Sunday, March 25, 2012

Crazy 8's

Olivia is now 8 months old, and one crazy 8 month old at that! She is so busy and into everything! So naturally it has taken me 3 days to try and finish this post. I love everything about her, she is getting so big way too fast! I can't believe in just 4 months we will be celebrating her first birthday! At 8 months she:
  • wears 12 to 18 month clothes!
  • in size 4 diapers
  • eating stage 3 baby foods
  • loves her puffs, yogurt and bananas
  • down to 2 bottles a day-that she holds by herself
  • sleeps in her crib every night! (this is more of an accomplishment for mom)
  • not really into crawling
  • pulls her self up-usually when nobody is watching of course
  • is the biggest chatterbox!
  • Says Dada, Mama, Baba(bottle), Gama(grandma), hi, uh-oh, and bye-bye
  • loves playing outside
  • loves swinging at the park
  • loves reading books









Friday, March 9, 2012

motherhood=love

My entire life for as long as I can remember I've wanted to be a mom. As little one, I had about 15 baby dolls at one time and my entire day consisted of playing with/ taking care of them. They all had different feeding schedules, nap times, went to different schools, got special hair cuts by yours truly, and bed times. As I got a little older I discovered how fun and neat having two little sisters was. We always had so much fun together playing all sorts of games. I loved being the "mother figure" to them any chance I got. If we played house- I was the mom. If we played school-I was the teacher. Then as we got a little older, we were introduced to Barbies. But I didn't just play with my barbies, I lived to play barbies. I used to go into our kitchen and make all sorts of "casseroles" for my barbies to eat for dinner with whatever I could reach in the pantry. I also would find my mom's camera and use it to take "professional" family pictures of my barbies. I remember looking through some old photos at my parent's house not so long ago and finding like 50+ pictures of just my barbies randomly set up in these poses.


Now that I am a mommy, I realize my tactics are pretty much the same. My every waking moment revolves around Olivia's needs. From feeding, playtime, reading, baths, getting dressed(sometimes a few times a day), diaper changes, and bedtime. And like my barbies, I also take a million pictures of her everyday in all sorts of funny poses sometimes with silly signs that she only wants to eat. I lay in bed at night and think about what new things I can do with her the next day and the day after that. I live for this little girl. For that smile and giggle I wake up to every morning. For the shrieks every time I leave the room. I am her favorite person in the world and nothing compares to that feeling. I could not imagine my life any other way. Matt and I were just playing with Liv the other night and he turned to me and goes "can you imagine how empty our lives would be if we didn't have her?" I couldn't agree more! I am so grateful that I get to stay home and raise my little girl in our home the way we want her to grow up. It really tugs at my heart strings to see a lot of my close friends who don't have the option to stay home with their children and how much they struggle having to leave them every day for 8+ hours a day. Then I see people who have the privilege to stay at home with their kids and do nothing. Their kids are behind in development, always sick, they don't cook for their families, they don't even get out of the house with their kids. It makes me really sad. I am beyond obsessed with my child, with my family. I don't leave my child with a sitter every chance I get, I don't get my hair done at the salon every month, I don't have a fancy i phone or a droid, I don't wear true religion jeans, I don't go out of town for the weekend for mini vacations and leave my child with someone, I'm a full time mom. I don't need any kind of vacation from that because it is all I want to be doing. I'm afraid if I blink too long I will miss something. I love being a mom more then I can ever explain. I've waited my whole life to actually be a mommy and I never knew love could feel this way <3