sleep.

Sleep has been an incredibly challenge over the last 7 months. We started doing some sleep training a few weeks ago (2/18) and really found something that worked. Each night baby girl would wake up a little less and needed less soothing before falling asleep. Last weekend her sleep got worse again. Her napping is never very good at home with us and we started to wonder if teeth were upon us.

Fast forward to this past Thursday night. Baby girl slept 9 hours straight! I was planning on writing a blog post on Friday about it--how we'd finally had a breakthrough. Friday was a weird evening, keeping baby girl up about 1 1/2 hours past her bedtime. She still slept 6 1/2 hours straight, ate, then went back to bed for 3 more hours. Great news!!!

Saturday night, though...she was up every 2-3 hours. She's inconsolable. With our sleep training, DH* picks her up, soothes her, then puts her back in her crib. He'd do that for an hour, though, last night, with no success--she was still screaming like she was in some major pain. So after awhile, he'd bring her to me to feed her. She's eat, fall asleep, and rinse & repeat 2 to 3 hours later.

Again, we're thinking maybe teeth. She's gnawing like crazy on everything. She's drooling more than ever before. But we also know that her sleeping well at night depends on her taking good naps. She DID take good naps yesterday, though, with horrible results overnight.

I'm writing now because I have to do SOMETHING while DH is upstairs with her. Tonight is a record. We put her down around 6:50 and she's back up, screaming her head off, at 8:45. She's so desperate in her shrieking. I can't handle it. It always makes me cry. She's quiet right now, but I'm guessing DH is still holding her.

I hope she's better overnight during the week this week. This is making the weekends not nearly as desirable...but that's for another post.

*DH does the training b/c we're fairly sure if I went in there, she'd expect to be fed and wouldn't give up until I fed her. And I'd also probably give in before he does, as I know I have something that will ALWAYS soothe her and can't stand seeing her in so much apparent pain when I know I can do something to make it better.

Meal Plan 2/28-3/6

I thought I might start writing out our meal plan for the week. I know I'm always looking for new ideas for meals and hope you appreciate them, too. Even if you don't, it helps keep me organized :)

2/28: Lazy Chicken in a Crockpot (new-to-us recipe)
3/1: Pulled pork (pork cooked in crockpot with BBQ sauce) & frozen corn
3/2: Either frozen pizza or takeout (the hubby is working late)
3/3: Chicken & Broccoli Stir Fry (new-to-us recipe)
3/4: Black Bean and Corn Creamchiladas
3/5: Pesto Chicken & Sweet Potatoes in the crockpot (another new-to-us recipe)
3/6: Our niece's birthday party

We also have stuff to make tacos so that might get subbed in if we forget to prep the slow cooker before we leave for work. I bought the taco stuff before I knew DH wouldn't be home for dinner on Tuesday.

My Pump

Meet Ameda:

Over the last 4 months, we've gotten pretty close. We spend about three hours together every weekday and have been through a lot together. Of course, when I first got her, I had to upgrade to a newer model...the original version just wasn't cutting it. Just this week, I had to get a new accessory for her--apparently she needs to get something new and shiny every once in awhile or she'll revolt. Isn't that just like a woman?

Ameda has provided me with the ability to still provide only breastmilk for baby girl. She's not had to have an ounce of formula. Wow. Thanks, old girl. I suppose I'll keep you around for awhile longer.

I have considered putting old Ameda out to pasture, though. I've grown to...I hate to admit it...resent her. I resent having to pull my curtain closed, secluding myself from my workplace, for hours at a time. I resent needing to expose myself in my desk chair, contorting my bewbies into these horns. I resent being milked.

I've never been much of a thrill-seeker, but each time I hook up with Ameda, there's a sense of danger. Will someone catch us? And by catch us, I mean, will some IDIOT decide that the curtain that's hanging across the entrance to my cubicle isn't there for privacy, but, rather, for decoration? The biggest problem? Men. I've had two men invade my privacy--one pushed the curtain aside to come in (and still didn't understand that I DID NOT want my trash emptied today) and the other just peered over the cubicle wall. Oh, how we did laugh, Ameda and I. On top of those two, I've had two other men that I don't know very well talking to me through the curtain. Do you think I want to have a conversation with you while I'm on a date with Ameda? I work in a computer-based position--just email me. I promise I'll respond. Even when I'm in the middle of the date, I'm connected (may be rude to Ameda, but she's gotten used to it).

