6 months old!

Aubrey Girl-
Whoa. You are 6 months old! You are SUCH A JOY. You are such an easy-going, laid back, go-with-the-flow baby. I think you get this from your Daddy.

You are learning so much. You are a totally different baby from 2 months ago. You were learning to roll over 2 months ago and have now mastered rolling over in both directions with such ease. No more sleeping on your back only - you're now sleeping on both your back and tummy and I still sometimes worry about that. But what good is worrying? You're a STRONG girl. You have fantastic neck/head control so sleeping on your tummy, being something I can't prevent, is just the way it is.

Daddy lowered your crib last night. Gramma Beck was worried about the mattress still being up high in the infant setting, so now you're lower in the crib.

You're making lots of new sounds - growling, high pitched screaming and soft sounds as if you're talking to yourself.

Nonna Jo thinks you'll be crawling in 2 weeks - at least combat crawling. You're a fast learner. If a toy is out of your reach, you find a way to get to it. You don't stay still on the floor in one spot for long. You are in love with the exersaucer and your jumparoo. You can be entertained in them for quite a while - but I try not to put you in it for too long. You fell asleep in the jumparoo while at Charni's. Here's a picture to prove it!

You're sucking on your bottom lip - it's cute. Maybe because you're teething, or maybe just because. Everything goes into your mouth. You love your feet and hands and Sophie too. You study everything with such focus. We can just see those gears turning in your head as you absorb everything around you.

You play peek-a-boo with anything you can cover your face with.

The game goes something like this:

AG - grabs lovey or a burp cloth or a onesie or whatever is in reach and covers her face (sometimes leaving one eye uncovered to "peek" through) and starts kicking her legs and waving her arms. The key is to wait until she lets go of the cover.

Mama - "Where's Aubrey?" "Where's Aubrey?" (repeat until either Aubrey pulls the cover from her face or mama pulls it)

Mama - "THERE SHE IS!" "There's Aubrey Girl"

AG - LAUGHTER ensues

It's a fun game. and you're so cute when playing it!

Sleeping is still going pretty well. You typically go down for bed sometime between 8-9pm. Wind-down for bedtime starts around 7. We sometimes do a bath (I won't lie - you're only bathed 1-2 times/week), change into nighttime diaper (you've started leaking through diapers at night - we put you in a Size 3 nighttime diaper), PJs, read a few books (Goodnight Moon, That's Not My Monkey & Is Your Mama a Llama?) and then you nurse and fall asleep. I lay you in bed and you typically wake up once, sometimes twice between bedtime and midnight. Then you sleep until sometime between 4-6 and wake up to nurse. On days when Mama doesn't have to work - you (we) go back to sleep (we snuggle in mama and daddy's big bed) and sleep until 8ish usually. On days that Mama works, you're up and at em' by 6:30 and it's off to nanny charni's we go!

You had your first beach trip with Mama and Nonna Jo this month. We headed to the beach on Mother's Day - mama's first and it was a great one! Daddy got Mama a beautiful watch and we got your name and birth-date engraved on the back. You were so cute when we introduced you to the beach. You got to sink your little toes into the sand and touch the ocean water. You enjoyed the sand - you didn't go crazy trying to grab it like I thought you would and the ocean water was a bit cold, so we didn't dip your toes in for too long.

We took you to see a plastic surgeon for the mass on your back and found out you have a subcutaneous hemangioma. This should go away by age 5 hopefully and doesn't seem to bother you. It bothers me more than it bothers you.

Here are your stats...
Height: 23 inches
Weight: 16 lbs, 13 oz
Diaper Size: 2 (size 3 at night)
Clothing size : SOME 3-6 mo, but you're mostly outgrowing those, Carter's 6 mo. and some 6-9 mo (but those are still a little big)

You are just the most beautiful, sweet baby Aubrey Girl. I couldn't be more proud to be your Mama.

 Love,
Mama

"What time is it?"

Mother's Day 2012

My first Mother's Day.

A great one spent with Steve & Aubrey (in the AM) and then with my mom. Steve surprised me Sunday morning with a card & a new watch - a combo "push present" and Mother's Day gift. This thing was a little pricey! But absolutely beautiful. We're going to have Aubrey's name & birthdate engraved on the back - but it takes 2 weeks and I wanted to wear it for a while...show it off! Every so often Steve would ask "what time is it"? I would easily forget that I now had a watch and I could tell him what time it was. I haven't worn a watch in years so I certainly wasn't used to being able to quickly glance down at my wrist to tell the time! He asked me when we were on the phone too later that night and I totally said I had no idea. Then it hit me. I HAVE A WATCH! I glance down at it often now. Just to admire it. But back to Mother's Day...

