turkey day!

Happy Thanksgiving! I am thankful for so many things in my life. I have an amazing family and the best friends a girl could ask for. Hoping you all have a fabulous day with your families and friends. I must say I'm quite jealous of my many pregnant friends and their elastic pants today.

Christmas card

So our picture session with my sister for our Christmas card was an epic FAIL. It was windy, cold, drizzly, and what I had envisioned as great picture spots. . .well, let's just say November in Illinois is ugly. But she did a couple good ones of my guys. William needed a few head shots for his new company venture and I couldn't resist bringing a red chair with us to match Owen's vest. Oh I love the men in my life!

sitting up

Look Mom, no hands. Well, maybe a finger touching the ground, but he's been trying really hard to sit up for longer and longer by himself! Where's my baby going?

random questions

Does my child have too many shoes? These are just his current ones (meaning the too small ones are packed away and the too big ones are still in the closet. :) I justify this by saying shoes are really the only accessory I can buy a boy.

Did you know that starting today through Sunday (2-5pm) Starbucks is having a BOGO drink sale? And since Owen isn't drinking Starbucks yet, I may just have to drink both of them.

Have I told you how much I love planning parties and shower? Sara's shower is starting to come together and let me just tell you. . . the cuteness abounds.

Anyone else so ready for Thanksgiving? I don't know if I more excited for the mashed potatoes or the fact that William will let me put up the Christmas decorations the day after.

Alright, that is all.

time with Grace

Grace came over to hang out with us for about an hour tonight. She is so much fun to play with! I cannot wait until Owen is playing with blocks, sorting shapes, and showing off knowing all his letters and numbers. Although I doubt that Owen will ask me to turn those links into a necklace like Grace did. I bet he'll be swinging them as a lasso or whip or something crazy like that.

Happy 5 Months!

Holy cow, 5 months already!! Look at my lil' punkin. This has been my favorite month so far. Ok, maybe I say that about every stage, but doesn't every mom? Today, he braved his 2 shots like a tough guy. I must say the leg chub on this 18lb, 6.7 oz boy helps the pain a little bit.

Hands down, my favorite development this month was something super little, but super sweet. When I'm rocking him or sometimes when he's eating, he'll put his hand up on my chin and rub my chin and lips. Ohh, melt my heart. He gives William and I tons of smiles and laughs, but out in public and for the camera, he's still the serious little man that we know and love. I so wish I could read his mind to find out what's going on up there. He always looks as if he's deep in thought and just taking the whole world in. And those eyes. This month, they've officially lost most of the gray and have gone chocolate brown. Now he's the exact replica of his father.

Loves/Hates
Owen loves bathtime. It calms him down no matter how grumpy he is and he loves playing with a few bath toys and kicking the water. He hates having his face washed though and always cries when I get him out of the bath. He loves taking his vitamin D and also loves screeching at the top of his lungs. He hates tummy time and of course still hates to sleep. He hates cold cereal and will only eat it if it's warmed up.

Milestones/What's happened
At the beginning of this month, he rolled over from his stomach to his back. But he has yet to repeat this. I've heard this is normal, but I'm not sure if I can really count him as being able to roll over. I already wrote it in his baby book, so I guess I already did. :) I had to use the Orajel for the first time this month. No teeth popping in yet, but he bites hard on everything and is drooling nonstop. His hair is starting to come in and he even has a little bald spot now on the back of his head. He's doing great sitting up with limited support. With no support, he can sit for a little while without toppling over:
Feeding
I have fallen in love with nursing again! Ok, ok so I've always LOVED it. But he gets so excited about it now. He waits for me to lift my shirt and then opens his mouth real wide and dives in. Haha, adorable. He still gets easily distracted, but I guess I should just be glad we have no teeth yet. He's doing pretty well with cereal. He seems to be losing interest, so I started making his food this week! Mmmm, sweet potatoes:
Here's a short video of him eating cereal:

Poop
Now that he's eating cereal, he's a once-a-day pooper. Why oh why was I worried when he only pooped once a week? Yuck. I guess the only good thing is because it's more frequent, he doesn't require a bath every time he poops. :)

Sleep
Crying it out is going fabulously well! His first nap is still usually the roughest with him crying 5-45 minutes. But most of the other times, he cries 5-10 minutes, tops. He's taking 3-4 naps a day becuase while crying it out is giving me more time outside his bedroom, it hasn't helped him extend those 30 or 40 minute naps. Oh well. Bedtime is between 6 and 7pm and he's been getting up around 11 or 12, and then again around 4. He's up for the day around 6 or 7am. So much better than me getting up 8 times a night.

