The time has come

for Ferber. ::sob:: Matt and I are both pretty heartbroken about this, not because we'll have to hear her cry, but because it means that she's growing up. She just has no idea how to put herself to sleep, and has started just laying awake in our arms at night after she drinks her bottle. If she would go right back to sleep, I would have no problem continuing to rock her, but I know she needs to learn how to do this. All of our reasons for not wanting to Ferberize are purely selfish, but we know that this is what we need to do. Parenting is hard.

On the bright side, I have new footie pajama pictures!




And tutu pictures!


She has started tripoding for a few seconds at a time, but by the time I get a picture, she's falling over. She seems to think it's pretty fun though. Wheeee!

Yesterday Elliot got to meet a new friend, which is pretty much her favorite thing ever. She looooves meeting new people. Our friend Katy was in town for a wedding, so we went to lunch with her, Brent, Chae, and Eli. Elliot occupied herself through the meal by gnawing on the wrapping paper that her present from Katy came in. I see a Christmas full of empty boxes and lots of wrapping paper in our future.

Can you spot what's missing?

Matt and I did a lightning-speed kitchen decluttering during naptime on Sunday, and much to the delight of Mr. CoffeePot, the blender has been banished to a cabinet. The coffee pot's new neighbor is my new best friend, the Crock Pot. I used it both Monday and Tuesday, and even managed to remember to put in the liner so we didn't have to clean the stoneware. I am trying to cook only with the Crock Pot on weeknights, so we can maximize our family time before the Nans goes to bed. So far it's a great success. Monday night was salsa chicken, and last night was pulled pork. Both were delicious, and both recipes made enough for leftovers. The salsa chicken is going to be reinvented tonight as quesadillas, and the pulled pork went into the freezer to use later.

Speaking of freezers, we are now the owners of a deep freezer. My parents decided to buy us one after they heard me stressing out over where to store my ever increasing freezer stash of milk (a good problem to have, I know). We got it this weekend, and it is sooooo nice not to have bags of breastmilk tucked into every nook and cranny of the upstairs freezer. I counted the stash as I boxed it up for the deep freeze, and in the past month I've gone from the all time low of 10 oz to my current supply of 270 oz! Elliot is getting about 2/3 breastmilk and 1/3 formula right now. I'm hoping to build up a large enough stash that I can quit pumping before she's one and still be able to give her a few bottle of milk every day until her 1st birthday.

During the kitchen reorganization, I decided I HAD to do something about the random feeding paraphernalia cluttering up my countertop. My solution was to organize all feeding necessities on a tray in the corner. I don't know why, but it looks so much better all contained on the tray. I finally found a use for a crystal jar I've had sitting around for years. It now contains spare bottle rings and nipples. I have limited drawer space in my kitchen, so the baby spoons went into a mug. Even the sharpie gets a home on the tray, so I am no longer searching for it to label the milk storage bags. We also keep bottles of water out with a formula dispenser, so it only takes a second to mix up a bottle in the middle of the night, and it's room temperature and ready to go! Since I'm exclusively pumping, I leave my freshly pumped milk out in a bottle rather than storing it (it's good at room temp for 8 hours) and keep that on the tray as well. The only time I ever heat a bottle is first thing in the morning. Matt or I throw a bag of milk from the freezer into some warm water when we wake up, and it's warmed up and ready to go by the time Elliot gets up.
I think my next project will be organizing the bathroom and linen closet. Any suggestions on how to fit an incredibly large amount of beauty products into a very small amount of space? I don't have the heart to be as ruthless in my decluttering of makeup as I am with kitchen utensils.

I present to you...

...the footie pajama photo series!!!! Because nothing's cuter than a baby in footie pajamas. Except maybe a kitten. In footie pajamas. But seeing as a value my life, and enjoy the fact that my blood is contained within my veins, I won't attempt to dress up my cats. You'll have to make do with pictures of my super-cute baby.

I was initially sad about de-swaddling, but now that she's sleeping without it, I am seeing the joy in buying adorable pajamas for her. She had three pairs until Friday, when her father, who is usually against purchases that aren't absolutely necessary, saw the bunny pajamas at Target and had to have them. More pictures to come as we add to the collection.

5 months old!!!

