almost mobile

Our little Miss A is super close to crawling!  I don't know whether to be excited or scared?!  She does this great rocking back and forth on her hands and knees.  She gets to this position mostly from tummy time.  But the last day or two she is starting to learn to get here from a sitting position.  Any advice what to do besides stand on top of them once they really get going??  How do you get anything done?

I love how her eyes get huge and she sucks her tummy in...she is so concentrated!

7 months tomorrow

I cannot believe how fast the last 7 months have gone by.  A friend of mine recently said when her son turned 1 year old, "Never has a year with so many long nights passed so quickly."  Isn't that the truth!  Miss A is now sitting up, eating many different solids, about ready to crawl and incredibly social.  She loves the outdoors and meeting new people as long as those people are women - she has something against men who are not her daddy!  She is starting to sleep unswaddled and in a sleep sack on her tummy, a day I thought would never come.  She loves her Maclaren baby backpack, but hates the Ergo and all slings.  She is in love with the baby in the mirror.  She likes to try to kiss and hug her.  I am also the lucky recipient of hugs and kisses making her daddy jealous because he has yet to receive either...poor guy.  But maybe it is because he makes her do things like this...

This is how I found them the other morning after I finished doing the dishes.  Poor thing is being taught to balance checkbooks and pay bills at the ripe old age of 7 months!  I feel so lucky that I have been given another 4 weeks to spend with Miss A.  I am feeling that anxious feeling again as the new school year starts in about 2 weeks!  And again I have to remind myself to enjoy the time I have with her and not stress about the time I do not.

I hope everyone had fun celebrating Father's Day this past weekend.  I know we did!  Happy Monday!

sitting

Look at my big girl!  She sits up for such long periods of time now.  I do not feel like she is strong enough for me to walk away and leave her there to play.  We probably still have a bit of time before that can happen.  But, I am so proud, and as you can see in the first picture, so is she!  I just love when they get excited about their accomplishments.

And she is fascinated with toes.  It all started when Gramma (my MIL) had red toenail polish on and Avery noticed.  Now she notices everyone's toes.  She is constantly trying to get to mine and eat them.  She, of course, doesn't understand how gross that is!  And lately, she has been just as into her colorless toes.

Happy Friday and have a great weekend!

the teeth

Daddy finally got a picture of the teeth!  Not without a lot of effort!  Without further ado...

I will eat the camera before I let you get a look at my teeth!

Oh no you don't!

Oh, alright!  

I really have no idea what he did to get her to make that face and bear the teeth?!  But I am glad we have a photo to prove they are there.  

summer vacation

So obviously being a working mom has limited my ability to keep up with this blog.  I am trying to figure out a way to remedy that!  But right now, it is summer break.  I have the next month off of work with my little Miss A and I am super excited about it.

Why only one month you ask?  Aren't teachers supposed to get three months off?  Well yes, and no.  I work at an extended year school, so we go to school 5 weeks in the middle of summer (yes, extra school).  The students actually attend school about 25 more days a year than traditional schools.  As for us teachers, if we work our 25 summer days, we get to take 25 days off in the regular part of the year (because the district is too cheap to pay us.  Cheaper for them to pay a sub and give us the days off).  But in the case of Miss A, this works brilliantly!  With those 25 days I am able to take most Fridays off during the year to be with her.  A four day work week is nothing to scoff at!

So what plans do we have?  None really.  Just time to hang out and have mini-adventures with my little girl.  Who by the way has 2 teeth, is sitting up, slept through the night (I am talking 10-11 hour stretches) 3 out of the last 4 nights, eating solid food like it is going out of style and bathing on the "toddler" side of her bathtub!  And now that I am off work, maybe I will get a chance to blog about some of those amazing things she is capable of!

a tooth! a tooth!

She has a tooth!

Why I am so excited is anyone's guess.  She has been fussy, napping oddly and waking screaming in the middle of the night.  But the minute the husband ran out of her room saying she has a tooth I was stoked!  It is her bottom right and I would post a picture except....she will not let me see it!  Every time I try to pull her lip down, her little tongue sticks straight out over the tooth blocking it from view.

The only time I have gotten a good look at it is when she was crying because my father-in-law tried to hold her (she is also going through a bit of separation anxiety, though come to think of it she doesn't really seem to like men, except for her daddy).  And since I do not have the heart to make her cry for my entertainment the photo will just have to wait!

But hooray for the tooth!!

yams are fun!

Miss A had her first real solid food yesterday (I don't count rice cereal)!  So fun!  We started by making the yams "from scratch" (really not much more difficult than opening a jar of baby food).

As I pushed steamed yams through the colander Avery waited...impatiently!

(I feel like she should have a fork in one hand and a knife in the other chanting "give me food!")

And then she ate!  She loves to eat.  And she loves to help me feed her....

