The Me I Am.

Do you ever feel like you're not who you used to be?
There are so many different phases of life that remind me of how much I've changed since that last phase.

From the moment I found out I was pregnant, it occurred to me that life as I knew it was different forever. For years, I came and went as I pleased, busied myself in a million extra curricular activities, and had very few others to consider other than myself. How selfish does that sound!
I distinctly remember thinking, this isn't about me anymore. No matter what happens (with all of the uncertainty pregnancy and childbirth brings), I am completely and utterly changed because of this.
Those feelings were spot-on.
Women morph into these new creatures after becoming a mom. You learn very quickly that you are capable of so much more than you ever thought you were. In a few short weeks, you learn to run on E. You instinctively put someone elses needs so far above your own that in a way you've forgotten about your own existence. At least for a little while. The dust settles, the fog clears, or whatever analogy fits best, and you take a look at yourself and realize you will never be who you used to be, so it's time to figure the new you out.

This is what I'm currently doing. Trying to determine who I am again.
I'm not saying the old Emily isn't in here anymore. My kick ass-ness is still present. There's just a little padding on it. Some of the edges of fraying. Sometimes the kick ass needs a good polishing before it goes out in public.
And the problem  is I can't decide what I am. Am I the frumpy mom-lady I feel like most of the time? Am I trying too hard to be nouveau mom? Aack!
But instead of trying to figure out who I am and smack a label on it in my spare time, I think I'll just live my life. Because like I mentioned : this isn't about me anymore.

Well, all the time, anyway.

Share your thoughts. Anyone else feel like they lost themselves in the mix? Or were you strong enough to hold on to a few scraps of the former you?

Midweek Happenings

I was true to my word and started my Insanity workouts. I "officially" started on Monday, and I've completed a work out three times now. It's going great! I'll talk more on it in a week and give the update then.

I've also been completely addicted to Pinterest lately. I signed up quite a while ago when I first heard about it in May, but only use it on and off...but lately I can't pull myself away. I've come across SO many ideas for food, fashion, crafts, decorating, organizing and awesomeness in general.
I found this little gem this week and thought it was too sweet:

Let me know if you'd like an invite! Leave a comment with your email address and I'll send you one.

Little Charlotte continues to be the greatest, most smartest, most hilarious and most grunty baby on the planet.
She had her 6 month appointment last Friday (about 2 weeks late...) She weighed in at 16lbs 3 oz and that puts her in the 50th%. Her height and head are also in the 50th percentile range. Her awesome quotient is in the 150th percentile. It's a new measurement they take. They have this algorithm that somehow takes the total incredibleness of the mom and subtracts the poindexter factor of the father and it comes up with the awesome quotient...so...I guess there ya have it.

I just hosted a Thirty-One party this week. Have you ever been to one? Normally I wouldn't be into this stuff, but I loved it! I "earned" a ton of free product and scored a bunch of utility totes and bags and whatnot.

On the crappy photography front, I am really wanting to learn how to use my camera. I only know how to use it on automatic, and the good stuff comes out when you use it in manual. If anyone wants to give me a crash course in digital slr photography, let me know. I need all of the help I can get.

We've got #projectmarriage Date Night coming up this Friday! If you don't participate in Project Marriage, you should!! July Challenge!

Okay, thanks for putting up with my randomness. Catch ya later. :)

I might be insane.

I just bought the Insanity workout dvds.
I am picking it up tonight.
I can't keep this to myself because otherwise I might get away with not finishing.
If you're not familiar this program, click here.

Every time I saw the infomercial on TV I would be so inspired, but never took the plunge. It's time!
I'm fed up with not fitting into my clothes. I fell into a funk the last time I went shopping because I had to buy pants that are 2 sizes larger than my "normal" size, and I refuse to make this my new normal.

After I had Charlotte, I lost weight rapidly. I thought, "psht! big deal. I'll be back to normal in 2 more weeks." I plateaued after 8 weeks of weightloss...and then started gaining. And gaining. And gaining some more. Frankly, I disgust myself. 90% of the reason there's barely any photos of my child and me is because I delete most of them. I'll be dressed, hair done, makeup ready, get a cute shot....and then the sun shines wrong and showcases my trout arms.

So, enough is enough. A year and 4 months ago, I was in the best shape of my life and that doesn't say much. Time to be the best I can be.

Boom.

Six Months!

