Pics (Showing off the blue fuzzibunz today!)

Happy Baby!


As Evelyn used to tell us - a bird would poop on that lip if it stayed stuck out like that!


ENOUGH Already MOM!


And...helping with the laundry again!


Laura still isn't feeling 100% better yet, but her sneezes are less frequent and she doesn't sound as congested anymore. Still in the mornings and evenings, but much less during the day.

Laura and I are headed to Delta Lake for the weekend. Haven retreat...but this year I'm not on the books to work, just visit.

2 more weeks until I go back to work :(

Nursing in Public

It is legal in NYS (as well as many other states) to breastfeed in public - The law specifically states "a mother may breast feed her baby in any location, public or private, where the mother is otherwise authorized to be". Now, some people choose to cover up while they're doing this - others chose not to cover up.

I have a coverup - but we're still learning how to use it. I still need 2 hands to feed Laura with and she swats at the cover so most of the time we're uncovered even if we're trying to stay covered.

Where am I going with this, you ask?

I found the perfect solution to nursing in public if we're at the mall... use the dressing rooms! Laura and I went to do a little shopping today and we left home at 10:30 and didn't get home until almost 5pm. We were able to take a feeding and diaper change break at both Target and Sears by utilizing thier changing rooms :) SO much easier than trying to cover up while sitting in the food court or going to the car to feed her!

Laundry is boring!

Well, I'm sorry to say that I bore my baby girl. She was wide awake when I brought her downstairs with me to fold the laundry - and not half way through the load she was OUT!



***Don't worry, I was standing within arms reach all the time she was on the dryer - even when I took the picture

2 days later and...

Daddy and mommy are both sick too. Blah!
Richie started to feel yucky yesterday morning and I started to get a sore throat overnight last night.

Hope this doesn't put a damper on our weekend plans...Laura and I are supposed to go to Delta Lake for a couple of days!

She's still sneezy and congested. Still no fever and acting normal. Yesterday she was back to her normal sleep pattern, so maybe she's feeling a little better than she did Sunday. AND... I had her in bed 20 minutes before her normal bedtime! YAY! Wonder if that was just a fluke though... She was in bed and asleep at 9:40. :)

First cold :(

Our baby girl is sick :( She woke up at 2am on Saturday night with terrible nasal congestion. We started the humidifier up in her room. She's been sleepy and sneezy - lots of yuck. No fever. And when she's awake, she's still got her normal happy times. She slept almost all day yesterday and then was asleep from 4:15pm-10:30pm with only one small feeding at 6:30pm. Awake and fussy from 10:30-12:50 last night, but then had a good night. Awake at 3-3:20 to eat. Then awake at 7 to eat. Stayed up for an hour and then tried to nap - she couldn't breathe well lying down...


so I propped her while I was right there with her.


Toby is making sure the humidifier is working okay!


Hopefully she'll kick this in a couple days and be back to feeling better. Richie and I just feel so helpless and so wish we could take all her uncomfortable sickness away...

Laura's first Thanksgiving!

What can I say... Halloween she posed with a pumpkin - so do you expect anything less than a turkey picture for this holiday???


We spent the day with Richie's side of the family at Aunt Jill's house. Everyone was taking turns holding Laura and I don't think she was set down once the whole time we were there. I took a bottle with us so that someone else could feed her while we were there and Stephanie was very quick to volunteer for that job! I found out that I have to pump more for a feeding though - we used to get by on 2 ounces, then 3...but on Thanksgiving, 3 wasn't enough! Maybe she just knew that you're supposed to eat a lot on Thanksgiving! I guess from now on I'll try to pump at least 4 ounces if I'm leaving her for a feeding.

I am so thankful for my happy little family :)

Cloth Butt!

Yep, nearly everyone thought we were crazy when I said we were going to use cloth diapers...but I'm here to say that we're doing it...and it's so easy! No nasty wet pail to deal with - we just toss all the dirties into the washer and they come out nice and fluffy clean :) What's a few extra loads of laundry each week? Nothin'! We're saving a bunch too - we've only bought 2 packages of disposable diapers ...we're using those on the overnights, but I imagine soon we'll start using cloth overnight too.

This diaper is just for looks - we didn't like how it fit, so I'm going to be selling it, but it looked cute for the pictures!





Caught her mid sneeze on this one!



And this is the diapers we're using mainly - the fuzzibunz. Even Richie is proud to say that he likes using the cloth diapers for Laura! She has pink, lavender, kelly green, bright blue, baby blue, sage, butter, and white dipes :)



Larua and I went and visited her daycare last week. We got there at naptime so everyone was asleep. That let Lynn hold Laura for a bit before the kids started to wake up. Once Laura starts, there will be 10 kids MWF and 9 kids T/Th. Then there are a couple of older kids who get off the bus in the afternoon who are like 11 years old. The next kid closest to Laura's age turns 1 next month - so there's quite a gap. Should give Lynn enough time to spend holding Laura if she needs to... since there aren't other really little ones who would need the same attention. We met Olivia - a 2 year old adopted from Guatemala, Braden - the 1 year old boy, Lana - almost 2, Lyndsey - 5 year old who should have gone to kindegarden this year!, and Gracie - a very talkative 3 year old, and Morgan - the 11 year old when she got off the bus... the other kids didn't wake up while we were there. We'll go back another day next week in the morning to meet them and see the play rooms. I showed Lynn and Jenna the cloth diapers and they were both really impressed! They'll have no problems using them :) Lynn said she takes out 5 full garbage bags of diapers to the curb each week! yuck!

