Some New Pics of the Munchkin

I realized when I went to go post pics that I didn't have very many that were within the last couple of weeks. So the other day, we had a little photo shoot. Here she is at 9 mos and 3 weeks!

Early morning, still in her PJs. One of her favorite things to play with is tupperware lids.

She is such a ham in the mornings.


I don't think I could have gotten a better pose. When she gets really happy and excited, sometimes she sticks her belly out. It's so cute. And she loves playing with the air vents. I think she likes the feeling of the wind in her hair...

She just learned how to wave for the very first time. I am so happy I already had my camera in my hand. She was so excited about it!

She couldn't get enough of the sticks in the yard. She had to taste them all.


I was able to catch her waving for the first time on video and as always, I can't hold the camera for too long without her climbing on top of me. So here she is waving, along with some extreme close ups.

Where does the time go?

I am so bad. It's been months since I've blogged. Or atleast it seems like it. Life is so crazy busy right now its hard to find the time. I feel terrible I haven't updated things and I don't want to look back and have nothing to show for months at a time....

Things have been picking up alot for me at work and I have been super busy there. So after I get home from work, play with the munchkin, make dinner, clean up the kitchen, play some more, then put the munchkin to bed, then do some more chores, I am usually too tired to get on the computer. I always say I am going to make more time, and I really would love to, but we shall see....

I will try to get things caught up without going on for too long.

We have been in the new house for a little over a month now and we love it. The past year was hard as far as our living situation, but everything definitely worked out for the best and we couldn't be happier about it. We are pretty much settled. Everything is unpacked and put away. All that is left to do is hang some more things up on the wall. Right now my computer room is full of stuff that still needs to be hung up or set out somewhere. I just leave the door shut and most of the time pretend its not there. And since I rarely go in there to get on the computer anyway, that's not very hard to do.

Things are also getting much busier for Joe at work. This is great in many ways obviously, but since he is going to school now as well, lots more paperwork and lots of homework is alot to juggle. He is doing great though. I am so proud of him. His grades have been so good and he has been working really hard.

I have been on a new diet. I have been doing the HCG diet. Some of you may have heard of it, but if you are like me you never knew anything about it before. My sister decided to do it and once she told me about it, I thought she was crazy and that it sounded like a ridiculous idea. So I got online and researched it so that I could tell her it wasn't a safe diet, but the more I researched it, the better it sounded and I decided to try it myself. I am on day 25 and I have lost 18.5 lbs!! They are drops that I take under my tongue 3x a day, along with an extremely healthy low calorie diet. I am doing the homeopathic version, so it is safer with absolutely no side effects (there are also injections and prescriptions that you can get from a doc, but this is a little different) and I gotta say, I am feeling fantastic and my baby fat is finally going away! The diet is way to complex to explain right now, maybe I will try to dedicate a blog entry to it later. If you are curious though, just google homeopathic HCG diet. Or check out this link for a quick synopsis: HCG Diet Its absolutely crazy how amazing this diet is and how it has changed my life. Not only is it getting ridding of my stubborn baby fat, I have increased energy, and even my skin and hair are looking better. I wouldn't believe it if I wasn't going through it myself!

Update: Knowing what I know now, however, I would NOT recommend the HCG diet as a healthy way to lose weight.

Saturday is Joe's 30th birthday party. I am so excited. We rented out the top floor of a bar that we used to hang out at alot and there are a bunch of people coming. Some people we haven't even seen since the munchkin was born. I can't wait!! My friend Sarah is making his birthday cake and I am sooooo excited to see how it turns out. I will definitely post some pics. She is an amazing cake artist and I am always amazed with her creations. Joe is a huge Grateful Dead fan and she is going to design his cake in 3D to replicate the little train station from the cover of the Terrapin Station album. I can't wait to see it!

The munchkin is growing so fast, I just can't believe it. She is pulling up and walking along furniture, but not quite walking on her own yet. I expect that she will be doing that very soon though. She can crawl so fast, its crazy! She just starting feeding herself a little. I give her little gerber puffs and she can stick them in her mouth. For the longest time she would hold them in her fist, bring her fist to her mouth, but then she wouldn't open her fist. She would get so frustrated! So just last night she made a breakthrough and seems to be finally figuring things out. She is starting to get her pincher grasp going. She still has NO teeth! She is doing pretty good at mashing up some foods in her mouth, but I am kinda wary to give her too much without any teeth. She has started to clap a little bit. She babbles all the time. It's like she is having entire conversations in her little baby language. She has kinda started saying ma-ma-ma and da-da-da but I'm not totally sure she is really talking about us. My friend Gina watched her last week and worked on signing the word "more" with her. She actually seemed to be getting it!

