Sleeping Baby .. Ha!

As so many people have told me may happen, Chloe has decided that sleeping through the night isn’t a good idea. She was doing so very well for so long, but now for the past 3 weeks Last night was the first night that she wasn’t up every other hour. I really don’t know what’s causing it, but I definitely don’t like it! At MOPS on Thursday Trish suggested that maybe her belly was upset from feeding her dinner. So from Friday through now we haven’t fed her supper, only lunch and dinner, but it hasn’t helped. So for the time being, we’ll still keep it at breakfast and lunch and we’ll see what happens … During the day, she’s pretty much keeping her naps at 11:30 and 3:30 ish. The morning nap always happens, but we’re still having trouble with the afternoon one. I definitely think that once I can stay home, she’ll have a whole lot easier time getting on a set routine. I just really hope she gets back to sleeping through the night for 4 hours at a time

Times at work have never been so stressful. We have way too much work to do and not the adequate staff to complete it. So with me not being able to work 100%, it makes things very difficult. Even pregnant I was able to juggle all the balls. Each passing day, Chloe gets more and more inquisitive and very attention needy. This is perfectly fine because I love playing with her and loving on her, but I need to get some things done during the day. Dad is having a hard time juggling all the balls too. He has got to get this Samaritan’s purse job done so that we can get out of under it before it buries us ALIVE!!

Home life has gotten a lot better over the past month and a half. Shane and I aren’t fighting every single day like we were. We still bicker, but that’s the joy of marriage! We’re still adjusting to managing our time at home having a baby and maintaining the house. Each day is different so I’m sure that for at least the first year it will be a big learning curve. And by time we half way learn to manage Chloe, we’ll be welcoming another baby into the family!! Well, hopefully …

This is her favorite toy right now. It’s a crinkle book that has teethers on the ends! She’ll sit and play with it for a good 30 minutes before she gets bored with it!

An Extraordinary 5 Months!

I can hardly believe it, but Chloe is already 5 months old! Boy time flies by! She has brought nothing more than joy and excitement to my life! It’s not easy, and sometimes it’s not fun, but I wouldn’t give up being a mom for ANYTHING! She has such a great little personality. The thing I love most about her at this stage is the way she is such a happy baby in the mornings. She always has such a big smile and is so very talkative when she wakes up. It makes getting up and going to work so much easier. She’s realized that she can hear her voice and that if she screams, it’s loud. So she will just randomly scream at the top of her lungs. Yes, it gets annoying, VERY annoying sometimes, but she’s learning cause and effect. She’s pretty much out of 0-3 month clothes now. I was going through her drawer this morning and I pulled 3 tops out, 1 of which she didn’t ever wear, that she can’t fit into anymore. There’s very few 0-3 month items, like a few pants and short sleeved onesies that she can still wear. But her legs and arms are so long, she can’t wear a lot of them. She’s in size 2 diapers and I don’t think that it will be long, and she’ll be headed to 3’s. Shane tried putting her in her bouncy seat and she cannot fit anymore. She’s way to long and slides right out of it! We’ve been eating cereal now since the 8th and food since the 20th. We started with peas and she LOVED them. Didn’t spit them out whatsoever. BUT last night, she didn’t want to eat green beans. She spit them out 3 times, so I decided to try something else. She took right to the carrots! Matter of fact, she ate 3/4 of a jar tonight for dinner. So we’re headed in the right direction to start enjoying more and more food rather than nursing so much. At night, we’ve got a pretty steady routine down and have her in bed by 8:30, usually asleep by 9. Some nights it’s a little earlier, but it all depends on when she starts showing signs of being tired. We’ve been putting her in the pack and play and leaving the room so she can get used to being in a room by herself. Come spring time, we’ll be putting her in her room so hopefully once we get her on a schedule and used to being by herself, it will make the transition a whole lot easier. About a month ago, she blurted “hi” to my dad and to me later that day. Shane thought we were crazy and she wasn’t saying that … well last Friday night, she looked up at him and said hey! He always says hey baby to her and she said it as clear as day! He doesn’t think I’m so crazy anymore …. She loves playing with toys now. We started by putting an elephant toy “elfie” in her carseat and with her at work about a month ago, and now she loves to have all types of toys around her! Everything goes to her mouth so we have to watch what’s within her reach. She loves the krinkle toys. She has a book that it totally krinkly and absolutely LOVES it! She’s very inquisitive when we’re eating. She wants to grab what we’re eating and try it herself, but she’s not quite ready for that yet.

Life has not been the easiest the last month. Work has been super busy and super stressful. There’s been a lot of tension amongst us all due to the amount of workload and the lack of works .. but let’s hope that gets better soon. I have set a date of the end of May for me to only be doing payroll and helping out with vehicles. We’ll see if I last that long. I’m just so ready to be a stay at home mom and take care of Chloe and prepare for our next bundle of joy! Don’t worry he/she isn’t coming anytime soon, but soon enough! We would like to start again at the end of the summer so that they are about 16 – 18 months apart. Many people think I’m crazy, but we’re young and need to keep going while we still have the energy. It’s sure going to be a challenge having 2 needing our attention all the time!!

