Cara's First Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving this year was probably more exciting than past years. I mean last year was nice, because Mom was here and I was finally not sick anymore and we got to share our baby news, but this year is definitely top 3.

Our cute table setup :)

The decorations I put up this morning...
No joke, I was SUPER delayed this year

Mom didn't come out this year, which was a bummer, but since she had come out for my baby shower and for a little bit after Cara was born, it makes sense that she wanted to wait a little longer (plus the drive out from Mississippi this time of year is definitely not ideal) so that was the only bad part of November. We decided, though, to not let it get us down. We knew for our first holidays with Cara we wanted to stay home so that we could keep Cara on her regular schedule and not worry too much about where she'll be napping and moving her around too much. We decided to invite our closest siblings (for me it was Andy and Rachel, for Larry it was Skyler and Jena) to let them know we were doing a dinner and they were more than welcome to come. Lucky for us (we bought a 20 lb turkey before making any plans) they all agreed. I was excited to have Cara be exposed to so many people and have a few family members around in her element to help that socializing issue we've had, I think Larry was excited to see his brother haha.

Watching the Macy's Parade in the morning

Cara having a T-Giving nap

I LOVE cooking Thanksgiving dinner...I mean I make Larry do the turkey since I'm not a fan of taking all the insides out and he's SO good at washing it out and drying it off and all that stuff. Plus we got this new roaster that he wanted to test out, so it makes sense he'd do that while I worked on all the sides. I'm a huge believer in doing as much of it homemade as possible. We had the whole she-bang:

• Turkey
• Homemade mashed potatoes and gravy
• Stuffing
• Salad (w/tomatoes, croutons, parmesan, and Caesar dressing)
• Olives,
• Rolls
• Cheesecake
• Eggnog, Hot Cocoa, and a sprite lemonade drink mixture

We let those we invited know and said they are welcome to bring anything else they want. Andy & Rachel brought a green bean casserole; Skyler & Jena brought a really awesome veggie display and cranberry sauce. It was a great time with great people. We were going to Skype with Mom so that she could be part of it, but we ended up visiting so late that I didn't think she'd want to get on. It was so nice spending time with the family. Cara was pretty uneasy at first, she seems to cry when new people hold her, but then she warms up and is fine. Of course this was quite a few people and some very active kids, but after a while she loved everyone. She was smiley, she let Cailyn feed her dinner (for the most part), she kept smiling at Grayson (which was adorable), and by the time they were leaving Cara actually reached out for Jena to say goodbye. It was so sweet!

Everyone sitting and eating :) :)

Cailyn feeding Cara her dinner
(Since we all ate early)

Family picture, of course

I have to say for our first technically hosted Thanksgiving it went really well. We ate on time, the food was REALLY good, and everyone got along (no family holiday drama). I think we'll have to go out next year to people's homes though, just to make it even, but I definitely loved having it in our home this year. Especially for Cara's first one (she even got to try some of our foods and seemed to love them and get excited for more).

Anyways, hope everyone out there had a great Thanksgiving as well! Now we can start getting ready for Christmas (for those of us who haven't yet...definitely not me!).

And she scoots!

So Cara has always been a mover and a shaker type of baby. We would put her down and really before she could roll over or anything she'd be in a different position or a little to one side fairly quickly. This is why it took me so long to see that I think she might be ready for scooting. She had made little movements here and there, but only little ones and nothing that made me feel like I could officially call her a scooter...that was until this morning.

We were eating our Sunday breakfast and we put Cara on the table to see what she'd do and...




Look at that scoot! She does it on the carpet too, but it's just easier on the table for her. It's so adorable to see her so excited to get somewhere. And now that she's more mobile it's fun to see her go where she wants to and not just where we put her. Now I wonder how much longer we have until she crawls and starts walking...hopefully she lets us enjoy this scooting for a little while. Love our little miss Cara Rae!

New Baby Adventures: moving Cara into her own room!

Have you ever heard so many horror stories with something you were about to experience and it made you want to not go through it at all. Maybe by keeping things as they are it wouldn't be easy, but you weren't about to change it up and experience what others were warning you about. I mean you've gone this long with how it's been, why risk making it worse?

