Four Months Old!

Today my little miss had her 4 month check up.  She's actually 4 months and a few days but who's counting?  If you are a friend of mind you know that we have struggled so much with breastfeeding.  It literally took us 3 1/2 months to get it down pat.  The past 2-3 weeks have been awesome!  With each month I can also pat myself on the back for making it another month.  So, if you are struggling with it yourself, know that you can do it!  I've made it through the ringer and can say that it is totally worth it. 

Ready for the stats?  My big girl has gone from the 8th percentile to the 25th percentile since her 2 month appointment.  She weighs 13lbs and 3.5 oz and is 24 inches long.  So big! 

She is actively exploring her surroundings at all times.  She loves to look around and smile at others.  She had a small stage during her third month in which she did not want anyone to hold her but me.  She seems to be growing out of that.  Mommy isn't sure how she feels about it though.  ;)

She often plays independently, as long as she can still see me.  She loves her playmat still [a great investment] and is learning to play in her entertainer.  She also has a new best friend.

Bailey likes to lay next to Kathryn.  Kathryn likes to pull Bailey's hair and watch her every move.  It's kind of fun to watch.  Although Bailey doesn't have a mean bone in her body, she's still an animal so I have to keep a close watch on the situation.

In the past month Kathryn has really been working hard on her communication skills.  She went from blowing raspberries to grunting, and then out of nowhere started shrieking and hasn't looked back.  She gets all worked up with her arms and legs and then lets out a loud, high-pitched squeal.  Of course, we react with great joy so she continues to do it.  It's so fun!

She is really good at grabbing and holding onto things.  She can hold her toys and enjoys throwing them.  It's fun to watch her reach out for Bailey or for my nose.  She loves to get hold of my face with both her hands and give me a wet sloppy kiss.

She still absolutely hates riding in the car.  Every once in a while when we are just in town she does ok, but she will cry all the way to Louisville/Lexington if she has to.  Which makes going anywhere undesirable.  My nerves can't handle it. 

She sleeps pretty well at night.  At 3 months we moved her out of her bassinet and into her pack and play, and she started waking up several times a night when we did that.  She had previously slept all night but after the growth spurt she's had, now I know why!  Sometimes she just wants to be patted back to sleep because she isn't quite able to put herself back to sleep when she wakes up.  Napping is hit or miss.  She sleeps great if she's being held but not so much when you put her down.  That's ok with me because I just take a nap with her.  A great time for her to nap is when I pack her up in her stroller and go for a long walk around the university. 

Her favorite toy is her daddy.  When he comes home she starts kicking those legs and waving her arms with excitement.  Sometimes it's just one arm, and Justin calls it her "chicken wing".  She looks at him with such expectation..."What's he going to do next?"  She gets upset with him when he tries to sit still with her.  We had our first instance of her getting upset when he left for work.  It was short-lived but his absence was definitely the source of her distress. 

What I want to remember most about this stage is how expressive she is.  She is so aware of everything and I know that will keep us on our toes as she grows.  She wakes up with such joy every morning.  The only time she is ever upset is in the car.  As I've been writing this post, she is just laying on her playmat kicking her legs and babbling/shrieking.  So much fun!

Can't wait to see what the next month brings!

You're Gonna Miss This

I'm sitting in a chair, currently unattached to my child.  I think to myself, "I don't know how long this will last, so I should do something....." which leads me to another thought. I really don't know how long this will last, but it's going by so fast.

She is currently shrieking.  That's her new mode of communication.  She's in her "rocking entertainer" which is a thing that holds her up in a little seat that turns all the way around, and there are things to her to bang on.  I take comfort in the fact that her feet don't reach the bottom of it [yet]. She is playing without having to have me right there. Miss Independent, she is.

She doesn't need me to hold her head up.  I don't have to nurse her every hour, she sleeps most of the night [although a nice nap would be nice, too], and she is increasingly aware of her environment.  Pretty soon she'll be rolling over, sitting up, and eating sweet potatoes.

I'm going to miss her clinging to me.  I won't miss or even remember having dirty dishes and dusty corners, but I will miss all of the times I've had to stop doing household chores because she needed to be held. 

I'm going to miss her lack of mobility when she crawls and then runs away from me.  I'm going to miss the grunts, raspberries, and loud shrieks when she starts sounding our syllables and asking for a drink of water.

I'm going to miss spraying and washing her diapers on the day that we go pick out her first big girl panties.  In the midst of the potty training struggles that will come, I hope I remember how much I really do love cloth diapering.

I'm going to miss her waking me up sometimes every two or three hours at night because she needs a little snack or just to feel my skin against hers.  The tired eyes I see every morning in the mirror will always be there, but for different reasons.

Cleaning and scrubbing can wait til tomorrow
for babies grow up, we've learned to our sorrow.
So settle down cobwebs, dust go to sleep.
I'm rocking my baby, and babies don't keep.

