...and then there were four!

We decided that Mother's Day would be a great opportunity to announce...

...Jane is going to be a big sister! 

We are all excited.  Well, as excited as a seven month old can get about something she does not even know...lol.

Thursday

Wednesday night we did some swinging, while Daddy watered the lawn, and then we went to tropical sno!



Yes, Daddy did spray me!

 

The remnants of our Tropical Sno - we got Jane a cup of plain ice
chips...she LOVED it.

Yesterday, we had a lunch date with our good friend Jenny.  Jane just loves her.  So do I : )  We went to a cute little bistro/coffee shop called Mustard Seed.

I got a veggie sandwich, Jane had carrots and Jenny got the smoky something-or-other sandwich.

Mama gives me yummies.

Carrot-face!

Miss Jenny even helped feed me so Mama could eat lunch!

We love hanging out with Miss Jenny.  Our conversations are always encouraging, light hearted and fun.  She is a great encourager in my life.  And she is SO good with Jane.

Oh, and on our way home we passed the sanctuary, um, I mean Starbucks. ;)

We had to stop...it was Happy Hour!


Dada got home shortly after us.  So, we hung out with him!

Tonight, we are having family over for dinner!  Aunt Heather and maybe Gramma and Grampa.  What a busy week we've had!

(NO) Schedule - Day 3

Today we did nothing remotely close to having a set schedule.

Momma woke up at 4am to be sick and continued feeling sick the rest of the night and into the morning.  Once we got up for the morning, Jane played in her excersaucer for awhile while I tried to lay down and feel better.  Finally, she napped with me, around 10:45am; I got up around 11:30am and felt much better.

At 12:30pm, we met Grandma and Aunt Heather for lunch at Cool Beans.  We ate and chatted until around 2ish.

Cool Beans is a cute little coffee shop/diner, all 70's hippie style. 
It is also where I meet with the ladies of LLL once a month.

Then we visited Dada at his office.  We stayed there all afternoon.  Jane snuck in a little nap there, but nowhere near getting enough sleep.



As we got home at 5pm, she was rubbing her eyes, and I could tell she was so sleepy still.  So, I stuck her in her swing to lull off to sleepyville. 

Excuse the mess in the background, but doesn't she look SO peaceful!?

It's about 6:30pm now and she is still sleeping.

Dada is working on the lawn and I am going to take her outside to swing as soon as she wakes up!  It is gorgeous outside and Justin was a sweet Daddy and hung her easter swing up in our tree!

There is her swing, and you can see Justin in the back weed-whacking!



That's about all for our day.  Tonight I believe we are getting Tropical Sno :)

MMMmmmmm.

Schedule - Day 2

For naptime #2 Jane was already asleep and stayed asleep once she went in her crib.
Naptime #3 did not work out.  She cried quite a bit, so we got her up and tried to feed her then gave her a nice bath to get her ready for bed.
At bedtime we decided to let her sleep in the co-sleeper in our room, because Justin had to get up super early (3am!) to study for his last test of the semester.

Today, at naptime #1, Daddy was home and Aunt Becca was over.  Justin couldn't stand her crying, so tried to soothe her and then I could tell she wasn't going to go to sleep after that.  So, I got her up to finish playing with Aunt Becca. 

Now, is time for naptime #2 (or #1, since she hasn't actually had one yet).  As Aunt Becca and Grandma left, I nursed Jane, changed her dipe and turned on her light music and closed her curtains.  At 1:58pm I laid her in bed, she has been crying since (about 5 minutes).  I am going to give her 10-15 minutes and then try to calm her a bit.

I think this is good for her, but it has definitely been harder after that first nap went so well!


Today, as mentioned above, Aunt Becca came over.  Justin's sister (Aunt Becca) has tons of craft stuff and she is addicted to Pinterest.  She noticed that I pinned this and volunteered to bring all the necessities over to make it!  It was so fun.

We used lots of pretty colors

Here's the first set of footprints...

Jane's feet are very ticklish, so it was fun to watch her squirm and wiggle as we painted her feet!

Mama painting on bug.

And, the finished product:

I have given her approximately 13 minutes and she is still pretty screamy...going to get her now...