Thank you, Miss Ameda, for a great four months together. I'm starting to think about some sort of a contractual agreement, though, that if you keep doing your job, I'll stay faithful. How about it?

Socks in my Pocket

Doesn't that sounds like the name of a band or something?

Anyway.

This has become a normal occurance for me. Sticking my hand in my coat pocket, either to keep it warm or to pull out car keys, and pulling out, instead, a pair or two of baby socks.

Baby socks, you ask? Yes, I have a baby, but why would I have socks in my pocket? Well, you see, baby girl hates to wear socks, but since it's February in Ohio, we insist. She resists (just this morning she stole them from me, not once, but FIVE times to then stick them in her mouth), but being the big meanies we are, we force her to wear them, at least until she's in someone's house.

And once she's in someone's house (specifically, the babysitter's), they're off in an instant. Every single day we pick her up, sockless. I'm given her socks, they go into my pocket, and the baby gets put into her carseat (don't worry, she's covered by one of those fuzzy things...keeps her little toes warm. The sitter would tell us if we weren't keeping her warm enough--she just did yesterday when we didn't put her hood up for the 10 second walk to the 85 degree car).

We go through this song and dance every.single.day. during the week. And that's how I end up with five pairs of socks a week in my coat pocket.

Simplification, for real

I think I've spoken here about our need to simplify our lives. We've said it time and time again, but this is amplified by the existence of our lovely daughter. We want to be able to spend as much time with her as possible, not wading through paperwork, doing hours of dishes (because we hadn't done any in awhile), searching for things (because we have too much)... So we're on a mission and we're actually getting somewhere with it (finally).

We've made lists. Lists of things that need to be done to get our house to a place where we can breathe. Things like clean out closets, reorganize cupboards, figure out a system to deal with papers and coupons and then DO IT, cleaning out that huge pile of stuff that's accumulated behind the love seat... We've also got lists of things that will need to be done daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, and semi-annually. We've started to figure out WHEN it's all going to get done. We've got a calendar. We're writing down committments outside the home that we each have. We're writing down our dinners for each night (we've always meal planned, but now we're assigning meals to a night so we can't say nothing sounds good). We're writing down which of the items on that first list are getting done that evening.

So far, so good. We started on Monday evening. We cleaned off the end tables and pared down what was there. One night DH scrubbed the sink. When I got home from the grocery, I cleaned out the refrigerator. One evening I scrubbed the stovetop. One evening I put away baby girls's wardrobe and cleaned up her room. Tuesday we were home on a snow day (which was SO great!) and we ended up cleaning up a lot of the 2nd floor. Our closet is emptier (thanks to three boxes of clothes we're donating), the floor is cleaner, and we're a lot more relaxed in our bedroom.

One task from that day, though, made me more emotional than I ever thought it would have...putting away maternity clothes. I loved being pregnant. I would love to be pregnant again...if there weren't a baby at the end. I love baby girl, but I am SO not ready to have another baby. But I am ready to be pregnant again. Yes, I was self-conscious about the way my flabby belly looked. But I loved being that close to my little girl, twenty-four hours a day. So I cried when I put away those clothes (and packed away those that I had borrowed). I miss my days of my little girl inside me (and not fighting me when I try to get her to go to sleep).

Where was I (as I wipe a tear from my eye again)? Ah yes, simplification.

This weekend we're due to: clean out the oven, get rid of the stuff behind the love seat, figure out a coupon organization system (I'm a person who keeps all inserts, collects many other coupons, sometimes buys additional inserts...I'm a couponing maniac. I used to have a binder with all my coupons sorted by type put into baseball card inserts, but that is too much maintenance for me now. So I have a plan now that I'm going to try), deal with the stacks of paperwork and figure out how we're going to deal with them in the future, clean out the food cupboards, and also clean, purge, and sort the cookware cupboards. That may sound like a lot, but I think it should still be a fairly relaxing weekend.

I'll try to keep updated here all the things we've done to get our house simplified. The only negative side effect to this is that we're missing out on many TV shows. We don't turn the TV on during weeknight evenings while the baby is awake, typically, so we get about 1 1/2 to 2 hours to watch TV each evening and now we're cleaning during it. But that's okay. Even without the TV, I'm seeing that we're both a lot happier and more relaxed with a cleaner, emptier house.

