Happy Weekend!

How are you?

This morning we are going to breakfast as a family (another first!), then we're going to help our aunt & uncle move into their new home.

Here are some links to go along with your morning vice;

It's only January, but who's already in the mood for landscaping?

Loved this momma's article on breast milk.

We are almost finished with The Office...oh Michael Scott, how we'll miss your antics!

Yum yum. (minus the onions)

Have a great weekend!

Back To School, Back To School...

I'm going back to work next week! I am super super excited because not only am I going back, but I get to take Adalynn with me! 

Remember last year when I was going through the Path Intl. Instructor Certification? I had to complete a bunch of student teaching under the supervision of a certified instructor. 

Since we moved to our new barn last spring, our program has been growing in leaps and bounds. In addition to more classes and more riders, we have two more ladies that are currently going through the certification process to become instructors. 

So, I get to be there to supervise! Since I'm not doing the actual instructing, I'm able to take Adalynn with me. Our new barn is heated, so on lesson days it will be 45 degrees in the barn, which is just perfect for me to have her in a wrap with a light jacket over her. 

I feel so extremely fortunate to have a job where I'm able to take my newborn daughter to work with me. It will get us both out of the house and, even better, I don't have to leave her just yet. 

It's going to feel so good for both of us to be out in the fresh air, moving and grooving baby :) Plus, she gets to finally meet her Renew family! 

Top Products for Surviving the First Month with a Newborn

Sounds a little dramatic, doesn't it? Surviving.

But it's true! Between the lack of sleep, determining why your baby is crying (and what to do about it), learning how to change a diaper, bathe your baby, or clothe her without breaking off her arms or legs. What is that snorting noise she's making? Is that a lazy eye? Can I just let her cry like that? And I thought babies were suppose to sleep, like, all of the time?

As part of our decision to live more simply, we try our hardest to get by with only things we really need and use. There are a whole lot of baby products out there, most all of them look fabulous, cute, useful and all that jazz, but what do you really need for a newborn? 

Happily, not much! 

I've made a list of the simple products that we found to be the most useful to have for our newborn. Below are the few things that really helped us keep our sanity. 

This lullaby sound machine and projector.

It has all sorts of noises you can choose from, we always have it on rain. I especially love it because I always needed a box fan on to sleep, but since we have her sleeping in our room right now, this easily replaced that noise. Plus the projector doubles as a perfect night light, so when we get up to feed or change her, we don't have to turn any other lights on. 

Aj lived in these white newborn onesies. So simple, and simple is all we needed those first few weeks. Plus, they have the mitten cuffs for when her nails were getting too long or if her hands felt too chilly at night. 

She was always wrapped in a flannel receiving blankets over her onesie. They also double as a great burp cloth in a pinch!

At night, we wrapped her in these Swaddleme velcro swaddle blankets. We loved them because they take the guesswork out of swaddling, you just lay your baby on the open blanket and fold the flaps until you can velcro them together. Perfect! We also learned that our little one didn't like having her arms swaddled, so we just started with it under her armpits, leaving her arms free and clear.

The hospital actually gave us this bulb syringe. The first time I ever thought to use it was when, one day, she was snorting almost like a pig when she was breathing. Even though I couldn't see anything up her nose, I gave it a try anyways and man let me tell you the ick nasty whopper I sucked out of there! And then...voila! Her breathing was fine. I've since become a booger-sucking pro :)  

This newborn-to-toddler tub was perfect. We just lay her in the little hammock up top and can fill the little tub up until the water hits her back, she loves it. Of course she's too little to play right now, but the warm water comforts her and she just relaxes for her little spa sessions :) Bonus, take the hammock out and she's got her own little bath until she grows past toddler stage!

Butt wipes!! Now, you're probably thinking obviously, but I'm recommending these two specifically because they were the best for her skin. Babyganics Fragrance Free Wipes and Pampers Sensitive Wipes are the only two types of wipes that left her without a rash, so that's all we used (and continue to use) for the time being. 

