One Month Old

This little lady is one month old already!   And has it been an adventure ever since!

The first few weeks of life wasn't too bad, slept most of it but she sure doesn't like having her picture taken.  As soon as the camera comes out she gets mighty angry about it.  Trying to get a picture of her usually ends with me in a complete sweat and her face beat red from crying.  She usually wins as I don't believe in letting her crying it out too long so I give up on getting a picture so this 1 month shot above is actually 1 mo, 3 days, and Mom wins at attempt number 3.

She isn't very lukewarm about anything.  If she's hungry she is very hungry.  If she's tired, watch out.  If she's content, she can stay content for a long time.  If she's doing tummy time, wowzers she can really lift her head already!  If she's napping, she can sleep very well.  She is kind of an 'all of nothing' type of gal already.  She gets that from both her Mama and her Daddy.

Our biggest challenge has been eating.  We've changed it up quite a bit and think we may have found what works best now.  Annie is a good eater.  Again, taking after her Mom and Dad....  Most newborns eat 1-3 oz.  Not this girl, she eats 5 oz and demands at a minimum 4 oz.  At time even 6 ounces!  And every 3 hours on the dot during the day.  Her Pediatrician isn't concerned, he said if she wants it, let her have it so that's what we do.  The challenge is she eats so fast that we had some issues with her keeping it down but think we've finally have a system figured out to keep it from coming up.

We are pretty lucky in the sleeping department, I'm not sleep deprived for the most part.  She generally wakes up once, sometimes twice and eats and goes back to sleep relatively quickly.  Sometimes I can get back to bed in 30 minutes.  And she will sleep for 4 hours at a time at night.  We try to keep her up from 8 -10 pm to accomplish a good nights rest.  But she has had a few nights where this isn't the case and she is wide awake and going to sleep just doesn't happen as nicely as I would like it to.  But overall, I must say I think we are pretty lucky to get the sleep we are getting so far.  I do the weekdays and Aaron handles the weekends.  That's how we are surviving.

We are having fun hanging out at home, we haven't gotten out much but thinking next month we will be.  Here are a few more photos of Miss Annie!

"Why do we have to cut into nap time for this Mom?"

Sticking her tongue out for the camera

Practice shots so I can get my camera settings right, but someone isn't happy about it at all! 

We stick out bottom lip out and pout quite often.. I have a feeling she will use that trick to get her way when she is older

I think Charley is the most sleep deprived in the house, she will literally bury her head into the couch cushions when Annie is crying.  It's pretty funny. 

Annie's Nursery

I'm super excited to share Annie's nursery.  I had a vision and my vision was Pottery Barn Kids look/feel without paying for a Pottery Barn nursery.  We have spent countless hours looking for just the right pieces to make Annie's room complete and I'm in love with it!  It is like 'Pinterest perfect' to me.  I hope she knows she is one special baby girl for having a room her Mom and Dad worked very very hard on as well as some pieces bought by other family members who love her very much too!  

Ta-Da! 

Crib from Babies R Us 

Name Frames, DIY project off of Pinterest.  Cardstock, frames and glued on letters

Floating bookshelf from IKEA

Pottery Barn Bunny, framed maternity pics soon to be replaced with pics of Annie

BOOKS! 

Bunny Rocker from Pottery Barn

Glider from Babies R Us

Chandelier from Overstock.com

Lamp - Pottery Barn, Changing Table Basket - Hobby Lobby

Curtains from Bed Bath & Beyond

Floral curtain tie backs - custom made order from Etsy 

Dresser from Babies R Us, knobs replaced with crystal ones from Home Depot

Frames, DIY: Spray painted, printed card stock 

3 Weeks Old

3 weeks old as of Wednesday!  Starting to notice that our newborn sizes are starting to get a little snug, especially in the length, going to be into 0-3 month sizes I would think in the next week.  Yay as all my cute outfits are 0-3 months as we didn't really have cute newborn size clothes.  So glad I'm about to the point where we just take this photo month to month, taking a picture of a baby like this isn't an easy task!  And I thought Charley was tough to photograph!  Happy 3 weeks Annie! 

Grilled Chicken Basil Wraps

  

Now since pregnancy is over (and I do NOT miss being pregnant at all!)  and starting to feel somewhat normal again, time for a recipe post!  I'll try to not inundate the blog with Annie all the time but at the same time, she consumes the majority of my days now so don't be surprised if that is all I have to blog about at times :)  But she is pretty blog worthy if you ask me!

During pregnancy, I really didn't have much of an appetite and rarely cooked.  And really still don't have much of an appetite.  I didn't have one particular craving, I always crave sweets so that hardly counts but I did eat lots of peanut butter sandwiches, cottage cheese and cinnamon toast crunch.  Well that's just not blog-worthy so last night Aaron and I made a REAL meal.  And it was good.  I got mine almost all gone before Annie woke up so I consider it a successful dinner all around.