We had McDonald's for breakfast. :-) Hotcakes and sausage w/ hashbrowns & OJ! Then Steve helped me pack up the car to head to mom's. Mom, Aubrey & I were going to the beach for a week. Have I mentioned how awesome my husband is? Yeah - he let me steal our daughter away and go to the beach. for the week. with my mom. And it was great! We missed Steve terribly but there's nothing like some beach therapy to take all your cares away!

It was a special treat to be spending Mother's Day with my daughter and my mom. Mom and I don't always see each other on Mother's Day so it was nice. We exchanged gifts at the beach and toasted to the day.

Now I just need to figure out what in the world I'm going to get Steve for Father's Day! hmmm......

Linkup - Kelly's Korner

Hi!

My name is Erin. Welcome to my little corner of the internet.

If you found my blog through Kelly's Korner and her linkup, please feel free to leave a comment for me!

I'm an almost 34 year old, first time mama to Aubrey (loving it) and wife to a wonderful husband, Steve. We live in between Raleigh and Greensboro NC in a small town called Mebane. We relocated from Charlotte NC 3 years ago and although I'm not a small town girl, this is where we currently call home.

I work full time and cherish evenings, weekends and holidays with my family.

I look forward to hearing from you.

 - Erin

Snuggles with Nonna Jo

Saturday Morning Nap

in mama's big bed!

Walmart Shopping w/ Aubrey & Ariane

saturday when ariane and i were shopping for groceries for MGW, aubrey girl fell asleep holding her foot - it was pretty funny!

Just Chillin' In My Exersaucer!

22 Weeks, 4 Days

First Overnight w/o AG!

This Saturday I will head up the highway about 25 miles to my friend Ariane's house for a mini girls weekend/overnight. There are 9 of us getting together, 8 spending the night. This will be my first overnight away from her. Granted, I spend 11 hours/day during the week away from her while I'm at work. But overnight is different.

Steve and I (well, really just me) have been trying to transition Aubrey into her crib for a few weeks now. We had fallen into the routine of letting her sleep in our bed for ease (mainly for me) of middle-of-the-night feedings. When she hit 4 months old, she went through a sleep regression. She had been doing so well sleeping through the night and then it was like a switch was flipped and she started struggling to stay asleep when we put her to bed. She was still sleeping in her moses basket, but when she started pushing herself backwards while she was in the basket, i started worrying she was going to hurt herself (like her head, pushing it into the edge of the basket). So I pulled her into our bed. And there she stayed. For a month. With us.

I'll be honest. I love having her sleep beside me. She snuggles right up. But bed sharing is something I swore I would never do. It can be dangerous, even lead to death. Last week, my dad texted me about a story on inside edition about co-sleeping and a couple who lost not only 1 child, but 2 children on separate occasions because of co-sleeping. You would think the first time would have scared them enough not to ever do it again, but a year later they found themselves facing charges in the death of their 2nd child.

That night, I tried the crib again. That story was looming over me and I couldn't shake it. Everyone thinks "it won't happen to me" but I DON'T want it to happen to me! So for the 1st time, Aubrey stayed in her crib ALL NIGHT. Yes, I had to get up a few times during the night to comfort her/feed her, but the point is, she went to bed in her crib and awoke in her crib. Next fear - her sleeping on her stomach! But that's another blog post for another day.

So back to the reason I started this blog post - Saturday Steve will be in charge of getting her all ready for bed, fed and put to bed. He will be the one getting up during the night to try and calm her when she wakes up crying. Maybe he'll feed her, maybe he'll see if he can just calm her back to sleep. Of course it's easiest for me b/c I have a boob I can just throw in her mouth and she will nurse back to sleep. Not so easy for Steve! 

We have yet to have a full night of uninterrupted sleep. I was hoping if we stuck with the crib sleeping routine that maybe by the time Saturday gets here, she will have slept straight though the night - but unless that happens it the next 3 nights, i'm not sure Steve will be that lucky. We did get a good 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep last night though! Baby girl slept from 12:30am - 6:30am without me having to go into her room and comfort her. So maybe, just maybe, another switch will be flipped and we'll get 10 hrs of uninterrupted sleep!

And let's not talk about her leaking diapers!

I'll report back on Sunday to tell you how everything went!

xoxo

you're gonna LOVE this one!

22 Weeks, 3 Days

look how CUTE!?! love it!