So much to talk about!

It's been a while since I've blogged, so this is going to be a very long post with a lot of pictures. Where do I start? How about...boating safety.

Matt and I came across this sign while we were out Sunday morning celebrating our anniversary. So where were we? A lake, perhaps? The river? Nope. This is the body of water we encountered, at which boating is prohibited.


So please, next time you're at the Plaza, no boating in the JC Nichols Memorial Fountain. But definitely go to Tomfooleries for brunch. Yum!

Sunday was also Elliot's 4 month birthday. She is growing up way too fast and it is so sad. She does get cuter by the minute though, so that eases the transition somewhat. She weighed 11 lbs 11 oz at her doctor's appointment yesterday, and is 24 1/2 inches long. That's 12th percentile for weight, and 54th for height. Here is my tall and skinny girl rocking her babylegs and giving her teddy bear some love.


She got her shots yesterday, which actually went very well. Her dad went with us, so he got the honor of holding her hands down during the shots. She cried, of course, but calmed down within seconds of me picking her up, slept on the way home, took a nap, and woke up as good as new. She's doing well so far today too. She slept through the night last night (yay!) and went down easily for her morning nap,which we are now 2 hours and 15 minutes into. I don't know if she's sleepy from the shots or if she's going back to her usual sleep routine finally, but whatever the reason, I'm enjoying it. I suspect what happened is that she figured out that I bought the Ferber book yesterday and decided to start sleeping better on her own before I read it, thus continuing her never-ending quest to watch me waste money.

Thursday night I finally made up my mind on the great feeding debate. Not knowing how much she was eating was way too hard for me. After all of her weight issues for the first few months, I need to know that she's eating well, for my own sanity. I decided I would pump, and supplement with formula as necessary. I thought I would feel sad giving her formula, but I am loving it! She's actually getting a lot less formula than I thought she would. Once I could stop worrying about her getting enough food, my supply shot up through the roof. For the first few days she got formula mixed with breastmilk for every feeding, to get her used to the taste of it. Now that she will drink the formula by itself, I'm giving her bottles of milk for most feedings, with formula before bed and anytime I need a bottle ready quickly since I can just use warm water and mix it when she needs it rather than waiting for a bottle to heat up. I am still nursing her to sleep at night and whenever else she needs comforting, and it's going great. Since she wasn't eating enough before, she's actually getting more breastmilk now than she was when I was exclusively breastfeeding. When I add the formula on top of that, she's getting WAY more food. I think that's the main reason that I don't feel guilty about the formula, because she's not getting any less milk than before so she's still getting all the same benefits of breastmilk as before. Another plus for formula is that it allows me to kick Matt out of bed at night to go feed her while I keep sleeping! He was always willing to do this, of course, but I always woke up anyway because she would cry while he was heating up her bottle. Formula takes about 30 seconds to mix up, so I can go right back to sleep without hearing my poor baby scream. I feel like this was a great decision, and everyone in our house is much happier now. I'm getting to enjoy being with my baby rather than worrying about her all the time.

Here she is demonstrating how she has her dad literally wrapped around her fingers.

"I've got my washcloth! I'm ready for bathtime now!"

"No! This is MY rooster! Back off!"