I'm thankful for YOU!

We're in KC visiting family but I wanted to take a moment to say THANK YOU.  You are all wonderful beautiful helpful people and I'm thankful for you.  I'm thankful for the friendships we've created, I'm thankful for being allowed to visit your lives, I'm thankful that you've come to visit mine and I just want you to know.  


You mean so very much to me and I'm thankful for you!  I hope you have a wonderful holiday and I'll be back soon!

Falling down

Don't be melodramatic, don't be melodramatic, don't be melodramatic........


It won't help anything.  Stick to the facts.  Keep it in perspective.  Everything's going to be okay.


.....................


I'm in desperate need of a pep-talk and that's the best I can do right now.


So, never mind what I said a few days ago that I was winning the Sleep Battle.  Round Three, Four, Five *and* Six go to......I don't even know who they go to, because neither of us is winning right now.

Not even a little bit.

Sofia is most definitely waking in the middle of the night to comfort nurse.  That tells me that she has the ability to sleep through the night but is waking up naturally and doesn't know how to fall to sleep again without at least a few minutes of nursing.  She's definitely not eating so it would be better for her to simply sleep more.  Right?  I don't know.

I feel like my brain has been rattled because I attempted Ferber-izing her tonight.  Holy shitballs.  That's all I have to say about that.  Who in the HELL can do that without cracking?  And if it's you, comment right the hell now and tell me EXACTLY how you do it.  

Let me say that again:  COMMENT ON THIS POST AND TELL ME HOW TO DO THIS.

I've never asked for comments before because it's your business if you want to lurk or not, but I just spent the last hour staring up at the ceiling because I was so shaken by spending the hour before that listening to my daughter scream her face off in three minute intervals.

Because yeah, I couldn't even do the 'progressive waiting' that Ferber recommends.  You're supposed to let them cry for one minute, go in and check on them for no longer than two minutes, leave even if they're screaming their faces off, wait for three minutes, check again but no longer than two minutes, wait for five minutes, check again, and repeat at five minute intervals until they fall asleep from sadness exhaustion I don't even know.

Are you freakin kidding me?

I did this for almost an hour, which felt like 59 minutes too long.  I finally gave in and nursed her.  Then, I felt guilty about doing it because if I was going to 'give in' I shouldn't have let her cry in the first place.  I just whispered 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry' as her little fist hit my chest.  That's a suck-ass feeling if there ever was one.

How in the world am I supposed to do this alone?  Where am I supposed to find the strength to withstand the crying?  

But she needs to sleep.  She barely takes naps in the daytime because she wakes up naturally about 20-30 minutes after she goes down and hardly ever goes back to sleep, so even though she always naps in the morning, it's never for long.  Afternoon naps are a joke.  I try and try to give her every opportunity to sleep but it doesn't happen.  The only time it happens in the afternoon is if I have to go somewhere and she sleeps in the carseat.  Then I feel even worse when we arrive and I have to disturb her.  I've definitely taken the long way to get places just to ensure that she gets at least thirty minutes of sleep.

I feel even worse seeing this in writing.  Great.

Never mind the rest of my life.  It took me eight hours to do laundry one day.  I just about lost it because the same amount used to take me two hours and I used to be able to get so much other stuff done while the clothes were in the wash and I used to fold and put away the laundry as it came out of the dryer.  Now, the only things that get done like that are her diapers. 

Regular showering is a joke.  I will myself not to sweat because I know it'll probably be days before I'll get to shower.  

And holy shit, my eyebrows.  And my hair.  No lie, I just avoid mirrors these days.  

And the 'work' I did for my neighbor?  I'm having anxiety over that too because I should have said no in the first place.  But I'm not good at saying no.  I felt like I was put on the spot and it would have been nice to have the extra money for Christmas. 

