Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving from our family to yours!!

Blakely and her cousin Lexie Kate.

5 Months Old!

Five months old is such a fun age!! Blakely is doing so many new things and I definitely think this is my favorite age so far! 

We got the go ahead from the doctor to start giving her rice cereal this month and she absolutely loves it! Of course she makes a huge mess when she eats and more of it gets on her than in her mouth.

 New Milestones

• She rolled over for the first time yesterday!
• We still swaddle her at night but we are trying to break her of that habit so she won't become dependent on it. She is starting to love to sleep on her side.

•  At her appointment last week, she weighed 14 pounds even. 
• She is grabbing at toys and today, reached for me for the first time!
• She loves talking and is a non-stop babbler. I really think her report cards are going to say "Excessive talker" when she gets to school. :)

•  She LOVES playing with her cousin Lexie Kate! And as you can tell, Lexie just loves kissing and hugging on her Blakely.
• It is so funny to watch her play in her bouncer. She can just barely touch her feet to the ground so she leans to the left so that one foot touches and then starts jumping with her one foot. Kevin calls her his little Riverdancer.

•  For Halloween, Blakely went as a baby duck! It was the cutest thing ever. We didn't get to go the Fall Festival at Kevin's church because of rain, but we enjoyed visiting his parents and grandparents so they could see her cute costume!

•  Lexie Kate was a baby daisy. She loved hugging all over Blakely and couldn't keep her hands off her!

Blakely, you are my precious angel girl! You are the light and joy of mommy and daddy's world!

4 Months!!

My baby girl was 4 months old last week and I love her more every day! Life could not be sweeter!
She is starting to get more control over her body and I know it won't be long before she is sitting up on her own.

This past month I have seen her reach a few milestones. I heard her really laugh for the first time last weekend.  We went to Greenville to see my dad who was there for a wedding and my brother Jon was holding her. He kept making fart noises and all of a sudden, she let out this huge belly laugh. It totally melted my heart!

She is also starting to hold her bottle on her own, which is such a help to mommy. She doesn't do it for long, but I'm sure it won't be long before she holds it for most of her feeding.

She loves to hold onto toys and anything that dangles in front of her. She absolutely loves her play mat and she'll lay on it and just swat and grab and whatever is hanging above her.

One thing I'm not crazy about her doing lately is that she has started waking up in the middle of the night. Ever since the beginning of August, she has been sleeping on average 8-10 hours a night. However last week, she woke up at 3:00am and has been doing it ever since. Most people I have talked to seem to think she might be starting to cut teeth and have assured me that this phase will probably not last long. It's not really the waking up that I don't enjoy as much as the fact that she doesn't go back to bed very easily. In fact, some nights the only way she will go back to sleep is if I put her in the bed with me and Kevin. I definitely do not want to make a habit of this, but sometimes I am so completely exhausted that I will do whatever necessary to get her to go back to sleep. OK confession, I'm not crazy about her sleeping with us (mainly because I know it's not the safest thing in the world with her still being so little) but I do LOVE having her so close and snuggling with her for a few hours before I go to work. 

She is getting so much personality and is really starting to be fun. I'm loving every milestone that she reaches and although I love watching her grow, I am already starting to feel that it is going too fast. She is definitely my sweet little girl and every moment with her reminds me of how precious life is.

"Oh Lexie Kate, you are so funny!!"

These two little girls are so precious to me! I can't wait to see how much fun they have growing up together.

What I've Learned

Being a mother has completely changed my life in so many ways. Here's just a few of those ways.

1.Waking up at 6:30am now seems like a luxury.

2. A day full of stress can instantly be cured with 2 minutes of cuddling with my girl.

3. I'm so proud of my body and am probably less self conscious now than I was 25 pounds ago.

4. I can no longer watch scary movies where people are tortured or killed. Although they are characters and not real people, it makes me cringe thinking that stuff like that can happen to other people's children. And watching the news....forget about it.

5. I now understand the necessity of sometimes having to breastfeed in public. (I've only done this once but I now realize that you can't always time the feedings and when your child is hungry and you don't have a bottle, you do what's best for your child).

6. One last kiss is never enough.

7. I never knew watching another human being sleep could be so therapeutic.

8. Never leave home without an extra outfit (for you and baby). I should have learned my lesson after this incident but I obviously didn't and had to borrow a shirt from my mother-in-law last week after Blakely pooped all over me right before I had to be at work.

9. Making her wait until she's 35 to start dating is not unreasonable. And I guarantee that Kevin will at least have a gun visible when the first guy comes to pick her up (if not in his hands).

10. I have WAY more patience now as a teacher than I did before. When my 6th graders are acting crazy and I want to raise my voice, I remember that each one of them is someone's child. I always want Blakely's teachers to speak to her with kind words and with a patient attitude.