It ends the same way it begins...with a bit of fussing to tell me she has had enough of this new orange stuff!

Overall, super successful!  The only downside...she hasn't pooped since about 4 a.m. this morning...it's now 6 p.m.  This is not normal....let's hope we are not dealing with constipation here because that would not be fun!

on returning to work

So the countdown begins.  I have three weeks today before I have to go back to work.  I am feeling anxious and unsure about the whole thing.  I really LOVE my job.  I teach 2nd grade.  BUT I REALLY LOVE Miss A ( a whole lot more than my job, obviously).  But it has been made clear that I am to go back.  I am not sure what to expect.  I have done a few things over the last couple of days to start to prepare.

• I have planned every outfit for the 5 weeks that I am back to work before a short Summer Break because I will be getting up super early to get to work by 6am so that I can get home by 3pm.  Sounds a bit silly, I know, but my whole morning can go South if I do not know what I am wearing ahead of time. 
•  I have also made a menu for those 5 weeks so I do not have to think about what is for dinner.  This also helps me make the grocery list for the week so that I do not put off going on the weekend.
• I have made the babysitter a list of important phone numbers in case of emergency.

Does anyone have any other suggestions on preparing myself and my home to go back to work?  I would love some advice!

4 month sleep regression

The last couple of nights have been really difficult with Avery.  I remember hearing that the three month growth spurt was the worst, but for us it has been the start of the fourth month that has brought about the most frustrating events.

Miss A had been sleeping quite well, with the exception of a random night every so often, over the last month.  You could say we were getting spoiled.  She was going to be between 7:30 and 9pm, waking once between 1:30 and 3am for a feed and then not again until the start of her day between 6:30 and 8.  We were getting enough sleep that we were no longer super cranky.  Her dad was even giving her her bottle most nights for the middle of the night feed.  We thought we had an amazing sleeper on our hands.  That was until....

Wednesday she had her 4 month check-up which included vaccines.  She missed her morning nap due the the appointment time.  And ever since her napping and night time sleep has been off.  Not that she was on some perfect schedule/routine, but it was becoming predictable.  On Thursday and Friday she was waking every hour to two hours and not wanting to go back to sleep.  Super frustrating to her dad and I.  At  5:30 Saturday morning she woke-up, I fed her, then she refused to go to sleep.  She was awake until 11:30am and had to cry pretty hard to crash into sleep.  Last night she did better, as I really worked at keeping her asleep during nap time after that super long stint of being awake in the morning( I feel like if her naps are bad during the day, her night sleep is that much worse).  But she still woke many more times than she had been before Wednesday.

So I think we are going to try the Ferber Method , or some form of it.  I was reading that a lot of the 4 month sleep regression is due to their brains processing all of the information that they take in during the day and also that they may be trying to practice and process new skills.  Hopefully we will be back on some kind of night time sleep schedule that is not so disruptive for both Miss A and us.

Moral of the story: Don't get too comfortable, it all changes!!

road trips, growth spurts and teething?!

What a week!  I have been meaning to write about sleep training and about an award a friend gave to this blog, but Avery started her three month growth spurt and we had a trip to the in-laws over the weekend, so needless to say I have had NO time to write.

So to start...a 4 1/2 hour car ride with a 3 month old is NOT fun!  Well, at least not with my 3 month old.  I felt so bad for her.  She did really well for about 3 hours, which by the way I think is great!  But then after that she lost it.  Feeding was difficult in a small car, as was traveling with a bunch of stuff.  And sleeping in someone else's house wasn't too great either.  We do not sleep in the same room as Avery at home so that was an adjustment for us.  She didn't sleep well in her travel bassinet.  Or maybe she didn't sleep well because everyone but me thought a 3 month old could go hours on end with no nap!  All that does is make sleeping impossible later.  I actually put her in bed with me early Sunday morning around 3 am because I felt so bad for her crying in her bassinet.

And then the growth spurt...I had been wondering when it would hit.  Foolishly I thought maybe Avery would just "skip" it.  Or maybe it would just be really mild and spread out over a couple of weeks.  She HAD been a bit fussy lately.  But no!  It has come!  She is back to crying a lot.  I feel like I did before she turned 2 months.  A lot of soothing, holding and walking around with her.  She also eats A LOT!  Her sleep cues seemed to have disappeared.  She makes strange crying noises.  I cannot tell if it is because her voice/cries are changing or if she is just hoarse from crying so much.  Her night sleep seems to be the only thing unaffected by this whole thing...THANK GOODNESS!  Which is why I was reluctant to think it was a growth spurt at all.  The only bad sleep she had was at my in-laws and I think that was just because she was in a different place with different smells and sounds.  The oddest thing is that she is wanting to "chew" on our fingers and hands.  Now she has always loved to try and put our fingers in her mouth.  And if she succeeded she would suck.  But now it is a definite gnawing action.  I have heard that some babies do get teeth this early...but I am not ready for that just yet.