A slow flow bottle nipple. I'm breastfeeding, but we avoided a huge fiasco (story for another time) by having a bottle so that we were able to use what I had pumped to feed her. Make sure you have a slow flow nipple, as that's the closest to the natural flow of momma's breast. It can still be too fast for a newborn, so make sure you just feed small amounts at a time between burping, plus it will give your baby's tummy time to catch up and realize that she is full.

I hope this list was helpful. If you've been there, what are some things that really helped you when your little one was in the newborn phase? 

One Month Old!

Yep, again with not cooperating for the camera :)

Adalynn turned a month old this past Sunday, which is crazy because I feel like we were just in the hospital last week. At the same time I feel like she's been here forever and can't imagine our life without her.  

So here's what she's been up to lately.

Smiles, smiles, smiles! She just started last week and it mostly happens when she gets kisses from her daddy or momma...also gas. Gas works too. 

She loves to stretch, especially after she eats. She reaches her arms way up and arches her back. Thankfully she is starting to wait until after she is done eating because, let me tell you, that did not feel good.  

She's starting to sleep really well at night, we've finally in the past couple of days been able to establish a bedtime routing and aim to have her sleeping by 10:30, then she's been waking only two times before morning. It's so awesome. I never thought three hours of sleep could feel so good. 

Another couple of things: She sleeps with her mouth open. It's too cute. Also, I can't decide if she has reddish hair or not. She loves her bath time and almost always pees in it. And I finally started dressing her in clothes other than her white onesies, which is what she lived in for three weeks straight :) 

We had one 40 degree day last week and we decided it was past time for us to all go outside. I put her in my baby wrap (which is about the greatest thing every) and we went outside, took the dog for a walk and just hung our around the yard for a good hour. She slept the whole time and it was so nice to be outside as a whole family! Crossing my fingers that we get another one of those days soon!

First Family Picture

We finally took our Christmas tree down last night. It always makes me sad to take it down, but it was time...especially because it stopped getting watered about two weeks ago (!) 

Before we took it down though, we had to snap a couple of pictures. It took me about half an hour of googling to figure out how to set the shutter delay on our camera, but we finally got it :) 

It's hard taking pictures with an awake baby! In almost all of the pictures she either quick turned her head around, was yawning or had her hands in her face. But I'm happy we finally have a picture of the three of us. 

Now that I know where that delayed-shutter release is, I'm going to try really really hard to remember to take lots of pictures of all of us together! 

New Momness, Amazing. New Dreams...Not So Much

*Picture is totally unrelated to the story, but can we celebrate that she neither pooped or peed on me this bathtime?! :) 

Okay, so when I was pregnant I would occasionally have dreams that we had the baby. Those dreams were good, they were exciting and fun. One would think that, since she is finally here, I would be having happy dreams about family adventures and whatnot. Well, it's not happening. 

Instead, I wake up in bed during the nights with these horrible feelings that I fell asleep with our little girl. That she's laying in between us, under all of our covers...suffocating. It's absolutely the worst feeling and it happens about every other night. 

What makes it worse is my stinking teddy bear that I always sleep with...when I wake up in the middle of the night, you have no idea how much that teddy bear feels like a newborn baby when you're half asleep.

Then last night I had a dream that my old babysitter took me, Adalynn and a bunch of my friends (as adults, yes...dreams are weird) to Applebees. After paying the bill, I took a little bit more time to get all my stuff around then everyone else- purse, diaper bag, baby, doggy bag, etc. - so they said they'd meet us at the car. 

I'm walking out of the restaurant and I realize, I don't have the car seat or the baby. I run back in to our table and she's nowhere to be found. No one in the restaurant has seen her, no one can find her and we realize that as I was getting my stuff around, another diner in the restaurant grabbed her car seat and snuck out. 

I had let my little girl get kidnapped. 

You know how sometimes in your dream you realize that it's just that, a dream? Well of course for this one I didn't, it went on and on and on and I only snapped out of it when I woke up because she was crying. 

It was horrible! 

