Four Months

Our little darling turned four months old on Sunday. I was so excited to take her to her check up on Monday, I was hoping to hear how great and healthy she looked, and that I am doing a good job. Instead, the doctor told me she is concerned about Audrey's weight. WTF? She is 17lb 5oz and 25 inches long (95% for weight, 75% for height), which is exactly where she's been all along. The doctor feels that if this continues then she'll end up being 5'10" and 200lbs. Doc wants me to introduce solids now and start replacing some of my time spent nursing with solids, because my milk is "too high in calories". This has nothing to do with my diet she says, but just that some mothers have fattier milk than others. I thought that was a good thing? I politely declined, saying that I intend to nurse Audrey exclusively until she is 6 months old, or until she appears ready to start solids (as this is recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics, World Health Organization, ACOG, and every other major health organization). At this point, Audrey shows no interest in food and still has the tongue thrust reflex. Besides, I'll admit it - I love breastfeeding. I love the bond I have with her, I love that I'm the only one that can do it, I love the convenience, I love that her poop doesn't stink, I love it all. So no, I won't introduce solids now, and no, I won't cut out her nighttime feedings THANKYOUVERYMUCH. She also is concerned that Audrey isn't sleeping through the night and that she isn't able to self-soothe herself back to sleep when she wakes at night. She suggested I let Audrey cry, even if she gets herself into a full on screaming session. When I asked how long I should let this go on, seeing as Audrey is a very intense and persistent baby and will not just give up and go to sleep, the doctor said that some babies will cry for an hour or more, but I should just let her cry because she needs to learn to sleep on her own. Again, I politely said "ok", but I have no intention of starting any form of sleep training now - especially one that involves my baby crying hysterically for me. Don't get me wrong - I can let Audrey fuss for a while and even cry because I know her cries. But I cannot and will not let her carry on a full blown meltdown while I sit downstairs and ignore her. Many people would disagree with me, but I don't care. They aren't her mom. I am. And I can do whatever I please with my child. :) During most of the appointment with the doctor I felt like saying, "You realize she's only four months old, right?". It seemed like the doctor was getting ahead of herself in some regards.

She did say that Audrey is completely 100% extroverted. She was hamming it up - smiling, cooing, kicking and talking throughout the whole appointment. She would get really loud while the doc and I spoke until one of us looked at her and spoke to her, then she's smile and wiggle. Doctor says Audrey will be one of those energetic kids that talks to everyone in the grocery store and for the second time in a week, I was told that I'm gonna have my hands full with this one. Bring it, little girl. Bring it.

We are finally all getting over being sick. We were mostly better last week, but then A came down with another cold and passed it along to the rest of us so we've been absolutely miserable up until today. Daycare was closed but schools weren't, so I stayed home with her today. We had fun! I miss this a lot. Even though I'm with her on weekends, I have so many things to do that we often don't get to just be around the house playing together. AND for the first time in a long time (ever??) she napped really well! She took a nap earlier that lasted an hour and a half, which for her is a really long time. She woke up once about halfway through but I listened on the monitor rather than running to her and she went back to sleep. Now she has been sleeping for an hour and 40 mins and hasn't woken up at all. This is truly progress for her. She has never been a good napper. I've actually been able to get stuff done today! I cleaned the bathroom, kitchen, filed some bills, FINALLY got around to making Audrey's notebook for important documents, updated my blog (!), and organized her clothes. Yay!

Speaking of clothes...she is on the verge of outgrowing her 6 month clothes! I don't know what to do!!! All of her 6-9 month stuff looks like it will fit her now, but most of it is Springtime/warm weather clothes. It sucks because now she won't get to wear all of the adorable jumpers and spring dresses I have for her, AND I have to go out and buy more clothes! Ack! But hey, I love shopping so I'm sure it'll all be ok.

That's all for now...have a great weekend!!!

xoxo

The House

 As promised...


Foyer



Kitchen




Living Room




Dining room




Master Bedroom




Master Bedroom again

  

Bathroom





Second Bedroom

Josh spent the weekend painting. He is very meticulous, so he couldn't just paint the walls - he had to paint the ceilings, baseboards, window frames, and doors, too. He hasn't actually started painting the walls yet, but now that the other things are out of the way, I think he should have the bedrooms completely done by next weekend. In the kitchen, you can see on the right that we have the washer/dryer combo unit. It is really small so we are having a laundry room built where the upstairs linen closet is. I'm so excited! That means we can take our red LG washer and dryer that we bought a couple of years ago. We are also having new windows installed, which will save us money on heating and cooling the house.

It is coming along slowly, but surely. I really hope the bedrooms are done this weekend so we can start moving stuff down there. I want to be settled and not have this move lingering for the next few weeks...