How I Met Your Father [Part 1]

I'd like to tell you the story of how I met, befriended, and then much later became the girlfriend [and of course, wife] of my husband.  Not because it's Valentine's Day [tomorrow] but because yesterday was the five year anniversary of our accidental first date.

We met the semester of my junior year of college [his sophomore year].  The location of our meeting is much debated between the two of us, but I'm right.  It was at the local laundromat on a Sunday afternoon.  It was sunny but the air was still crisp from winter.  No one else was there except for him and his then girlfriend.  My husband claims that we met in the lobby of my dorm when a large group of us were going to the movies, but that was some time after our first meeting.  When the group of us went to the movies several new friendships began for me.  I began to spend a lot of time with this group of people and got to know Justin through this.  I must admit, though, that I had my eye on someone else for a long time to come...

During my senior year of college, we began to spend a lot of time together.  I guess you could say that I considered him my "best guy friend".  He was still dating someone else and I certainly was not interested in him as anything more than a friend.  Sure, the thought crossed my mind a few times that he and I were quite compatible and over time I even began to find him attractive.  Not that my husband isn't adorable, I was just blind to it through our friendship.  Looking back, I am thankful that God kept my eyes covered because it allowed me to have an open relationship without any walls, insecurities or fear of rejection. 

It has been my experience in my own life as well as in the lives of the college girls that I get to minister to now that it is easy exclaim, even in private, "Where is my husband?!"  As a naive Christian girl, I thought I found my husband every other month.  It's normal.  But I had sincerely prayed about this situation and I knew that God had someone for me, and that it would be a man that I had been friends with.  I prayed about it often and as a p.s., "Lord, could he please be a baseball player?"  I felt that God would take a beautiful friendship and in His time, turn it into something more.  How silly that I was in the midst of that for a couple of years with Justin without even realizing it! 

A year after we met, I graduated college and Justin and I parted ways for the summer.  He was going to China and I was beginning a job in the same town we attended school.  When we were apart that summer, I had begun to realize that I indeed did have some feelings for him.  I had finally realized that the other guy that I was interested in for so long was just not interested in me.  So I put my best face on and decided to move forward, unattached.  I moved into a house with some other girls, got a dog, and entered the working world.  Justin went to China and when he came to my house with some other friends for the first time after the summer, I couldn't understand why I wanted to hug him.  I had missed him. 

Justin and all of his buddies would come over on the weekends to watch movies and more importantly, eat.  This time in my life is where I got to fully embrace the gift of hospitality that I did not know I possessed.  I loved spending my paycheck [somewhat unwisely!] on feeding those boys. Justin would often come over early to help me "test" food or just hang out.  When his birthday came along that December, he came to my house that Saturday for breakfast. I distinctly remember carrying his plate of pancakes from the kitchen to where he was sitting on the couch and thinking, "I could do this for the rest of my life."  It was then that I realized that I couldn't suppress my attraction for him any longer.  I hoped it would go away. 

A few days later my roommate and I threw an epic Christmas party and then it was time for Justin to head home for the Christmas break.  Over the holidays, he took me to my first UK game at Rupp Arena.  Being a Tennessee fan, this didn't interest me at all but he did so I went.  After he came back for his last semester of college,  he and I made a friendly wager over the UK/UT basketball game.  Whomever's team lost had to take the other person out to dinner.  It never entered my mind to think of it as a date, and I'm not sure if it occurred to him either. 

It was a snowy Sunday, and I wanted to back out because the last thing I had wanted at that point was to ruin a great friendship because of my silly feelings.  I remember that I wore my Timberland boots [hey, it was 2006 and snowing], jeans, a white shirt, and a pink zip up hoodie.  We went to Lexington and he took me to Cheddar's because he had lost our bet.  We also shopped a little and went to the Starbucks that we had frequented in our friendship.  We then attended 608 at Southland Christian Church, a Sunday night service geared toward college students.  The speaker was talking about seizing opportunities placed before you and actually said that if there's a girl in your life that you've been thinking about, just ask her out.  He and I just looked at each other out of the corner of our eye and didn't talk the rest of the night.  It was a long drive back to my house after.

When he pulled in my driveway, I started to ask him if he thought that perhaps the reason we had been friends to easily and for so long was that we were meant for something more.  But I couldn't get the words out before he said, "Yes!"  He knew what I was going to say.  I think he wanted to say it but was too shy.  We talked about things over the next few days and we decided that we should begin a cautious relationship. 

I had known for a long time that if he would just admit that he was interested in pursuing me, we'd get married.  But that's a story for another day...

