Instagram Monday!

I love that my princess always has a book in her hands. She is just like her mommy that way :) Her favorite is reading in the tub. None of her other bath toys are anywhere near as cool as her bath books!

Paisley got to feel the baby's first outside kicks today. It was so exciting for me and she thought it was funny. She wasn't really sure what was going on but it made her giggle. :) With all of this baby excitement going on we've been playing with baby dolls alot. She loves feeding her baby...and sometimes herself ;)

What does a stay at home mom do all day??

As a newbie mom I'm always looking for things to do with my 1 year old that are fun, age appropriate, and educational. Sometimes we fall into a rut where I'll just let her play with her usual toys but on our creative days we have a lot of fun together! So if you're stuck in a rut like I often get, here's our top 10 of activities we enjoy. :)

Top 10 Activities for children ages 9 months - 1 year

Dance Party

Shaving cream ( we put shaving cream on the wood floors and have a blast drawing in it)

Playing in her water table - (We are also getting ready to try different things other than water, such as corn starch, flour, and jello!)

Lego's- I build and she takes them apart :)

Drop In- I used an old coffee can and cut a slit in the lid so that she could drop in lids from her fruit pouches. She really enjoys this simple game!

Bubbles are always a hit
Coloring- I bought a simple scrapbook with the paper already in it and she colors with colored pencils or fat crayons
Cooking!- My little girl loves the kitchen! She loves to stir things so whenever I get the chance we are baking together. Yes its messy, but it's absolutely worth it! We also have a cabinet just for her in our kitchen and she gets to play with her own bowls and spoons and such while mommy does dishes.
Fabric Scrap Bin- I'm sure we all know how hard it is to fold laundry with a toddler in the house! You're folding while they unfold..well I made a little bin of my fabric scraps and let her play with them while I fold laundry. She's practicing folding while I'm actually getting something done!

Baby Obstacle Course- I sometimes set up a little obstacle course for the princess, it was really great when she was learning to crawl and stand up. I used diaper boxes, pillows,she would even try to crawl under our coffee table. It was fun for her and I had fun crawling around being silly with her :)

So..what are some of your favorite things to do with your toddlers?

Shh...I have a secret..

Wanna know???

Did you guess it?? Yes,we're expecting baby #2 in November!!

Baby leggings!

I LOVE baby leggings! They are so stinking cute but they can get pretty pricey. My favorite way to make them is super easy and super quick. I usually just go to the store and buy adult knee high socks-my daughter has always had chunky little legs so I've never had a problem with using these,even at 4 months old... :)

What I like about using the adult knee highs is that there are so many different patterns for pretty cheap, they usually have some for each holiday, and most of the work us dine for you! So, I take the socks and cut off the foot part at the ankle(you can make it shorter if your baby has short legs) and then I fold that under just barely and sew in a circle. That's it. Done. And for less than $5!

Dear Last Night..

Thank you!! You were perfect and exactly what I needed.
Love,
Me

Why? Oh just because my daughter finally slept a full 8 hours without waking up to eat!! When she did finally wake up this morning she cried for about 5 minutes then her daddy took her and got her back to sleep. And an hour and a half later she's STILL asleep on his chest! What should I do with this free time?? I think I'm going to go take a hot shower since I'm sick and then start on laundry and dishes if I have enough time. Eep!

"I can't keep up and I can't back down..."

This is my daughter..Gorgeous right? 10 months old Sunday and every bit mommy's shadow. I LOVE my daughter. She is smart,sweet,beautiful, and the light of my life. I adore her. But I've been staying home with her for 10 months and I'm slightly restless. You see, my daughter is clingy. She hates to be put down unless I'm right beside her, she sleeps in our bed-and only if I'm holding onto her, she doesn't even like going to her daddy if she wakes up at night...It's been rough. I'm getting a little worn down lately, it's hard never having alone time. It causes tension with my guy, a house that's a mess, and a frazzled me. I don't ever want to feel like that about my daughter...she is honestly the very best thing that's ever happened to me. So what do I do? I'm worried about trying to sleep train her for her crib because it's looking like it's going to be a huge crying adventure..and I hate to see my baby cry. I don't know how to make her more independent but still secure that mommy loves her and isn't leaving.

Valentine's Cards!

So I said before that February is a special month for my guy and I. We have our 3 year anniversary on the February 2 and of course Valentine's day is the 14th. I thought why not just make it a full two weeks of love? Starting Feb. 1st my love will be getting a present each day until Valentines day! Well..it's also my sweet baby girl's first Valentine's! I'm super excited to celebrate with both of my lovebugs so I decided to make a card for her daddy from Paisley!

