Thursday, December 29, 2011

Pregnancy Update

So, I have done an awful job of doing weekly updates or even taking weekly pictures. Poor Olivia is going to have "middle child syndrome"...well, hopefully she's the middle child ;) I promise I'm just as excited this time around, but I'm also busier (with chasing around a toddler and all that jazz!) I am making it a New Year's Resolution to begin keeping up with things better from here to the end!

Oh, and It's a GIRL! (in case I haven't mentioned it yet) YAY!!

I'll do a weekly "update" soon (those are my intentions anyway), but for now here are some comparisons between my two pregnancies.

Same:
*Both times I've had to shave my legs less. Score!

*My face is less oily both times.

*Weird and vivid dreams were my first signs of pregnancy both times. I'm still having very vivid dreams that wake me up.


Different:
*With Sophia I had horrible all day sickness. I only "got sick" a handful of times, but I had to keep crackers & Ginger Ale and a toothbrush & toothpaste with me at all times until I was around 15 weeks. With Olivia I felt "off" for several weeks but only "got sick" once.

*I had "better hair" with Sophia. No difference with Olivia

*With Sophia I had really bad acne along my chin line for the 1st tri. None at all this time around.

*I felt Olivia at 15 weeks. I didn't really feel Sophia well until around 20+ weeks. I had an anterior placenta with S that cushioned her movement so that's partly why. I have a posterior placenta this time & I could/can feel things much better this time around.

*I got really strong & pretty fingernails with Sophia...no difference this time around.

*My gag reflex is softer this time around. I gag nearly every time I have to take my meds (which is everyday) and it sucks.


There were definitely more differences so everyone thought it was a boy. I knew she was a girl ;)

Thursday, December 1, 2011

17 Months

Uhm, I have an almost 1.5 year old?! Say what?! I cannot believe how fast this time has flown by!! I haven't been keeping up with this blog very well...and I really need to get a step on my weekly pregnancy updates. I'm already mistreating baby #2! I'll get that soon, I promise!

Sophia, at 17 months you:

*weigh approximately 21ish pounds

*wear 12 months on bottoms, 12 or 18 months on top & your pjs are 18 months

*are STILL in a size 3 diaper

*wear a size 4 shoe

*sleep from 7:30 pm to 7:00 am. Daddy and I take turns putting you to bed; which consists of getting hugs, kisses, laying you down with "mammy", you sticking your feet up in the air until we tell you "put your feet down silly girl!", covering you up, and you going to sleep all by yourself. Thank you!! We are so thankful you are such a good sleeper!

*have had a vocabulary explosion! I wouldn't have the time to type out all the words you say, but some of the cutest are:
"____, are you?" when looking for someone, "elmo go?" when wanting to watch Elmo, "gobble gob" when seeing a turkey for Thanksgiving decorations, "HO ho" when seeing a Santa, "noooo" while flicking a finger around (this is already not so cute ;),

*love to eat green beans, fish sticks, mandarin oranges, nilla wafers...and that's about all your diet consists of =) We need to work on your picky-ness!

*are trying to put your "gocks" and "sooos" on all by yourself, but not very successfully

*like to "pound it" (aka give knuckles), even the dogs and cats get to "pound it" several times a day

*say "baby" while pointing to my belly....sometimes you point to my chest instead. lol You try to say "Olivia" but it sounds more like "lilibaya" or something like that

*love Minnie, Elmo, America's Funniest Home Videos, and just about any commercial that comes on

*pat people on the back when giving hugs...sweetest thing ever!

*make everyone's day much brighter when they are around you. You are such a joy and I'm so blessed to be your mommy!

<~Painting your feet for Halloween ghosts


<~~Mommy's little duck



<~~Your first pig tails!

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Oops! It's been awhile!

Well, it appears that I have neglected this blog! I figured I should get on here and do a 15 month update...only to realize I didn't do a 14 month update and my child is actually 16 months now! Where does time go?! So, here is a quick recap of the past couple of months.

*We are busy, busy, busy!

