Ten (for two)

1. Last week's regularly scheduled 10onTues was preempted by an emotional mama trying to get her wee one to sleep in her room. I was unable to focus on anything else, so I missed a couple of smallish updates. This week will be a recap of the last 2 Tues's. Mkay?

2. Sun the 16th, our little family loaded up and met another little family at the Austin Zoo! We picked an awesomely rainy, humid day to go.. but we still enjoyed ourselves. The kiddos (Camy, 8ish months & Braxton, 4ish months) obviously weren't totally into all the animals, but they were definitely aware of some! Like the peacock who spread his beautiful feathers for us, or the greedy goat who hopped up onto the fence to steal the food we were offering to another more timid goat. I can't wait to go back when the kiddos are a little bit bigger and a lot more aware.

How thrilled do I look about that goat? Ha.

3. After the zoo, Andy and I decided we would introduce Camy to the water for the first time. Wow, that was an adventure. We stripped her down and slathered her in sunblock. We put on her fancy new reusable swim diaper. We wrestled her into her new swimsuit. And trekked on down to the neighborhood pool. Total time commitment to this point: About 30 minutes. We tiptoed into the water holding Camy Bean, and she immediately started crying. And trying to climb over my shoulder. And looking at me with "What the hell, Mommy?!" eyes. Sooo.. we climbed out. Total time in the pool: 30 seconds. We let her calm down a couple minutes then tried again in the "big" pool. Same result. Our last ditch effort to spark Camy's love affair with water was to sit on the ledge between the big pool and the baby pool and let her kick her feet in the water. Nope, she still hated it. Awesome.

4. Tues the 18th was a glorious, wonderful day (except for the whole Camy rolling off the bed thing!). What was so glorious? So wonderful? This mama having a salon day! That's what! I love love love my stylist, Mel, and she always makes me feel great - with the hair cut/color of course, but also by her friendship. I always have a good time while I'm sitting in Mel's chair.. we talk, we laugh, we gush about our kiddos, we gossip. Its great. I love my new short do, and I especially love my color, now void of the gray! Hooray!

Before:

After:

5. Thursday afternoon Camy and I met a dear friend for lunch before heading over to a local sprinkler park with a load of other mama's and babies. Lunch was good fun. Camy enjoyed stealing some avocado bites from my chicken wrap and gobbled up some sweet potato fries.. all while periodically peering up at a balloon tied to her chair, concerned by that red floating globe. She was not so much a fan of the nice lady who tied the balloon to her chair, and certainly didn't share the same affection for balloons as her friend Audrey did. Quite funny.

photo taken by Tabatha

6. ....and the sprinkler park? Fail.
Well, not a total fail - we both still enjoyed ourselves. But Camy hated the sprinklers, so we stayed on the outskirts of the splash area and watched the other kiddos run around in the water. We also crawled around and stole a book from our friend Campbell, a shovel from our friend Luke, and food from our friend Ethan. Perhaps we should start teaching Camy about how stealing doesn't make friends.

both photos taken by Tabatha

both photos accurately portray her disapproval of the water

7. We have solved our sleep problems, for now. Camy sleeps every night in her crib. (Don't cheer yet.) Her crib is now in our room... attached to our bed. "Sidecar'ed" if you will. We took off the front rail and attached it to our bed the same way our little cosleeper attached way back when. It is wonderful. Camy gets to have her mommy close (and her mommy gets to have her close!), she is safe within the walls of her crib, we get our bed back.. it really is a win-win for everyone. Eventually (maybe when she's 12), we'll push the crib up against the wall in our room and reattach the front rail. Then eventually (when she's 20), we'll move her bed back to her room. Hopefully this gradual transition we are envisioning will be easier on her than the cold turkey business we tried last week. We'll see.

I promise I have a photo coming soon. 

Our room hasn't been photo-ready this week. 

Cuz I suck at keeping up with laundry. 

