I’ve been duplicating my posts about Sam on a new blog I started. If you want to read future updates, please go over here to listen to my Ramblings!  It’s easier for me to post items and hopefully I can update more frequently! This page will be changing (when I have time) to a page of photos about our beautiful baby.

More photos of the company picnic and others… Just a few..
I will update soon! – Click here

6-6-06

Pictures finally! Click here

Where is my Mommy radar? I thought that was a super power you automatically received once you had a child. Apparently, I lost it. Or never had it.  Or something.

This morning Justin asked me if I remembered what happened last night.  Hmm. Noooooo. What happened?

Apparently, Sam started screaming at 12:30am and it came through loud and clear through the monitor.  Usually, I fiddle with that stupid monitor for five minutes before I go to bed. If it’s to loud I can hear the static buzz and if it’s to soft I won’t hear her cry. Technically, you can hear her cry from her room to ours but it’s pretty faint. And I am a sound sleeper.    So I have to reach the perfect setting on that silly thing. I don’t want to hear every sigh and hiccup.  Also, lately she has been rolling around and keeps hitting her music box which is GREAT for an extra 20 min in the morning but horrible for me to wake up to. Especially when she keeps pounding it with her foot over and over so you hear the start of the same song every 15 seconds.

So, she was screaming. Apparently.  Justin said he had just gone to bed (he’s been having trouble sleeping the past month or so – insomnia is a horrible thing!) and he sat there for 10 min thinking I was awake but practicing some voodoo cry-it-out theory (which I totally would if I was up but alas, I was not) and finally he got up to go see what was going on.  She was just screaming and was on her side. Poor thing.  He said he picked her up and walked her around for a few mintues and she was still crying and then he sang to her for awhile in the glider.  After about 30 min she finally drifted off to sleep as he sang to her.  Awwww.  Cute, right?

It is nice that J got up and settled her down though. I would have just zombie walked back to bed and fed her while we went back to sleep together but would have woken up two hours later annoyed by my arm completely dead of all feeling and her still sucking on my boob and would have had to carefully put her back in her crib only to have her wake up an hour later.  He could have just brought her to me so I could have fed her. I didn’t tell him that though. (I think he knew though.) I did have such a nice sleep that night.  And he was able to settle her much better than I would have because, she just would have wanted my boob.  And he doesn’t have one.

But all this was going on while the MONITOR was still on, next to me, at it’s perfect setting while I continued to sleep.  Sad!  Hello, Mommy radar? I have a great history of sleeping through crazy things but it is slighly scary that I would sleep through poor Sammy screaming.  It is nice that J got up and settled her down though. I would have just zombie walked back to bed and fed her while we went back to sleep together but would have woken up two hours later annoyed by my arm completely dead of all feeling and her still sucking on my boob and would have had to carefully put her back in her crib only to have her wake up an hour later.  He could have just brought her to me so I could have fed her. I didn’t tell him that though. (I think he knew though.) I did have such a nice sleep that night.  And he was able to settle her much better than I would have because, she just would have wanted my boob.  And he doesn’t have one.  Hopefully she won’t do it again anytime soon but we have six month shots coming up so I forsee some more night wakings.  I love my sleep.  I always feel so bad when people tell me that they have insomnia. I can’t imagine it. It’s happened about four times in my life (knock on wood) and I freak out the next day.  It’s the worst thing in the world to not get sleep. I can’t imagine having to live with insomnia.  I’m so SORRY to everyone who suffers from it!! So, Mommy radar? Hello? Please don’t fail me if something bad happens in the future! (Although, if it’s another night waking for nothing serious then I forgive you… ) xoxo

OH MY GOD, giving real food to a baby makes their poop disgusting.

DISGUSTING. Seriously.

About two weeks after we started giving Sam baby food, she stopped pooping. It was a nice vacation! I was getting tired of all those leaky poops that snuck up the back of her diaper and on to her clothes. Every afternoon at her 3:30 feeding I would wrap a blanket around her butt before we started feeding because I KNEW what was coming. After the third day of not pooping, I started wondering though. Where was all the poop? It had to come out sometime. When? Yikes.

We started with the prunes. Once a day… then twice a day. Then, we added peaches at night. The night we started peaches, I handed her off to Justin for a little ‘Daddy Time’ and he kept coming down to where I was sitting on the computer saying ‘She is STINKY!’ Which she is/was. Those prunes were making some nasty smelling gas come out of her butt! Yikes! I kept waving him away, ‘Go some where else, I’ve been smelling them all day!’.

