My bruiser

Today we had lots of firsts. Lots. Of. Firsts.

Look at my little crawler go!



But, wouldn't you know, the same day that Cheyanne decides to show off her new skill'z is also the same day that she had her first tumble? Not just a little tumble, but a tear jerker with blood and a cut to the head tumble. It was traumatic- for both of us. And so it begins...

But thankfully, she rebounded pretty quickly.

And away she went!! Look at that serious crawling face. That's a girl on the move.

So, for you avid readers ( ;-) that's supposed to be a smiley face), that means my baby has learned to crawl AND pull up all in the same week! Whew! My head is spinning. 

Where did my little helpless baby go?! She is long gone and now I have a little bruiser on my hands.

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FYI-  I hate double posting on the same day.  It's so unfair to tomorrow...

Double FYI- We are on our way to the beach for 4th of July week. YAY! And even more importantly, the Giant will be joining us for a few days!! I'm on my way to pick him up in VaBeach at the airport today. Even though he'll only be with us for a few days, I'll be soaking up all the time I am given with him. This will be the first time since he left in November that he will be home home and most of our families will be able to see him. Excited doesn't even begin to touch my mood right now!!

My flower child

Could she be any cuter?

No, I don't think so! I love this little face.

I am not above bribery

I'll do just about anything to get this girl to crawl.

Yum yum puffs :)

Nap time?

Does this look like nap time to you?

How about this? 'Cause this is what I found when I peeked in after hearing some giggles through the monitor during nap time.

That's right. We have a climber now. Uh oh! 

In the middle of the night, Chey decided it was time to wake up and STAY AWAKE. Amidst her anger, she somehow figured out how to successfully pull up in her crib. I was in her room lying on the bed while she cried, getting up to calm her down every few minutes. Well, after about the 6th time of doing this, I was on my way to sit up and head over to her when I realized, I hadn't even sat up yet and I was looking at her looking at me. Uh...?! That's a new one! 

Apparently it wasn't a fluke. This second time proves that it. She knows. Needless to say, there will be some lowering of the bed today before bed time. And, a whooooole lot of baby proofing.

Nuff pictures Mom!!

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We've been traveling this past week, so I'll update on our adventures shortly.

Happy Father's Day

With 7 minutes to spare, I'm finally getting this posted.

Happy Father's Day Husband. Cheyanne and I are blessed to have you in our lives. Thank you for being the fantastic father that you are.

This is for you Babe.

9 month beauty

Why does it surprise me so much at this time every month that my baby is getting older? As if the fact that she is growing is such a shock. Its so very bittersweet when I write these monthly posts. I love thinking back over the last month to see how far she has come and how quickly she is changing, but its hard admitting that my baby is not such a tiny "baby" anymore.

On that note, lets recap how my sweetness has grown in the last month.

Well, for starters, getting her month picture with Mr. Bear has gotten increasingly difficult.

Exhibit A.

B.

C.

She doesn't like to sit still. Ever. Girl doesn't know how to crawl, but boy she sure can move and scoot and roll and flop and shimmy and relocate by all other means necessary. And, to get a good picture you've got to be quick because she finds everything else around a camera more fascinating than looking at the camera.

She weighs in at a whopping 20.5 lbs. Only a few ounces more than she did a few weeks ago but still in the 75th percentile. Dr said that that is most likely because she's getting more mobile. My long girl has grown a few inches, now at 27 1/2 inches in the 50th percentile. And her head, well her head is a Bailey/Wood head, 18 inches = 90th percentile. What can I say? She is the perfect mix of the Giant and I. 

Her favorite things include: watermelon, her toothbrush, hair, eyelashes, water, all things paper, and Mickey Mouse. Oh, and her Skipper. She loves her Skipper.

Besides watermelon, we have added meat (chicken and turkey), strawberry, blueberry, peaches, puffs, teething biscuits, and yogurt to her food palette. She's not the best eater, but she still gets two meals a day of whatever she'll eat. Nursing every 3 hours suits her just fine. 