I am so inlove with this little girl, I just can't believe how much she has changed our lives and how happy she has made us. I just never knew you could love someone this much. She just turned 9 months on the 9th. I can't believe that she is going to be a year old in only 2.5 months... time really does fly!

We are LOVING LOVING LOVING our new babysitter situation. First of all, it takes me 6 minutes to get to Stacy's house from mine, so to say she lives close is an understatement. I get up for work in the morning and give the munchkin her bottle, I then dress her and get her ready for the day. Then I put her in her pack n play with some toys and I leave for work. Joe finishes getting ready for work, then he feeds her breakfast and takes her to the sitter. I get off work at 3:00, then head straight to the sitter. I arrive around 3:15 to 3:30 depending on traffic. She is usually just waking up for her nap or still sleeping when I get there. I have known her sitter since high school so we were already friends. So sometimes, when she is still sleeping, I will just hang out and chat for a while until she wakes up. Once she does, I give her a bottle and we head home. She loves playing with Stacy's little boy and there is another little girl there too. She seems really happy there and everything is working out great. When Stacy needs a day off for vacation or whatever, the munchkin goes to her original sitter's house (our very first one) who she loves too and gets to play with her little girl Ada. It is so great to have such a wonderful back up as well and to have people that I really like and trust taking care of my little baby.

Here she is going swimming for the first time!! She was so scared and nervous at first, but then she finally warmed up to it.


Here she is with her little cousin.


And I will leave you with this video. Her little cuz kept trying to chew on her ear. It cracks me up....

After a storm comes a calm. ~ Matthew Henry

I truly hope this is true in our case. It really seems our lives have been in a whirl wind for months, actually since I was about 8 mos preggo and we decided we were going to have to sell our house and move. That was almost a year ago. For the first time in a long time, the upcoming days on my calendar are not overflowing with little scribbles trying to fit everything we have going on into a little 1x1 inch space.

We moved again this past weekend. Hopefully we will be here for a while. The little munchkin is only 8 months old and she has already had 3 homes. Luckily she seems to adjust pretty quickly. Because we moved into our villa only 4.5 months ago, the packing seemed easier this time. I still had half of my kitchen items in boxes and everything was very organized and purged from having already gone through this so recently. It did seem to go much quicker. I took off work Friday through Wednesday and I was able to unpack and put away most of our stuff. I still sent the munchkin to the sitter while I was off work so that I could actually get some things done. It has all been very exhausting and exciting.

Losing our house due to financial reasons was very hard for us, as it would be for anyone. We knew selling our home and moving on was our best and quite frankly, our only option. While searching for our temporary housing while our house was on the market was depressing, it was temporarily overshadowed by the wonderful arrival of our new baby. I did a pretty good job of putting on a happy face and forging on. I tried to make the best of it. Once we became somewhat adjusted to parenthood, the reality of our situation set in and it was a little overwhelming. We had lost our first home. A home that we loved. The first home we bought together. The home the little munchkin was brought home to from the hospital. Now we had found ourselves in a very different place. I hated the villa and the longer we were there, the more I began to loathe it. The list of reasons goes on and on, and I won't bore you with them all, but it was definitely not the place for us. As soon as our house was sold, I was already looking for a new place for us. The thought of spending an entire year there was more then I could bear and I knew we had to go.

Long story short, I found our new home on Craig's List. As soon as I saw the listing, I had this strange, urgent feeling come over me. The home had just been listed the day before and I called them right away. It was April, and our current 6 mos lease wasn't up until July 1st. We were in no position to already be looking, but everything about this house was perfect for us. Not only was it exactly the kind of home we were looking for, it was only 0.7 miles from my parents house! We went to look at it, and we fell inlove. We told the landlord we couldn't move in until July 1st and ofcourse they were completely turned off by this. They also informed us they already had an applicant ready to move in right away. We told them how much we loved the home, that we would do anything we could to move in there (anything we could afford really). The little munchkin was a big help. She really turned on the charm and you could tell that the wife really liked her. The couple told us they would talk about it and get back to us. We filled out the application, gave them $30 for our credit/background check and crossed our fingers. We left without much hope.