Mobility and other new developments

I love getting to watch baby girl learn new things every single day. She's just amazing.

We were blessed to have a snow day yesterday (as a non-teacher, these are very rare in our house), so all three of us just hung out together. We got to watch her demonstrate her newly acquired crawling skills. For about a week she'd been doing this worm-like movement where she'd push up on her arms and "worm" (for lack of a more descriptive word) her way to you across the carpet. But as of Monday night, she is officially, truly crawling. She's got the knees and arms all working together (even though she still hesitates to put her right knee on the ground sometimes) and can travel pretty well that way. She's still slow, but I have a feeling the speed will come very soon!

She's also a huge fan of blowing bubbles. Once she starts she doesn't stop for about an hour. She'll do it while she's upset, while she's happy, while she's eating (Daddy loved that one with squash in her mouth)...bubbles everywhere!

Baby girl has also recently discovered her hands. This is very strange to us, as she's had great dexterity with her hands for months and months now. She can pick up little things, grab, throw, etc., but never went through a phase of staring at her hands--she just started using them! Well now she's started looking at them. She'll hold them up in the air and move her arm around, rotate her hand and just watch it in amazement.

What else? Oh, she's ticklish. Her back, her armpits, her sides, her thighs, her neck...pretty much anywhere! Sometimes she'll get frustrated when you tickle her, but other times it will produce belly laughs and squeals and those are so much fun!

This kid will also love to play in the parachute during gym class. Whenever we lift a blanket up in the air and start to let it fall over her, she opens her mouth in a huge smile, closes her eyes, and holds her breath. She loves it!

Every day it is something new, which makes coming back to work so much harder! Today is her first day not being the baby at the sitter's--a three month old started this morning. Good thing she's getting that mobility thing down--she won't get to be held as much anymore!

Gratitude

~ I'm so thankful for my DH. He is truly my best friend. We've recently been handling things differently and I get really frustrated with him, but I know if we both have patience and open the lines of communication, we can work through anything.

~ I'm thankful for my sitter. We don't necessarily see eye-to-eye on some things, but I have confidence that she has my baby's best interests at heart and misses her and loves her. I also know that even though she has a policy about late pick-ups, if we get stuck in the awful weather today and are late she'll give the baby a bottle if needed and take it all in stride without making us feel guilty. I love not having to stress about getting there on time.

~ I'm thankful for my mom. She loves me, DH, and the baby so much that she can't contain herself. I've been having a hard time reining her in sometimes--there are just some weekends that we need our own family time--but I want to take time today to just be grateful that she WANTS to spend time with baby girl. She would be with her every single day if she could and it's so wonderful knowing that someone else loves my baby as much as I do and that I have someone I can rely on to take care of her like I would if I can't. I don't know what I'd do without her and hope I don't have to find out anytime soon.

~ I'm thankful that I've been able to exclusively breastfeed for 6 1/2 months now. I was all set to write up a venting post about how I never get a break and how my husband doesn't understand how much and long I'm awake every.single.night, but today I'm just happy that I've had a relatively easy time nursing my baby. I didn't have to pump extra in the beginning to encourage supply and I haven't had to supplement--those two things alone are such a huge deal to me.

~ Lastly, I'm thankful for my baby. She has been incredibly trying recently (last night she was up 9:30-10:15 (shrieking like a crazy woman), 11-11:30, 2-2:30, and 5-5:30) and has been fussy-ish, but realistically, my baby is the happiest I know. She smiles at everyone, giggles for no reason, eats like a champ (both nursing and solids), and is generally a pleasure to be around. I know so many people who are hoping and praying for a baby and I have to remind myself sometimes that I was in their shoes--just wanting a baby, any baby, of my own. And now I have her and I get so incredibly frustrated with her and I need, sometimes, to just be glad that she's here. She's mine. And she's perfect.

So thank you God. I truly am blessed.

