One Month

As I write this post, Madeline is a few weeks past her one month mark – she is 7 weeks old today! In some ways her birth seems like years ago, but in other ways the past 7 weeks have flown by. I have enjoyed every moment with my little girl so far, and I am trying to soak up every moment with her this last week of my maternity leave. Babies grow and change so fast! You hear people say this all the time, but it becomes especially true when you have your own little one to watch grow.

So I’ve decided I am going to try and chronicle each month for the first year of her life. Taking monthly baby shots has become all the rage, but it is really fun to see monthly shots lined up next to each other after a year to see a baby’s growth. I found some monthly onesie stickers on Etsy, and I took some photos of Madeline at her one month mark.

In her first month, she went from 8lbs, 21 inches to 10 lbs 2oz and 22.5 inches. Her growth put her at the 90^th percentile for height and 70^th percentile for weight. She also learned to lock on to our faces, is getting pretty good at holding her head up during tummy time, and right around 1 month she finally learned to take a pacifier. And let’s just say that the pacifier really does help pacify Miss M during her fussy moments!

Now we're only a few weeks away from the 2 month mark, but I'll save those updates for the next post!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I’m so glad Valentine’s Day is in mid-February, because it brings some life to this otherwise un-eventful month. I know many folks are bahm-humbug on V-Day, but I’ve always loved it. For me, it’s a chance to make homemade cards and crafts, cookies and treats, and a reason to do something special with those you love.

This year was no different. James and I had our first date night without baby on Friday night, while a friend watched Madeline. We enjoyed a lovely dinner at our favorite French restaurant, Suzettes. And then we spent the weekend holed up warm and cozy in our house, while it lightly snowed, snuggly with our little girl.

I made some Valentine’s Day banners this year just for fun. The heart banner was super easy and inexpensive to make – these are foam hearts I bought on sale at Joanne’s for $5.00, and I just sewed them into a big string. I wasn’t sure how foam would work, but it runs through the sewing machine just fine.

Then I sewed some felt letters onto burlap to make this LOVE banner – also super easy. I cranked both these out in less than 2 hours before some friends came over for coffee. It would have been even quicker, but I was trying to keep Miss M entertained on the side.

Probably my favorite thing about Valentine’s Day is making cards and sending them off to friends and family. This year I scaled back the number I normally make, and just made them for our family members. Projects take a lot longer with an infant in the house!

And for Valentine’s Day itself (today), Madeline and I made some fun little Valentine treat bags. These were also really easy to make, and I think turned out really cute. I bought some treat bags at Micheals, and then used some cardstock and stamps to make the tops and stapled them to the bags. It would probably look better to use double-sided tape and eliminate the staples, but oh well, next time. I think these little treat bags are going to become a regular in my crafty rotation – they would be great for favors at birthday parties, superbowl parties, Christmas parties, you name it. Just change up the paper, stamps, ribbons, etc.

These little bags I made for James and delivered them to him at work. He’s starting a four week detox diet this week, and for week 1 he can only eat fruits, veggies, and nuts. So I made him a trail mix bag and some almond/date bars – this bar I cut into a little heart to make it more festive.

Then I made a bunch of chocolate treat bags for my co-worker friends, and Madeline and I went and delivered Valentine’s treat bags today.

But my favorite part of the day this year – hanging out with my little Valentine!

Hope you have a great Valentine’s Day!

DIY Infant Headbands

Although my girl is not totally bald (she has more hair than I thought she would!), adding a headband to her outfit here and there definitely gives her a feminine touch. But I’m not a huge fan of really big headbands on a tiny baby’s head…large plastic flowers that cover half her head aren’t really my style. I tried to find some sweet and simple little headbands at Target, Baby Gap, Gymboree, etc, but I just wasn’t finding anything so I decided to make my own. And they turned out to be really easy and much less expensive than anything you could buy in a baby shop.