Sometimes I simply cannot believe that I have a child. A little human who relies on me for just about everything. Okay, everything. And to say that she's been here for 6 months already is nuts!
To say it was the "best" 6 months of my life would be an understatement. I simply cannot use a word that describes 7th grade camp or turtle cheesecake when summarizing the last half year.
To say it was exhausting and joyful at the same time or simultaneously terrifying, draining, fulfilling and delightful...might be more like it.
So, in lieu of a sappy post (we'll save that for when she's a year), we'll take a look back to see how much she's grown!

Darby used to love Charlotte. She prefers to have her own space now. My goal was to have a photo each month to show how big Charlotte was getting in relation to her dog, but Darbs won't have it.

This pretty much sums up the first month. She was not colicky, just fussy. I had to implement the 5 S's from Happiest Baby on the Block at least 5 times a day. But at least I had discovered what worked within the first month.

We started cloth diapers at 2 months. They were huge and hilarious.

Look how huge those leggings are on her chicken legs!

She started to get a little more fun at 3 months. But right when we thought we had the sleeping thing down, she threw us a curveball. And we didn't sleep for months.

Starting to look a lot more like Papa Elf Bear

Pudging out a little more! And being hilarious in general.

I won't lie about it. I like the pouty lip shots because it's the one time she sort of resembles me.

No teeth yet, but love to chew on just about everything.

Around 5 months she really started to get easier. She smiles all of the time, is a delight to be around (when she's not grunting her fool head off) and loves to play with toys.

Such a sweet, sweet girl.

Sitting up!

Laughing at Dad and looking exactly like him.

Life is good at 6 months.

If I hadn't carried her around in my giant belly for 9 months, you'd barely know the kid was mine.

I've really noticed lately how independent she is. I know that seems like an oxymoron...independent baby. I picture a diaper clad baby with a wide brimmed hat and satchel taking on the town...Think "Madeline" but squishier and smaller. Uh, anyway.

She's independent in the way that she sometimes prefers to play alone and holds her bottle by herself. I guess these are just little things, but it just makes me see that she can do a few things without the assistance of her hovering mother. Soon, she'll be choosing her own outfits and riding a bike...but today, she is still little. And there's nothing I can do to keep her this way. And dammit, I've made myself cry.

A Success Story

Hey y'all.
We. Have. A. SLEEPER!

I hope that if there are any of you out there that have had sleep issues with your little ones, you'll read ahead. We have a well rested family.

I have hesitated to write about it in fear of jinxing it. I'm sure there are plenty of you that know what I'm talking about. The moment you "brag" about your great sleeper, they change on you. And maybe she will after this post.
You may remember this entry or this one. And now that I look back, it's been over two months in the making.
I asked for lots of advice and suggestions. I think I read every book, blog, and magazine about it. I followed my instincts, and I ignored my instincts. I somehow managed to be consistently inconsistent. But we got it figured out.
When Charlotte was 4 months old, her pediatrician told me that "she can nutritionally go 12 hours without eating." I wouldn't believe it. She could barely go 5 hours without waking up and I assumed it was because of hunger. But starting then, I chose to not feed her at night. And breast-feeding moms? You know how that feels. Hello boobies!! There were times that I would get up to pump at night just so I could fall back asleep. Yes, Charlotte was still waking constantly, and I felt horrible about pumping when I could just feed her.
After several weeks of attempting to phase out a night feeding, we were sort of making progress. About once a week, we'd get a little bit more sleep.
But she was still a stinker.
Cry Cry Crying. She'd sleep great from 7:30-11, then she'd be up multiple times. For weeks, the most I got was maybe 3 consecutive hours of sleep.
This is when I started the book reading. And I am so thankful for the suggestions to read Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child.
::side note : my friend Betsy recommended this book. And her daughter sleeps like a CHAMP.::
This book saved my sanity. It was tough. I downloaded it on my eReader and found the parts that applied to me and started putting them into practice.
What it came down to was that she was going to have to cry. I mean, she was crying anyway, even when I was trying everything to get her to stop. So now I was just going to have to not try.
We turned down/off the monitor, and cracked the door so I could just barely hear her. I think it took roughly a week of doing this seriously. There were many nights where I had no idea how well she did because I couldn't hear if she was crying.
Okay, I'll cut to the chase.
She now sleeps 7:30pm-7:30am with 1-3 wake ups but goes RIGHT BACK to sleep many times without my help. The 5:30 wake up is harder to break, but we're getting there. She takes killer naps, but we are still enjoying a flexible schedule. It's not the end of the world anymore if her naps get screwy.

The downside to all of this? The lack of a night time feeding has greatly reduced my milk supply. The combo of that and going back to work and having less than comfortable pumping accommodations has meant that Charlotte is now on formula 99.9 % of the time as of last week. I miss the good ol' days, but life is getting so much easier and for that I am thankful.