Within an hour they called us back with a deal. If we would pay for half of May, half of June, plus the security deposit, and bring them the money the next day, they would hold the home for us until July 1st. I couldn't believe they were willing to do that for us! Right away, I told them yes, but I wasn't quite sure yet how we were going to make it happen. It was alot of money to come up with and not alot of time to do it. We scraped together everything we had, and with a little help from my grandparents, we made it happen.

So it's only mid May, not July 1st, why are we already in the new house? Thanks to one little tiny paragraph amongst all the other legal jargon in our lease at the villa, we were able to leave much sooner.

"If for any voluntary or involuntary reason, the lease is broken" we had to pay our last months rent plus a fine equal to our rent payment. We were already planning on paying that much anyway to live there through June, but this way we didn't have to continue to pay the utilities there plus take care of the yard. Now we could move into the new place sooner and not throw away the money we gave them to hold it. Yay!!

It all happened very quickly. But it's hard to find a place you love that is available right when you need it. Sometimes you have to just make it happen, and even though we had to really stretch things out to make it all work, it will all be worth it in the long run. For the first time in a long time, I feel really happy. I don't have the ball of anxiety in the pit of my stomach. The very first day we were in our new home, I felt a sense of relief that our lives were somewhat back on track again.

The crazy thing is, I like this house better then the house we had to sell. Alot better. It is also costing us so much less per month to live there. And I absolutely love love love the location of it. We can walk to my parents house! And the really great part is, that after our lease is up, if we want to buy the house, we get 20% back towards the down payment! And that is definitely something we are interested in.

So we are in the new place. We almost have everything unpacked and put away. We saw alot of my parents over the weekend, with them living so close, and it was wonderful.

The little munchkin is all over the place and into everything. We moved just in time because the old place wasn't great for her at all and the new place is set up perfect. We baby proofed as we went and now she can explore and check out everything safely. She is crawling so fast now and its so much fun trying to keep up with her. She is pulling up and almost standing, but not a whole lot yet. She mostly just pulls up to her knees and hangs out there.

There sure is alot to catch up on when you only blog once a month.... hopefully with things calming down that will change. We'll see. I have a ton of pics to upload. The little munchkin is getting so big! Here's a few for now.

The little munchkin's playmate in these pictures is her little cousin who is only 6 weeks younger then her. This is my sister's baby. Her and her husband have just started blogs of their own. If you want to head over and check them out, here is my sister's blog, and here is my brother-in-law's blog. I thought some of our common friends might like to take a peak!

Here's her and her cousin playing in a big bucket at my mom's house.

Her cousin wearing her "I'm Bringing Chubby Back" onesie that I got her.

And here's the munchkin sitting in a little racecar bouncer.

Watch out People... she's crawling (Sorta)!

From Belly to Sitting

Third times a charm... Another New Sitter, a 7 month Birthday, and Lots of More Changes...

Well the little munchkin had her 7th month birthday last Friday. I can't believe I haven't blogged since she turned 6 months... well, actually I can.... since I was having issues keeping up with my blog anyway...

Alot has changed in the past month! We finally closed on our house, March 17th. It was the best St. Patrick's day ever. I can't even describe the relief I felt signing those papers. It felt so good to close that chapter and put that behind us. The villa has been working out okay, although we are already ready to move again. We have a 6 month lease, and we are really thinking we might move again when its up, which is at the end of June. I love the neighborhood that we are in, mainly because when me and the munchkin go for our walk each evening, we stroll through beautiful streets with very different and unique homes that all wrap around a huge lake that you can see for a good chunk of most of our walking routes. There are also so many different directions we can go in and different things to see, which helps to keep things interesting. The court our villa resides on, however, is not the best location. There are about 100 kids that live on the same court and they are usually all outside for most of the day. When we come home, their bikes are laying in our driveway and we have to sit and wait while they move everything out of the way. I am not kidding, they are everywhere. And they are rude. Nothing like walking out of your house and getting dirty looks from a kid standing in your drive way. Yep... time to move on. And before the munchkin is old enough to meet any of these little shits.

We also have a new babysitter. Our third one. And I am really hoping that this one will be for a long time. Our first one told us she couldn't babysit the munchkin anymore. We were devastated, but one of my good friends, Laura, stepped up and told us she would help us out and start watching her and for the same very discounted price that our previous sitter was watching her for. We were so relieved. We were still paying all of the utilities at the other house and had zero room in the budget for any more expenses.

