Jinxyisms

Conrad Elliott came blazing into this world Thursday night July 30, 2009 which just happens to be his Mother’s 21 birthday. What a perfect birthday present.

Conrad’s proud parents are our good friends Anthony and Maggie. We’ve been friends with Anthony for years and have seen him through some very good times and very bad times as you so often do with chosen family. I am so please to say this is the happiest if not most tired I’ve ever seen him.

Conrad is a big boy weighing in at 9 lbs 2 oz. Maggie was a champ and pushed him out in only 20 minutes. He is 21 1/2 long and has lots of hair just like his parents.

Maggie I have a few bits of advice for you, you know since I’ve a veteran and all.

Let Anthony help and take his opinions to heart. That was one of the hardest things for me. Waldo wants to be a part of every decision when it comes to Lily but I think I know it all, so I had to learn to compromise and sometimes be very persuasive so I still get my way.

Enjoy every minute. I know you’ve heard it before but its so true. They grow up so fast. I still can’t believe Lily’s 7 months old.

Sleep when Conrad sleeps, at least at first.

Most importantly Conrad is your baby so listen to that amazing Mother’s instinct and ignore everyone else, including your Mom and people like me. But listen to me because you know I know it all. Lol.

Congrats you guys!

I have to include a few more pictures because I never know when to stop.

Look at those legs, edible.

I made Maggie unwrap him so I could finally see a chubby baby.

And the hair.

Remember I’m here if you need anything.

I get so many wonderful comments and compliments about Lily’s clothes, (thank you all so much) that I wanted to spend a little time talking about them.

I’d say that 99% of all of Lily’s clothes were either from my baby shower or hand-me-downs. Besides my baby monitor, a few blankets and odds and ends all I got for my shower were baby clothes. It was amazing. My co-workers and family went crazy buying cute little girl clothes. One of my ex co-workers whom we refer to as Grandma Starr bought cute baby girl clothes before we knew Lily was a girl and still buys her stuff.

As for the hand-me-downs, they came from all over the place. I worked at a credit union and if you’ve ever been a credit union member then you understand the close community that it can provide. I got bags and bags of baby clothes, a baby bath tub, swing and bouncer seat from one member alone; it was gggrrrate. One of the ladies Waldo worked with had just had a baby and gave us probably 4 big rubbermaid tubs of clothes. And my little (hahaha she’ll be 30 soon, how does that happen?) sister has a baby girl about 4 months older then Lil so she sends a lot of hand-me-downs too.

Here are some of the great shower gifts:

This is one of my favorite outfits ever, it was from Grandma Starr

and another shower gift from Grandma Starr

This is a shower gift. The “cherry on top” is a friggin’ button, I might rant about this one day

Another co-worker brought this back from Maui for Lily

I could go on and on and I’m sure some of you feel that I already have gone too far. As you can see I’m using this as an excuse to reminisce.

As for that other 1% of clothes in Lily’s closet I have bought new; one dress and one onesie and a few things at a yard sale. We are so thankful for the wonderful generous gifts that we’ve received.

These are the things I’ve bought new:

I need to wrap this craziness up so I can go to bed.

But one last thing that I meant to post a couple of months ago.

One day Waldo got home from work and there was a bag from the grocery store hanging off the door knob. When we opened it there were two baby outfits in it with no note. One was a larger size of this

Someone please explain to me how two people thought my daughter would want to look like Fran Dresher?

Lily loved the cats so she’s in heaven

She loves the cats so much that we think they are going to be the reason Lily becomes mobile.

Lily’s on the move from Christy Wiggins on Vimeo.

Dear Lily Bean,

Today you are 7 months old and changing so fast its hard to keep up. Some of the things that you did this past month were:

7/15 finally giggled at peek a boo. Up until this point you just looked at me like I was crazy.

Belly laughed for the first time on 7/5. You are still very hard to get laughing and as soon as we get out the camera its all over. You would rather look at the camera then anything else so of course you stop enjoying whatever it is I’m killing myself doing to make you laugh.

