one week left!

before i start with the main blogging..i thought i would add a picture i took 2 days ago. i dont know why but i love this picture. she looks like a tiny little munchkin in it. it makes me want to squish her! :)

anyway, the countdown begins.....in one week i will be going back to work. i am glad to be able to get out of the house and not feel so stir crazy all the time.....but i am nervous about being gone from emerson all day long. i have a semi routine going with her during the day when we aren't going anywhere. we wake up, i change her and feed her. then we play for a few and then i put her in her playmat while i try to pee and eat breakfast. after she gets tummy time in the playmat and starts to get frustrated, i take her out and play with her again for a bit. then i put her in her bouncer to talk to the baby in the mirror. hehe. she loves this. when she starts to get cranky i put her in the swing, where she will fall asleep for about a half hour. when she wakes up, i change her and feed her again and usually get her dressed for the day. then we continue about our day and most of the routine is out the window at that point but i enjoy our mornings....i'm going to miss them when i am at work. she is happiest in the morning and i am going to miss it! however, i certainly can use some money again.

why cant i just bring her to work with me????

oh my screaming baby...

i decided to take a moment a write another blog because well, i just needed to vent. i just spent the last 2 hours listening to emerson scream her head off. now i have a major headache. and now she is sleeping peacefully. phew. i think she has gas problems again which is fantastic. nothing i love better than a screaming gassy baby. i thought we were doing well on the formula we were on but maybe we should switch back to the soy formula instead. this is getting kind of crazy. babies are like little puzzles you have to piece together. only a bunch of pieces are missing and you have to figure out what to put there.

well....i'm going to go take some tylenol, or something and hope that it starts working before my lovely screaming child wakes up and we get to do it all over again...

want to save money? have a baby!

that's right! you read that correctly. i said, if you want to save money, have a baby! i know that isn't the normal thinking...and upon reading that you must have thought to yourself that babies are so expensive and all that. well, i am here telling you differently. don't get me wrong, there are diapers and wipes and all that...but if you really wanted to save you could work on elimination communication and just use washcloths for accidents. and breastfeeding is free too. hehe..

i figured out one of the ways today that babies actually can save you money....it's because you no longer shower anymore. that's right...you don't spend the money on shampoo, conditioner, soap and all the other things you need for showering. and you will save on the water bill as well. this will save you even more money if you tend to buy expensive shampoos and body washes.

the drawback to this money saving technique is that you might start to smell. however, this also might work to your advantage since i read the other day that babies can tell their mom's by their smell. you won't have to worry that your baby doesn't know who you are....or even where you are, since they will be able to smell you so strongly. heck, you might not even need to hold them for comfort if they can just smell when you enter the same roon as them! the only disadvantage to that is that i feel bad for emerson...(or anyone really). just like i don't want to be the one with the stinky kid, i'm sure she doesn't want to have the smelly mom! she will either have to deal with it though, or learn to occupy herself for longer periods of time so that i can actually get a chance to shower....

of course, i can always shower when she sleeps right? well, as luck will have it, she slept 8 hours straight through last night! woot woot! only thing is that she didn't go to sleep until after 1am. so much for trying to get her on a 11pm schedule! i even started putting her to bed last night at 10:30pm. eventually i gave up trying to get her to sleep in her hammock and brought her into bed with me (with her sleep positioner so she can't go anywhere) and man, does she sleep better when she is with me. i wasn't even touching her! so, in theory, i could have showered last night at 1am, however, how many moms do you know that would sacrifice sweet slumber for a measly shower? not this one, that's for sure!

and so i slept very well last night and feel wonderful today.....even if i do smell a little :)

2 blogs in one day!

this is really a blog about me...but it does have to do with emerson too. actually one thing i wanted to blog about is all her fault. the other thing...well, it's my fault but it involves cute pictures of her.

if you are a little lost, i will explain. my pants dont fit anymore. none of them. and it's all her fault. i am actually 2 pounds below my pre pregnancy weight but somehow the pounds have redistributed themselves....and thus, none of my pants fit! my maternity pants are too big...they keep sliding down. and my pre pregnancy pants are way too tight. some i can button, and others are a lost cause. i have one pair of jeans that fit (and if you live near me, yes...they are the jeans i am wearing EVERY day since they are the only pants that fit). i go back to work on the 15th and i think i might have to go to work bottomless. that's right...no pants! i cant really wear my jeans to work...especially not every single day. and if i wear my maternity pants, i will end up showing quite a bit of crack to my students. granted, it would be pretty fair since i see their cracks often due to the low rise of pants these days! but, in the grand scheme of things, i would prefer to keep my crack to myself. i'm a private person like that. so....maternity pants are out.

i could wear the pre preggo pants that will button....and then i will have the most fabulous muffin top ever! gotta love muffin top. now that will definitely project me straight into loser mommy status. forget ever being the cool teacher again. cool teachers dont have muffin top.

so we are back to the jeans....which i cant wear to work. either that or go to work sans pants. and its all emerson's fault. ...and when i get fired for going to work with no pants on, i'll blame that on her too!


