January Outcomes and February Ambitions!

I feel like January flew by! I don't even remember writing my January goals, so I hope I was able to achieve some of them. Let's see how I did:

• Have a date night with my husband. We had a baby-free lunch date for our 7 year anniversary! We both would love to do a dinner, but that will have to wait until Ellie sleeps better at night.
• Try a new recipe. I tried quite a few new ones ~ lentil soup, potato corn chowder, mexican rice, to name a few!
• Take one step forward in my business planning process. Yes!
• Declutter our home. Yes, but I feel like it's a never ending process.
• Contact the company that holds our car loan and arrange for either larger payments or more frequent payments. Yes!
• Go to a Bikram yoga class. Yes! Although I only made it once, I'm still glad I went. It's a shame the classes are so expensive. However, I have signed up for a mom and baby fitness class that starts next week, so that's something!
• Schedule the car for an oil change. Soon...
• Visit friends and/or family. Not yet, but we have a brief trip planned to visit friends next week!
• Get Ellie to nap in her crib.SUCCESS!!!! OMG what took me so long!? 

I think I did great considering I forgot about most of these goals after a week or so! So now I'm ready to set some goals for this month!

• Work on improving Ellie's night time sleep. I'm reading the No Cry Sleep Solution and so far it really resonates with me. I figure if I can get Ellie to the point where she only wakes to nurse a couple times each night, we're golden!
• Finish writing the first draft of my business plan.
• Go to more baby groups! It's good for Ellie and for my sanity to get out of the house. Driving into town each day isn't so great on our budget, but we'll have to make it work.
• Get more shifts at work. I feel happiest when I have a few hours every few days to do something productive away from home.
• Green smoothies!! My veggie intake is waning again... not good! I feel like I crave sweets a lot more when I'm not getting enough fruits and veggies in my diet. I need to hop back on the green smoothie bandwagon. Maybe I should branch out and try a new recipe?
• Get the oil changed in the car finally!

8 Months!

Months 1 - 7

I was just reminiscing about how little Ellie used to be and thought it might be fun to do a post compiling all of her monthly photos. So without further ado, watch our magic bean grow right in front of your eyes!

 

 

 

 

 

7 Months!

Living In The Moment

Lately I've been thinking a lot about how different my frame of mind is now, compared to a few months ago when Ellie was a newborn. In the 0-3 month phase, I remember constantly thinking 'it'll be easier when...' or 'I can't wait until she's able to...', filling in the gaps with milestones I thought would make my life easier. Having a newborn was simultaneously incredibly challenging and a wonderful blessing.

I feel like my attitude started to shift around the 4 month mark. Ellie started acknowledging and reacting to me (smiles, laughs, etc) and I started to feel like having a baby around was just as much fun as it was work. And even then, some of that 'work' was actually pretty great (breastfeeding, bath time, etc.).

Now, at nearly 7 months, she is such a joy to be around! She laughs, plays, reaches for toys, reaches for me, babbles, sits up on her own, makes funny faces (especially the one she makes when I try to feed her apples or hummous). She brings so much joy to my life and I couldn't imagine going a day without her (the day of my surgery was brutal!). All of this gushing doesn't mean she isn't still a challenge and a lot of work (that's just part of being a parent), but the work is a lot less daunting these days. Here's hoping she's still this much of a joy when she's a teenager ;)

Little Miss Pees A Lot

I love cloth diapers. I love not filling a garbage bin full of diapers or having to run to the store at the last minute (and that store is a 30 minute drive away too!) and fork out a ridiculous amount of cash for diapers. What I don't love is our current struggle with keeping Ellie dry overnight. We've stopped changing her diaper at night because she's just too sleepy and a diaper change results in blood-curdling screams from a child who just doesn't want to be woken up quite that much. Sadly though, we still have to sometimes as we are still figuring out the perfect night time cloth diaper. We have a few options. We have two DryBees fleece night diapers that seem to hold everything in, depending on how many inserts we put in them. The downside is that they are super bulky and for the last half of the night her bum feels ever so slightly damp, since they don't have any plastic lining (PUL I think it's called?). We also have two BumGenius 4.0's that we stuff with both inserts they came with (one long one that folds down and snaps to be a shorter length and one short one that's fairly thin). The downside to these is that we never seem to get the perfect fit around both legs and she ends up leaky about half way through the night. Finally, we have our cheapie CozyKids pocket diapers that we stuff with two regular inserts. This usually works to avoid leaks, but we sometimes have fit issues. The upside is that they aren't bulky, even with two inserts (neither are the BumGenius). Is there a perfect overnight cloth diaper out there? Can anyone recommend one? Something that's not too bulky, fits lots of different sizes, and can hold a whole lotta pee???