EDIT: : I went in to rock her and turn on her favorite song (Grey Blue Eyes - Dave Matthews), and now she is silent :)

Schedule

One of my goals is to get into a somewhat strict routine/schedule.  Mainly for Jane, but also for us.  I would like to have set times when Jane naps and goes to bed.  Right now it is quite random, depending on Justin's homework schedule or our personal lives.

Today I began this transition.

Jane usually sleeps with us at night.  We have an "Arm's Reach Co-Sleeper" that sits right next to our bed, but many times she refuses to be silent unless she is snuggling against some warm momma or dada.  We are starting to get frustrated with it and feel it is time to transition her into her own room.  We love snuggling with our bug, but we don't want to be mad about it.  Therefore, now is a good time for us to begin this transition.

For naptime today, at around noon, I took Jane into her room, turned on some light music, changed her dipe and laid her in her crib to fall asleep on her own.  I am not into "Ferberizing," necessarily, but I felt it would be good to try a little bit of "crying-it-out" for naptime.  It worked!  She cried for about ten minutes, not too hard, and fell asleep on her own.  I feel quite accomplished and feel this is a huge step in the right direction.  I am going to try this for her afternoon and evening naps as well and maybe at bedtime.  I might not push it too hard, and only go for naps the first few days, then try bedtime; not really sure yet.

I feel having set naptimes will help everyone.  Me, with some sanity; Jane, with a set schedule; Justin, it will help him mostly in the evening to know when he gets time with just me.

As far as other parts of our daily schedule that need to be tweaked, there are so many.
I would like to start waking up earlier.  I would like to have set times when Jane eats solids (she is eating them about 3 times a day now).  I would like to have a set God time.  Even a set time where we read together and play together and clean.  I would like to set up a tentative schedule that we follow on a daily basis.  Of course, this schedule will be flexible, I think it would be stupid for it not to be.

That is all.  Maybe I will post the sched. once I have one set up! 

Life Changes

Justin and I recently found ourselves fighting/bickering a lot.  We decided to discuss the core reasons why and came up with quite a few things.  You can imagine what the core reason is:

We don't spend enough time with the Lord.

All the other things stemmed from that one fact.  We decided to make a list of all the things we would like to see change in our lives.  We now have a rough list of some changes that need to be made.  We need to define them so that they are achievable.  We also need to add a time frame in which we would like to institute the changes.


I am so thankful for a husband who is open and understanding.  The fact that he came to me to talk about these things encourages my heart to the core.  I love to talk about things, but I love better when he pursues the things we need to talk about.  He is so in love with God.  He wants to honor Him in everything and sees that he needs to tweak his daily life a bit in order to do that.  I LOVE that openness.  I am encouraged, impressed and just plain blessed to have that kind of best friend. 

One of my goals is to blog more.  It is one of the lower ones on my list, but I think it is somewhat important.  I seem to do a lot better emotionally and spiritually when I make time to journal and/or blog.  It would be a good way to update people on our lives, share spiritual truths I am learning, etc.  Plus, I love reading other people's blogs as well.  I think it would help fill my void of personal connection I have been feeling.  Moving to a new place, becoming a wife and stay-at-home momma in one year's time have all finally caught up with me and are taking a toll.  I miss friends and college.  Growing up is draining.  (Don't get me wrong, I love every single minute of it, but I do have times when I just want to get together with Neal, Bev, Lundy and Whorts and play a good game of Catan or watch a rediculous episode of MST3K!)

There is a brief update, and I hope to be more organized with my posting than this in the future.  Hopefully, if I don't take so much time in between my posts they can be short and sweet (which are my favorite to read) and perhaps meaningful :)


One more thing.  I was challenged to read the book of Philippians by a friend who spoke on Philippians 4:8

" Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things." 

She spoke about our joy being rooted in Jesus and not in happiness.  How our joy is conditional on Christ alone and happiness is conditional on circumstances.  I feel like I used to be really good at being able to say, "It is well with my soul," and mean it.  I felt like my joy was deep and evident to most people around me.  

Somewhere along the way I have lost track of my Savior, therefore losing track of my joy.  I'm on a mission to get it back!