Sunday, November 21, 2010

New Chair

We have a new addition to the Wehner family kitchen...


We are finally moving out of the bumbo seat! I was so excited to finally get a high chair, lucy has been pushing her limits in the bumbo, pushing her feet along the kitchen table and moving herself around while sitting and trying to escape and reach for objects on the table. I feel much safer with her strapped into this chair!

(Lucy waving here... still in PJs, even at lunch time!)

And my kitchen table has stayed much cleaner since!

Waving

For the past two weeks Lucy has been waving at everything! It is adorable, and makes me smile every time...

Baby It's Cold Outside


Like my new hat?

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

8 months

Wow, 8 months feels way to close to 1 year for comfort... these months keep flying by! This month brought lots of needed sleep and a lot less tears...

Sleep: I was so excited to write this post because I can officially report that we've had an awesome month of sleep... I'm now a full believer in crying it out. I wrote about this in my last monthly update, but we had just started so I wasn't sure if it would work out or not, but it definitely did! We had 3 nights of crying when Lucy would lay down, the first night was an hour, the second night was 40 minutes and the third nigh t was 20 minutes... these nights she would also wake sporadically through out the night, but I wouldn't go in unless she continued crying over 15 minutes and typically she'd put herself back to sleep before that. After three nights of this, I now have a baby that goes down for naps and bedtime without crying and doesn't wake in the middle of the night except to nurse around 4-5am (of course this is about 90% of the time... we do have rough days here and there).

I was a little apprehensive about this whole "crying it out thing" but I was really at my wits end, and I was starting to notice that Lucy was becoming more manipulative with the crying, for example, she would cry for a minute than wait for a minute to see if we'd come get her, then repeat. She'd also gotten into the habit of crying till we'd come in, so we would do the 5, 10, 15 minute wait schedule, but she got used to knowing after a certain amount of time we'd be back in to soothe her and give her a paci and would never stop crying.

I think this, in combination with kicking the third nap has led to some amazing sleep! Her schedule right now is two 1.5-2 hour naps (9-11am and 2-4pm roughly) and then night time sleep is from 7:30pm-7:30am (with a nursing at 5am).

Eating: Lucy is still nursing, and is on a normal meal schedule (breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus a bed time nursing and a middle of the night nursing). She rarely wants to be spoon fed anymore (totally her strong willed personality coming through) and mostly likes to eat finger foods so I typically give her frozen mixed veggies, cut up fruit (apples, grapes, pears, prunes), cheerios, or sweet potato chunks.

Milestones: Not many changes since last month, besides perfecting the skills she has already acquired - she still loves to practice holding no hands, cruising and crawling. She did recently start waving, but typically won't do at the normal "hi" and "bye" times, usually just randomly throughout the day... it's pretty adorable. She also can get up the stairs now... which adds a new dynamic to baby proofing the house! She is "talking" more, using her ba's, ma's and da's a lot, but hasn't associated them with anything yet. She still loves to squeal in delight.

Temperament: This month was probably one of my favorites so far in terms of easiness and routine... probably mostly because of the increased sleep I got, but also because I felt like things became a little more predictable. When Lucy was first born, she was very routine and easy for me to take care of, but months 4-7 seemed to be a little wild in terms of knowing why she was crying and what each day would bring. This past month I felt like I totally understood why Lucy was crying, what not to do to avoid the crying, and what to do once the crying started... now that I write that I realize 90% of my day is shaped around avoiding tears!

Some things I have noticed about Lucy's personality - she is constantly on the go and hates to be strapped down for a diaper change or in her car seat... she is such a go getter! She doesn't like to sit in my lap to read or sing songs, no matter how animated I get, she'd rather be crawling/cruising on to the next thing. She knows me! this is has been fun and not so fun, I love that Lucy sees me and wants me when she's sad, but at the same time, this has been difficult when I've been trying to do something and need to set her down or need someone else to hold her. At the same time, she's totally comfortable with other people (she typically only prefers me when she's hungry or sleepy), she has not showed any signs of stranger anxiety yet when she goes to the Grace nursery every Saturday for church or Ben's parents every Thursday for my Bible study.

New also this month have been little baby temper tantrums... I can't help but laugh when she does this... whenever Lucy wants to be held (again bc she's hungry or sleepy) and I set her down, she wips her head back or forward and starts whaling, like it's the end of the world... I know it won' t be later, but for right now, I just think it's so darn cute!

