The average day...

Daily schedule:

 

• Awake: 6:45-7:15am - if Daddy's home, he goes in to greet her in the morning
• Breakfast: banana/applesauce/cheerios/yogurt/oatmeal
• 1st Nap: 2-4 hours (typically 2.5/3hrs.)
• Lunch: anything - truly
• Playtime for 2-2.5 hrs.
• 2nd Nap: 1.5-3 hrs. (typically 2 hrs.)
• Play until Daddy gets home - including an awkward sprint/fall/sprint/fall/sprint trip to the front door when he arrives.
• Dinner: whatever we're having - plus some extra greens, if we're on top of it.
• Bedtime: 7pm - bottle, books (unless she's falling asleep in her highchair - which happens 2-3 times per week - then we abbreviate the bedtime routine) and she's put into her bed.

Diapers: 2-3 poopy diapers/day (size 4s)

 

Temperment: She's simply a joy. Truly a joy.

Overdue

Wow - sorry for the overdue posting here - I'm going to have to make it short, since Ellie's on her way up from a nap. 

I realized it's been almost a month since I last posted!  Crazy. Quick synopsis of the big things that have come and gone:

• Trip to Germany and Austria (basically the reason I went missing on the blog for a month). Lots of funny stories from this trip that deserve their own post.
• Baby play dates that get so much better each week!  Because the 'play' date actually involves 'playing.'
• Dave has been shooting a LOT. So there's lots of post production that I need to get on - thus, my time normally spent blogging went toward my 'other job'. Which I enjoy just as much, albeit keeping me away from my fun social avenues. :(
• Switching rooms around in the house so that Ellie now has almost an entire room to be safe and play in.  I'm sure the commitment to the kid is much to Annie's chagrin, but it's nice that I can be in the kitchen and keep an eye on her destruction.
• David has been super Dad.  He took on watching Ellie all day yesterday from awakening to nearly  sleeping - he was exhausted when I got home and said, "I don't know how you do it every day." (HUGE GRIN HERE)
• She's started sleeping through the night!
• Nana visited and saved Mama on a few occasions.
• Oh yea, and we're pregnant!

All of these items deserve their own post, so I'll have to get on that!

Glad to be back!

xoxo

Items I Previously Thought Were Useless

1. Baby Bathtub - so many people said that I'd never need/use them.  I would end up bathing her in the sink, etc.  I registered for a $15 ultra basic sling for the baby, but then returned it right before she was born after the advice that it'd go to waste.  Lesson:  BUY ONE.  I wound up not bathing her  (very often at all) because it was such a complete ordeal to bathe her for the first month.  First of all, you need four hands when they first come out since they need 2 hands just to support their bodies and head.  Then you need another two hands to soap & wash quickly! And the reality is that they do NOT love being held out under a faucet or anywhere outside the cuddly loving arms being hosed or lovingly poured upon.  No matter how gentle you are, they just don't like it.  My advice: crank up a space heater, have a nice luke warm water awaiting the baby in the tub that has a sling for the infants in it; get everything you need right next to you and settle in for about 20 minutes on your knees.  Now that she can sit up, she doesn't need the tub, but I don't know how she would ever have gotten clean within the tub in the first 6 months.
2. Thermometer - I always figured I'd be able to feel her head and know if she had a fever.  Not true.  When the first cold comes along, you're suddenly at the drug store thinking the $80 instant thermometer seems reasonable.
3. Bibs - I thought it was just for food, so I'd only need one or two.  Reality check.  They drool. A lot. And they do it early and often.  I wasn't prepared to 'bib' her just to keep her clothes from being soaked (especially in the winter).  Buy extras from the dollar store. Granted you take them off when you're trying to impress someone with how put-together you kid seems, but you keep it on right up until you make your debut.
4. More than an average of 3 onesies/day for each week - I remember thinking, how many outfits can one child wear!?! And then she came along...(with ownership that I just don't love laundry...so that might factor in...somehow) and somedays she'd go through 7-8 onesies in one day. Spit up, poop, pee, more spit-up, drool, a bath, hopefully no more poop and you're averaging 5 outfit changes.  Now I had a spitter, so that could be it too.  I remember being grateful for the dozens of clothes she had early on.
5. Swim Diapers - Always figured the regular disposables would be just fine.  What I didn't account for was the triple sized blow-up the diaper experiences once you're in the water for more than 3 minutes.  Heather and Meghan (mama friends) couldn't stop laughing that Elizabeth instantly quadrupled her body weight with the swollen diaper - making it nearly impossible for her to even move her legs. There should've been a picture.

