Twice Baked Diapers & Formula

You know how you just wait for something and know it's going to happen, but just don't quite know when???? That sort of describes last night.

I don't know why dogs love all things gross, but they do. So when we got home from church last night and Brent took the stroller back to the nursery and yelled for me "telling me it was bad, really bad" I didn't quite know what to expect.

This is what 6 days worth of dirty diapers looks like, shredded by a 5-yr old Boston Terrier.

Yeah, absolutely gross.


He actually didn't get all of them out of the trash can, about half. For reference, we weighed the bag of dirty diapers last week and it weighed 18 pounds (just diapers, not the trash can). I guess after we left he knocked the can (like a 13 gallon kitchen trash can) over and had a bit of fun. And of course he knew what he had done, he didn't come back inside after we had figured it out, and he didn't even whine or cry during the hour of time out he had afterwards. Considering the vast quantity of things he's consumed over time it doesn't seem to have made him sick.

Someone asked me if this was him acting jealous. I sort of think it's him being a dog and just generally liking gross things. Ugh. It took a broom, mop, and vacuum to clean it all up. And just to make life even better, Lilli had one massive spit up right after. All over me, her fresh pair of PJs and our antique living room chair. After all that we pretty much wanted to go to sleep - all of us except for Miss Lilli. So let's just say she slept in her bouncy seat all night in our room, Pippin was left in solitary in the living room and Brent and I got a semi-decent nights sleep.

Nap for One

Over the last week Lilli has really started spending a lot more time awake, and she spends most of the day catnapping (which is really hard to believe since people pretty much only see her asleep!!) Brent took this pic Sunday afternoon while one of us was sleeping! (She's nestled in her Boppy, I promise I'm not crushing her.) She did eventually fall asleep and we all had a nice two hour nap.We measured her last night and she seems to be about 20 inches now, but it's a little hard to measure a wiggly baby with a measuring tape. Her weight is right around 9lbs, 2 ounces. She was 7 lbs 6.5 ounces and 19 inches at birth. Her newborn clothes are starting to get tight and a little short (and very laughable!), and I think it won't be long before we move out of the newborn diapers. She was very well behaved for dinner last night (which was a surprise because yesterday was her fussiest day ever!) and even wild child Pippin behaved for a change! I guess they both knew we were close to putting them in the pack and play and sticking a "Free to a Good Home" sign on them in the front yard!

Today's plans include consignment shopping with a friend. I don't know that I really need anything, but it never hurts to look!


-Rachel

Where's Lilli?

We just downloaded some pics left over from Valentines, and this one just cracks me up. It's sort of the "E.T." look where you couldn't even find where the kids had hidden him.

Today is Lilli's 1-Month Birthday!! We'll have to take some pics later we can compare back to Jan 24th. She's just over 9 pounds now (last time Brent weighed her was Sunday) and I know she's gotten longer because it's not as easy for me to tote her around. She's awake a LOT more than a month ago and always knows when I'm about to take a nap or spend some time relaxing (or watching my 1 soap!). We're celebrating tonight by having some friends from church bring us dinner! =) Can't complain about that!! Hopefully she'll behave since they're having a baby girl in just a few weeks and they probably don't need to see any fussy baby meltdowns right now!

Enjoy the pics!
Lilli is the same size as her Webkins that her Auntie Stephanie brought her on Valentines!!

Daddy Duty

So, after 4 weeks of total sleep deprivation Brent declared Friday night my night off. (Don't get me wrong - he's been up for MANY of the middle of the night feedings, but I have had to be up for every single one of them...). And let's just say I was EXCITED! I literally haven't slept through the night non-stop since May of last year thanks to my tiny pregnant bladder, so the idea of just sleeping uninterrupted sounded like heaven.

We usually try to get Lilli to bed around 10 on weeknights, so we're sticking with that on the weekends too (and since we're pretty sleepy it's not hard to do!) Brent took the 10 oclock feeding and I'm pretty sure I was asleep by 10:30. Right now she's sleeping in her pack and play in the living room, right outside our door. I heard some commotion going on out there as I went to sleep, but I knew Brent had it under control and all I wanted to do was SLEEP.