But the day of the move?  I had the baby strapped to my chest all day long while I was trying to tell the movers about somebody else's stuff, what was supposed to go to storage, what was supposed to go to the new place because nothing was labeled and the house was an absolute wreck when they arrived.  I hardly knew what was trash and what was supposed to be packed.  And how am I supposed to unpack everything at the new place?  Do you know how much longer everything takes with a baby strapped to your chest?  And OH YEAH, WHAT ABOUT NAPS?!

I should have said no, because I have no one to take care of the baby while I go do stuff.

I'm  the one who takes care of the baby.  It's called primary caregiver, Desiree.  The baby is my first job.  Really, it's my only job but there's nothing like the guilt of 'not contributing' that will have me open my mouth and say yes when I should have said no, just so I can say I've added to the bank account.

The baby will be up soon.  

Thinking on Thursday

Thank goodness for Carolyn's Thoughts on Thursday because that's about all I have energy for!  And I know you're not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition but that's all I've got.  For.

Link it up!

• I have to wash my hair tonight and I really don't want to because it takes so long, and I'd rather sleep.
• But I have to because my hair is nasty dirty and that's just gross.
• I'm hosting a playgroup tomorrow and it's my first one so of course I'm super nervous that I'm going to do something dumb and they'll never want to come over again.
• I've eaten more regularly in the past two days than I have in a long time thanks to my one-handed food.
• You'd think I invented sandwiches judging by my pride in my original not original discovery.
• My neighbor sold his house and travels for work so he asked me to coordinate the move for him.  He paid me but having the baby and 'working' all day was almost not worth it.  I'm beat!
• The baby has been sleeping so well lately!  Just in time for us to go out of town in a couple of days.
• Last week I painted my nails for the first time in years.  My mani is all chipped now and I can only paint my nails OR wash my hair tonight.  I remember now why I don't paint my nails.
• I rearranged the living room and bought a new rug - I can't wait until it gets here!
• The baby crawled for the first time a couple of days ago, hence the need for the living room change.  She needs space to roam!

Please, for the love of all that's good and holy, ignore my voice in the following video.  In fact, do us all a favor and watch it on mute because I sound like an idiot.  If I knew how to put music over my voice I totally would because, wow.  What a weirdo.  Me, not the baby.

I was dreaming when I wrote this

And by dreaming I mean having a large glass of the good wine.  Just so you know where I'm coming from.


SO!  Yet again, I love the internet and blogging and wine!


Writing the last post got me thinking about food and how much I hate it, but how much I hate it more when I feel like someone or something is getting the best of me.  Today I brainstormed and guess what y'all!  I'm cooking right now!  And drinking because I hate cooking!


Oh and guess what else!  I did a Google search on what foods you can eat one-handed to get ideas.  My lil' ol' blog came up at the bottom of the first page!  I feel bad for that because I am of no help whatso ever when it comes to ideas.  Until now!


There's a website called thenaptimechef.com that gave me some great ideas and got my thinking cap glowing.  My thinking cap glose, doesn't yours?  Anyway, sandwiches!  You can eat sandwiches with one hand!  I had the most brilliant idea of making sausage biscuits for breakfast (because I am a meat-a-saurus and must have meat at every meal.)  I went to the store and got some Jimmy Deans and some pop biscuits.  I fried up that thar sausage, made some eggs and put them in baggies, ready for the microwave in the morning!


Then I made some chicken salad sandwiches for lunches, inspired of course by my one and only bestie Carolyn.  She posted a recipe for chicken salad sandwiches thereby putting the bug in my ear.  Ps, where in the HAYull did that expression come from?  Reminds me of Star Trek, the wrath of Khan where they put the bug in that guy's ear.  Tells you how old I am that I'm referencing that movie and how much that scene affected me that I can still remember it.

One-handed food!

ANYWAY!  Oh chicken salad!

I chopped and mixed and assembled and now I have lunches!  I'm feeling so good about myself right now which is a good thing because I'm really done with this whole husband-living-in-another-city thing.  Because let's face it, when he's home an average of 48 hours a week, he lives in another city.

