Five Months

Little Quinn.  Well, you are not so little anymore, you are 5 months old!  I can’t believe the time has flown by.  I was going through my emails this morning, looking for your birth announcement because one of my friends said that they never got it.  I never found it, but I was rereading all of our adventures of our first week together.  You really scared momma, and even reading about it put me in tears, even though now, you are as healthy and perfect as perfect can be.  Despite that first large bump in the road, you are growing more and more every day.  Every time I look at your pictures, I want to reach out and hold you.  You are my everything, and I don’t know how I ever survived in this world without you.

This past month, a lot has happened with everyone and everything around us.  It has been rough and fun, and full of adventure, both the good and the bad kind.  I don’t even know where to begin.  First, our housing situation was in jeopardy.  The air conditioning went out, and our landlord basically told us that we were lucky it wasn’t something major, and that it was an easy fix because he couldn’t afford to fix anything for us, and would give us a 30-days to vacate notice should anything else go wrong.  That really freaked me and dad out.  It’s one thing to put us on the street, we can be nomads if need be, but we have you now.  You to care for, you who needs a stable, and comfortable home; you, who needs so many things that moving from place to place, cannot be provided.  I was really scared for the first few days.  Scared and angry.  For once in our lives, daddy and I switched roles.  He was the one freaking out about what the plan was going to be, and telling us we had to move, move, move, and I was the one who wanted to ride it out, and see where life was going to take us.  Don’t expect that to ever happen again.  We are still in the same place, but still keeping our eyes open.  I want to find a good home that we can be in for a few years.  Something not too crowded something I won’t fear for you to walk around in, when the time comes, or even for you to crawl around.  I always told myself I didn’t want to have children while living in an apartment, because an apartment is so temporary, so not homey.  Unfortunately, thanks to our mistakes, we can’t provide you with a home to grow up in now, either.  I guess I should have clarified my future thoughts with “rentals” versus “apartments” because, we may be in a house right now, but it is not ours, and it is definitely not our “home.”  Someday we will have one for you, and hopefully, that will be the only home you remember, one filled with love, and laughter.  The middle of the month also brought about a LOT of changes.  In the same week your dad finally got back to a normal schedule at work, you got back to a normal sleep schedule (rather quickly, I might add), and you started day care.  Your dad learned of his new schedule on a Thursday morning, he went to work that night, stayed up as late as he could Friday, and then spent all weekend with you.  I pretty much only saw you when you were hungry.  It was the first time he actually got to enjoy you in all your glory and you got to enjoy him.  You were both so happy, and I am so excited that this opportunity fell in his lap.  That Monday, he started his new shift, Monday through Friday, 8 am to 5 pm, like a normal dad, he also started school that day, and that Wednesday, you started day care.  We are starting to shape up like the all-American family.  Day care was really rough on me.  I didn’t want to trust someone else, someone I didn’t even know to take care of you for any extended period of time, much less 10 hours a day, 5 days a week.  Although this is one of the best day cares in the city, we got off to a bit of a rocky start, but I think things are ok now.  You had no problems with them; it was just your crazy parents who did.  You love daycare.  They sent me pictures of your first day there, and you were smiling in both of them.  You are smiling when we drop you off, and smiling when we pick you up.  You get wagon rides, and lots of cuddles, they absolutely adore you, and I’m pretty sure you enjoy it there too.  I cried your first day, and then sat at home for 9 hours wondering what you were doing, and didn’t do much else.  It was my first day without you ever, and I was pretty lost.  It’s still hard to drop you off every day, but I’m doing better.  I come home now and look for jobs, cook, or clean.  I’m still not working, and I really want to have you by my side all the time, but I need to get used to not having you there, and I also need to get things done around the house.  About an hour before I get to pick you up, I get antsy, and can’t wait to see you.  It’s like that last hour before you get to go home from work or school.  It’s so close, but so far.  Someday you will know what I am talking about.

  

At your 4-month checkup (which was almost two weeks after you turned 4 months), you weighed 13 lbs. ½ an oz.  You just now fit perfectly into 3-month-old clothing.  I am slowly starting to have to pack away your 0-3 month clothes, which is not as traumatic as I thought it would be, because you have a LOT of clothes.  At your appointment, you got shots, and this time you didn’t crash out, and you were miserable for a few days.  I felt so bad, and you were so cranky.  The doctor said that we could start trying out solid foods starting with cereal if you showed any interest in it.  You already get cereal in your bottles to help you keep it down, but I made up a bowl of cereal for you to eat, and you had no real interest in it.  I will try again next month, but I won’t pressure you at all.  The more food you eat, the less bonding time you and I get, so I’m being selfish with it.  You don’t truly need to start exploring with solid foods anyway until you’re a year old.  The doctor also suggested that we let to start drinking from a cup.  She personally doesn’t like sippy cups, and recommended little bathroom cups.  She showed us how to give you about an ounce of water in one, and you drank it so fast, as if we were starving you.  We didn’t have any bathroom cups at home, so I gave you my old Tommee Tippee Cup to try and you loved it.  You got the hang of it right away, and you could tell how proud of yourself that you were when you first used it.  Daddy, going with doctors’ orders, didn’t want to use a sippee cup, so we went out and bought a bottle with handles and a bottle like nipple that had 3 stages (bottle nipple, a square-ish nipple to transition you to a sippee cup type drinking device, and eventually cup) but I think it was too big, and you weren’t really digging it.

