Christmas Reflections

As a child I remember going to Mass with my family and waking at the wee hours of the morning to open my Christmas presents.  This is our first Christmas with our little one and while she doesn't understand the meaning of Christmas and doesn't show the excitement for Santa yet, having a child makes Christmas a little different.  We're starting to make our own traditions as a family.  For some, Thanksgiving is about bringing family together.  For me, I feel more that Christmas is our family gathering.  This is our third Christmas without Joe's Dad and I miss him more and more as R2D2 becomes more interactive and social. He would love seeing her look of awe at the tree lights and eating the wrapping paper  Joe had a great role model as a father and I love seeing Joe step into this role of a father.  Mr. Joe would be so proud of him.

In November my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer.  She has since had surgery and will be starting chemo after the new year.  She has stage one cancer, so her prognosis is very good, however it's still frightening to know my mom has cancer.  She's already a survivor though and we will get through this.

While we exchanged actual gifts, I truly feel enjoying time with my family was my best gift I received this year.  I'm in a busy part of my residency right now and the time off was the exact gift I needed, especially with my mom's recent diagnosis.  Our families have blessed us with their gift of time and babysitting throughout the year which has helped more than Joe and I could ever return in words or Christmas gifts.

We are truly blessed.  Thank you Lord.

Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas to you and yours!!!

5 Months Old!

I'm not going to lie, I'm downright exhausted and I'm not sure how much I'm going to write.  I recently had two weeks of night work and it's so much harder sleeping during the day now that I'm a mom than it was before.

We didn't have a doctor's appointment this month, so her weight is the old school me holding her and subtracting.  So, Joe and I think she weighs approximately 14 pounds this month.  We didn't measure her.

R2D2's eyes are still bright blue! :)

Clothes: I've put away all of her 3 month clothes and she's comfortably fitting into 3-6 months and 6 months.  I'm still getting used to the sizing system.  Regardless, she has plenty of clothes.

Diapers; Comfortably size 2 now.  I have a wholesale size box of size 2s in the garage and I have a feeling she'll be in size 3 once we finish that.

Feeding: Other than a little bit of supplementing in the first week, R2D2 has been exclusively breast fed for 5 months.  That being said, I'm taking a step back.  I've been exhausting myself waking to pump or staying up late to pump after she's gone to bed.  I was keeping up, but I wasn't making time for myself.  I pumped daily while driving to work and my shoulder and neck ached so much.  I've decided to cut out pumping while driving to work unless I didn't get to feed her before I left and I'm stopping staying up late just to pump after she's gone to bed.  It took over a month for me to accept this, but I have.  I'm still making enough for her to have 3-4 bottles of breast milk a day and then she gets about 1 bottle of formula.  The first day Joe said she didn't mind it, but the second day she definitely made a face and pushed the bottle away.  I don't want to waste my milk, so I'm not going to mix breast milk with formula in one bottle.  If she's hungry, she'll get used it to.

We started solids this month too.  So far we've tried oatmeal, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, apples, carrots, and green beans.  She likes everything but the green beans. I've tried them on several occasions and she keeps spitting them out.

Milestones: R2D2 can now roll from her back to her tummy.  She rolled tummy to back when she was about 3 months and did that several times for about 2 weeks, then stopped.  She still doesn't roll tummy to back that much any more.

Sleep: We're still working on sleep.  For the most part, she can now fall asleep on her own in the crib, however she's still not consistently sleeping more than 5 hours before starting to wake every 3-4 to feed.

I know there is more.  I can't put down all of the changes and joys she's brought us in just one post, however, I hope she'll enjoy reading these when she gets older.

Green Beans

Not a big fan yet. We'll try again tomorrow.

Bad habits

Sometimes being an adult is rough and I don't have the best coping mechanisms. I miss the innocence of being a child and not knowing what's going on. There are some health concerns in my family right now. I'm also back to working 60-80 hour weeks. I'm trying not to get stressed, but its hard. I have not made or found the time to work out and the past two days I've been finding myself turning to food to help ease my stress. I must stop this, because then I just feel worse. I know I'm tired. I know I don't have much time, but I must commit to exercising when I feel stressed instead of turning to ice cream. It's easy to use R2D2 as an excuse, but I'm stronger than that.

Four Months Old!

Our baby girl is a third of a year old!  Now that I'm back to work, the months are going faster :(  She had her 4 month check up on the 20th.  She weighed 12 pounds 4 ounces and she is 24 inches long.  Her weight is now about the 12%, so that makes me happy.

R2D2's eyes are STILL blue.  I love seeing her big blue eyes look up at me.  I really hope they stay blue because they're such a beautiful shade of it.

Clothes: 3 months clothes are getting a little tight, but the 6 month clothes are still a little too big.  I'm trying to rotate her clothes so that she can try to wear things at least once...

Diapers: She's comfortably fitting into size one diapers right now.


Feeding:  I'm happy to say we're still breast feeding.  I'm producing just enough milk, but just enough is still enough.  She's not sleeping through the night and I wonder if she had more to eat during the day if she wouldn't wake to feed overnight.  I'm not pumping enough for that to happen, so I'm ok with waking to feed her in the middle of the night.  I'm not going to lie though, I am reaching the extreme state of exhaustion.

Sleep: As I said above, she's not sleeping through the night just yet.  She'll sleep for about 4-5 hours when I first put her down and then wakes every 3-4 hours to feed the rest of the night.  We've transitioned to her sleeping in her crib though and she's been falling asleep on her own in the crib :) She takes 1-2 naps a day.

Activities:  She's become much more social, which I love!  Joe can get her to giggle up a storm and she's been talking more.  She enjoys tummy time more, but still doesn't roll over from tummy to back that often.  As you can see from the picture, she LOVES putting her hands in her mouth.  Mom said I had my first tooth around 4 months old, we'll see about R2D2.

As you can see, she's starting to outgrow the laundry basket :)

Solids!

R2D2 turned four months old yesterday! We decided to give solids a try today. She took the oatmeal like a champ!