The every changing time...and a fear confessed.

So We are now at 3 1/2 months of life. Little, or should I say BIG, Brooklyn is growing at a fast pace. She is changing into this "older" baby and losing her newborn-ness. She is trying to sit up now, which always causes lots of grunts and groans. She loves to kick her legs a lot and swing her arms around. She has started following objects as they move around a room. She will fixate on someone and watch them and actually "see" them and purposely watch them. She has begun what we call "getting her feelings hurt" where something will apparently bother her and she begins this puckering of her lower lip and proceeds to then cry big ole' tears which is just heartbreaking to watch. My little girl is growing up. It's amazing to watch how much they can change in just one week. 

This is the little princess at 3 1/2 months old having fun with daddy

She loves her bumbo seat! And she can sit up well in it!

Mommy and daughter! I love my little girl!

Our awesome new baby sling made by wonderful family friend Gale McNeely

And now for a very unflattering, yet funny, picture of mommy sleeping with Brooklyn (Waylon thought it would be SOOOOOO funny to take this picture!)

I, of course, do NOT ever remember sleeping like this! lol

As you can see in the last picture, I've taken to co-sleeping. I never in a million years thought I would, yet, I do it and I love it and I'm so having a hard time transitioning to her sleeping in her crib in her own room. One of these reasons is my paralyzing fear of SIDS. I know it's something that if God intends for that to happen, we wouldn't be able to stop it, HOWEVER, I still feel like I need to be right there by her and if I'm there, it won't. I did recently read a great article about how a county in New Zealand has eradicated any occurrences if SIDS since 1994 just by wrapping the baby mattresses in this safe plastic wrap. Apparently, the chemicals put in mattresses to make them fire retardant is toxic and poisonous in babies and paralyzes their central nervous system which is why there never seems to be a struggle in SIDS babies. I'm not going to get into every detail of what the article says but if you're interested in it, let me know and I'll give you the link (I don't have it right now but could find it if I needed to). Needless to say, that with my fear of SIDS, I ordered one of the mattress covers ($32 is not a lot of money for some peace of mind and if it ends up being true, then it's totally worth every penny). I should be getting it this week. Once I get it, I will be putting it on Brooklyn's mattress and then, MAYBE, I'll be ready to have her start sleeping in her own room. Waylon is very hopeful for this. He would like our bed back for just us. I do miss having the bed to ourselves completely, however, I love having her in bed with me too so it's kind of a double edged sword. I'll let you all know how that works out!

Life is starting to take some semblance of a routine and shape. I still feel like there is too much going on in our lives and that we need to cut more out. That's hard to do when you have a baby, you both work and one of you goes to school full-time. Our envelope system budget is working very well. It's definitely showing us areas where we were WAY over spending and how much money was being wasted on eating out. That has helped immensely. We have eaten cheaper and eating at home way more often. I'm making my own coffee instead of buying it at McDonald's. I'm making breakfast as well and currently we are eating mac'n cheese for dinner a lot. Ramen noodles are also a popular food item here right now. I know these aren't the healthiest of meals, but we are really trying to eat cheaper right now and it works for us. We have to do what works right now.

On the same line of thinking, my sister Melissa just posted a great blog about living simply.

You can read it here

She has some great insight on the concepts and meaning behind living simply and not just simply living. There's a big difference! I hope to apply these concepts to my life. Thanks sis for the great blog!

There is more I want to write about but I'm actually going to type up the blog and make sure that all my thoughts are in order. I would like to post about some more serious topics. I have a few already in mind that I obviously want to have my thoughts organized before writing it. 

Right now I need to get back to doing some house work before I go to bed. 

My friend Stefanie McNeely will be having her little baby boy Caleb a week from Tuesday on November 10th! We are all very excited about his arrival!! Brooklyn can't wait to meet her new little boyfriend!!