:)

8. So as of last Friday, we had tried (and failed) to introduce Camy to our neighborhood pool and we had tried (and failed) to introduce her to the fun of sprinklers in summertime. Despite our lack of success, we took her to Andy's parents house Friday evening to go swimming. They have a pool with a solar heater and that particular day the water was a wonderful 87ish degrees. Camy still resisted a little at the beginning, but only by whining.. not the full out screaming we witnessed before. It only took her a few minutes to get used to the idea and when she did we put her in a little floatie - the girl loved it! She just kicked back and relaxed in the water for a good 30 minutes. It was too cute. She really enjoyed watching the big kids splash around at the other end of the pool, too. Hopefully she'll love the water as much as they do one day soon.

photo taken by my sister-in-law, Candice

9. Given our recent success with the heated pool, we picked up a small baby pool at Target to splash in at home. But of course, without the heated water, Camy just cried. Humpf. I am determined to get this girl to love the water. How in the world are we to survive a TX summer if we can't go swimming or splash in a sprinkler? How?

10. And last, but not least... for our 2nd Anniversary, we gave ourselves a joint gift this year: a 50mm lens for our camera. So far I have a love/hate relationship with it.. hate it because it doesn't have auto-focus (and we were not about to shell out an additional $400 for one that did), About 1 out of every 63 photos I take is almost totally in focus. The other 62 are a total blur. But I do love the ones I manage to get right.. or almost right. Hopefully it won't take long for me to get used to the manual focus.. but something tells me that with a baby who doesn't sit still for a single second of the day, the 50mm is not going to be my go-to lens as I had hoped. Oh well.

Yeah, I'm a dork. Don't act surprised.

how cute would this photo have been if I knew how to focus? hmm?

Bonus #11: Tomorrow Camy will be 9 months old (nine months old).  I have no words.

Wordless Wednesday: Puppy Love

Forget 10 on Tuesday

I had every intention of posting our regularly scheduled 10 on Tuesday post this evening. I would easily get to 10 things and have some Cutie McCute photos to share. But right now every brain cell I have, every bone in my body is focused on getting Camy to sleep in her crib. And I don't see success in our future.
We (read: I) have been hem-hawing about this decision for some time now. Camy sleeps like a champ 11-12 hours straight every night. She's (usually) fairly easy to get to sleep. She doesn't want/need nighttime feedings anymore. What she does want/need, however, is me. Cuddled right up next to her. Where she can reach out and stroke my shoulder (....and now I'm crying) or touch my face. She always is touching me in some way as she drifts off to sleep. In fact, she'll be drifting off to dreamland, eyes closed and her sweet little arm will reach out in search of me. If she finds me easily, she never wakes. If she doesn't find me, she wakes up upset. She needs her mommy, and in a lot of ways, I need her too. Just as she is used to having me there to fall asleep, I am used to having her sweet little body next to me.
Every time the conversation of crib sleeping presented itself, I had a reason why we should wait. She was teething. She was sick. Andy had a week full of late nights at work leaving me on my own for bedtime. We had travel coming up where we'd have to bedshare so what was the point in confusing her? Etc. Etc. I always had some reason other than simply I want her in my bed.
Paused here to make the first trip in to soothe her, picking up where we left off......
But really, that's what it does and always has boiled down. I enjoy her being in our bed. It works. We all sleep. Why mess with it?
I'll tell you why.
Today she fell off our bed.
I'm not saying this to point fingers, just to further explain my POV, but it happened when I was not home. I think had I been here and witnessed the fall, I would be more on board with transitioning her. But I was not here, she was perfectly fine by the time I made it home and learned of the incident, and even after being told, I was not convinced it meant we needed a change. I suggested we buy bedrails. Andy laughed. I guess I can see why that's silly when we have a perfectly good, safe, not-cheap crib in her room that doesn't get used other than as a towel rack. When he left for work today, I was still digging my heels in the sand about it. I was saying that he didn't get a vote unless he was going to be home to help implement the change. He was not allowed to put the stress of the transition solely on my shoulders.
Paused again for trip number 2....
But I thought about it all evening.
I thought about the way our marriage is being affected by having a baby in between us.
I thought about how nice it would be if Camy was able to put herself to sleep so that every once in a while we could have a date night or I could have a night out with the ladies and not have to worry about the hell we'd be putting our sitter through.
I thought about all the things I'd be able to accomplish during naptimes knowing that she was safely sleeping within the confines of her crib, not on our bed with pillows lined up to (hopefully) keep her from falling and me feeling the need to dash in and check on her every 5 minutes.
There are a lot of positives to crib sleeping.
So, I decided now's as good a time as any.
I would give it a shot.
And ya know what.... she's sleeping. Soundly. In her crib.
It took a whopping 37 minutes from the time she finished nursing.
2 trips back into her room to soothe her.
I first laid her down around 820, and stayed in the room with her patting and humming and shushing for about 5 minutes. The first 15 minutes of her being alone in the room she just crawled around the crib, pulled up to stand, sat back down, pulled up to stand, danced around, sat back down, crawled over to her lovey, hugged and tossed her around, laid down, sat up, etc. Once she started to fuss (not even really getting to the point of crying), I went back in and laid her down. I stayed with her another 5 minutes then slipped out of the room. She immediately sat up and looked around, I'm guessing confused as to why she was suddenly alone again and not cuddling, waited a couple minutes, then began to cry. I gave her 3 minutes. I told myself that I would let her try to work this out on her own for 3 minutes before I swoop in to rescue her. I wasn't going to let her get herself all worked up... I was just waiting to see what she did. Well, she continued to cry. I sat outside her door for 3 minutes, crying harder than she was. Then I went in to lay her back down. She calmed right down, stayed laying down without trying to roll over or sit up, and I stood there with her holding her hand until she fell asleep. She was asleep by 857.
I am so proud of her.
And I am so proud of myself.
I am really glad that she did not cry herself to sleep. I couldn't bare the thought of her falling asleep wondering where I was, why she was alone, etc. I am glad I was able to stand there with her and help her drift off calmly, knowing that I was there.
I am impressed with how (relatively) easy it was to get her to sleep in there.
But you know what? I am so so sad that I now have to walk into my bedroom alone (....and more tears).
Andy doesn't get home until midnight or later, and I have a sneaking suspicion I won't sleep a wink before then.
All the pride I feel for our success.... and I still want my baby back in my bed.

