Dr. H & Sleep

The last thing I want to do is bore y'all with another story, but I forgot to tell y'all about our chiropractic visit a couple of weeks ago. (And by a couple I mean 7.)

According to Adam he did not sleep during our first year of marriage. AT ALL. I guess something about all the sharing a bed with the love of his life caused him great distress. He does more complaining about his sleep deprivation than I do about going to work everyday. (I'll give you a moment to let the magnitude of that statement sink in. )

Ok, moving on.

Like any good husband he finds ways to blame his wife for this. Since he also has problems sleeping when he is out of town I refuse to believe that me and my 12 pillows are to blame. I think he totally exaggerates this problem, but what do I know? I'll tell you one thing I know. He sure is sleeping good when I leave every morning. I'll tell you what else I know. This is exactly why God didn't intend for people to live together before marriage. If I had known that he was such a complainer about his sleep habits and if he had known I require upwards of 3 pillows I highly suspect we would both be single today. From time to time since that first year of marriage he has slept like a baby (which, really, whoever made up that phrase clearly DID NOT have a baby). Two nights in particular allowed him to sleep with the ease only known to him in his bachelor days. You know, the days before me and my pillows came along an ruined it all. The first being the night I slapped him with the "guess what we're pregnant news." He declares that he was so shocked by the news his body just shut down. Yeah, whatever. All I know is that I starred at the ceiling all night while he snored softly in my ear as though the weight of parenthood wasn't pressing down on him. The second night was when he was introduced to Dr. Harrison. Dr. Harrison is a chiropractor who comes to Clay County a couple of times a week and also has a practice in Oxford. He adjusted Adam a few months ago and I'll just say that Adam likes him as much as any straight man can like another man. Dr. Harrison fixed all of his problems including the elusive concept commonly known as sleep. You can image his delight when he discovered that chiropractic visits are covered on our insurance and that life changing adjustment cost only $7.40. Needless to say his first visit would not be his last. After getting some advice from a couple of veteran parents we decided to load the little one up and take her to see Dr. Harrison for her congestion a few weeks ago. At some point the congestion turned into a nasty cough. So he adjusted her and told us to bring her back again the next week for a follow up. We took her back the next week and within a couple of days she was back to her properly breathing self and sleeping like an angel. Looks like Dr. H's magic has the same effect on Reese as it does her Daddy.

The only thing about taking your baby to a chiropractor is that you will hear about it from everybody who knows where you've been. It was like we took her to a witch doctor. Most people just looked shocked when I said we had her adjusted, but others told us bluntly that we were crazy and needed to take her to a "real doctor." Yes, please lets go to a "real doctor" and drug our baby up unnecessarily. (For the record- we had already been to the "real doctor" 2 times paying a grand total of $60 in co-pays and they couldn't do anything for us.)

I am not going to go into all of this today, but we are having some sleeping arrangement issues at our house right now and we need prayer. Reese has demanded that she sleep in the bed with us or no one sleeps at all. So we have to make a final decision whether we are going to purchase a king size bed and let her win this battle or if we are going to show her who the boss is and make her sleep in her own bed ALL night EVERY night. During the daylight hours of the day it is so easy for me to have the best intentions and say that no matter how much she cries she will not be put in our bed, but it has proved to be difficult to live up to that at 1 a.m. She doesn't interfer with our sleep when she is in our bed, but we have no desire to share a bed with a 5 year old in a few years either. I am the polar opposite of an indecisive person so I don't know why I can't make a decision and stick with it when it comes to this! Maybe it's because I am delirious when crunch time comes in the wee hours of the morning. All I know is that it's now or never with the sleeping in her bed thing. Once she is old enough to call out for me or walk to our room it is going to be too late. So, please, any advice is welcome! Do your kids sleep in their bed or with you? Did you go through this? What did you do about it?

(For the record- I slept with my parents till I was an embarassing age and so did Adam. I remember it being such a security to be in the bed with them. I will not call names but a particular friend of mine thinks that's why I hate staying by myself at night now;) And come to think of it she could be right.)

Here comes Peter Cottontail

(Because I am a complete genius I uploaded these pictures in the wrong order so we are going to go from Sunday backwards. Please bear with me. I am still trying to get off of the chocolate high I have been on all weekend.)