Things seemed great at first, but after a while I began to realize that it just wasn't a good fit for us. Laura also has 3 beautiful children that are turning out great, so obviously she is a great mom, but she just has a completely different parenting style then I do and different ideas of how things should be done. And maybe my little one just has a totally different personality then her kiddos, but whatever the case, it wasn't working. Our main issue was with her naps. Half of the time when I would pick up her up, Laura would tell me that she didn't get a nap in that day. I then had to prepare myself to spend the evening with a very crabby baby. Often she would pass out in the car as soon as we got in it and I would find myself driving around for over an hour just so she would get a good nap in before we got home. This was getting expensive in gas money alone!

I guess I was hoping she would be on more of a schedule. Not a strict schedule, just a loose one... where she would get her bottles in and take a good nap (or two) and have lunch around the same time each day. She really thrives on this kind of schedule and when she is on one, it makes each evening so much better and she is in such a better mood. When she eats more solid foods during the day she also sleeps better, and sometimes Laura's busy schedule didn't have time to get all of this stuff in. The munchkin was more along for the ride when she was at Laura's house, and Laura is a very busy person, so there was really no way to have her on any kind of schedule. Plus it was really hard for the munchkin to sleep over there. She likes it to be quiet and dark, and that was just impossible at Laura's. Between her kids being home from cycle break or just off from school half the time, her dogs barking at the wind blowing outside, and there not being her own space to take a nap, the odds were just against it.

Last Friday, was when I finally decided it was time to make a change. Laura's daughter had strep throat and she took the little munchkin with them to the doctor and had her sick daughter giving her a bottle in the car on the way there. She called me and told when when they were already on their way to the doctor's office. I was freaking out! When I came to pick her up, I asked her if she would call me earlier next time so that I could come and get her because I didn't really want her around anyone with strep throat. She kinda laughed at me like I was being paranoid and said that it wasn't like her daughter was drinking out of her bottle. All weekend I was worried she was going to get sick. It's scary for a little baby to get strep throat. It's highly contagious and although infants don't usually get it because of their small tonsils and the antibodies they are born with, it can cause alot of problems for a baby, especially if it isn't diagnosed right away. Then munchkin is 7 mos now... so she is kinda moving out of the "infant" age anyway.

So last Thursday was her last day at Laura's. And all though it was sad to say goodbye, and very hard to tell her, it is very obvious already that we made a very good decision. And she is still at an age where the transition wasn't very bad at all. Infact, she seemed to not mind one little bit. I am glad this happened sooner rather then later, because as she gets older, uprooting her from her babysitter and sending her to a new one is going to be much more difficult. It's amazing how fast things can change. Starting last friday, I began working on "her" schedule. And I really do mean her schedule. She has been wanting one so bad and now that I have been following her lead and sticking to it, she has been so incredible happy. With her getting better naps and eating more during the day, I have been going in and rubbing her back and giving her a binky instead of a bottle during the night and she is now sleeping through the entire night! She is now sleeping 11.5 hours straight! Every night! And we are going on 5 nights in a row! I am so freaking happy about this. We are all getting sleep and every one is so much happier.

So here is a rough outline of her schedule:

7:30am - 6 oz bottle
8:15am - breakfast, oatmeal
10:00am - 6 oz bottle
10:15am - nap (1-1.5 hours)
12:00pm - lunch, veggies and fruit
1:00pm - 6 oz bottle
2:00pm - nap (1-2 hrs)
4:00pm - 6 oz bottle
5:00pm - dinner, veggies and fruit
7:00pm - 6 oz bottle
8:00pm - down for bed

I have been waking her up at 7:30am and giving her a bottle. I leave at 8 and Joe feeds her oatmeal before he leaves to take her to the sitter. Who knows how long this will last, but I gotta say she seems incredible happy about it. She seems so giddy... like literally bursting with joy half the time. It is so funny. She finally switched to 6 oz bottles once she started sleeping through the night too. Before that she was getting a 4 oz bottle every 2 hours. Its so much easier having a 3 hour window now between her bottles.

