Geez, I'm A Bad Blogger

I promise to TRY to get back to paying attention to this space very soon.  I'll need the support as we begin the journey of TTC #2.

In the meantime, my girl is 8.5 months old, and smart as a whip.  She's crawling, pulling up and standing as long as she has something to hang on to, saying "mama" and "dada", and so much more.  I don't know where the time goes.  She is the light and the love of my life.  More soon, I promise!

5 Months

In the blink of an eye, my baby is 5 months old.  I have no real excuse for not posting more often... other than my beautiful girl, moving, working two jobs, and whatnot.

We're all doing really well.  We started Miss Betty on solid food just a few days shy of 5 months.  She loves squash, and is less sure of carrots, but enjoys the process.  Next week is sweet potatoes.  She's babbling up a storm, but not real words or near-words yet.  I feel like she's trying really hard to crawl, but only manages to get her but up in to the air and her thumb in her mouth before she gives up.  She'll roll the length of the room if we don't stop her from doing so.  She's been sleeping through the night since a few days after we moved.  It's glorious.  She goes to bed between 8 and 9, and wakes up between 6 and 7.  She occasionally still wants a bottle somewhere in the middle, but rarely.  I love her more than I could ever express.

The one horribly hard hiccup in the last 2 months, is my puppies.  Once she started moving around a lot, we became very painfully aware that they weren't going to adjust to a tiny little moving person.  I don't think they'd have ever hurt her on purpose, but I wasn't willing to risk accidents.  I found a lovely couple that operate a little rescue on a 10 acre far, and she took them in.  It is the hardest decision I have EVER had to make, and the day we dropped them off was one of the very worst of my entire life.  The depression I experienced afterward has lessened, and every time I hold my girl I feel a little bit better.  I know it was the right thing to do, for her.

I apologize for the woefully short update, but I will try to post more often.  I'll leave you with some picture spam.

Riding in the big girl part of the stroller

Who doesn't love duckie pajamas?!

Worn out from too much 4th of July partying

Carrots!

Hanging out with daddy

Such a big girl!

Her first pontoon ride was met with mixed feelings...

Squash!

Stressful Moving is Stressful

If I survive all of this, I am NEVER doing it again.  Saturday is the big (moving) day, as we start our new jobs on Monday.  We still don't know exactly where we're going to be living.  There's still SO much to do as far as packing.  We have no idea what's going on with selling our house.  It's just a gigantic mess.  One way or another, we'll survive!

In the meantime, my baby is starting to sit up on her own!  Who let her grow up so fast?!  I demand that person be fired!

Newborn Photo Shoot

We had the same girl that did our maternity session, come and do our newborn session.  Betty was 2 1/2 weeks old at the time.  We could NOT get her to go to sleep, so we could do any cute "sleepy baby" poses, but I didn't care.  I like that she's fairly alert.

Because I had to hound the photographer for 10 weeks, while emails, phone calls, and facebook messages were ignored and unanswered, she FINALLY sent me the digital copies of the pictures for no (extra) charge.

Without further ado, on my baby girls 13 week "birthday", here are her newborn shots!

A Chuckle For You

It has been four days since I last pumped.  I've been mildly uncomfortable, but nothing I can't handle.  Not once have I leaked, including the entirety of the last 12 weeks.  Until last night... ruining "adult time".  I shot a stream of milk a good foot out in front of me.  There was a consistent dribble for the next few minutes.  We had a good laugh, but the mood was over after that!

Nothing is too sacred anymore :-P

Updates in Bullets

*  I started back to work on Tuesday.  I cried all the way here, and periodically throughout the day.  Yesterday and today have been better, but still hard.

*  Yesterday I let my manager know that I'm moving as soon as I can find a job near JP's new job.  She took it pretty well.  They may let/want me to go ahead and move and work remotely for a couple of months. That would be awesome.

*  I haven't packed a single thing.