It got me thinking about our marriage and how the two years that we've been married we've been dealing with some drama or another pretty much since day one.  I'm super extra ready for a drama-free life right about now because it's hard on both of us.  When he's gone I handle all house business, no breaks, no relief, no time off.  When he's home, it would be great to get a break, relief or time off but he's been traveling and working the whole time and he wants a break too.  He wants to put his feet up in his own house for a minute and while I can't blame him that much, I need help around this piece!  I'm over it and I'm ready for normal.

Until then, I'm drinking the good wine.

PS, I hate food

I thought my attitude towards food would change once I had a baby.  At least I hoped it would, but now that she's here, I still hate it.  I try my hardest to eat well because I'm breastfeeding and I'm thankful that I never had bad habits to begin with, but I still hate food.  And I hate it even more because of what it's done to my precious baby.

Food is dumb.

Breastfeeding is perfect for lazy moms like me.  I don't have to worry about packing snacks when we go out, I don't have to warm bottles or wash them when I'm done and I don't have to worry about food groups or proper nutrition or vitamins or any of that nonsense.  Through the magic of Mother Nature, Sofia gets exactly what she needs when she needs it with zero brain effort from me.  

However, since I can't breastfeed forever (totally kicking rocks about that) we had to introduce solids.

Solids?  What's that?  Unbutton your shirt please.

After the french fry, I was more serious about getting off on the right foot.  Again, because I'm a lazy parent, I'm choosing Baby Led Weaning for Sofia.  I got the book and cookbook and we were ready to go.  

We started with bananas.  She played with it more than she ate it, but that was fine by me because some got in her mouth as evidenced by her diapers.

OH!  MOMS!  No one told me this and it freaked me the hell out:  if you feed your baby bananas, they will get little threads in their poop that look like worms.  Scared the ever-loving SHIT out of me!  Thank God for the other moms in my playgroup because I was ready to call the freakin CDC and never feed her solids again.

And another PS - my cloth diapers are still doing fine.  I told a couple people that we were doing cloth and they were all "oh that's cute.  Just wait until she starts solids - you'll be singing a different tune."  Well LA LA LA beeshes!  Still snow-white, still no stinks!

For about three weeks, we tried bananas, avocados, carrots, prunes and pears (the prunes and pears were purees because we were on the road and she hadn't pooped.)

But, I think we did it wrong because my poor baby's little face busted out in a nasty case of eczema.  Her little cheeks were a rosy red mess of bumps and scabs and I was NOT having it.

She even scratched her nose, poor baby.

The pediatrician had a look at it and was just like, put some Aquaphor on it.  Okay fine.  I did and it cleared up but it came right back the second she ate something else.  Bananas - busted up face.  Avocados - busted up face.  Carrots - busted up face.  I was getting annoyed and finally we just stopped altogether.  I hate food anyway - I didn't need any more encouragement to go back to exclusive breastfeeding.

However, I'm also afraid of oral motor delay - at least I think that's what it's called.  It's what happens if you miss the window for introducing solids and then they have trouble eating and talking and stuff.  SEE how much trouble food is?  Gah!

Since I wasn't satisfied with the Aquaphor-and-power-through-it diagnosis, I went a different path and got me a hippie doctor.  It's yet another reason why I love our neighborhood.  There are two lactation consultants and a naturopath that live within driving distance!  Plus, they do house calls!

The hippie doctor had me fill out this 20-page questionnaire that asked me to gauge my satisfaction with my intellectual pursuits, how I felt about staying home and what I ate in a normal day.  There was all kinds of space for that part, and I felt really bad writing 'Triscuits.'  I wasn't surprised when she was like "you need to eat more."  Really hippie doctor?  You don't say?

But, aside from that it was really interesting meeting with her and she spent over an hour at my house, going over the vitamins I took (CVS prenatals - she wasn't too impressed with that either), even looking at the lotion I used on the baby - which got her approval.

Approved by hippie doctors everywhere!

Get yours today!

(You have to say that in your announcer voice, otherwise it's silly.)