First cold

I don't remember if I made a post about a cold previously...but it ended up not being a cold (yay!). However, baby girl has officially come down with her first cold (boo!). Her breathing was changing when we put her down Tuesday night and then she woke about 1 1/2 hours later with snot running out of her face. We suctioned her and DH and I slept with her in the recliners overnight that night. Come morning, she was acting pretty normal (was moving and shaking all over the living room--she's getting this scooting thing down!), but by afternoon she was definitely slowing down. She'd napped 4 times by 3:00 and soon after puked all over DH multiple times. It was awful. I picked her up so he could clean himself up and she puked all over me multiple times. Ick. Called the doctor and they said to push Pedia.lyte until morning.

Baby girl was having none of that. I ended up nursing her b/c she just wasn't taking the Pedia.lyte and she's kept everything down so far (as far as I know). My poor baby. She slept like normal last night, though, which was really nice. She's coughing a bit, though, sneezing, and has snot running all over. She was a mess this morning. I stayed home until my mom could come up, then came into work. I'm getting ready to head home--I miss my baby! I'm just hoping she's feeling better--poor, sweet thing!

Answering Amy's Question

Amy asked:

What is E's personality like so far? Any future career paths she should start looking into? :)

Baby girl could be a model or an actress. I am probably biased, but I think she's beautiful and she has the best smile. She also has a bit of diva within her. lol She loves to be around people and wants to be the center of attention. If someone's holding her, she's usually pretty happy (unless she's tired or hungry, of course). She hates to sleep because she's afraid she's going to miss something (she's a lot like her mama in that sense). She's such a busybody and incredibly nosey.

The only thing that might keep her from being a model or actress--she loves to eat! lol Of course, so far the food she's the most fond of (out of four she's tried...haha!) are sweet potatoes, so that might not be too bad for her figure. As long as she hits a growth spurt and doesn't stay a shorty, it could still happen!

Answering Liz's Question

Liz asked:

How are you doing with the weight after the baby? With losing so much before you got pregnant has it come off quickly? Or are you struggling?

I am totally struggling. I touched on this in another post, but I've been really nervous about cutting back to be able to lose weight because I don't want to cut my milk supply, so I haven't done nearly enough to lose any weight. At 6 months postpartum, I'm about 20 pounds less than when I delivered and about 30 pounds more than when I got pregnant. I'm frustrated by this, but not frustrated enough to jeopardize my supply by cutting back.

I thought had I learned a ton while I was losing all that weight. I had...but I just haven't stuck to it again like I thought I would. I still viewed it as a lifestyle change and it's what I'll do again when my life isn't consumed by making milk for my baby, but it is on the backburner for now.

I was tracking my food intake on SparkPeople, but have sucked at that recently, too. Even in doing that, though, I found I was eating more fruits and veggies than I had been previously. So even just writing it down made me more conscious about what I was putting into my mouth. DH and I have done a TON better about eating out every night, but I'm afraid that will be jeopardized as he starts a new position with work and starts working crazy hours again.

The thing I worry about most is that I won't ever get thinner again before we try for baby #2. No, we aren't planning on having a second right away, but if I wait until baby girl is weaned to start losing weight...well, it just might happen, which means I'll be piling pregnancy weight back on top of this first pregnancy's weight.

I suppose now that I'm conscious of my concerns maybe I'll keep them in mind and make sure they don't happen, eh? I do want to have a bit of time between weaning baby girl and trying for #2, so I'll be using that time to get healthy again. And I have a feeling with #2 I won't be eating as much junk food as I did with baby girl. I love my junk food, but I love not feeling like a whale even more!

Answering Simi's Question

I love that Simi's question wasn't baby related. I love talking about baby girl...but am so glad to talk about something else for a few minutes!!! Simi asked:

If you could pick any city to live in in the US where would you live? And Why?

This is actually a REALLY hard question for me to answer! The most important thing in my life is my family. Yes, they bug me sometimes and there are days that I wish I were further away, but I love knowing that my parents can easily make a day trip here and could be here in 45 mintues if necessary. So I wouldn't want to live much further from them. We're also almost halfway between our parents' houses (we're about 1 1/2 hours from the ILs and an hour from my parents), so really, Columbus might be ideal as far as that goes.