Another big milestone

Well, those of you who are friends with me on Facebook might already have read my status from tonight. Brooklyn is sleeping in her own room from tonight on. At least that's "the plan". We'll see how mommy does. I know this is definitely harder on me than it is on her. She will probably sleep better now. At least that's what I hope. The last few nights have been very difficult. She's been waking up several times a night and having very fitful sleeping. I don't know what the deal is. The only thing I could think is that she's sleeping in the same room as Waylon and I and any time we move in the bed, it makes noise and she's pretty sensitive to noise. I think she just needs to be in a nice dark, quiet room of her own. Tonight will be a test run. I just know I'm going to freak out if I wake up in several hours and see that she hasn't woken up yet. I'm still a little worried about SIDS although I've taken EVERY precaution to avoid it. A mother will be a mother and will worry. There's not a whole lot I can do but continue to give her up to the Lord because he is in control and no amount of worrying on my part is going to help. So pray for me as I take this step forward in letting Brooklyn grow up by sleeping in her own big girl crib that uncle Bryan bought her. I'm excited to be using it at least! And now that she'll be sleeping in her room, we'll get more use out of her nursery and all the time I spent decorating it. I remember sitting in there thinking about what it was going to be like when she was finally here and we were using that room and now, here we are, 3 1/2 months into it! It's been a wonderful journey so far and I'm looking forward to enjoying every moment of it along the way.

I'm proud to say that Waylon and I have implemented a budget and a system to keep from over spending! It took so much of the stress about my worries in this area. We sat down and wrote down what our income would be for the month and then took out all the bills we pay every month. Then we budgeted amounts for gas, groceries, eating out, and entertainment. These amounts I withdrew from the ATM and put into envelopes labeled for each category. Waylon and I each have our own envelope for eating out for the entire month. Our goal is to only eat out on Sundays when we go with our family after church so we allowed each of us $50 for the month. This also goes towards my McDonald's ice coffee addiction so I won't be able to get them as often as I would like. Then again, I know how to make them so I should just start making them at home. Every three days or so I grab a $20 from the gas envelope and put that much gas into my car and just keep it from going under 1/4 of a tank. We allowed ourselves $30 for the whole month on entertainment. This would include going to the movies or renting a movie. We don't really do a whole lot more. We had a little left over and from that we will pay small amounts on the medical bills from having Brooklyn which aren't a fixed amount every month and also use this towards savings and any "shopping" we need to do that doesn't fall under one of the other categories. I really want to get into the habit of saving money so that we have the funds to go on nice vacations over the summer. I would rather have 1 really good week of vacation each year than be able to take several lame ones. Our goal for next summer is to save enough to pay for our family reunion in June and then a trip to Destin, FL in late July, early August with my parents. The hotel they stay in is right on the beach and is nice but not too expensive. It's a Holiday Inn. I stayed there once when we went in November (not a great month for the beach but you can't beat the off-season hotel price!). It was fun and I'm looking forward to going back when we can enjoy the sun. 

Now that we've got the financial situation going down a good path, I want to get the house cleaning going in the same direction. I think what I'm going to do is just make a schedule out where each day of the week has it's 2 or 3 chores that we do on that day every week. That way it's always getting done and it's never overwhelming where we have to clean the whole house all at once. That never happens! No matter how much time I give myself to clean the entire house, it just doesn't get done. ugh

Tonight when we were grocery shopping, we got the medium flow nipples for Brooklyn's bottles. I know this is just so exciting to read about but I'm excited about it! lol. I feel like it's really going to help Brooklyn's feedings to go quicker and for her to be able to take full feedings before she falls asleep. This is especially a problem in the middle of the night. She will start taking her bottle and after an ounce she's already falling back to sleep and ends up not taking the whole bottle. Then, an hour later, she's ready to take another ounce. It's frustrating, that's for sure. Especially when you're freaking out about the fact that you have to get up early and you're up for the 3rd time with your baby who only wants to drink tiny amounts at a time. 

As I type this blog, I keep nodding off to sleep. I'm a very tired momma and believe I will hit the sack before it gets any later.

