Monday, April 28, 2014

TableTop Fun: Castle Panic

We played another co-operative game last weekend called Castle Panic.
 
 
Players defend the castle from monsters that attack using cards representing an army. It can be really fun and really frustrating. You pull 2 monster tokens after each turn. But you can also pull tokens that tell you to pull even more monsters. We hadn't done a full round on Saturday before 3 walls were down and we were in trouble. Frustrating! Emma helped us with the dice rolling part.
 
 

Friday, April 25, 2014

My New Favorite Thing

Emma in a sleep gown!
 
 
Scrunched up...
 
 
Flailing...
 
 
Best of all... Smiling!
 
 
{Full Disclosure: Sleep gowns are heaven for middle of the night diaper changes. But she is awful cute in them!}
 

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Entertainment Center Redo

Emma's naps are unpredictable. Sometimes it's 20 minutes... or 4 hours. Today was a 4 hour one. When it hits a certain point I don't really know what to do with myself. I randomly decided to reorganize the entertainment center. I don't have a before picture but here is the result. (bad lighting and fuzzy pictures, sorry)
 
Fun fact: the middle shelf contains our wedding vases. It took me almost 3 years to finish them but I finally did! They are filled with dirt from "The Dirt" (the mound of dirt that came from our basement being dug out when we built) and turned into votive holders.
 
 
Emma gets a shelf. Some contents are temporary...
 
 
 
I added some mantle stuff... I'm on the fence if I like it or not. I wanted a way to display these photos without buying a billion frames or a big collage frame AND be able to change the pictures out quickly. Thoughts?
 
 
 

I Give Up

This is Emma giving up on tummy time. :P
 
 
This is more her style...
 
 
 

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Can You Spot the Snake?

Before it got cold again, we went for a walk on the trail near our house. Can you spot the snake in this picture? :)
 
 
 

Trouble

We are in so much trouble when this one becomes mobile. She kicked me constantly as soon as I was able to feel her move during my pregnancy. It's not surprising that she is a flailer. :P 



Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Thoughts on Motherhood - 1 Month In

I'm a month in to being a mother. These are some of my thoughts on this strange new world. :)

Never wake a sleeping baby? But what if you let her fall asleep in your arms?!? Ian and I have discovered that we would rather physically injure ourselves getting up and putting her down than wake her. :P


Aches and pains. Speaking of physically injuring ourselves... we've noticed some strange aches and pains. The normal stuff.. like arm and back pain from carrying her around is expected. The unexpected - our finger joints. My hands and finger joints are so sore! My best guess is that during feedings or when she is sleeping in my arms, I use my phone or Kindle to stay awake. Baby in the left arm, phone in left hand, bottle in right hand equals strange joint pain. Weird.  



Let the shoulds rain down. Being new parents means a whole lot of shoulds in your life. Should she be breathing like that? Should we sleep or wait to make sure she is really down? We should be able to get her to sleep longer. Should we put her in the bassinet or let her sleep in the swing? Should we use a pacifier? Should. Should. Should. Some of the shoulds we give ourselves. Some of them come from others. The shoulds suck. 



It goes by really quickly. It feels like Emma exited the newborn stage really quickly. I mean.. she's still an infant.. only 5 weeks old but the difference from a month ago is amazing. She's aware of her surroundings. She's starting to interact with us and know she is interacting with us. The other day I stuck my tongue out at her and she smiled/cooed and stuck her tongue out at me. This went on for 5 minutes. 



The pro breastfeeding chatter can be hurtful. There seemed to be so much talk of breastfeeding benefits before and after my pregnancy. I felt like getting a t-shirt that read "I GET IT. I'M ON BOARD." I'm still flabbergasted people even need to be convinced to breastfeed. 

Fast forward to our current reality. I am physically incapable of supplying enough milk to breastfeed. That's something that all that chatter never mentioned. If everything else goes right or you do everything you possibly can, you still may not be able to solely breastfeed. Emma's latch was pretty good from birth. She was eager to feed. She didn't use a pacifier or bottle. I sat with a heating pad and pumped. I took the herbs. I took the medication. I did tube feeding. And still... I can only produce up to 4 ounces of breast milk a day. I am lacking the glandular tissue needed to have a regular supply.

This is why the pro breastfeeding chatter can be hurtful - breastfeeding advocates make it seem like formula is evil. This leads those who MUST supplement to feel like they have failed. The breastfeeding class at the hospital even mentioned the terrible marketing practices of the formula companies. Maybe they've never been to the Nestle Canada website. I'll admit that I was stupid enough to judge people who didn't breastfeed. I'm sure people are judging me without knowing the full story.

I went through so many emotions during an already emotional time because of this. Guilt, failure, bitterness, sadness, anger... I'm still going through some of these. People would give me the pros of not having to breastfeed but it didn't stop me from feeling robbed somehow. Buying that first batch of formula almost killed me. But then... what was the alternative? I was going to let her starve?? The message should be really simple. Breastfeeding is best. But if you have to use formula, that's good too. Emma is healthy. That is all we can ask for. 



