6 months...

Every mom blog I know of starts each "month" post out with "I can NOT believe my baby is blah-di-blah months old..."  But....SERIOUSLY.  I CAN NOT BELIEVE MY BABY IS 6 MONTHS OLD! 

The last couple of months Stephen and I have really been trying to enjoy our baby.  We are trying not to say things like "I can't wait until she ___"  Insert whatever developmental thing she can't do yet- crawl, walk, talk, etc.  We are trying to really enjoy exactly where she is right now.  And we ARE.  Last night I was holding her after I fed her and she was asleep and I thought "One day she is going to have kids of her own..."  SCARY.  And I then also decided not to dread or fear her growing up.  It seems like my baby was just born yesterday, but at the same time, it feels like the longest and hardest 6 months of my life!  Ha!  But she really is halfway to a year and that is insane to me.  She gets more and more fun each day. 

I apologize for how many pictures I will be posting of her.  It was hard to narrow it down to these out of the 40 something that I took!  What's harder than taking good pictures of a 5 month old?  Taking pictures of a 6 month old.   But, at the same time, when you are her mom, they are all good! 

Everywhere we go people comment on how cute Blakely is....When she has a bow in her hair or she is wearing pink people say she is beautiful.... However, if there is no pink in sight, EVERYONE thinks she is a boy.  Sometimes even when there is pink involved.  It is hilarious. 

As you can see, Blakely is sitting up very well now.  Though if the tv is not in her direct line of sight, she will topple over to get a good view.  I had the tv on during her photo shoot so I could count on her looking in one direction.  So when she is smiling...it's most likely because she loves "Say yes to the dress."

Dad says, "Enjoy wearing short dresses while you can..."  And she will enjoy...eating them.

Blakely is still drooling oceans of saliva, and wants to eat everything- but still no teeth. 

She is also obsessed with me, if I do say so myself.  It's quite flattering.  She is especially enamored with me in the morning and after she has taken a long nap.  I guess she misses me.  :)  When I am around and Stephen is trying to play with her, she will not even look at him if I am nearby.  It's hilarious.  And my hair needs highlighted. 

Please mourn with me over how wonderful, yet blurry of a picture this is.  Stephen says I need to just go ahead and delete it cause I get sad every time I look at it.  I am sure we will never again get this great of a picture of the two of us. 

Blakely is sitting up but will topple from time to time.  She also gets tired and eventually leans so far forward that she just flips over onto her belly.

She is eating solids twice a day.  She is really excited when we start- will open her mouth wide, but after the first two bites she is uninterested and I have to pry her mouth open.  She eats oatmeal every time, and has had apples and prunes.  She isn't crazy about either.

She sleeps from about 7pm until 6am.  I have tried everything to get her to sleep later- and she is just an early riser.  She does, however, go back down for a nap by 7:30 usually.  As do I.  I feed her around 10pm to get her to sleep a little longer. 

She has almost no predictability to when she eats.  Sometimes she is starving after 2 1/2 hours...sometimes I couldn't get her to eat if our lives depended on it until it's been 4 hours.  She is strong willed. 

She is getting more hair!  And it's blonde. 

She loves her jumperoo- she is still too small to reach the ground, so we have a box underneath her. 

I think I can finally have dairy!  I had my first non-soy starbucks yesterday, and so far so good.  I am so excited.  Oh how I have missed milk, and cheese, and milkshakes, and starbucks....

She is still a bad napper- but I think she is getting better.  She has taken two- 2hour naps today- which is unheard of for us.  I am sure she will be on a nap strike for the next week since I put that. 

She LOVES the water!  I try to go to the pool with her every day. 

Her favorite thing to do is watch tv while holding her feet in the air and blow raspberries with her pacifier in her mouth. 

Friends

Thursday morning the three of us packed up and headed to Destin for a day trip.  Our friends Jason and Molly are leading a Kaleo project there for Oklahoma State and Tulsa University, and Stephen was speaking at their weekly meeting.  Despite the fact that Blakely only took a one hour nap the whole day, she was in pretty good spirits.  Probably because she got to hang out with her friend Selah!  Blakely is one day older than Selah. 

Selah wasn't sure what to think about Blakely goobering all over her toys, but she was a good sharer.  We might have to get us one of those Sophie dolls- apparently they are a big deal.  No one told me! 

