First Christmas

This was a wonderful first Christmas with N. I tried to resist saying I'm shocked its already over, but seriously, I want to go back and do it all over again and slow it down. Pay no attention to the orange nose we've developed.... baby loves some sweet potatoes!

Christmas Eve - So dang cute!


He LOVED the bows, but was very unimpressed with how they tasted.

On his lamb pillow pet :)

This is how we unwrap presents!

B's mom came over to our house Christmas Eve and went to our church service with us. Then we woke up and did Christmas at our house.

Taking a break for some food.

Our Christmas outfit. (That hand is only out of his mouth if the paci makes it in, everyone says its because he's teething, but he's really been like that since day 1, he loves his hand.)

After breakfast we packed up and headed to my parents for Christmas round 2 and dinner. We left Monday morning at 5am for North Carolina so B's extended family could meet the baby.

B and his grandmother. I was very impressed with how N handled himself in the car! He was his typical self, took naps, played and hung out. He probably handled the 8.5 hour drive better than me!

Everyone loved meeting N! We are enjoying a 4 day weekend at home now, recovering from a week of non-stop. N is working on his crawl. I'm sure in a few days I'll have to share a video. :)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Baptism

N was baptized a couple of weeks ago on Dec. 18. He held it together great and we were very thankful so we could actually listen to our pastors and consent to the questions they were asking us. :) We have such a wonderful church family and know that they will love N as long as we are there. They will help us raise him in the Lord and teach him to be a strong christian man. My parents and Ben's mom came also. (We scheduled it this day in hopes that my little brother would be in from Texas, but his flight came in the day after the baptism.)

Praise the Lord for this precious child he has blessed us with!


He did pass out just minutes after his part was over, B was not thrilled I wanted to still take pictures with a sleeping baby in his arms. :) Ha! Pictures are important!

5 Months Old!

My sweet little boy is 5 months old (I'm a few days late).



In the past month he has started eating baby food (mostly orange/yellow veggies), holding his own bottle, finding and putting his pacifier in his mouth and semi-scooting (as in actually tucking his legs under him and trying to push his head along the ground...).

He is still doing great with sleeping (6:30-6:30), waking up every few nights to find his paci, but I don't have to go in there often, if I can stand to wait it out he usually finds it and gets it back in his own mouth.

(Looks so sweet here, like he's consoling his little bear :)

He is very happy! Takes one 2-hour nap a day and a few power naps. He loves the johnny jump-up finally! Well, I should say, likes... not loves. But his feet at least touch the ground and he can actually bounce a bit.

The funniest story from the past month was when B was helping me make some squash baby food (that stuff is expensive!). I had N in the kitchen feeding him while B got out the frozen squash and the magic bullet. I'm telling him that he just use the bullet to puree the food and add water until he gets the consistency of the jar stuff. I hear the bullet starting and then B has a confused look on his face and says to me, "I think we are supposed to let this thaw out before blending it..."

HA! THAW?! I said, I'm pretty sure you are supposed to COOK it, we aren't starting him on a raw food diet yet! Glad I was around or poor baby's tummy would be very upset the next time we fed him... hah!

:)

Silly boys...

Look at that fat belly!

Merry Christmas!

N's nanny asked if I was going to take him to see Santa this year and my answer was, ....probably not. I just couldn't see standing in line for hours to give my child to a strange man, have N scream and pay $25 for the picture...

So she asked if she could. Of course! She could take him during the day so the line wouldn't be as long too.

She came back and this was the shot they got. SO CUTE! I am so thankful for her and how much she loves him.

(If I look at Santa too much I get a little creeped out about it!)

As several people on facebook noticed, this picture is MUCH better than our last holiday picture...

Things I've learned

I've learned that just when I thought I was procrastinating, God's timing is perfect and his plan is impeccable. We have been blessed with exactly what we need, when we need it during this entire journey. Praise the Lord.

I've learned Thanksgiving day is a fun day for baby to try his first food: sweet potatoes. He couldn't eat them fast enough!



I've learned to ignore that we have a baby boy and a purple Bumbo. (Look at those little toes all curled up!)

I've learned that when you think you are talented and changing a horrible diaper in the backseat as fast as you can, the baby will pee all over his own face and your car leading to horrible screams. Even if you haven't been peed on in months.

I've learned that schedules do wonders for sleeping through the night.
Bath, bottle, bed = happy baby and happy mama.

Baby loves Christmas tree lights.

I've learned leaving the house with a 4 month old takes up my entire car. How does something so tiny take so much stuff?!

The baby sense movement monitor has given me back my sleep. I've learned I cannot convince a 4 month old they need to sleep on their back.

I've learned that as long as a craft takes less than 15 minutes and has only 2 steps, I can still consider myself 'crafty'.


I LOVE sips n' strokes!




Lastly, I've learned the days go by so much faster as each one passes and I want them to slow down! I look at my mom and think about how not too long ago she was in my shoes, raising her her children, 28 years old, and then all of the sudden, her kids are grown, she has 4 grandchildren and 30 years have gone by. It feels like a blink of an eye.