When I picked her up from Stacy's, our new sitter's house yesterday, she had the munchkin sound asleep for her 2nd nap in her pack n play in their spare bedroom. The room was nice and quiet, dark and with a fan going. It was perfect. I could have kissed her. She was sleeping so soundly infact, that I ended up staying and waiting around for 45 minutes while she finished her nap. When she woke up, I gave her a bottle and we were on our way! And we had such a good evening. When she gets her 2 good naps in at the sitter's house, she is wide awake and in a good mood the rest of the evening until it's time for bed. So the time I get to spend with her in the evening is so much better then her being crabby and me having to fight to get her to take a nap, and then she doesn't go to bed as well either. I had given Stacy the outline of her schedule and she was able to follow it with no problem, because really it was what the munchkin wanted all along. Stacy also watches another little girl that is about the same age as her own little boy, who is about 1.5 yrs. She has the other two napping at about the same times already, so the munchkin seems to fit right in with their schedule too. So she has a total of 3 little children there now. I think it will be more fun for her there, having the other little kids to entertain her.

Our new sitter is also more expensive and since we are looking to find a house to rent, in a better area for us, and maybe something a little bigger and with a yard, I had to go pick up some more hours at work. I am also working again on Wednesdays and although I am going to miss having this day off with her, I am happy that it is all working out for the best. I am now working 8:30 - 3:00, M-F (I was previously working 9-2 with Wednesdays off). Picking up the extra 12.5 hours a week is making a big enough difference in my paycheck so that we can afford the new sitter and spend a little more towards our rent. Now we just need to find a new place! And it has not escaped me how fortunate I am to have a boss that is so flexible with me and willing to work so well with my ever changing schedule.

The munchkin is now sitting up like a pro and has started to work on her crawling. She is so interested in her toys and is handling them really good back and forth with her hands. She will sit on a blanket and play with her toys forever. She still lets me know when she wants me to pick her up though. It's still her favorite place to be. She has her bottom teeth starting to show through her gums but they haven't broken all the way through yet. She has been getting much better at eating her solid foods, but she still doesn't quite get what they are for. If she is hungry she gets mad and lets me know that she wants a bottle... so still doesn't realize that the food serves the same purpose. Her favorite veggie right now is a mixture of butternut squash and corn and her favorite fruit is pears. She is not a big fan of sweet peas. She is still in the 95th percentile for her height and is in the 75th for weight. She is a big girl! Her feet are still super small though. She is still wearing the hand me down socks that her younger cousin grew out of months ago! She loves to laugh and will squeal with delight if you tickle her or bring her in close and make noises in her ear. She has really become such a happy baby. And for the most part, unless she is tired or hungry she is usually in a really good mood.

We have been walking in the evenings around 5 or 5:30 and will usually walk for 2.5 - 3.5 miles. The munchkin loves to look around and see everything. Sometimes she will fall asleep half way through and sleep the rest of the way. And if the sun is in her face she will get really mad and let me know right away! Luckily, our stroller has a great shade on it that can be adjusted to block the sun from pretty much any direction. Sarah, our original babysitter, and her little girl Ada join us for many of our walks and will often stay afterwards to hang out and eat dinner. This has been great, especially the nights Joe is at school. Sarah's husband is usually at school in the evening too, so it works out well for both of us really.

The past weekend I finally got to get out and get some adult time... and I really had a blast! Friday night I left Joe at home after I put the muchkin to be and went to a party at a friends house. I only had 3 drinks but I couldn't drive, and had to leave my car behind while a friend took me home. What a lightweight! Then Saturday night, my mom came over to babysit while Joe and I went to a friend's 30th bday party at a bar. The Captain and Diet Cokes were flowing and I couldn't even tell you how many I had! Some of my girlfriends came up to meet us and we tore up the dance floor. It felt so good to let loose and not have to worry about anything but having fun! And since my mom was at home with the baby, I didn't have to worry about her at all. When we got home, she said that she went to bed around 8:00 really well for her and hadn't heard a peep from her since. 7:30 am came quick though and it was really rough getting out of bed... good thing she was sleeping through the night now though.... no more middle of the night bottles.... Yay!!!!

Here were some pics taken by others throughout the night. Yes, I was completely out of control.

There's me and my gal Toni on the far right.

It was our friend Cort's 30th bday and there's his fiance Brenda between us.

Here I am motorboatin' Toni...

And here's Nicole, me and Toni. I am a little intoxicated as you can tell.

This is what happens when you don't get out enough!

Sorry for this very long-winded catch up.... but there has been so much going on and I really wanted to try to get some of it down. And with my new hours at work, I am here longer, so it's not so crazy busy and I actually have some time to blog again. Woo Hoo! I am going to work on a photo update tonight!!

Cousins