STOP GROWING!  Gosh it goes so fast!  I saw a newborn at the doctor's office the other day and could not believe that she was ever that small.

So soon I will write the post about sleep training and the cute award that was given, but for now this random post about miscellaneous stuff will have to do.

to work or not to work

Before I was a mom, I was a school teacher.  My job was just about everything to me (you know, the husband was/is pretty important too).  I loved it!  Notice how that statement was in the past tense?  Over the last couple of weeks I have been feeling like I may not want to go back to work once my maternity leave is up.  There!  I said it!

You see, when I told people I was pregnant, the conversations, especially ones that took place at and around the workplace, would inevitably revolve around whether or not I would return to work.  My response was always that I am a better person when I am working, which may still be true.  I also said things like, "This is my second home," when talking about my workplace, which was true.  I didn't think I could be home all day with a child and have no adult interaction, and there are days where I still feel that way.  BUT, and this is a huge one, the idea of handing over my child to someone I barely know for 3-4 days a weeks, for hours on end, makes me so incredibly sad.  I found myself staring into Avery's eyes this morning crying because I do not want to leave her.  I know this has been felt by countless mothers (and fathers).  We are so sure that life will go back to being the same after we give birth.  I was so sure of this fact that I remember saying, with no hesitation or doubt, to friends, family and coworkers, that I was DEFINITLY going back to work.  They all would smirk and say the same thing, "We'll see!"  The ONLY person who didn't smirk and mutter those two little words was my husband.

Now don't get me wrong, I am sure he would love for me to stay home.  But he is super logical, pragmatic and a realist.  He KNOWS we cannot make it in this city without me working.  He knows that if I stop working we leave the city to live who knows where and probably in a suburb.  And please do not take offense to that if you are a suburb dweller.  I grew up in the 'burbs and I have to say that right about now they are looking great.  There is something safe, comfortable and convenient about them.  I have found myself daydreaming (or night-dreaming because it is typically when I am feeding Avery in the middle of the night that I allow myself to fabricate such illusions) of a house in the countryside, having 2 or 3 more kids, working from home (doing what?  We'll get to that in a minute.), learning how to garden and running barefoot in the grass with all my little blond children...and then Avery spits-up on me and I remember that it is 4am and my feet are freezing!

So if I want to stay home, (which has not really been discussed in detail with the husband, because like I said he is a realist and to him it is not an option...end of conversation) I need to find some way to bring in money.  Has anyone else been in this situation?  There is a pit in my stomach when I think about the end of April and going back to work.  Has anyone else come up with a clever way of bringing in income without dropping your child off at daycare and going back to work?  What sacrifices have you made to be a stay at home parent?

the first 2 1/2 months....

The first two and a half months of motherhood were so damn hard!  Miss A cried a lot!  I thought I would never make it through.  Everyone around me kept saying that the beginning is rough, but that it will be over with sooner than you think.  "Try to enjoy it!"  ENJOY IT???  Were they crazy?  I was sleep deprived, had both mastitis and the stomach flu in the first month and a super fussy baby!  I was frustrated and crying about as much as Miss A was.

 

Miss A during her super fussy period!

All I wanted was for her to get older faster so that it would be over sooner" than I thought.  One day I saw a little boy sitting in his stroller at the post office as his grandma filled out some paper work.  The boy was just quietly observing what was happening around him.  If that had been Miss A she would have been screaming her head off because a)she doesn't like her carseat which snaps into her stroller and b)she seemed to hate to go out in public.  I just wanted Miss A to be as old as this little boy, who was probably around 9 months.  I am not writing all of this to complain and get a bunch of sympathy, but to let others know that it is super hard to be home alone with a newborn all day long.  And I have a super supportive husband who would jump in and help anytime.  The thing is that many mom's feel pressure to be perfect...do it right and make their babies happy from the get-go.  But really we are learning just like they are.  And of course you are supposed to have patience.  With yourself and your baby.  But it is pretty hard to have patience when you are sleep deprived.

Now there is light at the end of the tunnel...or at least the first tunnel.  Miss A has been great the last couple of weeks.  She is on a more regular sleeping schedule during the day and she is less fussy.  Now she tends to cry only when she has a wet diaper or is hungry.  I mean she still cries for no reason sometimes and I still get frustrated due to lack of sleep, but it is much better than it had been.  I also realize now that I do not want her to be as old as the boy in the post office so quickly.  Look at all that I would be missing.  She is so small and adorable, and this time really is going to go by quickly and never happen again.  I know it has been said a hundred times, but once you start to go through it you understand why all those moms and grandmas keep saying the same things over and over.  So really...try to enjoy it!