Tuesday, January 24, 2012

First sickness

We have officially survived our first sickness with our sweet baby girl.  Last night I had to go to the school board meeting, so Lucas was with Emily.  He texted me around 7:45 and said I needed to come home because she was screaming and wouldn't stop.  By the time I got home, she was happy again.  I immediately took her upstairs and fed her, then worked on getting her in the bed.  She did NOT want to be swaddled and I literally had to do it about 15 times to get her contained.  She fought me every second of the way.  I thought it was strange, but just wrote it off as her being overly tired.  After she'd been down for about fifteen minutes, we heard her gagging and choking in the monitor.  We rushed into her room to find her covered in spit up, all in her nose and hair and bed.  We got her up out of the bed and started cleaning her up when the serious vomiting began.  After a couple times of it, we called the pediatrician's office and they connected us to the doctor on call who told us what to do. 

She finally quit throwing up around 11:15 and Lucas headed over to the Crandalls house to get some pedialyte.  That poor little baby was so sick that she was limp and just passed out on my chest.  Her temp was very low as compared to where she normally is.  We camped out downstairs in the living room where Lucas slept on the couch and I reclined in one of our armchairs holding her in a sitting up position, but relaxed enough that she could sleep.  Around 3:00, we gave her a few teaspoons of pedialyte, which she kept down.  Around 6:00 I breast fed her and she kept that down, too.  Aside from her just being a bit more sleepy than usual, she was pretty much back to herself by around 8:00 this morning.  We had a day of relaxing and napping and had no more sicky problems at all. 

We are so thankful that it was so short-lived, because it was absolutely awful.  We're not sure where it came from, but we are just glad she is back to normal.  I am so thankful that the Lord was watching over all of us, but especially our Emmylou.  She is our perfect little blessing and we are so grateful to be her parents.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Happy Birthday, Daddy!

Happy Birthday to my wonderful husband/Emily's amazing daddy!  I always knew Lucas would be a great dad, but I have been wowed far beyond what I expected.  He loves that little girl with all his heart and constantly goes out of his way to help me with anything I need.  I could not have found anyone who would be a better father than Lucas.  And to be honest, I couldn't have found anyone who would be willing to put up with me and love me the way he does.  We both love you so much and we are so blessed to have you as the most important man in our lives!







Best.  Dad.  Ever.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Five Months

Well, month five has already come and gone.  It's hard to believe our darling girl is almost a half of a year old.  This month has been just as wonderful as each of the months before, and certainly a little more challenging as she is becoming more independent.  We celebrated Christmas in Emily's fifth month, which was so much fun.  We also laughed and beamed with pride as she began to discover new things, develop more of her personality, and become more of who she is going to be.  She loves to play in her exersaucer, splash in the bath, play on the floor, and laugh alot for her daddy when he kisses her tummy.  Here are a few highlights of the fifth month:
  • Christmas:  Emily's first Christmas was wonderful, but also marked the beginning of a difficult week.  We celebrated with our family on my side and Lucas's side and Emily's body was taken over by a little fussy monster for about a week.  We thought it was teeth, but since she still has none to show for it, we aren't sure what the problem was.
  • Babysitter:  Emily began with her babysitter this month.  We absolutely adore Mrs. Leslie and she loves our little girl, as well.  What a blessing to be leaving her with someone we can trust and know that Emily is happy while she is there!
  • Sleep training:  After a few very rough nights, we decided to finally buckle down and do some sleep training.  So far, so good!
  • A few firsts:  A few firsts from this month were first time to sleep in her crib, first time to eat rice cereal (which hasn't really agreed with her very well,) and first time to ring in the new year.
  • Moving around:  Emily really started to reach for things around her right after her four month birthday.  She would reach and actually hold onto anything that was offered to her, before promptly dropping it in a game of "Uh-Oh!"  We spent lots of time bending over and retrieving.  She also began rolling regularly in both directions this month.  She still doesn't roll alot, but whenever she decides she wants to, she can do it with ease.  She also began using our fingers to pull herself to a sitting and standing position.  Now that she can do this, she pretty much always wants to be standing up.
Since we didn't have a doctor's appointment this month, we did her stats at home.  The Wii Fit has a great baby measurement tool and she even has her own little baby Mii.  Precious!  She is 16 lbs (65th %,) 27 1/2 inches long (off the charts %,) and her head is 17.1 inches (around 70th %.)  We moved her up to a size 1-2 diaper and moved her to six month PJs because she is so long.  She can still wear three month clothes, but the pants are short.  Moving to six month clothing soon!

And the moment you've all been waiting for...


Stinks McGinks,
Words simply cannot describe how much we love you.  Your little smile is infectious and there is nothing I would rather do than snuggle you and stare at your little face all day long.  You are absolutely perfect and we love you more than life.  Every part of living is better with you!

