Monthly Photo

Josie is 11 months old (and a week, you know how I am with these updates...never on time).

This is also her LAST laying down shot. While I'm relieved to no longer have to wrestle her, I am sad that this stage is ALREADY done.

This month Josie got her first flu, she got a horrible rash that you can still see in these pictures on her arm and leg, and she developed picky taste buds. No more eating whatever is put in front of you. Suddenly I'm being challenged to be creative with her meals so she's not just eating meat, cheese, and bread. When I say meat, I mean red meat. This girl is just like her father and doesn't want anything to do with fish or white meat! I can sometimes get her to eat it if it's covered in red sauce, but even then she usually figures out what I am up to and spits it out. Veggies are the toughest, and I'm not sure she keeps more than one or two bites actually in her mouth. 

We just started working on getting her sleeping through the night and are starting the process of weaning her off of formula. She did try whole milk but didn't like it at all so we'll see how that goes when she doesn't have formula as an option soon.

She's walking all the time and once in a while gets excited enough to attempt to run. It's pretty funny because she's just laughing and flailing her arms yet can't quite control her speed and usually ends up falling over. She's gotten better about having to be into everything she's not supposed to, and can entertain herself pretty well with books and bigger toys. I've finally got some bigger toys for her now that she's bigger, and she can't get enough!

We don't seem to get sick of each other even though we are alone most of the time. She likes to bring me books to read which absolutely warms my heart, because she's still just as independent as before and usually wants to do everything herself. 

We haven't really had to discipline her in any ways yet, since she's still a bit young for that, but the few times I gave her the look or said something in a stern voice, she just laughed at me. We'll have to work on that!

She's saying Mamama all the time and now says Dadada too, although not always in the right context. She knows that saying "hi!" happens when someone just shows up, but over uses it all the time and walks around saying hi hi hi! to anything and everything. It's fun watching her watch  us make noises too. She often will just stop and stare at our lips and then bust out laughing. If we imitate her sounds, sometimes she'll do the mocking bird thing back and forth which is one of our favorite games. Current favorite: Da boo da boo da boo with super hard consonants. She loooves saying this.

Still just the two lower teeth. We're wondering if the other teeth will ever make an appearance! She's wearing all 9-12 month clothes and I pulled out her 12-18 summer clothes too so we wouldn't have to buy more. They are a bit big still, but she can pull it off. She is 22.2 lbs as of last week although I think the biggest way she's grown is up. She's definitely a lot longer than last month! We'll get the official measurements next month at her one year appointment.

Now we have a birthday party to plan and more fun activities to do outside!

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Bit of Truth

Time for a bit of truth.

After the "honeymoon period" of the first couple of weeks, I got the flu (old news, I know) and seemed to feel better after a couple of days. But the truth was that I felt miserable. I was overwhelmed with the state of my house, felt outrun by my moving baby girl, and couldn't face the kitchen for meals and cooking. All I could think was "how am I going to do this every day?" It was such a dreadful feeling, and I felt like a failure.

But then the weekend came, we left town, had some great family time, and came back to settle into yet another routine week. This time? I thrived. Suddenly nothing was too much, I wanted to bake or cook, clean, chase the girly girl around. So what changed?

I didn't give myself time to recover. I forget sometimes that I'm pregnant and need a break sometimes. That just because I'm not over the toilet puking doesn't mean I at 100% and can do anything and everything. So after I allowed myself to rest guilt free over the weekend, I truly was able to enjoy my time and get it together in my life.

It's difficult to not be hard on myself with expectations and desires around the house. I forget that life happens and there are ups and downs.

Truth: I love staying at home and this is exactly where I am supposed to be. It's just hard to remember this when I'm not feeling good... maybe I should write this down and frame it somewhere so I won't be so hard on myself.




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Crying It Out

I told you on Friday that we were going to be attempting to break Josie's bad sleeping habits this weekend. I was especially nervous because we'd somewhat tried this before and was never successful. It seemed that just when we were making progress, she'd get sick or have an ear infection or we'd be staying somewhere with a different atmosphere and schedule. It never stuck.

This time around we had no excuse for that because we were here all weekend and she just got over being sick so we knew she was healthy. Here's how it went.

