How to Properly Suck A Thumb

How to suck a thumb: A tutorial by Ellie

Step one: Find a good thumb and insert in mouth.



Step Two: Make sure thumb feels comfortable.



Step Three: Close your lips around selected thumb.



Step Four: Suck on selected thumb. Enjoy!

Thankful

I am thankful for:

My beautiful, energetic, smart, and cuddly nine month old baby girl.

My sweet, thoughtful, honest, and hard working husband.

A roof over our heads.

Food in our bellies.

Enough money to get what we need and typically what we want.

Family and friends that understand what is important in life.

That I like my in-laws.

My husband's good job that allows me to stay at home with my baby girl.

The rough times that made me appreciate how good my life is.

My mother in-law inviting us on her Hawaiian vacations.

A car that works.

Heaters.

The United States of America and those willing to defend it.

My dog even when he is a pest.

Last but certainly not least, I am very thankful for our amazing family doctor who will see us, even when we call him at the break of dawn because our little girl is burning up.

Thanksgiving might be canceled in our house (thank you to our understanding Thanksgiving guest) but I still have a lot to be thankful for.

Every Item Has Its Place...

... and every item should be in its place. I am a pretty tidy person and for the most part I don't just toss things around. Every item in my house has a certain place that I put it. Occasionally, if I am feeling lazy things will not get put away properly but it doesn't happen often. When it does happen it usually doesn't stay that way for too long before I fix it.

Yesterday, I moved my daughters trash can while I was cleaning and dusting. Last night after an extremely long day we finally hit the sack. Twice during the night I had to change her diaper. The second time when I did, the trash was full and I had to shove the diapers down so it would fit. I thought... "Didn't I just empty this, it shouldn't be full yet." I looked up and my purse was sitting where her trash can normally sits. I had been shoving her dirty diapers in my purse.

This is why every item has a place and why you should always put it back in its place! Especially when you are a sleep deprived mother!!

Christmas Cards

Typically I am super early for everything. I think last year I mailed my Christmas cards in November. However, with the little one in tow I haven't been as timely about anything. I am just now ordering our Christmas cards. You know what is great though? Now that I have a baby I don't have to sift through millions of photos of the husband and I to find one that we both look decent in. No one wants to look at us when they can look at this:



Thank you baby girl for stepping up to the plate and volunteering to be the face of this years Christmas card.

Forest Gump of Husbands

You know when you say something and then the more you try to explain it the further you dig yourself into a verbal hole. Sort of like my husband asking me what was wrong with my belly button. I don't know honey, maybe I just carried your child for nine months and it was stretched flat. Maybe it is now no longer a perfectly shaped belly button. You know, things like that.

Well the other night my husband was saying in his best Gump voice the line from the movie about him not being smart but he knows how to love so he would make a good husband. I had a light bulb go off and I shouted.... That is a perfect analogy you are like the Forest Gump of husbands. The look of complete horror on his face told me I would need to explain this genius theory of mine. I thought about what to say and I knew it wouldn't come out right so I told him to never mind that I would just end up digging myself a deeper hole. He insisted I try.

I proceeded to tell him how he might not be as good looking as my favorite movie star and that he might not always be the brightest (he is actually very smart except for those belly button type comments or pointing out my stretch marks when I was eight months pregnant when I thought I had none) but that he knows how to love and be a good man. Of course this didn't go over to well in his selective hearing world. But, I have to admit if he said that to me he would be sleeping in his truck for a couple months. Good thing he knows how to be a loving and forgiving husband.

Well the hole is already dug not much I can do now but get some good jokes out of it.



Love you honey!Aren't you glad you got me this fancy phone so I can blog about all these important things while the baby sleeps!

Tough Emotions

There are certain elements in life that never change. Seeing a newborn baby that is happy and healthy will always make me smile. Seeing a car accident will always make me cringe. Putting on a sweater straight out of the dryer will always make me feel warm and cozy. Putting up stockings for Christmas will always make me feel like a happy child. Smelling freshly baked cookies will always make me want cookies. Death will always be sad.

Death no matter how old or young a person is, how sick or healthy a person is, or how expected or unexpected it is will always be sad. I have lost more family and friends in my twenty eight years then many people lose in a life time and each one of them was sad. Some were much tougher then others but they were all sad. However, I am quickly learning that it is much harder to watch someone you love grieve a loss then it is to grieve yourself.

My husband's grandma passed away, unexpectedly, Monday. It came as a shock to everyone. To watch as people hurt and knowing you can't do anything to fix it or make it feel better is so hard.

Sleeping on her own ...

When I was pregnant I was very firm about where the baby would sleep. In her crib. Mommy needs her sleep too.

Fast forward and we are in the hospital with our brand new baby girl and she is sleeping peacefully in that tiny plastic crib. That is until she hears me lowering my bed to lay down. I am not kidding either. Every time I pressed that button she would start fussing. However, that was the hospital and luckily at home I can just lay down and there won't be any button noise to wake her.

Ha ha. Right. She would only sleep on me and even when she was awake she was not to be put down. She still, at nine months, sleeps on me. Not next to me but on my chest. She has reflux and sleeping at an angle really helps her. Each night we crawl in the recliner and there we stay. Occasionally I will lay her on the floor so I can use the little girls room. She gets to pee in her sleep but no one seems to think I should. Double standard. Anyways, usually she will fall back asleep on the floor for twenty to thirty minutes. Only the floor though, you try the crib and she will scream bloody murder.