So now I'm just thinking can I get a good dream or something? Like, how about we all go to Disney World in a few years, or camping, or hiking or we fly on a damn unicorn over a rainbow...something that doesn't involve me either suffocating our child or getting her kidnapped. Is that too much to ask?! 

Miss Piggy

So, we've got a little porker on our hands. 

When this little lady was born, she weighed 6lbs 11oz. At her first doctor's checkup, she had dropped to 6lbs 6oz, which the doctor said was completely normal. 

Well, in the two weeks since her first doctor's appointment, she has gained almost two whole pounds. She had her second checkup last Thursday and the doctor had the nurse weigh her twice because she thought the scale was wrong. She was up to 7lbs 11oz, the doctor said it was great but she was surprised she'd gained so much. 

This made momma super super happy because we had a rough time really getting the hang of breastfeeding and I was quite worried that she wasn't getting enough or gaining weight like she was suppose to, turns out I had nothing to worry about!

We weighed her last night and she is 8lbs 5oz. That's gaining a pound a week! We took this picture just before bath time and were laughing away because her (little) belly is huge! Her cheeks are porking out and I just love it. 

I'm happy she won't be growing at this rate forever, but it makes me so happy knowing she's healthy and that she is getting enough to eat. And her chubby cheeks and baby beer belly...I can't get enough. 

To Be Induced: Part 1

**This was written the night we found out that I was being induced the following day

Wednesday, December 16th

I'm sitting on the couch typing this after a pretty long day. My mother-in-law had our nephew for the day, so I spent the morning visiting at her house. From there, Kelly picked me up and we went on our way to the doctors office for our (almost) 41 week baby appointment. 

Today was scheduled an ultrasound, to be sure there was enough fluid in there for her, among other things. We had our non-stress test on Monday and she checked out to be just fine. (For most of my third trimester, I had high blood pressure, causing me to skip right from monthly doctor visits to weekly visits and, a couple of times, even having appointments every couple of days. The word preeclampsia being thrown around a lot. Not fun.) When last Friday rolled around and my blood pressure had skyrocketed, they sent me to get blood work done with talks of inducing on Saturday depending on the results. Scary and not exciting. Fortunately, everything came back normal. 

So here we were come Wednesday, sitting in the office waiting for our doctor and I'm all smiles thinking okay, she did great on the stress test and the ultrasound shows everything is nice and homey in there, we are good to go! Let's go home and do some more stair climbs! 

Then the doctor came in and...lo and behold...high blood pressure. All seven times he checked it (no joke). After checking things down below and consulting with my two other doctors, he told us that they all believed the best thing would be to induce labor. 

Scary and not something I wanted to do. It didn't make any sense to me because our baby was perfectly fine, as shown in all the checkups Friday, Monday and today. 

As the doctor explained more about me having gestational hypertension and the complications that can arise during and after labor for mother, we understood the reason for recommending induction. I was extremely worried because I know that inducing labor increases the chances of having a c-section. Again, scary and, in a perfect world, not something I wanted to happen. 

As much as we both wanted labor to start naturally, we thought the safest route would be induction as the doctors recommended. 

I also had this horrible picture of induction being hooked up to a bunch of IVs and them pumping you full of some sort of something. Not so much. The way that it would actually be started is by them giving my down under a little dissolving pill that would soften everything even more and boost the contractions up. Okay, that I can deal with. 

So on our way home, we stopped for Kelly to get a haircut, then again at his mom's to pick up my vehicle and say a quick hello. Then we came home and quick cleaned out the fridge, did some vacuuming, washed the bathroom, finished up laundry, cleaned the stove, pledged the woodwork. You know, basically everything so we could come home to a squeaky clean house. 

We had a yummy steak dinner followed by nice warm showers. Now I'm sitting on the couch writing this, while all of the Christmas lights are on in the house, The Grinch is on TV and Kelly is next to me drinking a beer. 

I look forward to going to bed tonight and snuggling as close as possible to my husband, because next time we sleep at home, we'll have a little girl by our side.