You enjoyed the swing we bought before you were born. You hated that thing and wouldn’t sit in it even for a minute before. Now you’ll put up with it for a max of 20 minutes but hey I get some dishes put away in that time so I’m cool with it.

You smiled at a few strangers, this is a big thing for us. You smile at Daddy and me all the time, but either just stare at unknown people or cry because they are looking at you.

Biggest thing is you got the all clear from the medical genetics from the children’s hospital. You’re small but fine. We knew that but now your regular doctor can relax and stop worrying us.

You can sit up pretty well if we put you in a sitting position. You can’t get there on your own, but its a start.

You are starting solids. I just don’t feel that you are 100% ready for them so we keep trying about once a week till I think you’re there. You eat something solid for dinner every day now and really enjoy it.

You didn’t start it this month but you’ve perfected it.  You just about always have a finger in your mouth, usually its your index finger but sometimes you add your middle one in and every once in a while you replace it with  your thumb.  Usually you are just biting on it but sometimes you will suck it and it is the most precious thing in the world.

You do this really cute head rub sometimes.  I wish I could get a picture of it because I can’t describe it.  But it melts my heart when you do it.

You are the most amazing little person in the world and I’m so lucky that you’re mine.

Love,

Mama

This Saturday was full of firsts for my little Lily.  I think my favorite was that she didn’t get upset and scream in the car during our weekly shopping trip, of course when we went out again later in the day there was a whole didn’t vibe in the car but I won’t dwell on that.  She didn’t cry at all, that is what I want to remember.  She had her first sip of water and it was from a “cup” which was another first and that went right along with her fist medicine.  Lily is teething (people following me on Twitter may have heard something about this) and its killing me her so I bought some Hyland’s Teething Tablets and dissolved a couple in a tiny “cup” with a tiny bit of water.  She drank that down just like a big girl.  I was so proud of her.  I have no idea if the teething tablets helped at all because her crankiness comes and goes so quickly it gives me whiplash but I like to think that it did help.

Another first for Lil was sweet potatoes.  Its the first non-rice cereal solid-ish food that she’s eaten and she liked it.  She was really unsure at first and I think that was partly my fault.  I didn’t mix any water, breast milk or formula into it, I just left it the consistency and texture it was right out of the food processor.  So it was a little thick and totally a different flavor/texture from the rice cereal she was used to so I wasn’t surprised that she wasn’t too sure at first, but she got over it very quickly.

I was so shocked at how easy the sweet potato was to make for her.  I bought 1 medium sized organic sweet potato (I should have taken a picture of it) and I followed to the directions that I got off of wholesomebabyfood.com.  But to make it sound more like my idea I will tell you what I did and add in the few pictures I managed to take.

I washed and scrubbed the sweet potato, then punched a bunch of holes in it (I love to get aggression out this way), then wrapped it in tin foil and tossed it in a 425 degree oven.  That is hotter then the website suggests but our oven seems to not run as hot as it should.  After 30 minutes Waldo flipped the potato over and after an hour total I took it out.  I left it wrapped to cool off for probably another hour.  Honestly I forgot about it so I have no idea how long it sat there but probably no longer then 90 minutes.

So I unwrapped it and sliced it in half length way and then peeled the skin off.  It was still a little hot but the skin just slipped right off.** I think cut it into large chunks and tossed it in the food processor.  I have a tiny processor and it was just perfect for this size sweet potato.  I then smushed the life out of the tuber.

I let it cool off a little more and then put some in a cup for Lily. Like I said before I didn’t add any liquid to it and I should have. I’ve been giving it to her all week with water added, its much better. She really liked it once she got over the new taste and texture.

When she was done she cleaned herself off.

After the smushed potato in the processor was all cooled I grabbed a clean ice cube tray and filled it up. Did you know that one ice cube is just over one ounce. I didn’t know that till I had Lily. The things our kids teach us.

Oh yea I wrapped it in clingfilm and then I stuck it in the freezer. The next day I wacked it on the counter and the frozen cubes of sweet potato fell out onto a paper towel.  Now they reside in my freezer in a zip lock bag and I take one out in the morning so it can thaw for dinner. It works out wonderfully.