Thank you to all of you who offered your help, and for any of you who are struggling with night time sleep, shoot me an email/comment/message on facebook. You can do it!

Oh, and we also broke the swaddle cold-turkey! Without a single problem, incidentally. I think I was so afraid to try it in fear that our nights would be filled with the screams of an enraged child, but she's getting too big for it. And it worked!

Moving ahead towards our next hurdle...whatever that might be.
Crap. Now we'll be dealing with teething.
But at least I know she is capable of being an incredibly awesome baby.
sigh.

June Wrap Up & Photos

Whew. Life is going too fast. Everyone says it does after you have a kid. I am now one of those people, because my kid is going to be 6 months in a few days and I absolutely cannot believe it. I'll do a picture post around that time so we can see how much the little monster has grown.
But for now, here's a little recap of June in Emily World.

We introduced veggies and a couple of fruits to Charlotte when she turned 5 months old. My plan was to wait until 6 months, or however long it took her to be ready, but with encouragement from her pediatrician, we went ahead with it. Charlotte loves it! So far we've done sweet potatoes, carrots, bananas, avocado, apples, pears, and peas. She loves all of it....except apples. Once I mixed em with nanners though, she was an addict. That's how I interpret her little shakes of anticipation for food. Certainly it can't be excitement. Clearly, she's a baby addict.

First tastes of sweet potatoes 6/4/2011

She's been cirque du soliel-ing for a while, but is now officially playing with her feet every chance she gets

We've also slowly started to introduce her to beer. We're trying to build up her tolerance, so we only allow a little bit at a time. 

Siting up is our next big milestone. She's not quite there yet, but she's getting closer. She hasn't reached Weeble status, as she still falls down.

Charlotte had her first trip to Lake Michigan. We didn't go on the beach, but we walked the pier.

(Edit: She's been to Lake Michigan up north. This was her first time closer to home.)

She looks so tiny in her big stroller. It's funny to picture a 4 year old fitting in the same stroller a 5 month old is in.

After our long hot walk, we rewarded her with a little bit more beer.

I busted out the jumperoo this month. I have ADD when it comes to toys. I am just too excited to see how she responds to the new gear. She does like the jumperoo, but the little stinker is either too short or doesn't weigh enough for it.

Not a lot of bouncing going on in there.

Appleschmutz. Not a fan.

She sure loves her Daddio. And he loves his little "Nugget". His "Mrs. Bucket" His "Didi Benami" Yes, he actually called her the name of an American Idol season 9 contestant.

The non-Charlotte photo: Marcus and I had our first overnight away since the Little Dictator took over. We had an absolutely fabulous time at our friends' wedding in northern Michigan. Charlotte was her usual non-sleeping self while we were gone, but Grandma and Grandpa survived!

Back to Mini Mussolini: I have been trying my hardest to get her to laugh! She's given me little chuckles for a couple of months. After trying peek-a-boo, tickling, puns, sarcasm, and self injury, she finally laughed! At the dog.
Here's a clip. (Darby was jumping around and trying to chomp on a chunk of styrofoam) Forgive the poor quality, I grabbed the nearest video cam.



And lastly, a quick photo before she "marched" in a premature 4th of July parade. No one could even see her, since she was sleeping in the Ergo carrier...I was just excited to have an opportunity to have to wear this outfit more than once!!

Her shirt says "America's Sweetie" I find it somewhat hilarious that children's clothes rarely reflect the true meaning of our independence here in the USA. It's all cutesy "Daddy's Lil Firecracker" and "Star Spangled Beauty". Don't forget "Mommy's Little Heart Attack" with a kid lighting a Roman Candle.

So that's June in a nutshell. July has always signified the middle of summer...after that it just flies by. July is also the month in which my little girl turns 6 months. Does that mean she'll be a year in the blink of an eye?

I guess I should start planning her party now...

My very first "Guest Blogger"

Marcus has been showing an unusual amount of interest in my blogging lately. Saying things like "if I blogged, I would dominate!!!" and "I want to blog about pickles!" <--well, not that (completely).

So I offered him the opportunity to write for my readers.

When I asked him what the title is all about, he made me notice how the font gets smaller. So it's sort of like an echo or something? I don't know. Ask him.

So, welcome Marcus! This dude loves run on sentences!

