iphone friday 10/26/2012

iphone friday time!  This past week has flown by, both a good thing and a bad thing.  Fall has finally hit and it is going to get below freezing this weekend.  My cousin and her hubby are on their way to visit us from KS and tomorrow we meet with a sleep coach about Nora's sleep.  She sleeps at least 9 hours in one stretch at night, but when she falls asleep at 7am...that can mean a 4am wakeup...not cool! Some mornings she wakes at 5, some mornings at 630. We are hoping to come out of this consultation with a way to make her sleep more consistent.

So onto our past week:

1.  I caught Nora sucking her thumb one morning.  Man, wouldn't that be nice if she took to her thumb so we didn't have to go do 430am paci reinsertions.

2.  She loves chewing on hats (and paper, and bottle nipples, and spoons and.....)

3.  My little helper

4. Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, let me personally welcome you to downtown.

5.  Emmy and Jackson playing either a) beauty shop or b) doctor

6.  Took Emmy with me to the post office to mail a gift, decided to weigh her there.  35#3oz

7.  Nora rockin my new earwarmer/headband

8. Cousin fun at the "thunder up" game last Friday.

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

7 months {nora}

Happy 7 months to the cutest little girl named Nora that I know! I say it every month, but goshdarnit, time is flying by TOO fast. 

Here are a few(or alot) of highlights from the past month.

Eat: Milk and solids nowadays.  We are halfway implementing the "Baby Led Weaning" theory (we introduced finger foods a little after 6 months) and we are also doing purees.  The shortlist of foods that she has tried: banana, avocado, strawberries, pineapple, oatmeal, apple slices, egg yolk, green beans and mum mums.  As far as milk is concerned, my guess is that she's nursing/taking by bottle about 24-28oz per day.
Sleep: Asleep by 7pm and usually awake by ???am.  She was waking at 515ish for a few days and then would go back to sleep in the mornings.  Just this morning (10/22/12, so this should technically go in next months post) she slept from 715 to 615!  Sweet Jesus Hallelujah!  Seriously, the first thing I did was thank Jesus for her one night of *potentially* amazing sleep.  Of course, the one night Nora slept thru was the one night Emmy had to wake to pee.  Oh well. On a normal night for Nora, I still usually end up in the guest room to be on paci patrol.

Naps: Naps are still sporadic, but we (daycare & me) are really trying to get her on a schedule.  Last week she did a great job of having a 45 minute morning nap and 2+ hour afternoon nap.  I know this is still nowhere close to the sleep that she should be getting, but we are still grateful for it.

Food: Whoops, I forgot about this section and put it all above.  I will add here that Nora's hand-eye-mouth coordination is pretty good.  I think I'll go ahead and contribute it to introducing finger foods earlier than we did with Emmy.
Health: Thought she had an ear infection at her 6 month appt (which was actually at 6m3w), but all was clear.  She was messing with her ear again tonight, so I wonder if her teeth are trying to move up.

Shoes: What are shoes?
Clothes: 6-9 months.
Diapers: Size 3.
Trips: Up to Kansas a few weekends ago for Halle's bday party.  I think that's it.
Likes: grabbing noses and chins, eating the bill of Chris' hats, nursing, playing with her feet and trying to chew her big toes, feeding herself, listening to books, pat-a-cake, petting Sally, pooping right when going to sleep and pooping in the bath, keeping her feet constantly moving and ankles rolling, shaking her head "no" with a big fat grin on her face.
Dislikes: not getting things the exact moment that she wants them, regular schedules, finishing a full bottle, new faces
Milestones: Sitting upright and pretty steady. Talking more, still alot of "hey", "ha" and "huh" sounds.  The other night, at 4am, I swear she was saying "mamamamamam" (of course, not saying MOM on purpose), or maybe it was just my lack of sleep that imagined this up.  Can put paci in mouth proficiently.  Reaches for and grabs objects, takes them from hand to hand.
Other: Nora's little personality is really starting to shine through.  If the girl wants a bottle, you better get it to her STAT!  If she wants to stop taking it just to look around, you better take it out of her mouth STAT or else she is going to let you know about it!  Little miss thing is entering a stranger anxiety, something that Emmy didn't start going through until recently.  This is all new territory for us, so it should make her baby dedication next month interesting.  I just hope she doesn't cry.  Nora is so funny in that she doesn't roll over consistently.  She seems pretty content on tummy time and only fusses after being there for 10-15 minutes.  I'm pretty certain she knows how to roll (since she's done it quite a few times in the past)...but maybe she just has a short term memory :).  Also, Nora's not a big fan of naps.  We spent alot of time fighting her this past weekend to go down.  Coupled with Emmy being in the "treacherous three's", this weekend really wore Chris and me out.   I had to remind myself many times how fortunate we are to have our girls, and that did help ease frustrations.

