Quarterly Top Five

How do I pick just 5 when so much as happened over the past 3 months?

I will do my best!


Aubs blowing bubbles at Nanny's house
These were her first successful bubbles on her own.


My two girls- one in and one out.
This is when Aubs started to get excited about being a big sister


Brand new
No explanation needed


It's tough being two
This totally sums up Aubs terrible two side


All dolled up with no place to go
Nothing better than a pretty little sleeping newborn
You can check out the rest of Finley's newborn pictures here

Linking up with Amber, Ashley & Sarah

One Month

Onesie sticker c/o Picky Sticky
{I promise to try and get more pictures of her awake}

Can you believe it? Finley turned a month old on Wednesday. It's so crazy, on one hand she still feels so new and on the other it feels like she has been here for awhile. So what can I tell you about Miss Fin.... well she is a little more particular about things than Aubrey was. We haven't really found a great way for her to sleep. Ideally I would like for her to be swaddled and on her back in the pack n play next to our bed but she isn't having it. My solution to this is a Rock n Play sleeper since she seemed to sleep so good in her swing. This is a temporary solution and I'm trying to wean her into sleeping on her back by having her nap in her pack n' play more frequently. Sleep in general is going better. Last night she gave me a 4 hour stretch followed by a 3 1/2 hour stretch. Her doctor said yesterday that there is no reason why she can't be sleeping two 5 hour stretches at night now so we are going to try to work up to that by letting her fuss a little and hoping she puts herself back to sleep. This has only worked once so far but as she gets older I'm sure she'll get better with it.

Physically Finley (say that 3x fast) is doing really well. We had a one month check-up yesterday and she is tipping the scales at 9 lbs 13 oz and is 21 inches long. If you do the math you will see that she has gained a little over 2 lbs in a month which supposedly is fantastic. Now that she is able to go longer between feeding, her weight gain should slow a little bit.

The reason we had a one month check-up instead of the standard two month is because at her last appointment our pediatrician found that Finley's left hip was a little "clicky". Unfortunately at the appointment yesterday it was still clicking so we have to take her to get an ultrasound on Tuesday at the children's hospital. It sounds a little more serious than it is. Basically the joint that connects her femur to her hip isn't rotating as smoothly as it should. This is supposedly a pretty common problem and usually heals itself. If the ultrasound reveals that her socket is shallow and not likely to heal on it's own then she will have to wear a soft brace on her legs until she is about 9 months old. Of course I'm not thrilled about this but what can I do besides stay positive and be thankful that she has no serious issues. If she should have to wear the brace, it will heal her hip completely and she won't even remember ever having to wear it. Being a parent throws you so many punches, doesn't it?

kisses from crazy haired big sis

It Clicked

I had mentioned before that Aubrey wasn't adjusting too well to her role as big sister. Well that all changed after about two weeks she started to come around. Her behavior is night and day what it was when we first brought Finley home. I am so happy that she is back to her old self and she is actually happy about being a big sister. She constantly looks to see where Finley is when she wakes up in the morning or comes home from preschool. She also showers her little sister with about a million hugs and kisses a day.

Not only has she taken on the big sister role but she has also decided to rock the big girl status. When I say, it clicked- I mean potty training. Our girl is potty trained!!! She still wears a diaper for naps and night time but other than that she has been in underwear since last Wednesday. She even went on a 2 hour boat ride and 3 hours of preschool with no accidents. I have been trying to potty train her since she turned two without much success. You can read about it here. Everyone told me that one day it would just click and that's totally what happened. I always gave her the undies or diaper option and she started choosing undies. For the first two days there was a lot of sitting on the potty with no success but by day three she just started going. We haven't looked back since and it is fabulous. She may not have been trained at 2 like I had planned but I can now say that my 2 1/2 year old uses the potty like a champ.



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Finley's Newborn Pictures

This time around, I decided to take my own baby pictures. Why? . When I had Aubrey I had a bit of a bad experience. I found a photographer online who was top rated on some mom's site and I booked her. I sent her $100 deposit (to a PO box which should have been a red flag) and stayed in touch so that she could come to our house a few days after Aubs was born.
While we were in the hospital I had Joey call her a few times and leave messages but she never got back to us. When I got home I did some research and it turns out that she had done the same thing to a bunch of people. Basically took a deposit and fell off the face of the earth. I even found a complaint stating that she shot someone's wedding and then never gave them the pictures. Thank God, it didn't go that far with us. Since we had no photographer and I didn't have a nice camera back then, we decided to go to a studio in the mall.
Did we get nice pictures? Yes. Did it cost an arm and a leg to get some girl in her early twenties to take a few shots in a a fancy studio with a fancy camera and software with little skill or creativity required? Yes.

I'm no professional but I think that these shots turned out pretty good. Also it saved us about $600.





















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Thanks so much to all of my regular readers for sticking around during this crazy time in my life. Having the new baby in the house makes it tough to post as much as I'd like and I appreciate everyone who still comes by to see what we are up to. I hope you enjoy reading my blog as much as I enjoy reading all of yours.

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Sleep... what's that?

I absolutely love having a newborn in the house, especially my newborn. I love her tiny little body with her big belly, her sleepy smiles and on the top of my list is the way she smells. I could smell Finley's head all day long. Weird I know but she is probably my last newborn so I want to soak it all in. I don't know if she smells that good to everyone but I still insist that everyone smell her head. They might be just humoring me when they say she smells as good as I think she does. The one thing that takes away from newborn perfection is their tendency to only sleep for two hours at a time.

Finley sleeps three hours at a time a most, but usually two. Which is to be expected because she is only 3 weeks old. It's tough on Mama though. There have definitly been nights where I want to throw in the boob towel and give her a bottle but I know I will regret my decision in the morning. Oh and every time I have to heat up a bottle for the next year. All in all, I'm actually dealing with it pretty well. As long as I get 6 broken hours of sleep and drink about 2-3 cups of coffee a day I can function like a normal person. I have found that the real trick is to not think about the fact that I haven't slept for more than a three hour chunk in almost a month. If I don't dwell on it than it's not so bad. Instead I try to focus on the fleeting moments with my newborn babe. Sure I'd rather not get up at 12, 2 and 5 but I know that years from now I will miss the quiet moments that I have in the middle of night with my little Fin.

Scenes from Sunday

This was suppose to be "Scenes from the Weekend" but I always seem to forget to take my memory card out of the computer and put it back in my camera plus I keep forgetting to put my spare memory card in my camera bag. So yeah, you're just getting "Scenes from Sunday". I will tell you what we did on Saturday though. We went up to my parents house (aka house with the best light ever/worst place to forget your memory card)and everyone went out on the boat and ate a yummy dinner. When I say everyone, I mean everyone minus Finley and I. She's still a little young for the boat, we are thinking about taking her on after the new year.

On Sunday we went to my mother in-laws for a little bit of a Sunday family dinner. Here are some pictures from that day.

These 3 are total baby hogs






A trip to Nanny's isn't complete without playing in the slip n' slide pool out back.





Rounding out the evening with some sidewalk chalk.



Amazing group shot of the cousins- yeah right. That's what you get when you ask two 7 year olds, a 5 year old, a 3 year old and a 2 year old to stay like that while Aunt Mal runs and gets her camera. I just love Aubs face in it.



Linking up with The Paper Mama and Jenni from the Blog.

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