Being a momma adds a layer of stress to life that I never knew existed. Big events make me nervous now that we have a babe in tow. I find myself praying (begging) God to let her be in a good mood when we have a big day ahead of us. It's not that she is bad, but as her Big Daddy will tell you, she can go from 0 to 60 (60 being a crying fit!) in 2 seconds flat. Sunday morning we knew that we would be going to sunrise services and I was certain that by doing so we were setting ourselves up for a major meltdown at some point in the day. But as A-master pointed out if Jesus died for our sins and then rose bright and early on Sunday morning then surely we could honor him by getting up bright and early too. I was semi wrong about the meltdown thing. She took a 2 hour nap after we got home and she was good to go until about 3:00 when she had a run in with another nap. After she cried and spoke her mind about her hatred of sleep she played in her hair and fell fast asleep.

But before all the napping took place she was playing the part of our sweet little Easter bunny!

She even did a little Easter egg hunting with her Auntie Heather.

It saddens my heart that some of the babies around our house are getting too big for their Easter britches and don't care for Easter egg hunting anymore. I almost cried a tear when I realized that only 3 of them would be pushing and shoving for sought after "I found the most eggs" award. Little Red (pictured below) took home the trophy this year. He beat out cousin Jolie by 2 eggs.

Daddy/Uncle Adam posing with the girls. It was nice to have Little Paris Hilton joining us for our Easter festivities;) (Deep within my soul I know and accept that our little family will forever be comprised of nothing but girls. Look at A-master. Such a ladies man.)

In true grandparent form PeePaw spoiled her while MeeMaw and I did all the Easter cooking. (Actually MeeMaw did the cooking while I did important things like wipe off the counters and butter the rolls. It was a daunting task but somebody had to do it.)

Reese loves our 4 legged friends. She thinks they are so funny!

Since she was asleep when we left for sunrise services she didn't see what the Easter bunny had brought until we got home.

And here is where I will document that I got up at 4:30 AM on my baby's first Easter and we were still late for church! We went to Big Daddy and D.D.'s church for sunrise followed by breakfast. You know we baptist strongly believe in eating a good meal to celebrate any occasion.

Reese with her cuz's Jaycie and Brooklyn

Adam's granny and Aunt Sheila

I can not be held responsible for what I look like in this picture. It was so early I didn't even care, but looking back I probably should have.

Big Daddy playing the chef.

Hagen, Carli, and Micki

Since I am shaking things up a bit today by going backwards we will now talk about Saturday's happenings. Often Reese is more interested in eating her toes than she is her baby food.

We bought our first sippy cup on Saturday, but all she wanted to do was chew on it. There was much debate as to which one to purchase. After confirming that the Dr. Brown cups don't have as many parts to clean as the bottles do we went with it. The packaging says it is spill proof which is another example of the lies marketing people will tell to get you to buy their products.

Reese helped her daddy cut the grass. (Actually she only rode on the lawn mower when the blade was cut off because, as previously mentioned, I am highly paranoid and I could just envision her falling off and getting a digit/limb cut off. I have a sick and twisted mind and having a baby only made matters worse.)

And here is where baby meets Easter egg for the first time. She has recently started crying when we take toys away from her and Adam finds it hilarious.

(It also must be documented that the Easter bunny let A-master down in the worst kind of way. When he got up Sunday morning with sleepy, squinty eyes the first thing he said with disappointment in his voice was, "I guess the Easter bunny forgot to bring me a king sized bed" I think that was sort of a tall order for the good bunny, but maybe Santa Claus will come through for him.)

7 Months!

7 months old already???

At 7 months Reese:
Weight: 14lbs 3 ounces at the last doctors appointment
Height: 26 inches
Drinks 4-5 ounces every 3-4 hours. She loves baby food (and popsicles as you will see). Her favorites are carrots, bananas, apple banana pear combination, banana mixed berry combination, and sweet potatoes. She hates green peas. She also isn't in love with juice of any type. (Dr. C said that we could start giving her the baby foods mixed with meats. Will it stunt her growth if we forgo doing that??? Because there is NO way I am going to make her eat such! It looks gross and I imagine that it smells even worse! Does everybody give that to their babies? Somebody please give me hope that this isn't a requirement of babyhood.)