Toodles

Motherhood and surprises

Motherhood has taken me into her strong grip and will not let go. I must say, it is a very challenging, beautiful lifestyle. It's finally starting to sink in that little miss Brooklyn is MINE and she is a long lasting responsibility. It's such a foreign idea for someone my age who has never had a long lasting responsibility like this and is experiencing it for the first time. Does this make sense? It's such a huge milestone in my life and it's hard to believe it has happened. It's hard to believe I've already gone through my entire first pregnancy which I thought would never end. Now here I am with an almost 3 month old beautiful baby girl!  She keeps things hoppin' around here, that's for sure! I'm learning a lot about myself through motherhood:

- I worry less about some areas that I thought I would worry MORE about and I worry MORE about some areas I thought I would worry LESS about. Weird.

- I'm not good at housekeeping with an extra person. I barely got my own laundry done in the past, now I have another little diva to keep dressed and clean. It's a never-ending pile of laundry that doesn't get done very often! lol

- My time is more precious to me than anything right now.  I'm finding that more than money or socializing or anything else, my personal family time has become more important to me than I ever could have imagined.

- Leaving a tiny little part of myself at home, in bed is PAINFUL!!! 

- I never thought I would say it, but here it is: I miss being pregnant! I get all nostalgic of my pregnancy and feeling her move and just all the excitement of meeting her and seeing her for the first time. I miss that. Not that I'm not super happy that she is here and it's so much more fun than being pregnant. But I still miss it and look forward to my next pregnancy which will probably be sometime next year if things go as planned. I want to get off the pill next summer and try to get pregnant then and have a spring baby in 2011. Of course, God probably has other plans for us, BUT, that's what we're going with right now. :)

- I enjoy making a fool of myself just to see my precious little girl smile. It's priceless.

There are many other things I could list here but my mind is all jumbled and I'm being distracted by said little girl smiling and cooing at her daddy in her bouncer.

We need some prayer right now for our financial situation. The issue is not that we don't have enough money, although we could use a little extra income a month to make ends meet. Our main problem is appropriation of the funds we do have and paying bills first before we spend it on anything else. We really need to buckle down and live off a budget and not break it every time. It's very frustrating to get tow 2 weeks from my next pay check and not have enough money to pay the water and electric bill, let alone, buy groceries and gas. Ugh. It's so stressful. We are going to be cutting out ALL eating out for the next 2 weeks and then once I get paid again, I want us to be almost that strict for the next month and see how much of a difference it makes in our getting bills paid. I did recently purchase "Financial Peace" by Dave Ramsey at Half Priced Books. So far it has been very good and inspiring and telling me a lot of stuff I needed to hear. Having another mouth to feed makes the reality of being a good steward of our money THAT much more important. So pray for us as we make big changes in our finances. God has blessed us with much and we are very grateful. We need to learn to take better care of what He has given us. 

One last thing that I just have to brag about is something amazing my husband did for me this week. On Monday I came home to find a beautiful bouquet of flowers on my table, along with a big bowl of chocolates and a beautiful hand written letter from Waylon. Also, the kitchen and living room had been cleaned. He was a busy man that day! I sat and read the letter and cried. It felt so amazing coming home to such a sweet gesture and reading beautiful words from my husband. He is a wonderful husband and father and I am so blessed to get to spend the rest of my life with him. Thank you Waylon! I love you babe!