 

That was my thought process when it came to moving Cara into her own room. For one, everyone kept telling me she'd probably have a hard time sleeping in her own room after being in ours for 6 months (sorry, but SIDS scared the living daylights out of me and I wasn't about to move her to her room until I felt we were out of the scary zone). Plus I kept reading that other babies got so used to being in a bassinet or pack n play that moving them into something new would rock their world enough that they wouldn't sleep through the night. We had finally reached a point where Cara was sleeping through the night regularly. Did I really want to mess that up just so that I could get ready for bed without worrying about waking her up with the noise? Or what about how we'd tip toe into our room when we were going to go to bed and I'd freak out if we made any noise that would wake her up. It was stressful, sure, but once we laid in bed things were great and we'd all sleep really well. Not to mention: what if the owlet went off when she was in her room. 99% of the time it was a false alarm with us (there was only 1 time where I think it might have been a legit alarm), but to run into her room and being so much further away didn't make me feel better. Plus I had ever intention of closing her bedroom door so that the cats didn't wake her up and we could continue watching TV or doing stuff downstairs without waking her up (her room faces the loft-like overhang into our living room) so to me I viewed that as one more obstacle if something went wrong.

All that aside, I knew I was getting more ready when I wasn't sleeping very well because she was moving around so much at night that it was waking me up (I thought she was waking up) and each morning with a yawn I'd tell Larry "tonight is the night, we're moving her tonight". Then once I got home from work I'd be used to my exhaustion and become a sentimental fool and say "no, we can't move her tonight, I'm going to miss her too much". I think by the eighth time of me doing this Larry just knew to not really believe "tonight is the night" anymore. Finally one day I said "okay, at 6 moths old, she'll be ready, I just need to rip off the band aid and get past the first week and I'm sure I'll be fine!". First week, ha! After the first night I was sold!

Having the video monitor
Makes it SO much easier :)

We spent the week before her 6 month mark spending nights (after dinner, but before bed) in her room (she'd play on the floor and we'd just kind of watch her) so that she'd be used to the room and it wouldn't seem so strange to her. We would lay her in her crib for a couple minutes so it wouldn't be SO foreign to her and then we'd go get her ready for bed in our room and put her down. That first night we moved her I made sure we kept the same bed time routine (it was nice it just happened to be on a day with shots and we didn't let her take her evening nap so that she'd be super worn out) and put her down. We had a habit of brushing our teeth before we turned on the monitor so that we didn't go back in right away and let her adjust to it. By the time we had turned it on, she was already passed out. She slept SO well that first night. The owlet did go off once, but I turned it off on my phone, checked her on the video monitor (she was fine), and we fell back asleep. I decided the owlet wasn't worth it anymore (she was too mobile and I think she was knocking the sensor off) so we put her down without it the next night and...she still slept like a champ. I thought we might have gotten lucky the first night with the shots and no nap, but she was still doing so great. I was in heaven...or as close to is as I could think of. I had a baby who moved seamlessly into her own crib/room, I could finally get ready for bed without worrying about waking her up, and I had my side of the room back in peace and quiet! It was pure bliss. We're now to a week mark and I don't think I could be happier. No, I don't wish we had moved her into her room sooner, I waited till I was ready and felt she was ready, and now that we don't have the owlet waking us up we all sleep so much better. Plus Cara is good at putting herself back to sleep if she wakes up so we really don't ever have to go in there.

Raising our hands in celebration (or baby stretches) that
She transitioned to her room so easily!

I'm pretty sure I have the easiest baby on the planet and for that I'm so very thankful. Lets hope all the rest of our kids are just as easy...haha!

Freezer Meal Adventure

So since my new work schedule is starting up this week (I will work later in the day so I won't be home till we're usually eating) I decided it was time I should start something I've always been curious about...freezer meals. I've read so much about this and know a bunch of people who tend to do it right before a baby is born so that they don't have to worry about throwing meals together with a new baby in the house, which honestly I didn't think to do until it was too late so I didn't get to try it (luckily it worked out for us).

I have wanted to try freezer meals since I like meal planning and having things ready to go and this seemed like the ultimate way to have that done, but for a long time. Plus, this way, all Larry had to do was take things out of the freezer to thaw out, maybe pop it in to the oven for a bit, and voila! Dinner is done. I spent a good portion of October researching what was needed (Are there only certain meals that work for freezer meals? How long do they last? What's the best way to start?). Turns out this really isn't as hard as I thought.

I have been wanting to organize our recipes for a while now so this was a great time. I first sorted them into category (i.e. breakfast, lunch, dinner, desserts, snacks, etc.), then by main ingredient (beef/turkey, chicken/pork, no meat) and then I wrote down the days of the month and essentially did a month long meal plan (rather than a week or two). Knowing each one should last us three days and that Thanksgiving and Date Nights were still in the mix we only needed 8 recipes (Can you believe it? Eight for a whole month? Easy peasy!). Since I wanted to see if we could cancel out some of the recipes in our stash (maybe two were just too similar and we only needed one. Maybe one just didn't have enough flavor) I figured I'd take a couple from each "main ingredient" stack to mix it up and help with getting rid of any.

