Happy 7 Months, Amelia!

I feel compelled to write a monthly post for my Amelia.  Bless her soul.  In all honesty, the reason I never did months 1-6 is simple;  she never stopped crying.  What kind of a monthly post would that be? 

“Happy 2 months, Amelia!  You cry constantly and can scream louder than any child I’ve ever known…or any human for that matter.  You want to nurse 24/7, spit up the majority of what you eat, rarely sleep, and hate everyone except your mother.  We love you!”

How unpleasant to go back and read one day.  You’re not supposed to remember these extremely tough time with babies – because if you did you wouldn’t have any more.  So blogging about it wouldn’t do anything but make it where I couldn’t forget if I wanted to!   

All of that being said, Amelia has turned a corner. I’m sure of it.  I think.  I hope. She is FINALLY accepting a bottle from a few select people, she likes her Daddy a little more these days, and she isn’t screaming at the top of her lungs anymore all the time.  She is really a sweet girl!

Amelia,

You are something else, girl.  The last 7 months have been challenging, but rewarding.  Without a doubt, you love your mommy.  You hate for me to be out of your sight, unless Ms. Lois is holding you.  She’s my only acceptable substitute!  She loves you, though, so that makes me happy.  You roll all over the place!  You roll your way across a room sometimes!  I love to put you down somewhere and come back and find you across the room…so funny!

You are attempting to sit up on your own and getting better at it everyday!  You TRY to crawl.  You basically can get both legs up under your tush and you try to push off with one foot – it usually involves you accidently rolling yourself back onto your back.

You think your sister is the funniest person alive.  You watch every move she makes!  She loves to come talk to you and play “gitchu gitchu”  (“I’m gonna get you, get you, get you!”)  You go to sleep around 6:30pm and sleep until about 6:30am.  Sometimes I can pull you into bed with me and nurse you back to sleep for another hour or so. 

You’re a tiny little girl.  When I weighed you today you were an even 14lbs.  You’re only in the 20th percentile for your height so we’re thinking you’re going to be a petite little girl.  You might prove us wrong, though!  Even though you’re a tiny thing, you have the rolly-est (yes, I made up that word) thighs and poofiest (again, yes.)  cheeks.  I love them.  You’re still in a size 2 diaper – which works out great.  We had a diaper shower from the ladies at church in January and got so many diapers that I still haven’t had to buy a single pack yet.  How awesome is THAT?! 

(Check out those leg rolls for a 14lb baby!)

You have the strongest little legs!  You would much rather stand up than sit down.  You definitely didn’t get that from your mother. Ha!  You chew anything you can get in your mouth, including your fists.  You can fit your entire fist in your mouth.  It’s quite impressive, really.  You slobber everywhere and we keep expecting a tooth or two, but so far you just have a gummy, toothless grin! 

You love your playmat, your jumperoo, your crunchy elephant, and your squeaky giraffe.

I think it’s cute that you have favorite toys already.  You eat about six 5oz bottles a day and nurse once in the morning and once at night.  This just started last week.  Before that you nursed every 2 hours all day long until 6:30 rolled around.  You like baby food a lot.  Anything with bananas!  You also LOVE an avocado & banana mixed together.  You won’t eat the avocado without the banana, but you love the two together! 

You hate to have a dirty diaper.  You will scream uncontrollably until it gets changed.  Pee is fine, but the other…notsomuch.  You expect a fresh diaper within seconds of being finished, which is sometimes difficult – especially if we’re in a store or the car somewhere!

You have a mind of your own, without a doubt.  I think you might get that from your mommy.  You want what you want!  Daddy and I were discussing just last night how you’ve got persistence working for you!

I look at you and think about how tiny you are and how before I blink my eyes we’ll be celebrating 1 year going on 18 years.  It kills me.  Some part of me wants you to stay my little baby forever, but the other part can’t wait for all the fun times ahead.  When Caroline turned about 9 months old,  I constantly said (and still continue to say every month) “this is my favorite age!”   I have no doubt it will be the same with you!  You are a wonderful addition to our little family, and it makes me so excited when you and Caroline interact and smile and play with each other.  I hope you always treasure one another! 

We love you with all of our hearts, baby girl.  I can’t wait to teach you all the wonderful things about Jesus and our purpose on this earth.  My hope is that you become a Christian, godly woman who always tries to please the Lord!  You are such a joy in our lives.  We love you.

Love,

Mommy (& Daddy, of course!)

Pictures & a Car Accident

I wanted to share my favorites from our picture session with Jessica Rowell Photography in Hernando, MS.  If you’re anywhere around that area and want some wonderful pictures done of your family for excellent prices – call her!  She’s amazing! 

 

Amelia wasn’t too terribly thrilled to be doing these pictures, but she did better than I expected.  Caroline did great as long as we sang Veggie Tales over and over again!  I’m really, really happy with how they turned out so I wanted to put them up here to show them off.   

In other news, we had a car accident last Sunday but we’re all okay.  Someone didn’t see us coming down the highway and crossed the intersection (going straight across.)  Thankfully, I did hit my brakes and swerved to try to miss him, so we avoided a total T-bone collision, but I did slam into the very front of his vehicle.  I was honking the horn when we hit him and our airbags deployed.  When we hit him, it somehow basically knocked our wheel off the car and shot us into a small ditch.  Let me just say that wrecking with your whole family in the car is a lot different than wrecking by yourself!  Someone who saw the accident said he knew we had babies in the car because our car had not been stopped for 2 seconds and both of our doors flung open to jump in the back and get them.  We were so lucky.  No one was hurt, including the man we hit.  I’m so, so, so thankful for that.  I had some cuts and bruises on my arm where the airbag deployed while I was honking, a seatbelt rash on my chest, and some bruised knees – and that was the extent of everyone’s injuries.  We were all really sore the next day (and even worse the 2nd and 3rd day) but I’m feeling 100% now.  It probably didn’t help that I had done Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred on Saturday night for the first time ever.  Yeah.  Talk about bad timing.

Look at that dirt that we took with us from the ditch!  Crazy!  Our car was totalled, and we’re hoping to get a new one this week.  I was SO sad about my car!  I know that a car is just stuff and is replaceable and I couldn’t have been happier with the outcome of our situation, but I was so proud of my car!  Oh well, it did its job and kept us safe! 

If you’ve made it through all of my ramblings, thank you. 

Couponing Powerpoint

If you’ve been wanting to learn to coupon but haven’t had time to go to a class – you’re in luck!  I recently taught a small class and prepared a powerpoint to go along with it.  It doesn’t give you ALL the benefits of an actual class because everything that I said isn’t written down, but it will definitely work to get you started!    Just click the “couponing” tab under my big farming picture up there and scroll down a little.  You can make it full screen or just zoom in on the pages that aren’t big enough.  Hope it helps someone get started!