She is growing so fast!

Well right after my last post it seems Carsyn has matured mentally by leaps and bounds! She started rolling over- who knew a mother could get so excited about watching her baby roll?! This is good news and bad news. The bad news is that she now rolls in her crib which startles her and causes even more problems to the already existing sleep problems! Also it seems that she likes to roll or scoot when noone is around. I guess she thinks if someone is there than they will help her but if she is by herself than she has to figure it out herself.



Carsyn also has learned that the refrigerator is where her bottles come from and starts bouncing and laughing when you get it. (She gets it honest- I suppose- her parents love to eat!) She watches everything in her surroundings like a hawk. Faces of people are VERY interesting to her as you will see in a pic below. She is fascinated by mouths and noses!



She has two little teeth coming in at the bottom already- I figure they will be in by 6months. She has been eating her fruits and veggies now for a few weeks and LOVES them! She just bouncys and laughs when you feed her! She is like a little bird with her mouth wide open! And she watches you when you eat to see how it is done! I will be happy when she can eat real food!



And she just started laughing out loud this weekend. It is so funny and sounds like a babydoll! I am going to try to capture it on video!



This weekend was quite the event. Traveling with a 4 and 1/2 month old by myself was quite interesting. Friday we got an early start to go see my grandmother. It was a sad sight seeing your grandmother not look the same as she used to. On the way from there to Mccomb Carsyn decided to have her dirty diaper just as we pulled out of the building. So off to the side of the road to change it. When we arrived Carsyn apparently had stranger anxiety and was overwhelmed by all of the attention (added to lack of naps) so she would only come to me. She went to bed pretty early that evening. Saturday we went to downtown Mccomb for the Iron Horse festival. She did pretty good for it to be so hot and during nap time. Come Sunday when it was time to leave she had finally gotten acclimated to the new family members but it was time to leave! :( We stopped by for a visit with my mom in Hattiesburg and then off to Mobile we headed to arrive in time for bath and bed. Carsyn did fairly well in the car but she can only make it about an hour and then she gets tired of being by herself. My child does not like to be by herself! Something else she gets honest from both parents! Anywho, as we approached Lucedale (35 min out of Mobile) she started screaming and did so until we arrived in the driveway. When I pulled her out of the car she started laughing hysterically! She was so happy to be out of the car! It amazes me everyday how much she knows already! She definitely is becoming her own person.

This weekend is a very non-eventful one, thank goodness! I think we are going to have some lessons in sleep this weekend because I really am at my wits end and I now Know she is smart enough and capable of sleeping for longer stretches. It will be difficult but it must be done!

Enjoy the weekend pictures! I will try to get some video this weekend to upload!

We are still right here!

I know- where have I been lately?! It is not that we have been super busy just nothing much to tell. Carsyn has still not gotten this sleeping thing down yet- her naps only last around 30 minutes to an hour (if we are lucky) at a time and she still wakes about every 3 hrs at night. I have started putting her down at 6PM as soon as I get home and she seems to like going to bed earlier. She usually sleeps until 10PM and then wakes at 1:30, 4:30 and gets up at 7ish. I will be so happy the day she only wakes once in the night. I truly do not think she is still hungry all 3 wake ups I think she just wants to make sure we are still around. I have not let her cry at night anymore because to be quite honest- it is easier to feed her and put her back out in 15 min than listen to her cry for an hour. She goes down to sleep quite easily but it is the staying asleep that we have a problem with. Carsyn has not done this with me yet, but both Danny and Courtney said that they have carried her into her room just to get something and she starts wimpering when she sees the crib~!!!! And she has figured out that if she is not getting attention if she lets out a loud yelp that I will turn and look and there she sits just smiling at me.

Kind of like this picture.....

Monday this week I finally got to go have a girls night out. This was the first time other than one time at Bunko that I have gotten to go do something since she was born!!!! Mommy guilt is the worst but I have told myself I have got to learn to let go and start having fun again. We had a paint party where we drank wine and an art instructor helped us paint a Venetian Water scene. It was hard! Mine looks okay but not great enough to hang in my house!

When I got home Danny had gotten Carsyn to bed and I went in the room to check on her. I smelled dirty diaper- I sniffed her booty and YEP she had a dirty diaper in her sleep! This was a first for us! I was like "Do I wake her up to change it or wait!?" So I waited 15 minutes and she woke up on her own and we got that sucker cleaned! Then right back to sleep to wake up every few hours later!

This weekend we are heading to Mississippi again to visit my grandmother who is still not well and attend the Iron Horse festival in Mccomb. Danny can not accompany us as he has to work so it should be an interesting trip. We will stop by my moms on the way back down to Mobile.

