We don’t actually celebrate Christmas religiously, but I am guilty of being a huge Christmas fan. The hype of it and the lights and the music and the tasty cookies and food… It’s just so warm and lovely.
Anyway, this year didn’t disappoint. My sweet little friend Erica played santa this morning and delivered an awesome wood growth chart ruler for sweet Charlotte. It’s unstained, so I think we will stain it and hang it in the finished basement as the “family growth chart.” It’s going to be perfect! And how sweet, huh? She signed it from Santa 🙂
Then we FINALLY made Mark’s father’s birthday gift (overdue since October). Anyway, we got one of those handprint kits forever ago and just finally did it today. It’s super cute and was fun to do!
We had to do three or four takes because as soon as we’d put Charlotte’s hand down, she’d squeeze the mold. And of course, we used the leftover supplies to make a toby print 🙂
Then, best of all, my sweet Friend Kate who moved away to Seattle is back in town. Her family is just the sweetest and always opens their doors to us. In fact, I’ve been there for Christmas or Christmas Eve for quite a few years. And this year was no exception. After Charlotte took two epic naps (3 hours each), we packed up the fam and spent an absolutely lovely evening with them.
Last night, Marky and I created an email account for our little one. Not for her use, but as a gift.
Someone recently told Mark about an idea to create an email address for your babe and use it to send advice and stories for your child to read at a later time. We loved the idea, so that’s exactly what we’ve done.
I don’t know when we will give her access to the account, but it seems like such a special gift. A priceless collection of love and memories and advice for our sweet little one.
And until then, we will continue to email her recollections of our sweetest moments and finest advice.
Tonight we took the princess downtown to check out the Christmas light display. Being that her fifth favorite thing (only behind mommy, toby, daddy, and pinching/clawing faces) is lights, we figured she’d love it.
Unfortunately, miss thing has an early bedtime, so we didn’t get as many smiles as we hoped… But she did seem pretty mesmerized by the lights! And, we even got a swing session in. All in all, a successful fun time!
No one needs to know that she cried the ENTIRE 40 minute drive home, right?
Today I got together with six other mommies from my high school. We all graduated 11 years ago and many of us haven’t seen each other since then. However, with Facebook, somehow we’ve all kind of “kept in touch.” So, with everyone home for the holidays, we decided to get together for a little play date.
I have to admit, the whole thing gave me anxiety. I’m not the most outgoing and tend to avoid situations like this, but I knew it would be nice to be around other mommies (especially ones I know) and more importantly, it would be great for little Charlie to play with other mini people.
All in all, it really was a great time. It’s just way too much to see so many little pumpkins in one room. Charlotte doesn’t get as much time with tiny ones as I would like, so it makes me happy to see her lunge towards other babies, laughing all the way. She’s a little hug lover.
UGH! I’m feeling really defeated right now. I’ve been on the dairy/soy elimination diet for over two weeks now and there has been no improvement in Charlotte’s stool. In fact, yesterday I saw blood again. I called my doc and she’s recommending switching Charlie to a special formula for a week while I totally detox my body (only eating whole food prepared by me), but said that if I want to give it another week, that would be fine.
I’m a total breastfeeding lover, so of course, I don’t want to give my sweet baby formula. BUT, I’m worried that I’m being selfish.
My plan is to totally cut out anything and everything that could be a culprit. That includes dairy, soy, nuts (almonds), beef, eggs, wheat, corn and shellfish. I’m not sure what that leaves to eat, but I’d literally eat only celery if it meant that I could healthily continue breastfeeding my sweet pumpkin.
But in the meantime, while I’m detoxing, I feel like I need to give her the formula and it pretty much breaks my heart.
The past few nights, we have been sleep training Charlotte to sleep through the night. What does that mean you might ask… Well, when she wakes up for her mid-night snack, we let her cry it out. The first night, she woke up at 1 am, cried for an hour and then went back to sleep. The second night was similar(ish)… Although, we fell asleep and lost track of time.
And last night… Well. Let’s just say she slept through the night! Here’s what we know… The monitor volume was only at 1 (and is usually at a 3 or 4). Mark and I both had dreams that Charlotte was crying. And Charlotte slept until 7:50 am… She usually wakes up between 5:30 and 630.
So, I’m not really sure if she slept through the night or not. Which leads me to, if a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound?
Charlotte definitely loves presents… But she’s totally in it for the paper. Man does that little girl love shoving wrapping paper and tissue paper in her tiny baby mouth.
Maybe by the 8th night, she’ll enjoy more than just the wrapping.
I absolutely love taking Charlotte’s weekly pictures. It’s so incredible to see the changes she makes in just 7 days.
