Project Life Round 2

In 2010 I attempted to take a picture every day! I just finished putting all my pictures in my Project Life album and I'm proud to say that I only missed about 20 days for the whole year. I'm pretty proud of myself!! Now if only I had kept up with the journaling... I'd be done with 2010. But my journaling is only complete through the end of April. Ooooopps! My hand will be sore by the time I'm done with all that writing!

I love the end result (even with most of the journaling missing so far) that I'm doing it again for 2011. And this time my goal is to stay on top of the journaling. Every day is a stretch, but once a week is completely doable.

To keep me accountable (and to spice up my neglected blog a little) I'm going to post my weekly photos and journaling on Tuesday. I'll be joining Jessica at The Mom Creative who sponsors Project Life Tuesday. Follow along and take a peek into my day-to-day life.

Monday - January 3, 2011

It's amazing to see how much Scoot has grown when I compare this picture to her "first bath" picture. I love the way she's just relaxing in the warm sudsy water.

Tuesday - January 4, 2011

We've made a resolution to eat out less in 2011. Aaron is chef for the night and waiter too!

Wednesday - January 5, 2011

Scoot was up a lot last night. Aaron got up for the 3:30 fuss and very soon discovered a HAZMAT diaper situation. They both stayed up until 5 when I got up to shower and then they zonked back out.

Thursday - January 6, 2011

I finally got the rest of my 2010 pictures printed and I'm ready to put them in my 2010 Project Life album. Now I need to get busy on the journaling!

Friday - January 7, 2010

Scoot loves the dogs! She crawls over to check them out and always talks to them when we get home or after she wakes up from a nap. Can't believe Aaron got a picture with 2 dogs and a baby looking at him! woohoo!

Saturday - January 8, 2011

Scoot tries solid food for the first time!! We decided to go with green beans for the first meal. She seemed to like them. No yucky faces and none spit out!

Sunday - January 9, 2011

Scoot has mastered crawling and is now climbing *into* her toy box to get whatever she wants out. She's also learned that if she takes it ALL out she can switch between toys without missing any play time.

(I can't get this one to show up. I'll try to edit later.)

My Sweet Girl is 6 Months Old!!

How have 6 months gone by already? My sweet girl is 6 months old! She amazes me every day and I am beyond blessed to be her mommy. Between work and spending every spare moment with her when I get home, I have very little time for anything else. Since there hasn't been a post here since October, I probably didn't even need to spell that out! And now, lets go bullet style so that this doesn't become a 4 page post!

At 6 months Caroline...

*is still exclusively breast-fed. We'll start solids sometime after the beginning of the year and her 6 month check-up. I'm in no hurry.

*does not sleep through the night yet. But I'm honestly not missing much more sleep than I was at the end of being pregnant. She's so easy in the middle of the night that it's no different than getting up to pee several times a night. When she cries I get her from her room, bring her to bed with us, she nurses back to sleep and I usually drift off too, then I take her back to her room.

* can roll anywhere she wants to go.

*is a tummy sleeper.

*We put her to bed awake, she rolls over on her tummy, grabs her blanket and sticks her thumb in her mouth. She's out in just a few minutes.

*sleeps best with a white-noise machine on all night. When she first goes down at night we play classical nursery rhyme music.

*can sit up all by herself.

*favorite toys are the ones that make crinkle noises.

*loves bath time. I can't wait till we can do some "mommy & me" swimming classes.

*has 2 pearly white monsters who have taken up residence in her lower gums.

*loves animals. Clover and Dolly love her back and she plays with the dog and 3 cats at the babysitters.

This girl is the light of my life! So glad we had a snow day today and I got to spend her 6 month birthday snuggling her at home!!

We got a new rug for the living room and Scoot and Daddy had to test it out before we moved the furniture back in.

Here I am practicing my sitting up in my Christmasy outfit.