When I started running her bath, Justin got her ready and opened her diaper and WHEW! There it was! 7 1/2 days of not pooping and we got a huge whooper of a diaper. Wow, I was SO happy that Justin was doing that diaper. I was breathing out of my mouth and very thankful.

The next few days she would poop little pasty poops. They didn’t leak out of the diaper any more! I thought it was WONDERFUL! Pasty poop stays in the diaper, right? No liquid whooshing out of the back or the sides.

Well, she stopped pooping again. Today was the 4th day. She was eating her lunch and I could tell something was coming. I was pushing her legs up and she was letting out (stinky) gas but no poops so I put her in the Exersaucer. She played happily in there for about 20 minutes. I smelled something after awhile and I thought she may be pooping. She started to squawk so I went to pick her up.

Big mistake. There was pasty poop everywhere. EVERYWHERE. There was four days of poop in that diaper and that diaper was NOT big enough. It was all over me since I picked her up. My clothes, my arms, her exersaucer. The smell… THE SMELL was horrible.

Needless to say, we just got out of the bathtub. Bleah.

When does potty training start? Yikes! I think we are going to start early with her.

What a fun day heehee

No new pictures They are on my camera and I have to get them off.

Sam did flip over from her back to her tummy on Sunday!  She did it again on Monday too. Even though she knows how to flip from her tummy to her back (since her third month) she spends so much energy flipping once that she just lays her head down and screams when she gets to her tummy. Soon she will be rolling all over the floor though! Fun fun!

I haven’t updated in awhile. I don’t have many new pictures either because I got the new Cingular PDA thingy that has pictures and video and I keep snaping shots with that.. but then I have no memory (I really need to go get some) and then delete them after. I should really go back to my camera.

Sam is doing fantastically though.  She adores her exersaucer and is slightly growing out of her playmat on the floor. She would rather be sitting and playing with toys than lying down. She started babbling a lot more in the past week and we have also been wrestling with her naps and sleep time. She has been doing great, don’t get me wrong, but we have been on the same schedule for about 8 weeks now so it’s probably time for change so I’m trying to prepare myself. Usually she eats 6 times a day (we are nursing still) and every other day or so we go to 5 times a day.  A few times the past two weeks she will wake up at odd times at night. Justin thinks it’s because she is hot (ok ok, so I DO swaddle her up in a million blankets, whoops!) so we stopped that. I think she might not be getting enough food, either from going to 5 feedings a day and her not catching up, or I might be producing less milk.  Or who knows… I’ve read somewhere that as they get to this age they get so excited looking at the scenery that all that activity makes them wake up at night for many possible reasons.  All together she does get 12-14 hours of sleep, 10 of which is at night. YES. Ok. That was not bragging. I swear. Because every time I brag it backfires on me so that was simply stating the facts.

New things that my talented, gorgeous, sweet daughter is doing…. Well, as I said she is starting to babble more and in the process she is figuring out that she can make these sounds herself and whenever she wants… and loves repeating them. All the time.  The past three days it has been a low whine. Which is fantastic. Ha! I hope she grows out of the whine soon. Hopefully she will move on to the delightful shriek which I have heard randomly the past few weeks. Also the rasberry would be an improvment even if she gets drool all over me. Which happens without the rasberries anyway!

Yes, I think we might be seeing teeth soon. At Gymboree class all the Moms sit and compare what their babies are doing and drooling/teething is a big one. I’m almost tempted to sit with a measuring cup all day with Sam so I can go back and report… “Yes, well, MY daughter drooled out almost 15oz yesterday!”  Ahh, the comparisons have started. I don’t think it can be helped. It’s pretty amusing though because everytime I find out something someone else is doing I will usually go home and either practice with Sammy to get her up to speed (ie. sitting on her own – other 5 month-ers are doing it!!!) or try out to see if she likes it (ie. blasting the music and dancing around like a crazy fool to make her laugh ~ which, my god, she LOVES! She likes it better when Daddy does it though!).  And I know the other Mother’s do it as well, so I don’t feel that silly.  We are able to talk about sleeping habits, teething, sitting, tummy time, etc. etc.  It’s a great group and I love going to Gymboree especially because SAM loves it. Her favorite is the parachute game.

We have a very relaxed schedule though and we have great days together. I feel so joyful to be able to spend this time with her. Even though the second she drops down for one of her naps, I am racing for my computer to check my email… and actually I am checking it on my phone while I am playing with her at times… I just love watching all the new things she learns each day. I love the smiles she graces me with when I walk into her bedroom or she sees me across the room. I love knowing that she thinks I’m the funniest person ever (aside from her Poppa) and laughs at all my jokes.  She is such a beatiful little girl and I’m so proud to be her Mom.