These are a few of my absolute favorites from her mini shoot :)  I know that her daddy will treasure these forever. <3


(For the heart I just used the free Picasa editing software to write all of the different sayings. )

Where did the time go?

Yesterday my beautiful baby girl turned 9 months old! I can't even believe it! So we just moved into a new house and I've been decorating and being slightly sentimental about Paisley,and I found this in one of the boxes I unpacked!

I made this when she was about 3 months old. It was pretty simple to do, I just bought a shadowbox on sale at Hobby Lobby and put scrapbook paper on the back. Then I hot glued all of her hospital stuff in there. Her preemie onesie she came home in,the socks her aunt bought her,the little bow she wore home,and her hospital bracelet. I love having it hang on the wall beside her hospital picture.

This is Paisley at 3 months old with her coming home outfit! I love my little princess!

Refashioning Onesies!

When I found out I was pregnant with my sweet little girl I was given clothes from everyone that had a baby recently..some of them ended up being little boy onesies and I decided to hold onto them because I had a friend who was having a baby at the same time. Well we all ended up having girls so what was I supposed to do with these onesies? Well I needed to girly them up!
The first one I started with was a brown and white striped onesie that was pretty cute just not very girly. So I grabbed some brown polka dot ribbon and headed off to the sewing machine.

*warning: I don't know how to sew the "right" way..I kinda make it up as I go and hope it works*

So I made sure that the first ruffle was along the butt,right about where the leg holes start on the onesie. Then I started sewing,just a normal straight stitch. Every so often I would just hold the onesie in place while keeping my foot on the pedal so that the ribbon would gather. I sewed over the ends the ribbon and then went back over the top completely so that there were no more gaps. Then I sewed one more 1/4 inch under the top of the first. Super easy and only took me about 20 minutes!

What do you think?

Crib Chronicles:part 2

So we didn't make it to the crib but she did sleep on her own mattress beside our bed for a good 3-4 hours last night! Progress!!
Last night we went with my parents and sister to look at tons of Christmas lights and we had so much fun! The princess loved the lights, she was singing and bouncing the whole time :)
She is 8 months old now! I can't even believe it..time just seems to fly past us. My baby girl now says hey,hi,dada,yeah,blah blah blah,and waves bye bye. She can pull herself to standing and stay standing for 5 minutes.crawling is only in circles but we're getting there! She eats solids twice a day...she's just growing up so fast!
I'll be making her stocking stuffers today so I'll post on those later tonight!

The princess at 8 months

The Crib Chronicles:part 1

We finally moved into our new house last night!! It's going to be a fresh start for us and with that fresh start we thought the princess should start sleeping in her crib. From the time we found out about her I knew she would go straight to the crib when she was born, and the crib was the first purchase we made. We had decided no co-sleeping or bassinets or even the baby Moses. But the princess had other plans..the very first night in the hospital she wouldn't sleep in the bassinet for us. She would in the nursery but I wanted her in my room. But everytime we went to lay her down she would scream and scream and as exhausted as I was from giving birth,I held her in my arms all night while we slept in the bed. After that we tried the bassinet at home but she wouldn't stay and I couldn't get up at night to pick her up from the bassinet because of complications from her birth. So she stayed. We've tried a few times to get her sleeping on her own but no luck,even for naps. So new house, new start. At 9:30 I fed her and laid her down in the crib, 3 tries later she was still waking up and throwing a huge fit. 10:30 fiancé tries 4 times with no luck. We kept trying until midnight and got nowhere. So we decided we would bring in the crib mattress beside ours..she wasn't having it. After 3 hours of trying she ended up back on our bed. We are going to try again tonight and hope it goes better. I'm feeling pretty depressed about this whole thing. How do people do this without using cry it out??


How can you say no to this?

Baby girl&apos;s first ornament!

The tree is up! I am so beyond excited for baby girl's first Christmas :) We really wanted something special for her first ornament and we did alot of looking at stores but didn't really find what we wanted. We did get her an adorable picture frame ornament that says baby's first Christmas and we let her pick an ornament and she got a pink baby bottle but that just wasn't what I wanted. So we went to pick up some glass ornaments to put pictures in (more on that later) and I already had paint for another project so we decided to go for the handprint. Next to impossible with a very curious 8 month old! I'd recommend doing this one when baby is asleep ;) I put a little squirt of paint in her hand and she closed it and squished it everywhere of course. Then daddy held her while I let her grab the ornament. Voila! Instant cuteness and a great reminder of baby's first Christmas. I used a paint pen on the other side of the ornament to write her name and 2011 and then tied a sweet baby ribbon at the top. We left it to dry for about 30 minutes and then put it on the tree. While we were making one for our tree we also made up a few extras for her grandparents and aunts. We'll pair those with their other gifts for a cute present from the princess! Best part? I got everything half off so it only cost me about $5 to make all of the ornaments!