Yesterday Blakely was particularly cuddly.  Since she hasn't laid her head on my chest in for.ev.er I thought I should snap a picture before she changed her mind. 

Isn't she pretty?!?!?

We had quite the fiasco yesterday morning.  We drove back late Thursday night from Destin, then Stephen had a 6am flight out of Pensacola Friday morning for his best friend's wedding- so he had to leave by 4am.  Luckily someone else got up to take him... He called me at 5am when he got to the airport because he forgot is WALLET.  V-E-R-Y important to remember your wallet when you fly!  So he was alone at the airport at 5am with no ID, no money, and no breakfast in his belly.  He called the guys that took him and lucky they had some cash on them.  He was then able to be "questioned thoroughly" by a TSA person.  He answered all the questions correctly, so after what Stephen called an "intense pat-down" they let him on the plane just in time for take off!  Whew!  We don't recommend it, but you can fly without an ID....  So the wedding is over, and Stephen is on his way back right now!  We really miss him! 

Blakely loves dad cause he lets her have fun things like coke-zero and lemons!  No, he didn't actually give her a drink of coke.  :)

Google.

Doesn't it just make you smile when you start to think you are crazy, then google puts to rest all your fears?   As a first time mom I have never, and I do mean never, started a google search without my question popping up in the search engine before I finish.  (...and I have googled a LOT of quesitons...) From "why does my 2 week old grunt like an old man all night..." to "what should my baby's poop look like..." No matter how crazy the question, or how crude the subject matter, I can always count on the fact that someone else has asked it too. 

I dread the day that I have to finish my whole question to discover that I am the only freak out there asking it.  I hope that day never comes. 

beach+baby=disappointing.

I have a confession.  Most people already know this about me.  I hate the beach.  I want to love it.  It's beautiful, seems like it should be relaxing (yes, seems...), you can get a tan...whatever.  I HATE sand.  I hate sand even more with a baby.  I kid you not, we were on the beach for no more than 20 minutes and Blakely came back with sand in her crack.  Not sure if you are familiar with sand, but you can't just brush it off either.  Maybe you can brush most of it off...but you will always have a few kernels lingering.  She'll probably have sand in her crack until shes 10.  Not to mention the car...I think I will now forbid my husband from ever taking our car to the beach again.  It will now have sand in it until the end of its days.  How do I know?  I took my old car to the beach in 2006 and it had sand in it until the day we sold it last month.  Anyway, I also hate salt water.  It makes me feel sticky.  I also hate sunscreen....even stickier.  And you are done-zo until you take a shower.  So even though I barely broke a sweat at the beach I need a shower anyway.  Now, I'm not complaining that I get to live near the beach all summer...I love it here.  I just won't be going back to the beach.  Last summer I went to the beach twice in 7 weeks...and both times it was because I had to. 

Plus, in the hoopla of bringing a baby 17 hours from home we forgot our beach towels.  woops.  So we had to stop at target.  Oh, and I also forgot her swimsuit.  But personally I am not that sad about it.  I was not looking forward to putting a swimsuit on this girl...and does she really need one anyway?  So we just went with a diaper.  Plus B didn't eat like she was suppose to, or nap like she was suppose to, so on our way to our first family outing to the beach she was crying...sticky from sunscreen, sweaty...you get the picture.  So we left for the beach around 2:20 (we are only about 2 miles from the beach...) and we did not set foot on the sand until after 3.  So we set up an umbrella and laid out our two towels we bought and laid Blakely down on the towel, and she got sand in her eye.  not sure where it came from cause I felt like I was being a freak trying to keep it away from her.  So we took a couple of pictures of us in the water...to prove that it happened.  Stuck her feet in the water and let her stand in the sand for a minute, then we had enough and came home. 

I do like this picture of us...but it might as well be a lake.  I like lakes. 

ps.  Blakely slept ALL night last night (minus the 45 minutes Stephen was up with her...but still...Thanks babe!) but seriously...slept from 6:30 until 7 this morning.  THEN.  Took a 2 hour nap.  Somebody pinch me. 

traveling

Phew!  We made it to Gulf Shores.  Let's just say, I don't know how we'd do it without the minivan.  :)

We loaded up on Sunday afternoon with hopes of Blakely going to bed at her usual 6:30...but of course, instead, she didn't go to sleep until 8.  No big deal really, except that this was the beginning of her schedule going wacko.  We arrived in Newport at MawMaw's, and I am pretty sure Blakely loved her instantly because she thought MawMaw was the reason she got to be awake and social at 1am.  I've never seen Blakely smile at someone she didn't know so much.