Wears size 2 diapers and mostly 3-6 months clothes. I cleaned out her closet on Saturday and put all the clothes she has out grown in storage boxes. It goes without saying that the whole process made me sad. Wasn't it just yesterday that I was hanging up all those clothes and wondering what she was going to look like? (I'll tell you what she looks like. Adam S. Robertson. Did y'all like how I added his middle initial for emphasis?haha)
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Just this weekend she has realized there is something in her hair and tries to pull it out. Sometimes she gets her headbands down over her eyes and it makes her so mad. For the past month (at least) I have been meaning to dedicate a whole post to her playing in her hair when she goes to sleep, but it hasn't happened. Maybe one day.

Went on her first camping/fishing trip last weekend. (I hope to tell about that later this week, but I can't make any promises.)

This weekend I realized that her hair will hold small bows. (That is about the 3rd time I have said "this weekend"- that's because it was race weekend therefore a 4 day weekend for me and it was just lovely!)

(I was hesitant to put up these pictures in her Easter outfits because if the dress I ordered her doesn't come in you will probably be seeing one of these recycled as an Easter dress.)

When I looked back through my pictures from the weekend (see, there I go talking about it again) I saw this picture and it became clearer than ever before that I am raising a small version of A-master. She looks just. like. him.

She does not have any teeth, but this weekend she was in extreme drool/gnawing mode. Plus she was a major grouch on Sunday so from what I am told I should be expecting a tooth soon....That is exciting, I guess, but I am not rushing it. I LOVE the big gummy grins we get;)

She is very interesting in everything!! She wanted the camera so bad...

She thinks everything her daddy does is hilarious. Sometimes when he is watching TV she just looks at him an laughs. (P.S. Momma thinks the face daddy is making is pretty funny too.)

Before you look and this next picture I want you all to know that I was totally and completely against this....

But because it was a sugar free popsicle her daddy thought she could rub her gums on it. I am pretty sure if I looked at all the books they would say this is a huge no-no, but she sure did like it!

As soon as she falls asleep she turns into a little oven and sweats profusely.

When do you officially declare that your baby is sitting up? She has rolled over a couple of times, but she has really never been interested in rolling over, (Dr. C. said "why roll over and look at the bed sheets? Babies have everything they need when on their backs." His accent makes it so much funnier when he says it.) but now that she can sit up that's all she wants to do. If she falls back or reaches for a toy that is too far away and ends up on her stomach it makes her so mad.( I like to put the boppy pillow behind her because it gives me a great deal of comfort.)

Your going to have to take my word for this because I don't have a picture to back up what I am going to say. Do you see that little pointed part of the outside edge of her ear?? (this would have been a great picture to use the text part of my editing program and point to it, but I don't have that kind of time today.) It might not be so clear in this picture, but it's there. Her daddy has the exact same thing in the exact same place. See, I told you I was raising a small version of him.

We have officially gotten our money out of this stroller (and put 100 miles on the tires already). It puts her to sleep every time!

We did some shopping this weekend and I just love how she props her little foot up on the tray. (I gave her a little teething ring to chew while we were in Target and I never saw it again. I assume she threw it overboard.)

Sunday I sent her to the nursery and to my surprise when I went to get her she was NAPPING! HALLELUJAH!!! But they said she fought it to the bitter end.

We let her sit in the buggy, but she didn't seems as impressed as I thought she would be.

Driving still puts her to sleep but it takes a lot longer these days. This is her sleepy face.

I am pretty sure the only thing she gets from me is her love of checking out the iphone while daddy chauffeurs us around.

WARNING: The following 25 second video might cause you to cry (or laugh at her which is what her daddy did.)(Reese E Cup- mommy didn't laugh at you.) Monday afternoon I laid her down after she had gotten really really sleepy. By the time I got to her door she was SCREAMING! I originally planned to let her cry for 5 minutes and then go in and soothe her. At the 5 minute mark she was falling asleep and then waking up to scream some more so I left her thinking she was about to give up the fight. Wrong. After 13 minutes I gave in and picked her up. 13 minutes! Better known as an eternity. As soon as I picked her up she fell asleep but was still trying to catch her breath in her sleep. Yes, we have a little sleep hating monster on our hands.