Five Month Round Up....

June 26th, 2012. Five months old.

Wow, time has really flown by!
I feel like I just wrote my four month round up yesterday, so this has taken a day or two to wrap my mind around...although it feels like yesterday, so much has changed that I think that's why it feels like it's flown by.

Every morning, without fail, I'm greeted with the sweetest smiling babe. Whether I have to wake her up or she's already awake and "playing" around in her bed until I get her, I'm always greeted with this huge opened mouth smile and it's a great way to begin the day. It does not prove that the rest of our day will be that joyously epic, BUT it's a great way to start!


We had an impromptu doctor's appointment on B's 5 month birthday, she weighed in at 14.5 lbs. I was asked by the nurse doing her vitals if I've been "slipping that baby some fried chicken and grits when no one's looking"....Although her weight is not astronomical for her age, we'll just say she wears it in certain places that would make you think otherwise, and honestly, comments like that are music to my ears.
She is wearing 3-6 month clothes, but definitely fills out a solid 6 month outfit with some nice, not obnoxious, growing room. I have learned, through all her physical growth, that baby clothes are a black hole of annoyance...Any parent can relate to that, so enough said on that topic!

Hair is finally filling out. :)

B's hair is filling in more and more each day and I love it. Her scar from birth is slowly disappearing thanks to that, finally! Her eyes are still a mystery to us. She has half of a brown/blue eye and then her other eye is a grey-ish blue. Jury is still out on that one.

Some of the most astronomical changes we've experienced this month just shows how much she's growing up. She's completely out of a full body swaddle, out of a one arm swaddle, and is only swaddled from the chest down when sleeping at night. During the day John will chest swaddle her, but most the time I don't and to me it seems she does better during the day without it. She's an absolute wiggle worm and is rolling all over her bed both when awake and asleep, so during naps it seems that the quality of nap is better when she has free range of her bed than at bed time when she's a little limp noodle.

Sweet "smoosh" face
sleeping on her tummy. 

Sleeping on her tummy has definitely become the most favored sleeping position and she continues to make my heart pound when I look at the baby monitor and see her in some tummy pretzel position. I'm not sure how she sleeps sometimes. She seriously looks like a contortionist the way she twists around in her sleep...BUT the positive side out of all of it, is at least she's 100% conked out while doing it, so rock on little girl, do what you need to do.

Another big change has been in her feeding times. She's been on a solid scheduled nursing routine since about 1.5 months old and we make gradual changes to it as she's able to play longer etc...well a week or so after her 4 month birthday we were doing our last nursing "session" of the night and after only about 5 minutes into it she pushed me away. I was so startled by it I put her back to me and she kept pushing away and was as wide awake as ever.
Usually during these feedings she nurses about half an hour and then usually falls asleep on my shoulder while I'm burping her or once she's laid in bed--but she's usually almost asleep at that point so her being wide awake really startled me and sent me into a slight panic.

Why isn't she tired!? It's bed time, the same bed time routine we've had for a while, what happened overnight!?
Well after trying to force the issue for about another 10 minutes she really just kinda laid there talking to me and kept pushing me away. So I burped her a little bit and laid her in her bed WIDE awake fingers crossed she would put herself to sleep.
She was out in about 5 minutes.
I was in shock...not only did she not want that nursing session at all, but she went right to sleep without a single squawk.
From that night on, that's how things went, she would still occasionally take a full feeding but she'd still be wide awake in the end and once burped and placed in bed she'd roll over and go to sleep, no cries or fusses at all.
It was amazing, lol. I think I'm constantly underestimating what that little bug can "handle" and what she's capable of doing, and so when she finally stands her ground with me and does things on her own it not only startles me, but it also hurts my feelings some.
That night she pushed me away for the first time, I called John after I put her in bed, tears in my eyes telling him that she doesn't want me anymore, lol.
It sounds ridiculous now, but at the time it was seriously such a shock that I had very hurt feelings and it also just shocked me how big she really was getting.
Now I LOVE it and enjoy the fact that I don't have to worry about a rough n'tumble bedtime when I lay her in bed wide awake.

Playing with a spoon.

We also introduced some Earth's Best Organic rice cereal to her a week ago and it was really fun to do. I had contemplated skipping this step altogether with her because to me it's really not necessary, BUT we're not sure John will get to be here when she gets to first experience REAL food, so I wanted to do this so he can have some of the fun in feeding her with a spoon, etc, for the first time.
She'd been playing with a spoon for about a week prior so she actually had the whole spoon-mouth concept down. She was a little confused by stuff being ON the spoon at first but after playing around with it for about 15 minutes she seemed to be ok with it. I know John really enjoyed it so that's all that matters!

Happy face after first rice cereal with daddy.

Sitting up, un-propped,
for the first time!

Another big baby accomplishment is that John got B to sit up on her own for the first time.
That was a great milestone that made me even more sad that my baby girl is growing up.
With how rough things were when she was a new newborn, I never thought I'd miss my little snuggle bug of a baby, but the older she gets the more she's needing me less and less I'm finding the more I miss those things we used to do.

This month was John's 28th birthday and I was really glad he was home for it. He has a habit of being deployed on birthdays and anniversaries, so the fact that he was home for his birthday was an awesome bonus. We laid low, going out to dinner with friends, but other than that laid low and enjoyed our first family birthday with daddy.

Sporting her amber
necklace.