*I am going "back to school" with online courses....so that takes up a lot of my time right now. I work, play with Sophia, and do homework once she's in bed. It's exhausting!

*Sophia is going to be a BIG SISTER! Baby #2 will be here the beginning of April. We are over the moon excited and so blessed that everything has gone so smoothly this pregnancy.


*Sophia is now 16 months old! At her 15 month appointment she finally weighed 20.0 pounds and is 29 3/4" tall. She is in the 10th percentile for weight and 25th percentile for height. She started out higher in both percentiles, but she's slowing down quite a bit. Guess she's going to be petite. = )

*She is quite the chatterbox! Some words she says:
mama, mom-mee, dada, dad-dee, mimi, gigi, papa, poppy, baby, Lily, Ty, Cot-i (for Ducati), kitty, Izzy, doggy, nany (banana), ba(bath), nigh-nigh, mambie (lambie~her lovey), money (lol), potty, done, gone, bite, iide (outside), byeee, button (belly button), sewww(shoe), ooooh gosh!

*She knows some animal sounds:
kitty = mmmow, sheep=baaaa, cow=mmmmmm, doggy=yuf yuf, duck=Quack!!, monkey= ooh ooh, lion/tiger/bear=rawr, and elephant

*She can be a good eater or a picky eater...just depends on the day. She loves her some fruit, though!

*She goes to bed at 7:30. We start to wind down around 7:00 by reading books or playing with minimal noise/stimulation and then we lay her in her crib at 7:30. She puts herself right to sleep! Thank you, sweet girl!

I'm sure I'm missing a thing or two, but this is all that comes to mind at the moment. I worked on a final all day today and my brain is fried. I'll add more if I think about it later. = )
~Having fun at a picnic


~What a difference a year makes!

~Fun at the pumpkin patch
Sweet girl all worn out

Monday, July 25, 2011

13 Months

Well, my baby isn't a baby anymore! She's officially a toddler and it makes my heart swell! I debated for awhile on whether or not to continue w/the monthly updates & pictures and I decided to go ahead w/it. Mainly because, well, I don't have much else to blog about! Really, though, I began this blog as a way to document the journey to motherhood & I'd like to continue keeping a "journal" that documents our life. This is also like a baby book for Sophia...she has a baby book on her book shelf, but I always forget to write in it!

This month Sophia:

*weighs 18.7 pounds

*wears 12mo onsies, 6-9 mo shorts/skirts, 9-12mo shirts, size 3 shoes & a size 3 diaper

*finally cut another tooth. She now has 3 teeth! ha!

*walks everywhere. No more crawling! She can stand up straight from the floor without pulling up. The only time she "crawls" is to get up or down a step. A funny: We have about a 1/2in difference in floor height from our kitchen to our living room (from pulling up carpet in living room) and Sophia insists on getting on her knees, turning around, and crawling backward "down" the drop off. It cracks us up that she thinks its a step down.

*talks. A lot. She jabbers all day long and will often give us the "what-for" She can spot a "quack" from a mile away & will quack until you see it, too! She knows what the: cat, dog, sheep, duck, & elephant "say." She has about 20 words in her vocabulary.

*still loves music & reading. She also loves to sit her little chair and read, snack, drink her sippy, watch tv, watch the kitties, just about anything. She loves that chair.

*is completely off the bottle. She gets a sippy of milk w/breakfast, lunch, & dinner. We often give her about a 1/2 sippy of milk about 45min before bed just to top her off.

*she became a very picky eater for about 3 weeks, but we are slowly getting over that hump. Some days she barely ate enough to keep a bird alive! The pedi says that is completely normal for children her age: they don't have much of an appetite & are slowly learning that they have opinions & want to express them.

*she has grown attached to her "Lambie" A little lamb lovey. She sleeps with him and cuddles him very tightly. It is so stinkin sweet!

<~~Workin' at the car wash! The car wash, yeah!

<~My water baby..playing w/her new water table

<~~Attempting to feed herself with a spoon. Not too shabby! ha!

<~Big enough to play at the play place at Chick-fil-A. She's growing so fast!