Let the Guilt Begin

I knew this day would come. I expected it from other moms, maybe even from relatives, but not from health professionals. Silly me. I thought doctors and public health nurses were meant to monitor your child's health and encourage you to continue healthy practices for your child. Unfortunately, the public health nurse we saw most recently decided to lay on the guilt about how and what I feed my baby and whether or not I'm doing a good enough job. (I seem to have similar somewhat negative experiences with all health nurses, I'm not sure why). See, at Ellie's 4 month shots, she weighed roughly 15lbs. This week, however, at her 6 month shots, she was a couple ounces less than she was 2 months ago. A couple things could have caused this, one being that they weighed her naked this time and fully clothed last time. Another being that she's much, much more active than she was 2 months ago. Adding to that, she's grown longer rather than heavier. At any rate, our doctor (who also saw and weighed Ellie at 4 months and 6 months) saw no reason for concern, yet the public health nurse proceeded to lecture me on my milk supply, what solid foods I was feeding Ellie, and whether or not Ellie was getting fed or nursed enough. Needless to say, as a first time mom, I basically spent the week in super stress mode trying to nurse more often, trying to feed Ellie more solid foods, and stressing out that my milk supply wasn't sufficient. That changes today. After listening to my gut and doing my own research I learned what I had thought all along - that breastfed babies simply don't follow the same growth curves as formula fed babies and that standard growth charts used by health professionals are based on an average of both breastfed and formula fed babies. So while Ellie may seem small when compared to all other babies, when her weight is tracked on a breastfed-babies-only growth chart, she's right on the mean. So I am done worrying and stressing myself out. She eats (often and plenty!), she plays, she sleeps, poos, pees, and laughs. She's perfect and she's doing just fine!

6 months!

Weighing in at 6.85kg and measuring 66cm, our little babe is half a year old!

November Goals

I can't believe it will be December a month from now. I am not even the least bit prepared for the holidays. Looks like I'll have to make up for that in November!

• Take Ellie to a baby group. We've been to it once before, but now I'd like to work it into our schedule more regularly.
• Continue to eat more veggies.
• More tummy time for Ellie! She very much prefers to sit up to play on her blanket, but to learn to crawl, she'll have to do more tummy time.
• Be more consistent with putting Ellie in her crib for naps.
• Sit down with Adam and weigh the pros and cons of me finding an outside job. I have an interview next week, so hopefully we can do this before then.
• Encourage Adam to use the sauna or steam room at least once a week.
• Do something (anything!) once a week that contributes to my own overall health. Whether this is a yoga class, a session in the sauna, some time in the fitness room, etc. It doesn't matter what it is as long as it makes me feel good and is good for me! 
• Let my mom babysit more so that Ellie gets more used to her. This will give me some freedom and help relieve some of the stress of having to leave Ellie when I have my gall bladder removed. Plus, if I do get an outside job, it will help with childcare.
• Get our house clean and sorted. We have bottles that need to go to the depot, a baby swing to return to a friend, computer stuff to organize and put away, a baby gate (or rather, a dog pen) to set up, a playpen to put away, etc. I am looking forward to tackling this to-do list!
• Baby proof! Ellie will only be getting more and more mobile as the months progress, so it may be time to baby proof things like cords, cables, outlets, etc. Then, when she's just about to pull up on stuff, we'll baby proof things like heavy furniture and toilet lids!
• Work on my two big goals.
• Make and freeze a month's worth of baby food!
• Pump and freeze milk for my surgery (I have to keep doing this on an ongoing basis because milk only lasts so long in the freezer and I have no idea when my surgery will be).
• Christmas presents/plans! Everything about this is up in the air, so hopefully we can get some of it figured out soon!