Hilarious Mommy Article - Must Read

An Aerial Disaster

Going cloth...

We finally ran out of diapers - we've been incredibly blessed with generous family and friends who had outfitted us with diapers since she was born.  I was either going to have to buy new #3 diapers or go cloth.  I'd been avoiding going cloth because it seemed like a huge hassle and too much work.  Well with the addition of solid foods, we had firmer poop coming out, so it seemed like it might not be such a hassle anymore.

I had a playdate with Heather (my green-super-save-the-world-Mama-friend) and Pippa.  I was telling her that I might go cloth; she jumped on it and said she was planning to sell her extra bum genius diapers.  So I bought 7 of them.  Heather had 20 (I think?) and she felt 12 was enough for her.  I nabbed another 2 or 3 (I forget here too) from my sister who tried the same brand in the early days with my niece. (It became too difficult for her in a highrise apartment building with a shared laundry room.)  So there I was with my 10 or so cloth diapers ready to go.  I knew enough from conversations with Annie, Heather & Meghan that bum genius seemed to be the ideal brand since they can grow with the babies.  "G" diapers and others require you to buy new sizes each time the kids grow.  Bum genius allows you to snap the diapers into the right size for you. (see photo)

Well, we had an accident the first night - sad, but I had forgotten to add the extra nighttime layer too, so that could've been it.  Daddy watched the baby the 2nd night (I had my first girl's night in almost 3 months) and he put her to bed without switching a new diaper on (oops!) so we wet through that one too around 2am. Surprisingly, I've learned it's very easy to change a baby with a cloth diaper while nursing in the middle of the night. (For those imaginging me leaning over a changing table - please save yourself the brain strain.)  In the rocking chair, the cloth diapers just fold over the bottom.  They're soft and comforting so she isn't phased by it. 

Lessons learned here for the time being:  cloth diapering works great - for the daytime and for parents.  My Dad bought a box of #4 Huggies from BJs so we use them for nighttime and for babysitters (my parents). 

More Lessons: You MUST wash those cloth diapers before 24 hours.  They STINK if you wait. Which isn't the end of the world, but it can get 'stanky' if you leave it around. The sun works great to dry them out. :)

And we're.........crawling?!?!

The little one had been working on moving for quite some time. She started the wounded soldier/sniper drag around 5 months. Then she started getting up on all fours and rocking (well, maybe teetering or shaking is a better description). David and I assembled a bet that she would crawl within the next 10 days, or before her 6 month mark of 6/8/10. I took the under and David took the over.

Her crawl track finally paid off on June 14th. My Dad was over to offer assistance with the shed construction and we were all outside. Ellie had a blanket in the yard scattered with a few toys. She was up on all fours and rocked herself forward.

Cross patterning like a rockstar. She moved nearly 6 feet. Of course, I shed a tear. Crying as a Mom, when your kids do new things, is so foreign to me, so I challenge someone to explain it to me. It just happens.

The kicker is that once it's figured out, it's all they can do. I had childproofed just in time! And thanks to my loving husband, we switched the dining room and the piano room. Now the room closest to the kitchen is child friendly and she can do whatever she wants with plenty of safe room. Added perk, the dining room now feels lie a real room!

Real food!

Oh a new land for us!

I went back and forth on when to start her on food. People ask if she seems interested in eating. I'd mentally think, well, she's interested in directing everything to her mouth, so how can I tell?

ss a treat for my Mother in Law for our delayed Mother's Day, we introduced E to bananas. Her Aunt Molly smashed that bad boy up nicely and while Nana held her, Daddy took pictures and Aunt Molly fed her. Fed her is a nice way of putting it. She wasn't so sure what to do with the mushy cream stuff aiming toward her face on a shiny long thing. I'll consider it a success since she swallowed most of it. We tried banana again a few days later.