I got this reciepe from a Pampered Chef email I get monthly.  I adapted it to what we had in the fridge and cupboards and worked with what we had.  So you will find the adapted recipe below, my notes in red for all my shortcuts and the link below to the actual real recipe if you want to follow it more exactly.

These Grilled Basil Chicken Wraps are delicious!  Anything with fresh basil is awesome.  Aaron wants to grow fresh basil this year and I'm down for it, as long as he does all the gardening work as I'm no gardener, it would save us a ton of money on fresh basil that's for sure.

We paired it with Target's Blue Corn Flax Seed Tortilla Chips. We've been eating these chips for years and can always be found in our cupboard, you really got to try these chips if you haven't!  They are the BEST!

Simply Balanced Blue Corn Tortilla Chips with Flax Seed from Target

Note: my picture was not as appetizing as this one so I copied this picture from the website 

Grilled Chicken & Garden-Fresh Basil Wraps

INGREDIENTS

4   boneless, skinless chicken breasts

1 tbsp  canola oil

1 tbsp Mrs. Dash lemon/pepper  Rub

1 tbsp. dried basil spice

4 small vine-ripened tomatoes

1/4 tsp each salt and coarsely ground black pepper

4 oz whole milk mozzarella cheese

1 oz Parmesan cheese

1 cup loosely packed fresh basil leaves plus 6 large basil leaves, divided

2/3 cup light mayonnaise

1   garlic clove, peeled

3 flour tortillas

 Sliced red onions (optional)

DIRECTIONS

Brush chicken with oil, sprinkle with lemon/pepper rub and dried basil. Arrange chicken in skillet and cook.  Remove chicken; cool 5 minutes. Dice chicken into 1/2-in. pieces.  (Hyde way: have chicken frozen in freezer pre-cooked and sliced, dump in a pan, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle not measure the spices over top of chicken and warm thru in skillet, remove and strain excess oil in strainer).

Meanwhile, slice tomatoes.  Blot excess moisture from tomatoes with paper towels. Sprinkle tomato slices with salt and black pepper; set aside. Grate mozzarella cheese; set aside. Grate Parmesan cheese. Combine 1 cup of the basil, mayonnaise and garlic in a food processor; until basil is finely chopped. Combine basil mixture, Parmesan cheese and chicken in a bowl; stir to coat. (Hyde way: buy cheese pre-shredded.  Use grape/cherry tomatoes, slice in half.)

To assemble wraps, place three tomato slices widthwise over center of one tortilla, overlapping as necessary. Top with one-third of the chicken mixture; two basil leaves; three additional tomato slices; red onions, if using; and one-third of the mozzarella cheese. Fold in sides of tortilla and roll up tightly burrito style. Repeat two times for a total of three wraps.

Preheat grill pan over medium-low heat 5 minutes. Place wraps in pan; cook 3-4 minutes per side. Remove wraps from pan and serve.  (Hyde way: I don’t own a Panini press, I just warmed up a skillet and held down each side with a spatula for a few minutes and served.  I'd love to own a Panini Press though (this is a hint to the hubby since I know he reads my posts, love you honey!)

Actual Recipe: http://new.pamperedchef.com/recipe/2558 

2 Weeks Old

We are 2 weeks old and so far so good!  We are sleeping mostly thru the night the last 4 nights.  I'm sure that will change but I'll take it for now!  At our 2 week appointment she had surpassed her birth weight and grew 1/2 inch.  7 1/2 lbs, 20.5 inches.  Looks like we hopefully won't be short like her Mama.  Aaron is thrilled that she has more of my skin tone and not his.  We don't think she looks much like either one of us, been told she looks like a good mix of both of us, which I would agree.  Right now, it's way too early to tell what characteristics she will form.  Since her weight is good, we can stick with our feeding schedule and the Pediatrician said we can go up to 5 hours if she is content without feeding and I can feed her as much as she wants so that seems easy enough.  I do not enjoy nursing, it's tiring and time consuming but we are lucky, she is a good nurser and my body produces plenty of food for her so I know it's best for both her and me so we will keep at it.

Her afternoon naps right after lunch seem to be the best.  I get a nap in then myself, which has been nice.  I'm working on healing from my surgery.  I was doing good but then had a set back yesterday and was feeling a lot of pain.  It's tough for me to not be up and moving around like I want to without feeling the effects of surgery.  I also can't wait to start exercising again.  I'm losing the weight but just feel real self-conscious still about my tummy.  I lost 16 lbs in week 1 (not that impressive considering 7 lbs baby, several pounds fluid, several pounds placenta) and in week 2 I lost 4 lbs so I have 10 more pounds to go to get back to my pre-baby weight.  I'm sure those 10 lbs will take a little more time.  And then toning up will be my next hurdle.  Enough about me though, back to Annie!  Here is her 2 week photo!