I'd like to encourage my college girls that if you seek the Lord's will in your future mate, praying about it often, He will give you the desires of your heart.  Don't believe me?  Justin played baseball.  ;)

Last Night's Pie

Last night we had a guest coming for supper, and ya'll know I can't let someone end a meal without something sweet.  It cleanses the pallet, so to speak.  Before I tell you how I made this pie, I must tell you about the pork loin I made for supper.  For me, there are two cuts of meat that are considered treats: roasts and pork loins.  I call them treats because they are rarely in our budget [not to mention chicken breasts or steaks].  But when I found a 7lb pork loin for a few cents more than $10 last week, I had to snatch it up.  I either make some kind of BBQ version in the crockpot or a mustard & herb version in the oven when I fix this cut of meat.  I wanted to try something new so I moseyed on over to my favorite site for dinner inspiration: Mel's Kitchen Cafe.  There I found her recipe for Brown Sugar Spiced Pork Loin. It sounds kind of odd, but it was soooo good!

Ok, back to the pie.  With a shrieking 3 month old on my hip, I had to come up with something quick that didn't require a lot of work or a trip to the store.  A couple weeks ago I made some shortbread cookies and froze half the dough.  So I thawed it during the day in the fridge.  When I was ready to make the pie, I pressed it into my tart pan and baked it for abou 15 minutes at 350.  As that cooled, I beat up some fresh whipped cream, sweetened with about a tablespoon of powdered sugar.  Then I folded in some [Kroger brand] crunchy hazelnut spread. Yes, I said crunchy.  It tastes like the filling in those fancy ferrero rocher candies that I don't know how to spell.   I spread it on top of the crust and drizzled melted milk chocolate on top to serve.  Yum! 

Co-Sleeping

Sometimes people assume that since I'm a baby-wearing-cloth-diapering-Toms-wearing-breast-feeding mama that I must co-sleep. 

If sitting in a chair at 2am with a baby girl either sprawled out on my lap, wrapped around my neck, laying diagonally across my body, or otherwise attached to my person while drooling and sweating all over me as I try to contort myself into some comfortable position is "co-sleeping", then we're all over it.

It's fun. Because cribs, as you know, are only for play time.

Three Months Old!

My little tater tot is officially 3 months old as of this past Saturday.  Which means that I have officially been in charge of a living and breathing human being [outside of the womb] for 3 months.  With most jobs there is a 90 day trial period where the employee's performance is evaluated and usually receives a pay raise.  If I had to evaluate myself [and my husband] I think we're doing a pretty good job!  I know I won't be getting any raises, but I'm ok with getting paid in giggles, big smiles, and sloppy open mouth kisses.

I don't have any stats on her growth, but I am guessing she's probably gained around a pound in the last month.  She's fitting quite nicely into 3 month clothes because of her cloth diapers.  Yesterday I had her in a disposable and it was fun to see how tiny she still is. 

She is still sleeping pretty well, but sometimes she likes to avoid napping during the day or wake up a couple times at night for a quick feeding---just to mix things up.  On Saturday we finally ripped the band-aid off and moved her from the bassinet to just the flat part of her pack-and-play.  She slept the whole night, much to our surprise!  Unfortunately, she has been waking up a couple of times each night after but that may just be because she's having a growth spurt or something. 

Our little girl is still quite a happy and social baby!  She smiles ALL THE TIME!  She doesn't mind if other people hold her, but she definitely doesn't like it when she can't see me.  When we're out and about I keep her in the Moby wrap and she is content there.  She is definitely a mama's girl.  I'll take it because I know it won't be very long before I'm not #1 anymore.  I got to hear her laugh for the first time last week!  It was one of the sweetest little sounds I've ever heard.  She did it for her daddy on Sunday night, but she isn't doing it all the time yet.

Kathryn has always had great head control and loves to sit up and watch everyone.  She can't sit up on her own, but she likes to be propped up or sit in her Bumbo seat.  She loves to look in mirrors and is still trying her hardest to roll over.  She loves things above her that move.  I have got to make her a mobile this week! 

She has entered the stage of discovering everything with her mouth.  I think she gave up on sucking her thumb; she uses two fingers or just stuffs her whole fist in.  Anything that she can get hold of goes right in her mouth.  Her vision has improved greatly and she loves to watch us from across the room.

Yesterday was a big day.  She became a cousin!  Annabelle Lucia was born to my brother and his wife.  They live in NH but hopefully they'll get to meet soon.  Congratulations!


What I want to remember most about this stage is how excited she is about everything.  I think she will be that way for a long time to come, but it is just so precious.  Sometimes she puts her little hands up by her mouth with that big ol' smile and she looks like a little squirrel.  She has really settled into her environment.  We love to play, read stories, and have family Bible time most nights.  She loves bath time and talking to us from her changing table.  She is, I believe, naturally kind of shy.  When I'm holding her and people come up she kind of smiles and then buries her head in my neck.  I secretly love that.  I can't wait to see what her 4th month brings!

I won't tell...

You have to admit...

she's pretty cute.

I won't tell on you.  :)