5QF

After missing the last few 5QF's, I'm so glad to be back. Being back means we've returned to normal. Its a good day when I have time to sit down and play along with a blog hop! Do you play along? You totally should! Especially today - we've got good questions from Mama M today! [Thanks, Mama M!]

1. Take your pick... date night, girls night out, or night out alone?

This may sound sad to some folks, but I would take Girls' Night Out, easy peasy. The wine {or whatever the heck Tabs makes with champagne and cranberry juice}, the laughter, the stories shared.. too much fun! While I do definitely enjoy the date nights with the hubs, I see the hubs every day. So when I have the chance to get out of the house to join the ladies for an evening, I jump at it! {Sorry, A!}

2. Can you touch your nose with your tongue?

Well.. no. I am glad it is zero dark hour here and the rest of the house is lost in sleepyland. Because I'm pretty sure I looked like a looney tune trying... twice. And I can't do it. I don't even think I'm close to touching. Can people really do that? Do you have to have some freakishly long tongue to be able to touch your nose? Hmmm.. 

3. What is your favorite flower and why?

By far, purple tulips. And white calla lilies. ::love:: I'm not sure what the initial adoration stemmed from, but I carried both in my wedding so now when I see either flower, that is where my mind takes me. They are beautiful blooms and very special to me now.

 Such wonderful memories of that day.

photo taken by the amazing Tyler Schmitt

4. If you could go back in time, what advice would you give yourself?

Another easy one. Finish college. I dropped out of college pretty early on because I wanted to move in with my then-boyfriend-now-husband and thought we could use a few months of working FT and socking away money. I told myself I would just take one semester off and then drop back down to PT work and return to school. Didn't happen quite the way I had planned. Things kept getting in the way of college. Things like acquiring a new car payment, so needing to work more than just part time to keep bills paid. Things like getting married and wanting to start a family. Things that should have taken the back seat to me finishing my education, but at the time seemed exponentially more important. Now, don't get wrong here - I love my husband and my daughter more than anything, but I can't help but speculate about what kind of (easier) financial situation we may be in had I gotten my degree and started my career sooner. I would love to go back to school and finish up, but now it will have to wait until Camy is a little bit older. 