So Much Fun!

Audrey is at a stage right now that I am absolutely loving. She is SO HAPPY!!! Smiles, giggles, the expectant look she gives Josh & I when she's "talking" to us, all of it. On Monday night we put her to bed at her normal time and she fell asleep fine as she always does. Forty minutes later (exactly 40 minutes), she woke up, as she always does, and I went up to give her the pacifier or cuddle her for a minute, which usually gets her right back to sleep within minutes. Not this time. Nope, she was wide awake. And ready to play. Josh and I were tired so we decided we would just go up and we'd all three lay in bed and watch some T.V. I was determined to ignore Audrey for the most part so that I wouldn't encourage her playfulness at nighttime (night is for sleeping!), but wow, it was so hard! She laid between us kicking her whole body and squealing (that's new, and WOW she can hit some high notes), talking to the blankets, and watching us. If we looked at her and made eye contact she would get this huge grin on her face and get so excited, which would then make us all excited and laughing! Finally she was being too active and kicking us so I put her back in her bassinet and Josh and I tried to go to sleep listening to her "talk". Eventually, she did talk herself to sleep. Her wakefulness and playfulness happened again the following night, but it was really more cute than anything else so we just enjoyed it.

I pulled out the jumper today and put away the pack n play which we were mostly using as storage for her toys and blankets and random socks I find laying around. The jumper is awesome! Her teacher tried her in one at daycare a couple times this week and said she was ready for it, so after dinner tonight when Josh went to work on the house, I got to working on putting this huge thing together. It took a while and I think she was getting mad at me for not playing with her, but once it was done she had a blast!



No Pictures Please!



I was off on Monday and we were all finally over being sick, so Audrey and I went over to visit my friend Heather who just had baby Emily back in December. Emily and Audrey are almost exactly three months apart, but Emily was born premature so she is actually quite small. These pictures do not do her justice, she is so tiny in person and absolutely adorable. We tried to take a cute picture of the girls together but Audrey is too much of a wiggle worm right now and Emi is too fragile to be close to Audrey!





Audrey, trying not to break little Emily

Audrey enjoyed herself. She got to play with some big kid toys that Heather had for her nieces. It was nice for me to get to hold Emily again (I first met her when she was one week old and still in the NICU), I forgot just how precious she is. Audrey was never that small for obvious reasons, but now she is almost 4 months old and it is becoming hard to remember what she was like when she was first born. Luckily, I took many pictures and videos to remind me! I never really felt like she was a delicate newborn, she was so awake and active from the start.

Speaking of four months old, Audrey has her 4 month checkup on Monday. I am not looking forward to her getting shots, but I am interested to see how much she weighs (my guess is right around 17lbs) and how big she has gotten since last time we were there. We are also going to her orthopedic doctor on Monday for the follow up on her hips. She's been out of the harness for 2 months now, so this is just to confirm that her hips have fully grown into their sockets.

I have to congratulate Lexi and Shawn on the birth of Baby Tiernan! He was born Monday, January 17, weighing 7 lbs 2 oz. He's such a little cutie and looks so much like Lexi. I wish I could be there to hold and cuddle him, and I wish even more that he and Audrey could grow up close. :( I guess now that he's here we will all just have to make more trips to visit!

I will leave you all with an adorable video of Audrey enjoying her bouncer for the first time. She was having so much fun that I felt bad taking her out and getting her ready for bed, but it had to be done (Mama needs a break!) and she was showing signs of being tired. I love her little laugh and smile. There are points in the video where she is looking at me waiting for me to do something - that's the expectant look I'm talking about.

Amazon Mom

I have to share this because I am so excited about it! This will probably only be interesting to Sarah, Lexi, and Joy. And I doubt Lexi and Joy even read my blog so, here ya go Sarah!

So follow me here. This morning I was wasting time on this "mom" blog that I occasionally read, and her particular blog post was about deals and savings. Of course that piqued my interest being the frugal woman that I am. She mentioned Amazon Mom (http://www.amazon.com/mom) as a place to save on diapers and wipes. I went to the website and read about it, and signed up. Let's talk about diapers first. A box of size 2 pampers swaddlers, 186 count (which is what Audrey is currently in) runs $41.99 at Babies R Us, and $41.99 at Target, though I think sometimes they go on sale at Target. At Amazon they are $41.49, BUT if you sign up for their "subscribe & save" program, you get 30% off, leaving the price at $29.04, with free shipping. The "subscribe & save" program is free. You pick your diapers and check that you want X number of boxes delivered to your house every month, every two months, or however frequently you need them. That's it. Amazon.com charges your card once a month when they ship out your diapers. Even better, you can do this for more than just baby wipes and diapers. Things like cereal, toiletries, even our cat food! I feel like I've just won the lottery. I have now spent the better part of my day on Amazon looking at all the things I can "subscribe" to and save money. Wow. And YAY! This is not just for moms either. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, any caregiver really. So cool!

