Emerald has started sitting in the bumbo, since she’s doing pretty good holding her head up now! It definitely is quite a work out for her and it’s helping strengthen her neck muscles, but she gets tired and bored within about 10 minutes.
She also has started paying more attention to Eddy and notices him more 🙂
Every since we moved in, I’ve played with the idea of painting our brick fireplace white. 1. It would match everything else great 2. It’s kind of the thing to do… but I was just having a hard time pulling the trigger, scared that I wouldn’t like or and there was no way in going back. I also thought about re-sale and would the next owners want brick.
Well I posted this image on Facebook asking for everyone’s opinion and everyone (but my dad) agreed that it should be painted!
So next up, I photoshopped it…
So since we have plenty of Behr White Paint + Primer that matches the rest of our house, I went for it. And here’s my progress so far… and holy cow it’s going to take a LONG time to finish this project! 1. Our brick is like textured to the extreme, so it’s very difficult to get good coverage 2. My time is limited, so the only chance I have to do this is when E naps, so Mondays and Weekend days. I’ve only started the bottom, I’m already dreading the upper part! Too bad all those people that said “paint it!” didn’t volunteer to help 😉
As maternity leave comes to an end on Wednesday, I’m trying to think of all the great times I had with my little girl and be thankful for this time we had together versus how much I’m going to miss her during the day when I’m at work.
For maternity leave I took the 8 weeks of short term disability, plus an extra two weeks. I’ll then go back to work part-time (working Wednesday and Friday and working from home on Thursday) for two weeks and then going back four days a week. I figured it was good to ease back into things…
I honestly can’t believe how fast it went by. The day before she was born was my first official day of maternity leave and was thinking how these 10 weeks were going to feel like an eternity and now that I only have two days left, it unfortunately felt like a week. I will say we definitely made the best of our 70 days together. We took days of rest, but we also did stuff to cross things off on our summer bucket list. Here is a collection of photos that sum up maternity leave…
// Slept a lot…
// Some of us took showers…
// Had a lot of doctors appointments to check on her weight and my incision…
// Took lots of selfies…
// Got to hang out with grammie and she did a lot of housework for us…
// Went out for ice cream…
// Played with toys…
// Went to dad’s baseball games…
// Wore the baby…
// Got newborn/family photos done…
// Went on walks to the beach almost every day…
// Went to the zoo…
// Went to a parade, celebrated the fourth and saw fireworks…
// Met new friends…
// Lounged at the pool…
// Got frozen yogurt…
// Went to ski shows…
// Opened a savings account…
// Spent time with my cousins…
// Played at the beach…
In returning to work, what I’m most sad/worried about is missing little milestones like her first giggle, rolling-over, sitting up fully on her own and just all the little endless smiles that I get from her on a daily basis. I’m also not able to wrap my head around how I’m going to “take care” of our home, aka cooking, cleaning and just keeping up with all the work that comes with owning a home. My time with Emerald is going to be super limited to nights, weekends and Mondays that I don’t want to waste my time cleaning our house, I definitely want to spend every waking moment with her!
The good thing about returning to work is who is taking care of her during the day. My mom will watch her two days a week and a good family friend is watching her the other two days. She will be so spoiled and well taken care of, so I’m thankful I have nothing to worry about there!
I’m trying to remember that there is a season and time for everything, sadly this maternity leave season is over, but here comes a new season and hoping there are blessings there. Oh and here comes the tears…
Since we live only an 8-minute walk from Pewaukee Beach, it was only a matter of time before we introduced Emerald to it. We’ve taken lots of walks there before, but today was the first time she put her toes in the sand and water (brrr!)
We can’t wait until she can appreciate it more 😉
Our baby girl is two months old already, time please slow down!
At her two month check-up, she weighed 8lbs 11oz and was 21.75″ long (she also got three shots and one oral vaccine, poor baby!). Lately she’s been sleeping 8 hours at night, even though our doctor wasn’t a fan of that, but since this girl is continuing to gain about an ounce a day, we won’t wake her! She also started social smiling around 6 weeks, and it’s the best thing ever. It’s like “hey, she actually likes us” 🙂
Other milestones this month include gaining more head control and being able to hold herself up on her tummy with her arms. She also took three bottles in one day when Drew and I went to six flags for the day and she hung out with my mom all day. She is a super eater and drank about 5oz each time, wowzers. Glad she doesn’t mind bottles since she’ll be getting three a day when I go back to work soon.
We made this video of her at two months so we can look back some day and cherish all these little moments.
Today we went down to see my Great Grandma Vada Anderson (who is 96 years old) so she could meet the babies. We also thought it would be a great chance to get a five generations photo, both for my family and Becky’s.
Even for being 96 years old, my great grandma sure does get around and is looking great. She even made cheese cake and cookies for us. Emerald loved talking to her, and it makes me so happy to have this photo since we don’t know how long she’ll be around.
The photo of her holding Emerald and this one at our wedding below are so special.
It’s been eight weeks since we finished the nursery the day before she was born and I snapped most of these photos (some I snapped today that shows her newborn photos in frames)… and it’s crazy to look at these photos and reminisce about the day before she was born which almost was the day she was born, since contractions started before my scheduled c-section.
It’s also crazy to think that I tried to edit these photos that night as I sat through so many painful contractions but decided to give up and go into the hospital. I had my to-do list and was determined to cross “post nursery photos on blog” off my list, but having a baby you learn you go with the flow, and things change.
We love her nursery… and not only did she need to love it (ha) but I needed to as well, since I spent a lot of hours logged here as she nurses. I love staring up at the photos of her when she was about 5 lbs (she’s now 8.5ish) and thinking back to those first few weeks…
If you want to know the source of anything, just ask!
Emerald has changed so much from when we first had newborn photos taken or took some family ones at the hospital, so I had my sister snap a few on my camera the other day. I’m trying my best to document so much of this little girl, since she’s growing up so fast already 🙁
And it’s also really hard to make sure I get in front of the camera sometimes, that’s the hardest!
She needs her mama.
7 weeks.
Emerald started smiling for us at 6 weeks old! Right now it’s the best thing in the world, knowing that your baby likes you, ha! It just feels like all the feeding, changing, rocking, crying is all worth it for those first few smiles. #heartmelted
It took a few tries to get it caught on camera though, but once I did today she made lots of crazy faces! Can’t wait until she full on giggles!
