Vertical Change

Look who's sitting up all by himself!!


He's not quite stable to stay forever like that, but today was the best we've done!! He even got into a sitting position from laying down today! It cracks me up how excited the tiny things make me.

Our sweet little boy is 6.5 months old.

Making Memories

I wanted to share with you one of my favorite things I've found since having N. Shutterfly photo books! I have always been a fan of photo books, but used to make them on my iPhoto software on my mac. They were pretty pricey and have few customizations to make. When N was born I received several coupons for free books from Shutterfly. It took me a few tries to realize all the fun things I can do with these books. You can literally scrapbook digitally and then they send it to you all put together! I'm in love!



You can start with just a basic style, but then combine any type of embelishments, words, ribbons, shapes, anything! Seriously, if you have pictures on your computer you love that you have not done anything with in awhile, go to shutterfly asap. (No they did not pay me to write this... I wish they would. They could pay me in photobooks. :)

A few things we are praying over lately:
We have been extremely blessed with the lady who keeps N during the day. I can't remember how much I shared about that situation, but day care was a not-so-good situation turned AMAZING situation. When we found her, she was just going to be temporary while we tried to get into a day care, but things went so well that we asked if she wanted to keep him through the end of the school year and she said yes. Well, we were thinking at that point we would put him in a program (he'll be one), but we LOVE her so much that I've asked if she'd want to keep watching him. We aren't sure if she'll be able to because financially she may need to go get a full-time job that pays more, so we are all just praying over it to see what God's plan is.

Second is our home. We've been here almost 6 years and had the plan of it being our two-year house. Hah! Well, we do feel like we've outgrown it and I feel like I'm done driving 35 minutes to and from work. Thankfully N does wonderful in the car, but that could be a whole hour we could have at home if we moved closer to work. Not to mention B and I both drive the same direction to work and we live 35-45 minutes away from our jobs! It just makes sense to move closer. So this is a heavy one we are praying over. It means moving further away from family and our church that we LOVE, and into a city we don't necessarily love, but being close to our jobs and being able to build a community for N as he grows. Right now our church, home and jobs are spread out between about an hour in different towns. I'd love to combine the three to be close.

Our fun photo for the day: N moved into the big-boy bath ring tonight!

Check In and Up

Do you know my husband? ^ He is tall and used to be very skinny, now he's pretty average or could lose 15lbs or so (which is probably skinnier than average in the real world). Well, N had his 6 month check up today and and is in the 75th percentile in height (length? does it count as height when is still quite horizontal?) and 25th in weight and head circumference (which is shocking since most of my side of the family have bucket heads). Which also means 27 inches long, 15.5lbs. I was surprised he was on the skinny side.... he's full of rolls and eats like a pig!

(Here are his leg rolls and a hat that makes his head look huge! Apparently it was for a new-born :)

I also went and priced out formula since my last post and I was SHOCKED at how expensive it is!!!! I thought it would be around $10-15 for a tub that would last a week or two.... instead it is about $25 for 5 days. OMG! I was having a hard time officially letting go anyway and this may have sealed the deal for a little longer. I know I cannot keep up with 6 times a day anymore and be attached to this dang machine ALL day, but I have dropped down to 4 times a day, which makes more sense since N only eats 4 times a day. I've done this two days and so far so good, but if I start to drop ounces again I don't mind supplementing some. It will probably be an on-going transition away from pumping, but I feel better letting go of the stress I put on myself. If it works on 3 or 4 times a day and I can keep up, great! If I have to supplement, that's okay too. 6 times a day though is definitely over, but I'm not quite as ready as I thought I was to give up my shelf in the fridge.



Lastly, where has Oxi-Clean been all my life?! We were recently blessed with a ton of hand-me-downs. Some had some pretty serious stains set in. I washed and pre-treated several times and it made zero difference. I googled what to do and found lots of people loved Oxi-Clean. After just an hour of soaking the clothes the stains were almost gone!!! I can't believe I hadn't found this stuff sooner! If you have not tried this go out and buy this right now!

