Monday, November 29, 2010

Oops

I went out of town and kind of forgot about this thing...

I owe you a much better post than this, but I wanted to at least post something so here I am.

Jade turned 7 months yesterday. That update will come soon. I'll also post some photos from Thanksgiving with my family. We had a great time, but I must say that it's good to be home.

But for now, here's a photo I took earlier today. Love.





Thursday, November 18, 2010

This is what happens























When you assume you will have time to straighten up and clean your bathroom during morning nap.

So basically, my bathroom isn't clean AND there are Cheerios all over the floor. Good thing we have dogs :)

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

And she crawls...

Last night while I was cooking dinner, Chuck was playing with Jade on the floor in the living room. Jade was going after the dog bone (I can't wait to tell her about this when she's older and hear her go "eeeewwww") and instead of her normal scoot, she crawled. She did this several times, I ran to get the video camera, and then she stopped. But the below clip is just a little hint of what she was doing.



Surprisingly enough, she's mainly scooting again today and she's not getting into too much stuff. But I'm sure that will change soon enough.

We had Chuck's work Thanksgiving today and it was sooo yummy. Jade did really well while we were there... I gave her some of my ham and she was a big fan.

The weather's been kind of weird the last couple days... really warm, but all the leaves are finally changing colors and falling off so it looks like it should be cool out.

Friday night, we're driving to Birmingham to spend the week with my family (and friends in Columbus) and I'm super excited about that!

And to close... another clip of a fun thing Jade has been doing. She'll be perfectly happy if she can't see me, but if I come into the room and don't pick her up, she cries. It's wonderful.





The crying continued for a bit longer than this, but I'll spare you guys :)

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Ladies retreat

So last night after church, all the ladies took off to go to Yorktown to eat yummy food, stay in a hotel, hear some fabulous messages, and just get to know each other better. After going back and forth with the churches admin person (a good friend of mine), preacher's wife, and Chuck, we just couldn't figure out a way for me to go without Jade coming too. And I don't know about you, but a retreat with a 6-month-old just doesn't sound very relaxing.

I realize this is just a phase in my life and that there will be many more retreats and conferences that I can go to in my life, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little disappointed. I was alright with it until I saw all the women loading up into cars with their bags and pillows last night. This was on my second trip out of the auditorium to get Jade in the nursery.

Speaking of... my "goal" is to be able to sit through an entire church service before Jade is 1. But sadly, the achievement of this goal is all up to Jade so there's really nothing I can do to meet it. She just, in general, isn't such a fan of anyone except her mama. I think if we went to a "normal" church that met on Sunday mornings it would be easier, but we meet at 5 pm, which is the peak of her fussiness. And I also have to miss a lot of football games and attempt to stay up and watch them when I get home (thereby sleeping on the couch). But I LOVE my church, so it's all good :)

That's it for now. I just realized I haven't taken any photos in a few days, so I'll be sure to get my camera out today.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Nevermind

This post has 2 purposes. One is to say that I spoke a bit too soon. Last night we had some inconsolable screaming and as much as I tried to think of another cause, I'm pretty sure it's the dairy I've been having. But her reaction wasn't nearly as severe as it used to be and it took much longer, so I think I'll still be able to eat dairy if it's cooked into something, I just might need to avoid the cheeseburgers for a while. Tonight, we're having a recipe for dinner that calls for 1/4 cup milk, and I'm going to use real milk and see what happens :)

The other is to ask my dad a question while attempting to show you guys pictures of inconsolable Jade. Last  night, when Jade lost it, I thought "oh this would be great for my blog!" (sad? Maybe, but that's not the point.)
This picture was taken with the camera's built in flash... obviously left something to be desired so I added the fancy pantsy flash daddy gave me.


Which gave me those three. Seriously? What in the world am I doing wrong? I've taken pictures before... and I just don't understand why I can't get the lighting right these days.

Anyways, that's Jade last night in her "mama please don't eat dairy" fit. Looks like I'll wait a while before having another cheeseburger. But man, that one on Monday was good :)

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

I am proud to report

That I ate a cheeseburger yesterday. For those of you that don't know, I haven't had dairy in about 3.5 months. Jade's little digestive system couldn't handle it and every time I had so much of a smidgen of cheese, she turned into a little screaming devil baby.

Since I love breastfeeding so much, AND since my little angel will.not take a bottle, which left me with no choice but to love breastfeeding, I cut out all dairy. For those of you thinking "no biggie", you're wrong. The first week was awful because all of a sudden I realized that everything has dairy in it. Couldn't eat my English muffins for breakfast. No mashed potatoes. No sour cream on my burritos. No chocolate. No desserts at all. No ranch dressing to dip my wings in. No cheese dip at Mexican restaurants. No casseroles. I was especially dreading Thanksgiving and Christmas because most of my favorite foods would be off limits.

