We’ve had a really chill day and I don’t feel like we got anything done.  We went to breakfast this morning and then to our local toystore to get Lucy a light-up drum, ball, and teether.  She really doesn’t have many toys and Shaun decided she needed an interactive toy for sitting up.  She loves it:

We also did some shopping for us today.  Shaun got some much needed new shoes and I got the make-up that I’ve needed for over a week now.  It’s 6:30 and Lucy needs some dinner and then bed.  I plan to make green beans, peas, prunes, and blueberries tonight.

Here’s her daily picture:

Although this one is pretty cute:

This one too!

Can you tell I like the Eye-Fi?

We got the Eye-Fi installed last night.  It was doubtful for a bit whether it would work or not.  We got the card that has Geo-Tagging capabilities-Shaun really wanted this for his mountain biking pictures-and that card only comes in 4 GB.  Our camera shut down when the 4 GB card got put into it and we thought we were toast.  Then our camera said “Card Reader Error.” Well…dang.  Super techy husband to the rescue!  Shaun was able to find a firmware update for our camera that would allow it to take a 4 GB card.  He just saved the update to one of our other memory cards, stuck it in the camera and there you go-our camera now takes 4 GB cards!  Technology (and my husband) are cool!

Thus, I give you Lucy’s daily picture(s)!

Shaun thinks a daily picture is a great idea too so hopefully we can keep this up.

Last night I was walking home and this was parked in front of my house:

Sweet ride, eh?

Did anyone see The Office last night? Oh.My.God. It was ridiculously funny. Shaun and I laughed out loud at least 15 times. Between watching Survivor, The Office, and getting the Eye Fi all set up we didn’t get to bed until 11 last night-that’s late for this Mommy!

I had another nightmare filled night-boo.  If this doesn’t stop I’m going to schedule a visit with my therapist.  We’ll see how tonight goes.  I know that I’m really stressed at work and home life is crazy (just because taking care of Lucy and the house and my husband takes all my time) but I don’t feel like these two things should be causing these major anxiety dreams.

Speaking of home life being crazy, my awesome husband was super helpful this morning. Lucy woke up at 5:10 to eat and didn’t want to go back to sleep after I fed her. I brought her into bed with us to try and get her to fall back asleep and it worked for about 30 minutes but at 6 she wanted to be up.  Shaun got up with her and got her ready for the day.  He let me “sleep in” until 6:45.  He even got her bottles ready to go and put the bag on top of her “Daily Communication” paper that we have to fill out for daycare everyday.  He was then playing with her and had a little finger puppet on and the finger puppet was telling Lucy how she is lucky to have a Mommy that works so hard and does so much for her.  I’m getting all teary writing about it.  Seriously?  How sweet.  I really do have an awesome husband.  He knows just what to do to make me feel appreciated and loved.

The Weekend

It supposed to rain all weekend.  BOO.  I still need to go to Bare Essentials to get my make-up. That’s the one thing from my to do list for last weekend that didn’t get done since Lucy was sick.  Maybe I’ll go to the mall all by myself.  I think this will be a great weekend to finish our baby proofing.  She’s starting to get more and more mobile and inquisitive.  We need to change out the electric outlet covers and brace the furniture to the wall and then we’ll be done.

Yeah….Lucy was sitting in Shaun’s lap and pulled herself to a standing postion last night.  Before we know it, she’ll be doing that on EVERYTHING.

A Tutorial on Sterilizing

I sterilize so many things now that it seems like common sense how to sterilize. I remember though, frantically Googling how to sterilize when I had to do it the first time. I had so many questions-Do I wash it first? Will the plastic melt? How long do I do it?

When you become a Mom you become a sterilizer! I sterilize probably once a week-new bottles, toys, pump parts, baby cubes-the list could go on an on.

This past weekend I bought more bottles for Lucy. I used to “only” have 3 sets for daycare but the washing of her bottles gave me major anxiety (it was yet one more thing I had to do in my already jammed packed night) so Shaun told me to go buy enough for her to have all week. I was trying to save money but Shaun reminded me that my sanity was worth more than a few bottles. So now we are the proud owners of 20 bottles-it sounds (and is) wasteful but I figure I’m saving water resources by not washing bottles every few days-nice way to rationalize it, huh?

Anyway, onto the tutorial!

Sterilizing is a good thing to do with any new plastic product unless the package says “DO NOT BOIL”. You never know what the product touched before it got to you and babies basically put everything and anything into their mouths.

