Memorial Day Weekend

Here’s a quick recap of our weekend (minus the whole sleep training thing – which I will update you on tomorrow) with limited comments by me (except where I just cannot resist).

Michael and Peanut

A grill, 2 men, and a can

Penny and Peanut

Apparently water bottles make awesome baby toys (supervised!).

Penny and Peanut

Squishy kisses from auntie Penny are the best kind.

Gigi with Peanut

Penny, Tim and Peanut

Penny, Tim and Peanut

Penny, Tim, Peanut and Buca's snout

Peanut’s favorite game was watching Buca (Jon’s brother Michael’s Lab-Weimaraner mix) and trying to grab her.

Penny, Tim, Peanut and Buca

This is Buca.

Buca

I heart her.

And this is our moody Yorkie.

Diva

He was acting dramatic because he wasn’t getting the attention he wanted.

Penny, Peanut and Buca

3 generations - Gigi, Penny and Peanut

Michael with Peanut

Michael, Peanut and Buca's forehead

Petting Buca

Tying to poke Buca in the eye

My little family (not pictured: two squirrels small dogs)

The End.

A quick update

Saturday was an absolutely beautiful day filled with family, some delicious food, and lots of pictures.

Family Photo

But before I go into all sorts of details about our amazing day in the next post or two, I thought I’d update you on a couple of things going on in our household.

Peanut with her auntie Penny

- We tried to give Peanut her first solids – rice cereal – for 3 days.  However, since her tongue reflex is still going strong (meaning, she pushes the food out with her tongue as an automatic reflex to prevent from chocking), we decided to stop for a few days and try again next week.  We’ll continue in the same manner – trying for a couple of days at a time, then stopping for 4-6 until she starts eating the food instead of just pushing it out.

Peanut and her Gigi

-  Based on Peanut’s behavior (her hands are ALWAYS in her mouth, she only wants the paci for about 1 minute when she wakes up, etc), our pediatrician suggested that we may want to take away the pacifier now because it seems to just wake Peanut up at night.  She also thinks that we will be successful if we tried some sleep training.

Playing with Penny and uncle Tim

- We’ve been thinking and reading and talking to others about it and decided to go through with it.  The sleep training starts this weekend and I’ll write a post once we’re done if it’s successful or not.   We’re going through with it for 3 days and if things don’t get significantly different, we’ll reevaluate.

Peanut loves being an airplane

-  Jon and I went out on our very first date on Friday night while Jon’s mom babysat.  It was incredible!  The restaurant was a recommendation by my boss – it was this little Italian place and it was AMAZING!  Like, amazing!  Jon and I even managed to talk about things other than the baby for a few minutes.  The baby slept soundly through the whole date.

She looks just like her auntie :)

-  Peanut is finally laughing!  And babbling.  Almost non-stop.  It’s so cute.  Her favorite subjects are the puppies.  She loves to watch them, then squeals with delight when they come over to her.

Playing with uncle Mike and his puppy, Buca

Well, that’s about it folks.  How are things going? 
Do you have any success or failure stories about sleep training?

FF - What If’s

Today we’re going to do things a little different – you know – spice it up a bit.

For today’s Friday Five I’m going to post 5 What If questions and you can post the answers on your blog or reply in the comments!  Now let’s have some fun.

<center><a href="http://www.livinglikethekings.com/search/label/Friday%20Five"> <img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5105/5671375328_fa84c29f3f_m.jpg" /> </a></center>

1.  If you could eat only one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Spicy tuna sushi.  Hands down.



2.  If you won $1 Million in the lottery tomorrow, how would you spend your money?
First, I would sell my house and buy a slightly (not much) bigger one in the Boston area.  I would give some money to our immediate families and take everyone on an exotic vacation.  Then I would go on a big shopping spree 9probably at H&M, TJ Maxxx and Carters), and put the rest into a savings account for Peanut and Peanut’s future sibling.



3.  If you could travel through time, when and where would you go?
80’s.  I freakin’ love the 80’s.  But I’d want to be in Cali.



4.  If you had to give up one of your senses, which one would it be?
Sound.  I mean, I’d prefer not to give up any of them, but there is no way that I would be able to live without the others.



5.  If you could have one superpower, what would you choose?
Flight.  Come on!  How cool would that be?  I would be able to go anywhere…really fast.  And just consider all the dollars I would save by not wasting gas.



Don't forget to link up your posts!

Why I chose to breastfeed

Sorry my non-baby friends…no fun videos for you this time.  But I’ll do my best to make up with an awesome Friday Five tomorrow.

Let me start by telling you why I wanted to write this post:  a very large majority of what I see and read these days is about why people chose to formula feed.  Some of my favorite bloggers and quite a few of other blogs I follow have either chosen or switched to formula.  At Peanut’s daycare, she is the only baby that is currently breastfed. 