Friday night: We put her to bed at 7:15 PM right after she got done eating so we knew she wasn't hungry or thirsty. We did the usual routine minus the bottle, gave her the pacifier (not battling that battle yet), quietly left the room, and turned on the monitor. Then we listened to her scream for two hours. I kid you not, she did not fall asleep for at least two hours. Don't get me wrong, we're not heartless. We'd go in ever 15-20 minutes to give her the pacifier or a sip of water, try to calm her down a little, get her laying down again, but usually it just made it worse. It was a long night, and we hadn't even gone to bed yet.

She woke up at around 2:00 AM wanting a bottle. We changed her diaper and gave her the pacifier. She screamed for an hour and a half. Of course I can't sleep through that, so I read a book in the living room while checking in every 20 minutes again (only made it worse of course). I was doubting this method, but since we were already in this far, I knew we couldn't just quit now, and I'm so glad we didn't.

Saturday night: Same routine, this time she screamed for an hour. That's half of the previous night! While it still felt like forever, we were so glad that there was progress. Instead of sitting inside during that hour, we brought the monitor outside with us and weeded the flower garden. At least we could be productive while we felt miserable. That night, she got up again, we changed her diaper, and she screamed for only 20 minutes which was definitely a big improvement. 

The one thing I was guilty about was that at bedtime, both nights she really only fell asleep after I rubbed her back until she was practically asleep. The real reason I was guilty about it was because I didn't want to just replace one habit with another.

Sunday: Thankfully, she did not need the back rub on Sunday to fall asleep. Instead, we put her down at 7:45 PM (nice and full after eating out), and she fell asleep right away for about 20 minutes. Then she woke up and just chattered and talked for an hour and a half. What in the world?? She wasn't crying but I don't think she fell asleep until 9:30 PM. She did scream a bit when she dropped her pacifier on the floor, but after a couple of minutes, I went in to give it to her and she rolled over and fell asleep right away. What a relief! No screaming for hours! And the best part? She woke up and let out ONE cry in the middle of the night before going back to sleep. That means we all slept through the night. After only three nights.

She did happen to wake up really early this morning, although I'm not too concerned about it. She'll take a longer nap today which is always nice for this blogger.

I'm so glad we stuck with it and hope that this improvement is a permanent change. I'm sure we'll have some setbacks, but generally she still knows we love her and wakes up grinning and giggling every morning.

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Weekend Update

We got a lot of outdoors stuff done. The garden is protected from the evil rabbits, the weeds are finally pulled from our front yard flower bed, and hubby spent some time fertilizing the lawn after I mowed it. Our yard has been an uphill battle since we moved in because of the state the previous owners left it in (or didn't, I guess since it had just fallen apart). The weeds are out of control with roots that are so deep we just can't get them out. Discouraging, to say the least! Jo and I can't even really play in the fenced in backyard because of the awful canadian thistles and dandelions.

And did I mention that Josie had a contact dermatitis rash on her arm? We have no idea what it is from, but it is being treated now. It also spread to her leg, and she looks pretty beat up. Poor girl is going on her second week with it which doesn't seem fair. Its so hard to know when to bring her in for something. Sometimes rashes go away and it's expensive to go to the doctor for something that they wouldn't even treat or we could treat on our own. Live and learn I guess.

We also went out to eat with Grandma and Grandpa Deyle on Saturday and again on Sunday night (just the three of us). Hubby is out of town for most of the week and I knew I didn't want to cook a huge meal and then have tons of leftovers around. Plus, we ran errands in the afternoon and just ran out of time to think about supper! It was nice to have a family outing even though I could hardly eat the food I got because I was so full off of the salad and bread that we get beforehand... good job Texas Roadhouse, everyone loves some good leftovers.


Church was wonderful. We're getting to know more people and seeing friendly and familiar faces is so encouraging. We just started studying the book of Colossians which is a great book, awesome for the next 14 weeks.


Josie took a three and a half hour nap on Sunday after church and another hour nap later in the afternoon. Amazing. 


I love spending time with my little family every once in a while. It's refreshing and we all seem so happy. It was a blessed weekend which is just what we needed as we gear up for busy busy weekends coming up.

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