clingy

Mommies, how do you deal when your baby is at the stage when all they want is to see you, and you can't leave them alone for a second without them screaming?I try to give her lots of things to entertain her, but she just freaks out, I try to change her environment periodically, but I can't be constantly doing that... I am at a loss... and not getting much done!

I have tried leaving her to cry it out, and come when she calms down, that doesn't work so well, she just seems to scream harder and longer.

If I am sitting right next to her, she is happy, for a while sometimes, if I am holding her she is fine usually. If I walk out of her sight, she freaks.

I really don't know how single parents' do it... I am soooooo glad some nights when Kyle comes home so he can take her and I can get a break from all the fussing!


Speaking of, the light of my life has woken from her nap and is crying in the next room, so I will go and get her now.

PS. She was up and crying pretty much alllllll last night, I think Kyle and I got 3-4 hours of sleep, which is weird for her, because she has been sleeping through the night consistently for a few weeks now... girlfriend would not sleep! She wasn't hurt, hungry, stuck, etc. Finally we just had to let her cry until she conked out, and then she slept like a dream!


PPS. Because she is normally a sweetheart and a joy.
See below....

Miss America

I don't know why these loaded in sideways... argh, just tilt your head to the left and they will look right...

Here is Evelyn's Fourth of July outfit, my mom bought it for one of the baby showers, SO cute!!!!
I added the bow...

This is her glamor shot. Yes, I'm fabulous, who wants to know?

Mom, are you really taking my picture during church?
Why yes I am. I don't want to risk losing your good attitude before I can get a cute picture of you, and you are playing so happily!



Oh.My.Gosh. The bow. The bow just completes the outfit! I love it. It's darling. I may make her wear one every.day.for.the.rest.of.her.life. so cute!

The heat makes her so sleepy! luckily it means good naps though!

God's proof that I NEED. yes need. a fancy shmancy DSLR. my point and shoot's shutter speed is for the birds. Anyone want to buy me one?


We went to church in the morning, had a potluck afterward, went home and tried to cool off. Went to Kyle's parent's for a dinner barbecue. Left the camera at home next to the couch after I took her sleeping picture, so there are no pictures from the rest of the day. bummer!!! Well, my mom took a couple pictures, so maybe I can get them from her... Walked to a local park where we could watch the fireworks going off. Evelyn slept through the whole show, only slightly starting when a few of the big ones went off all right in a row, but never waking up, yay! Kyle was convinced it was a bad idea to take her to the actual location where they were shooting off the fireworks, instead of watching from a distance where we couldn't really hear them. I am glad she was able to prove him wrong. there is just something wrong about watching fireworks and not getting to hear or feel the booms!!!

I love Independence day! It is one of my favorite holidays!!!

3 months!

I have been a mother for 3 whole months now! Craziness!!


Little tipsy!

Oh mom... do I have to take more pictures?
Yes. Yes you do.
Oh, hello!

Fallin' down here mom! Are we done yet?


Why, yes, I would like to discuss the ramifications of...

She is such a big girl! No stats, since she doesn't see the Ped. this month, but I got on the scale with her and then without her and I think she weighs about 13 lbs now. No, I will not tell you how much I weighed when I got on the scale without her. That is none of your business!

Also, this is how she sleeps in our bed, is it any wonder that I prefer her to sleep in her own bed? and she tends to roll to my side. Only my side. Not Kyle's. Stinker.



And this is our new dinner seating arrangement, it works very well for us, thank you.

I have started something...

Last night on Facebook I posted that my baby girl was sleeping in her room, in her crib, for the very first time since we brought her home. The first time she would sleep in a room that I wasn't in too. Now I knew it was for good, but it still made me sad. Kyle posted essentially the same thing...

Well, that brought about comments from a few of my friends, from each end of the debate on the Family Bed.

it got me thinking, and here are my thoughts on the whole thing, disjointed as they may be, because they would not fit on a Facebook comment...


I am all for the Family Bed. I think it's a wonderful idea and I read about my friends who have their kids all snuggled in with them and it sounds beautiful! But... I also need my space. I like to have room to sleep as I want, to roll over and not move a child.

To this point Evelyn has slept in her cradle right next to our bed, at first on Kyle's side, and then when he started work again and needed his sleep, on my side so we could get her right away when she would wake at night.

For the last month she has been consistently sleeping through the night (yay!!!!) through no part of me, (I dunno how she did it, she just did and I am not going to stop her!). Well, if she is not going to need to be fed in the middle of the night then there is really no reason for her to be in my room when she has her own... plus she is getting a bit too big for the cradle.