5. If you won the lottery, what is the first thing you would do?
With "do" italicized here, I imagine you are not asking what the first thing I would spend the money on would be? {Which would be paying off our medical bills and buying a bigger house.} What would I actually do? Probably cry. And laugh. At the same time. With a few screams thrown in there for good measure. Have you ever done (or seen) the I'm so happy I don't know whether to cry or laugh so I'll do both reaction? Cuz that would be me.


Your turn!! Follow the instructions found here.. I'd love to see your answers!

Wordless Wednesday: You better back off, Mama.

Ten on Tuesday: All Good Things.

 In my last post, I hoped that this week would bring us all good things. And so far, so good.

1. Camy is healthy!! All is right in her world again. RSV is gone. Cough is cleared up (way before the 3 weeks we worried about!). Appetite is back in full force. Sleep routine made a glorious comeback. She is smiling and laughing and playing and wonderful.

2. And, AND.. she's crawling, y'all. Crawling. With her belly off the ground, cuh-rawling. Its about time! She's been inching around in her cute, awkward little fashion for months now. But she finally figured out how to get her little chubby-belly up and gain some forward momentum on her hands and knees. Ya know what did the trick? Bath time. Yup. Bath time. I finally mustered up the nerve to ditch her bath seat, and she loved it. She loved having full reign of the tub and chasing her bath toys. Only problem was she tried chasing them by her usual belly scooting. And she failed. And I freaked. {Um, Camy - you are not a fish. You cannot breathe with your face under water, my dear!!} It really didn't take long for her to figure out a way to get to her toys without drowning {my smart girl!}, and I was surprised to see her newfound skill translate so easy to dry land. The very next day she started crawling around the living room! So cute! She's still very much a slow poke, but I certainly don't mind that! ;)

Not the best pic - but the girl was on the move. I was just trying to keep up! ;)

3. We have decided to begin to think about maybe considering trying to once again potentially transition Camy back to her crib. Maybe. We are thinking about considering it. Strike that. A was ready months ago to have her in her crib. I am super duper hesitant. But I know it needs to happen eventually. I know she will be fine (well, I don't know that.. but I tell myself that to help me sleep at night). She napped in her crib out of necessity yesterday, which was the first time in months. And of course, she rocked it. Naps, I can handle. Then she fell asleep during her nighttime nursing so I seized the opportunity and laid her in her crib. She didn't bat an eye at being laid down, so I took the opportunity to get to bed early for a change stayed up another 3 hours trying to distract my mind by losing myself on the interwebs. I just couldn't go to bed by myself. A was at work. C was cuddled up in her crib. And I was all by my lonesome. For some reason, I just can't handle that anymore. I fought the urge to go and scoop her up to bring her to bed with me.. but still checked on her about every 15 minutes. Lucky for me, she woke up around 11 crying and I may or may not have neglected to try soothing her there. I may or may not have just grabbed her up and cuddled her close. She may or may not have spent the rest of the night in our bed. But hey, 3 hours in her crib is more than she's done in a very long time. We'll get there. I'll get there. 

4. Total Tooth Count: 4. Her top middle (left) has broken the surface and the one just beside that one is about halfway in. Her crooked little toothy grin just kills me. Its hard to get those top teeth in a good show-off photo.. even harder than it was to catch the bottom, I've learned. But we're trying and hope to debut the toofies here soon.

5. Saturday the three of us made a day trip into Houston to attend the 2nd Birthday Party for a dear friend's son. I was a little worried about keeping Camy strapped into her seat for 7 hours out of the day, but in true Camy fashion, she totally rocked it. We only had to make one stop to feed her on the way there, and made it the whole way back without slowing down. Awesome! And Camy loved flirting with everyone at the party. She really seems to have outgrown her first wave of "stranger danger" and was hamming it up for all the guests. What surprised us the most, though, was the way she latched onto my friend's mother in law! I mean, Camy LOVED her. Reached for her. Giggled at her. Talked to her. After about 30 minutes I tried to take her to go and eat, and Camy turned away from me. Yeah, I'd be lying if I said that didn't sting a little. Or a lot. It was cute though, to see Camy making friends. And it was wonderful to catch up with some folks we hadn't seen in far too long.