6 Months & a few days late

Happy 6 month birthday to my little monkey!

We had a rough 6 month birthday week, with lots of low fevers, plenty of drool and a sleepy boy. He's really been pretty happy considering all the above, but finally today I can feel his two little teeth on the bottom trying to poke up. Hopefully they'll push on through quickly.

What are you doing here teddy?!

The past 6 months have been wonderful! Tiring and yet wonderful. We have fallen into a very good routine. We are home-bodies to begin with, but don't really try to go out to eat or anything with N lately because he goes to sleep at 6:30 and its just not worth trying to console him when he thinks he should be asleep. Thankfully N's wonderful grandmothers are eager to keep him so Ben and I can get out once in awhile.



Here are some stats for our little boy:

We think he is around 17 pounds (I got on the scale with him the other day). We have our official 6 month appointment on Monday, so I'll update then.

He still sleeps at least 12 hours at night and takes a 2 hour nap in the morning and a 1 hour nap in the afternoon. Baby LOVES some sleep.

He loves his jumper! And I love watching babies in those things... hilarious!


We got in the habit of rocking him over Christmas break since we were all over the place, but had to do some boot camp last week to get him back into putting himself to sleep. One night of crying and he remembered. I think some times he prefers to just be laid down so he can get to sleep already. (If I haven't pushed The Sleep Solution book enough and you want to do some sleep training, go get it! We've read and re-read it many times to remind us what to do.)

He eats and LOVES food. Peas and sweet potatoes are probably his favorite, but he still acts like a bird no matter what you feed him with his mouth wide open after each bite. Its hysterical! He's had a ton of different foods, and I tried rice cereal with him one day last week and it was awful. He ate it but was so gassy and cried the whole day. We will not be trying that again. The doctor told us not to mess with it since he is sleeping through the night and wasn't spitting up much, but I got a wild hair after he started spitting up more than usual. We decided we'd rather have a laundry problem than a miserable baby.

There's his bird face:

Warning: breastfeeding info ahead:::


On a similar note I'm still pumping and can hardly believe it that we made it to 6 months. Prior to Christmas I really thought I would keep doing it until 12 months as long as it lasted, but over Christmas break my milk took a nose dive. It was like one side just wouldn't let it out and in turn I started making less. I had to add another pumping time to catch back up and have stressed over it for the past 3 weeks. Today, I think I've made up my mind to ween N towards formula (glug....). I finally got to the point where I am starting to dread pumping. I even tried to nurse him again over the break in hopes he'd learned to nurse again and help fix the milk not coming out issue, but after bottles for 4 months, there was no such luck. I'm beating myself up over it, but I don't want to dread pumping and spending 3 hours a day hooked to this machine is getting old. I want to just spend it with N. I want to enjoy him and be with him rather than having to put him in the pack n' play and watch him from across the room.

Anyways,

A few other news:

We are still army crawling around. He can't quite get that belly off the ground. Also we are working on sitting up. He does the funniest thing when he gets his legs under him, but then doesn't know what to do next. Look at all those rolls!

Happy 6 months precious! We are so thankful to have you in our lives!

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I like the new blogger app, even though when you load pictures they automatically go to the bottom of your post (or I haven't figured out a better solution). Anyone else know how to change that? At least I'll blog more often!

I love Melissa's idea of a picture a day for the year. (I'd link to you if I knew how on my phone :) so today I'm going to show you my new favorite hobby for day #2's photo (I really said hobby, but I'm not sure it fully counts as one yet). This all started from a horribly botched wreath my mom bought for $60....yes $60!!! I got it and thought I could do that better and cheaper! Anyways... Here are some finished products. I've made 4, gave one as a present and this Alabama one is a birthday present for a friend. Easy peasy!

Blogger has an app!

Thanks Melissa for telling me blogger now has an iPhone app out. I've been waiting and waiting (and really gaveup hope!).

So this is a test blog. From the phone.

I wonder if you can order your pictures or put text under them?