I didn't hear a thing all night. I was pretty sure I'd hear her up for her 3 am feeding, she hates having her diaper changed and pretty much wakes up the whole neighborhood each night. But nope, I didn't hear a thing. Pippin did feel the need to wake me up at 2:45 but I told him to go back to bed and leave me alone, so he came back around 6:45 to wake me up.....At that point I got up to let him out and saw the slumber party in the dining room. Lilli was sound asleep in her bouncy chair and Brent was curled up on the dining room couch. It looks like they had a fun night! What's the fun of hanging out with daddy all night if you don't get to sleep in the dining room in your bouncy chair on the dining room table???? All that matters is I got to sleep all night long!!

To continue in giving me a break he got her dressed for the day. I usually lay out her clothes (with the occasional "Daddy's choice" day thrown in here and there reluctantly), but Brent took a few creative liberties with her selected attire.....

For some reason he found that rolling up her jeans and adding her cowboy booties really completed the ensemble.... (I got the cowboy booties for $2 on clearance at Babies R Us last fall and Brent has already gotten about $2,000 worth of enjoyment out of them! I never quite know when she's going to end up with them on!)
From there we went to Lifeway to buy a few things on sale (and pretty much struck out....). Here's a few pics from her first trip to Lifeway:

Where's Lilli???
First time in the Kids area:Later that day we headed out to Babies R Us to take advantage of some coupons and promotions (we saved 25% on diapers!!! and got a $15 gift card for our purchase!) and to get Lilli some tights and little black Mary Janes for her first trip to church. And when you see the pics you will def agree those little tiny shoes she will probably only wear 3 or 4 times were worth every bit of $10! (Although Brent may still not agree...I should've ripped that tag off first!) I'll try to post those pics tomorrow, trying to get the 4 of us to all look good in the same pic is 5x harder than when it was just the three of us so the picture will probably require some Photoshop magic! (Pippin does not get to go church - even though he desperately needs some Jesus - he can't be left out of a family photo!)

Have a great Monday!

-Rachel

Cat Status: Achieved

Probably the #1 question we still get is the age old "How does Pippin like Lilli?" question. I think I get asked that more than the popular "How are you sleeping? ". At first he pretty much ignored her, and her crying made him a bit nervous (as in there's been a LOT of anal glands expressed around our house....between these two kids this has been one gassy house). Then he started being curious, and every night he would sleep on the end of the couch closest to her portable crib (we call his insane snoring her "cheap white noise machine"). Then he started to look forward to seeing her - swiping the occasional lick on a flaying hand or foot, and wanted to comfort her when she cried with these little licks. And anytime I'm feeding her he's as close as he can get, usually sitting right behind my back. Now, I think she's achieved Cat status, which is only one step down from my Momma status, and pretty even to Daddy status.

At our old house in Smyrna our neighbors two doors down had a cat. They also had a dog, so this cat was really used to dogs. Every time we'd walk Peta would walk up to Pippin and just rub her little body next to Pippin and casually stroll off. And he LOVED it. He'd get all shaky and didn't have a clue what to do with himself. It began his infatuation with this strange animal, and he tends to think every cat should love dogs this much. Anytime he sees a cat he gets all quivery and expects this type of response - and let me just say that our urban alleycats around here do NOT respond to dogs this way. Half the cats around here scare me and we'll cross the street or get off the sidewalk for a few of them!

Anyway, last night after dinner we settled in to watch a little TV. Brent was hanging out with Lilli, and of course Pippin was following me around as I cleaned up the kitchen. When I plopped down on the couch with the gang he was only a minute or two behind, and instead of snuggling up totally with me....he found a new friend. They ended up napping together for most of the show we were watching, like two little peas in a pod. He didn't mind the occasional bang on the head from her quirky baby reflexes. I'm starting to worry that one day Lilli status is going to surpass Momma status!

(On a side note, I never, ever leave them alone and unattended together, before you call child services!)

Here are some pics, I think we took like 300 of them cuddling together. There's always a camera ready to go on our coffee table!

-Rachel

I am constantly telling Brent how advanced Lilli is for her age and he just laughs at me. (I'll add that on Bringing Home Baby today there was a 7 week old who had "just discovered her hands" - my girl has been chomping on her mitts since Day 1!) I think this video proves once and for all she's way ahead of other 3.5 week olds:

She's already playing with her baby gym & grabbing at things! I think it's very fitting she got a work out in today since I had walked on my treadmill earlier this morning while she was napping. I think we may start working on ACT prep next week. Enjoy!

Big Night Out!

Normally for us Valentines involves a big night out at a pricey restaurant, but this year with the economy being such and a 3-wk old who probably wouldn't be all that welcomed at an upscale place, we decided to go back to the basics and go out for our favorite - Indian food!