Now, I know to some people, whether or not their baby/child sleeps through the night they will keep them in their room for as long as they can. I have friends with two small children, with two small beds in their parent's room, and they all love it! (they have room for the children to have their own rooms, but choose not to utilize it right now) I don't know that I could do that.

My parent's had my brother in their room until he was two, then he moved into my sister and my room until we remodeled and we all had our own rooms. I don't know what they did for my sister and me, as I was too small to remember, but I am sure it was similar.

I am all for babies in bed with mom and dad, to a point. If my baby girl comes toddling down the hall and says "mommy up!" then by all means I am going to pull her into bed with me and snuggle until it is time to get up! My parent's did with me (until I decided sleeping sideways in the bed with my head in one's ribs and my feet in the others was the way to go, hehehe! sorry mom and dad...), I loved that security knowing they were there for me to go to. I want my kids to feel comfortable crawling into my bed in the morning and knowing that we can have that time together as a family, to slowly go into our day. My friend Lindsey does that and I love it!

One of the things that came up was how do you go about your "marriage business" if your babies are in the same room as you. Well, I don't know about older children, but for us, Evelyn is a fairly good sleeper, also, when we *ahem* we aren't exactly swinging from the rafters. We did try to keep it down, but we also didn't feel as though we needed to take it to another room, and by the time we got around to it, she had usually been asleep for awhile.


Now I know I had a lot of other thoughts on this matter, but when I was composing this in my head earlier I didn't take good notes and have now forgotten what I was going to say... so that's all I got for now. Take it or leave it. Start new debates... Just please keep it civil people!


and here is a picture of the cutie who started the debate... because it's my blog and I can!
she's so cute!

sleep

Any tips on getting a baby to take proper naps without you holding them the entire time? Evelyn naps, but when put her down she wakes up screaming in about 10 minutes. We have started night time sleep training (letting her scream it out, going in to comfort her, but not picking her up on the doctor's recommendation). I have started trying that for her naps today, and it has been hard. I am currently holding a sleeping baby who fell asleep as soon as I picked her up... *sigh*
The last two nights have consisted of an hour of crying before she falls asleep, with the last 15 minutes or so being really MAD cries, and at that point she doesn't settle down when we come in anymore.

Any books or tips you can recommend would be welcomed!

We have already been recommended (I am using that word a lot this post!) "on becoming baby wise"

Also, any tips on getting her to sleep longer? She goes for about 6 hours at night (not bad) but wakes up at 4 or 5 like clockwork convinced she is going to starve! She is 12 pounds, so I know she isn't going to starve and she is plenty big enough to go without a nighttime feeding. Should I just try to conquer one thing at a time? I would love to be able to sleep through to 6 or 7 or even 8.... bliss!

Evelyn's 2 month stats

Hi, My name is Evelyn and I am 2 months old! Aren't I cute?


Evelyn is growing so fast! she needs to stop now... *sigh* but she is so cute! Promptly after taking these pictures she spit up all over her cute, previously clean, outfit... at least she waited until after?

Height 22.75" (75th percentile)
Weight 12lbs (75th percentile)
Head 39.5(cm???) (75th percentile)

I am amused that she is 75% all around, Kyle likes that she is above average :) he is hoping she will be a prodigy...






She is trying to roll over already, don't know that I am ready for that... and she can sort of scoot herself around in circles or very short distances when she is doing tummy time!

Evelyn is getting closer to sleeping all the way through the night, she currently will go about 5-6 hours (which she started doing on her own!) but no longer...

If you think about it, around 10 pm PST we will be putting her in her bed to put herself to sleep... it is going to be a looooooooong night. The doctor said this will be the hardest night, and then it gets easier and after 3 nights she should be fine... We have been rocking her to sleep, but as soon as we put her in her cradle she wakes up and starts screaming, so now we start this. We were going to start last night, but she had shots yesterday and I figured she had had a hard enough day already...

Mommy Rhapsody

Mommy Rhapsody from Church on the Move on Vimeo.

Oh, this is so life now... ^_^ What a creative bunch of women!

HT: NerdMom

One month!

okay, so technically she is 5.5 weeks now, but I have been busy!!!

This is Bea, the Bear. She was given to me by my Grammy. Evelyn's middle name of Beatrice is in honor of her, I thought it was only fitting to use Bea as the Growing Toy...

