Here we go 2014!

(this is just a fun pic from our Crawford visit)

Always a nice time to outline some goals and what not right?!

1. Devote time and effort into promoting my professional photography and develop my editing and shooting skills.
2. Enroll in a dance class, like ballet for moms or something.
3. Handle my bid-ness in the home with less exasperation and more routine.
4. more cooking and meal planning! of course…
5. Make new friends! this is important
6. Be confident with parenting techniques, primarily where Amelia is concerned. Bring it, terrible twos… ( ha! if only i was that confident )
7. Embrace adventure, open my heart to more kindness and love and less selfishness.

Alrighty, CHECK.

Toilet Training

Thought I'd give you an update on how our progress of potty training Amelia is going! I am very proud of her, She first peed in the potty about 1 month ago, after many months of "toilet education". We started changing Amelia in the bathroom once she was about 18 months and having her sit down on her toilet to practice the sitting and getting used to the idea in general. It took all the way until she was 23 months to sit and pee on the toilet, it was like, one of the most exciting things that's ever happened in my life!! 

We never did any intense all day marathons of going to the potty every 20 minutes, I wanted the process to be a bit more "organic" than that, and could never bring myself to buckle down and do the intense method for 3 days straight or whatever they say. Although I did doubt that she would ever do it and thought for a while that I WOULD have to do something like that. My plan began from a montessori method, which teaches that toilet training is very natural and does not NEED to be accompanied by intense regiments and lots of incentives. That being said, we did end up giving Amelia a treat when she uses the toilet correctly, so ya know we have tailored things to fit our needs a bit. And I will say that the reward idea has both positives and negatives ( asking for treats constantly, getting upset when she doesn't get one), can't really decide if it has helped us or not. (She gets a fruit snack when she goes).

I switched Amelia to undies after a day where she went pee in her toilet multiple times, the first day she  wore them she didn't use the toilet once, and I was really sad… but then a few days later we put them on again and had a much better time.  So she wears underwear at home during the day all the time now, and has very few "pee puddles" ( that's a montessori term that i like, and Amelia seems to like it too). She tends to have more poop accidents than wet ones right now. She does do BM's in the toilet  as well, though they are more rare. she gets TWO treats for that. So next up will be wearing undies out, right now I put a diaper over her underwear, she has yet to use a standard toilet, so that's still a trick…

I'm sure there's more details I could give you.. so ask if you want!

Yay for potty training!! -slash- it's a pretty big stress on me and Paul, but I'm glad we are doing it :)

Those Babes of ours

Ahhhh!! I look slightly spazzed in this photo, but this is what happens when you are trying to get Amelia to smile at the camera. We took this a few weeks ago right around George's two month mark, and I wanted to write few things about what the babies are up to these days. 

Amelia:

You love the t.v. now. (slanty smile face) you are always saying "show!?" or "cars!?"  which is your favorite movie. So we are trying to restrict your tv time to an hour or so a day, while at the same time it is such a nice break for me to have you seated in front of the toob while I clean up one of your messes without you making a new one! It has been on my mind a lot, feeling guilty about how much t.v. time you've been having, so it is taking some time to figure out what I feel comfortable with as far your "toob time"! You have been getting out of your bed and coming out of your room, you finally figured that out, and it is kind of the cutest thing ever, but also a no no. SO we are navigating that as well. You say lots and lots of words! practically any word we give you to try now you will say, finally including "George"! which sounds like "jooje" Just waiting for the connectors and you will be chatting up a storm! too much fun...

George:

Hi little man, you are still just a joy! You sleep fabulously at night (at least 8 hours every night in a row, starting about 730 or 8). And you're still a rather chunky boy at about 13 and a half pounds. And tall too! 90's percentile for height at the moment. Much chunkier than your sis was at this time (i think she was only like 10 pounds).

You don't sleep during the day a ton, so sometimes I find myself frustrated that you are yelling to be fed or held while I'm trying to do something else, which is of course unfair to you because you are a good baby who doesn't give me much trouble! We love you oh so much! Obviously you're not doing much else, not rolling over or anything, just working on your tummy time and lifting your huge head. And giving us precious smiles and sometimes little "hu hu hu" giggles :) 

the non-toddling toddler

Amelia is 13 and a half months now, and has not yet taken her first step. CONFESSION: I am ready for her to walk! but it's quite obvious that does not matter to her. here's the deal, I know it is not like she is abnormal, it is still quite average for babies not to be walking at this time. I also know that every other mom who has a couple babies, or who's baby already walks says "oh you're lucky!" but let's be real, she's my first baby, a lot of the other babies her age and younger are walking, and i just want her to ok?! SHe has been gaining lots of coordination lately, can go up AND down stairs, on AND off furniture she does this cute little arabesque thing with her leg sometimes when standing or crawling. And most importantly she grooves and wiggles to music. SO that's all good. And she's at the point where it could literally be any day now. I just wanted to keep it real  and say: No she's not walking yet. No I'm not jazzed about it. But then also I'm not really the super teacher type, I mean I have always just let her do her own thing, it's not like we are having baby walking boot camp over here. OK that's all for  now.

good ideas for "mom coupons"

•  A maid service comes and cleans the entire house! (oh la la)
• 1 saturday morning set aside for a few hours of personal grooming, mani/pedi, facial, haircut, (i could use all of these)
• meal provider: Dad feeds baby (toddler who doesn't toddle) every meal in one day, how nice! this includes prep and clean up *
• One night out where dad arranges all babysitting etc.
• 10 minutes foot rub ( always nice)
• breakfast in bed! or dinner on couch!
• daddy date, Dad takes baby out for an afternoon ( mom takes nap , duh )