Lily’s next new food will be avocado. I had to search around for an organic one or she would have had it before the sweet potato.

**I think this was from leaving it in the foil while it cooled.  It was easy peasy what ever the cause.

My girl is 30 weeks old today.

Woot, two weeks in a row I posted on the right day.

I just want to let you all know that Lily’s birth story is being featured by one of my bloggy friends Kelly from Our Lincoln Log.  I’m honored to be one of the mothers featured in Kelly’s weekly birth story series.

I know for a lot of us a better question would be “are your baby’s beauty products safe?”  This is a great tool for those of us that are concerned about what we put on our bodies.  The Skin Deep Safe cosmetics database has a toxic rating for just about every beauty product out there.  They range from 0-10 with 10 being really toxic.  It has products broke down into baby care, eye care, nail care, etc and then broken down further into subcategories.

I have only used this for baby items and was shocked and not so shocked by what I found so far.  The Aveeno baby soap and shampoo that I have been using on Lily was rated a 3, I guess that’s not really so bad but I want better.  I was not really surprised to find that just about all Johnson and Johnson products were over a 3 and most much higher.  I didn’t see anything lower then a 3 but I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt.

I want to know why it is that products that are made specifically for our babies are harsh and toxic when they are labeled safe and gentle?

The nurse that facilitates my breastfeeding/mom support group gave us the web address last week and I wanted to share with you all.  I hope you find it as interesting as I did.

Here are some comparisons that I just can’t get over. My girl is getting so big.

Lily is 29 weeks old here

Here’s she’s 7 weeks old

We bought this swing for her before she was born, this is the first time I’ve put her in it in months because she hated it before. Now she will tolerate it for a little while. She’s 27 weeks 6 days old.

1 week 6 days old

Here she’s 3 weeks old. In this picture you can’t really tell but that outfit is way too big for her. Its a newborn size.

Here she’s just under 19 weeks old

Kill me now, I don’t know if I can handle looking at these pictures in a year or two.

I keep seeing this MckLinky logo around but didn’t take time to find out what it was all about till this week. It’s pretty cool. Since Mr. Linky is buggy lately this seems like a great replacement and improvement. Rather then have to track down blogs to add your link to like with Mr. Linky you write your post (and they are themed which I like) and link it to the MckLinky site. This week the theme is THREE THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT ME

Hhhmmm I feel like I’m a pretty open book so I’m going to have to strain to come up with a measly three things.

1. In high school I worked in a very high end jewelry store. My Grandma worked there just about all my life and taught me how to string pearl necklaces. It was tedious work, but I loved it. I have pretty much worked nonstop since I was 15 years old. When Lily was first born and I was new to this whole stay at home Mom thing I felt sort of lazy and weird to not be “working”, I no longer feel that way. I work darn hard taking care of Lily.

2. I spent every Wednesday night at my Grandparents house up until high school and then sometimes even after. We were/are very close and I miss them and the rest of my family. This closeness is one reason I waited till I was 32 to have a baby. I now live 1500 miles away and I hate that Lily won’t have that closeness to family that I did growing up. But there is no way in hell I’m moving back to California, just no way. I guess this could have been two things but I’m still going to add a third official thing.

3. I’m a pack rat and lazy but mostly about mail. This adds up to a very messy computer desk. I always have mail stacked up under my monitor stand and on top of my tower. I pay everything online so I don’t know why I have so much dang mail anyway, but I do. Every so often I’ll stack all the mail up and toss some of it but put the rest in a box or a drawer till its so old that I know I won’t need it ever again and then toss it. Its such a waste of time and space, I really need to get better organized. By the way I’m lazy in general, not just about mail.

4. Because I want to throw this in, I’m obsessed with pictures of my beautiful girl. I really want to take better pictures so if anyone has any suggestions or knows of good websites I’m all ears and eyes. I can’t afford a great new camera so I’m stuck with what I have for now which is a Sony cyber-shot. It works pretty well but its no DSLR or anything. So because of this obsession here’s another picture or two of Lily.