on the hunt

I've been spending a lot of time tweaking Alice's Wonderland. Since she's sleeping in that room now I'm in there a lot and I'm trying to make the whole wonderland theme a little more cohesive. I've been pruning away at things and it just takes time to make a room feel just the right amount of nod to the story without going overboard. I'm particularly proud of this little thing. The frame reminds me of wonderland and the picture in it I just took from an old Kate Spade calendar I had. I mean, get out of town, it's got black and white flowers and a playing card with an A on it. AN A FOR ALICE!

The other thing I really want for her are black Mary Jane shoes. Not only do I want her to wear them for Christmas but I want to have them on display in the room for like, always.

Once everything is finally tweaked I'll take some good pictures of it. Just a few more things...

she's moving out already?

I guess we were crummy roommates 'cause Miss Alice has decided she might be done with us and ready for her own space and has slept in her own room for the past two nights.
This is how I feel about it:
It was mostly a test to see if she would sleep better in her crib than the pack and play in our room and she did. What a surprise mom, the mattress you spent time researching is more comfortable than the makeshift crib you been sticking me in. I couldn't have done this a few months ago when she was waking up constantly to eat but she's been sleeping steadily from 11/12 to 6 for about a month now so I thought we'd give it a go and she adapted perfectly to it. She wakes up in the early morning for her breakfast without tears or screams, just noises. I come into her room and in the dark I see her smiling at me. She eats and goes right back to sleep 'til 9/10 when I'm awakened by her coos and babbles, not cries. She's been soothing herself to sleep on her own lately without use of a pacifier too so that helped. She is a magical baby, I dunno what I did to deserve her.
All we did was get a routine going and stuck to it. Michelle and I were talking about it and she said any number of routines or tricks work you just have to stick to it. Ours was we'd go into our room after being changed and into her PJs, sometimes let her lay there wiggling out her energy, top her off with milk, put her in her sleeping sack, put on the white noise machine, pacifier in her mouth and rock her to sleep with a lullaby. I'd read that its best during these times to not engage the baby in conversation and just keep it quiet and that is so true. I made the mistake of talking to her after a day where I missed her and that kept her up longer than usual. Babies need routine. They start putting it together that its bedtime and the routines become the comfort they need to sleep happily.

We never "trained" her to sleep all night like letting her cry it out. I know some people do that and that works for them and again, do what you gotta do. Alice's little personality just dictated what we did. I know some babies just wanna be held and cry 'til they are but she's been pretty basic needs/independent from the get go. Mostly cries for food, fusses when she needs a nap. When she was up at all hours I'd feed her and hold her, I couldn't let her cry for long. Thankfully she outgrew that and that's what allowed me to try the whole sleeping in her room thing.

I have heard about the 4 month sleep regression thing so we'll see what happens then. I may be singing a whole other tune then.

one of my fantasies

So you know how I have this strange obsession with campers and camping? I saw one recently that was such a great idea. A girl turned her little trailer into a traveling event space.

Maybe someday I'll buy a little trailer and convert it into something special. Someday...

momma's going back to work, a little bit

So I took a job after turning down work for the past few months. We'd always planned I'd take 3-4 months off when Alice was born but now it's almost the end of the year and we were wondering if we could financially swing my waiting to just go back to work starting in January. Co-workers were very respectful of my having had a baby and I didn't hear from people the first few weeks that Alice was born but after that I kept getting offers of "easy" jobs to jump back into. Yesterday I got an offer I couldn't refuse: three days in my old office starting Nov 10, wrapping a stage job (the for reals easy part). I mean, no brainer. It's also perfect because it's a short amount of time and we're using it as a trial if I'm ready to go back to work or if I need a little more time with ma baby.

It pumped me up thinking about getting dressed up and going to work to support my family. Along with the sadness of leaving the little tyke home, I was filled with an optimism of being a good role model for her, being a momma that makes money for the family.

Here we go. Mom going to work again. Let the great experiment begin!!

Have a great weekend gang! Work it!

what CAN i wear

Button-front shirts and dresses I guess?

Dressing yourself for quick and easy boob access ain't easy. No sirree.

it has come to my attention

That I get to dress a little girl for Christmas this year.













The holidays are gonna rock!

- mobile blog post. spelling irrelevant.

i'm so ahead of the trends i don't even realize it

The eventual kitchen remodel is still a few years away but right now I'm still really digging white subway tiles, open shelving, marble, white countertops, white upper cabinets, and dark grey lower cabinets, which are super on trend right now. I told Matt about the dark grey lower cabinets and he said, "Oh yeah like the island in our old kitchen." 

How could I be so daft? Yes, exactly. When we moved into the condo in 2009 I had the painter paint our island a really dark grey and loved it the whole time but completely forgot I'd done it until Matt reminded me. I even remember that I was deciding between a lighter grey and Matt told me to just go all in and not be afraid to go for the darkest swatch on the stick. It gave it such a nice contrast.

Remember this old place? None of it exists anymore. My in-laws stripped it bare and changed things up and it looks way better now. But there it is: proof that I was into dark grey cabinets way back when.

