some days.

this morning i got up when liga knocked on the door.  this is not the first time that has happened.  i turned the alarm off at some hour after pressing snooze twice (i tell myself in my head that i don't want the alarm to wake the baby, but let's be honest i am dying for just a few more minutes of sleep).  i stumbled into the bathroom and noticed the creepy vein that's bulging out of my eye is still there.  it's not super noticeable, other than to me, but i see it.  justin doesn't want to look at it because he's grossed out by "things in eyes", but it's there and it's creepy.  i showered and then spilt breast milk on the counter trying to prepare emme's bottles for the day.  i nursed her when she woke up (25 minutes after us) and was rewarded with spit up on my clean shirt, which i half-heartedly mopped up with a soggy burp cloth and then promptly left on.  after managing to finish clothing myself in something resembling work-appropriate, i poured a mug of coffee and made it out the door.  5 blocks away from the house, i remembered i had left my wallet in the stroller yesterday, so i turned around to get it, in the process spilling coffee all over the center console and all the pens/receipts/orange peels that make their home there.
when i made it to work, i realized (after parking at the opposite end of the parking lot) i'd forgotten my id badge, so i had to walk to new jersey to get the security guard to let me in.  he made a joke about it that i completely didn't catch - what happened to my quick wit?  since getting to work, i forgot 2 different meetings and forgot to pump for an hour more than i was supposed to, leaving me with only 2 sessions for that today.  tomorrow's calendar looks like a hot mess of blue activities to complete, so i am scrambling to get ahead on a day when i am only falling more and more behind.  i promise i will get it together again one day.

marching along.

i just love all the puns you can make during the month of march.  what i don't love is how this month has flown by in such a blur.  i swear i was just organizing events for the end of february at work, and now all of those things happened over a month ago....

anyway, i seriously need to catch up on posts from sxsw and other weekend festivities like the chip party and what not, but all i have are a few photos from my phone on this computer, so these will have to do for right now.  

we brought emme to a couple of events during sxsw (south by southwest for those not in austin).  the first was friday evening at a pizza joint called homeslice.  thao and the get down stay down were playing a free show, so we loaded up a baby and went to meet a slew of friends and their kiddos.  it was fun, but very distracting.  austin was a madhouse with people - busier than i've ever seen it for this festival.  we also weren't ready for it to be so hot and sunny, so i was a little paranoid about the bebe getting too much sun and all of that.  add that to the 30 minute wait for the bathroom for a diaper change, and i don't even recall hearing a single song by thao.  no matter, it was fun seeing everyone and catching up a little bit.  it was also fun to watch the big kids playing and running around and imagining that emmeline will be doing that same thing next year at this time.  so crazy to think about that....

the saturday of sxsw we were a little bit better prepared.  we went with the stroller instead of baby-wearing since it was hot again.  we took e to the ozomatli kids show, which we promptly left in favor of a late lunch at zax (the last place i ate before delivering emme, actually).  w&d joined us and we joked about them having their baby that night since they were with us for our last lunch before emme, but lil p hasn't shown up yet!  anyway....i am pretty sure this monkey enjoyed her sxsw time, as she took a 3 hour nap through all of it.  

this baby keeps getting busier and busier.  she is in to EVERYTHING right now.  she likes to observe everything for a few minutes and then try to taste it.  she will put anything she can find into her mouth - we need to start babyproofing asap.  the other day, liga sent me a picture of emme passed out on the floor.  she was in the middle of playing and it was just too much for her, so she crashed right there.  hilarious.  

we've been trying to have her spend time with us at the dinner table as much as possible.  i really want family dinners to be an ingrained part of our lives.  my parents were so great about cooking at home and us all eating together, and i think that's so important to family engagement.  she really loves her high chair, despite the video of her demonstrating her vocal chords.  she is all about being part of the action.  i've also decided on our plan for food (i know, i'm crazy), but i'll save that for another post.

this past weekend, we went to the third annual national potato chip day party at our friends chris and april's house.  jb will be making a video about it at some point, but i did snap a pic of this little miss post diaper change when we got there.  she was so excited to learn about chips of the world.

emme eats with the family!

we picked up a new high chair for the little miss this past weekend from ikea and she loves it! she seems bamboozled by food entering our mouths and not returning. i should make the disclaimer that the video was shot when she was sleepy and hungry - we are not actually torturing our child/laughing at her expense. ok, so we may have been laughing at her expense a bit.

weekend updates.

all of our pictures are on the home computer, but i tend to blog from my laptop, so i am just going to post this and then add pics later.  otherwise it will never happen....