4 Months Old!

Noah is 4 months old!

He weighs 13lbs 9 ounces (30th percentile), is 25.75 inches long (75th percentile) and his head is 16 inches (50th percentile).
He sleeps from 6:30pm-6:30am.
He eats 4 bottles of breastmilk a day, 28 ounces currently.
He can pick toys up and put them in his mouth, but we are still working on getting the paci in there. He LOVES his paci still.
He loves his bath. Sometimes we spend a long long time in there at night because its the only thing that can hold him together until his last bottle and bedtime.
He smiles all the time and laughs several times a day, but isn't cackling yet.
He sleeps on his tummy (no other way around that one).
He loves his feet and hands. The feet haven't made it in his mouth yet, but if there isn't a paci in there, his fingers are. I've tried to notice which fingers he is sucking on the most and it seems to be his index, middle and ring fingers on his right hand... all at the same time. :)
His hair is finally coming back! WOO!

Hello bear!

His little feet are always in this position, turned towards each other and pressed against one another. Its too funny.

We are loving life and enjoying every minute of it. We have two great friends who are coming to visit us this weekend and meet N. Before we know it Thanksgiving will be here and N will get to meet his two great-grandmothers!

Sleep is not just for the weak

16 weeks

We have a new and wonderful schedule in our household! (This post is mostly for documentation so when baby # 2 may come around and I am sleep deprived and wondering when I will ever get sleep again I can look back and remember how things went with N.)

We dropped another feeding on Saturday and are down to just 4 feedings a day - 7 ounces each. Which put him right on track to start trying the actual 12 hours by 12 weeks schedule (The Sleep Solution book). So Saturday night I laid N down at 6:30 and sure enough he slept until 6:30 the next morning! I had to go in there once and put his paci in around 4am. Well, I was wary the next night because this was giving me a whole new morning routine IF it worked. I would pump first, get ready and then wake him up and feed him before we left for work. Well he did it again! 12 hours!

So today we are officially on our fifth night of our new schedule and things are looking promising (knock on wood!). I was worried about getting into the 12 hour schedule because I had been waking him up at 5 and I did not want him going to sleep at 5 in the afternoon. I would never see him! 6:30 is as late as I can push it and still get to work on time. He just started acting so tired in the evenings waiting on that last feeding, so I thought maybe he was ready for this new schedule (even though apparently some babies are ready at 12 weeks). Our book would read 12 hours by 16 weeks :) (The book did help us get to 8 or so hours by 9 weeks too - very helpful.)

Our amazing sitter (nanny?) who watches N during the day drops him off to me at 3:15, so I feel like I have a good chunk of time with him in the evenings and then in the mornings he talks the WHOLE way to work, where he used to just sleep. It cracks me up!

I would definitely recommend the Baby Sleep Solution book, one of the very few I read because it was so small.

This picture reminds me of how much he likes to hear himself yell. :)

Happy Halloween!

War Eagle from the little Auburn tiger cub :)

N is 16 weeks!

Unorganized Living

I'm hanging on by a thread lately. Work is CRAZY... I know I've said that before, but I feel like I need to create a new word that is bigger and more hectic than crazy. I have actually gotten to the point of tears this past week, on a regular basis. It could be that I ran out of my zoloft my doctor put me on after I had N, but it also could be that things are just super overwhelming! (I did refill my prescription today just in case, but my doctor told me it was a pediatric dose and probably wasn't going to make a drastic difference... I'm starting to think it is doing a good bit!)

Anyways... part of the overwhelmingness is how unorganized everything has gotten. Work AND home. Everyone has told me to just let housework and other things go and enjoy the baby, but when things look like this:


Its hard to continue to let things go, things are feeling too out of control. Yes, 3 FULL laundry baskets and one more in my room that looks just like this!

Things are so unorganized that I drove all the way to target today (20 minutes one way) and realized my purse was at home... and the tears started again and wouldn't stop.

SO - I've made some decisions. The first one is that I am going to work on Sunday morning to catch back up and hopefully start back on a good foot Monday morning instead of trying to continuously dig myself out. I hope this will be the one and only time I have to work on a weekend, but N sleeps until about 8 or 9am, so I'd rather go while he is sleeping than miss the time when he's awake. And second, I'm going to get organized! I've been inspired by my messy MESSY life and this blog (she is doing a 31 days to organized living series right now).

One of the things the blogger (Kelly) says many times is have less stuff than you have room for. Well, we don't have a lot of room, but we sure do have A LOT of STUFF... and I think its time to do some major throwing away. I have months of magazines stacked up I haven't read yet... time to go.

In one post she talks about how she only has 3 types of each item of clothing for her 5 kids, so 3 t-shirts, 3 pants, 3 skirts.... can you imagine? THREE?! I read that part to Ben and he said she was crazy. I have to admit, I don't do laundry enough to only have 3 items, but I could trim down the onesies from 60 to maybe 12... seriously... we have A LOT of onesies.