Her diagnosis was that Sofia's little gut just wasn't ready for solids and we're going to try again at the end of this month and be extra conservative this time, doing only one food every five days and starting with root vegetables instead of fruits.  Also, I've started taking a probiotic and some hippie fish oil because the CVS fish oil pills didn't cut it either.  Hopefully the baby's face won't bust out again and we'll have a more enjoyable time with it because I'm hypersensitive about establishing a positive foundation with food for her.  I'm in mortal fear of a picky eater or having a kid who's allergic to everything.  

Besides that, there are so many other issues tied to food.  I don't want her to be a comfort/stress/emotional eater and those habits start early.  I also don't want her to hate it like me.  I just want her to have a healthy relationship with food and I want to start her off on the right foot.

We have another appointment with the hippie doctor at the end of the month and we'll try this song and dance again, hopefully with more success.  But for now, I'm happy to leave it up to Mother Nature.

I am a prize cow.

Beautiful

Ok, so I've had my cry over how much the world sucks.  It always takes time to recover when you've witnessed the devil and before I grab my daughter and crawl under the covers and never leave the house again, I better remember the beautiful things.

I went to Pinterest to remind me that it's not all bad.

Because you light candles when bad things happen

And then, of course:

Chubby babies make me happy

Okay, I feel better now.

Because I can't say anything else

Tonight I will pray for those children.

Round two goes to The Mom

Thank you all so much for your words of advice and encouragement on the last post.  I read them all and tried a few and for the past two days I've been Winning!

Oh come on, you knew that was coming.

So, I took April's advice on the theory that Sofia might be having separation anxiety at night.  That made sense because lately she's been a total Stage 5 Clinger.  Two nights ago, I put my tank top in her crib and while I nursed her before bed, I took one of her lovies and rubbed it on my chest and neck.  I felt weird doing it and I was a little nervous to have things in her crib but I had the Angelcare on high so if anything happened, I was ready.

One night it went off and I nearly broke my face jumping off the sofa and sliding

on the hardwood floor trying to get to her room.  She had rolled over to the edge

of her crib and was completely fine.

They may save babies, but they might kill you.

They should put that on the box.

Anyway, I laid her down with her lovie and my shirt and prayed for the best.  Like clockwork, she woke up at 12:30.  I let her cry for only a second before I went to her.  I rocked her, nursed her and put her back in her crib.  I came back to bed and at 12:46 she started moan-whining crying.  I told myself that I would let her cry for five minutes tops and doubted whether I'd be able to hold out.

12:47, she was full-out yelling.  12:48, still yelling and I was out of bed on my way to her room.  

12:49, silence.

Three minutes and she was out!  I couldn't believe it!  She slept until 6:30 and I went ahead and brought her to bed with me until 7:30 when she was up for the day.  That was a good first try for both of us.

Last night, I put her to bed around 8 and she went down like a champ.  This time she didn't wake up until 2:40am!  I went into her room and nursed her for just a couple of minutes and then rocked her and put her back to bed.  She moan-cried, but by the time I made it back to bed she was asleep.  

I'm quite sure I'm jinxing myself by talking about it, but I just had to document this for posterity.  I couldn't do the whole cry-it-out routine where you're supposed to let them cry for five, ten, fifteen minutes in succession.  Five minutes is my max so I'm really glad she went back to sleep in three.

Maybe tonight she'll be up for hours.  Maybe she's learning to put herself to sleep.  Maybe the lovie and my shirt were the key.  I have no idea but I'm just thankful that I've gotten two nights of good sleep.  I even put makeup on today!

Because that's what it's about - you have to celebrate the good moments so you can make it through the ones where you don't get to shower for three days because you can't put them down and the only food you've had are Triscuits because that's all you can eat with one hand.

Send coffee

I don't even drink coffee.  Even if I did, I can't drink it because I'm breastfeeding but that's how delirious I am.  Send whatever you have that will help me through this.


My daughter's sleep habits have gone in the toilet.