Anyway.   Today we started on banana rice cereal. After four days of making faces and screaming at me on the regular rice cereal, we moved to applesauce which she proceeded to smack her lips and grab the spoon and chomp it to death.  The banana rice cereal was a hit though. She doesn’t eat very much right now but we are having a good time working on it. I’m so excited because she already will feed herself as I hand her the spoon and she grabs it (while I ‘guide’ her otherwise there is food *everywhere*) and puts it in her mouth. I also got her a sippy cup that I’m letting her play with for now as I want to keep working on the independence skills. She is doing awesome though!

Next weekend we are heading up to Vegas for the Club Spring Mountain celebration. It will be our first big trip aside from our Big Bear excursions which are easy two hour drives.  We are crossing our fingers that the drive goes well. She does pretty well in the car so it should be tons of fun.

More later,
xoxo
K

We had “The Great Cereal Experiment” this evening. Wow. It was hilarious! She hated it! hahaha!  Here are the pictures to document how funny it was…

The Cereal Experiment

Wow, it’s been a month! Time goes by so quickly… We had our four month appt and it was great. Perfect baby, of course She was 13.6lbs and 24 inches. She did great at the appt and only cried a little during her shots. I bragged to the doctor about her sleeping habits and of course, the next morning she gets up at 3:30am… haha.  It only happened that day though (probably cause of the shots) and she is back to her normal sleeping habits now. We just moved her into all of the 3-6 month clothes and now that it’s getting so warm, we get to wear all the cute onsies and cool outfits which is great.  She is really grabbing at toys and playing with them now. Before we would have to hand the toys to her and now we just put them in front of her and she grabs them, shakes and bangs them around for a few seconds, and drops them. Repeat process. LOL – I’m sure I will be pretty bored soon when she is flinging them across the room but hey, it will be great exercise!

K

Three Month Photos – Also photos of Big Bear and other things…
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Three and a half month photos – Just a few…
Click Here

Samantha is growing so quickly! She recently started grabbing at toys and playing with them. Everything is starting to go straight to her mouth, it’s hilarious.  She has outgrown half of her clothes in the 0-3 month mark and is now starting to fit all of her new clothes. We had to go and get her some sleep&play easy onsies because while all of the new clothes she has are sooo cute, they are a pain in the butt for everyday wear.

Last week we had the _perfect_ day. She woke up at 7:30am (after I went in at 7am to make sure she was still breathing…), went down for a nap around 9am and slept for an hour and fifteen minutes. Went down for another nap around 12pm and then slept for two hours and fifteen minutes!!! She took all of these naps with a minimum of fussing (5min or less!). I started a modified cry-it-out naptime routine and while it’s a little tense listening to her fuss as I walk out of the room, we are all so much happier about it! Well, Justin is learning anyway. It is hard to hear her cry! When she wakes up from her nap she is full of smiles now, where before she was being grumpy from sleep deprivation.  It’s nice to hear her ‘talk’ and smile during the day for playtime. After that perfect day, the next day she woke up at 7am and then went back to her 530am wake up time. Hopefully it will happen again!

Hmm.. that’s about it

Our baby is going to be three months in two days! So exciting! She has started rolling over when we put her on her tummy now. We are very impressed. Justin called it ‘gravity’ since she leans her head over and then ‘falls’ over but she uses her legs now to keep that movement to flip her on her back. She does much better on her right side at the moment.  She is also doing the ‘full body smile’ meaning she starts kicking out her arms and legs like crazy when she is excited. It’s pretty darn cute! She has started kicking in the bathtub which is pretty funny. We have her high chair set up now and it has a reclining position so she sits with us during meals.  Her little head hardly reaches the tray when she is reclining but we put toys on the tray and she stares at them for awhile and then babbles at us. Or falls asleep. It all depends on her mood.

Nursing is going great now. Except we stopped giving her bottles because it was going to well (and Mommy HATES to wash bottles anyway…) and tomorrow I have my special Valentine’s Day present (a day to myself!) and we realized that she hasn’t had a bottle in a few weeks! She freaked out when we gave her one so we’ve been trying every day now. She is more used to it after the past few days so hopefully Daddy won’t have a cranky-pants on his hands tomorrow. I’m sure they will have lots of fun together and Mommy will have LOTS of fun getting her hair done and going out to dinner with the ‘girls’.

No new pictures for now. I think we have slowed down a little. We have been going shopping though and have the cutest clothes for when she gets into the next size. I can’t wait!