Babies in hats make me swoon! And a baby in a hat with a big grin ... I'm mush!

not a bottle washing fan

Scoot's blood sugar was low when she was born and the nurses gave her a bottle of formula in the nursery right after delivery. Of all the reasons that I wish I hadn't had to have a c-section, this is the one that makes me wish I could change it the most.

I'm thankful that this was the only issue that Scoot had at birth and that it was something that was so easily fixed. I'm glad the nurses fixed it so fast and that the bottle calmed her instantaneously (according to Daddy who stayed by her side the whole time).

Despite taking a bottle first, we have had a very successful breastfeeding experience. Since that first feeding, Scoot has been exclusively breastfed and God-willing she will be for at least two more months before we start solids. Simply being able to breastfeed at all is something that I feel blessed to be able to do.

Obviously, she had to be taking a bottle when I went back to work. I pump at work and she happily takes a bottle for the sitter, or Daddy, or even me. Luckily she has adjusted her eating schedule all on her own to accommodate nursing as much as possible. She eats less during the day and then cluster feeds in the afternoon/evening until bed time to make up all the calories she needs for the day. I love it! It gives us an abundance of nursing/bonding time and means that I don't have to have as much pumped for the sitter each day.

Being able to provide this for my girl is something I'm very proud of and incredibly thankful for. But I haven't been able to bring myself to nurse in public yet. We always take a bottle (or two) with us whenever we leave the house in case we're still out when it's time to eat. And so far it's worked out just fine. Scoot can eat and we can stay out longer than two hours.

But one of the selling points of breastfeeding is the convenience. The milk is always ready and always available. I want to be able to cut down on all the pumping (and bottle washing!) by getting comfortable with nursing in public. It's just not a big thing around here. I've never seen anyone nursing in public around here and I don't know how it would be received. I don't know if I'm strong enough to stand up to someone if they made negative remarks to me. I don't know where I should start to increase my comfort gradually. But I'm going to work on it because the way I see it, between Scoot and her future siblings, I hope to have years of breastfeeding in my future!

First Game

On Saturday Virginia Tech hosted Wake Forest in an ACC match-up. Aaron has seen VT play & beat every ACC team except Wake and Florida State. This was the ONLY game he wanted to go to this year, and he'd been talking about it since last season.

I wanted to go too, but there was no way that I was leaving Scoot over night (and other obvious plans, like leaving her a mere hour and a half away with my sister did not occur to me -- mommy brain I suppose) so we decided to take Scoot with us.

I was really very excited about it at first, but as the time got closer, I got more nervous. We ended up having to buy 4 tickets because we needed 3 (can you believe a 4 month old needs a ticket?!) and couldn't find anybody selling only 3. Were we going to end up wasting all that money because we had a fussy baby? Would Scoot be too hot/cold? Would she get a sunburn? How was I going to nurse her in the middle of a stadium full of people?

Well, we went. And it was FABULOUS! We were sitting up high in the stands and with 4 seats we had plenty of room. The people around us were calm(ish), the sun was just going down behind the stadium, it was cool, but not toooo cold, and Scoot ate right before the game (nursed in the car) and during half time (a bottle). The loud cheering and cannon caught her attention, but didn't seem to scare her at all.

The most amazing part? She slept through the entire second quarter. I had her tied to me in the moby wrap. After looking outward to see what was going on for the first quarter, I turned her around to face me when she started getting a teeny tiny bit restless. It didn't take her long to find her thumb, tuck her head into the wrap, and fall asleep. Even amidst all the talking, cheering, and moving.

We left at the beginning of the 4th quarter. VT was already ahead by 5 touchdowns and the second string was in the game. It was starting to get cold and we wanted to beat traffic since we were driving 5 hours back home.

Overall it was a perfect introduction between Scoot and VT. I see many many many more trips in our future!

*Pictures to come once loaded on the computer*

All the A's

Amanda starts with A.

Aaron starts with A.

Caroline starts with C.

