4 Months Old

Annie is 4 months old!  And I’m behind posting this, as usual!

She is so alert, aware of her surroundings and just really intrigued with this world.  Big milestones are she now can grab and pick up small toys, everything goes to her mouth it seems like, rolling from back to tummy every day, and babbling more and more. 

She started rolling consistently at about a week shy of 4 months old.  She did a lot of rolling onto her side and hanging out there for the majority of her 3^rd month; now I can’t keep her off her tummy hardly!  We did have a scare, one morning we walked into her room and found her still swaddled tightly and she had somehow managed to flip to her tummy.  We have no idea how long she was like that for.  From that day on we stopped swaddling her arms so she can have more control when she flips in the night like that.  From that point on, my sleep pretty much went downhill.  I’m petrified that she is going to suffocate sleeping on her tummy and was waking up all throughout the nights and flipping her from tummy to back just to literally walk back to our bedroom and look at the monitor to see she managed to be on her tummy again.  I realized it was a battle I was never going to win at and the Pediatrician has rested my fears and thinks she will be fine if she flips to her tummy at night. 

Babbling.  It’s still as cute as ever to have little conversations with her.  She is still exploring what sounds she can make.  And does it with such effort, you can tell right before she is going to babble because she is so focused and tries so hard to bring out just the right sound.  Good gravy, I could seriously listen to her babble all day long and never get sick of how fun it is.

Her colic hasn’t gotten much better.  We took her in before her 4 month appointment and she is now no longer on baby Zantac and now on a form of Baby Prilosec.  So far, not seeing much of a difference.  Our Pediatrician said some babies are just ‘high maintenance,’ they want to be held exactly a certain way, have a constant need to be ‘hands-on’ and are very vocal about it.  I really think this does apply to Annie.  I cannot wait for her to mellow out some.  It’s exhausting.  We’ve had some challenging days in the past month.    

I know every parent has their challenges.  I have to tell myself often that we are blessed in that our challenge really should be temporary.  Happier days ARE ahead.  A coworker recently told me something that resonates with me, one thing she wished she would have realized is that when people tell her ‘it’s just a phase’, it really IS just a phase.  That is reassuring. 

One thing that has changed for me the last few months is on the weekends I really sleep in way longer than I have in years.  On the weekends, I use to wake up around 8ish and now I can barely pull myself out of bed before 10/10:30 am.  Thank goodness Aaron is a morning person and takes the weekend shift with Annie so I can sleep in.  Monday thru Friday I go nonstop from 5:30am to 10 pm every day with very little time to stop and just do nothing.  Aaron does too but he can just handle it better than me, I’m use to more ‘me’ time than what I get nowadays.  So sleeping in is my new ‘me’ time.  And I look forward to it every. single. weekend. 

Here are a few pics from her 3 month professional pics! 

Un-Preggers

I just realized that a year ago this past week was when I found out I was pregnant.  How did 9 months of pregnancy feel like an eternity but yet it feels like it was just yesterday we were finding out I was pregnant?  Craziness!   Pregnancy… ain’t that something!… it’s not for the weak.  But I am so blessed to have gone thru the process, many out there struggle with pregnancy and that is something I’m fortunate enough to say I can’t relate to.  Getting back to my un-pregnant normal self has been nice change of pace though.  Hence my top 10 list of why being un-pregnant is great again:   

1      I can enjoy a glass of wine again.   Well sort of… nursing a baby means that everything has to be timed.  I’ve had to dump pumped milk because it tested positive for alcohol, it only takes one time of that happening for me pass on the drinks.  I now know where the phrase “crying over spilled milk” comes from.   I’m now to the point where I’m only pumping every 5 hours which gives me a good buffer of of time to clear one glass or two out of my system.   Dinner with drinks are now back on the table!

2        I can sleep on my back, hallelujah!  I learned a lot about myself during pregnancy that I never really had acknowledged much before.  Such as how much of a back sleeper I really am.  I could not stand sleeping on my side and my shoulder would always fall asleep.   Most women say it’s their bladder that keeps them up at night, not so much me; it was side sleeping that kept me up all night long. 

3

      The pillow fortress has been brought down.  To attempt to sleep comfortably at night, I had 9 pillows in bed surrounding me.  Aaron barely had room in the bed amongst all my pillows.  Every night I would peek over my huge pillow wall to check if he was alright over there.  I was pillow overboard.  Even at the hospital I had supposedly every pillow the maternity floor had on hand, which I seriously question if they just started to decline me pillows at a certain point in which I had to send Aaron home to get me more pillows.  I think we had 20 pillows in the room, not an exaggeration.  When the nurses would come in to check on me they thought my pillow fortress was pretty serious stuff.  I’m back to being a normal person who requires only one pillow now.  

4      I am allowed to buy toilet paper, the ban has been lifted!   True story.  I ‘nested’ like crazy and by 6 months, I had nothing more to nest.  So what does a pregnant woman do that loves to plan and prepare?  Well I spent the last trimester stocking up on all kinds of stuff, such as toilet paper.  It got to the point where Aaron was getting really annoyed because we had packs of toilet paper in every nook and cranny of our house.  I was buying TP as if doomsday was coming.  Then one day, the doorbell rang.  Aaron answered to find a UPS man with a box as tall as me and almost too wide for our door.   Yes, I ordered a whole bunch of toilet paper from Amazon.com.   Aaron FLIPPED out on me.  A TP ban was placed in our household.  Yes folks, I was told I was not allowed to buy any more toilet paper.  Recently I asked Aaron if I could buy TP, I had to give him our current inventory count and apparently I’m in the clear now to buy TP again.  HA!