Excited about Christmas!

Sister Mary Emily

Emily and Mimi

The best Christmas gift ever!

With a few Santa gifts

Surprised by shots at Dr.Copeland's office :)

Sitting pretty

Happy five months to me!

Friday, January 6, 2012

What a week!

This has been quite a week in the world of Emily!  Actually, I guess it's been a little over a week, so we'll start with two days after Christmas.  On the 27th, Lucas's parents came down from Ohio to see Emily (and us.)  We had a wonderful visit with them and were so glad they were able to come down for a visit.  We had our family Christmas with them and Abby and Chuck as well as some fun family dinners and a little shopping, too.  Unfortunately, Emily chose this week to become a fussy baby, which had never been the case before.  I felt terrible because his parents get so little time with her that we want it to be good when they get it.  We're still not sure what the problem was, but we think it was a combination of things.  Regardless, she's pretty much back to normal now.

Their visit just happened to coincide with our plan to begin sleep training Emily.   We were expecting it to be fairly easy because she's been sleeping through the night in her bassinet since seven weeks.  We hadn't, however, been very good with napping.  Mostly we just let her nap on us because we could.  I knew that her sitter would be getting her into a napping routine that worked for her schedule, so I didn't worry about it.  However, when we decided to put her in her crib at night, we decided to start putting her down for naps, too.  The crib at night worked beautifully.  The crib at nap time, not so much.  So, we were weaklings and nixed the crib naptimes after a couple days.  She would only sleep 20-30 minutes in the crib, whereas she'd sleep two hours or more on us.

After four nights in her crib, she had a rough night where she didn't want to go down.  Of course, that was NYE and we were having a party, so I guess she probably just wanted to stay up with us.  We got her to sleep about 1:00 and she slept great.  The next night, she went to bed fine.  On Monday night, however, she decided she no longer wanted to be in her crib.  Granted, we were certainly not following any of the sleep training rules.  We were waiting until she was asleep to put her down, which isn't really what is recommended.  For the next three nights, she woke up and started screaming every time I tried to lay her down.  She even screamed when I put her in her bassinet.  Keep in mind, this was the same method I'd used every night since she was seven weeks old.  So after several nights of screaming and very little sleep, we decided to get a little bit informed on sleep training, put her in her crib, and just suck it up and deal with however much screaming and crying we had to endure.  In the midst of these few terrible nights, we also started Emily with her babysitter who we absolutely love. Emmy was great for her, but she was definitely exhausted due to the lack of sleep.

The plan was to give her a bath, nurse her, wake her up if she fell asleep, swaddle her, use hot towels to warm up her crib mattress, remove them, put her down in the bed with a pacifer while she was fully awake, but a little bit sleepy, sing her a song, say goodnight, and walk out.  We also had a night light, a humidifier, and an awesome white noise iPad app that was making a fan sound.  That sounds like alot, but it really wasn't that bad.  We hoped with the perfect environment, she would go right to sleep, but we didn't really expect it to work.  She hated swaddling in the past, but it was working beautifully for the sitter, so we thought we'd give it a try.  We followed our plan perfectly.  She spit out the paci and talked to herself for about ten minutes, then fell asleep!  We absolutely could not believe it.  She slept from 8:45 to 4:00 this morning.  At 4:00, I got her out of the bed and put her in with us for the last hour before I had to get up.  She actually slept until I woke her up at 5:45 for her to eat.  Tonight, we followed the same routine.  She started to fuss when I swaddled her, but was fine by the time I put her down.  Again, she was great.  She spit out the paci and I went back in and gave it to her again.  She fell asleep in about five minutes or so.  Let's hope she sleeps through the night tonight, too!  If she wakes up, my plan is to re-swaddle her and put her back down with the paci.  I hope I won't have to resort to that plan!

In the last couple weeks, she has also started rolling quite a bit more.  Although her first rollover was very early- barely over a month- she has hardly rolled at all for the past few months.  Now, though, she rolls over pretty quickly whenever you put her on her tummy.  She can also roll from back to front, but doesn't do it quite as often.  I'm constantly surprised at how strong she is.  She can almost bring herself to sit up from laying flat on her back.  She just needs a little help by holding onto my fingers as she does it.  She can even go from sitting to standing on her own as long as she's holding my fingers.  She loves to stand up and does it all the time- holding on to us, of course.  Her hands are constantly in her mouth and we're sure teeth aren't too far off.  We gave her rice cereal for the first time on January 3rd, which she loved.  She ate about one tablespoon (three tablespoons or so prepared) for three days, but we decided not to give it to her anymore as those three days were also the three days she wouldn't sleep.  We will try to re-introduce it later. 

Things are trucking right along and we are loving life with our little Emmylou!