonderful.  While we do occasionally do craft projects, for us, this is just much more natural and as a result, a lot more fun.

Motherhood Mondays: Christmas Recap

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. Ours was very nice and mostly low key.  I wasn't sure how I would handle the day thinking about my brother, but as usual Phillip did an awesome job of making sure that I stayed happy and had plenty else to think about.

Be prepared for picture overload here!  A few days before Christmas we had a get together with my Dad because he headed out of town for Christmas.  Phillip gave out the handprint ornaments that we made and they were a huge hit!  We also celebrated some birthdays because there are four December birthdays in my family one of which is on Christmas Day and another on Christmas Eve!

Giving an ornament to my grandmother...

Giving an ornament to Papa (my dad)...

Natalie with my grandmother.

Kissing my grandfather... so sweet!

Me and my girl!

We spent Christmas Eve at my Mom's house.  My grandmother got Phillip and Natalie the sweetest gifts.  Phillip got a new piece for his Thomas train track and she got Natalie a little soft baby doll.  We had a really nice time and my mom made an amazing dinner of course!

Me and my mom and two sisters.

When we got home, Phillip and I got ready for Santa by putting out some cookies and milk.  He was VERY excited.

Christmas morning was spent at our house with my in laws and sister and brother in law.  The kids got way too many toys and had a great time.  I made a delicious cinnamon roll cake for breakfast that was devoured.  I'll share the recipe soon.

Coming down to the living room... he was SO excited!!  The snowman PJ's are from Smocked Threads by Cecil and Lou.

He spots the presents!

Opening his stocking.

Showing off some presents!

Natalie with JoJo and Grandad (Brian's parents).

I actually managed to get some sweet shots of the two littles by the Christmas tree but I realized as I was writing this that I never got them off the camera!  More for later this week I guess.  Tonight we are keeping it super low key.  My Dad and stepmother are coming over to watch some movies and have snacks and champ.  I've been dying for an occasion to make champagne jello shots so we will be enjoying some of those while we ring in the new year in comfy pj's :)

Here's wishing y'all a wonderful New Year's Eve and I'll see you in 2013!

Motherhood Mondays: Late Nights

I think I've mentioned a few times that we've had some crazy nights and not a lot of great sleep around here lately. One of my greatest sources of anxiety, while pregnant with Phillip, was how I would deal with the lack of sleep inherent in new parenthood. I was a pretty big baby about my nine hours a night, and how, I wondered would I deal with never being able to sleep in again?!

The funny thing is you just DO manage. Somehow you live on far less sleep than you ever thought possible. And it's just not that bad. My fears have been realized though. I don't remember the last time I got to sleep in. Now occasionally Brian will take the kids downstairs on a Saturday morning to let me try to sleep a little more, which is wonderful, but it rarely amounts to much more sleep.

So, I do miss sleeping in and more than that, I miss long, uninterrupted stretches of sleep, but mostly I'm happy to leave that part of myself behind. The part that "just HAD to sleep nine hours a night." I feel that with the birth of each child and each passing day spent with them, my selfishness is being slowly chipped away.

And, as long as its not literally every hour, I really don't mind getting up at night with my babies. How lucky am I to hold those precious angels in my arms and nurse them back to sleep? How lucky am I to rock them, sing to them, and kiss their downy little heads? I am so SO lucky.

I know someday I will sleep through the night again, but I want to remember what it felt like when this fleeting time is gone. I want to remember how simple it was to solve their problems and make them feel safe and happy and how wonderful it was for them to need me and for me to be everything to them.