Baby Girls Nursery Tour!

Baby girls room is finally DONE!.... With 2.5 weeks to spare! Go me!

Ok, there are some empty frames on the wall but they will be filled after I get some newborn photos and a birth announcement printed!

I'm not going to go into huge detail because it's past my bedtime lol, but here are some quick photos I took today after her new glider got delivered!

I'm super happy with how soft and girly her room turned out, and how I was able to accomplish a bit of a vintage feel I was going for, using some old meaningful family pieces - all for under my budget of $500!

Enjoy!

Gallery wall requiring some photos and her initial! Wall colour is Bear Run by CIL.

Ikea chandelier (it was left in the house by the previous owners!)

 The dresser was in my bedroom growing up. I primed and painted it from its original warm honey colour and added new hardware.

Beautiful custom tassel garland by my bestie Chantal at UrbanFizz!  - https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/urbanfizzinc

Jenny Lind crib by DaVinci - Amazon.ca (I sold Easton's old crib and change table to fund this one!)

'Do all things with love" - Print from Winners

Flower from Dollar Mart, curtains from Ikea (also left by the previous owners)

The "Princess Mirror" belonged to my grandmother and was in my parents crawlspace collecting dust for about 15 years!

Glass knobs and white porcelain pulls from WW Liquidators in Kitchener

The view from her big brothers room

Avery glider in Dove Grey from Sears (my birthday gift from my parents!) and pillow from Walmart

"Flowers in your Hair" print by UrbanFizz, frame from Target

Quote from one of my favorite Robert Munsch stories, gold frame from Value Village

"Glittery Heart of Gold" print by UrbanFizz, frame from Target

Baby #2 and Easton's 21 month update!

Let's do this again!!!

Dan and I are SO delighted to be expecting baby #2, due May 14th 2015! We are very very blessed to have gotten pregnant easily again and are so excited for Easton to be a big brother! He will be 2 years and 4 months older than his baby sibling! 

So I'm officially 12 weeks along, and I'm feeling pretty good! Thankfully the exhausted, need-to-have-a-nap-everyday phase is over (it lasted from about weeks 6-10) and my morning sickness is gone for the most part too! I feel a little yucky first thing in the morning but once I've had breakfast, I feel a lot better. If you remember my constant complaining of morning (HA... try all day!) sickness while I was pregnant with Easton, this is a welcome change!

We had an early ultrasound at 10 weeks and got to see the little bean and his/her strong heartbeat! Such a wonderful experience to see your baby for the first time, wiggling around inside you :)

We'll go for our comprehensive ultrasound around 20 weeks, which falls right around Christmas, so we'll be finding out the gender then and I will definitely blog about it! So far my mama's intuition is failing me, I have no feeling whatsoever whether its a boy or girl! What do you think!?

Yes, I know... it's HUGE!

I do feel like I've started showing MUCH sooner than I did with Easton! I compared my bump at 12 weeks this time around with my bump at 18 weeks with E and they're pretty much the same size! YIKES! Better slow down on the Halloween candy...

Which is a perfect segway into Easton's update! Here are some photos of the little Lion man from yesterday, in his Halloween costume!

 

Easton is 21 months (closer to 22 now, but whose counting) and I'm LOVING this age!
He says TONS of words now, and is even starting to put 2 words together. Full sentences are right around the corner! I love hearing him talk and say new words. Proud mama!

He loves to read books, make Playdoh animals, play hockey with daddy, do puzzles and play games on the ipad, go for walks, take his nap (weirdo!), watch 'Diego', 'Backyardigans' and 'Chuck and Friends' on TV, help mommy bake, sing "Old MacDonald" and "Wheels on the Bus" (with actions too!), go to Amanda's house (daycare 1-2 days a week) to play with his friends, but most of all, he loves to play with his TRUCKS! My goodness this boy is truck obsessed. Tractors, bulldozers, dump trucks ('dumpy'), big rigs, pick up trucks, monster trucks, race cars ('racey'), police cars ('peece'), you name it, he LOVES all things automobile. Such a boy.