Well, if you made it through all of this nonsensical rambling- you deserve some pictures.

iphone friday 10/19/2012

I'm actually writing this early, it's Thursday night and I just realized that my baby girl is going to be 7 months old tomorrow!

She still doesn't roll, pretty much sits up straight, is making new sounds and looks scared whenever Emmy charges towards her.

Emmy's new trick this week is starting every response with, "but, but, but....."

L-R
1. She's covering herself up while "pumping"
2. She had to do what sister did
3. Playing dress up at school
4. "Skip to my Lou" at gymnastics

L-R
1. I only got 3 toes in before I threw in the towel.  Toes were too squirmy
2. She absolutely loved the sink bath
3. Getting in the Halloween spirit
4. Witchy Nora ;)

Happy friday friends!

the post in which i confess

So a quick poll...who out there in blog land knows that I'm no longer in school?

Yeah.

That lasted about 4 days.

The master plan went something like this:  I would take 9 hours (a full graduate load) and use the rest of my time to study during the hours of 8 to 5.  The girls would attend school during those same hours so that I could be distraction free.  I would take 3 semester and be done December 2013.

Sounded like a good plan.

I prayed about it many times.

Seemed like it was going to work.

Right.

The problem?

I had not been in school for 3 1/2 years and I was jumping right back into it, right where I left off.  I keep thinking that maybe had I only been out of it for a year or so then I would have been OK.  But who knows if even that would have worked.

It became very apparent, very quickly that it was not going to work.  I was so drained by the end of the day, mentally checked out.  Chris can handle me being in my own la-la land...but the girls?  No.  They deserve better.  See, no matter whether I am a student, work at home, work outside the home, or do a bit of both- my number one job is to be MOM.  It was physically and emotionally impossible for me to be MOM during my first week of school.  So did what any financially smart person would do. WITHDRAW AS FAST AS YOU CAN FROM A PRIVATE SCHOOL SO YOU CAN GET 90% OF YOUR MONEY BACK!!!

So what was next?  Well, a monumental ankle sprain on my first training run for the Tulsa Run...which still hurts by the way.  Universe:1, me:0....oh, how I digress.

Next up was...working on my resume, buying a suit and start distributing my resume.  The oil and gas industry is a small one, both a good thing and a bad thing.  In my case, for this instance, it was a very good thing.  I ended up interviewing fairly quickly with 2 companies and received a quick offer from the first one that I interviewed with.  I accepted and started work on September 28.

I am now at Laredo Petroleum (downtown in the Bank of America building) and have been there for 3 weeks.  I have an office!  It's an interior one but I seriously do not care, I am just so grateful to have an office.  It's been especially nice b/c I can just close and lock the doors and MOOOOOO away.

So, that's my life update.  Hopefully I remembered everything, leave me a comment if there's something I've left out!

iphone Friday 10/05/2012

I dedicate this post to my cousin Gina, who called me out on my lack of posting.

First up, the Nora collage:

I am still not able to capture a whole lot of smiles from our babe, but she is getting to be so much fun. Apparently she rolls (only at daycare, not at home), she is sitting up taller, really tries to communicate, tried a chunk of honeydew melon this week and still refuses to sleep through the night. Which reminds me to take the following note to self: never again brag about your 5 week old daughter who sleeps through the night, she will use it against you at 8 weeks old and continue to do so well after her 6th month:


Annnd moving on to our eldest:

she is trying to learn how to kick a soccer ball- but when one sometimes still falls while running, then one also has a hard time doing more advanced skills, she attended a parade in Tahlequah today courtesy of Aaron and Alex (what would we do without you all, you ring out the absolute sweetest side of our girl), she is using her imagination and creating her own balance beams, and she continues to just be really cute. She comes by it very naturally. She is learning Spanish at school, yoga and sign language. I am amazed by her progress and potential.

Tonight daddy is taking "Nora duty" and I am sleeping upstairs. I know what's going to happen: some spinoff amended version of Murphy's law: Nora is going to sleep all through the night. But in the event that she doesn't, he has a thermos full of hot water and a bottle in an ice pack right next to his bed. The monitor is turned up much louder than normal and all doors are cracked for extra passage of sound waves. Goodnight blog land. I'm off to enjoy 6+ hours of consecutive sleep. (Really hope I don't wake up as a result of habit)