The 4th Festivities

Either I am getting old – or – I am a new Mom.  These holiday weekends are exhausting!!  Right now I am doing everything I can to keep my eyes open for just a bit longer before I crash!  Of course we do it to ourselves – Friday night we went into the city for some quick shopping and our first dining out experience with a baby!!  It wasn’t a fancy meal – yet our kind of meal… nachos on the outdoor patio of Burrachos!!  Yum!

Yesterday for the 4th we decided to be productive in the morning so I painted walls in the basement and Jesse mowed lawn.  Then we headed over to my Aunt & Uncle’s where a mean game of bean-bag-toss went down.

Here is Jesse focusing – he was paired up with my Uncle Ron and I think they were undefeated for a long time!! 

Jesse and Adam playing it cool.

Here is Mally in her 4th of July outfit.  Her big cousin Ellyn wore this same outfit 6 years ago at our Wedding Shower which was on the 4th!!  I can’t even believe it has been 6 years!!  Someone told me today that she looks like Ellyn – I’ll have to dig up a picture of Ellyn in this outfit and see if they look alike.

Then we had to quick stop in at a wedding.

While we were leaving the wedding and heading to our next destination we saw this really neat cloud…

We stopped at our friends Jason & Lacy’s for their 4th of July party.

Lacy is due with their 2nd baby on Tuesday!!  She was hoping for a 4th of July baby… but no such luck!

We were then going to go meet my parents at the park to watch the fireworks, but we were done running and just stayed at Jason & Lacy’s and watched the show from their backyard.

And Mallory slept threw the entire show.  Even the grand finale when it was really loud… never even flinched!

She even slept when their neighbors were shooting off fireworks right over our heads!  Now that is what they call – sleeping like a baby.

We didn’t get home until 1am!!  What are we thinking!  This is the 2nd weekend in a row where we got home this late!  (Last weekend my cousin got married.)

Then this morning we decided that we would go to church.  Our first time going to church!  We were first service goers (8:30) before having a baby, but we may have switched over to second service for a while (10:45).  Mallory’s first time in church today and during the first prayer… she decides it is prime to let one rip!!  Ohmygoodness!  Jesse and I both were trying to silent our giggles!

Alright it is now after 8 and this Momma is going to get an ice cream sandwich and crawling onto the couch for a little R & R!!

5 Hours!!

I got 5 straight hours of sleep last night!!!  It was heavenly!  This is the most sleep I have had since… oh… about June 5th!!!  I’m a girl who loves her sleep, so this is all very exciting to me!

I’m really starting to think this ‘dream feeding’ is so the key to sleeping!!  I have done it all week (except the one night where she wouldn’t) and we have only woke up once and then not again until 6:30. 

When she woke up at 3:30 this morning and I looked at the clock to see what time it was - I about jumped out of bed to go get the little squirt and give her tons of praises, hugs, and kisses for sleeping so good!  Except during these night time feedings – I don’t say a word to her.  I want her to know that this is not a time for fun – just changing diapers (yes diapers!  I’ll change her and she’ll dirty another one before I even get back to bed in that hour!) feeding and back to sleep as quickly as we can!

The perks of working at home… baby can sleep on your desk!!

The Friday before Mallory was born my sister came with me to my Dr. appointment.  On the way home from the appointment we drove past the prison (where Jesse works) and my sister says “So, when it is take your child to work day… who will Blueberry go with?”  I don’t think Jesse can put little Mallory on his desk… and I can… so she’ll come with me!  : )

Creating a Schedule

I’m a routine kind of girl, so that means I would love it if Mallory was a routine kind of baby!  This week I am trying to create that in her.  Jesse went back to work and I thought it would be perfect timing to start our own little routine here at home.

I asked my friend about how she put her kids on a schedule and she said she used BabyWise and said it worked out great for them.  I don’t have the book – so I googled BabyWise and found a blog on it!  Of course the first thing I clicked on was how to get your baby to sleep longer at nights and sleep threw the night!!

One of the things they tell you to do is to feed them at night at 6, 8 and dream feed them at 10.  Dream feed is where you feed them and they are not fully awake.  So I tried this the last couple of nights.  The first night worked great with only waking up once!  The second night, not so great!  I couldn’t get her to wake up enough to have her dream feeding!  She seriously pressed her lips together and would not open her mouth!!  I even changed her diaper and she still didn’t wake up!  So I put her to bed and she woke up twice that night!!  Last night I was able to give her a dream feeding and she only woke up once again.  So I think they are onto something with this dream feeding business!! 

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What’s a post without pictures?  Last night we took Miss Mallory for a walk out in the woods.  Jesse has taken her a couple of times and he puts her in this little sling that we bought.  But I don’t really like our sling because she looks like a ball in there and it doesn’t look comfortable.  So I tried out this other carrier thing that I found in my sister’s stuff at my parents house.  (Shannon did you even know you had this?)  Mally was so stinkin cute in it that I just had to take some pictures!!

It went from 90 degrees hot and humid weather to barely 50 degrees windy and cold weather!  So she had to buddle up in her little hat and I had to put a blanket around her!

I wanted her to stay awake on our walk – but she must of been too comfy in there because she fell asleep.

But she woke up when I was getting her out of it.  She is so alert these days and she just checks every thing out.  She is also starting to give us big smiles!  And while she is sleeping some times it sounds like she is giggling!  Little baby noises are too cute!!