There are some very obvious choices for choosing to nurse your baby – it’s nutritional, it’s natural, it’s bonding.

 

But to be honest with you, I didn’t really ever see anything else as an option.  To me (although I totally understand other peoples choices and decisions), formula is something that you go to when you are unable, for whatever reason, to breastfeed.  For mothers that cannot provide, for one reason or another, enough food for their baby, formula is an amazing alternative.  However, for me, it wasn’t an option I was going to consider unless something was going really wrong.

This actually made things easier, believe it or not, when things were painful and hard in the first month, I didn’t consider formula as an option since I was still producing enough for the baby to eat.

With that in mind, here are some other reasons that breastfeeding was the right choice for us:

• It’s free!  Well, sort of.  Since I am working full time and breastfeeding, we made quite an investment in all the supplies.  But when you add them all up, it’s still significantly cheaper than buying formula.
• It’s easier and quicker and more efficient in the middle of the night.  There is no need to warm up and make a bottle or watch the baby cry while it warms up. 
• It’s also easier when we’re traveling someplace.  There is no need to pack bottles, the right amount of formula, etc.  I just bring…me.
• The milk my baby gets is made just for her.  It’s like a custom order.
• There’s still plenty of ways for Jon to bond with the baby.  He changes her, plays with her, and takes naps on the couch with her (while I supervise).  On top of it, we introduced Peanut to a bottle at 2 weeks and Jon has been able to feed her at least once a day.
• It’s awesome to help you lose the baby weight.  Seriously, it’s incredible.
• Whatever immunities my mature immune system is able to gather, I get to pass on to the baby.
• It’s healthy for me and the baby! 

What did you choose to feed your baby?

Why was that the right choice for you and your family?

I’m saving that for later

Guess what we started today?

What is this?

Our very first solids!

At our 4 month appointment, our pediatrician asked us to tell her what Peanut did while we ate.  So we did.  We told her how she follows the chips from the bag to my mouth.  How she freezes and watches any time one of us tries to stuff our face.  How she loves to smell whatever we’re tasting.

So our pediatrician said that it sounds like Addison wants to try that food for herself.  And we had to oblige.

Mom, go faster!

I was scared.  And nervous.  I’m not sure what about, but I’m guessing it has something to do with her growing up way too quickly.

Ugh, here, let me help you

But from this very first meal, it looks like I shouldn’t have.  Because she seemed to love it.

Must shove food into mouth

She thought it was the funnest thing.  Ever.  She watched me scoop it in her mouth, then tried to help by shoving her hands (covered with rice cereal) in as well.

I'm saving that for later

Then she got tired of not being able to gobble up a ton of it, so we quit while we were still ahead.

So there you have it.  We have a kid who’s eating solids.

Dear time – I quit.  Could you quit as well?

When did your little ones start eating solids?

What’s your favorite meal?

Our growing Peanut

From her 4 month appointment:

She is 11 lbs and 4.5 oz - putting her in the 10th percentile for weight.
She is 25 inches long - putting her in the 45th percentile for height.
In other words, Peanut is...well...a Peanut.

6 ladies with something in common

These six beautiful ladies met this weekend:

Molly, Emily, Kim, Kari, Katie and me

because of this:


I should be honest with you…4 of us are kind of cheaters.

Kari, Emily, Molly, Katie and Kim

We knew each other.  In fact, we work together.  And therefore see one another every single day.  But we did get to meet 2 more beautiful bloggers to add to our little growing network.

Emily and Kari (two of the ladies I work with)

The dinner was delicious, the conversations were amazing.
To be even more honest…the wine helped.

I’m not going to lie to you, this was one of the most wonderful nights.  The ladies that joined us for dinner were incredible – and every bit what I imagined just from following along with their blogs.

Let me introduce you:
(from left front and going around the table…)
Kim from Book Worm Runs
Emily from Life on Food
Kari from Running Ricig
Lil’ ol’ me from….welll…here
Molly form MK & an MBA
Katie from Love is Everywhere

Molly and Katie

We talked about our blogs, how we got started, what keeps us going, and our inspirations and aspirations.
Oh and we ate.

Kari and soup

and we took lots of pictures.

Kim, Emily and Kari

Because that’s what we do best.

me, Molly, and Katie

Well, that and write. And for some of us, run.  And others, learn.  And yet others, love.  Okay, so taking pictures is just a small part of what we do best, but you get the drift.  We took a lot of them.
And then this beautiful lady whipped out the presents.

It’s just her nature.

Kim and Emily

Like it’s my nature to enjoy presents.

And then we schemed about the next Meet up.  If you’re interested in being kept in on the details, leave a comment or shoot one of us an e-mail.  We’d love to expand our awesome network.