In the good old days, she would rub her eyes around 7:30 and I'd get her bath ready.  It's part of our routine and her little clock would tell her it's time to wind down.  After the bath, it's lotion, pjs, nurse, then bed.  Bath, boob, bed - it worked like a charm.  She used to sleep until about 4 in the morning, when she would wake up with the sweetest little cooing, I would go to her, nurse her back to sleep without incident until 7 that morning.  It was beautiful and I was smug.  I was glib.

Oh, she still goes down between 7:30 and 8.  Bath, boob, bed still works like a charm.  But now?  Now the child wakes up around midnight.  There are several things wrong with this.  

I try to go to bed between 10:30 and 11.  It's a gamble I know, because I can either stay up until she wakes up that final (ha ha) time or go to sleep for an hour and wake up right in the middle of a sleep cycle and feel like I've had an entire bottle of Nyquil while being beaten about the head and neck.

But sometimes I can't help it and my eyes just close and then I'm screwed when she wakes up.  Oh yeah, gone are the sweet baby coos and sighs.  Now she does this whiny, moan-y thing that grates on my last nerve.  I can handle the crying, at least it's a thing.  But this whining, moaning noise?  I have gone into her room and said, "Oh my sweet precious angel, Mommy loves you so much but you have got to stop doing that."

She will still nurse, but it's the going back to sleep that's killing me.  She fakes me out!  She'll nurse until she falls off and I think I'm home free.  I  s l o w l y get up from the chair, tiptoe the three steps to the crib, stand there for a while rocking her back and forth whisper-singing a lullaby, I lean over the crib keeping her in much the same position as I can manage, landing softly on the mattress, and I stay there unmoving, not breathing and she sleeps.  S l o w l y  I straighten up and start to tiptoe the four steps out of her room.  Juuuuuust as I reach the door BAM!  Whiny moan-y noise.

Naively, I try to let her put herself back to sleep and she's done it a grand total of one time.  The other times if I let her cry too much, she wakes herself up completely and upsets herself so much that I'm guaranteed not to get back to sleep for the rest of my life.

And so she has won this round.  I'm so tired now that I'm afraid to nurse her in the chair because I actually fell asleep once and now I'm terrified of dropping her.  So I bring her to bed with me so I can at least nurse her lying down.  But now she's on to me and she does the fake out even when I let her fall asleep in our bed, only now it's fifteen steps to her crib and she goes all that way pretending she's asleep only to wake up and whine when I put her in the crib.  So I leave her in our bed.


BUT!  She's six months old now - she no longer sleeps all cute and sweet in one position, looking like an angel doll baby.  She's a full-fledged person and she sleeps all kinds of crazy.  I have been kicked in the groin, slapped in the face, throat-punched, my nipples pinched and that's not when she's rolled over practically underneath me so now I'm paranoid about suffocating her.  Although I'm not as worried as I was before because I'm sure she'd punch me in the face before she was in true danger.


I've contemplated sleeping in the nursery so when I nurse her in bed I can get right up and put her back in her crib and if she won't go, it's a short walk back to bed.  But I don't even know if that will work.  Saturday night Drew slept with her in the nursery because I was so delirious and tired that I simply couldn't do it.  I did the fake out dance with her like five times and I was so freakin spent that I had to just come back to bed and admit defeat.  


I know it's because we've been traveling.  When we were at Drew's parents, she slept in bed with us because it was an impromptu trip and we didn't have a pack n play.  When we were in Reading, she didn't care for their pack n play and since we were all in one room and Drew had to work every morning, we couldn't do the fake out dance because he had to get some sleep.


So I'm pretty sure I've messed her up and now she expects to sleep with us/me, but I can't take it.  Between waking up in the middle of a sleep cycle and getting physically assaulted, I am a mess.  Plus, I know it's not good for the baby.  She needs her own space and I hate that she can't get back to sleep once she wakes up in the middle of the night.


I don't know what to do because she hasn't seriously started teething yet and I'm petrified of that little development.  I'm telling myself that it's only a phase, that no baby ever went to kindergarten not sleeping through the night.


But oh my baby Jesus, I. Am. Tired.