Sleep? Hmm, I'm starting to learn the meaning of the word again. This has been a crucial month of sleep training, and she's starting to catch on. No more middle of the night feedings allowed. Yay for more sleep! 

To the window....to the wall!

New things: 

• waves bye-bye to every one
• stands alone holding onto things
• sat up on her own twice (that I've seen)
• says Dada along with many other consonant sounds (however she will NOT say it when her Dada is actually listening ::sigh::)
• when being forced to crawl she revolts and will straightens her legs while throwing her butt into the air refusing to put her knees down- stubborn like her daddy
• tries to give my hickies on any available part of my body by suctioning her mouth onto me- which makes her laugh every time
• scrunches her nose and snorts/sniffs in and out (very cute like a little puppy)
• randomly hates getting her diaper changed
• stranger anxiety is real and alive
• shakes, rattles, rolls, and bangs everything that she can get her hands on... after she gives it the once over via a taste test of course

Anyways, that's my 9 month old baby girl in a nutshell.

Here are the best two from our photo shoot.

9 month photo shoot "Take One" (I told you it has gotten harder).

And it came to a close...

Oh Miss Attitude, I love you with every bit of my heart. 

9 month photo shoot "Take Two" will come some time soon, hopefully with better results.

Hurricane Cheyanne

I swear, I turn my head for five seconds and when I turn back around- I find this...

Empty toy basket- Check!
Pull Momma's wallet out of the diaper bag- Check!
Empty Momma's wallet- Check!
Empty entire diaper bag- Check!
Empty and tear apart Momma's coupon booklet- Check!
Smile sweetly as if I haven't been up to anything mischievous- Double check!!

Hurricane Cheyanne strikes again.

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9 month post coming soon, I promise. Today we have her 9 month check up.

Chop and Go

Gone, gone gone... my hair that is! The time finally came to go from

to

!!!!!!

I just sucked it up and did it. Someone with Locks of Love will be receiving 15 inches of hair soon. My hair has literally never ever been this short. E.V.E.R. And I love it! 

I truly never thought I'd have the guts to make the chop, but I am so glad i did. Today I am at least. Its still brand new, so who knows what I'll think in a few weeks when I have to be in a bathing suit in public and there is no long hair to divert the eyes from the one two many other bodily curves... weird logic I know. But, it totally makes sense to me.

For years, my hair has been my pride. It was always the one thing about myself that I liked and felt good about. It has primarily been long most of my life, so its still a shock when I pass by a mirror. I have always wanted to donate my hair, and I finally decided that if I didn't do it now, I never would. On a whim, I called a really popular salon in town Monday afternoon thinking maybe I could get an appointment by August (giving me extra time in case I chickened out). Well, the receptionist told me they had a cancellation for Tuesday night. Shoot. Well, ok. So, last night I went terrified and couldn't have been happier with my beautician. Gabby, a young and super talented girl knew exactly what would work on me. Since I had never cut it this short, I didn't have a freakin' clue what to do. I showed her a few pictures and she just went at it. All. Fifteen. Inches!! Chop. Chop. Chop. 

This is the first time I've felt air on my neck. I think I was more nervous of how Cheyanne would react when I came home with no hair than about how I'd look at the end. She only seemed to notice it at bed time when she normally plays with it. It confused her a little but thankfully that didn't last too long. She seems to love the change too.

What do you think?! I think it was a necessity after the Giant called me a Duggar. That can never be good. 

Love/Hate Relationship

I have a serious love/hate relationship with pacifiers. I struggle with it daily. Mostly, I struggle because Peapod (and my husband) have a love/love relationship with "paci."

I love it because Cheyanne loves it. It makes her happy. It calms her down. It comforts her. We have games with it when I'm changing her diaper- I bounce it on her belly, she grabs at it and laughs hysterically.

I hate it because ITS A PACIFIER. It is this weird plastic thing that was created to take away the ability to calm herbabyself without it and it covers that beautiful smile!

I try not to take pictures with it in, but every now and then, one slips in without me realizing it.