Not enough time, not enough hands. Now that I am a stay at home mom for a year (I'll be damned if I start using the ridiculous acronyms!), I have realized how quickly a day goes by. It's broken up by her feedings and naps.. but there is so little time to get anything done in between. This will change as she started to sleep longer. I'm not asking to be able to clean the entire house or even take a shower. I just want to be able to pump, eat and maybe even *gasp* nap!


And lastly, it's all new, we're still learning.. and it changes daily. There is only one thing that stays the same. Her cry usually means 1 of 4 things (hopefully never more than 1...). Either she is hungry, tired, needs to be burped or needs to be changed. If you run through the cycle, you can usually figure out what's wrong by process of elimination. Knowing this has taken the mystery out of babies. We still have meltdowns but it's easier to deal with when you have some idea of what could be wrong. The first few days when she was starving, we had no idea since we were feeding. That was probably the most frustrating point. But we are still learning. 

Overall, mommyhood is as hard as I expected it to be but much more fulfilling than I thought. She's adorable and when I see Ian melt over her cuteness it makes me really happy. He's such a sucker. We're in trouble. :) 

Eyelashes

When you're waiting for baby to fall asleep, you have time to make some observations. :P Emma had short stubby eyelashes when she was born and I thought she had inherited mine. I'm not sure if these will stick around but she has grown some pretty long lashes lately! (please ignore the messy bed head... :])
 
 

Monday, April 21, 2014

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Happy Easter


Here's Uncle Drewcifer asking Emma to pick a card... :P


Another picture.. but an interesting note. This picture isn't actually real. Google has an auto function that if you load 2 of the same pictures but a person is not smiling in one of them, it creates a copy and merges the pictures. Pretty cool. 


And a funny GIF it also created. :) Happy Easter!


Thursday, April 17, 2014

The Daily Em: Captured!

The elusive smile has been captured on camera! How silly is she?
 
 
She usually smiles while getting her diaper changed. This girl can't stand a dirty diaper for longer than a second!
 
 
 

Emma's 1st Soap-Mohawk

Her hair is getting pretty long... long enough for me to do this!
 
 
She was less than impressed. :P
 
 

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Better Weather

On Sunday, we spent most of the day Spring Cleaning the upstairs. We cleaned out our drawers and closets and organized what was left. Emma hung out with us and even slept 5 minutes in her crib before tagging it with some spit up. Ian said she was just marking her territory. :P We rewarded ourselves for the hard work (it was hard given the limited/broken sleep) and we went for a walk around the neighborhood. The weather was so warm but with slightly chilly wind. I'll take it!

 

Emma went for the walk in her bassinet so she could get a good nap in.

 

 

Here is a picture of her driver and ride.

 

 

We went by the pond and it was ice free. The geese were able to swim finally. :)

 

 

 

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Emma - 1 Month Old


Ian and I are a little in disbelief that Emma has turned 1 month old. Time flies when you're trying to keep up with the diapers, feedings and naps. Some days it feels like the year off will go by quickly... and other days Emma plays what I call the "Nuclear Reactor Game" and melts down multiple times. But then she smiles a bunch and it makes it all worth it. :) Yes, the picture above says 10 pounds, 9 ounces.. as the doctor said "No failure to thrive for this girl!". 

Credits: Photo - Mommy, Headband - Daddy, Onesie - G-Ma,
Month Sticker - Aunt Kam's friend Ashley, Blanket - Daddy's Boss Eve, Cuteness - Emma
Here she is full length...


...and scrunched back up!


Her usual pose...


...and a face full of cute!


We had our 1 month baby checkup appointment today. Everything is really good with her... you can't ask for anything more than a happy, healthy baby. She's also got this one wrapped around her little finger. :P


We are looking forward to her "coming fully online" and starting to interact with us more. :) 

Small Smiles

Emma has started to smile a lot. It's really hard to capture though. All of the smile pictures we get are post smile. Boo!

 

 

TableTop Fun: King of Tokyo

We bought a new board game on Saturday because the seafood store opened at 9:00am. Yeah, doesn't make sense to me either... but it happened! We decided that we can afford one new board game a month. The prices range from $10-$60 and we have a long list of games we'd like. We needed to waste some time Saturday morning, so we headed to J&J Cards to select our new game.

 

 

I ended up picking King of Tokyo. It is a card drafting and dice rolling game that is a ton of fun. It is quick and pretty simple to master... although Drew seemed to be the only one who really mastered it - he won all 3 games.. Boo! Emma wanted to play... I can imagine this would be a good kids game as it has some simple math involved. Some day!

 

 

These Pictures Were Taken Today

Yup, it's the middle of April! :P

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monday, April 14, 2014

People?

Ian's new favorite thing is making Emma seem like people... which we all know she is not. :P Here she is "hanging out" on the couch. :)

 

 

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Headband

Well?

 

 

Hmm... maybe not...