After grocery shopping (which we've decided in the future should be a click list order rather than going to the store ourselves) our ingredients looked a little like this:

Luckily we have two skillets and crock pots and almost two of every pot in a set so it was nice to use one, wash it out, then while it was drying I'd use the second one.

**A side note for me, I can't eat leftover cubed or whole chicken. One time I was cooking chicken (cubed) and apparently one single piece didn't actually get cooked so when I ate it I could taste how raw it was immediately (it was COMPLETELY pink on the inside) and ever since then when I eat reheated chicken (even from restaurants) it tastes raw and I'm unable to eat it without wanting to throw up. So I can only have shredded chicken. That kind of complicates some things as I have to mess with chicken recipes to make it work with shredded chicken, but it's also nice because I just cook chicken in water (or chicken broth) in the crock pot all day, shred it at the end of the day and then throw it into the rest of the ingredients for the recipe and it kind of turns into a casserole type dish.**

**Another side note for me, I used to hate casseroles. I just hated the word. I hated what people threw into them. They were just plain YUCK! Then I actually tried one and loved the idea of mixing a bunch of yummy things together and cooking it, probably with some cheese on top. Now they are my favorite things to make and eat!**

Cooking only took a couple hours and then I just put things into containers, labeled them with what they were and how they needed to be reheated (add 1C of mozzarella cheese, cook at 350 for 20 minutes...that sort of thing) and packed them away. Like I said, easy peasy! I'm hopeful that they don't taste like reheated dinners, but we'll find out this next month. So far I'm loving the convenience. Sure I have to spend a whole Sunday doing laundry, cooking, dishes, and tidying up the house, but if it means dinners will be ready when I'm home and we can actually sit down as a family to eat (yes, I'm old school in actually wanting that), then it's totally worth one busy Sunday per month to accomplish this!

One thing I didn't realize is that old school shows (like Home Improvement or even Leave It to Beaver, I think, for example) show freezer meals packed away when the mom's have to leave and I never realized those were freezer meals. They were labeled the same way I did mine and I never put two and two together. I also never realized how much those mom's did to stock their fridge like that for their husband and children...and not once did they get a thank you. I don't think they even understood what it took, luckily Larry saw how much I was cooking and all the prep work I did so he got it. The only negative to him was he had to smell all the yummy meals that he had to wait to eat haha.

Anyways, maybe I'll do an update next month to say how well these worked out and if I'd recommend doing them again. Until then...bon appetite!

Cara is SIX Months!!

I am SIX months old!

I like: Trying new foods, making mommy laugh, playing "roller coaster", music/dancing/singing (seriously LOVES this!), selfie mode on a camera (she really loves looking at any baby), being a part of things with mom and dad (she wants to sit up and come along with us...even if she has to roll there), reading time (she giggles at every book in front of her), rolling all around the house (now that she figured out rolling from tummy to back again), and sleeping on her belly and face (which makes mommy very anxious!).

Marks from sleeping on her face...
But she's obviously still happy

 I dislike: Poopy diapers, being hungry or tired, laying down when I want to sit up so bad, being held like a baby (though to be honest, this has been her dislike for a few months now), being hungry around loud new places (she will lose her crap if that's the case), and the dr's office (she knows it by the paper on the table now haha)

Not ALL foods are winners

I am now: 14lbs 10.5 oz (with a wet diaper) and 26 inches long according to the dr appointment we had today. She is in mostly 6 months clothes, but she does fit into some 3-6 month ones still. We're still putting her in size 2 diapers, but she's starting to blow out of those and ruin onesies so we might be upgrading soon.

A Typical Day looks like: She is waking up between 7:15 and 7:45 now and gets her first bottle at 8. She'll usually be up 2-3 hours before needing a nap. If her nap is a short one (usually half an hour) she'll only last closer to the 2 hour mark. If her nap is longer (about 1 hr to 1.5 hours) she can make it 3 hours. If she's fussy we'll let her take a mini nap between 5 and 6, but some nights she skips it and is fine (so she usually gets 2 - 3 naps a day).