6. Camy helped us make the trip in. She fits in well with the stereotypical Houston drivers.

Get out of my waaaaay!

[Disclaimer: This was taken while we were parked in the Brenham McDonald's parking lot. You don't need to call CPS.]

7. We celebrated my first Mother's Day with an outside baby this past Sunday. It was lovely. I woke up to a happy, beautiful, healthy girl - and let's face it, there's nothing that can top that! I came into the living room to find a card and a gift perched in my nursing spot. Camy and Andy got me a beautiful birthstone ring from James Avery that I just love. We went to a yummy brunch at the in-laws then to beautiful Mother's Day service at church. After that, we just hung out and enjoyed each other's company, and that's all I can ask for on such a special day. Getting to live and laugh with my husband and precious daughter. To top off the evening, Andy made us a yummy dinner which was followed by chocolate covered strawberries and wine. Lovely. :) I hope all my firsttime Mommy friends enjoyed their first official Mother's Day as much as I did!

8. In solid food news, we had to take a break from solids while we were battling RSV. Not only did she just not have much of an appetite, she was also very lethargic during nearly all her awake time. Any energy she had throughout the day was exerted nursing. It was rather sad - our days consisted of nursing, sleeping, crying, and coughing. But, with the return of her appetite, we are jumping right back into the world of table food. She still gets purees at least 2x per day, but we are now offering her much more of what we are eating. 2 introductions that stand out this week: cheese and mandarin oranges. Love and love.
This was the beginning of her love affair with cheese, stealing the chunk her daddy was snacking on:

9. As is the trend around her since Camy Bean came along, I save myself for last. Soo.. in ME news, whatever allergic reaction I was having last week cleared up beautifully with the steroid treatment I was put on. The meds didn't seem to have any effect on my breastfeeding, and I had no ill side effects as a result. My face returned to its normal state of fluffiness and my lips no longer look like I had bad botox done in an alley. Huge relief, I tell you. Unfortunately, as of last night, the rash that was along my jawline began making a comeback, so we are anxiously waiting to see if it progresses the same way this time. Let's hope it does not and that this is just a fluke that will resolve itself quickly.

10. Aaaand, in other ME news (because the Mama deserves 2 bullet points out of 10 every once in a while, no?)... I am treating myself over the next week. I am going on a solo shopping excursion to find a hot mama swim suit while Camy spends some time with her daddy at home... and I am crazy excited about the idea of doing some shopping without worrying about tending to the babe. Also, and this is big news people, I have an appointment to {finally} get my hair cut and colored. I have missed my beloved Mel and her magical hair powers, and I am counting down the hours til I get to walk through those salon doors! Hooooray for Becky Time. Not Mommy Time. Not Wife Time. Not Nanny Time. Just Becky. Just me. It will be gloooorious.

Happy Tuesday!!

We're still alive...

..barely.

We've had a week for the record books.
We spent the last 8ish days battling RSV with Camy.
Went 3 days without internet because our modem died.. and we are about to go 4 more days between giving my mom her air card back today and waiting for the Uverse to be installed Monday. Ugh.
I had an allergic reaction to something and my face has been covered in an itchy rash, eyes have been dry and itchy, and my lips have been swollen and blistery for about a week. I went to the dr for it yesterday and I am supposed to start a steroid treatment today to stop the immune response and get rid of the swelling (which he seemed really concerned about).
Sooo.. come Monday, when I can return to regular blogging, I am hoping our little corner of the world has done a complete 180.
Let's hope for a healthy Camy.
A healthy Mommy.
Reliable internet so we don't have to live in the dark ages.
All good things.. let's hope.

Happy Mother's Day to all my wonderful, awesome, sweet, hilarious, supportive Mommy friends!!!
See ya next week.