Me
Small victory for me. As of today, I'm officially .2 pounds BELOW my pre-pregnancy weight! 40 pounds gone. Now, it definitely all looks a little different than it used to and from friends I've talked to, it never will. I have another 10 or so to get down to my wedding weight, but when I kicked up my exercising, my milk supply went down a bit, so I'll hold off on worrying about those pounds for awhile. It just feels great to be back in all my clothes!

A few more pictures of month 5:
Look at me grow:his first Halloween (my adorable Bamm Bamm)
As my auntie Jenna put it, I'm still working on smiling for my pictures:
really mom?

pomegranate

I love these fruit. They of course don't fit into my weekly budget for groceries, but every once in awhile I splurge and get a couple. But I had yet to find a way to get all those berries out without swearing getting the red juice everywhere. And that stuff stains. So I was searching around online and found some written directions, of course now which I can't find. So I made a picture tutorial for those of you who love this fruit.

Step 1: Gather supplies - a large bowl of water, a knife, strainer, and your pomegranate.
Step 2: Cut off about a 1/2 inch of the top. I do all my cutting underwater. This prevents any spraying of the red juice. Then cut slits around the fruit, about an inch apart.
Step 3: Again, underwater, pull one of those sections off and using your hands, pull off the red berries. The berries sink, all the other stuff including the outside rind will float and you can just skim it off.
Your water will turn pinky/red as you go.
Step 4: Then, skim off of all big pieces, and then strain your berries.
Step 5: throw them in a fruit salad, garnish a holiday dish, make a million other recipes, or leave them in the bowl with a spoon and finish them in the same day like I do. Yum!

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming

Sorry for the bad blogging week. VLI midterms just about did me in. But I think I pulled off an A on one and a B on the other. Not to shabby. Add in sleep training and this is how I've been getting along. Nothing some Pandora, knitting, and assorted chocolates can't handle. :)
Thanks for everyone who's checked in to see how sleep training is going. All I can say is why did I wait this long?! I already feel so much freedom. I had no idea how much time I was spending in his bedroom fighting him on going to sleep. I won't bore you with the details on my sleep logs, but I will say that Tuesday night, he went to bed at 6:30, got up at 12, 4, and then 6:30 for the day. 2 wakings! Down from 8. I feel like a new woman. Not every night has been that great, and I'm still trying to figure out when to feed him and when to make him go back to sleep. Because I KNOW he can make it for longer than 3-4 hours. But I'm just following Julie's advice and feeding him if my boobs hurt and making him cry if they don't. :) His first morning nap is always the roughest and has cried for up to 1 hour, 15 minutes, but most of the time, he cries for maybe 5-10 minutes and then rolls over for sleep. Seeing the instant success has kept me going when he gears up for a fight.

I'm so happy to be seeing this on my monitor more and more:

crying it out

I thought cry it out meant the baby was supposed to cry, not the momma. But alas, I must admit to crying some big ol' tears.

But let me back up.

I have always been pro-cry it out (CIO). I used it during my many years of babysitting and scoffed (yes, I've repented) at moms who said they just couldn't let their kids cry. Then I had Owen and ate every single one of those words. It's a different story when it's the baby you carried IN you for 9 (10) months that is screaming and when you know that you're the one thing that could calm them down quickly. And on my quest for sleep answers and reading the 20+ books I did, many of them talk about the major consequences of doing CIO, the main one being trust. Even in the book I really like, The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems, Hogg says that if you try CIO, you will have to go to extreme measures to earn the trust of your baby back. There is so much written out there (especially in the blog world) on both sides of this method. And most people are passionate about the side of the camp they fall in.

So what's a momma to do when her precious babe just isn't getting the sleep she knows he needs? She follows her mommy-gut. I was trying to explain this to a mommy-to-be at her shower this weekend. Mommy-gut is that stuff you somehow just KNOW when you have a baby. It comes from being the one person that knows your baby the best. And I'm hoping my mommy-gut also comes a lot from the Holy Spirit since he's way smarter about all this than I am. Every momma has a different mommy-gut. And not one single mom's is better than another. That's why we all raise our kids differently and find that some things that work for others don't work at all for us or our little ones.

So to get to my point, I felt that Owen was just ready to do this. He's exhausted and so am I. So I looked around me at some families who I know have done CIO. They have happy, well-adjusted children who adore them and from what I can tell, trust them completely. So this past week, I've asked a bunch of questions, gotten some great advice, and decided to jump in. Last night you could find me curled up outside his door, with my video monitor and my phone being used as a timer, crying right along with my little guy. And the 2nd round of sleep training begins. . .