After the first couple weeks, it wasn't so bad, but it still wasn't very much fun because I love cheese :)

Last week, at Jade's 6-month well-check visit, I talked to her doctor about it and she said I could try to re-introduce dairy very gradually and see how it goes. Some babies grow out of it by 4 months, some 6, and some not until a year (or even later).

So Tuesday, I put a little itty bitty bit of milk in my coffee. No reaction. Wednesday, I put my (old) normal amount of milk in my coffee. No reaction. Thursday, I put milk in my coffee and ate 2 spoonfulls of yogurt. No reaction. Friday, I ate an entire thing of yogurt (albeit not in one sitting). No reaction.

I talked to the lactation consultant and she said that at some point, I was just going to have to decide it was worth it and take the plunge. So I decided that yesterday was the day. Chuck and I went to Five Guys for lunch and I had a juicy, cheesy burger. And Jade is fine.

I cannot tell you how happy I am. Now if I can just figure out how to keep all the weight I lost off and still eat everything I've been missing :)

Thursday, November 4, 2010

The Jungle

When we moved into our house, this is what the front yard looked like.

What's that? You can't see the house? Yeah. We know. Honestly, we hated it. But we loved the house so much we agreed to overlook it and that we would tear it up ASAP.

Well, ASAP was not quite as "soon" as we might have hoped. Somehow I forgot that I am NOT a yard person. And then I got pregnant and the nursery became the number one priority and we let the yard go. So it looked like this for much longer than we wanted it to. Our parents actually helped us dig it all up more than once (sorry, mom) but then the weeds took over and it looked like this all over again.

But my wonderful husband spent the last 8 weekends making our yard pretty. He did all kinds of hard work that I won't claim to know anything about. And now it looks like this:




Now, he would be very upset with me if I didn't mention the light post and plug in the tree ring. Prior to his project, we had no power receptacles in the garage or on the front of the house. He ran electrical line from the box in the laundry room into the attic, put a drop in the garage, dug a 12 inch deep trench all the way to the street, added the box in the tree ring, and put that lamp post up. And it all works. I'm impressed. So now I have plenty of plugs for gaudy Christmas decorations. The neighbors are going to love me!

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

My little peanut

Yesterday was Jade's 6-month well-check visit. Everything is great... she's hitting all her milestones (surpassing most of them) and the doctor kept talking about how cute she is. She got her first flu shot... we have to go back in a month to get the booster since they don't give the whole thing to the little ones at once.

So here are her stats:
Height: 25 inches, 25% percentile
Weight: 13 pounds, 11 ounces, 10% percentile
Head circumference: 25% percentile (I can't remember the measurement...)

Up until now, she's been in the 50th percentile for height and head measurement, and the 25th for weight. So she's not growing as quickly as they expect most babies to grow, but she's growing consistently and they're not at all worried because she's developing the way she should be and Chuck and I are not exactly large people.

She likes broccoli more than she likes carrots, but I don't think her tummy likes it. She was SO gassy last night and actually pooped twice in the middle of the night, which she hasn't done in months. So I think I might be holding off on the broccoli for a little while. We have sweet potatoes in the house... maybe I'll give that to her next. Or a banana? Who knows. We're gonna have sweet potato tonight, so I'll probably go with that. I think it's fun when she eats the same thing we do :)

Currently, one of her favorite things to do is hang out with Belle. Unfortunately, that means they also share Belle's dog bone. Belle gets one end, Jade gets the other. The first couple times it was disturbing, but now I think it's adorable. Don't sweat the small stuff, right?

Not the best example...but shows that I'm not making the bone thing up!


What?

















Best friends

She was ADORABLE in her Halloween costume. Everyone at the church's OctoberFest LOVED it. I was proud. It's no secret that I'm not exactly creative, so I was pleased by how well it turned out. But if I'm ever gonna make her another costume, I need to learn how to sew or something crazy like that :)

We took her to get her 6-month photos taken on Saturday and had some of those done with Jade as Princess Leia. I didn't bother taking pictures with her in her costume with my camera because we paid the extra money to get a CD of the pictures they took. We didn't pay for the printing rights, just the sharing rights, because that's all I really wanted. And here comes my vent. They don't bother telling you that the "sharing" CD comes with lo-res, non-edited photos. Who wants to share that?? I'm so irritated. I've been very pleased with The Picture People so far, but I will definitely be writing them a letter about that.

But if you want to see them, here is a link to her photos. Sorry... but that, and the below gem from Chuck's cell phone are the best I can do...
She actually looked happy in the ones at the photo place...

Chuck and I never got around to taking more pictures with her in her 6-month sticker, so I'll share the one I took last week. It's cute... she just happens to be falling over, haha.