*  We're heading up to look at apartments and houses this weekend, and I have a job interview on Monday.  It's just part-time, but that may be exactly what I want, if we can budget in a way that I can afford to do it.

*  My baby hit 12 weeks old yesterday.  Where the heck does the time go?!

*  In honor of the 12-week milestone (ok, it's really just so we don't have to travel with as much stuff), we took the bassinet piece out of the pack n play, and Betty spent her first night in the middle level.  She did really well.  It's so hard for ME to make those stupid little changes, because I hate physically acknowledging how fast she's growing up.

*  I hate being away from my girl for so many hours a day!

*  We had a quiet Mother's Day.  I'm having a hard time feeling like I deserve to be celebrated.  Especially when my sister is now going through her own battle with infertility, and I have several people close to me that have lost their mothers in recent memory.  It's hard to be joyous when others are sad.

*  I stopped pumping 3 days ago.  I'm having some guilt about this, but I was to the point where I was only getting about 3 ounces in 24 hours.  I didn't want to have to deal with the stress of going back to work, trying to pump at work, moving, etc.  Luckily, Betty does really well with the formula.  I've been pumping exclusively since she was 3 weeks old or so, after she started refusing to breastfeed.  Maybe at some point I'll write a post about my breastfeeding, pumping, and supplementing experiences, but right now there's just too much guilt associated with it all.  I'll get over it.

"When the going gets tough, the tough call Grandma".  We don't care if it's a boys onesie!

What I came home to, after my first day back to work.

Rocking her swaddlepod and new sleeping spot.  Sorry it's such a dark picture!

Ch ch ch changes + Photo Dump

Whoo boy.  This having a baby thing changes so many things, but the expected and unexpected!  You expect to be exhausted, frazzled, and completely smitten.  You expect to have much less sex, and time for yourself.  What I didn't expect, was exactly how much I'd want to be nearer to my family.  This is going to be a little scattered, I hope you'll forgive me and be able to follow along.

When I fell in love with my husband, I moved in to his house, 3 hours away from where I was living at the time, and 5 hours away from most of my immediate family.  He has lived in this town his entire life.  His mother has lived in this town for all but 2 years of her life.  After Betty was born, it started to become really evident how little family support we have here.  We decided, after much deliberation, that we would make it a goal to move to my home town within a year.  We want our daughter to grow up seeing her Nana, grandpa, and her aunts and uncles, more than just every few months.  We also want to spend as much time with my 83 year old grandmother as we can, who is madly in love with Betty.  There are several other good reasons that I won't get in to just now.

A few weeks ago, I shared with my mother that this was a possibility.  Just a couple of days later, she heard of a job opening in her school corporation in JP's field.  JP has always wanted to work in an educational setting, so he went ahead and submitted his resume, not expecting much, as there was an internal employee also putting in for it.  Fast forward to last Tuesday, which found us in my home town for an interview.  Yesterday, they called and offered him the job, which he accepted.  He starts on June 10th.

Holy sh*tballs, ladies.  I'm moving across the state in a month.  Well, if I can find a job, that is.  I may have to stay here until I find one.  So much to do, so much to decide.  My head starts spinning every time I start to think about it.  JP's mother is going to move in with us as soon as her lease is up in September.  There's nothing to keep her here once we're gone.  So much to do...

Anyway, I'm going to close out with some of my favorite pictures from the last month or so.

I don't remember exactly when this was, but she's so cute in just a diaper!

Rocking some tights that are still too big!

"Hmm... Daddy is asleep, what can I get away with?!"

Nana loves to dress Betty up in cute outfits.

My baby picture!  Did you know I had a twin?

Trying on Daddy's hat... and hating it.

Having a chat with her great grandma!

Family shot

<3

Her first 0/3 outfit

At our 2 month check-up

Loved this onesie!

She loves her GG!

Puppy time!

Finally caught a good smile on camera!

Daddy was reading The Tales of Beedle the Bard.  I LOVE this picture!