Evelyn's One Month Stats

Weight:
10lbs 8oz,
90th percentile (whatever that means... all I know is she's healthy and growing and that's good enough for me!)

Height:
21.5 in,
50th percentile (not too surprised here, have you seen us? we are a short people in this family!)


We had Evelyn dedicated at church last Sunday.
It was kind of exciting because it was our pastor's first baby dedication! He also got to dedicate his brother's youngest daughter who is just over a year old. Having both Kyle and my families there doubled our normal congregation size, woohoo!! yay for church planting!!

Picture (heavy) post

In the Hospital

First week home

Easter dress! It was so chilly and rainy that day, so we added a onesie and tights, but she was still cute!

Chillin on the blanket

Making faces at mommy

Learning how to play Peek-a-boo?

All dressed up for a party

What a sleepy girl! Kyle really likes the crease in her bottom lip, he thinks it's adorable...



I have a few videos of her too, just need to figure out how to post them on here... I know I can do it on FB

Oh, and she is going to be a month old tomorrow!!!! Who let me have a one month old?!?!
Love you my little Evie B!

Birth Story

Going to try to get this down quickly while the babe is sleeping!

Any men that read this, this is your warning that this post will talk about labor, female parts of the anatomy, bodily functions and other things that go along with all that. Continue at your own risk. You have been warned....





So, Tuesday the 23rd we went in for a scheduled induction at 12:30 PM. As of that Monday I was still only 80% effaced with no dilation, when we went in on Tuesday I was 80% effaced and 1cm dilated! They started me on the cervix ripening drug which is administered every 12 hours, so once I started the first dose I would have to wait 12 hours until we could see how far along we had come. At this point we were just hanging out in the hospital waiting... and waiting...

Because of the delay on the hospital pharmacy's side we didn't start the drugs until 2:30 PM, so that meant rather than be able to sleep mostly through the night the nurse came in at 2:30 AM to check me. The drug hadn't worked yet, but I had started contracting, and the contractions were too close together to give me another dose so they had to give me another drug to stop the contractions. It was nice to know that my body was able to start the birthing process though!

At 5 AM and after 2 doses of the contraction stopping drugs they were finally able to give me the next dose of the cervix drug. By that time I was dilated to 3 cm and had bloody show (TMI?). The contractions started in pretty well by then, and I was finally able to start to feel them. We continued to just ride through the process waiting to birth this baby! The contractions got worse and worse, and they gave me Fentonal (sp?) to take the edge off of the pain since I wanted to try to do labor naturally with no epidural. The first couple doses worked great, and then they didn't do anything!!

Oh, PS. No one warned me that you might puke when you are in labor... everyone warned me about having a BM while you are pushing, but nothing about puking up your dinner from the night before... ugh. and apparently Fentonal can aid in that...

So the pain keeps getting worse and worse. Kyle is being a trooper this whole time sitting by my side as I writhe in pain helping me focus on breathing and allowing me to squeeze the living daylights out of his hand. Also he got me a orange popsicle that I promptly proceeded to evacuate out of my body... dang it, I like orange popsicles too!

Finally about 11AM the pain is just too much for me to bear anymore and I beg for an epidural. Of course the anesthesiologist is in a C-section just then and can't come to me promptly. As they are calling for the back up anesthesiologist to come I happen to mention that I feel like I have to go to the bathroom, they promptly check me and lo and behold I am dilated to 8 cm!!! woo!! so they also call the doctor to come and break my water.

All of a sudden everything is moving quickly, the nurses start setting everything up for delivery, they hook me up to an IV drip of Pitocin, the best anesthesiologist in the world comes and gives me my epidural and the world suddenly is a much nicer place, my OB comes and breaks my water changes me to the internal monitors and tells me to start pushing. whew, are you tired yet?

After 1.5 hours of pushing, at 1:31 PM, less than 24 hours after we started this whole process and less than 12 hours after labor really started, Evelyn Beatrice was born.

Just about everything that was in our birth plan got thrown out the window, but then we kind of knew that would happen when we had to be induced instead of everything proceeding "naturally". We are happy to have a healthy, happy(for the most part) baby.

Also, I am happy to announce that we have successfully weaned off the nipple shield as of today. We never needed it really, but she was having trouble latching at the hospital and so they gave it to me so that she would eat... it only took hanging out in bed all morning with her feeding her every hour and listening to her cry like I was torturing her by nursing her to do it, but we did it!






...and now we return to our regularly scheduled programming that doesn't include talk of the female anatomy, bodily functions and labor... enjoy.