Monday, June 17, 2013

Five Month Update!

Emmy Lou Who is 5 months old and 1 day, and this Momma actually got the blog post up on time! Winning all around. :)



This month we've been working on sitting a lot as we start solid foods. She's not quite  there, but she's getting close! She'll sit on her own while she's on my lap or in the corner of the couch. She just kind of topples over if you try to sit her on the floor with nothing around though. Headfirst, right into the tootsies! Since she's not sitting that well yet, we don't give her solids at home. I let them deal with that at daycare. So far she's only eating a small amount of rice cereal every day. Once she masters the art of sitting up and keeping food in her mouth, look out sweet potatoes!

Speaking of tootsies, she found her feet this month. Can I tell you how adorable a chunky little monkey baby is once she finds her feet and holds on to them in a constant yoga pose? HOLY CRAP. I pretty much die every time she does it, and I shower her with praise and kisses. Well I do that anyway, but can you even stand how adorable those chubby little cheeks are?!

Last, but not least, she's started vocalizing much more than she used to. Before she was fully of grunts and coos, and now she's full of squeaks and shrieks. Mostly shrieks.

As for Momma Monkey, I'm currently still holding onto 5-10 lbs of baby weight. I'm willing to let it slide because I'm basically back into all of my clothes and I'm worried that any kind of exercise or dieting of any kind will cause a dip in my milk supply. I'm already supplementing with formula on occasions (usually 1-2 bottles a week) because she eats so much, so my weight isn't really a concern for me. It's all about getting the monkey all the food she needs!Unfortunately this equates to me pumping for around 5 hours a day in addition to nursing her, but seeing her grow so well makes the 3AM pumping session worth it!

I should have measurements next month from Emily's 6 month checkup, which is crazy because I can't believe my little love bug is already going to be half a year old. I'm already planning the most adorable birthday party ever, which I hope to celebrate back home in North Dakota with family and friends. Stay tuned for the next update!


Thursday, May 23, 2013

Three and Four Month Update!

Again with the lateness. Seriously, guys... Having a four month old and being a working mom is a ton of stuff! I wake up at 6:15 AM and it's basically go go go until 8:30 PM when she falls asleep. By that point I'm ready to grab a bowl of ice cream (one great thing about breastfeeding is that you can basically eat ice cream every night.. haha) and my pump, head to the bedroom and turn on PBS. So pardon my tardiness. I'll make up for it with tons of pictures of the chunky monkey, starting with month three!



This month baby E didn't have any checkups, but we did take her to the doctor for a cough. I know, I know.. paranoid much? But she just had this cough that would not go away! Anyhow, turns out she was fine. They weighed her at that appointment (which was around 12 weeks) and she was a 11 lbs! I couldn't even believe this kid was that big! Well, I guess I can. She guzzles 16-20 oz at daycare, nurses twice at home, and then has at least one more 4 oz bottle.

As far as milestones go, E started giggling this month. Holy cuteness. It's more of a grunt, but she's getting there. :) She also moved to her crib, which was way less hard that I thought it would be. She had a rough time for the first few nights because she was used to her rock and play sleeper, but she adapted pretty fast and was right back to sleeping through the night. The monitor I mentioned in the previous post has been a life saver. If I didn't have something alerting me that she was still alive I think I'd lose my mind. This kid sleeps like a rock. A chunky, red-headed rock. I kind of love it.

Now on to four months!!!!


We had her four month checkup on 5/20, and baby E is definitely growing. She's up to 13 lbs 4 oz and 23.5" long. She's jumped from the 10th percentile in height and weight all the way to the 75th for height and 90th for weight. Even the nurse was shocked, she had to measure twice to make sure we didn't just get it wrong. I swear if she wasn't the spitting image of her father I wouldn't think that this was my baby at all. She's still eating like a horse, so that probably explains it. She eats anywhere from 28-35 oz a day. Not even kidding. She was sick twice (UTI and bronchiolitis) and I had a panic attack because she wasn't eating very much. Keep in mind that not eating much for Em is 20-24oz a day, which is TOTALLY NORMAL for any other child.

Milestones this month were kind of big. At the end of the month she started to roll over from her back to her tummy (according to daycare)! At home she still gets stuck on her chunky little arm, but she's about 99% of the way there. She also started to sit better with assistance. She's been standing with help, AKA locking her knees while your holding her, but she typically leaned against us when she was sitting. Now she hates to lean on us, and wants to sit on her own with very little help. She can't totally sit up on her own, but I think she'll get the hang of that this month!

Again, I appologize for being absent friends and family, but now that we're over the house hill we were working on I hope I can be more present. See you next month!

Big news in our house!

No no no, I'm not pregnant. But if you haven't already heard, we're moving! That's right, we're moving. We decided to build a new house closer in to town and sell our beloved first home. The traffic is just getting way too bad out where we live. Actually, it might have always been bad and I just didn't notice it before I wanted to spend every waking minute with our little family.

We decided to move closer and buy a bigger house at the end of March, but we just couldn't find a place. That sounds odd, but houses are flying off the market here. It seemed like every open house we went to was already pending, and we couldn't even look at houses unless they were pre-market. In the area we wanted to be in we would end up spending $200K or more on a house that needed massive updating, and we'd have to put in an offer before the house was even listed. We decided that wasn't what we wanted to do, and ended up taking our realtor with us to a new development that was close to where I work and ended up picking a lot and building.

The next big step was selling our house. I'm going to be honest, we bought our house for $125K in 2009 and I thought we might get $132K out of it best case scenario. Apparently the housing boom has crept its way out to where we live, because we listed on a Friday afternoon, had seven showings through Monday night, and five offers all for over what we asked. So we signed a contract to build a new house and sold our house all in less than a month. It just so happened that this happened to fall right between my month three and four postings about Emily, so that's why I'm so late on those! I'll post them right after this, but I wanted to justify myself.. haha

In other news, since we're buying a new house, Emily gets a whole new nursery! One of the constant feedback points we got about our house was that everyone loved the nursery. Seriously, people would write nothing else anywhere and then finish up with "I love the kids room!" It's a pretty proud moment for me, because I worked really hard on pulling that room together. I've already got a new pinterest board up and running with a ton of turquoise and pink ideas for my little chunky monkey, so expect a post about that soon. :)