First take the product out of the packaging and disassemble it (Lucy’s bottles disassemble into 5 pieces-no wonder I hate washing them):

Get a big pot of water on the stove and boiling.

Next wash with soapy water and rinse-make sure to get all the soap off:

When your pot has come to a boil, put the plastic pieces into the pot-my bottle sterilizing this weekend took 2 batches-it wouldn’t all fit into one pot:

Bring it back to a boil. Set the timer to 5 minutes and start it:

Boil, baby, boil! No your plastic will not melt!

After 5 minutes, take everything out (I use metal tongs) and put on a clean towel to dry:

Voila! Sterilized plastic goods!

We didn’t get the Eye-Fi set up last night because I was dead tired.  Shaun went mountain biking after work and didn’t get home until 7:50.  That meant that I did the whole bedtime routine by myself which isn’t a big deal it’s just more difficult.  By the time I got dinner done and we had eaten it was 8:45 and I was ready for bed.  We were in bed by 9 and lights were out by 9:15 (get your minds out of the gutter-we were reading).  My little superstar sleeper slept until 6:15 this morning so I got 9 hours of sleep last night.  WOO and HOO!  Of course I had crazy stress dreams all night long but oh well, at least I got to sleep for 9 hours.

Even though the Eye-Fi did not get set up, I still took my first daily picture of Lucy with my phone.  She was so smiley this morning-see?

She’s started giving kisses on command!!! Last night I asked her to give Mommy a kiss and I got a big wet slobbery one. We played a game where I would kiss her and say “Mommy gives Lucy a kiss. Will Lucy give Mommy a kiss?” And then she’d kiss me and I’d say “OH THANK YOU!” and she’d crack up. We did that for about 10 minutes last night. I was covered in Lucy slobber and it was so worth it!

I had the realization last night that since I’ve been back to work (4 months now) I haven’t done anything for myself without Lucy. Breastmilk is such a precious resource that I never leave her with Daddy and a bottle. Plus I miss her so much while I work that I don’t want to leave her alone when I have the chance. But, I think I need to get over this and leave her with Daddy for a few hours one weekend. I do need some “me” time and the train ride to work, work, grocery shopping, and cooking don’t really count. Maybe I’ll take a babystep and go for a run this weekend all.by.myself. I do have an issue in that I don’t know what I’d go do. Sad, huh?

Time to start brainstorming.

Lucy was much better this morning and has been doing great at daycare today. Yay for that!

My Eye-Fi card was at work when I got in today-YIPEE!!! Now it won’t be such a pain to upload pictures.  I’m hoping to take a picture of Lucy everyday before daycare.  Who knows if that will happen.  Some days I’m so short on time that I don’t thing it will but it’s a good goal.

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be back on the blog in the morning, tutorial/informational post in the afternoon.  I have pictures that I need to upload about sterilizing bottles.  As I was taking the pictures I was thinking, “This is dumb-everyone knows how to do this” and then I remembered that I frantically googled how to do it when I had to do it the first time.  So, look for that soon!

Wow the last few days have been really difficult.  Lucy got the flu and it went from bad to worse.  Work is absolutely crazy right now and I couldn’t take a sick day so I spent yesterday at home with a coughing, congested, snotty, and PUKING Lucy while trying to get work done.  I did get it done but it was really difficult.  I felt like I was being a half good Mom and a half good Employee.  No good.  No good at all.

Lucy was better today and Shaun and I decided that she was okay to go to daycare.  She hadn’t had a temp since Sunday and hadn’t puked since noon on Monday. But when I got her to daycare and saw her next to healthy kids I realized how sick she still was.  She was better but being better from really sick still isn’t good.  It took me forever to leave daycare and when I did I just burst into tears.  I called Shaun and asked if he could come home during a meeting that I absolutely had to go to with no Lucy on my lap.  He said he could so I got off the freeway and went back to daycare to pick up Lucy.  I felt like such a BAD MOM leaving her there and I’m glad I was able to pick her up.

She was better today and I considered taking her back to daycare around 11 (all she needed was a really good nap) but Shaun took a 2 hour lunch and let me get work done and have my meeting.  This afternoon Lucy was like a whole new person-YAY!

Most of the time I’m really happy to be a working Mom.  The last 2 days? Not.At.All. I wish I could have just been Lucy’s Mommy and that’s it 🙁

I’m working from home and taking care of her and it doesn’t leave much time for anything extra.  I’ll be back when I have a healthy kid!