Why yes, I *have* had work done

Not on me.  I'm still scrawny with circles and bags under my eyes.  My blog however, is looking downright fresh!  I enlisted the talents of the lovely Miss Katie who orchestrated this little facelift and I am so very happy!  I have pages now!  It looks so much cleaner and my favorite part is that there are no more borders around my crappy pictures!  Because it was the border that was making them crappy, doncha know.  I have some sprucing up to do and some pages to fill but I love the new look!


I'm most impressed with how quickly she did it.  I'd been wanting a blog redesign for some time but I didn't know exactly what I wanted and I'd heard horror stories of people taking months to respond, if they responded at all - once they took your money of course.  Not so for Katie!  I told her what I was thinking about, and like magic she delivered!  Thank you so much Katie!


Not only that, I've finally entered the 21st century.  Oh yeah, I got one of these hot mamas.

I'm so high-tech I can't even stand it.

My old phone was dying and being crochety about it; he (my phone was a boy) refused to let go.  I'd try to send a text message and I could practically hear it wheezing as it tried to keep up with me, and that's saying something because I'm not tech-y at all.  Never mind email, that was way too much to ask of the old boy.  He'd lock up and that was it.  I couldn't even turn it off to put him out of his misery.  Eventually, he'd remember he was right in the middle of something and all the words I typed an hour ago would come rushing out.  It just wasn't pretty so today I went to the Sprint store to see if they could do some CPR or shock him back into working.  Sadly, they told me that anything they did would just be prolonging the inevitable and that I should just let him go.

Enter Sloane.

Slim, trim, shiny and down for whatever.  We've been hanging out, getting to know each other.  She's oh so pretty and I totally have to step up my game.  I was used to my old boy and I was patient with him.  If it took him ten minutes to send a five-word text message, I let it slide because I knew it was hard for him.  But not Sloane.  I type fast, she sends faster.  She even talks to me!  It's amazing!

New phone, new blog - I feel so shiny!

Lieutenant Dangle

I was trying to think of a different post title for the longest time, as the title has nothing to do with the subject, but I couldn't get it out of my mind.  Plus, it makes me giggle, especially when I think about people who will Google that and come here and realize I'm talking about babywearing!  HaHA suckas!


Because yeah, we're not talking about this:

We're not ever talking about this.

We're talking about this:

Normally, I don't bother with things that piss me off on the internet, because hello it's the internet.  But man, when I saw this I went off on Kate Hudson, lecturing my laptop screen, I mean, yelling at her.  You are a celebrity!  People look at you!  They're going to emulate you and follow what you're doing!  You should know better than this!  How do you not have people in your camp advising you!  And hem your jeans!

I really hate it when people don't hem their jeans.  It looks sloppy.

I shoved my computer in Drew's face and went off for another five minutes about Kate Hudson and her poor baby.  Then I realized it was everywhere.

I just feel sorry for this poor kid.

Yes, I know putting your baby in a front-facing carrier lets you show them off to the world but it's not good for them.  I didn't know that but after doing just a little bit of research, it's really really not good for them!  That's what kills me:  how can I do one little Google search and come up with this and this and these people hire freaking baby consultants or maternity concierges or whatever they are and they don't get this very important bit of information right??

Let me break it down:  Kate Hudson's baby is only a couple months old, I think.  When babies are teeny, they naturally curl up.  Their little hands are in fists and their legs naturally draw up close to their bodies - naturally.    Now, my baby just woke up so I can't do further research and give you more links so I'm only going to reference my own kid. 

When she was teeny, I would hold her and her little legs automatically curled up underneath her.

It happened when I laid her down too.

Also, waaaah because she was a month old here and she's such a big girl now!

But back to my point.  They don't start to stretch out or relax until they're about three months old-ish.  Again, referencing my own kid.  But that still doesn't mean you should put them in a front-facing carrier.  Feel your groin area, you'll notice two big pulses - go on, stand up and feel that spot where your legs meet your torso.  A medical person can tell me what the technical name is but they're from arteries and it's rather important that you don't compress that area and cut off bloodflow.  Also, you have to be mindful of your baby's hip area.  That hip-leg socket area is pretty important to crawling and walking so you want to make sure it's growing properly.