I decided that I am going to organize ONE thing a day. Just one. Whether its one drawer or one basket of clothes... one shelf... I need to organize ONE thing until things get back in order again. That doesn't sound too crazy right?

Here are some of my unorganized areas:

This is a super cute trunk in our foyer that you can't even see.



Shelves and shelves of books I haven't read.... and its not looking likely that will happen any time soon. Time to get rid of them?


On top of the fridge/cabinets.

And just because this makes it all better:Sweet little pumpkin pie! He LOVES his bath. :)

Here's to becoming more organized! First thing to cleanup: the DVR... I didn't want to start off too big. :)

Hectic!!!

I was going to vent and tell you how overwhelmed I am at work, but after I read my big complaining paragraph I decided this video is much better:

Noah is ....scooting? ha! I'm not sure what he's doing, BUT he's been doing it for a few days and it CRACKS me up! So instead of complaining about how crazy, hectic, insane work is... I'm going to love the moments when I'm at home with this cute little bug.
He's 14 weeks old!

Pinterest Fail

I love Pinterest, as I'm sure almost all of you do too. Here's the thing about Pinterest. It makes me feel pretty incompetant. I mean seriously... how are people so crafty?! I read 'the easiest homemade skirt tutorial' the other day and had to give up after the first two instructions. I literally didn't understand at all what it was saying to do.

Well, one of our pastors sent me this picture (below) on there and said she thought of Noah when she saw this. Its pretty dang cute! I thought, I can do this, I mean how hard is it to cut a few holes and stick your baby in?! right??

Wrong....

Very wrong...

N thought I was making the pumpkin eat him or something... Screaming bloody murder. I'm surprised DHR wasn't called.

Lesson learned - there are very few things I can do on pinterest. Actually, I have only found one: 3 ingredient Nutella cookies... well no, nevermind....Ben made those, not me... so maybe I'm back to none.)

3 months!

Happy 3 month birthday to my sweet boy!


What we've been up to in the past lately:

N has been rolling over both directions for 2 weeks now!

He has been mostly sleeping through the night since 9 weeks. We had a momentary hiccup for a few days where he was waking up and wanting his paci or I would need to rock him, but we are back to sleeping from approximately 8pm to 5am (I usually wake him up to feed him at 5am, because I have to pump and it makes my morning routine before work go much smoother when we do it at the same time.)

He sleeps in his crib at night no problem, but we are still trying to figure out the napping thing. He naps in his nap-nanny in the morning while I get ready, but he does NOT like to nap in his crib.

Several times this week when I've gone to get him up in the mornings he is on his tummy! The doctor told us we have to flip him back over on his back when we find him asleep on his stomach, this wouldn't be so terrible except we have a video monitor so I see him on his tummy all the time! Which means I have to get up and flip him a couple times a night. My mom said to quit and just lay him on his back and let him be, and really if I didn't have the video monitor, I'd have no clue he was on his tummy. BUT.... I do know and I'm still too nervous to leave him there since the doctor told us to flip him over.


N can hold his paci and had one attempt to actually put it in his mouth, but flailing ensued and he ended up frustrated. It was still rather cute.

He found his feet! He lifts his little legs up in the air all the time and this week reached out and grabbed them. Its so funny how the tiniest accomplishments make my day.


He is eating 6 times a day still, 30 ounces of breast milk (Hooray! This was one of my main goals to make it to!). (The hiccup in our night sleeping was when I tried to push him to 5 feedings a day because he was acting so tired at night, but that didn't work for us just yet.)

We started at a new 'day care' 2 weeks ago. He was at an in-home daycare with 5 other babies, but we've moved him to a one-on-one nanny-type situation with a lady who picks him up from my school and drops him off in the afternoons. She LOVES him and it could not be any better for us right now! I am very thankful to have found this wonderful woman to watch him.

He smiles ALL the time! He has laughed out loud a few times. I can't wait for him to laugh all the time :)
He loves his baths - this is an understatement.
Loves to suck on his hands.
Prefers to never have his clothes changed. :)
Loves to lay on a blanket or the floor play mat and kick and talk.
Has discovered his voice and loves to yell!
Weighs almost 13 pounds.

We are so thankful for this sweet blessing. Ben is doing great. It is so sweet to see him as a dad. He is a wonderful father. I on the other hand am struggling. I am UNBELIEVABLY tired, even with N sleeping through the night. I am thinking maybe my iron levels are off or something because it feels like mono-tired. (I'd say pregnancy tired, but then everyone would ask if I was pregnant again, which I am not. :) Other than that, things are great, work is crazy busy, but it is falling into place with everything else.

Family Time

My very talented friend Haley came and took family pictures this past weekend since my little brother was home from Iraq. She put a sneak peek on facebook and here are two of my favorites!!



It has been a very long time since we've had any type of professional photos taken and since Chris was in town I really wanted to get pictures of all of us. This one turned out great even though my poor brothers struggle terribly with smiling... they are so awkward when they take photos! Ha! This one turned out better than usual though.

Here were two I took while we were getting ready:

Nana and Caroline

Ava Grace telling me she found dog poo.... good job!