It's gonna be so fun to design my own kitchen someday. And by then, we'll see, I might be into something else completely.

holy crap month three

Alice is three months old and she decided to hit this month hard.
She's a lot more aware nowadays. Like she finds the cute baby in the mirror to be totally hilarious.
She's growing like crazy. If there were one thing I'd wish I'd understood earlier about babies it would be the concept of growth spurts where they're extra fussy and seem to be doing nothing but eating all day because I kept thinking something was wrong with her and I'd worry about my supply and if I was starving my baby. As long as she was peeing regularly, its the normal act of a baby being a baby and growing and needing more food than usual. She's had one recently where she was extra fussy and would eat, knock out, be up and happy for a few minutes, and repeat. This time though, I knew what it was and approached it with a lot more patience and zero tears. It's incredible what a difference it makes just having the right attitude. So things won't get done 'cause she wants to be held and fed, hold her and feed her. And grow she does. She's almost outgrown her 3 month PJs and even her baby toes and feet look chubbier to me.
She does the rolling thing now. When she's on her back, ploop, onto her belly. She's an ambiturner like Zoolander at the moment and hasn't figured out how to get back to her back. It happens quick so those glorious days of leaving her on the bed and knowing she won't roll off while you put on makeup are over. She does it at night too and I hear the frustrated grunts of my little stuck turtle. "Waa! I dunno how this happened!"
She's got way better neck control and pretends she's real people and will sit up with some pillow help and "watch TV" with us. She's also discovered her hands and sucks on them a lot and moves her fingers all dainty like and will kick things with her feet to watch them move. Cause and effect.
None of these things are revolutionary and they are what babies do but its just incredible to watch her learn to become a full on person.

- mobile blog post. spelling irrelevant.

the baby gear in our house (newborn to 3 mo)

On a typical day this is what our house looks like with Alice's baby stuff. I'm sure this will all change as she gets more mobile but this is where we are at the moment.

I keep the mombo (nursing pillow) in the living room so I can nurse her while we watch TV in the day. 

Depending on her mood, we'll pop her in the mamaroo so she can talk to the ceiling fan or lay her on the play mat so she can wiggle around and stare at the mobile. Sometimes if I catch her in time I can convince her to fall asleep in the mamaroo as it bounces. Most of the time we have to rock her for a few minutes and then do the scary transfer and hope she stays asleep.

Since it's been pretty hot lately we've gotten into the habit of bringing the car seat in so we can load her into it without worrying about it being too hot on her skin.

In addition to the coats and bags, we have her diaper bag here ready to go. I'm constantly stocking and re-stocking it. I overdo it on changes of clothes in it but you just never know with babies.

If I'm in the office I have the other bouncy chair in here. It has a mobile attachment that she can interact with and recently learned to kick it but she gets over it and once I remove it, she's back to chilling. If she's awake it's on the bouncy mode and can rock as she moves. If she falls asleep it's reclined so it doesn't move. This is the same chair she slept in when she was a newborn.

In our room we have the pack and play where she sleeps and my other nursing pillow for the night and early morning feedings. On the left in front of the bookcase you can see a little device that's the white noise machine we use for her in here. I was thinking it was becoming a placebo for us but I swear to you, when I'm holding her and she's drowsy and I turn the machine on, she closes her eyes. It's like she's programmed that whenever that turns on, it's sleep time.

On my nightstand I always have some sort of baby related book, a water bottle, and the breast pump. I wish I could move it or put it away but my supply keeps fluctuating depending on when she eats so if she's still asleep and I'm full I can take advantage and store some for the back to work stash.

In the kitchen we have the baby dryer where there's always a piece of the pump hanging out and the little vials that collect the milk. This is meant for her bottles as well and the little plastic container has the recently sterilized pacifiers ready to go.

On the other side is the bottle warmer for when I go back to work. I know we can easily just run a cold bottle under warm water to warm it up but this bottle warmer takes a lot less water to work the same way. It's all about conservation in this drought pals.

And in the guest bath hang her bathing tub...

and her towels. The bathrobe is just cute and for show for now. We don't actually bathe her in the bathroom, she's bathed in the kitchen sink in the puj. My back is a big fan of this scenario.

I didn't show her nursery because honestly, we are in there very rarely during the day. We do use it to change her, the occasional rocking in the glider, and some naps. I really should work on getting her to nap in there much more than she does so she can get used to the crib when we eventually transfer her to her own room in a few months when she's sleeping throughout the night for reals. 

Next week Matt's going to be gone all week during the day working and I'll see what it's like to be home alone with a baby for extended periods of time. Pray for me!

halloween time '14

The black & white Halloween time is back. Nothing revolutionary, same stuff that I've had for years.

The adding of the monster photos did finally give me the chance to change this little area that had been bugging me for awhile. When you walk into our home, there's this little command center that's also supposed to be a dumping ground for our in & out items like Matt's wallet, our sunglasses, a piggy bank for loose change, pens, etc. It just felt, I dunno, cluttered.

Predictably, I got a tray and put things in it and I was happy. I'm like "put a bird on it" but "put a tray under it".  There's a tray in pretty much every room in the house but so what, who cares.

A big part of the elimination of clutter was that darn pig. So now the change is in a small jar.

I made a runner out of the two spider placemats and I think I need some black taper candles.

I pretty much only have this little dining area to change things seasonally so we do what we can.

I love the fact that the candle isn't orange but is pumpkin scented.

The mamaroo in the background reminds me to post about all the baby gear that's taken over the house. I know, you can't wait right?