Hate it. So, just so I'm clear- Cousin and Husband- I am speaking to you here- I completely blame you for my love/hate relationship with paci! You introduced it into my life and now I can't leave the dang house without it. Its a constant question as I walk out of the house, "Where's the paci?" UGH!

The only cute pacifiers I have ever seen are these called Wubbanubs.

If I could go back and give one of these to Cheyanne, I would because they are just too cute. The idea of her cuddling it while she sleeps, too cute! Plus it might have saved me some serious lack of sleep hours if she could find her paci on her own in the crib instead of waking up without it and crying for me to come find it and "plug her back up."

I try to not let her have her paci during the day unless we are out and about. Since she's a pretty shy little girl, paci seems to comfort her during stranger anxiety. Or there are fussy times that I have to give it to her which I loving call "plugging her up." She also only gets it if she is getting into something, which recently means paper since that is her newest obsession. Paper anything. If she sees it, she wants it. But, that doesn't go well with her other obsession of everything going in the mouth. The two don't mix. That's when paci is required again. Exception. Exception. Exception..... again ugh.

I gave in on the paci. Husband won that battle. Of course, he won and then he left so I've been here smoldering on this stupid stupid. Doesn't seem fair... But, its okay. I may have lost that one, but I'll win when its time for that paci to go bye-bye. I'm counting down the days... There will be none of this child walking and talking with a paci in her mouth. Sorry baby girl. Soon as the words start coming, the paci is leaving. We're gonna nip that one in the bud. And Hubs, decision's made. I win. :) Hopefully. 

So, readers- What do you think of pacis? Love them? Hate them? How long do you think its okay for a baby to have one?

What to do?

When you desperately need to take a shower because you are in a time crunch to get ready for church and your little one refuses isn't quite ready to take a nap?

You baby proof your bathroom- pick up anything she could get her hands on and tear apart or ingest aka the trash can, lay down as many blankets as you can find to cover all hard surfaces and keep her little piggies off the cold tile, and grab any toy that you think might even remotely entertain her for a few moments including stuffed animals, toy baskets, books, shower toys, pretty much anything that can be shaked, rolled, or banged.

And expect that no matter how much you provide her to play with, all she will want is to see you.

And after all is said and done, since the church's electricity went out this morning and church was moved to the non-airconditioned gymnasium, baby and I stayed home after all and napped. At least we're clean.

I'm fired

Have you ever just wanted to fire yourself? You know, when things just aren't going well, and nothing you are responsible for doing is working out? If you were your own boss, you'd probably just hand out a pink slip? Yeah, that's me right now. I'd pull a Trump real quick on my lazy butt. Or maybe more so, if my husband was my boss, I'd be canned for sure!

I have no excuse for my lack of posts besides pure boredom and a serious lack of anything worth discussing. During a phone conversation a few days ago, my husband informed that I would be having a "mutiny on my hands by an avid reader" if I didn't get on the ball. I have two jobs. One is to take care of our daughter (which I should get ribbons for Husband!). Two is to update the blog so he can see his little girl. Insert big ol' fat pink slip here. Fired.

I'm being completely honest when I say, I have nothing to report. Besides being her continually cute and quite a handful self, Cheyanne  has had a pretty relaxed week. During the day, that is. At night it is a whole new story. Actually, it might remind you of a time six months ago when we were first leaning to sleep. Remember this night or this night? Anyways, so I am completely ashamed to say that after all those nights of teaching the baby to sleep, I slowly let us slip into a different sleep schedule. I don't know how I did it, but at some point, she started regressing back into sleeping in smaller increments. It became so easy for me to run to her rescue in my sleepy haze before she could ever even learn to put herself back to sleep. To make it worse, I started giving in and nursing her back to sleep which made just quadrupled all the "sleeping on our own" problems. That led to more laziness and bunking up together as soon as she'd wake up, nurse, and fall back to sleep right where we were- two to three times a night. Etc. etc long story short, we were back to sleeping in 3 hour increments at almost nine months old. ::sigh::. No human can rightfully function on the lack of sleep that I've been running on for the last 8.5 months. Seriously. Some days, I truly don't know how I drug myself out of bed except for the fact that I had a baby talking in my ear every morning at 6:30am.