It's a week late, but here's her 5 month picture. I can't believe she's 5 months old already. That is completely unacceptable. I have to put a stop to this growing up business somehow. She is rolling around all over the place, and trying desperately to crawl. She's managed an extremely slow inchworm-type motion so far, but no real crawling. We started rice cereal this week, but had to discontinue it because it stopped her up rather badly. And when she finally managed to "clean out the pipes", it was not pretty. We're giving her a little break from solids, and will try again with in about a week, with oatmeal instead of rice.

We've added a new addition to the household. Meet the new doorway jumper:
We borrowed Eli's jumper for a day to try it out, and she loved it. I loved it too, since it gave me somewhere to put her down when we're upstairs without having to worry about her being trampled by dogs, or getting so covered in dog hair that I mistake her for one. I tried to buy it at Babies'R"Us, but they were sold out. It's a good thing they were, because when I went online to look, I found a pink one!!! It's the exact same model that we borrowed, but in fun girly colors!

I have no idea what this face is for, but it cracks me up. I'd think twice before trying to steal toys from this kid in preschool.
We got caught in the rain at the park last week. Luckily, Maclarens all come with a handy-dandy rain cover. Unfortunately, when you keep the rain cover in the basket of the stroller, and you keep the stroller in the back of the car, the plastic tends to get stuck together and takes a while to unfold. Once attached, it is fabulous though. She stayed completely dry, although she did look like she was in some sort of isolation tent.

We did it!!!!

We took our first road trip with Elliot this weekend, to St. Louis, and I am convinced that we officially have the best kid ever. She made literally NO NOISE the entire way there and the entire way back. Eight hours of driving without a peep. At one point I became concerned at her quietness, and being unable to see her in her rear-facing carseat, I stuck the camera inside her seat and took a picture to see what she was up to.

We took her to dinner on the Hill with my parents, aunt & uncle, sister and a few cousins, and today she went to her very first family reunion. She loves attention, and being the youngest one there by more than a year, she got plenty of it.

Meeting her Aunt Matilda

Having a bottle with Grandma before heading home.

There was a LOT of packing involved for our 1-night trip. I'd say about 4% of the items packed were for Matt and I. I couldn't fit everything into our normal-sized suitcase, so I had to break out the giant one. For reference, Roy is about 65 pounds.

My girls watching me pack.

On Friday, I dropped Elliot off at my mom's so I could clean and pack without interruption. The first thing I did was furminate the dogs. If you have pets and do not have a furminator, you must buy one immediately. This is what I got out of the boys in about 5 minutes.

I did a thorough furmination of Roy a few months ago, and this was the result.

I hope everyone else had a fun weekend as well!

Special Helper FAIL

Elliot is going to be one of those kids who likes to help. I can tell. She carries her washcloth to the tub for bathtime, she holds her clean diaper during changes until I'm ready for it, and if my hair is in my face, she helpfully tries to rip it out of my head so as to provide me with unobstructed vision. So when we went grocery shopping yesterday, I decided to let her hold the list. Big mistake.

(Don't worry, I recovered all of the pieces. There are no random scraps of paper lurking in my child's intestinal tract.)

Worst.Blogger.Ever

It has been a shamefully long time since I've updated. My apologies. I have lots of pictures to share though, so don't be too mad, k? I decided on Wednesday that I had to give Miss Stinky Bear some solid foods, not because I thought she needed them, but because I wanted to. Badly. I'm not sure what happened to the audio, but it's really static-y so adjust your volume accordingly.











Friday was Matt's mom's birthday, so we made a surprise visit to see Grandma at work. She owns a restaurant supply company, so the Nans obviously enjoyed it, given her love for all things mechanical and kitchen related. She was particularly impressed by the giant coffee urns in the warehouse. I think perhaps she though that Mr. CoffeePot had been working out.



We took Elliot on her second trip to Lawrence this past weekend, but it was not the fun-filled event I had hoped it would be. We had to go because Matt is in a wedding next week and needed to be fitted for his tux. I checked the stores website, which said it was open from 1-4 on Sundays. We would have rather gone earlier than that, but it is what it is, so we left around noon to make the 45 minute drive only to find when we got there that they were CLOSED!!!! Matt and I were too filled with righteous fury to enjoy the rest of the trip, but not too much to prevent us from taking a picture with a giant jayhawk.



Yesterday I finally bought some mesh feeders. I've been letting her lick apples when I eat them, and she loves it, so I thought I'd let her go for it on her own. Notice how the feeder is carefully color-coordinated with her outfit. So stylish.

I have no real reason for posting this one, except that it is uber cute.