Shhhh....

Do you hear that?  
I do.  It's the sound of a baby sleeping, which is no crying!
We decided to try the dreaded CIO (cry it out, as known on message boards) two Sundays ago.  
My darling baby girl started playing me at night.  She'd fall asleep in my arms but wake up the moment I put her in the crib and cry.  So I'd pick her up, rock her to sleep, and then put her in her crib.  And then she'd cry.  Lather, rinse, repeat.
Nothing is harder than hearing your precious cry alone in her crib.  But I realized that that rocking a high school, or college, student to sleep each night is ridic.
I felt like a total jerk leaving her in her crib to cry.  I would plan each night to get all kinds of cleaning done at night while she put herself to sleep, and it took about a week for her to learn to get to sleep without freaking the eff out.  My house should have been spotless.
But hearing her cry for an hour would bring on a sort of attention deficit disorder where I would start projects but not finish them because I just wanted to drop everything and pick her up and snuggle her.
It wasn't until a week in that I realized her third nap of the day was probably what was keeping her from falling asleep on her own.  She just wasn't tired enough to go to sleep.
Once I dropped the third nap, it was like a switch was hit and she'd cry for a second when I put her down and then she'd fall asleep.
Naptime is the next beast we have to conquer.  I will admit this freely:  I still hold my seven-month-old during every nap during the day.  A lot of times we nap together, and it's something I look forward to.
But we agreed that in May we would try to get her to independently nap.  We gave it a go in March, but crying twice a day for an hour made her a different baby.
Hopefully it goes well.  Stay tuned!

She loves Cartman!  I couldn't get both of them to not be blurry. 

 

My little lady lately

We seem to have fallen into a daily/weekly routine around here lately, which is good!  Bedtime continues to be a challenge, but Lucy is slowly learning to get to sleep on her own at night.  Next up is working on napping solo during the day.  Which I'm looking forward to, because as it's getting warmer out, she's become a little heat generator.
She's been getting two solid meals a day, either oatmeal and a fruit/veg or yogurt and a fruit/veg.  I've been making most of her fruit and veggie purees, with the exception of carrots, which I buy in those fun little pouches.  I guess the carrots you buy in the produce section can have high levels of nitrates, which is okay for adults but not for babies.

Broccoli puree.

 So far she's eaten peas, sweet potato, apple, pear, avocado, banana, zucchini, yellow squash, potato, green beans and broccoli.  
Green beans and broccoli haven't gone over too well, I think they might be a little too chunky for her liking.
Everything else has been a hit though.  
She doesn't seem to have any interest in feeding herself, though.  I've tried given her diced banana, avocado and puffs.  She's either more interested in the plate they're one or smooshing them all over the place.
She love love loves eating frozen cherries in the mesh fresh food feeder.  They are messy as hell, but she loves it.

She's also gone pro with the whole sitting thing.  She still falls over on occasion, which makes me nervous, but I guess falling over is part of learning.  She doesn't usually care when she falls, unless she falls onto a toy.

 

 

Vacaville

I am so on the ball with this blogging thing.  Not!  (That was supposed to sound like Borat.)
Not this Sunday, but last Sunday, we drove to Vacaville to visit my grandparents, a.k.a. my mom's parents.
Andy had two weeks off and funnily enough that Sunday was his last day off.  Vacaville is only about an hour away, so I suppose we could visit more often but as always, life gets in the way.  You would think since I'm not working, we'd go down there more often but I'm not brave enough to drive down solo with Lucy.
She did pretty good on the drive down, but that's probably because I sat in the back seat.
It was nice to catch up with my grandparents and for them to see Lucy.  They are getting up there in age, in their early eighties, which makes me sad.

I hope that they are around long enough for Lucy to have memories of them.  
We went to lunch at the diner they like to have coffee at after church on Sundays.

 My uncle Mark and his wife Lynda live across the street from the diner, so they joined us for lunch.  We went back over to my grandparents house after lunch, but we didn't last very long over there because someone was cranky!!  Plus we had to get home to Brody and Cartman (who I like to refer to as Biscuits and Gravy.)

 Home relaxing with her doggy!

It's going so fast...

Our little girl is getting so big.  *sniff*
We've graduated from babywearing to this:

 Today was her first time riding in the grocery cart basket, which went pretty smoothly until the end.  But I chalk that up to being tired after a super short nap and then Mother Goose on the Loose at the library.

Waiting for Mother Goose on the Loose to start : )