I wonder if this has been around for a long time and I sound like a crazy person for having just discovered it. Unless I am missing some detail or catch, this is truly a great deal that I will be using from now on.

Just had to share. :) 

Changes, Changes



Headed to School!

We closed on the new house on Tuesday night! Yay! It was a few months in the making and took a lot of pushing to get it to finally close, but we did it. We got a great deal and ultimately settled for $16,000 less than we initially contracted. For those that don't know, it is a two bedroom/1 1/2 bath condo here in the same neighborhood that we currently live in. It was a foreclosure property, but was in surprisingly good condition! Everything is in working order and all of the appliances are there (which is saying a lot considering some of the properties we looked at!), and it is move-in ready, for the most part. The previous owners took good care of the house, which makes me sad to think that they lost it to foreclosure...It has a security system, which is great for me since I am such a nervous nelly and have such unwarranted fears of someone breaking in. The kitchen is a galley kitchen like you'd find in an apartment. It doesn't have a pantry (ouch!) so we'll have to find some creative storage ideas. Also, the new house has the small washer/dryer combo - which we used to have until we did some counter-cutting to make a full size fit. That means we will have to make due with a small washer/dryer and go from 4 loads a week to 10 until we can afford to do some remodeling. On a positive note, the kitchen looks out into the dining room/living room and it is all pretty open, unlike at our house now. I'm looking forward to having more open space! Upstairs are the two bedrooms, one in the front and one in the back, with the bathroom in the middle. Overall, I think we are losing 300 square feet, which is actually a lot. We have a lot of stuff that we're going to have to find new homes for. We are currently working with a Realtor to get Josh's house listed on the market and his bank is willing to accept a short sale offer. We know we have a long, hard road ahead of us on that, but we are doing our best to stay positive.

Earrings



Merry Christmas



Audrey is sick. Poor thing came home from daycare last Wednesday with a runny nose, watery eyes, coughing, sneezing, the whole nine. I did some research and learned that an infant cold is nothing to be concerned with unless it is accompanied by a fever and to hold off on calling the doc until a week has passed. So that's what I did. Her runny nose quickly turned into a stuffy nose and she has had a hard time sleeping for the past week. Monday and Tuesday night were so bad that she woke EVERY HOUR because she was uncomfortable and wanted to nurse. That leads to a very tired baby and a very tired Mama. I stayed home from work yesterday because I was so exhausted and so that I could take her to the doctor. They said its fine - no RSV, Flu, or ear infection - just that cold has to run its course which takes longer in babies since they cannot blow their noses. So I'm just using a saline mist on her nose and trying to suck anything out that I can. Last night was better, she only woke twice from 11-5am. She wasn't a good sleeper in the first place so I'm kind of used to this. Joshua is also sick and was pretty miserable all day yesterday, but he pushed through and made it to work today, despite many bouts of nausea last night and this morning. I'm hoping that all of us are back to our normal, rejuvenated selves by Monday. Audrey is getting so big - she was 16 pounds 9 oz at her appointment yesterday and she's a week and a half shy of being 4 months old. Almost double her birth weight already! She is "talking" so much and loves interaction. She demands it. We put her in the highchair when we eat dinner and she will fuss if we aren't talking to her/playing with her. Same thing when she's on her play mat. She'll play and have fun if we are down there with her, but if we turn to watch tv or get up to go do something, she will protest loudly! She is quickly becoming the queen bee in our little hive.

sneakin a peek at the tv

The animals are all doing well. I haven't reported on them in a while because they've kind of been put on the back burner since Audrey arrived. Frank has a small growth on the side of his face which the vet says is nothing - just a growth. I'm not sure what that means, really, but I think it has gotten bigger (or maybe I just forgot how big it was) so I'm going to take him in for follow up appointment soon. Dora is doing ok. We stopped crating her up when we leave the house and that was going great up until last week. Every day that we came home we saw that she had eaten out of the litter box. Josh cleans the litter box every morning so there wasn't much for her to get into, but she did anyways. So now we are back to crating her when we aren't home. I hate that she has to be in that little room all day, but for the time being that is just how it has to be. I can't wait for the weather to get warm again so that we can all go on walks and Dora can get the exercise she needs. Pussycat is her usual quiet self. She cuddles with us anytime we are sitting down and she usually sleeps with us too.



Spit Bubbles!!

Well that is about it for now! There is more to write but I need to tend to my sick little babies! Love you all! xoxoxo