Since becoming a mom (7 weeks ago!), I’ve rearranged a lot of things in my daily schedule to make them work with the baby’s schedule. I know exactly what time I need to get in the shower if I want to be dressed before she needs a bottle. I know what times of the day she’s happiest and will sit in the bouncy seat so I can do dishes and fold laundry. I also know when she’ll nap the best if I want to lay down and sneak in a nap for myself too.
The one thing I can’t seem to figure out is when I can sit down at a computer long enough to blog. It’s hard! Blogging in general is hard. I don’t think non-blogger’s realize that. It takes a lot of time to upload pictures (first to your computer and then to your blog’s website) and then to write somewhat coherent thoughts to go along with them. Of course, if you edit your photos you’ve got to work that in too. And don’t even get me started about the days when, right as you finish a long post, the whole thing magically disappears into thin air and you have to start over. Those are the days I want to quit.
BUT. I like having a blog. I like having things documented. I like sharing things that we’re doing and I love hearing from you guys! So, even though there are times when it’s incredibly hard, for now I will continue to try to find time to blog…even if it means there’s a week or more between posts. Eventually I’ll find the right place for blogging in my schedule.
All that said, today I’m writing in the car. Yep. We’re headed back to Florida to try to redo our beach trip. This time, my dad is traveling with me and mom (and the baby). Doc will hop on a plane and meet us there tomorrow (he will also have a work meeting or two so yay for work buying his plane tickets!). Dad is driving and Mom and Henry (the dog) got shotgun which leaves me hanging out in the back with Katie-bug. No place I’d rather be. :) It hit me about three days ago that I’d have at least 8 hours straight in the car without having to drive or keep the driver awake…nothing to do but sit here. Ahhh…glorious! Obviously I don’t have internet access (although I hear some new cars do??!) so I’m typing in Word for now.
And without further ado, let me play catch up from the last two or so weeks. This post may be all over the place and ridiculously long! Disclaimer: I’m not even going to bother editing any photos. I know I have eight hours but I’m feeling a little lazy.
Let’s rewind all the way back to October 21st when we finally got to meet this sweet snuggle bunny.
Thad Everett Cook was born on October 15th and is quite the handsome little fella. Remember when I helped shower him and his mom here? We took Katie Wynn over to meet her future boyfriend one Sunday afternoon after church, and were lucky enough to get to visit with some of our other friends too. Sarah (and her husband Charlie and son Gus) also got to meet Katie for the first time.
Katie felt so comfortable with Sarah that she snuggled right up and fell asleep.
I was not surprised at all when Doc immediately settled in with Everett. He loves babies!
Everett has the softest blond (dare I say strawberry blond?) hair ever! I could just pet his little head all day long. :)
I had not gotten to see Gus since before Easter. I couldn’t believe how much bigger he was! And handsome, too. I think he looks a lot like his daddy.
The last time I saw Gus, I cradled him in my arms and he fell right to sleep. Now, he’s a busy, busy boy! Way too busy for me and my camera.
See? Even Chris couldn’t keep him still. He wanted out of those arms…there were stairs to climb and places to explore!
The Earls were also there to see all the babies. Katie took a nap on Jenny too – she was spoiled that day!
Before we all left and went our separate ways, we took a picture of the moms and their babies. My, how things have changed! Apparently the three of us as moms is pretty hilarious.
The next weekend, we were lucky enough to get to see the Cooks and the Earls again. This time, it was to celebrate Allison’s birthday. Being born on October 30th, she’s almost a Halloween baby. I made festive cupcakes for us to have after dinner. They’re mummies…you know, cause we’re both mummies now. Har.
I took the most random pictures from this night. Like, for instance, Jenny putting salad on her plate.
I was a teribble hostesses and completely forgot to get candles for Allison’s birthday cupcakes. We’ll blame it on the baby brain. She was a good sport and blew out a match…even though we also forgot to sing the birthday song. D’oh!
Darrin had the magic touch that night. Not only did baby Everett sack out on him, but Lolli did too.
The weekend of Allison’s birthday dinner was also the weekend that my parents kept my niece, Bren, and nephew, Jett, while my brother and his wife were out of town. Bren came over to my house Friday afternoon and helped me make the mummy cupcakes. After washing our hands, there was a very strict rule that we could not dip our little fingers into the cake batter for a taste test. There was also a rule that if we went into the living room to check on baby Katie while she was napping that we were just to look and not touch her. So, to recap, there were two rules: no fingers in the chocolate and no touching the baby. After popping the cupcakes into the oven, I went in to check on Katie and saw that her gown had quite a bit of chocolate all over it. Some temptations are just too hard for a 4-year-old to resist.
We had our big kids that weekend too so my parents brought Bren and Jett over for dinner Saturday night. The kids all play so well together. Here are Bren and Anna watching tv in the living room (after we’d started clearing it out to get ready for the new floors).
I wish I had a cute picture of the boys too but they were up in the bonus room playing on the wii and watching the Notre Dame game. They tend to hide from me and my camera!
Besides hanging out with Anna, Bren’s favorite activity of the weekend was getting to hold baby Katie.
Speaking of baby Katie, how cute is she after her bath?!