When I first made our age tracking photo prop, I had only intended on taking weekly pictures up to her first month. I don’t know what happened, but somewhere along the road, I decided to continue the photos.
Anyway, as she gets older, my window for photos seems to be getting shorter and shorter. She starts out so happy and then it turns into this…
Or this…
I can only imagine that by the time she’s 52 weeks, she’s going to be throwing the dang board across the room.
Somehow I’ve totally fallen behind on my blogging! Sorry, baby girl & all 2 of my loyal readers 🙂
I’m trying to remember the subtle little changes my sweet girl made in her 19th and 20th week, but I’m not doing that well. I can’t distinguish between the weeks, but a few little things…
Charlie is a handsy little lady. Hair, fur, jewelry, plates, anything! If she can reach it (or catapault her body towards it), she’s going to grab it.
Baby girl loves that tummy time. I think it’s a power thing… imagine that. She get it from her momma, she get it from her momma. Okay, enough of that…
Charlie loves to stick her tongue out, blow raspberries and has actually started to incorporate this little pasttime into her pooping routine. Yep, you heard me! The little one officially sticks her tongue out and makes a weird humming noise when she poops. It’s pretty special.
Mark introduced Charlie to snow with her very first face wash. Kidding… he gave her a snowball. She didn’t seem overly impressed.
Charlie silently pooped and peed simultaneously during naked time. Bravo!
I’ve had a lot of requests to write a blog post about placenta encapsulation, so, here it is. I’m not going to lie… I didn’t do a TON of research on this topic. I definitely researched it, but not for days on end. I will include some benefits, but after speaking to my doctor and others, I determined that consuming my placenta (I know, I know… totally disgusting thought) via pills wouldn’t hurt me and could potentially offer some pretty big benefits.
Here are the potential benefits:
Help to balance your hormones
Replenish depleted iron levels
Assist the uterus to return to its pre-pregnancy state
Reduce post-natal bleeding
Increase milk production – this has been proven in a study
Make for a happier, more enjoyable post-natal period
Increase your energy levels
The cost to have my placenta encapsulated was $250. I went back and forth on the whole idea and ultimately, decided to go for it. It’s gross, but come on! That’s not the only gross thing I’ve ingested via medicine. For example, the cervadil that was inserted into my lady parts to help induce labor has bull sperm in it. Literal bull semen.
Anyway, I ended up deciding to do it. I went to a woman I was referred to by my doula and really, it was all quite simple. We provided a cooler and ice pack and the surgeons and/or nurses packaged it up, gave it to the doulas who delivered it to the encapsulation lady and voila! Three days later my giant, nasty looking organ was transformed into pills.
Mmmm….
The pills weren’t a big deal to consume… although they had a funky burp taste… not far from Echinacea. Anyway, I ate them. So, the big question is, did it work?
Well, I really have no idea. But here’s what I know… I didn’t have any postpartum depression… not an ounce, I have milk for days, my bleeding was way manageable and I’ve had a great recovery. Would I have had the same recovery without the pills? Who knows! But in my mind, no harm, no foul.
I guess the big question is whether I’d do it again… And honestly, I don’t know? I honestly don’t feel any more passionate about it now than I did before I did it. I guess I’d do it again… No harm, no foul… Right?
As a sidenote, I have to share some hilarity that came with my placenta pill purchase. So, at my postpartum visit with the doulas, they brought my placenta pills and a couple other “gifts.” Gift number one…
Yes, that is a blood imprint of my placenta. Hang that one up in the nursery… huh?
Gift number two…
No big deal, that’s just the umbilical cord dried and shaped into a heart. The gift that every mother wants… Well, actually, it’s the gift that every pet wants. When we first received the gifts, we clearly did not know what to do with them – because who the… heck… wants a placenta-blood painting or umbilical cord jerky – so we decided to leave them in the nice little neon green gift bag and keep it on the fireplace ledge (aka… The I don’t know where else to put this spot).
One afternoon while Marky was reading to our sweetie pie, Oliver the Kitty got curious. He stuck his nose in the bag to check things out and got his head stuck in the handle. I’ve never seen anything so ridiculous. He lost his shit. He went running all the way down the stairs, jumped on top of the work bench and on the cabinet before the dang bag fell off of his neck.
Meanwhile, Toby struck gold. When we got back upstairs, we discovered that the umbilical cord must have fallen out of the bag in Ollie’s frantic dash, as it was clinched in Toby’s jaw. We grabbed Tobes, but he would not release. He clenched that thing for dear life growling all the way. I can’t remember how we ended up getting the cord back, but it was seriously hilarious.
Here’s a video of story time turned kitty nightmare (the silliness begins at about 2 minutes)…
Playing House 