Work Life Balance

This is a post I started back in July. Again, how far we've come! I'm still busy and ironically never got around to posting this. Maybe work-life balance is as hard as I thought it would be. Just as my mother warned me, I get used to a certain phase or behavior or ability or inability of hers and just when I'm feeling good about it, she changes. At 13 months we don't have dirty diapers in the morning anymore. Kathy at the daycare gets to deal with those. Muahah!! Oh and potty training before age 1? HAHA...yeah right. I have not made time for that and won't until months from now.

Robbie, the baby, and I went to Mobile for 10 days over a month ago and I still haven't posted about it. I feel behind on most things in my life these days so it's no surprise this has taken so long. Motherhood keeps me busy. My job keeps me busy. Family keeps me busy. Though in ways the work-life balance isn't as hard as I thought it would be.
I work Tuesday through Friday now with Mondays off so I know what my week looks like. Katie Rose and I have a good routine in the morning. She wakes up earlier than I wish she would (around 6:15 which is an excellent alarm clock if I accidently forget to set mine). Do blackout curtains really help them sleep later? By then I have hopefully had a shower and done my makeup. KR then has a bottle while she watching Baby Einstein's Baby Mozart. Then she usually has a dirty diaper so after I dry my hair, I change her clothes, get myself dressed, and head out the door by 7:25. I might get in a cup of coffee which has been reheated 3 times and cereal. And I try to make my lunch every day, so really, I'm pretty proud of all that I do in 2 hours. I wish she didn't watch tv every morning but I have alot to do and something has to give.
Now, let's address this dirty diaper (or 3, as this morning would have it) every morning. A lady I work with started potty training her little girl at around 7 or 8 months old. She was a "regular" baby each morning so they started sitting her on a potty seat with a toy and eventually she did her regular business on a potty instead of in her diaper. By the time she was a year old she rarely had a stinky diaper. I think this could work especially now before she's really mobile. Any thoughts?
I can't believe she's almost 8 months old and she just gets cuter and cuter every single day. I love where she is right now. She still can't crawl but she gets on all fours and rocks, so it will be soon. She's not great a pulling up on furniture or her crib but she doesn't get many opportunities to practice that particular skill. I'm not in a big hurry for these things to happen anyway. She loves playing peekaboo and she really loves when her daddy or I act like a monkey. Parents do such ridiculous things to make their children laugh.

Baby Sleep Project

I used to think I understood the phrase "sleeps like a baby."

Haha! These are posts I started and never published and it's really funny going back and looking at these. I like how this is titled Baby Sleep Project and was started last spring. Oh how far we've come. KR started sleeping through the night at about 7 months old and has never turned back. Thank goodness!

So Behind!!

Ok so I have not been updating as often. My job keeps me busier since I got a promotion in August. My homelife keeps me busier with a now 13 month old running around and relentlessly trying to eat dog food. And along came hunting season...Halloween....Birthday....Thanksgiving....and now Christmas. Whew!!

So back to KR's birthday. It was a great little birthday party. The "rule" is that you invite the age of the child plus 1. The girls at work make fun of me because I have all these "rules." Rules about timeliness of thank you notes. Rules about what shoes can and can't be worn before and after certain holidays. Etc. We invited more children but hunting season is busy for families in Montana so only Alison Sutherlin came. And it was just perfect. Katie Rose loved all of her toys and she loved loved LOVED her cake. KR loves attention - an audience - commotion, noise, and entertainment, for sure. She gave the best performance a parent could ask for and we delighted in celebrating her first year.

Grandma Posie and Grandpa Bob came over with V-V and Grumpa. Bonnie and Pop were there and Meredith. We sipped on boxed wine and ate yummy food. The funniest part was what Bonnie was exclaiming while KR ate her cake. Bonnie thought maybe the top of the cupcake cake reminded her of her breastfeeding days. I've never heard Grandpa Bob laugh so hard.

Then and Now

This picture was taken exactly 1 year ago

What happens in a year!

I have so much to post about my baby turning 1. We had a fun little birthday party for her. V-V and Grumpa and Great Grandma Posie and Great Grandpa Bob came over from Stevensville. Bonnie and Pop were there too and our friends Meredith and Alison. She had so much fun opening her gifts and hugging her new baby dolls. She loved her giant cupcake and dove into it face first. I will post pictures and a video when I'm at home. It's just hard to find time these days but I want to cherish these memories for sure. We love you baby girl!!

As the Grownups Do

She talks on the phone like we do.

KR loves to hear someone talk to her on the phone so whether it's a phone, a remote control, or anything else smallish and rectangular, she holds it up to her ear and says, "Oh? Ahhoh?"