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Fun 4th!

Hope you all had a great 4th! We had a pretty good low-key weekend. We got up Saturday morning to do family pictures & Sophia wanted absolutely nothing to do with it! She whined & cried the entire time and only wanted mommy to hold her. When she would finally let me leave her, she wouldn't look near the camera & just wanted to play with the grass/leaves. I really really really wanted a good family picture, but that was not happening. She cried and buried her head in my shoulder & I was so sweaty and anxious/embarrassed/stressed that I think we only took like 1 picture and I'm sure it's a hot mess. She is NEVER like that. I mean, ever. She's cutting teeth so I guess that had something to do with it. I'm secretly (or perhaps not so secretly)hoping the photographer takes pity on us & lets us have a redo. ; )

After the picture fiasco, we went home for a nap and then took our big Wal.Mart trip. We are trying to go with a list & a plan more often...we find ourselves at the mart a little too often so we are trying to minimize our trips there. I've always used coupons to save a few dollars here & there, but I think I might try to get a little more bang for my buck and take the coupon thing a little more seriously. If you've got tips, I'd love to have them!

On Sunday, Jeff went to play golf with his parents while Sophia & I headed over to my sister's house to do an impromptu maternity shoot. I'm no pro, more like a mom-tographer, but I think she got what she wanted. Just some memories of being pregnant. Baby Karsyn should be making her appearance any day now! My older sister is also pregnant, so we will be having lots of little ones running around..fun times!




Jeff & I decided to be spontaneous and head to an afternoon movie (thankful his parents wanted to watch Sophia for us.) (We have so many people who love Sophia & want to babysit her, so we still get to go and do some stuff for just us. So thankful!) We went to see Transformers 3....it was pretty good. Long, but good.

For the 4th we hung around the house while Jeff grilled. We had grilled chicken, sausage, shells-n-cheese, garlic bread & s'more pie. It was heavenly! Sophia even got to have some s'more pie and she was a fan! After her nap, Sophia & I ran some errands showed off her cuteness for a bit. Luckily it wore her out so she took an extra nap, which worked out perfectly for going down to the river for the firework show. I was a little nervous about how she would react to the noise, but she LOVED it! She loves people watching & dancing, which she got to do plenty of both while we were there. She watched the fireworks for awhile, then decided to go from one person to the next to see if she could find someone who wouldn't make her keep looking up at the sky. haha! Her favorite thing was the glow-bracelet a sweet little girl sitting near us came over and gave to her. It was so sweet seeing the generosity of this little girl. It made Sophia's night! I hope Sophia grows up to have a sweet & giving heart like this little girl did. We got home around 10:45 and little miss was worn out! She was so good! I hope she still likes the fireworks next year!






<~My favorite fireworks = )

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Party time!

We had Sophia's birthday party on her actual birthday this year. I love that we were able to do that! Since she's just one and doesn't really have many "friends" we decided to keep it simple & just have family & close friends over for dinner & cake. The in-laws were gracious enough to let us use their house since 1)our house is not big (or nice!) enough, at.all. and 2)they have a pool that we could use for entertainment.

This was the first party I was actually 100% in charge of & that put a lot of weight on my shoulders. I like things to be 'perfect' and I have a vision in my head & I'm not happy until things look exactly like they do in my head...which can be a scary thing. At first the theme was Mick.ey Mouse but I decided that I wanted to do something a little more girly...and she will have plenty of years to fight me on a theme. It just so happened that a few months ago I was looking for new books for my classroom library & I was searching for "birthday books" and a certain book popped up. I saw it & knew I had to have it for Sophia's theme! It was Little Miss Birthday...remember Little Miss Sunshine?! It's by the same author. I used the theme loosely & mainly used the colors of the balloons. I decided to do the crafts myself since I had time due to summer break. I perused through Et.sy to get some ideas & I made my own version. I'm sure there were easier ways to do these things, but I got them done! I actually really enjoyed making everything myself & I saved a ton of moo-lah! I'm pretty proud of how everything turned out...nice & girly with a touch of fun!