Here’s what you need:

1) 1/4" Soft stretch elastic, braided style

2) Fabric for rosettes, felt for bows

3) Hot Glue gun

4) Sewing machine (or you can hand sew)

I started by taking the elastic and wrapping it around Madeline’s head to see how long it should be. The elastic needs to be snug enough to stay on, but not too tight. Once you’ve measured around your baby’s head, measure the elastic length on a ruler—that way if you make more than one you don’t have to keep measuring your baby’s head. Then add an extra half inch or so to the length of the elastic before you cut it, and mark the extra length. This will be where you sew the overlap – I didn’t use pins or anything to hold it because the elastic is so narrow – I just held on to the overlapping section while I slid it through the sewing machine. And then you have the actual headband – easy peasy! Make sense?

For a rosette headband, make your rosette from a strip of fabric – my rosette was about 14 inches long and 1.5 inches wide. You can find tutorials for these rosettes all over the internet. Then cut out a little felt circle a bit smaller than the rosette, and hot glue gun the rosette onto the headband with the felt circle on the back. For the Felt bow, I just used some felt I had around the house to make this bow using a hot glue gun. Then cut another strip of felt for the back, attach both to a headband.

Done! All I had to purchase was the elastic, which came in at $1.60. Awesome!

Here’s my model:

Madeline’s First Week Home

After 2.5 days in the hospital, James and I were ready to bring little Miss Madeline home to her new world. And I happy to say that I think she rather likes her new home. She has wasted no time in spreading her things all over the house – diapers, burp cloths, blankets, etc. Overall it has been a great first week!

We came home on a Saturday, and my parents were here until Tuesday morning. Then our sis Jessica arrived Tuesday evening, so we’ve had such great help as we transition to life with a newborn. Both my parents & Jessica have been willing to stay up with Madeline for the “first watch” at night, so I’ve been getting a few hours sleep before the feed/burp/change diaper cycle interrupts the night hours. That has been great! And we've had friends bringing us food and meals. Jessica has been off to the city for the weekend, so the last few nights have been our first taking care of baby just the two of us…it’s been going well, but I think we’re both excited for that day when you get a straight 6 or 7 hours of sleep again.

Here we are all ready to come home from the hospital:

We spent a lot of time cuddling with her this week.

She’s had her first baths, and hasn’t minded them too much.

Madeline is learning to make her demands known.

We are working on quality burp sessions in effort to minimize spitting up.

And since we aren’t hiring a professional photographer for infant photos, I’ve been trying to get a few photo sessions in with a new camera we got for Christmas from my parents. I haven’t hit any professional quality photos yet, but I have captured some of the many faces of Madeline.

We have absolutely loved becoming parents to this little girl, and I think it's still settling in to both James and me that she is ours to raise for the next 18+ years. God has blessed us so much with Madeline, and we are prayerful and excited for all that it means to be a mother and father to her. Here's to many more good weeks, kiddo!

Nursery Chronicles 3: The Grand Finale

Here is my final Nursery Chronicles Post:

http://typezofa.tumblr.com/post/15276803248/nursery-chronicles-3-the-grand-finale

Waiting for Baby

I realize that still waiting two days after your due date is not a big deal…a due date is an approximation and the baby could come several days (or even weeks) on either side of your due date. But after waiting 9 months, one becomes quite attached to that day – you want to meet your little child as soon as possible!

My parents flew in on Dec. 27 to stay with us and be here when the baby is born – they wanted to help out with all the new challenges that come in that first week after bringing baby home….laundry, cooking, cleaning, etc. But so far we’ve had 5 days of them helping us sans baby. I think we are all getting pretty anxious for the big arrival, so we’ve all been happy to keep ourselves occupied in other ways.

What have we been up to?

1. Cleaning

Curtis and my mom have done all sorts of deep cleaning around our house that I don’t quite get to all the time (or ever!). Like Curtis dusting all of our kitchen cabinets & cleaning out the vacuum, or my mom wiping down all the slats in our shades and cleaning out the window grooves. Thanks, parents, for help with all this deep cleaning!