So, here we are. the start of the summer, and I'm ready to start sleeping again. This week we've started the process all over again. If I could just get this girl to stay a sleep a little while longer, I promise I'd never complain about sleep EVER again! I've taken out the middle of the night feeding. I'm hoping that quickly slowly she'll catch on and just continue the sleeping. I can handle feeding her the last time before I go to sleep, but it would be so nice to get more than 2-3 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Our first night was rough. She woke up at her normal 3am eatfest, and instead of nursing her back to sleep, I began our new routine of teaching her to putherself back to sleep. An hour and a half of hazy no sleep made me doubt my decision. Awesome. But, I committed to it. So, I'm sticking with it. Three nights in and that hour and a half has shortened down to twenty minutes. WIN! I wonder what night four has in store for me. Sleep?! Let's hope so!

Sorry for the lack of pictures in this post, but these are literally the only two I've taken all week (on my phone too). Hard to believe, I know. I wasn't kidding when I said we've been boring.

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and this is just for a good hardy laugh

A good ol' family Skpye call. I personally like how Cheyanne is learning to wear hats from her daddy. Good times. Good times.

Sunny pests

I love warm weather. There is no secret about that. I love the sunshine, the heat, the beautiful flowers blooming. What I don't love about warm weather is the fact that bugs love it too. I hate all things that are creepy and crawly or buzzy or pretty much any thing that can fly or crawl by my head. (And yet I love camping- go figure). I have always had this attitude towards bugs. Its not a fear attitude, per say. Its more of a "staythehellawayfrommeyouhorriblelittlepestorIwillsmashyouintoathousandlittlepieces" attitude. ::Shiver:: Is that too much? Seriously- I will smash any little critter no matter how close it is. Close your eyes from this post my bug loving friends. Ha, who am I kidding? I don't think I have any bug loving friends, not consciously at least. That would creep me out completely!

OK, so back to the point of this entire post. No it is not just about creepy crawlies.

Yesterday was sunny, so of course we took advantage of it. After my husband has now told me multiple times that I am looking a little like a ghost, I have devoted myself to getting some color right away. In my defense, Skype does NOTHING for skin tone... Anyways, if you remember this post, I decided that I needed to get Chey her own pool. So I did. Best $7.50 I've spent in a long time.

She loves it. Put a few (or all) of her bath toys in there with her and this little girl is in swim time heaven. 

All of her toys...

It was all fun and games, until... those dang creepy crawlies joined us. Actually, before we even got out there, I went and sprayed DEAD 4 yellow jackets that were buzzing around the area. Once I felt sufficiently good that there were no more living yellow jackets within a 2 mile radius, it was time to take baby girl out. Fast forward a little to when the above mentioned dang creepy crawlies joined us. Things were fine. Baby was splish splashing and chasing her toys around. I was chit chatting on the phone supervising, until she belted out a cry that had me hang up and scoop her in my arms faster than I could realize what she was crying about. 

I quickly examined her and then found it.

See the red area on her back? A damn tiny sweat bee got her! Her first bee sting. :( I instantly called my mom and asked her what to do. Not knowing if baby was allergic or what I should even be looking for if there is an allergic reaction. thankfully, after several minutes of watching, the redness went away and she was completely oblivious to the pain she had just endured. But, needless to say, that ended our sunny adventure that became our sunny pest adventure. 

I hate pests!

Lets end on a happy note since that was the majority of our day.

I know a lot of my posts recently have been purely about our swimming adventures, but its what we've been doing. And frankly, I don't see that ending any time soon, not for at least 3 months. :) 

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And, don't forget to go VOTE today for Cheyanne!!

Go HERE and vote. Don't forget! Every day until the 11th. It takes two minutes, just click, type a verification code, and GO. That easy!