<~The invitation picture...I made the onsie = )

<~The entry table w/smash cake photos, Little Miss Birthday book for guests to sign, & party favors

<~A variety of "Little Miss" characters

<~~Baby food jar favors filled w/skittles

<~cupcake toppers I made


<~My sweet family


<~The present area...I made the banners & tissue poms

<~ Timeline of Sophia's life...I used all the monthly pictures I've taken. It's amazing to see how she has changed over the year!

<~Waiting on cake! (With her ducks ; ) I made the highchair banner...it says "Little Miss Sophia is ONE!" like her invitations.


<~Ready to open presents! (With her ducks...lol)

Sophia had a great time & everything turned out perfectly! Thanks to our friends & family who shared this special day with us! We are so blessed to know that our child is loved so much!

Friday, June 24, 2011

12 months!

Sophia Faith is ONE! I cannot believe how quickly this year has gone by! Everyone said it would & boy were they right! Here's what Sophia is up to these days:

*Not sure on the weight...I'm guessing right around 20 pounds. I'll find out during her appt. Tuesday. **She weighs 18 lb 1 oz & is 29 1/4 in....that would be around 45th% for weight & 65th% for height. Her head was around the 70th%. She's petite with a big head! ha! No wonder her shirts are so hard to put on!

*She wears a 6-9 mo on the bottom & 9-12/12 mo on the top. My favorite thing on her on rompers...so cute for the summer!

*She still wears a size 3 diaper & size 2 shoe.

*She has recently transitioned from 4 bottles of formula a day to 2 sippy cups of whole milk & 1 bottle before bed. I was expecting this process to take awhile, but she made the switch effortlessly!

*She eats more solids than purees now. Her favorites are green beans (she INHALES them!), blueberry pancakes, cheese, peaches, turkey, cheerios, nutra-grain bars, & my pop tart crusts :)

*Still only 2 teeth!

*She is a walker roughly 87% of the time. She will crawl to an object, pull up, then walk to where she needs to go. Just recently she has been able to go from a squatting-to-standing position. She tries to stand up straight from the floor but has a hard time & gives up & goes to something to pull up on.

*She can tell you what the cat says (mmmyow), doggie says (ruf!), duck says (gaaaak), and what the sheep says (baaaa). She can say Mama, Dada, Byyyeee, mamen (amen), mmon (one), kihhy (kitty), tank to (thank you), and baby.

*Bedtime has moved to around 7:30 pm -7:00 am.

*She still LOVES her music, books, & she now has an obsession with ducks & cell phones. This girl loves talking on her phone.

*Her duck obsession is quite humorous. She wakes up saying "gaaaak", asks for a "guk" as soon as you pick her up from her crib, and carries around small rubber "guks" everywhere she goes. I'm serious, they go everywhere.


<~Playing in the creek with daddy


<~ 'lil diva at Aunt Debra's birthday party

<~ put me in, coach!


<~swimming with her "guks"

<~ she likes to clear off her toy shelf & sit inside to read

<~Ravioli, yum!

<~ such a big girl at story time at the library

<~Heelllloooo?

<~smash cake practice

<~Birthday party invite picture

<~12 months! Our last monthly picture! (I think)

Monday, May 30, 2011

11 Months

My sweet baby girl will be ONE next month! I'm in disbelief about how fast this time has gone. Here's what the Little Miss has been up to this past month:

*You weigh about 18 pounds

*You wear a size 3 diaper, 9 month onsies & dresses, 3-6 or 6-9 month shorts/skirts/etc, and a size 2 shoe. You are super petite.

*You still take 4 six ounce bottles a day. You eat baby food between bottles & love to snack. You are beginning to eat more table food. You love: blueberry pancakes, green beans, graham crackers, quesadillas, cheese, and some other stuff.

*You still have only 2 teeth. You have been working on 2 or 3 on top, but they are coming in very slowly. You have been a champ with teething, sweet girl!