Carsyn 4 months

FOUR MONTHS!!!!

Well we have made it out of the newborn stage and into the infant stage! Today Carsyn is 4 months. To celebrate, the poor thing got to go to the doctor and get some shots! Daddy accompanied us for the first time and got to see how it is done! He did not like seeing his little angel get the shots! He was holding her while the nurse did it thinking it would take a few minutes and she was done in under 30 seconds. I said "You can pick her up now!" I think it might have hurt him more than Carsyn. :)

Surprisingly, even though her pictures show her to be quite the "chubbster" she weighed 17lbs- that is only 1 lb more than what I did at her age, so it is not as bad ad I thought. Her dad was 20lbs at 4 months so I was terrified she would be that much. Her length, however, was only 25 1/2 inches which I thought she would be much longer. She is in the 90-95th percentile~



We changed doctors this round as I was not fond of the first one I had met. Dr. Sands, though a bit goofy, was so much better than the first doctor. His nurses were better also. I think we have a keeper. He actually asked me questions and asked if I had any and was very informative. I never knew how important it was to find a pediatrician you like- I thought they were all the same. Very Untrue!



Dr. Sands also told me that I should try letting Carysn cry longer at night to see if she can go back to sleep without eating. He said to wait until she is really crying and not just wimpering. It is so much easier to ignore the cries during the day when you can occupy yourself with something else but at night 15 minutes seems like an eternity! I have had to hold Danny back a few times from going to retrieve her. Since he has returned this week he has tried to step into the routine and follow the new instructions, but he can't tolerate her crying as much as I can. The night time is really her only time when she cries hard and long the other sleep times she goes soundly down by herself. I dont' know if I will be able to follow-through with this tonight- I feel bad for the poor girl- she has screamed enough today!

I will try to get some 4 month pictures taken this weekend! :)

Trials and Jubilations

I know many friends of mine who are expecting moms, check my blog to see the trials and I will say Jubilations rather than Tribulations of the first year of Carsyn's life. I hope that my words will not scare you or provide a negative vision of motherhood, but rather show you the "real life" scenarios that we endure. It is definitely the most challenging job you will ever do but also the most rewarding.

As I have discussed in my previous emails, Carsyn's sleep has been a roller coaster of sorts. Much of it to be blamed on her parents for their unknowing accomplice to her bad habits. I read the Baby Whisper book and it helped but it would have helped more had I had it in the beginning. After talking with some friends I realized that the only way for Carsyn to learn how to soothe herself was going to be to let her cry for a bit. It was difficult- don't get me wrong! The first night she cried for an hour and 20 min! Now I didn't just abandon my child to fend for herself but I assessed each situation differently whether I thought she needed to be rescued. After only a few short days she now has set herself up on somewhat of a schedule. I hope I am not jinxing us! Now, she still doesn't sleep through the night yet, but at least she is getting the required sleep that she needs to ensure she is not over-tired and cranky which she has been lately.

Currently this is our schedule:

Bedtime routine begins at 7 and concludes with her soundly asleep by 8.
She wakes at 7:30ish to begin her morning.
Nap at 9:30ish to 10:30ish
Nap at 12:30-1:30ish
Nap at 3:30-5:00ish
and repeat at 7PM.

I had gotten so worried and distraught about her lack of sleep that I became obessive about her routine...and still am a bit! Luckily my sitter, Courtney has been wonderful and followed my requests to perfection! I really did luck out with finding her!

Go read this website to see the importance of sound sleep for your baby.
http://www.webmd.com/parenting/guide/how-much-sleep-do-children-need

I guess this is just the first instance of where I as the parent had to make Carsyn fuss and cry for her best interest. I guess it is the same as not letting your child play in the street even though they may want to!

:)

Being a MOM- an email that I received this week!