Easton reached a big milestone last month.... transitioning to his "Big Boy Bed"! About 2 months ago, Dan and I bought him a toddler bed and put it in his room for his "friends" to sleep on, knowing that eventually we'd need the crib for baby #2. We made it up with sheets and a blanket, put a bunch of his stuffed animals on it, and told him he gets to sleep in it when he's a big boy! Well, one night, about a month ago, Easton didn't feel like going to sleep at bedtime (which is quite unlike him, we never have issues at bedtime), and he CLIMBED out of his crib! BOOM! It terrified Dan and I, so we decided it was time. The next morning we made a big production about moving his crib and putting his "Big Boy Bed" in its place, and telling him he gets to sleep there now! We tackled nap time first, and he got out and ran to his door 4 or 5 times that day, to me sitting right outside. I brought him back in each time and told him to go to sleep. Its time for a nap. Well eventually, about an hour later, he fell asleep. That night went AMAZINGLY well, he slept the entire night in his bed, not getting out at all! Even in the morning he stayed in bed and just called out to me that he was awake! Since then, he's been great about going down for naps and bedtime, and has only gotten out a handful of times! I figure if he was still in his crib and he really wanted to get out, he would, so he might as well do it from a safer spot! I'm so pleased with how smoothly it went!

Now for the boring stuff - so I remember for #2...

Easton sleeps from 8:00 pm -7:00 am (roughly) and naps for 2 hours from 12:30-2:30 ish.

He's still in a picky phase with food, even turning up his little nose at some of his past favorites! He started LOVING milk, which is so strange, because he used to not want anything to do with it. He still loves to "dip dip" his food in any sort of dip really, loves yogurt, grapes, cheerios with milk, toast with PB and honey, most kinds of soup, crackers, cheese, beans, apple sauce and pasta. Not a huge meat guy.

For a while, about a month ago, I thought  he was getting ready to potty train. He peed on the potty 4 or 5 days in a row before bath time, but then just stopped doing it. Or he'd peed on the floor or in the bath right after I'd take his diaper off! Little Monkey. Thats ok though, our initial plan was to wait until #2 is here in the spring, and the weather is nice, to start the potty training process, so that's what we'll do. He'll be about 2.5 which I think makes more sense anyways.

He's wearing 24 months or 2T clothes, size 6-7 shoes, and size 5 diapers. He hasn't grown much since 18 months I don't think. I'd say he's up to about 28 lbs now, and around 36" tall.

That's about it!

Here's a photo overload of the little dude, mainly from our trip to Mary Lake in August, and our pumpkin patch visit in October.

10 months old

 My Sweet Baby Boy,

I love you more and more each day. Your smile makes my heart warm, your dancing and your laugh make me giggle, the way you become more mobile, talkative and clever every day amazes me.  You’ve grown so much in the past ten months, both physically and developmentally. You’re very bright and curious, you always have been, but it’s really starting to show these past few months how much you’ve learned in your ten short months! 

You took your first steps this week, and you are SO proud of yourself when you walk all alone. Although you’re only taking a few steps before you start to wobble and we have to catch you, I’m still so proud of you! You’ll be running in no time!

You’ve got 4 teeth now, although the top two are just poking though. I can’t wait to see how your face will change when we can see that adorable little gap-toothed grin! 

You do so many cute and funny things. When you’re playing with your wooden animals, you like to growl like your making animal sounds. When daddy puts on country music you get so happy and start dancing (flapping your arms!). Your favorite song right now is Gord Bamford's “When Your Lips Are So Close”.  You like to put whatever you’re holding near my mouth and if I pretend to chew it, you laugh hysterically! You can wave, give kisses and high-fives. You love pointing the remote control at the TV and pressing the buttons… such a boy!  You love to play tug-o-war with Lucy and the blue bear, and you also throw her the tennis ball to fetch! Your favorite toy (this makes your daddy SO proud) is your mini hockey stick.

You now nurse 4 times during the day (when you wake up, after both naps, and before bedtime) and sometimes once during the night. It took some effort to get you to sleep without breastfeeding, but now you go down really well with just a minute of rocking and a quick song. You also sleep much better at night now that your can put yourself back to sleep consistently!