Now, notice how these babies are dangling!  First, the mom's center of gravity is way off.  With the baby all out in front like that, it puts undue stress on her shoulders and back.  Never mind the poor baby who is strung up by their crotch, compressing those arteries.  Additionally, facing out causes an un-natural pelvic tilt in the low back (sway-back), messing up the hip-leg socket area.  Plus, your poor kid is just out there, bombarded with sights and sounds with no way to filter it by turning away and more importantly, they can't see their mom!  At that age, looking at mom's face is how they make sense of the world.   If Mom is smiling, this thing must be good so I'm happy.  Mom is sad, I will cry, and so on.  Considering the lack of that critical input of mom's face plus all the noise of the outside world, and you might end up yelling at your laptop.

Of course, having a baby facing in isn't near as much fun because when they're teeny, there's not much to see.

God Bless, I looked rough.

It makes me laugh that Mariska Hargitay actually folded down part of her carrier so you could see her baby's costume.  Yes, I yelled at the computer:  Take the kid out of the carrier and lay her down somewhere if a picture of the dumb costume is so important!  Think of your baby's hips, woman!

If your kid's legs still curl up, don't stretch them out to put them in a carrier!  If they do stretch out, keep them facing in and make sure their knees are higher than their butt.  If you do face them out, put them in a Buddha position so their groin isn't compressed, but only when they're old enough and not for a long time so they don't get overstimulated.

from here - again, a two-second Google search will tell you

all you need to know!

Okay, my rant is over.  I know my voice will never be as loud as one picture of a celebrity but that doesn't meant I shouldn't speak up.  I'm so happy that babywearing is becoming more prevalent, but my goodness, make sure you're doing it right.  And yes, I know that you'd have to wear your baby facing out for like 20 hours a day for months and months to do permanent damage and doing it once or twice for an hour or so at a time won't kill them but still!  

Okay, for real.  I'm done.  I've said my piece and it most definitely wasn't as eloquent or as scientific as other people out there and that's fine with me.  Sometimes you just have to say things and sometimes it doesn't come out pretty.

So don't be a Lieutenant Dangle.

I mean, don't dangle your baby.

I mean - you know what I mean.

I don't care if Halloween has passed

You guys!!  I have to make this quick because we have to get ready to catch our flight home, but you guys!!  I finally took some good pictures!!


My flash died on my camera.  I have no idea how it happened - I didn't even know that sort of thing could happen!  As a result, I've been forced to learn about all the other settings on my camera so I can take pictures in low light as well as paying more attention to natural light and how to use it.  Anyway, you guys!! Look!

It's not blurry!  It's a little smoky because of the sun placement,

but it's not blurry!!

Daddy's moo-ing

My new favorite picture

We went to Drew's parent's house for the weekend to surprise them.  It was so sweet to see the baby hanging out with her grandparents and I didn't die from the cold weather.  But more importantly, I got to shower, eat a full meal with both hands and put the baby on the floor without having to worry about a giant dog stepping on her.  It was bliss and I know I've said that before but seriously, any day without dog hair is a day in Heaven.  Even though I do kind of miss my doggie - although I'll never admit it.  Except I kind of just did.  Dangit.

It has been so much fun hanging out this week and I can hardly believe that in just two short weeks we'll be back on the road for Thanksgiving.  My poor baby - please someone tell me that I'm not messing her up for life by carting her all around like this.  I feel so guilty that she hasn't slept in her own bed for like almost ten days!  

But my goodness, I look at those pictures and seeing her grandpa feed her and seeing her smile and laugh in his arms gets me all happy and choked up and I think to myself, what's a sleep schedule when you've got Grandpa!

Of course, I may be singing a different tune tonight when we're home and I'm trying to put her to bed.  Pray for me y'all.

But hey!  How 'bout those pictures!