Seriously? Titles suck 😉

I’ve been so insanely busy at work that I just haven’t had much time for outside stuff. We went camping this weekend and that was fun but it means that I was out of town 2 weekends in a row and now have a lot of catching up to do at home. It seems that I’m always playing catch up. Either at work, at home, or here! My grand plans of having this blog with 2 daily posts and I can’t even manage one a week. I’ve become one of those really annoying people who blogs about needing to blog.

With that said, I don’t know what to write. Well, I can give you some fun Lucy activity:

-She’s started scooting all around. No crawling but she is mobile!
-She started really babbling this weekend and says Da Da a lot. We don’t know if she knows that that is Shaun but we try to reinforce that Shaun=Da Da.
-She has about 4 teeth trying to poke through.
-She’s started eating chicken and black beans and now feeds herself finger foods!
-I’m going to get cauliflower for her to try this week-I still haven’t tried the coconut milk-maybe this weekend.
-Sleep is still a struggle but we’re working on it. Last night she went to sleep without my nipple in her mouth-baby steps right?!?!?!?

In fun Chelsea and Shaun news-our 4-year wedding anniversary is next week and we’re going out to dinner-just the 2 of us. The last time that happened was in February-I’d say it’s time, wouldn’t you?

I think Lucy has been reading my blog 😉 Ever since my last post she has been pretty close to her “old self”. She’s been happier at night and even lets Daddy play with her while Mommy is in the kitchen/laundry room/bathroom. She also slept 8 PM – 5:30 AM straight through last night!!! We think she’s been cold. It has gotten warmer here and so we had started to just put her in fleece footed pjs with no sleep sack. Well, Shaun though that maybe she wasn’t sleeping because she was cold and suggested the sleep sack last night. It may be a coincidence but she slept like her old self again-that sleep sack is going on tonight-that’s for sure!

We’re headed down to Monterey tomorrow night for the weekend. Shaun has a Mountain Bike race there on Saturday. He’s really been looking forward to this and has been training since January, so it should be a lot of fun.

Lucy gets new foods every Wednesday and Saturday. I can’t decide if she’s going to get black beans or coconut milk on Saturday. Since she can’t have any dairy, I thought the coconut milk would be a great source of fat but black beans would be a great source of protein. Hmmmm. You’d think this was rocket science-really, it’s just feeding a baby 🙂

Oh and this just cracked Shaun and me up. Someone in my 18-unit building posted this above the garbage chute on our floor:

Priceless.

WAS WRONG.

Lucy is going through separation anxiety plus trying to figure out all her emotions and learning how she can get what she wants without having a vocabulary.  It is kicking my butt.  What happened to my happy smiley baby? Sure she’s still happy and smiley alot of the time but she’s starting to throw tantrums and cry and not sleep.  It’s hard.  It’s really hard.  I guess I deserve it.  I had such an easy go of it and now it’s not so easy.  She’s also getting to be more fun-it’s weird.  Her little personality is emerging and we can play with her and know what makes her giggle and get her sense of humor but at the same time if we do something she doesn’t like (like take away the remote or my watch or the keyboard) she throws a tizzy fit.  We don’t give in but then there’s the sleep issue.  Sometimes she just doesn’t want to go to sleep and she’s screams and cries.  What do we do then?  I have never been a fan of the “cry it out” method but I was desperate the other night and tried it.  I let her cry for 5 minutes and then went in there to soothe her.  They tell you to not pick them up but to rather rub their backs and speak gently to them.  When she realized that I wasn’t going to pick her up she got PISSED and started wailing and then choking/gagging.  Of course I picked her up.  Oh and she doesn’t want Daddy through all of this.  If he tries to soothe her and rock her she flails her body, tries to hit him, and screams like someone is hurting her.  It’s exhausting. It took us 2 hours to get her down that night.

Last night she went down without a fight at 7:30 but then woke up at 9:30.  I nursed her and tried to put her back down but she did not want to go to sleep and started screaming.  I tried to soothe her for about 20 minutes but every time I would make a move to put her in the crib she’d start screaming.  Well, I was running on 3 hours of sleep and was tired so I brought her into bed with me and she slept on my chest (after screaming while laying on my chest for 15 minutes) until about midnight (I think?) At that point I put her in her crib.  She woke up at 5 to nurse and started fighting the crib again so I brought her into bed with me again.  Thus giving her exactly what she wanted BUT Mommy needs to sleep!

I know that this is a stage and that it will pass but it is just really hard.  Really, really hard.  I hope it passes quickly.

I have lots of exciting things to talk about!  But first I have to complain about ME.  Lucy woke up last night at 1:30 to eat (I think she must be growing because she ate A LOT yesterday) after I got her back down, I never went back to sleep. WTF?!?!?  That means I got maybe maybe 3 hours of sleep last night.  ARGH.  Oh well.

First I wanted to answer Monica’s question-I know I could have done it in the comments of my post that she commented  on but I’m too lazy so I’ll answer it here-I only keep track of how much milk I pump in my spreadsheet.  She only gets a bottle at daycare.  When we’re home she’s a boob feeder-thank GAWD!  I’ve only ever fed her a bottle once and it was because she was having trouble breathing and was biting me.  She much prefers the boob.

Next-fun stuff!

I planted my garden yesterday:

Tomatoes:

Cucumbers and Bell Peppers:

I should have veggies and tomatoes (aren’t they technically a fruit?) in about 60 days. WHIPPEE!!!

Second-We.Are.Going.To.Hawaii!!!!! WHIPPEE x2! My husband gave me a very good piece of advice about 2 years ago. When I wanted a baby BAD, I bugged and bugged and bugged him about it. He told me “If you stop talking about it, I’ll want a baby faster.” I didn’t say a word from that point on and what do you know? A month later he was ready for a baby. So I pulled the same tactic here and have not mentioned Hawaii for a week or so. Well last night he showed me a picture of a bike with a bike trailer for a kid (we’ve been looking into renting these locally) and he said “Doesn’t that look neat?” and I said “Yeah…we’ve been looking at those for a few days…” and he said “Yes, but this one is in Kauai!” I’m so excited-we’re going in September.

Third-Since we’re going to Hawaii in September we have to look at dates and Lucy’s birthday is in September (on the 22nd to be exact). I don’t want to be in Hawaii for her actual birthday since I’d like her to have a cupcake on her birthday and she’s allergic to both dairy and soy. Which means I’ll need to make her birthday cupcake for her and even though we’ll have a kitchen at the condo where we’re staying, making cupcakes would be difficult. I know a silly reason but a very valid one to me. Additionally, I want Lucy’s birthday party to be close to her birthday and if we went to Hawaii over her birthday that would cancel out the 2 weekends closest to her birthday. Which brings me to my point. You still with me? I’m an super planner person and so I’ve been thinking about Lucy’s first birthday party for quite some time. I’m not alone though because Shaun said to me 2 weeks ago, “wouldn’t the park be a perfect place for Lucy’s birthday party.” My thoughts exactly sir! Her party is going to be Very Hungry Caterpillar themed and then that theme will no longer be an option because I don’t want Lucy or myself to OD on it. I also want to do cupcakes for the party and thought that I would make them in the shape of the caterpillar. Well a foodie friend of mine (who has not heard my plans) just sent me a blogpost to show me this picture:

Other very cute cakes can be seen here.

I doubt I can do the fondant but this was very close to what I was imagining so now I have a blue print!

See? Those were 3 very exciting things!