1. 2. Finishing up nursery projects

As much as I was hustling the last several months to prepare for this baby, our nursery just didn’t progress as quickly as I would have liked. As in, James and I were finally painting the crib with less than a week before our due date. So once my parents got here, they sprung into action and helped us finish up the nursery. James and Curtis set up the crib, my mom and I went shopping for some fun nursery accessories, and all 4 of us tackled making and haning a pelmet box over the window. The making of the box wasn’t too hard, but the hanging part turned out to be quite the difficult process. But I am very happy to say that our nursery is finally cleaned, clutter free, and fully ready for baby!

Curtis and me making the pelmet box:

Curtis & James on round 3 of figuring out how to hang it:

Mom & me doing some nursery organization:

1. 3. Prepping for teaching

At the end of December, James was offered a job as an adjunct professor in the philosophy department at Wheaton College. This turned out to be a HUGE answer to prayer for us…it will pay pretty well, keep us on Wheaton’s health insurance through July, and will provide James a job that he will love. And in the meanwhile he is still going to stay on in his master’s program part-time. But this did mean that James had about 2.5 weeks to prepare two courses from scratch – he’ll be teaching two sessions of Philosophy 101, and 1 session of Kierkegaard. So, in between all of our preparations for baby, James has been hustling to draft up course syllabi and assignments, read enough about Kierkegaard to be able to teach a 300 level college course on him, get books ordered at the bookstore for students, etc. No matter when our lady decides to show up, James will be teaching his first college courses starting January 9!

Eating & Shopping!

We’ve also managed to eat lots of yummy food, hit up a few fun restaurants (including a cool Greek restaurant for New Year’s Eve), and stake out the Wheaton College game room with Chicago Deep Dish for the Husky game. It was great – we had the whole room to ourselves, with pool tables, air hockey, foosball, shuffleboard, and a monster big screen TV. Would have been a perfect night if the Huskies had actually won! We’ve also explored several shopping centers, and sweet Curtis has tagged along with no complaints. We’ve purchased a Pack-N-Play at Costco, some organizational goods at Ikea, and some fun nursery accessories.

Out for New Year's Eve:

So I guess we certainly haven’t been bored, and it’s been really nice to have family here to help us finish prepping for the baby. But every night I go to bed hoping I wake up with labor pains…we’ll see what today brings!

(Less than) 48 hours in Seattle

At the end of October I had the opportunity to travel to Seattle for a work trip. The way my schedule worked out, I was only able to go from Tuesday to Thursday and I debated if it was worth making the long trek to Seattle for such a short time. But I’m so glad I did! Given that I was only in Seattle for less than 48 hours, I covered a lot of ground. My first night in Seattle, my sweet family drove all the way down to Seattle just for a dinner with me…even my brother and his girlfriend came. We ate at Tutta Bellas, my favorite pizza place in Seattle. It has amazing Italian style brick oven pizza.

On my one full day in Seattle, I was able to reconnect with my dear college friend Laura inbetween work meetings. We met up for lunch in Pike’s Place Market with my little sister and a student that I brought on the trip with me. It was a lovely sunny day, and we strolled the market sampling fruit, cheeses, candied nuts, and smoked salmon. Then we finally settled on a lunch from my favorite cheese shop, Beechers, followed by dessert from a fabulous little French bakery, Le Panier.

Me & Laura.

Me & Krissy Kris.

Beechers Cheese Shop. Oh so good.

Where all the cheesy goodness is made.

Lunch!

Sally & Krista.


Yummy French pastries from Le Panier.

That afternoon I took some time myself to stroll through the shops in Freemont, and to take a quick walk through Gasworks Park. Then Sally and I met up with some Wheaton professors and went out for dinner at Anthony’s Home port on Shilshole Bay…this has been one of my favorite seafood restaurants since I was a kid!

View from Gasworks park.

After a meeting with SPU’s president on Thursday morning, I grabbed my little sister and Sally for a stroll through Queen Anne and some coffee at Ladros before heading back to the airport. It was so refreshing to be back in “my” city, take in views of Mt. Ranier, and smell the sea air. It was also great to see my family and reconnect with some of my old professors. And that was my last flight before our little girl makes her grand debut. So glad for my less than 48 hour trip to Seattle!