Busier than ever.

I thought just being a stay at home wife and keeping the house clean was hard. Ha! A clean house is almost impossible with a baby. There are those rare moments when most of the house is clean for like 2 seconds...then it's back to the way it was. I'm ok with it though. Having baby stuff everywhere gives my home character and the feeling of family. I love my little Audie bee and I love taking care of and nurturing her. I love the way she looks up into my eyes adoringly when I'm feeding her. I love her grunts and squeaks when she's sleeping...or even awake. And I even LOVE having to pick her up and hold her because the only place she's happy is my arms. It brings me the greatest joy to be her Mommy. She's generally a happy baby. She loves to be held, but what baby doesn't? She has days where she cries if I put her down and I tend to hold her through those days. But she also has plenty of days where she is perfectly content in her swing, bouncy, or sleeping in her pack n play.

An update on me: I'm doing well. I'm over the baby blues part of post partum. It wasn't bad. It only lasted a couple weeks and I was back to normal. I spend most of my free time...what little I do have running around the house, cleaning, washing bottles, doing laundry, surfing the internet for good coupon deals, all to start over again in the routine of taking care of Audie. I am beyond exhausted most days, but that's normal and Audrey keeps me on my toes. Sometimes it seems like everything is just one reeeeeallly long, big day. No separate days because they all run together! lol. Especially when sleep is more like just a nap. All in the name of love for my baby :-) Life is good.

Finally getting the hang of it.

So I am finally getting the hang of being a new Mom. At first, if it wasn't one thing it was another: breastfeeding, pumping, formula, normal bowel movements for her, finding the right bottle and nipple combo to bottle feed her...shew! Hard work and stressful trying to figure everything out. I feel like I can finally relax and breathe a little now. We are settled into formula feeding. Everything is going great!

Can you believe that...my daughter has almost outgrown her newborn clothes?!?! Who would have thought that would happen at 2 months old. lol. She's a tiny girl, that Audrey. I love her so much.

We survived our first rough growth spurt. Of course, it happened while Paul was at work all week. Fussy baby that NEVER slept, but sure could cry with the best of them. It was a ROUGH week and I wanted to gouge my eyes out with a spoon at times and bang my head against the wall. It's hard having no one to help out. I don't know how single moms do it. Thanks to the bouncy seat, swing, car seat, and lots of cuddles...we survived. Now to gear up for the next one. And teething! ahhh!!

Paul and I finally figured out a schedule so that we could both get decent sleep throughout the week. We swap nights getting up with Audrey and it works pretty well. Of course, Audrey only really wakes up once in the night...but when she does, it takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r to get her fed, burped, happy and back to sleep. So it's a couple hours of lost sleep. Sometimes I'll put her in bed with me if I'm really tired and cuddle her until she falls back asleep. That way I can rest..while bonding with Audie. I get up around 10:30 for the day with Audrey (she eats at 6ish and 10ish am) Then for the rest of the day, we just go with the flow. I feed her when she is truly hungry, talk to her, sing to her and play with her till she needs a nap. Sometimes her naps are only 30 minutes, sometimes several hours. It's touch and go and Audrey has DEFINITELY taught me to be more go with the flow. There's some things you really just can't control no matter what.

I am so excited for Audrey's next pediatrician appointment. I want to see how much she weighs and ask a few questions about bottle feeding, formula, etc. Lots of questions. I can't wait. August 18th is her appointment. Oh...she gets shots too. Excitement gone. I'm going to cry.