She started melting down towards the end of our grocery shopping trip.  I pulled out my shopping list, and she was very intrigued by the paper.  She ended up getting a hold of it (maybe I gave it to her?) and when I took it back, she freaked!!
I gave her a teething toy, which only kept the wrath at bay for a few minutes.  Then she got a hold of my keys.  I took those away, and it was tear city!  The worst was at checkout.  I was preoccupied with bagging and paying, and she was not happy.  But we went home and nursed, and all was good in the world again.
 While I'm sad about the last 6 1/2 months flying by, her age has definitely made life more fun.  It was only three months ago I was writing about having to lock ourselves in a dark bathroom with the sound of rain playing on our phones during Christmas gatherings.
Now we are able to visit other peoples homes and attend parties without melting down (much).
This weekend was our nephew Stephen's baptism, which included the actual baptism at Stephen's church and then a party at his family's home.
We did have to leave the room during the baptism because Lucy started to get fussy, but her diaper was wet so it wasn't fussy just for fussy sake.
The LDS church where the baptism took place was pretty big, and I couldn't remember which way we had come in.  So when I attempted to go out to the car for a diaper change (I was late and Andy and I drove separately, so I left the diaper bag in the car) we got locked out.  
I started to freak out, because I didn't have my phone on me.  It was in the church's refrigerator because I had dumped my phone and wallet in the bag carrying a salad we were going to be bringing over to Chris and Jenilyn's house for the party.  I know, random, right?
I walked around one side of the church thinking I could get to my car that way, but there was a padlocked gate in my way.
Luckily, by the time I got back to the door we had left out of, a very pregnant woman and her toddler were outside.  When she realized we were locked out, she recalled that a reception was being set up in the main hall so she knocked on the door and someone let us in.  Phew!!
 The baptism was over by then, and we headed to the Dumm casa in Rio Linda.
I had a great time visiting with Jenilyn's sister, Sharalee.  She has a daughter born the same week as Lucy, and it was great to talk about being new moms and all of the "fun" stuff that comes with it.
Lucy held up so well!!  She was held by a few different people and had no problem being in around so much activity.  She did start to get crizanky around 7 p.m., but that's to be expected because we're usually getting started on bed time around then.  
(I'd post pics from Saturday but I didn't take any.  Silly me!!)
Then yesterday, Andy had the day off, which was a bonus because he thought he had work that day at Starbucks.
We headed over to the Sprigg's house for dinner.  Patrick is Andy's friend from high school, and we've become close with his parents, as well.
We always end up having a great time with them, and they love seeing Lucy.

 And that's been life lately. : )

Sippy

At Lucy's six-month check-up, her doctor gave us the okay to give her water in a sippy cup.  She's really great at picking objects up (rattles, water bottles, the straw from my water cup, her own baby bottles) and bringing them to her mouth, but she is still learning the concept of tipping the cup/bottle up so she can drink.  So we had some fun yesterday with a sippy. : )

The scrunch face is a new thing, I think it's super cute.

She was completely drenched and I don't think she actually drank any.

WAHM bam, thank you m'am

WAHM, in case your wondering, stands for Work At Home Mom.
To get you up to speed, I ended up not going back to work after my 12-weeks of maternity leave was up.  This little one occupies the majority of my day:

 Now that we're past the whole sleeping all day and eating all day phase, we've gotten into a pretty good groove.

Andy is now working two jobs to make up for me not working, and it's nice because this way we see each other way more than we would have if I'd gone back to work.

We were going to tag team it and one of us would be at work and the other home with Lucy, which thinking about it now was a crazy idea.

In order to bring in a little extra money, I've been freelancing for The Placer Herald.

I thought it would be super easy reporting and writing articles, because I'd just do all that stuff while she napped, right?

If I had been gifted with a child that napped anywhere with my arms, that would be the case.  Haha.

So now I make phone calls while she's playing in her exersaucer or the floor, and write stories at night.

She's even gone with me for two photo shoots and one interview.

The first photo was a little awkward.  Lucy was about four months old, and decided not to nap all day.  So in the Moby wrap she went, and though she got a little fussy while I was taking the photo, we got it done.

This past Friday, we went to interview a 62-year-old Japanese woman, Takako, who has been living in Rocklin and studying at Sierra College for the past year.  Lucy was asleep when we got there, so I wheeled her into the lady's home and there she slept for most of the interview.  She was pretty happy when she woke up and sat in my lap for the rest of the interview.

It got a little hairy, because Takako's host lady needed privacy downstairs to do some counseling, so we went to my interviewees room and Lucy was not happy.  Takako offered to hold Lucy, but that didn't last too long because Lucy gets squirrely if someone new is holding her.

It was a lot less stressful than I thought it would be since Lucy is pretty well-behaved and happy, and just went with the flow.

We visited Sierra College today in order to take a photo of Takako at lunch.  Since Lucy didn't get much of a morning nap, she fell asleep in the car again, so I put her in the stroller (much like Friday) and wheeled her to the cafeteria.  She stayed asleep the whole time while I was taking the photo and interviewing Takako's classmates.

Working at home hasn't been too bad, but I'm definitely doing less than I was when working sans child.  At The News Messenger, I was doing about 8 to 10 stories a week, and now it's one story every week or two weeks.

One story every two weeks is about all I'm comfortable with at the moment.  Any more than that and I feel like I'm not spending good quality time with Lucy because I get stressed with more than that.

It's funny how your life changes with a kid, that's for sure!!

 

20 Weeks!

Life is never boring with this one, that's for sure.

Some of our favorite things at 20 weeks:

• Waking mommy up at 4 a.m. and then again around 6 a.m. or 7 a.m, ready for the day to begin.  Mommy needs to learn to go to bed earlier, but hey, it's so much fun messing around on Pinterest/Regretsy/Facebook and/or doing housework after bed time.
• Getting kisses from Cartman and being sniffed by Brody.
• Blowing raspberries and "talking" to us
• Being handed a rattle or her new favorite ball and thrashing/shaking it around.
• Chillin' in her Bumbo seat (mommy got a tray for it at the suggestion of her doctor and playing with toys is so much more fun now).
• Chewing on her hands and drooling!!  
• Drooling on the back of daddy's head when on his shoulders.  He's always amazed how quickly he gets doused.

• Trying to catch water during bath time as I pour it from a cup.

She's still shy with new people and doesn't handle being in loud groups very well.  Hopefully with a little more socializing that might change, but she might be shy, too.  And that's okay.