She loves chocolate the way we do.

She loves credit cards the way we do.

And she cries when they're taken away...like we do.

Terrible Blogger

I have been a terrible blogger lately. Robbie was working out of town in September meaning I was a single mom for a little while. Hunting season arrived which took us to the Centennial Valley last weekend. I killed our computer in September by accidentally downloading a virus after uninstalling Norton...brainy, huh? Fortunately I was able to get our pictures onto an external hard drive. We got our new computer this week so I hope to do some catch up work.

Updates on Katie Rose:
Still not walking but growing increasingly frustrated (motivated) to figure it out.
Her bottom teeth came through a while back and now her top teeth are descending. They're the cutest little teeth ever!
She's also learning to bite and is leaving teeth marks allover her crib.
She says several words if you can call them words. She was saying Mo for more and learned sign language for "more." She's forgotten somewhat now that she feeds herself. She says Dadadadada and Mamamamama and No No No No No. She says Daw-dah for dog. She can't say kitty but she makes a hard "K" sound when she sees the cats.
She's getting a little temper and shakes her legs really fast and screams when she's not getting what she wants or when she's restrained from flipping around during a diaper change. She's learned to pick at the diaper stickies and pull them apart.
Her favorite foods are apples, blueberries, bagels, any kind of bread, seasoned rice, cheerios, eggs, shrimp - yes, I've given her shrimp, gerber pasta pickups, bananas, and most anything else besides green beans and a gerber stew we tried out. She spit that all down her front.

I can't believe she's almost 1...and that I already want another one...but we will wait.... More later!

For the Love of Adorable Dresses Part II

I posted an entry a while back about little girls, namely little southern girls, in adorable dresses. There is no disputing the fact that girls are more fun to dress and their clothes are much, much cuter than boy clothes which are expected to be more durable, less frequently ironed and starched, and appropriate for playing in the dirt. Here's a story about the foofy outfit that *almost* could.

Our friends Keith and Kelly got married August 20th and her colors were lavender/purpley and white. Meredith, my best justification-to-spend-more-than-I-should-simply-because-it's-adorable-and-perfect-for-the-occasion friend, and I had been gushing over different dresses and outfits we found online that would be oh so perfect for Keith and Kelly's wedding. I went to Strasburg Children's website a few months ago and found this ensemble:

This ensemble at the time was priced at 76 dollars which I nor Meredith could justify so we lamented and moved on looking for something else. Katie Rose has plenty of beautiful vintage dresses so it wasn't like we had nothing; It's just fun to shop. Ok so downtown Bozeman has a kid's consignment shop near where I work. I casually walked in one day during my lunch and low and behold, this very outfit was on the rack in her size for, get ready, THREE DOLLARS!!!! I couldn't believe it. What luck! What a prize!

I took it home and showed it to Mom who was also amazed at my fantastic find. She was at my house showing some other outfits she bought for Katie Rose. She said, "Let me take that home and I'll iron and starch it for you so it'll be all ready for the wedding. I'll take home some other dresses too because you know she'll spit up on the one outfit, and you should have another one or two to change her into throughout the party." Oh, perfect I thought. Things were falling right into place.

Then things took a turn for the worse. Mom had Katie Rose on the couch with her playing dress-up to make sure the new items fit. While Mom was holding her, Katie Rose spit up green goo allover the new purple outfit. She wasn't even wearing it and spit up allover it! But Mom was confident she could get it out with a little goo-gone and took it home. A few days later Mom came back over to our house with the ironed dresses. She had a solemn look on her face. She said, "Lee, please don't be too mad at me....pause....I got the spit up stain out of the outfit, and I transformed it from a wrinkled mess into a sweet, sweet outfit.....longer pause.....But, I accidentally got bleach allover the front of it. I am SO SO sorry." My unbelievable buy was ruined and had to become a play outfit...an outfit that could get - SIGH - dirty.

But - The relief is that we did only pay 3 dollars for it. And it happened to a store bought outfit and not one of the dresses Mimi made for me. Mom and I would have cried if that had happened. I suppose one shouldn't place too much value on material things because afterall, spit happens.

*Katie Rose ended up not going to the wedding at all, not because she didn't have an outfit, but because Robbie and I realized that at her age, we might have more fun without her. She was perfectly content with zero regard for her clothing at home with Grumpa and Mama V where she played outside, got food allover her play clothes and hair, and mouthed every filthy, soggy tennis ball she could find. Baby bliss. The outfit has been worn once while riding in the car to Stevensville the day of the wedding. It has since been washed and has returned to the wrinkled mess it started as.