so the second thing...this is totally my fault. i lost my sd memory card for my digital camera. yep..i suck. and it had super cute pictures on it that i havent downloaded or printed yet. once again, i suck. i put it in my wallet to go to print out pics today, and then it magically disappeared. i can't find it anywhere. and i lost it before i even left the house. i think my wallet actually has a black hole in it or something. you would have loved the pics. damn. i would have loved the pics! i think i have looked everywhere. i will post the pics though if the black hole in my wallet ever spits the memory card back out.

one step forward...two steps back

i lied in my blog yesterday. i didn't go to sleep early. well, i went to sleep earlier than before, but only by a half hour. but i had so many things to do! and it was much easier to get them done while little miss emerson was sleeping....

speaking of her sleeping....so much for 11pm bedtime. i tried it again last night with no success. she wasn't having it. but i kept at it and only took her out once to change her diaper (man, that kid can pee!) and eventually she fell asleep at around 12:30am. so much for progress. but we are going to keep at it. she did sleep until 6:30am, so at least that was a nice 6 hour stretch...but since i didn't go to bed until 2:30am, it wasn't as great for me. but i got stuff done at least. and then as usual, she nursed and went right back to bed. once she is in bed it works out pretty well.

i also had set my alarm to wake up at 9am. gotta start getting used to getting up earlier and also getting her on a good schedule to not sleep the day away. yeah...so much for that too. i sayed in bed until almost 11am. she was even awake before me but she was cooing and being good so i stayed put.

anyway, today we are getting out of the house. we are going to the mall...again. yeah, i have no life. someone remind me...the next time i unexpectedly get pregnant to plan to have the baby in warmer months! hehe

success! (and sleep)

last night emerson slept from 11:30pm-8:30am....straight through! woot woot! and then she woke up to nurse for about 5 minutes before falling asleep again until 10:30am. that would have been a great nights sleep...if only i had gone to bed before 3am. stupid me. oh well. it was a pretty good nights sleep anyway. hopefully she will do it again tonight. i swear i will go to bed earlier!

and as an added bonus....she is asleep right now! hehe. maybe, just maybe, we can get into a good schedule before i go back to work. i am even staying home today...even though it's KILLING me to be in the house all day. well actually, i might just go to the ymca later to work out...and i just need to get out of the house at least once a day. now i just need motivation to fold a million baby clothes, clean the house, write brad's mom a letter and address xmas cards.

....well, that might not all happen, but at least i've got a baby that sleeps! :)

one month appt and other jazzy stuff

well...it's supposed to be a one month appt but today emerson was actually 6 weeks old! i cant believe she is that old already! and she has gotten so big! we were at the mall tonight and i kept noticing babies who were smaller than her. i want to shrink her back! keep her little forever! although i love that she is smiling and last night she laughed...really laughed, for the 1st time. she is so cute when she smiles....

anyway, her appt went well. she is now 21 inches (At birth she was 19.25in) and weighs a whopping 8lbs 10oz! hehe..even though lots of babies weigh that (or more) at birth. it still seems big for her. so with those statistics, she is in the 35% for her height and 18% for her weight. she is still a little peanut for her age. however, her melon (head) is in the 56%percentile! she's got a big noggin like her daddy! haha. little body, big head! she must have an extra amount of brains or something. hehe. but aside from size, all is well. we are going to try to get her on a schedule, since she enjoys going to bed much too late for me to be able to function at work. not so sure how that is going to work (she is crying in her hammock right now :( ) but i am going to remain hopeful.

after her appt we went to babies r us to get some essentials for her..and to get a few christmas presents for her. i got her some toys. it was interesting picking them out, as there are too many options with only subtle differences. i kept showing the toys to her to see what she liked, but amazingly, she didn't care! this will probably be the only year she doesn't care. it certainly made choosing that much harder though! and believe it or not, i got her a toy that is pink and it plays music. i swore i wouldn't support toys that needed batteries but this one comes with batteries already in it, and it plays some nice songs, so i figured it was okay. and i bought her a wooden toy too so that kind of balances it out.

aside from the 3 or 4 toys i got her for christmas, i am starting a tradition with her. i bought her a snowbabies ornament for 2008. it is going to be her 1st christmas ornament and each year i am going to buy her a new snowbaby ornament. i also got myself one (its a snowbaby cuddling with a pink blanket) and wrote her name and birthday on it. i thought it would be neat to do something like that with all my future children too...(should i have any). i have also thought of buying her a xmas stocking that she can keep forever with her name on it...but i am having trouble finding one i like...or even finding one at all! my mother got her a stocking for this xmas so if i dont find one, she has that one for her toys but i would still like to have one for her that i can tell her she has had her whole life...

the last thing i might get for her ($$ willing) is some cloth diapers. its kind of my gift to myself (to save money), my gift to her (because there arent any yucky chemicals) and our gift to the enviroment (less waste). you can never start teaching the importance of that stuff too early! :)