       I no longer feel like an illegitimate pregnant woman.  During the last month of pregnancy, I swelled just enough to make my wedding band not fit anymore.  I hated being in public sans wedding ring.  I would stand at the checkout lines at Target thinking I was being judged, I just wanted to tell the cashier, no worries, this is a legitimate child I’m carrying, I AM married to the baby’s daddy.  I’m sure I completely over thought it and no one really noticed but I was so self-conscious of it and thought everyone was looking at me thinking I was an illegitimate pregnant unmarried woman. 

        I can put socks on (by myself!)  I would sit on the floor and would practically do circles around myself trying to reach for my feet to get my socks on.  The only way I could really get socks on was sitting down and leaning to the side and basically throwing my sock out like a fishing pool and catching my big toe to get them pulled on.   There were even times where I had to decide how badly I really needed to go to the grocery store because I just didn’t want to deal with putting socks on.  Luckily, Aaron is a great husband and put my socks on for me many of those times.

      Back to attending hot yoga classes.  Not that I love working out really but it is nice to get back to the workouts I actually slightly enjoy.  Hot yoga being one of them.   The regular yoga classes for pregnant woman just weren’t my style at all!

       Pants with real buttons.  When I bought my first maternity pants with elastic waist band that came clear up to under my bosoms I was like “This is awesome, I’m NEVER going back to regular pants again!”  I was loving them!  Seriously, I had every intention of wearing maternity pants for the rest of my life.  But after giving birth, I wore my maternity pants a few times and it was a scary, frumpy site.  I now have a deeper appreciation for my pants that button and sit at my waist.

        Back to washing dishes at the sink.  I’m short.  Therefore I don’t have long arms.  This in turn meant when I was very pregnant, my belly stuck out so far, I could hardly stand at the sink and reach the dishes.  Not that I love being able to wash dishes but it’s pretty disabling to not be able to wash your coffee mug in the 2 seconds it took in my pre-prego state.

         No more kong-fu fights.   I’m convinced Annie is stronger than your typical baby.  Feeling my baby kick inside is an awesome feeling.  But having kong-fu fights going down in your belly constantly and feeling like you are black and blue inside has its trying moments.  There were even times where you could visibly see a heel or a fist pushing out.  My stomach would have lumps and at times, her little kong-fu fights hurt!  Although I do miss them a bit, it’s far more fun to watch her kick, stretch and be on the move outside of me now!

All this being said… I now see pregnant woman and feel almost jealous!  Like ‘awh, look at that pregnant woman!’  How I can say I miss pregnancy is beyond me but a part of me does!  It’s an amazing process us woman get to experience that’s for sure. 

July 4th, 2014, KC Family Vacation

Hope you all had a Happy 4th of July!  We certainly did.  We went on our first family vacation.

Although not sure if it's really what you think of as a true 'vacation', I mean no site seeing occurred, no amusement parks were visited, no real 'firsts' happened but it was nice to get away for a few days down to the Kansas City Country Club Plaza.

We really enjoy shopping on the Plaza in the summer, they have a few stores we don't have back home such as Restoration Hardware (fun to dream!), Tiffany's (again, fun to dream!), a Potbelly's (smoothies please!), a Cooper Hawks (wine..um YES!), and a lot of 'A' stores as Aaron calls it using his commerical real estate lingo, which translates to a bigger Banana Republic and Gap stores with plentiful variety to fill a dressing room with.  My best find was this amazing black dress to wear for an upcoming wedding, if you are looking for the quintessential black dress, this one is for you!

  Annie did relatively well all weekend.  She picked her meltdowns almost perfectly to occur at every restaurant we ate at which was a bummer but we made due, one of us would walk around the restaurant or outside to calm her while the other one ate.  Oh well for relaxing, piping warm dinners!

She did great at the fireworks!  We decided to take a BIG gamble and put her to bed in her car seat before we headed out to the fireworks.  Then we transferred her back at the hotel into her swaddle sack and into her Rock N Play and we successful made the transition without waking her and she slept all thru the night.  Wheew!  We watched fireworks for a second year in a row at the Liberty Memorial which is located just off of downtown.  I love this high point in the city.  You can see 20+ firework displays for miles.  No fireworks go off at the Liberty Memorial which works out well with a sleeping baby beside you.  It's not crowded and everyone leaves as they please, no traffic to hassle with.

Aaron and I both agree, that if we weren't settled already in Des Moines, we would definitely live in KC.  I love our visits there!  

During our stay, we ate at a restaurant I would definitely head back to next time.  It was in the Westport area, which isn't far at all from the Plaza.  McCoys has a wide variety on their menu and a huge patio which was unfortunately packed when we got there.  

We started with an appetizer.  Can't go wrong with Spinach Artichoke Dip but this one, was spectacular, rivals our all time favorite in Chicago at Gino's East. 

It was so creamy and warm and the perfect combo of ingredients! YUM!

Onto the entree, as if the appetizer wasn't enough to fill my comfort food craving, I had to get the Mac Daddy.  AKA best mac and cheese ever!  For real, I could eat this for every meal. It was certainly yummers in my tummers.

The pizza on the other hand I have to be honest was just MEH.  Not that great.  The sauce was too saucy and had a kick to it that I didn't care for.  OH well they can't all be homeruns! 

All in all, I give McCoys 2 thumbs up even though the pizza wasn't great.  We'll be back for sure! 

Annie felt right at home at the hotel, just kicked back watching her movies.  Girl loves a good cartoon! 

My festive loves.  All decked out in their red, white and blue!  Hope you all had a Happy 4th!