This was Lilli's first trip to a restaurant, and the first time we've even been out at night since she arrived. Our favorite Indian place is usually pretty deserted at night, so it was a perfect place to go to avoid germs (since we're really not supposed to get out much right now with her) and also to avoid tables of staring people if she had a meltdown. And we decided to go on Friday night to hopefully avoid even more people!
We waited until after her 7 pm feeding for optimal sleepiness, and got her jazzed up in her Valentines day dress. Her dress capped off a week of dressing in Valentines themed clothing & PJs. I had some tights for her but they were actually bigger than her entire body so we went with cute socks instead. And of course the bow had to make a reappearance!
Thankfully Cuisine of India was pretty empty, one big table of Vandy students and one table with another couple.

This is me pretending to feed her some Garlic Naan (bread) which is pretty much as big as she is! She did great on our date night, and slept through the whole thing.
And here are some of Brent's normal pics - doing his best Lilli impressions!
Have a great week!

-Rachel

Little Monkey

Since Brent has mostly been posting unflattering, crying type pics of Lilli lately here are some cute ones! These pics were taken about a week ago on her 2-week birthday. This is the gorgeous quilt my sister-in-law Suzy made for Lilli. She did all the quilting herself and my 7 year old nephew Cody colored the animals. Enjoy!!

Rachel

P.S. We'll post pics of our cute family Valentines outing soon, the short version is she slept through her first outing to our fave Indian restaurant! I highly enjoy this "sleeping through most outings" phase! It's hard to imagine but this was the first time we've eaten out since she was born 3 weeks ago!

The back side of the quilt is a really cute monkey print that fits us perfectly! My nearly 4-year old niece Kasey got to pick that fabric out!

Pippin REALLY wanted to be part of the photo shoot - he wants to be part of EVERY photo shoot. I think he's learned that posing for pics = treats, so when he sees the camera he wants to be involved. He was a little hard to keep out of the frame, and in a lot of the pics you can just see his paws in the background. In this one he made a valiant effort to be part of the show.

I'm beginning to see an unintentional theme...

so i need to post something to show how Lilli does NOT cry all of the time. We're really thankful because while she does cry some we know it could be MUCH much worse.

Enjoy this video of her not crying!

FIRST TRIP TO KROGER!!!!

Today we had a great little trip to Kroger. We went early and beat the crowds and just took our time in picking up a few items. I think Lilli remembers past experiences at Kroger (in utero) so she was a little reluctant.

Sometimes We Laugh Together...

sometimes we don't.

This is why I only change Lilli's diaper once a week (whether she needs it or not...)

Yeah, watching this may be a bit painful. I am proud of the camera angle at 1:20 into the video though. I can't wait to show her this when she's grown.

A New Shopping Experience...

So I guess we will no longer go to Costco just for the film developing, free samples and toilet paper...

Staying Warm

Don't worry about Pippin - he's not about to lose reign over my lap. Maybe I shouldn't lose my pregnancy weight so I have room for everyone?? Yesterday Lilli was in the swing while I was doing some things in the nursery & she made a coo-ing noise as Pippin walked by. He loved it and stopped and started wagging his tail, so maybe the two of them will be BFFs!

-Rachel

Game Time: Where's Lilli?

Impromptu Photoshoot

Lilli and I spent a little time in the floor yesterday enjoying the warmth of the sun and the natural light shining through the window. Of course the light was heavily diffused as not to be overpowering enough to blow out the highlights and a couple of reflector plates were placed around her to even out the shadows. Lilli needs to realize this is how all "play time" will be when your dad is a photographer. She's beginning to get use to the shutter click of the camera. That makes me happy.

Here are a couple pictures from the shoot:

Baby and Baby Momma

Best Buds

*** If you're using the generic "Friend of Lilli" sign in/password that we emailed out to our friends and family and you leave a comment, please leave your name somewhere in the comment so we know who you are! We sent that name/password out to about 50 people so they wouldn't have to create new accounts! ******

Probably one of the Top 5 Questions people have had is "What does Pippin think of Lilli?" Well, right now he prefers to ignore her as much as possible. He'll breeze past her while she's in her bouncy seat, and once he licked a foot sticking out from under a blanket, but at this point he's really not interested. If she really gets to screaming he leaves the room, but for the most part he seems to accept her as a new part of the family. I'm sure once she starts walking around with Cheerios and Cheetos her likability will dramatically increase.

-Rachel