From the very beginning of time, when we started talking about baby names, I insisted that NONE of our children's names start with A. I'm a little bit (okay a lot) picky when it comes to names. And I'm even more crazy about starting and sticking to themes when planning the names of your children. I love a well thought out theme... even more so if you have to think really hard to find the connections... like literary characters or song lyrics. Letter themes can also work, but mostly for smaller (3 or less kids) families.

I'm the oldest of 6 cousins on my dad's side. We all have A names. Amanda, Alan, Allison, Alden, Ashley, and Aaron. Then I went and married an A man. Who has 2 A cousins of his own. Ashleigh and Abigail.

If we had 1 child and gave him/her an A name, we would be *required* to name all of our children A names. Not doing so would be risking irreparable damage to their self worth. We would be leaving them out of the "A" club. All of our children with their own letter means that we planned it. 2 or 3 with A names and one with a different letter means we're leaving you out.

With all that being said, I couldn't leave Caroline out of the A trend all together. Her middle name is Avery.

And now I feel torn. I like far more girl A names than number of children we'll ever have, but I don't like many boy A names at all. And we won't reuse any that are already used in our families. So do we continue the A middle name trend for our own children? Or do we leave it at what we've got and give the rest of our kiddos their own set of initials?

It will probably all depend on whether baby #2 is a boy or girl.

The Sitter Delima

Scoot's first day at the sitters was on her 10 week birthday. I get that I was able to stay home with her a lot longer than a lot of other moms get to stay home with their babies, but that doesn't change how I feel about it. I want to be the one taking care of her day in and day out. I want to stay home with her.

(All that being said, we are very lucky that we found a good babysitter with reasonable rates and a low child/provider ratio. I feel comfortable leaving her there every day. I just wish I didn't have to.)

Her first weeks were a little rocky. She's only a baby and she was staying with someone she didn't know. Carole didn't know what her sleepy signs were or how to hold her just so to get her to sleep. She had to take a bottle when she was use to breast feeding exclusively. They worked it out in short order and the fussy reports from Carole got fewer and farther between. The biggest thing was that Scoot started sleeping again during the day.

When I dropped Scoot off this morning, she looked at Carole and smiled. My head told me that I should be thrilled. Scoot likes going to the sitter. She's happy and comfortable.

BUT

My heart broke just a little. Those smiles that use to be just for me and daddy are now being shared. I thought about my parents and Aaron's parents. They are the grandparents, but they don't see Scoot as often as Carole. Carole knows Scoot better than they do. Carole gets the smiles and they don't. They're family.

It is a Monday and those are the hardest days to leave my sweet baby. I'm so glad I got to see that beautiful smile before I left for work. I just wish it had been directed at me.

It doesn't help that I have to wake up this sleeping beauty at an un-Godly hour in order to take her to the sitter and get to work on time. Here she is passed back out for her morning "nap" at 6:00am after getting up, diaper change, dressed, and nursing.

Back to Basics

Even though no one really reads this blog I feel pressure to write something meaningful and well put together when I do write. More often than not, that leads to me writing nothing at all because if I'm not going to write something that hundreds of people want to read, why write at all?

But that's not why I started this in the first place.

I started this blog to be my journal. Each and every single night during my sophomore year in college I wrote in a journal. I love having that to look back on now. The kicker is that while obviously that was an important year in my life, I doubt I'd ever look back on it and think it was anywhere near as important as my life is right now.

I'm raising a child for crying out loud!

And I want her to know that I think that she is the most important thing going right now. I want to remember all the little things. I want to know what day she started rolling over and when she cut her first tooth. I want to remember the way she sticks out her bottom lip and her sweet little dimple.

So from now on this space will go back to being what it was meant to be all along. My journal. At this point I don't plan to make it private, so those few people who do follow me are welcome to stay along for the ride. But I don't promise to be interesting to anyone but me.

Hopefully giving myself the freedom to write boring stuff with run-on sentences means that I'll keep better track of my life now!