I do want to live in a different part of Columbus, though. I want good schools for baby girl and any future children we have. Of course, with both of us working in the public sector, we don't make a ton of money. If I had all the money in the world, I'd probably live in Grandview or Upper Arlington--they are closer to work, have great schools, and have a sense of community. However, to get a house the size and quality that we'd want, we would need to make probably double what we do now. So I think next time we look for a house (within the next 3 years), we'll be looking in either Hilliard or possibly out toward the country (either up toward Plain City, out by West Jefferson, or down on the south side). In the country we'd be further from work, but both DH and I miss living in a small-ish community.

So for us our priorities are all about the family, schools, and home size. I don't think I can see us being happy with a 2 bedroom house, especially if we end up with three kids.

Random Tidbits

~ Baby girl is a lot smaller than I was at her age. At 6 months, I was over 19 lbs and 29 inches (she's 16 lbs and 25 inches). She's still in the 50th percentile for weight, so I must have been a fairly big kid. Confirms my thoughts that she might be a shrimp.

~ Baby girl also pooped in the tub for the first time. Luckily, it was grandma's tub, so grandma got to clean it up :) Also luckily (I think), she's passing "logs" rather than the old runny stuff.

~ Her favorite toy at grandma and grandpa's house during this trip? An egg carton. She giggles when grandpa hits himself with it or when he hits her...hilarious! She also loves the squeaky noise the styrofoam makes.

~ After being nervous about taking her out to eat for the first time, she's now made five successful trips to restaurants. I don't know what I was worried about--she's an absolute gem every single time. Now, the ride home after being so overstimulated...not always so pleasant. But she has a great time hanging out at the restaurant, usually eating and playing with some toys and never fusses. What an angel!

A fluke

Eh, too bad. Last night we were up twice again--midnight and 4. *sigh* She even got her late nap at the sitter's, I stuffed her full of food...and we're back to up twice a night. Oh well. So much for not being exhausted all the time!

A good day

We had a good night last night. The stars all aligned and baby girl was pleasant all evening, ate like a champ, and then only woke once during the night. We even wonder if she would have woken at all if not for the douchebag neighbor boy and his thug friends parked in a car without a functional muffler on the side of our house, trying not to be seen by his parents...

But I digress.

Baby had just woken from a nap when I picked her up at 5. I think that was a big start to the great evening we had. Then when we got home, I immediately nursed her, which got her to dinner time with a lot less fuss. We fed her her carrots, as much as she would eat, around 6:30. Then, without her being overly tired and falling asleep while eating, I nursed her again around 7:30. She seemed really awake, but was still rubbing her eyes a bit, so we went ahead with bedtime routine. She went down easily at 8 and stayed asleep until 1:00. OMG. Thank goodness we went to bed at 9:30--we actually got 3 1/2 hours of sleep straight. Wow.

We all awoke to the rumblings of the mufflerless car and DH offered baby her pear juice in a bottle, but she wasn't having any of that. He brought her to me and she nursed a bit, but fell asleep pretty quickly while nursing. I made sure she got some from both sides, then she was taken back to bed. Luckily the boy must have decided to take his friends and their drugs* inside at this point because the car stopped, thank goodness.

We all slept until our alarms started going off. I was able to get in the shower before baby girl even woke up.

Let's hope we can duplicate both the efforts AND the results again tonight. The hardest part will be making sure she doesn't get overtired because she RARELY takes a nap that late at the sitter's...but we can hope, can't we?

*I do not claim to know for sure that they were doing drugs...this time. I do know that the boy next door does make a habit of smoking pot into between our houses and has been seen in the midst of buying *something* from a car at the corner.

Bingeing

I've been feeling pretty out of sorts recently, both at home and at work. As a result, I've been cramming everything I can get ahold of into my pie-hole. I was actually starting to see the scale creep down a little bit, but I doubt that will continue with the way I've been eating. I know it's stress eating. I KNOW I'm not actually hungry. So why do I want to go buy a cake mix and eat the entire cake?

I've always had food issues. I spent some time starving myself back in HS. When things get tough, there's this little voice inside of me that alternates between encouraging me to *not* eat or to eat everything in sight. Since I don't want to, God forbid, affect my BM supply...I lean toward eating everything I see.

I think that little voice is the result of a control issue. When life feels out of control to me, I just want to find something, anything, that I can control. For me, that's always been what food I put (or don't put) into my body.

So yeah, I'm confessing this here in the hopes that recognizing that it's a problem might be enough to get me to stop. Or at least slow down. But of course now it's lunch time :)