Guest Guest Guest Guest Blog Blog Blog Blog

So Emily left me with C-nibbles (that’s today’s nickname for Charlotte (her name starts with “C” and she’s recently taken to nibbling things)) for the 2^nd night in a row so I’m taking this opportunity to “Guest Blog”, or so I think.  Technically I’m writing this in Microsoft Word© and I have to leave it up to Emily to enter it into her blog.  So it’s her choice to take this .docx file and do with it what she pleases.  She could just leave it saved here on her computer where it would be a misplaced journal entry.  She could read it out loud to C-Nibs (Short for C-nibbles) as a bed time story.  She could email it to herself, copy the email on her phone, MMS it and make it an unusually long and grammatically correct text message.

So as a person who has made a choice to refrain from broadcasting my life on the internet, I’m going to that say that I’m not blogging right now, I’m just typing.  I don’t have anything against the people who spend a lot of time social networking;  it just isn’t for me.  I’m borderline ADD as it is-- I’d get nothing done if I had to manage a facebook account and real life at the same time.  You may say, “You should try twitter, it’s fun and doesn’t take up much time at all.”  But if you said that to me, I would slap you in the face hard.  Because I do have something against twitter.  Why are hundreds of millions of people around the world using twitter?  I liken it to a bunch of middle schoolers who are given an assignment in writing class to compose a Haiku.  Twitter takes about the same amount of creativity but it has two fewer rules.  Well, maybe 1 fewer rule.  Keep it under  one hundred twentysomeodd characters and avoid tweeting photos of your crotch.  Last week something smelled like poop in Grand Rapids, people started tweeting, someone started a #hashtag, and there was a story on mlive.com that was as focused on the tweets as the poop smell.  Ridiculous by every measure.

So speaking of poop smells, back to Charlotte.  I took her  grocery shopping tonight.  Clausen Pickles are $2.50 a jar and buy 5 get $5 off so we did not go to the "ritzy" Meijer store just down the road from my house that never has the sale items on the shelves—we went to the Meijer at 54^th st. with the ill-conceived parking lot where the lines are short and the shelves are stocked.  Being in that part of town, I thought Charlotte and I could witness a shoplifting event, then I could report said event, show Charlotte the consequences, and teach her a valuable life lesson.  Then we could go home and eat pickles!  The shoplifting event did not happen but we had fun anyway.  It’s evident that Charlotte loves pretty much everything that moves so long as it does not emit a loud, startling noise (That means you—guy in the old blue Caprice Classic who honked at the SUV that was not backing out, but rather was simply centering itself in its parking space.  If you were paying attention, you would have understood that the SUV posed no danger and I was carrying a baby 5’ from you.  It’s bad enough that an idiot designed that parking lot, that’s no excuse for your idiotic behavior).  So yes she loves just about everything that moves. 

A glimpse into the inner workings of Charlotte’s mind:

Hey lady in the dirty XXL Disney T-shirt with the mangy looking pony tail? (Back to my mind:  people should call them donkey or ass tails when they look that bad).  You’re moving near me, here’s a big ass smile for ya!

Howdy, middle aged man wearing a leather vest who has to ask the lady in the technology department where the cheap MP3 players are, and who then proceeds to grab one, bring it back up to tech. dept. lady and ask her if it has radio because you don’t want to miss “the game” (Me:  Oh, so you don’t want an MP3 player).  I think this whole exchange has been utterly hilarious, let me turn my head side to side and smile at both of you!

But the trip was a success; Charlotte learned that her dad is totally awesome.  She might think it’s a little odd that I took the pickles to the technology department for checkout, but she also saw me save a guy $20 by telling him to use a Meijer Summer Buck for $20 off a GPS unit that he was buying anyway. And I also helped a girl out who was asking the tech. dept. lady to see a sample so she could get a visual of how big the 18” x 24” poster print would be if she printed a photo that size.  You may think, “Oh, 18x24?  That’s about a foot and a half by two feet”, which is exactly what I thought before I pointed the girl towards a display appeared to be 18” x 24”.  Tech. Dept. Lady didn’t have a sample, but did have a tape measure, and proved to Charlotte and the girl asking the question that I sure am good picking out dimensions.

So we returned home, and I ate a pickle (C-nibbles, despite today’s nickname, wasn’t really interested).  I gave her a bottle and got her to bed on time by my standards.  Emily understands that my standards are different than hers.  When she says, “give her a bottle by 7:00, then put her in a size 3 diaper, swaddle her up and put her to bed”, and that process starts at 7:12, I think I’m doing pretty well.  Though Charlotte did not appreciate the step I added just before the swaddling—bumping her head on the end rail of the changing table.  Whoops!

So that’s it, Charlotte is sleeping, typing is finished.  Thank you, Microsoft Word©-osphere, for listening.