Few other random bits...

Toby decided to curl up and snuggle with mommy and Laura -



We put Laura down on her play mat and she can kick the big ball, but doesn't really "get" the things above her yet - she certainly likes looking at the bright colors though! She is also getting so that she loves looking up at the colorful animals on the mobile abover her swing. That swing can keep her occupied for a good 15-20 minutes on a good day :)



Check out the smile I caught!

Catch up!

Whoops... got busy around here again!

Laura had her 2 month check up on November 14th (a day shy of 7 weeks old).
She's 10#6oz (gaining roughly an ounce a day) - this puts her in the 75thish percentile and she's 23 inches - in the 95thish precentile! She's gonna be tall! She got her shots - and I swear she screams longer and harder after her bath than she did for those. I was worried we'd have a rough evening because it'd make her fussy, but she slept all evening and only woke up to eat.

November 15th - Laura and I took our first trip together to Grandma and Grandpa's house! She did really well with the car ride again (like always). We met my mom at school so she could show off her grandbaby to her coworkers. Again, everyone commented on her amount of hair and her chubby cheeks :) We got pizza for dinner and then headed back to the house for a quick clothing change and then we were off to Delhi for Laura's second party in one week! The ladies from the church threw us a shower and it was very nice to see everyone and get to show Laura off :) She was a perfect angel - slept all evening. I think that was a combination of it being warm in the house and the background noise of everyone chattering. Lulled her right to sleep. We got some very nice gifts and I am working on the thank you notes this week!

Mom and dad's dogs were really good with Laura - they licked her ears, but they were gentle. Laura was even able to sleep through them barking and jumping up on Mom's lap!




I said it was her second party - the weekend before (Nov 11) we took Laura to Aunt Karen and Uncle Don's house and Laura got to meet a bunch of her extended family. Again, awesome time - lots of nice gifts - Laura now has a nice size collection of books. Richie is working on building a book shelf for her room now.

Here is Laura modeling the cute little sweater that Rachel made for her...


And here is just a cute slippery baby in the bathtub picture - because she's cute!

She smiles and coos!

This was yesterday afternoon ... finally caught a smile on camera!
Just this week, Laura has started to smile in response to her environment instead of just in her sleep from being full and content. She's getting so she'll sit and watch what's going on around her and not need to be held all the time when she's awake too. Yesterday I heard a little "coo" out of her a couple times, but this morning when I picked her up right after she woke up, she gave me a huge open mouth grin and a big "coo"... (No, I don't know what a "coo" actually is, but that's what all the baby books say she'll start doing right around now)...

She'd suck on her thumb if she didn't keep it tucked into her hand...

Ain't she cute!?! This was yesterday during tummy time. She does really well lifting her head up, but she only tolerates a few minutes at a time.


I thought this was cute - you know the little blister breastfed babies get from sucking? She finally has hers! ... Well, I say finally - it's been there for a few days, but I just managed to get a picture of it - and today it's gone already.

The most frequently asked question...

Is she a good sleeper?

Sometimes. She naps well during the day. We're figuring out how to calm her down at night... but lately she's been wanting to be awake for a couple hours between 2-6am! Ack! Usually it's a happy awake as long as someone is walking with her. I'll do that all day long, but at night - I'd prefer to sleep. Hopefully she'll figure out that during the day is wake time, and nights are for sleeping. Two nights ago she was pretty good - slept a great stretch (4 hours) in the beginning of the night and then woke for feedings, but decided to do cluster feedings (about 30-45 minutes apart) from 4am on. Last night, she ate at 8:45pm, in bed with not a lot of fussing by 10...slept until 2! Yay! But then she was awake until... 4:15. Just got her down, and at 4:45 she wanted to eat again! Luckily after I tucked her in that time, she slept until 8am... but hmmm... I try to keep her awake for 2 hour stretches at a time during the day, and I'm still making sure she eats every 2-3 hours during the day... She's got 6 weeks left with me home to get the night routine figured out.

Laura's first halloween...

First Laura had her appointment at the peds office. Met with Kit again... and Laura got to show off her amazing feeding skills that she learned this week! Had to get a picture with Kit to document this occasion! She was such a great resource for me, and a great support person who kept reassuring me that eventually Laura would get it... I believe that's a huge reason I was able to stick out 4.5 weeks of latch problems! Laura was 9 pounds 9.6 ounces. Still 22 inches long. Our next visit to the peds office will be in 2 weeks when she goes for her 2 month well baby visit. We'll see Dr. Snedeker. We saw him in the hospital and really liked him, so we'll stick with what we know!

On the way home we stopped and got pictures with pumpkins. Shhh...don't tell Laura that we didn't buy her her own pumpkin for her first halloween! ha ha ha!

Then we came home and dressed Laura up in her little nurse scrubs! Awe! (Thanks Aunt Dawn!) We took Laura across the street to meet two of the neighbors - then home for the night routine of rocking and shushing and sucking and eventually sleeping.

Funny Lookin'!

She started crossing her eyes a couple weeks ago... sometimes she only manages to get one crossed though...