It's been a while

I realize I haven't done a very good job at keeping up with my blog lately. Now that I'm working again I find myself being much more selective with the little amount of free time I have in the evenings. Most days I go straight from work to my parent's house to pick Brooklyn up and then I'm usually there for a few minutes visiting with my parents and hearing about Brooklyn's day. Then I come home and either fix dinner or eat the dinner Waylon has fixed. (He's been doing a lot of cooking lately! It's awesome! Thank you sweety!) After that, it's normally either time to feed Brooklyn or change her. She'll nap off and on but usually stays awake for a good 2-3 hours. She also will usually have a good, long cry for about 20-30 minutes. That part isn't fun. Last night she did this 3 different times! Did I think I was going to go crazy?? YES!!! She had her first meltdown then I finally got her calmed down and asleep. She slept for probably a half hour and then woke up with the most heart-breaking cry, like she really had her feelings hurt or was super sad. That went on for another half hour before she finally fell asleep AGAIN...only to wake up another half hour later doing the same thing. All during this time I was trying to organize bills, eat dinner and place a Mary Kay order and I had a bad headache...which didn't go away since there was a screaming child in my ear. 

My, how my daughter has developed her scream! I hope she can put them to go use later on in life and be a good singer! lol

Brooklyn turned 11 weeks this past Wednesday. It's amazing to think that I've already had her around for that long. She is such a joy to have around. I have to remind myself how thankful I am of her when she's having her meltdowns though...those are trying times of motherhood!

We had her 2 month check up last week which I never ended up posting about. Her stats were 13.2 lbs and 24 in long! She's a growing girl! She got all her shots and did very well with them. Thankfully they do a combined shot so she only got 3 needles and one oral vaccination. She did cry pretty hard during the shots but calmed down very quickly afterwards and then slept for the rest of the night and all of the next day. I guess those shots just wore her plum out!

We are in the process of treating her scalp for her cradle cap...or cradle "crap" as I like to call it. She has also developed what appears to be eczema. She has a few red, very dry, flaky spots. One on her cheek, one over each eyebrow, and a couple on different spots of her head. It's very different from the cradle cap so I don't think that's what it is. I called my pediatrician and left a message about it but haven't heard back from them. I'm going to try some Eucerine lotion on it (suggested by my aunt) and see if that works. Hopefully it will.

Brooklyn is still on 4oz every 3 hours or so. She has taken to "snacking" a lot lately though which can be frustrating. She can't seem to stay awake for a whole bottle lately! That bottle is like a drug for her. As soon as you put it in her mouth, her eyes close and she gets all sleepy, even if she was just screaming and crying for it! It's actually pretty funny to watch how she does this, BUT, then she ends up waking up a lot sooner and wanting more bottle and then falls asleep again. So round and round we go with this. She actually takes her bottles better during the night.

Her sleeping habit has taken a turn for the worse these past few nights. She was doing really well only waking up once in the night at 4:30 am and sometimes sleeping all the way through till 6 or 7am. The past few nights she has woken up almost every 3 hours. On most nights Waylon will get up with her since I have to go to work early everyday and he only gets up two mornings a week to go to school at 9:30. Even though he's the one getting up with her, it's still hard for me because I still wake up and will be awake for most of the time he is feeding her and burping her. It's really hard to sleep with that going on in your bed. lol

In other news...

I'm getting back into the swing of things at work. Everything there is starting to feel very natural and it's all coming back to me. For the most part I have good classes. There are two classes that are more difficult than others because the kids like to talk so much. One class it's really just the talking because they are a pretty small class compared to my others. However, the other one, it's more a problem of just having so many students in that period. I have 27 students in that class and in the other 5 only 18-21 students. Those extra 6 students do make a big difference. Over all though, I have to say that the students themselves seem very nice and overall well behaved and I think we're going to have a good year. Tomorrow we have a half day with the kids and then the rest of the day we have teacher training and get out at 3 so I'm pretty excited about that. I'm showing a movie in my class. In Spanish of course! The kids just love watching my Spanish movies...hahahahaha (evil laugh)...NOT! I just remind them that if they want to complain about watching Spanish movies, then we won't watch them and we'll do extra work. That usually puts a stop to the complaining.

I will have pictures on my next post I promise. Right now I need to eat dinner and then go pick my baby up and make it back for The Office, Community and Parks and Recreation. I'm recording Grey's and will watch it later this evening or tomorrow.

Life is busy and stressful but I'm very blessed!