And also all dressed up for church and wearing her bonnet?
She has been sleeping in just plain onesies at night because all of her pajamas were way too big. I recently discovered that these polo footed jammies fit her and now I think they might be my very favorite thing to see her in. My goodness, I could just eat her up!
One afternoon she fell asleep on my mom’s chest and I couldn’t resist snapping a pic or two of that sweet, peaceful face.
The day before we were scheduled to leave for Florida (round one) was the day of our church’s Trunk or Treat. I had signed up to have my trunk there so I had to quickly come up with some way to decorate my car. It’s not required, but a lot of people also have a game or something for the kids to do when they trick-or-treat at their car – things like a bean bag toss or tennis ball throwing or basketball shooting, etc. I wanted to have some kind of activity, but I also knew I didn’t want to spend the whole time chasing balls across the parking lot like those other idiots trunk owners.
After doing some brainstorming, Mom and I spent the afternoon making this: a six-eyed monster who likes to eat eyeballs.
We cut a hole in his belly and the trick-or-treaters had to reach in and dig through his guts (spaghetti noodles) to find an eyeball (grapes) in order to get a piece of candy. Kinda fun, right? Some kids loved it and thought it was soooo gross and cool. Some kids cheated and peeked inside and got an eyeball off the top. Some kids cried and didn’t do it at all. And some kids – these are the ones that I dreaded – reached both hands in and pulled out as much of the guts as they could possibly hold and then turned to me with this look on their face like “what am I supposed to do with it?” and before I knew it, I’d have a pile of slimy spaghetti noodles in my hands. That’s when all the ball chasers looked over at me like, “ha – who’s the idiot now?”
The next day is when Mom and I loaded Katie Wynn into the car and hit the road for Florida. She was a champ in the car! We ended up only having two days there since we cut the trip short. When I found out we’d be leaving early, I panicked that we wouldn’t have time to take her to the beach for a photoshoot I had been planning, so I put her swimsuit on her at the beach house. I had never even tried it on her and had to at least see how it looked!
It fit perfectly and she was so, so cute in it. Not sure if you can tell in the pic but it kinda bubbles out at the waist. So presh. I think we still have a bit of growing room in the hat though…
The next day was Halloween so I dressed her up in her cute Janie and Jack pumpkin clothes that Doc’s mom gave her.
We strolled around the town of Rosemary and stopped in a little restaurant for lunch.
It was so nice outside that day. We rested on a park bench and had a mini photoshoot after a diaper change. I love my little pumpkin!
So about this beach photoshoot…ever since we planned the beach trip I had envisioned the cutest picture of her in a sand bucket on the beach with the ocean behind her. So cute, right? Only problem was that she was too big to fit in any of the sand pails we had! Boo. Mom found a cute navy and white striped towel so I thought I could somehow arrange her on it with the ocean behind her and get an equally as cute picture.
Katie thought that was the dumbest idea ever.
I will say that it was incredibly windy down by the ocean. Between having her in a swimsuit out in the wind and the pumpkin pictures, I’ve probably secured my spot in the running for Worst Mom of the Year.
I spent a lot of time telling her about how the beach is really fun and one day she’ll love running around on it and that not all kids get to go on beach vacations so she should be thankful to be there. I think she really understood my message.
Still not totally convinced that she should be thankful to be there…
I was really bummed that I wasn’t getting any cute shots of her on the beach. I had had really high hopes. We had also brought a little beach chair with us in case the towel didn’t work out, but the wind was so strong by the water that every time I set the chair up, it got blown over. Mom had a good idea to take it up on the dune behind the beach chair rental place so that we could sit in the shade and have the wind blocked. Katie-bug was pretty mad by that point so I sat with her for a few minutes to calm her down.
We eventually propped her up in the corner of the chair and tried to get some pictures. Poor thing kept sliding down in the seat so Mom had to kinda help hold her up. This is about the best we could get.
I guess we could try the photoshoot again on this trip, but it just hit me that my camera is still sitting on the kitchen table back at home. Hmmm.
I had my first little scare last week about a rash that was on her head and face. I quickly called the doctor and made an appointment to bring her in. The doctor kinda looked at me like I was crazy and told me she just has cradle cap. How was I supposed to know that cradle cap could be a rash and that it wasn’t just a flaky scalp?! I think I should get a little bit of credit for it taking over 6 weeks before my first call to the doctor’s office.
The good thing about me taking her in is that we got to do a weigh in. My little girl tipped the scales at a whopping ten pounds even! She’s packing on the pounds. :)The funny thing is that at six weeks old, she still hadn’t made it up to her daddy’s birth weight yet!
Katie does an awesome job of holding her head up - I think she’s pretty much held it up since day one – so last week I set her in her bumbo seat for a few minutes. I think she’s still probably way too small for it and a little too bobble-head-ish, but she seemed to enjoy it for the little amount of time she was in it. I can’t wait until she can sit in it more often.
Phew! I told you this was going to be long and all over the place! My word document is officially 14 pages long. Geez. I do have pictures of a huge project I just finished to share with you, but I’ll do those in a different post. Right now it’s time for a nap. :)