*You had a double ear infection, but Aunt Sarah got you into the dr. on his day off & got you fixed right up! You love taking medicine, so that was no biggie ; )

*You aren't doing your grass-leg-thing much anymore. It was way cute while it lasted, though!

*You are cruising around all over the place. You get around by cruising from one piece of furniture to another. You will walk if you are holding on to someone's fingers, your walker toy, or anything object you can push around the room (toy totes, large toys, etc.) You are beginning to stand up for long periods of time if someone lets go of your hands. I think walking is right around the corner!

*You say: momma, dadda, kitty, amen, tank-to (thank you), baby, bye (with a drastic southern drawl ; ) and you talk non-stop in your own Sophia language. You often point at whatever you are talking about and we just pretend we know what you are saying = )

*Bedtime is still around 7:00 and you wake up around 6:00. You aren't going back to sleep after your morning bottle lately....I'm going to try to change that when school is out. I don't want to get up for the day at 6, okay?! Summer is for sleeping in!!

*The only entertainment you really need are books and music. You LOVE looking through your books & "reading" them to yourself. You point at the pictures, jabber nonstop, and give the animals on the pages kisses. You will also stop and dance anytime you hear music...on a commercial, a cell phone ringing, dance recital, anything!


<~~ Checking out what the Easter Bunny brought

<~~Not so sure about hard boiled eggs

<~~You have discovered your bows & don't like keeping them in your hair!

<~~ Too tired to finish eating!

<~~My first Mother's Day. I love my family!

<~~Being a big girl at Kacie/Karsyn's baby shower.

<~~Walking with Kayley

<~~Such a big girl in your new chair! (It's a birthday present, but I couldn't wait to let you use it!)

<~~You are the best thing that has ever happened to us! Your daddy and I love you SO MUCH!!!

Saturday, April 30, 2011

10 months

Sophia, you are now to the double digits! 12 months is coming way too fast! Here's what you are up to at 10 months:

*You weigh a little over 17 pounds.

*You wear a size 3 diaper and mostly 6-9 month clothes. The main three pairs of shorts you wear are a size 3 month! You are a petite girl!

*You still have 2 teeth. I don't see any more on their way just yet.

*You do this odd thing whenever you are playing in the grass: you sit with one of your legs in the air. I thought it was just a fluke, but you do it every single time! It's usually your left leg, but you've done the right leg, too. It's so cute!

*You are a super fast crawler. You have been pulling up on all the furniture and cruising down it. You are beginning to hold onto someone's hand/fingers and walk around. I found you standing in your crib, not holding onto anything, a few days after you turned 10 months.

*You LOVE to jabber. I think you just like to hear yourself "talk" and you can get pretty loud doing it!

*You are beginning to give "fives" in addition to all the other things you like to do: clap, wave, kiss, head-butt, blow kisses, dance, etc.

*You drink six 4 ounce bottles a day and eat baby food 3x a day. You also like to eat solids: blueberry pancakes, beans, rice, fruit, and whatever else we share from our plates.

*You still go to bed around 7:00/7:30, wake up at 6:00 to eat, and go back down until I wake you up at 7:00 to get dressed & leave for Ms. Cain's.

*You absolutely light up our lives! I cherish every moment I have with you and your daddy definitely adores you!

**Your friend Isabel was born April 21. She's a cutie! Congratulations Ashley & JT! I can't wait to snuggle her!

Now some pictures of my baby:
<~This is your "stinky face"

<~ I love going in your room and seeing you all snuggled up sleeping & watching you wake up

<~Those eyelashes and cheeks just about do me in!

<~The leg thing you do....

...again

<~Checking our your Easter gift from Memaw & Poppy. You loved the Peeps! (mean mommy only let you have half of one ;) This time your right leg is up...

...and now your left!


<~Finally using your highchair...we used the Bum.bo forever since you are so tiny. You love your highchair, though!

You got to dye Easter eggs

and you thought it was pretty neat!


<~ We had such a busy & fun day (the day before Easter seeing family, running errands, dying eggs, etc) that we forgot to take your monthly picture until bedtime! Oops!