Many people say I need to make her sleep on her own. I used to think I would. I would say at three months.... At five months... When this happens..... Seven months. Finally I stopped saying that and I realized I wouldn't. I resolved myself to the fact that she would sleep alone when she was ready. One day she would fall asleep without nursing and one day she would sleep alone in her bed.

About a week ago I knew this process was starting. She wouldn't nurse herself to sleep. She would nurse then stop and get fussy so I would walk around till she fell asleep. This worked for the first few days but stopped working. For the next few days I rocked her to sleep. After that stopped working we rock and sang. Last night none of it worked. Normally I would just get up and play for thirty minutes or an hour and try again but last night I could tell she was so very tired. So we reclined and I tucked her next to me with her head on my shoulder and she softly cried herself to sleep. Anyone who knows me understands that I don't believe in just letting babies cry. I don't think it is healthy nor do I have it in me. So this broke my heart. It took less then two minutes though.

She woke up thirty minutes later and I set her on the floor so I didn't pee the bed. I came back and laid next to her. When she woke up I was really sore for some reason. I scooped her up, back to the chair to nurse, and..... Wow! She slept an hour and a half on the floor, no wonder I was sore. When she finished nursing we went back to sleep. I woke up four hours later in pain. She normally eats every two hours. Even at night. She slept for five hours before waking to eat. Nursing moms know eating three hours late doesn't feel good on the beyond full human bottles. After that she woke every two hours like normal.

I know she isn't sleeping on her own or sleeping through the night yet but I can tell she is starting to work on it.

Nine Months

It is hard to believe nine months has already gone by. Yesterday I was looking through all her pictures and it was so amazing to see how much she has grown. Each day I lug around my thirty pounds of joy so it is hard to remember that little eight pound bundle of joy. It is amazing what nine months of growing can accomplish.



The picture above is the outfit we brought her home in and the other outfit she is going to wear today.

A lot has happened since our last update. She said her very first word which I am proud to report was "mama." She is pulling herself up constantly and will slowly cruise along furniture. She now has six little choppers. She is still more playing with her food then eating it but she is eating more. Her favorites right now are potato and broccoli. She also loves sipping water from a cup, she thinks she is pretty awesome when she does. I love the little red cup line she gets in her cheeks from pressing the cup into her face. She is babbling a lot but so far no more specific words.

I am very curious to see how many inches she has grown. We have her nine month check up later next week!

Socks

My baby girl grows like a weed. It was that time again to go up a size in socks. My sister was in town and she has somewhat "bright" taste in general. She picked out a pack of socks that was beyond bright. I reminded her that I had to be seen in public with my daughter so I grabbed the pack of socks next to the one she had picked. They were still crazy and bright but about twelve levels below what my sister had picked out.

I was such in a rush to make sure that my sister's pack was left on the shelf that I didn't really pay much attention to the pack I was picking out.

You know what was special about the pack I grabbed:



Well you see all those brightly colored socks. There is only one of each! There are no pairs!! The whole pack of socks is just one of each. Isn't that just crazy. Who would do such a thing!! So I have been trying to match up the ones that closest make a match but it is killing me. I am tempted to go buy another pack of the same style just so I can make matches! It is bad enough the colors and shapes on the socks but throw in the fact that they don't have a matching sock. This is a lot to take in for a girl that has only black or white socks!

Paci Pop

Growing teeth isn't an easy task. Just ask any baby. Some babies deal with it better then others. My baby is quiet a little trooper. She gets a little fussy at night when she would rather sleep then deal with growing teeth and she isn't eating solid food as well. Otherwise though she is dealing with it like a champ. Currently she is growing in six teeth. Three on the top have cracked through and one more is still trying. On the bottom there are two more working their way through the skin.

I found a great little treat that works well for her. Probably not a new idea for many moms but it was new to me. One day I bought some pacifiers because I wanted to see if I could get her to use them. I know what person in their right mind tries to get a eight month old hooked on them? Well my baby girl likes to suck and I thought maybe it would help her sleep - and me as well. However, she doesn't like them, she will chew on them for a few but then she is done with them. She ends up getting saliva in them as she chews on them. One day when I was washing out the saliva I thought "why not just fill them up with water and freeze them" and that is what I did.



She loves them. Absolutely loves them. She chews on them till the ice cubes are gone. The coldness helps her little gums. I went and bought some more so I have a stock throughout the day. I had just two but between boiling after each use and then letting them freeze it just wasn't working as well as it could. Now we have like twelve and they last throughout the day. I can boil them all at dinner and stick them back in the freezer and get them ready for the next day!

Sometimes one just isn't enough....

Toilet

For some reason animals and kids are drawn to toilets. I don't understand it and I don't think I ever will. Normal people only subject themselves to being around the toilet for a few reasons. They need to use the little girls room, they are about to throw up, or they are cleaning it.

Today my daughter was only out of my sight for two minutes at the most. I headed back to the living room to resume playing and as I walked past the bathroom door there was my little adorable girl standing next to the toilet, holding the seat to keep herself balanced.

Here is a picture. Just kidding. There is no way I was going to leave her hands on the toilet just to take a picture. I am sure you all can understand.

Guess it is time to start shutting the bathroom door.