Now fast forward to how she acts today. As soon as the spoon comes out of the drawer, as soon as the tray slides into position, as soon as her Mom sits down in front of her with a bowl of something - it's on! Squeals, grunts, grabby hands and head thrusts toward the food begin. Don't take a break, don't be too slow in delivering and don't run out of food early. She will advise not too pleasantly her disdain.

She's an absolute riot to me. She loves everything; I'm going to put a running list of new foods on the side here.

Ah, teething...

At first you tell yourself that there's no way. She's too young. It's too early.

Then you notice that she isn't eating as well and sometimes cries while nursing. She's been drooling for some time and everyone seems to be warning you that she's teething. So you ask other mom's who have had babies in this decade. They respond, "are her gums inflamed? Do you see the teeth coming through?" the reality is that first time Moms have never gone through this, so we haven't a clue what we're really looking for.

Then you watch as she grabs for things, draws them to her mouth and wails out in pain. Finally catching on here, Mom.

OK, it's teething. The drool, the poor nursing, the trouble sleeping and random crying is buttressed by noticing reddish gums and white bud looking shapes under the gumline.

Thanks to Becky Sechrist for offering her teething solution of frozen washcloths. These serve as fantastic replacements for the rapidly melting teething rings the stores hock.

And so it begins.

Gotta love it!

Miracle Juice

I just happened to stumble upon a link to this stuff called Colic Calm. When I was searching for ideas on how to calm a really upset baby and figureing out my new food restrictions. There were pages and pages of supposedly thankful parents plus the money back guarantee, so a quick PayPal purchase and it arrived 3 days later. I had it in my mind that I would give it a try when she got really inconsolable again. It took about a week and we broke it out. We have her 1/4 dose of this all natural stuff and within 5 minutes she was zonked out. It's like magic! Awesome!

So I've been able to ease some foods back to see how she can process them without the timidity that I will have the poor thing wailing in pain.

Love me some colic calm! A must for all moms.
http://www.coliccalm.com/ (not paid to advertise for them...just in case you were wondering)

Sorbet! And the world of ice cream!

With having given up dairy...out went ice cream. Well, I've found my own adaptation!  Sorbet!

I found a recipe in a cookbook at my parents' house and realized how easy it is. Just simple syrup, pureed fruit and a smidge of lemon.  So far, I've only made strawberry and pear.  Both were delicious!  David didn't much love the pear though, but Nana and I liked it.

Love the sorbet - 20 minutes in the ice cream maker and voila!

Mommy Dates

We went to childbirth classes (Bradley Method - focusing on natural labor & delivery) in Yardley.  We'd meet with 4 other couples in the home of the instructors.  The classes were good in prepping us, but there wasn't much time to mingle. 

We'd traded birth story emails and another mom, Heather had her baby, Pippa (short for Phillippa) a week before we had Elizabeth. 

Well, she just emailed me asking to get together - how exciting!!! We both feel rammy and need to 'test ourselves' in getting out.  We've planned lunch next week - can't wait!

"Hi Mary,
How's it going? I've been thinking about you lately. I don't know about you, but I'm feeling very cooped up these days and would love to get together. Pippa and I are willing to travel! Want to have lunch sometime next week?
Heather*"
The update:  here's a picture from my Mommy Date with Heather & Pippa.  First, Pippa is a doll and an amazing sleeper.  Elizabeth, on the other hand...my snacking, erratic sleeping, crying baby didn't put her best face on for our newest friends.  She pooped all over me (I tried to conceal my dismay).  Heather made a scrumptious cream of celery root soup with basil infused olive oil and a great turkey club on rye.  Um...yeah, I was lucky that I'd showered that morning.  

On my way back home, I phoned Annie for advice/support.

I guess this is my welcome to Mommy-hood-comparison-land.