 Blakely also got to play with her cousin Josie.  Josie's mom asked if she wanted a little brother or sister like Blakely and she said yes.  She was then convinced that Blakely was "hers."  She was pretty upset when I took her.  Josie also couldn't figure out why we wouldn't put Blakely down so she could go play with her.
And I thought getting a good picture of a 5 month old was hard...

Then we headed over to Nanny's the next morning.

After a late bedtime, playtime for an hour at 1am, and getting up an hour early, Blakely's tank was getting close to E, but she did SO good!  Neither Nanny nor Blakely cooperated with the pictures, so this is what we got.  :) 

We then headed to Memphis that afternoon, and I don't have a picture to show for it.  Boo.  Stephen's sister, Anna, has a beautiful white lab/border collie mix named Presley.  My grandparents always got me and my cousins names mixed up.  I never pictured Blakely having this same problem with her dog-cousin, but she did.  :)  But I guess it's better than being accused of being a boy when you have a bow on your head.  Poor girl. 

We then loaded up at 4:30am (yes, you read that correctly...) Wednesday morning to head to Gulf Shores.  Blakely did SO good.  We stopped for lunch in Lucedale, Mississippi at this place:

 We ate outside on the patio, cause it was nice, but mainly because we had no idea how Blakely would do.  It was a good thing we were outside thanks to this:

 In case you can't tell, Blakely lost a little bit of her lunch during our lunch.  We had a great trip, and now we are trying to get her adjusted to her new home!  

5 months!

Whew!  April was crazy, and May is about to be even crazier!  We were busy every weekend in April including: Stephen's parents visiting, a trip to see my parents + me and B staying there for a week, our staff training in Tulsa...then on to May!  We spent several days in Fayetteville visiting friends, then back to Lawrence for a week, Stephen took a day trip to Omaha, and we leave tomorrow for Blakely to meet her great-grandmothers in Newport, AR, then to Memphis for a couple days, then on to Gulf Shores, AL for 7 weeks!  Good thing we bought a minivan!  :)

I seriously never thought I could be so excited about a minivan.  It is so great though.  I can walk back and sit by B easily if she needs some company, nursing is a breeze on the road, plus there is so much room for ALL her stuff!  I feel like a true mom with a minivan. 

Oh!  AAAAAND...Blakely turned 5 months old! 
As she gets older, it gets harder and harder to get a good picture out of her! 

I'm not sure how much Blakely weighs...but I would guess around 13lbs.
She rolls over in either direction occasionally, but not regularly.  I'm not entirely sure that it's ever on purpose.
She can sit up, supported by the boppy and momentarily unsupported.  
She is still drooling like crazy, but no teeth in sight.
She has started reaching for things...everything.  Here's proof:

We call her arm the "flapper" because it seems like she just flaps it constantly now.  No real coordination just flapping everything within her reach.  It's pretty hilarious.

We took a break on cereal, because she took a nursing hiatus.  Then we were back at it.  Now we are taking a break again because it seems to be messing her tummy up.  So we are going to wait until 6 months.


Blakely is still a terrible napper and is not sleeping all night.  She is so unpredictable.  Sometimes she will sleep until 5am, and sometimes she is up at 2.  Will I ever get a full nights sleep again???  But I'm not complaining or anything...

Currently I am making my most desperate attempt to get her on a tight schedule.  It kills me to fight with her, but I am forcing her to nap, even if it means I put her pacifier in 20 times in an hour.  (yes, I did this yesterday.)

Along with reaching for and grabbing everything, she also wants to put everything in her mouth.  This is her trying to eat the camera as I take her picture.  

And just because I think this picture is hilarious: 

two things:

First.  We were fortunate enough to have some 80 degree weather here this past week.  I heard that most eye damage occurs in the first 5 years of life so I made sure she was protected. 

 Second.  We started real food for Blakely tonight.  So I sent Stephen to the store to get "rice cereal" for her, and this is what he came back with:

Hilarious.  So, of course, he went back for a second trip to the store.  Good news- the real rice cereal was a hit and we couldn't shovel it in fast enough.