Christmas is coming … too soon!

We spent the majority of our week with Shelley and Connor. It was so nice to have the socialization with someone other than my employees or my husband! Wednesday, we had movie night and watched (well, they did) Paranormal Activity 3 and enjoyed some of my homemade meatball sandwiches. Boy were they delicious!! It snowed again, but only stuck to the grass and cars so it didn’t cause any travel issues like the forecasters had expected. We still didn’t take Chloe out in it, because it was just way too cold that night and by the next afternoon, most of it was gone. Maybe, just maybe, she’ll get to enjoy her first snow before the end of the year!

Saturday, we made going to see Santa a family outing. Shelley and Connor came with us so that the kids could get their picture with Santa taken together. It was a blast! The mall has an option to take your own pictures for ten bucks. I have just as good of a camera as the photographer and his lighting was left up for us to use, so we got just as good of shots as he would have. We took the majority of our pictures while Santa was on his break so that we wouldn’t be rushed. They all turned out so good!

After the visit with Santa, we went to Randall’s house for a deer bbq with Monica, Cody, Jake and Cassie. I had never eaten deer before and really had no interest in it, but I actually tried his deer steaks. They weren’t anything I’d eat every day, but they were pretty good. He wrapped them in bacon and if I didn’t know it, I would’ve thought they were regular steaks. We had a great time watching Cody dance around with Jake and we actually danced! Shocker!!

We’re Double Digits …

In week’s that is! My sweet girl is already 10 weeks old! She’s the most amazing, well behaved, growing girlie I know! We’ve had a very important week this week meeting our cousin and Aunt as well as getting our very first shots and attending our first Christmas party!

A prayer has been answered and we are on speaking terms with Shane’s sister and her family again. After several years of silence, we have started making strides to establish a relationship with one of the only family member living close to us. Shelley had her baby 2 weeks ago and we met him Thursday night for the first time! I was trying to keep up with her facebook to see when she was in the hospital, but I was 2 days late! I really had all intentions on surprising her in the hospital, but it just didn’t work out that way. After holding Chloe, he’s soo tiny! It’s hard to believe that Chloe was that little just 8 weeks ago! It’s like holding an apple compared to two bags of potatoes! He was so very well behaved! He didn’t really cry or fuss besides when he was hungry. She’s formula feeding him and has already had to add cereal to it because he wants to eat so much. As much as Shelley and her mom don’t want to hear it, he looks like his father. I bet if you held up a picture of Corey beside Connor, they’d be almost identical! But, the visit went well. It was nice to catch up and for her and I to talk about and compare our pregnancies. We actually came back over for dinner on Sunday. Shane was able to express some of his hard feelings to her and vice versa. I’m sure it felt good for the two of them to get things off of their chests. As we take it day by day, all I can do it pray for the best and hope that we can have a big happy family for these two kiddos to grow up in together!

Many weeks ago, we received information in the mail about the study of new vaccinations that Blue Ridge Ped’s was participating in. We discussed it and decided that we were going to do it. When I got to the office on Friday, they gave me more information to look over so that I could make an educated decision. I will admit that I was a little skeptical because there was the chance of them not working. No mother wants her child to be sick if there’s a way to prevent it, so I wasn’t going to do it. Then once we saw the doctor, I decided to do it. She explained that there was 2 groups, A & B, and that one was regular already on the market vaccines and the other was the new ones already used in Europe. We fell into the group that is the FDA approved vaccines.

After being around Chloe for 10 weeks, I know her tones of crying pretty well and can tell what she’s in need of. And when they gave her the 3 shots, it was instant screaming in pain. I was heartbroken! I didn’t actually cry though until later when I was telling Shane about it. Dr. Lonus said that she checked out great. She’s not above normal for length and is perfect in weight. The only thing we need to work on is turning her head towards the left because she tends to favor turning to the right. He said that if it’s not better by the next visit, then we’ll have to take her to a physical therapist. So we’re gonna try our best to work it out and avoid therapy. Currently, she’s 24 1/4’’ long and 11 lbs 12 oz. So we’ve got a very healthy and growing girl!

Along with everything else that happened this week, we attended the Home Builders Christmas party on Saturday. It was a covered dish event and boy was there a spread! The food was delicious and the entertainment … well was watching others dance and make complete fools of themselves! Chloe was the life of the party being passed around so much! Even people we didn’t know wanted to hold her being she was just too cute! She danced with Gampy first, then slow danced with David Scott. Shane and I enjoyed our first dance since the wedding. Too bad he won’t dance more … supposedly with dance lessons he would, but we’ll just have to see about that.

New this week:
     - We’re smiling and laughing pretty much every morning. Some mornings she will just carry on for several minutes to herself.
     - We are continuing to like 3 AM, but still sleeping about 4-5 hours at a time at night.
     - We’re completely out of newborn pants! They are knickers on her – which would be fine if it was summer time, but with it being winter time, she’s gotta keep those legs covered.