Milestones

I just cannot believe how quickly Gracelynn is growing and changing. It is as if every morning I walk into her room and look into her crib and I think to myself "wow...did she grow some more over night???" She is getting so big and I can already see the independent side of her. We already knew she didn't have much patience...now we are seeing the stubborn, "I can do it myself" side :)

The other night I had her in her baby papasan on the bed while I was folding laundry (our typical set up) and she was fussing and kicking like crazy in her papasan. So I took her out and put her down on the floor on a blanket to let her get the "kicks" out of her. She immediately grabbed at her blanket (see picture in previous post) and began wiggling around while chewing on it. Now she has been moving around alot more, but nothing like this. Before I knew it she rolled onto her side and made it about 3/4 of the way (her left arm was under her). If she had been able to figure out how to get that arm out from under her she would have rolled from her back to her tummy!!! I couldn't believe it. She then rolled back onto her back and to the OTHER side. She was just having a grand old time chewing on her blanket and rolling around.

She also has started "talking" a lot more. She will sit and coo and babble like it's her job. Is it any wonder though...look at who her momma is ;) Yesterday she "sang" for the first time. I had Air1 on the computer and was listening to some music while I made dinner and folded laundry. I was singing along to the music and she was staring at me when suddenly she broke out into a smile and started singing along with me (read: cooing). It was so incredibly cute and I know she was mimicing what I was doing.

Gracelynn has also discovered her fingers. She had already figured out what her hands were for...chewing and sucking on of course, but now she has found each individual finger and will clasp her hands together, suck on one finger at a time and even grab at things. Last night while I was loading her into the car the diaper bag handle fell over on her carseat. She looked at it and immediately moved her hand over to it, wrapped her little fingers around the handle and held on for dear life. I have seen her bat at things, but this was the first time I had seen her intentionally grab an item, get it and then hold on. It was very exciting!!!

Last but certainly not least is her sleeping habits. She is consistently sleeping through then night (Praise the Lord!). She goes down some time between 8:30 and 9 pm and I typically have to wake her at 6 am (on the weekdays) to eat and get ready to go to Miss Andrea's for daycare. 9-10 hours of sleep is a beautiful thing :)

Well I had planned to wait until Saturday to share these milestones as that is her 3 month "birthday", but who knows what she will be doing by then! I had to share these now in case she is walking by then ;)

Here are a few pictures from daycare for you.



She looks like she got caught doing something she wasn't supposed to :P
It is so sad...this little hat is now too little for her. It was very hard to go through all of her things and put her little stuff away.


Such a big girl!

These jeans are another thing that she has outgrown.

We have started to use bibs to catch the huge amount of drool she has started to produce. This one of course is Daddy's favorite!

Another shot of her in her cowgirl outfit...eating her hand of course :)

Another hand-eating shot. She is too busy chewing on her digits to smile for the camera!

Our gorgeous little girl...if we do say so ourselves :)

Later!

Reality

Sorry for the lack of posts the last week or so. I had been on a roll with getting posts and pictures up, but then I lost my momentum.

I wanted to post about something that has been brought to my attention lately. So often when I post I post about the beautiful, wonderful, lovely things about being a mommy. Trust me, there are plenty of those. The little smiles that I get or the way my daughter will completely relax the moment she gets into my arms. Those things truly are beautiful, wonderful AND lovely.

However, people so often talk about those things and they gloss over what I like to call "the dark side of mommy-hood".

I have gotten tons of comments about how well I am doing and how people are so proud of the way I am handleing it all, however thre are times when it isn't so easy. Here is the nitty-gritty truth

Sleep:

No matter how "good" of a baby you have, you will have more sleepless nights than restful. My little girl is a very good sleeper and I have no big complaints, but I STILL do not sleep well. I wake easily and often. The only way I can really explain it is that the sense of responsiblity you have for this little life does not just go away when it is bed time. I wake up in a start more often than not with a sudden dread that my little baby has been crying and I somehow haven't heard her (especially now that she is in her own room) or that worse, something is terribly wrong with her. Not to sound morbid, but the fear of infant suffocation and SIDS is VERY present in EVERY mothers mind. The baby's life seems so fragile and your sleep reflects that.

Then there are the nights they don't sleep. That horrible feeling when you look a the clock and know you have to be up in 2 hours ready for the day...and you have only had about an hour of straight sleep so far, is the worst feeling in the world. You look down at the little baby in your arms or lying next to you and while you love him or her so much, you find yourself wishing for the days when you were able to go to sleep whenever you felt tired and sleep as long as you wanted.

Feedings:

I like to term this as "ruled by the boob", but really you are ruled by the feeding times whether you are breastfeeding or not. If you are breastfeeding, you have to time EVERYTHING around feeding times and where you will be when those feeding times occur. I have gotten stuck many times and ended up feeding Gracelynn in the car. Or I will be in the middle of the grocery store with a cart full of things and she will begin screaming.

It isn't much better if you feeding by bottle. You have to think ahead about how many bottles you will need (how long will I be gone), then you have to think about getting the bottle warmed up BEFORE she is screaming! It is NOT fun to attempt to get that bottle ready when she is already in starvation mode.

Car Rides:

As if simply getting out of the door isn't hard enough, the actual car ride can be brutal! Imagine getting to the highway and about that time you little one lets out a blood-curdling scream. And about that time all you want to do is scream yourself. By the time you are at the stoplight one street from your house, you are angry at the darn drivers that don't KNOW you have a screaming baby in your car and the lights that are all conspiring against you.

S*x Life:

I am not trying to make anyone blush, and actually I am more refering to the romantic side of the husband and wife relationship. Not only are you both so utterly exhausted by the days events, but you are both living in fear that the moment you start to CUDDLE the baby will awake. And then you get over that fear...and then she DOES wake up!!!

It completely changes the relationship between you and your husband. While it is so wonderful to share that with your spouse, it is also so hard to know that your date life and romantic side has to be put on hold a lot. It takes a lot more effort to keep those fires burning.

I am in no way offering this information to deter someone from having a child. IT IS COMPLETELY WORTH IT ALL!!! I cannot say that enough. I love my daughter and I would gladly go without sleep for a year just to have her with me. However, I feel it is important to share these things with others. How many women have sat in their homes, in tears, feeling like they are the ONLY ones feeling this way? It isn't right to put on the front that everything is ok...when really it feels like it could all fall apart at any moment. When we share these things, and we open up about what is REALLY going on, we offer to others the opportunity to be less perfect.

I hope this makes sense. I just wanted to share with others my experience. I am sure some of you can relate...and for those of you that aren't quite there, someday I hope you look back on this post and realize that what you are feeling is normal and you are not alone!

Ok...on to the pictures :)


Gracelynn and her blanket. She loves this thing! It is super soft and she likes to chew on it. Of course, she likes to chew on EVERYTHING these days, but this more than others.

The loves of my life. Gracelynn and her daddy :)


The other loves of my life :) Moose (he is so big!) and Miss Olivia.


Our little family at Trunk or Treat for Halloween. Ben had to come straight from work (or maybe that was his costume).

Ok...that is all for now. My camera has had dead batteries for the past couple of days, so we don't have a ton of new pictures. There will be more to come though, as Gracelynn is going through a growth spurt!

Much love...