I'm so blessed to have a fabulous partner who treats me to some of these things anyway sometimes...still good ideas for Christmas though if you're in a pinch :)

A year ago

A year ago today I was thinking "Holy moly, I'm gonna have this little girl today." and i did, actually at 1:09am, tomorrow. I remember talking on the phone to Katie every 10 minutes, updating her, getting pep talks. I was saying prayers for bravery, dancing around and singing Christmas songs to try and keep the labor active, even doing some last minute crafts! My last full day of just being wife, sister, daughter, before becoming mother. Wow, your first child's birthday is so much more than just their birthday, I realize that now about my big bro's birthday. This past year has been definitely the most challenging one of my life. I have never worked harder in my life, been more devoted to certain goals, felt more frustration and stress, and felt nowhere near this kind of love about another being before. It truly does change your views, this mom thing. I'm so thankful that Paul and I have been given the gift of becoming parents to this beautiful, unique and darling little girl. 

Amelia Louise!! You better believe I love you little one.  

11 months

 

this beautiful girl, chewing on sticks... 

 

not mastering the self timer

 

leaf residue on teeth and funny faces

 

these sweet little hairs! 

well pretty soon she will be a year! cant believe it, she gets prettier everyday it is nuts. As usual things are kinda complicated and not always smooth, but she's doing great and i love her so so much! we have daily tickle and hugs session on our bed now that we both enjoy very much. She is now drinking practically all whole milk throughout the day ( we are about a month early on this, but she and I don't mind) And i am basically done nursing her!! Proud that i made it to my goal which was to go straight from breast milk to whole milk at about a year, never using formula. She's eating anything we can get her to eat at this point, i fear we are entering the picky eating phase many toddlers are known for, but I'm gonna try to keep my cool about and not stress over the amount of food she eats. She likes oatmeal and yogurt in the morning, still some baby food mixes with added cereal for iron, lots of fruit and home baked goods, like cookies. : /

well ok that's it for now. 

A trip!

My folks offered to watch Amelia for a whole weekend, so Paul and I decided to take advantage and go out to San Francisco for a couple days. We are going to see Will and Amanda in Santa Cruz and hang out in SF! I've never been, I'm excited.

So......

I'M LEAVING AMELIA FOR THE FIRST TIME. I'M FREAKING OUT A LITTLE BIT.

I made a little schedule for my folks to use, which is funny bc we have probably never had two days of an identical routine, but i just liked the idea of making one, and it should help.

i already thought of like a thousand more things i felt i should add or elaborate on, as you can see the notes section got a bit long...

Treacherous Nights

we have them occasionally, and will still have them. And they are tough. Last night it began with the smoke alarm low battery warning. ( daaaaaaanggggit) oh yes. Paul went OUT in the middle of the night to get the right battery to replace it. im sure there's a way to just shut it off but that's not Paul's style. baby woke up for a moment but went  back to sleep. crisis averted?? whew. We fixed it and were settling back in  when Amelia starts crying and doesn't let up for like 30 minutes so i go in, attempt to nurse/ rock her back to sleep but it was no help that Tootsie was playing around in the bathtub jingling her little bell and having a big ole time. So i put A back down and get tootsie out, A does not go back  to sleep, she cries a whole lot more. so i go BACK and get her sleepy enough to finally go back to sleep. this whole ordeal has taken about 2-2 1/2 hours of our sleep for the night so far. Then at 5 30 her usual quick wake up, little breast milk time turned into wake up, cry for a long time. So we had to go downstairs and i spooned some yogurt into her to fill up her tummy a little more and then put her back and she cried for another 30 minutes or so. geeeeeez. i'm tired.

When will she sleep again?

On baby A's current sleep routine:
When she was tiny, like a newborn, she was a great sleeper. By 5 weeks she was sleeping 6 hours and beyond and it just kept improving over the next couple months. And I was thinking, wow this sleeping thing is easy. Right around 4 months she began to waiver on that reliable "through the night " sleeping. Maybe we can say it's because of teething pain? Or growing pains of some kind? She will still occasionally sleep through the night, like maybe 11 to 6 30, that's about the best we have done in the past couple weeks, other wise she will wake up as much as once every 3 hours! Is  she hungry? Is she in pain? I usually just nurse her, but sometimes even that won't put her back to sleep. Last night I was planning on putting my foot down. She went off to sleep pretty peacefully at 9 ish. At 1 25 I awoke to the sound of her cries. my plan was NOT to nurse her so as to stop her thinking every time she wakes up in the night she gets the boob. I let her cry for 10 minutes, went in, soothed her, let her cry for 5 more. Went in, picked her up and did the ole baby dancing, like we did when she was a newbie every night to get her to go to sleep, for like 25 minutes to no avail. at this point she was being really loud and I was SO FRUSTRATED. I always go into these situations saying that I'm gonna be calm and keep my cool, but I'm not strong enough to get through an entire session of yelling yet without getting upset. Paul came in and took her at that point, poor guy he has to go to work today. He was downstairs walking around with her for about 25 minutes. She still wasn't asleep! And so at this point she had been up for almost an hour and a half, and so, I nursed her and she passed out. As that silly guy would say "Epic Fail". She slept until 7 30 this am. Tonight? who knows, more adventures in crying and non-sleeping babies. It ain't all a walk in the park folks! Right now she is scooting around on her belly  and rotating around in circles on our wood floor. She's so cute.