You eat 3 meals a day and 1-2 small snacks, and you LOVE healthy food. Fruits, veggies and yogurt are your favorite. When mommy is at work, you drink whole milk and water out of a straw cup no problem too! I was so stressed that you wouldn’t drink anything when I went back to teaching part-time, but my first day back, you drank milk from a straw bottle like it was something you had always done!

You’re ten months old, but I still can’t believe I haven’t known you for years. You’re my main man, my sweetness, my monkey, my Easty Beast, my Boo-ka-boo. I love being your mommy. I wake up so happy (even before 6:00 am!) because I get to spend my day with you.  Although you’re almost a toddler, you’ll always be my baby.

Love you to the moon and back.

- Mama

8 months!

Easton is 8 months old! (closer to 8.5 now, but whose counting!?)

He's crawling like a machine, but is getting bored with it and wants to be standing as often as possible, and 'walking' with a chair/activity table/walker, whatever else he can find! He's a SUPER curious and high-energy baby, and I must say I'm a bit nervous for when he starts walking independently... because I'm pretty sure running will quickly become his favourite method of transportation! 

He's also babbling a lot, with 'ah' and 'eh', clearly winning for favourite words! He laughs hysterically when we rough house with him, and gets very excited when he gets to play on our bed! It's hilarious actually, he can't contain himself and turns into a little panting puppy, crawling all over the covers and burying his face into the pillows and giggling! It's so cute. 

 

He's mastered the 'pincer grasp' so meal time is one of his favourite times! He'd much prefer to be feeding himself little pieces of whatever we're having than being spoon fed puree. Some of his fave finger foods are: apple (baked so its good and soft), pear, peach, tomato, cheese, potato & sweet potato, cheerios, egg, chicken, and those little puff things (which don't really have any nutritional value but do contain 40% of his iron needs, so I give him a handful each day just so we're covered). The only thing he'll tolerate being spoon-fed is yogurt. He's also tried lasagna, butter chicken with rice, various stir fries, grilled cheese and tomato, and many more 'grown up' dishes! As much as he loves food, he's still very much enjoying his milk, nursing about 6 times a day. 

Here is what Easton's routine looks like these days (with lots of activity time and outings with mom and dad in between!):

7:00 - Wake up and Breastfeed

8:00 - Breakfast (usually a handful of Cheerios, 1/2 pc of fruit, and some yogurt)

9:30 - Breastfeed and Nap (45 mins)

12:00 - Lunch  (usually something like; cheese/egg/meat, a veggie and a fruit. 

1:30 - Breastfeed and Nap (1.5 hours)

4:00 - Breastfeed and Snack

6:00 - Dinner (whatever we're having!)

6:45 - Bath

7:00/7:30 - Breastfeed and Bed

(He still has 1 middle-of-the-night waking which could occur anywhere between 11 pm and 5 am! I nurse him and he goes back down easily). 

It took us ages to transition from 3 naps to 2, but now that we're there, we find it much easier because it means we can go out and get things done without rushing back so nap time doesn't occur in the car! (He always wakes up when we stop). He pretty much nurses to sleep, but I always sing to him before I put him in the crib (You are my Sunshine), and I know he's partially awake because he opens his mouth for his pacifier every time! ha ha! Nursing him before nap time has been the only way I've been able to get him to take a good feed since he started noticing everything going on around him and is super distractible!  

What else is new? OH, he's got 2 little teeth on the bottom and they kind of surprised us because he really didn't show any major signs of teething. Maybe a bit more drool that usual and a few more night wakings for a couple of days, but that's about it. I hope thats a trend that continues for all his teeth! When they first came in, he bit me a couple times while nursing, but nothing lately, so fingers crossed on that too! 

In terms of size, I'm not sure what he weighs right now but if I were to guess, I'd say about 21-22 lbs (just based on the fact he was 18 lb 10 oz at his 6 month appt). He's wearing 12 month clothes for the most part, and has size 3 feet. He's about 29 or 30" tall. Percentile-wise, he's always been in the 75th for weight and 95th for height (surprise surprise!)

All in all, he's a very good baby! He's active and energetic, always happy and smiling :) We have our share of meltdowns, refusals and sleeping issues, but we can't imagine life without our monkey! He's completes our little family (for now!) and we're having a blast!