Stats - thinking Lucy is around 18 pounds

Pictures! Again, I could not get Lucy to sit still or really look at the camera... but I snagged a couple good ones.

This is how we started...


The she moved to one side...


The back...


Now to the other side...


Towards mommy...


Down to the ground...

Christmas Cards!

I’m looking into ordering our family Christmas cards! It seems far away, but I know if I don’t work on it now, I’ll run out of time to order them, address them and send them out. Plus, we’re heading to the Grand Cayman in a week, which will eat up some of my normal Christmas prep time!

I’m hoping to get a good, current shot of our family while in the Caymans, courtesy of the lovely Katie Kruithof – with her awesome camera skills and a gorgeous beach background, hoping we can get a good shot!

Not sure which greeting card we’ll get yet, but I’m really loving these two cards from Shutterfly:



Which one do you like?

I'm loving their calendars as well, we'll probably end up ordering one as a present or maybe for ourselves!

If you'll be ordering Christmas cards this year, you can get 50 free by going to the Shutterfly site and signing up to write a blog post like I did!

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

On the Road Again - Blacksburg


We just returned from a 3 day trip in Virginia to visit Katy. Erin, Kristy and I made the 8-hr drive last Wednesday night - great for Lucy so she could sleep the whole way, not so great for the adults who stayed up most of the drive only to get 2-3 more hours of sleep upon arrival. Lucy did great most of the drive there and on the way back, reaffirming my stance that we will only travel 4+ hours if it is in the middle of the night. She fussed every once in a while, but luckily it was never more than a couple minutes.

I was a little apprehensive about going on vacation again because we were on a 2 week streak of amazing sleep in our home (rarely having tears when laying down for bed, and only one night time waking at 5am to eat) and I did not want to ruin this schedule! Fortunately, Lucy slept amazing while we stayed with the Miller's and besides being pretty fussy our first Monday back, has seemed to ease back in to her great sleeping schedule already (praise the Lord!)

We had a blast- saw Katy's school, where she works, drove through the hills of Blacksburg, saw where Dirty Dancing was filmed, ate at some amazing local restaurants and best of all laid around, watched friends and read gossip magazines... absolutely perfect. Katy also made us some amazing meals and was the perfect hostess! Again, Lucy went with the flow through all these plans and stayed flexible... she even stayed up till 9:30 one night, dancing the night away with Uncle Bbop:


A few other highlights from our trip:


Out on the town with all the girls:


Beautiful mountains! Beautiful girls :)


Snuggling with Aunt Katy in my adorable pea coat (a gift from Aunt Katy)!


Having fun with the camera by the New River...


When we drove to see where Dirty Dancing was filmed, it was snowing on top of the mountain! Lucy got all bundled up... (this is my favorite picture!)


We tucked the baby bjorn under my fleece for extra warmth!

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

My Fall Craft!



Have I mentioned how much I love staying home with Lucy? Of course I love that I get to spend the entire day with my little munchkin, but on top of that I am so thankful that I have the time to take care of our home and do things for others. I love being able to make my bed every day, and vacuum my floors - things that seemed like they would never get done when I worked full time. I love ironing shirts with a little Oprah in the background, or cutting coupons while Ellen is on. I love being able to meet friends for lunch and hang out with my niece and nephew... just 8 months ago I never had time to do any of the above, and most of Ben and my arguments revolved around who was going to do what around the house. Now I can take care of the home, while he brings home the bacon :)

I love this "job"!

I was thinking about all of the above this past week as I worked on a fall craft. Again, another thing I never used to have time for. I got this idea from the amazing Sarah, who has the absolute cutest ideas (by the way, please don't spend too much time on her blog, you will realize I get 90% of "my" good ideas from her and her sister Katie). Anyway, I saw these cute pots on Sarah's blog and decided to make them for Lucy's grandmas to say Happy Halloween and to thank them for all of their love and support. I had so much fun making them... hopefully Sarah will have some good Christmas ideas I can copy :)

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Happy Halloween

I love traditions! Now that we have our own little family, I want to make sure we start our own traditions for each holiday - one website suggested carving the age of your child each year and taking a picture, so we did just that! This year, 0 seemed too young and 1 seemed too old, so we went with .5... what age do you think Lucy will become "too cool" to do this?