Little Lucy is sick 🙁  She has a pretty bad cough and had a fever of 101.4 this morning.  I gave  her Motrin and it’s down to 100-which isn’t considered a fever for a baby (100.3 and higher is considered a fever) but she’s still feeling pretty ooky.

Shaun is out mountain biking with his mountain bike boot camp-he’s an instructor and couldn’t really miss, nor would I want him to.  When he gets home, I’m going to run the errands on my list.

I have my grocery list all ready to go.  For those of you iPhone users, I use Groceries, to make my list.  I LOVE IT! I no longer need a pen and paper when I go to the grocery store.  All I need is my phone and wallet.  You can keep multiple lists for multiple stores on it-I’m going to Whole Foods and Trader Joes today.  And it allows you to add things that aren’t in their database really easily.  My only complaint is that it assumes that you buy the same stuff every week and it’s kind of a pain to clear off the list and start over-well it takes 2 additional steps.

On the menu this week?

-Chicken Tacos

-Stuffed Peppers

-Pork Loin with Leeks and Potatoes

-Bul Kogi-Korean BBQ meat from Traders-one of Shaun’s favorites!

Lucy’s giving me wet sloppy kisses on the cheek right now-it’s the cutest thing ever!  She woke up so I gotta go.  She loved the butternut squash by the way!

I try to make all of Lucy’s baby food. It’s really very easy to do and it ensures that I know exactly what is going into her food.

I want Lucy to try butternut squash this weekend so I decided to make some tonight and I took pictures of what I did.  When I bought the butternut squash it was a work night and I didn’t have time to bake a squash for an hour so I decided to get organic frozen squash from Whole Foods.  That night ended up being a bear so I didn’t get to make it. I would have preferred a fresh squash but this was really nice quality.

I followed the instructions on the bag for cooking it on the stovetop. I prefer not to microwave her food because you never know what those microwaves do!

I said to boil on the stove for 5-6 minutes. This is what it looked like going in:

As it boiled I got her baby cubes ready.

These are great for daycare because it only gets one container dirty and the lid is connected so they (and I) can’t lose it. I prefer the 2 ounce cubes because Lucy has taken to solids and eats A LOT. The one ounce cubes just don’t do it for her. Plus the lids don’t stay closed as well as the 2 ounce containers.

Back to the squash. This is what the squash looked like when it was done.

And into the Cuisenart it went:

I processed it:

Until it looked like this:

I spooned it into the Baby Cubes:

Make sure not to go past the max fill line because the lids will pop open in the freezer when the food expands.

I mark the tops of the cubes with an erasable marker so I know what’s in them.

(It was fun to write “BS”)

Then put them in their freezer trays:

And into the freezer they go with the other food:

The food is good in the freezer for up to 3 months-it doesn’t last that long in this household!

My days of sleeping in are over.  Babies internal clocks don’t understand the concept of sleeping in on the weekends.  Good thing I was in bed asleep by 10:15 last night.  No partying here-unless you consider drinking 1 hard cider partying.

Lucy woke up at 5:45 and I went in and fed her hoping that I could get her to go back down.  No dice.  I even tried putting her on my chest in bed with us-still no dice.  I got up to change her and come out here and pump/blog.  Yes I still have to pump on the weekends.  My freezer stash is down to 5 ounces.  I had it up 100 ounces and then my supply took a big hit and I wasn’t producing enough during the workday to replace what she was eating.  Add to that my out of town work trip without her and my freezer stash was completely depleted.  Yesterday was actually the first  day in a long time that I pumped enough at work to replace what she ate at daycare.  I usually have to throw one more pumping in there-either in the morning or evening.  I feel like my life is consumed by pumping but I also feel like it’s worth it.

I remember when “pump” used to refer to a class at the gym-not anymore!

Potty Training

This may be wishful thinking but we think Lucy may be easy to potty train. At almost every changing she either pees or poos or both with her diaper off.  It’s so prevelant that we have a washcloth on the changing table and as soon as her diaper comes off the wash cloth goes under her booty.  Today she decided to do both and her diaper was almost dry  from the night before.  Only time will tell!

To Do This Weekend

• Finish Cleaning
• Take Lucy to Swim Lessons
• Shop for the week
• Cook as much as I can for the week
• Make baby food
• Laundry
• Go to the Mall to pick up some replacement Bare Minerals
• Pump 2-3 more times 🙁
• Have some fun!