This is a terribly long list, but hopefully with some babysitting by mom, I'll have a little more time to accomplish things!

Who Doesn't Love Halloween??

5 Months

Babies Are Expensive

We have just started doing a bit of research on adoption. We are literally only a few days into what will probably be many months of research and I've already lost count of the number of times my jaw has dropped. I realize adoptions involve a ton of legal fees, paperwork, and other expenses, but holy crapoly I had no idea how crazy costly they can be. Adopting has always been one of my dreams, but it sure is hard to stay focused on the dream when you're reading an email describing one adoption route that can cost between $30,000 and $50,000!

Dreaming Big!

Inspired by my friend and fellow blogger, Sara, I decided to spend some time thinking about my big dreams. I really like to just scribble ideas on paper, so I grabbed some blank sheets of paper and a pen and just started writing all the things I've ever dreamed of doing as a career. I didn't let any details hold me back. For example, if I dreamed of being a doctor, I wrote it down. The fact that I would have to go back to university for many years and incur a lot more student debt would be irrelevant. At this stage, I was just brainstorming dreams. In the end (although there's never really an end to dreaming!) I found a business idea that fills me with excitement and eagerness every time I think about it! I wanted to apply the same process to my personal life as well. But I already knew what my big personal dream was, so I didn't even bother getting out the pen and paper.

At this point, I'm not quite ready to share my big professional goal with the internet world, as I'm still just getting a handle on how to go about pursuing it. As for my big personal goal, I want a big family. It sounds simple enough, but we would like to adopt, which is a bit of a process. Expanding our family through adoption will require a lot of planning, paperwork, time, etc.

Both of my goals are big, big dreams. But by taking each of them one tiny step at a time, I feel like they are goals I can definitely accomplish. And each day that I work a little bit on them, I feel completely energized! It's a wonderful feeling!

It's October Already?!

It seems like September passed in a blur of activity and we've somehow wound up several days into October without even realizing it. Yikes! I guess it's time to see how I did with my September goals and set some new ones for October. Here's how I did last month:

• Take an overnight family trip. Done! Major success ~ Ellie travels well! She actually started consistently sleeping through the night during our trip!
• Eat more veggies. Done! I found a yummy slow cooker meal that's nearly all veggies and I've also been having a green smoothie everyday for the past week or so.
• Continue to exercise regularly. Not so much. I've walked with Ellie, but not as much as I did in August when the weather was nicer. 
• Give Ellie even more tummy time and independent time. I still have to remind myself to do tummy time everyday (I often remember right after a feeding, which means we don't do it because it would only result in mass quantities of puke), however, she does get a decent amount of independent play time.
• Go to a mom and baby group with Ellie. Preparing for our overnight trip meant skipping these groups and now they overlap with swimming lessons so they might not happen until November!
• Take the car in for an oil change and to replace our cracked windshield. Done!
• Get my bloodwork done to check my thyroid. I "forgot"? Haha... who likes bloodwork anyhow?!

Not so bad ~ although I'm noticing a trend where the things that are least likely to get accomplished are the things that relate to my own overall health. Not good. I need to try to rectify the habit of placing my well being on the back burner!

Now here are some October goals:

• Take Ellie to swimming lessons.
• Continue to eat more veggies.
• More tummy time for Ellie!
• Get Ellie to nap without being held. I know this is possible because she's done it a few times and because she naps in the car seat or stroller sometimes too. Now I just need to get her used to napping in the crib. I've been avoiding it because I appreciate the cuddles, but it would be nice to also be able to nap or to get things done while she naps.
• Apply for jobs. I am able to work at the hotel, with my husband, however, I would like to find some part time work where the pay is a little better. At the very least, I would like to pick up a few more hours at the hotel to supplement our income since I don't get any maternity leave pay.
• Encourage Adam to use the sauna or steam room a couple times a week to take better advantage of the perks of living here and to relax!