Crankasaurus Rex

Lately I am suffering from a serious lack of sleep that has absolutely nothing to with my little lovebug. I simply can't stop thinking. I wake up every hour and just lie in bed thinking about all sorts of random things. This has lead to a serious case of Crankasaurus Rex's. I yell at my poor sweet guy for no reason,can't stay awake during the day, cry randomly...you name it,I almost feel like the crazy Prego again!
On to a cuter subject though, the princess is talking more, working on giggles, and getting ready to eat solids! I'm super excited. And she finally fits into 0-3 months! Life is pretty good :)

2 Months!!

Today my sweet little angel turned 2 months old! I can't believe she is already 2 months,it seems like I was still waddling around 9 months pregnant just the other day. She is already such a huge part of our lives though. I can't remember what our lives were like before her. I don't remember what it's like to go to bed when I want and sleep all night,or to carry a purse instead of a diaper bag. I can't remember getting dressed without making sure I can nurse in that outfit or a time when I wasn't constantly worried about my baby girl. In the last 2 months I have been pooped on,peed on,thrown up on,drooled on,spit up on,scratched,had my hair pulled and had blisters on my boobs from breastfeeding. I wouldn't trade it for the world though. I am the happiest I have ever been. And even though Ben and I have less alone time, I think we are closer than ever. I adore my little family.

More Milk Please!

Tonight I met my sweet baby's other half-the screamer. I have this angelic,calm baby..the kind that every parent hopes for. But tonight she decided to show me that she does indeed have a set of lungs on her. Along with that she decided to let me know that she like her meals served every half hour..needless to say,it's been a long night. I'm worried that I'm no longer producing enough for her to get full. Hopefully it's just because I've been feeling sick the last few days but I'm worried it might be because I started on the patch or maybe I just stopped producing as much :( Kinda freaking out because I don't want to use formula. I guess there isn't much we can do now except to wait and see if it gets better in the next few days.

No Sleep Til Brooklyn!!!!

...or something like that. Last night was one of the hardest nights i have had so far. I was already tired because I couldn't sleep the night before and then we had to get up early to head out of town. Paisley normally goes to sleep at 12 and she'll wake up 2-3 times a night and then get up at 10:30 a.m. Her schedule never really differs too much. However, last night she decided she wanted to party! I ended up staying up with her until 2 a.m. trying to get her to sleep. I let Ben sleep because he has to work all day and I didn't want him to be tired. So it was me and Paisley, and every time she would fall asleep she would realize it and start screaming! It was not fun. Finally got her to stay asleep and then she woke up around 4 or 5 screaming bloody murder. I was so asleep I was dreaming while trying to feed her and I couldn't get her to calm down enough to even eat. So I got a little snappy at Ben asking him to help me and he woke up and got her calmed down a little so she would eat. And now here we are at 7:30 a.m. doing the same thing. Obviously my daughter hates sleep. She fights it every chance she gets so it looks like mommy will be sporting the sleep deprived look for awhile :( Maybe we should start looking at a better bedtime routine...

6 weeks 6 days 6 hours and 16 minutes

That's how old my baby girl is as I sit down to right this. This time 7 weeks ago I had just gotten settles into the hospital,got my IV out in and started my induction. I was terrified and excited, I had no idea what I was going to do with this sweet baby. The next day when I was handed my 5 lbs 5 oz angel I had no idea why I was trusted with such a tiny,perfect person. I didn't know how I would be able to take care of her once I got home. Almost 7 weeks later I don't know what I did before her. Waking up every morning to her sweet little cooing and those big blue eyes is more than I could ever have dreamed of. The past 7 weeks have been incredible. I've been able to spend every minute with her just relaxing and bonding. On Wednesday I start work again though. I don't know how I'm going to do it. My job is just a part time 5 hours a day job but I can't imagine leaving her for 5 hours. Every time I think of it I tear up. I wish I was able to be a stay at home mom but right now it just isn't possible. I'm not sure how my first week back is going to go but at least Paisley will stay with her daddy most of the time and then my mom is going to watch her the last 2 hours of the day. I'm pretty excited that they will get the chance to bond with her as well.Her daddy is so good with her :) I love seeing them together and I know he is thrilled to be able to have some one on one daddy/daughter bonding time. I am incredibly blessed to have my amazing family!