 Developmentally, you can now roll from your tummy to your back, and your back to your tummy, but not back to your original starting position.  Not sure why you do it that way, but you will figure it out.  It turns out tummy time is not as traumatic as you originally thought, and for the last week, when I come in to get you in the morning, you are either fast asleep on your tummy (you sleep in almost the same exact position as your momma!) or you are on your tummy trying to crawl around, and usually making a ruckus.  On your first day of day care, dad saw another baby (who is a few months older than you are) on her back grabbing her feet and rolling back and forth.  He thought it was so cute, and talked to you about grabbing your feet, and doing it too.  In the next few days, you did it, and he was overjoyed.  He loves when you do it every time.  You are a smart little cookie, and I don’t think people give babies enough credit for what they know.  You are at the age that we can start teaching you sign language to communicate better, and while we are eager to do so, we can’t find out little book we got for you.  Chaos is our life, and maybe someday we will get our act together, but probably not.  I think, despite no real effort going into it, you are learning to wave as a greeting.  You often lift up your hand when people enter or leave a room, or when we come to pick you up from day care, and someone says “bye” to you.  You’re somewhat shy about it at first, and you hesitatingly put your hand up, but every now and then, you will shake it at them.

We recently got you a Taggie toy.  It’s simply a sewn triangular piece of fabric with various tags hanging off it.  Simple, but you love it.  We’ve attached it to your car seat, and pretty much, it’s our “go-to” toy of the moment.  You still really enjoy your swing, but I think you like it too much sometimes, and although you are nowhere near the 25-pound weight limit, you get so excited, and so carried away with kicking for joy, you shake it, and it scares me a little.  This weekend we are going to the zoo pending the weather.  I’m excited to see your reaction to all the animals, but I think you will like the monkeys the most, unless they have some underwater animals.  Daddy fully plans to parade you around on his shoulders the entire time.  I think he might have to fight grandpa for it, and I have a feeling that excitement will end the second time you spit up on his head.  I’m giving you a freebie because he will probably be wearing a hat, and won’t mind until you actually make it to his hair.

I love you!

Love,

Momma

Gerber Baby

If you have Facebook, and think my daughter is absolutely adorable (which she is, no lie) please vote for her daily, starting 9/4 - 9/24 so that she can win money for college (long way off, I know!) or be a Gerber Super Star!

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The way things are...

I haven't posted in a while... well, let me take that back, I tried to post, and I had a long post about freezer crock-pot meals, and how awesome it was... and then it didn't post, and it only saved half of what I had typed out and it was long.  Then... the rest of the month went to crap.  Today, I found this, and it was perfect.  I <3 you Hallmark.

Once things get a little better, and I'm feeling more up to it, and less like slamming my head into a wall, I will update the world on what all has been happening.

Promise.  :)

Four Months

Four months.  A third of a year.  My little growing Quinn.  You are starting to get SO BIG.  I notice it so much more now than I did in the first few months.  It makes me happy and sad at the same time.  Happy because I love watching you grow and develop into the fun little person that you are, but sad that you are starting to become more and more independent with every moment of every day.

I haven’t really been paying attention to the “milestones” you should be meeting.  I don’t want to be that crazy parent who is like, “YOU SHOULD BE COOKING FULL MEALS FOR YOURSELF RIGHT NOW, YOU’RE 4 MONTHS OLD!”  I just soak in what you do every day, and know that you are going forward and not backwards.  I’m not sure if that’s good or not.  You can’t detect it until you’re 14 months or later, but I worry about autism every day.  I don’t know why, you were born a perfect little baby, and we really haven’t had many issues thus far, I just worry that this good streak will end, and something will go wrong.  So just keep moving forward… and I think we will be good.