Hmm... Other than eating more veggies, I seem to have a lack of goals related to my own well being, again! So maybe I'll top the list off with one more:

• Do something (anything!) once a week that contributes to my own overall health. Whether this is a yoga class, a session in the sauna, some time in the fitness room, etc. It doesn't matter what it is as long as it makes me feel good and is good for me! I like the sound of this goal already! :)

4 months!

I'm about 10 days late on bringing you this one... but here it is anyhow:

September Goals

I'm pretty happy with how I did on my August goals even if I didn't achieve all of them. Now it's time to set some goals for September and get started making them happen!

• Take an overnight family trip. We have this planned already, so fingers crossed it goes well! It will actually be a 4 hour trip in the car and two nights away from home - yikes!
• Eat more veggies. My August goal about eating more salads and green smoothies didn't work out. I think it was too specific. I'd like to get more veggies in my diet, but it doesn't have to be through salads or smoothies.
• Continue to exercise regularly. This may only be a walk with Ellie in the stroller, or it may be a half hour stint in the fitness room. I'm okay with either!
• Give Ellie even more tummy time and independent time. We threw caution to the wind and ignored absolutely everyone's parenting advice for the first three months and just did what worked for Ellie. Now, I'm ready to wean her off of always wanting to be in someone's arms. In the next couple months we'll start to work on getting her to fall asleep on her own for naps!
• Go to a mom and baby group with Ellie. There is one very close to our house, so hopefully that will help me get over the trauma of driving alone with Ellie.
• Take the car in for an oil change and to replace our cracked windshield. We've been meaning to do this for a while now, but it requires 'giving up' almost a whole day off, so I've been postponing it inevitably. I'm hoping that posting this here will force me to book it and get it done. I also would really like it done before our road trip!
• Get my bloodwork done to check my thyroid. I had crazy weird thyroid issues early on in my pregnancy with Ellie and was supposed to have it checked again shortly after her birth. Well, I've been putting this off strictly because it's not fun and I often have 'more important' things to do. It's time to get it over with! 

I could keep going, but I think this is a manageable number of goals. I also need to get started on some of them as soon as possible because otherwise there is potential for a lot of these things to all happen within a week of one another. That doesn't sound fun!

August Goal Review

Early in the month, I set some goals for myself and now the time has come to see how well I've done. Here are the goals I had set, and, in bold text, the results!

• Shower while home alone with Ellie. I have now done this about half a dozen times. It totally depends on her mood, but if she's happy in the bouncy chair I get a very enjoyable 3 minute shower! 
• Take Ellie somewhere in the car without Adam. I did manage to drive a couple minutes down the road to meet a friend and her kids at the beach. This was a few weeks ago, and slightly traumatized me (Ellie cried, I got distracted, I ran a stop sign!!!), so I haven't done it since.
• Go back to work part time. I've been working a few shifts here and there, but after much consideration, we decided it was too soon. Because Adam's shift would end at the very minute mine would begin, it required this difficult baby-shuffling routine in addition to the challenge of getting ready for work while entertaining a baby. I have my last shift this Saturday, and then we're going to wait a month or so and try again.
• Take an overnight family trip. Our work schedule made this impossible, however, we have one planned for September!
• Make time for regular exercise at least 2-3 times per week. I haven't made it over to the fitness room once this past month. But I did get out for walks with Ellie in the stroller nearly everyday for the past few weeks. It's a start!
• Eat more salads and/or green smoothies. Ha! I totally bailed on this goal.
• Do more tummy time, diaper-free time and outside in the shade time with Ellie. Success!
• Open an RESP for Ellie. Done! 

Not too shabby! Now I'm going to go think about what I want my September goals to be and hopefully I will get around to posting them in the next few days. 

3 months!

A Few Clips

Just a few long overdue video clips of Ellie for those of you not on Facebook...

A Few Favourites

These are just a few of my favourite moments from these past 2 months or so. Even though it's been a huge life-altering change, having Ellie is such a blessing!

The beginning of her thumb sucking attempts. I believe this one was an accidental success!

Ellie with her cousin Austin :)

Breastfeeding has gotten so much easier!

Self-explanatory? We couldn't pass up the opportunity to document this special moment!

Some after-bath time cuddles!