We've been debating here at the end of month #5 if B might be teething or not. According to my mom I got my first tooth at 4 months, so we've had our eyes peeled to see if anything is coming around. It seemed there towards the end of month 4 that she was getting really fussy, drooling buckets, and gnawing on anything she could get her little hands on. So far nothing has poked through or even swelled up, but I decided to try the amber teething necklace with B to see if it'd make a difference at all either way.
Now I'm not a crunchy mom by any means at all, I don't claim to be the opposite, but I definitely don't claim to be one either...I like to stay grey, neutral, Switzerland on all that...I go with what works. Do the beads work? I have no idea, but they are cute and if they don't work, well, they aren't hurting her, so who knows.

Damage on my car...

On June 16th my car got rear ended AGAIN.
I don't know what people have against me in this town, but this SUV has been rear ended 4 times now, and backed into once. What made this worse is that B was in the car with us and I've never been so panicked in all my life.
As soon as the impact "finished" I was half out of the car in the middle of traffic before John pulled me back into the car so he could pull to the side. I jumped out of that car so fast, shaking all over, and opened the back door and there was little B just smiling up at me with no real concern to what just happened. I was so relieved.

Damage on his car...

Unfortunately we are having problems with the guy that hit us. Although we got each other's information, he's turned off his cell phone and isn't answering any communication's sent out from his insurance or us.
They won't determine fault until they get his statement, even though he was ticketed for speeding and avoiding collision. He even admitted, at the scene, that he was playing with his iPod and that's why he didn't see us.
After having SEVERAL majorly mean hissy fits with his insurance I finally got them to agree to fix my car even though they can't get ahold of him, so in a couple weeks I'll be taking the car into the shop and getting it taken care of....again.
In the end, we were all ok, but out of all the times I've been hit in this vehicle, this one had me in a panic the most because of Brynlee in the back.
Pretty sure she got extra kisses and squeezes that day from both me and her daddy.

Happy Father's Day 2012!

This month was John's first Father's Day! It was so fun. We combined our Mother's and Father's day "big" gift by getting the XBox on Mother's day, but I knew I still had to get him something special, so I made a photo book of our family journey so far and also got him a deep tissue massage at one of the day spas in town. He works so hard for us and spends such long days with the K9 dogs and getting ready for this next deployment, he needed something to help him "woosah" before he leaves.

We are still looking at end of July into August for moving back to CO and him deploying. He and his K9 dog, Denzel, are scheduled for their team certification testing the end of July and once they pass, we are assuming he'll be deployed within weeks after that.
My parents and brother are coming during the 4th of July week to hang out with us and so Drew can finally meet his niece! They are going to help us pack up a lot of the house and get stuff organized and into storage, so that when things go down, we're no blindsided with so much to do and I'm not here by myself trying to figure it all out with a baby.

My garage sale buddy.

We had a garage sale with the neighbor at the beginning of the month and got rid of some of our furniture and a ton of odds and ends stuff that I'm glad to have gone. I don't know how a house with just three people can get so cluttered but it was and it'd been bugging me for a while, so I was wheelin and dealin, wanting the stuff to go even if I had to follow them to their car to make them take it. Needless to say we made out well, and got rid of a ton of stuff that makes me feel not so claustrophobic and intimidated when it comes to packing and moving.

Well, sitting here after B's 5 month birthday I never thought that I'd still be having problems with the healing from her birth. After my 8 week PP appt. they had to "reset" some things which set me back a couple weeks in the healing process. Well about a month later, I did feel better but I still felt like some things were off and still not completely right. When it's your first kid it's so hard to know what's normal or not, you have nothing to compare it against and everyone's experience is different....so after waiting a while and talking to my off post doctor's, I finally made an appointment for an exam and they confirmed what I had been fearing.
Things are healed, but not healed properly, so I have been actually referred to a OB specialist to see what the game plan is. My doc told me that it could take anything from steroid shots a couple times a year for pain management to even worse case re-construction surgery to eliminate the problem altogether.
I know all of this may be TMI for some, but it's something, again, that no one really talks about after their babies are born. I'm extremely envious of those women that just pop out babies and are cooking dinner that night like it was nothing...every time I get examined I get comments that I must have delivered a huge baby...when I tell them that she wasn't big at all I always get weird looks because of how extensive the "damage" is.
I have to go through my whole labor story over and over explaining how she was stuck, how long I was in labor, how long I pushed etc, and it's always greeted with raised eyebrows and questions about whether delivering her naturally was worth it all here on the flip side with these issues.
Along with a pending deployment and moving, it's really the last thing I need to deal with, but I really want to have somewhat of my "old" body back. I still struggle to sit on my own couch or the chair in B's room without hurting, so in the end I'll do what I need to do to get the issue resolved. Fingers crossed it's just not as drastic as they have said already to me!

I've still been working from home with a couple office visits a week and I have really enjoyed it.
With the older B gets and the summer coming to a close, I've taken less work and have started prepping for the impending deployment and move. I absolutely love what I do and have enjoyed so much the opportunity to continue it even after having a baby. It really affirmed in my mind that it's ok to leave your baby sometimes and go do things you want to do, and your not a bad parent for it.
I enjoy dropping her off and riding in my car in silence. I enjoy going to work, hanging out with my coworkers and having adult conversation, no matter how obnoxious it is! Those co workers of mine have had to put up with a lot from me the last 2.5 years I worked there (pregnancy, deployments, etc.), but I wouldn't trade any of them for the world and it's awesome what a neat dysfunctional family we are.

Well Bryn's first swimsuit is bought, the beach is calling our name, and we're going to be headed out with family over 4th of July weekend and I can't wait for her first beach experience. I also can't WAIT for Brynlee to finally meet her uncle Drew, it's going to be awesome. I think they'll be equally scared of each other, so it's going to be an awesome experience to watch.



Until next time here are some other goodies from this last month...

Memorial Day 2012. Airborne Museum, Fayetteville, NC.

Father's Day 2012.