We give her bottles every 3.5 hours throughout the day (last one around 3). Then we feed her a jar of baby food at 6 and a last "top off" bottle around 7. We start her bedtime routine around 7:45 and she's out by 8. She sleeps throughout the night, but does tend to wake up to babble a little bit around 2 or 3 AM. She is good at self soothing and putting herself to sleep though (which I'm very happy about).

This Month I: Became a pro at rolling over and turning around - can't leave this girl alone for even a second or she'll be 5 feet away from where you left her. She is starting to get up on her knees so I think crawling or scooting will be right around the corner. We also started practice sitting up on her own (I'm actually a little embarrassed I hadn't started this one before) and she seems to like that.

We also started giving her more solids (little tastes of what we're eating for dinner or breakfast usually) and she's getting VERY interested in foods now (opening her mouth anytime food is nearby, even if it's not for her haha). She even likes to hold the spoon when we feed her. She did try some foods she didn't like (spinach zucchini & peas was a bad one) and a lot that she did like (hello carrots or any fruit heavy foods), but overall she's eaten everything we've given her and she seems to look forward to times she gets to try something other than her bottle formula haha.

Cara is having issues with strangers and strange homes so we're going to be working on having babysitters. As much as I hate the idea of leaving her (she is my responsibility after all and I feel guilty for the person watching her), I know she needs to be used to other people rather than us. She even got to the point of hyperventilating at a birthday party and we need to get her over this issue.

Parent's Notes: Cara has been really hilarious this month! We realized she liked when I (mom) sang the tune of her piano activity mat so I started singing other songs and saw she smiled at that. One night I was bored so I put music on and started dancing and singing around her and she LOVED it. So now when we have down time I start to do that to entertain her. Every now and then she wants to be part of it and I'll pick her up and dance with her and she just laughs and laughs.

She's a giggle monster for sure and we love finding new things that make her laugh and/or smile. I'm so happy she's a smiley girl for the most part. Her Dr did note she will be popping out some teeth on the bottom soon (based on how the ridge of her gums is looking) so we get to look forward to that (I'm loading up on some children's Tylenol this weekend to be prepared for a fussy baby) and we are moving her to her room tonight so hopefully she does well with that.

Having her around is seriously the best and we're having so much fun playing with her. Since she goes to bed so early that gives us time to do what we need to and unwind each day so we feel we have a really good balance of parent/couple/personal time each day.

 

 

 

Update on last month's goals:

• We did watch the Halloween movies and even squeezed some others in (Beetlejuice, Corpse Bride, Hocus Pocus, etc.) and she liked those. We carved a pumpkin with her and let her feel the guts...she did not like that (she had a very concerned look on her face like she didn't like messes haha). We also let her gnaw on the top of the pumpkin (the inside portion after it was cut off) and she seemed to be intrigued by that haha.. She hated not being part of the trick or treaters, but it was fun to stay in and have her help us hand out candy. It was a GREAT start of the holidays for us.
• She definitely doesn't spit out food anymore (unless she's showing off her new fart noise skill while eating or if she doesn't really like the food). She loves to eat and try new foods all the time.
• We got our costumes picked out (she was a bee so I dressed up as a flower and Larry was a bee keeper). It was such a fun change to what I feel are normal first costumes.
• We've been good at having Football games on, but she tends to have her big nap during a chunk of them so she doesn't get to see them a lot, but I'm still glad we get to have them on and she gets to see parts of them still.
• Signing is still a work in progress. I still haven't found the bath one (I haven't looked), but we started doing cat and sleep more. She seems to like when we sign to her as she smiles when she sees us do it.
• Cara is a rolling machine, she is a pro at it now haha. Also, one night I was feeding her tiny shredded bits of chicken and she seemed to see those all right so I think she's good at that part now. Sitting up is still being worked on (she can sit by herself for a second and even corrects herself if she starts to lean, but if she sees a toy she falls over for it and she still face plants sometimes).
• 6 month appointment was scheduled and done on her actual 6 month mark so we're good there.

Goals for next month:

• Work on sitting up on her own and crawling.
• Introduce her to Thanksgiving themed foods, movies, etc. And we can creep some Christmas in there as well :)
• Keep up with the baby signs (I'd like to add grandma and papa along with bath to the routine).
• Work (hopefully not too hard) on getting her used to being in her own room
• Definitely get her trying more foods, hopefully we can start on some puffs soon, depending on how quickly her teeth show up. I'm in no rush to introduce choking hazards to her though haha.
• Work on having babysitters come visit so she can get used to being without us. We want to work up to leaving her at a house if we need so I've been sending out texts to people to see who wants to help us with this issue.