You love to grab things.  You may have loved it last month… but you really love it this month.  You always have things in your hands.  It doesn’t matter if you’re moving it around, or if it makes noise, you just want to hold on.  Sometimes, it’s to your disadvantage, like if you lose one thing in your hand, you go to your binky and you rip it out to hold you sometimes get upset, because you can’t quite figure out how to put it back in, but you’re getting there.  You have the motion right, just not the direction, so sometimes you just end up chewing on the handle.  One day last week, you were just sitting in my lap sucking on your binky and taking in the world around you.  I was topless since you had just spit up down my shirt, and into my bra (another thing you are awesome at) you took your binky out, looked over, and latched on and started eating.  This is something I will always remember and cherish, and will probably gross you out every time you hear the story, but I already know you are going to be a woman in charge someday.  You knew what you wanted, and you took it, all on your own.  No waiting for other people, just do it!  You also love to grab on to shirts, hair, and to thumbs.  You love to hold on to people’s thumbs and stand on their laps.  You love to use your little legs so much; I’m starting to think you may be running marathons before you ever learn to crawl.

Two weeks ago, we bought you an activity center where you sit in the middle, and the little seat turns around and there’s stuff to do all around you.  While you meet the age requirement, you are a petite one, and we’ve stuffed it with blankets, and put pillows underneath you, but I think it will be at least another month before you can even fit in it.  You are finally starting to chunk up to everyone’s relief.  You are a skinny little girl, and not in a sickly way, but somehow, everyone just expects babies to be chunky… and you are starting to get some rolls.

All in all, you are a pretty happy baby.  Only when you are really tired or your tummy hurts do you really cry.  Most of the times when you need something you just make noises (screams or just random shouts.)  It makes it easier to take care of you, and know when you are really hurting.  We had a tough few months in the beginning with all the crying, and not being able to figure out what’s going on, so I appreciate the break.

For whatever reason (and I am not complaining at all on this one) the car seat has become far less traumatic for you.  Instead of crying and throwing a fit 100% of the time, it’s only about 33% of the time, and it’s usually only when you are tightened in it.  I don’t know if you are realizing that you like the car, or you’ve just given up, because you realize that no matter if you’re crying or not, you’re not getting out of your car seat.  You still sleep on most of the car trips we take.  If you don’t, you rarely cry.  I don’t know if you get to see anything around you, but you seem to relax on car rides, and sometimes we can hear you chatting with yourself.  I hope you keep that, as you grow older.  Daddy has some vacation plans for you, and it would be awesome if you weren’t one of those bratty kids on car rides.  Haha.  You still insist on keeping your 2 am bedtime, but hey, at least it’s routine.  A few nights a week you will go to bed a little earlier at 1 am, and sometimes if I’m really lucky, you’ll even go to bed as early as midnight.  Baby steps though, you’re working on it.

Whenever we go out, everyone always compliments on what a beautiful baby you are.  I know, I see that precious little face every day.  Tell me something I don’t know people.  I may be a little biased though.  They also comment on how good you are.  You really are a pretty well behaved baby.  Your dad makes going out a little bit more dramatic than it needs to be sometimes, but overall you’ve never been a bad baby to have out and about.  You’ve had one melt down in Wal-Mart (who doesn’t want to when they walk into that store?) and it turned out you weren’t feeling well.  Only once has daddy had to take you out of a restaurant.  Even then, he didn’t need to, he just couldn’t get you out of your car seat fast enough to his liking, and so he literally ran out with you in the car seat, got you out, and came back in.  He’s silly like that.  All you wanted was to look around, and you were content once you were able to see over the table.

The highlight of this last month was a joy that I can’t even begin to describe accurately.  It was about 11:30 at night, and you and I were sitting on the bed while daddy was getting ready for work.  Landon and Lucy (our dogs) were running around the house being themselves.  Sometimes when he gets ready for work, your dad will play with the dogs, and this was one of those nights.  When your dad had stopped playing, Landon decided that he wasn’t done.  He picked up his toy, and began shaking it with his head ferociously, and throwing it up into the air.  You thought this was the funniest thing, and we heard you laugh for the very first time.  Landon caught it too, because he kept doing things to make you laugh, and it went on for about 5 minutes.  It was such a magical moment; you have such a sweet, precious little laugh.  Daddy loved hearing it so much, he was almost late for work that night, and bragged about your laughter to his co-workers.  Sadly, you’ve only laughed one more time since then, and it was caused by the same events.  Daddy and I have been trying in vain to get you to laugh at us, to no avail.  It will come someday I’m sure, and someday, we will forget to enjoy your laughter as much as we did on that day, because we will hear it so often, but I will never forget that moment that we all three got to share, and neither will daddy.

Today also marks the day, one year ago, that I found out I was pregnant with you.  I thought I was full of joy and love for you then, but little did I know what was to come.  I love you more and more every day.  Sometimes I feel like my heart may explode when I look at you.  You are so amazing, and I am so glad I had a part in creating you, and that I can call you my daughter.

I love you,

Momma

Interesting facts about breastmilk

I found this the other day, and while I knew some of it, like the ingredients, and the costs, some of it still blew my mind.

Taken from Lucie's List