Being a MOM... We are sitting at lunch one day when my daughter casually mentions that she and her husband are thinking of 'starting a family.' 'We're taking a survey,' she says half-joking. 'Do you think I should have a baby?' 'It will change your life,' I say, carefully keeping my tone neutral. 'I know,' she says, 'no more sleeping in on weekends, no more spontaneous vacations.' But that is not what I mean t at all. I look at my daughter, trying to decide what to tell her. I want her to know what she will never learn in childbirth classes. I want to tell her that the physical wounds of child bearing will heal, but becoming a mother w ill leave her with an emotional wound so raw that she will forever be vulnerable. I consider warning her that she will never again read a newspaper without asking, 'What if that had been MY child?' That every plane crash, every house fire will haunt her. That when she sees pictures of starving children, she will wonder if anything could be worse than watching your child die. I look at her carefully manicured nails and stylish suit and think that no matter how sophisticated she is, becoming a mother will reduce her to the primitive level of a bear protecting her cub. That an urgent call of 'Mom!' will cause her to drop a soufflé or her best crystal without a moments hesitat ion. I feel that I should warn her that no matter how many years she has invested in her career, she will be professionally derailed by motherhood. She might arrange for childcare, but one day she will be going into an important business meeting and she will think of her baby's sweet smell. She will have to use every ounce of discipline to keep from running home, just to make sure her baby is all right. I want my daughter to know that every day decisions will no longer be routine. That a five year old boy's desire to go to the men's room rather than the women's at McDonald's will become a major dilemma. That right there, in the midst of clattering trays and screaming children, issues of independence and gender identity will be weighed against the prospect that a child molester may be lurking in that restroom. However decisive she may be at the office, she will second-guess herself constantly as a mother. Looking at my attractive daughter, I want to assure her that eventually she will shed the pounds of pregnancy, but she will never feel the same about herself. That her life, now so important, will be of less value to her once she has a chil d. That she would give herself up in a moment to save her offspring, but will also begin to hope for more years, not to accomplish her own dreams, but to watch her child accomplish theirs. I want her to know that a cesarean scar or shiny stretch marks will become badges of honor. My daughter's relationship with her husband will change, but not in the way she thinks. I wish she could understand how much more you can love a man who is careful to powder the baby or who never hesitates to play with his child. I think she should know that she will fall in love with him again for reasons she would now find very unromanti c. I wish my daughter could sense the bond she will feel with women throughout history who have tried to stop war, prejudice and drunk driving. I want to describe to my daughter the exhilaration of seeing your child learn to ride a bike. I want to capture for her the belly laugh of a baby who is touching the soft fur of a dog or cat for the first time. I want her to taste the joy that is so real it actually hurts. My daughter's quizzical look makes me realize that tears have formed in my eyes. 'You'll never regret it,' I finally say. Then I reached across the table, squeezed my daughter's hand and offered a silent prayer for her, and for me, and for all the mere mortal women who stumble their way into this most wonderful of callings. Please share this with a Mom that you know or all of your girlfriends, or daughters, who may someday be Moms.
May you always have in your arms the one who is in your heart
Get the MapQuest Toolbar, Maps, Traffic, Directions & More!

SuperMom's!

Not All Superhero's Wear Capes!

The most difficult job in the world is a Mommy! You never really appreciate your mother as much as you should until you have your own child! When I was pregnant I wondered how will I ever know what to do- I have never been around a child, but then miraculously when Carsyn arrived it was like I had always had a baby. No I dont have all of the answers of how much to feed her, what to feed her, when to let her cry, but you still have these instincts that take over and alert you to her needs. This is a blessing and a curse because you can are the only one that can usually figure out what she needs but then there comes a time when you get burn't out! Carsyn will be 4 months next week and the lack of sleep and constant need for attention is wearing on me! Don't get me wrong, my husband is wonderful and helps out when he can, but he works a lot and the mommy is who ultimately does most of the grunt work while Daddy gets to play. Add to that the fact that I work and I have to also get dressed and get myself to work in the morning it has been a quite tiresome few months.

Drastic times call for dratic measures and I think it has come the time where Miss Carsyn will have to learn to put her self to sleep and learn some self-soothing techniques. We have had some decent nights and we have had some REALLY bad nights, but I think I have come to my breaking point. I NEED TO SLEEP and I KNOW she is capable of this. You worry as a mother that you will starve your baby at night but I think she will be fine. Her daddy (like all daddy' s I am sure) is convinced that she is a little more advanced than 4 months which she does seem to show more alertness and advancements than some others her age. I was going to give her until 6 months to ensure she was not hungry at night but I can't take another 2 months of no sleep. And her naps have gotten bad too not just her nights. The swing which has been my saving grace, now can't even get her to sleep. So while it is going to be difficult for all of us I think in the end she will appreciate the better longer sleep as well. I just hope I can persevere and follow-through with the methods! God bless me the strength!

This weekend Danny will leave for the longest stretch since she has been born as he has to go to Market. My mom will arrive this evening to come help me and will stay until Monday. But then I am mostly on my own until Wed. unless my friend Ashley can come stay. I think this weekend/week will be a good time to implement the crying strategies as I will be by myself anyway so maybe I will be too exhausted to run in there at the first sound of her little cries.

Pass any tips our way if you have had success!