we have been crazy busy for several weeks in a row.  first, justin was in new orleans.  then, emme and i were in pensacola.  then, it was wendy's baby shower and kim's bachelorette shower.  then, last weekend, we were in lafayette for rachel and chip's wedding.  this coming weekend is sxsw (south by southwest), a music festival that descends upon austin and overwhelms the city for a week.  i have historically not been a huge fan (battling crowds to see an hour-long set is not my favorite thing, nor is trying to figure out which shows the hipsters have deemed we must attend), but i think there are some decent outdoor shows this evening and tomorrow during the day that are kid-friendly, so i will probably load up the little monkey and see what we can see.  anyway...here is a recap of recent events.

wendy's shower was lots of fun.  i hosted with kirsty, heather, sarah, and jeanne (wendy's sis).  we had it at kirsty's house and there were about 30 or 35 lovely ladies in attendance.  it was the weekend before mardi gras and my mom had given me a boat load of pretty mardi gras beads so i forced everyone to wear beads and play the "b" game - if you say baby, someone can take your necklace and whoever has the most necklaces at the end wins a prize.  wendy's bff ashley, who was in from houston, ended up winning.  jeanne got the most adorable petit fours and had them made to match the birds from the shower invitation.  lil p (we think parker, but we're not 100% sure) will also be the best dressed little girl in history, as they got tons of adorable outfits.  wendy is not the biggest fan of being in the spotlight, so i relished forcing her to open presents in front of everyone - ha!  she is the cutest pregnant person ever, and we can NOT wait to meet lil p (soon!).

kim's shower was sunday night and it was really fun.  we all met up at malaga tapas bar and drank wine (well, i drank wine...i think kim drank another cocktail) and ate yummy tapas.  we all gave kim some goodies for the honeymoon, and kristina had everyone write a bit of marriage advice for kim.  i found it pretty helpful to see what other people advise for happy marriages, too - you can never have too many tips. kim and mike's wedding is in jamaica one month from today.  it will be emme's first international experience and we're really looking forward to some relaxation and fun with close friends.  unfortunately, i did not bring a camera to document, so you'll just have to trust me that we had a great time.

during the week last week, our friends erin and derek came over for dinner and shared the news that they are expecting a wee one in early october!  they are going to be such great parents.  we are so excited for them - there is a baby explosion these days and i love it.  i never thought i would be such a baby person (not that i didn't like babies, i just was never all ga-ga like some people), but after having one, i think it's the greatest thing ever so i'm psyched that so many of our friends are joining the parenthood party.

last weekend, we packed up dogs and baby and headed to lafayette for rachel and chip's wedding.  their big day was on sunday at a place called the blue moon saloon.  it was super fun - nice ceremony on the front porch of this old house and then a rocking cajun dance party courtesy of the lost bayou ramblers.  i loved seeing so many old friends and cutting a little bit of a rug (i'm not a very good dancer, but i love to watch everyone else and occasionally join in).  i didn't get to spend a ton of time with justin, as he was filming the whole operation, but he will be working on their video and i'm sure it will be great.  the only downside of the weekend was that my mom was in houston for a play on saturday day and night, and she had a terrible allergy attack when she got back.  but, we made the most of it, as usual.  since the wedding was on sunday, we headed home on monday and even managed to squeeze in some judice inn cheeseburgers monday morning at 10 right before hitting the road.

and that gets us to this week.  emme is a full-on tummy sleeper now.  i was nervous about it for several nights, but she falls asleep so easily and quickly this way, so i am just letting it go.  she's rolling both ways but hasn't yet figured out that she can keep rolling to get wherever she wants to go.  she prefers to scoot around and is quite mobile that way.  she is making new sounds and squeaks as she finds more and more of her voice these days.  she still doesn't laugh super easily, but every so often something random will get a great giggle out of her and we pretty much lose it.  she loves to be up in the air superman-style.  i keep hoping that we're turning a corner with the spit up, but after having to change her diaper table cover this morning when she launched half of her breakfast out onto it, i am thinking we are not quite there.  i took her for a run in the stroller yesterday afternoon and two things are apparent: 1) i am horrendously out of shape and 2) this girl loves the outdoors and the (slightly) faster clip of a jog.

four month pictures.

i have been horrible about posting pictures lately - i'm so sorry!  i think i have just had so much going on, it's all i could do to jot down a little bit about our activities here and there.  i have a boat load more to upload - some from wendy's baby shower last weekend, as well as a summary of last weekend (how is it already thursday?)...but that will have to happen later.

i am starting to realize that parenting is even more controversial than discussing politics.  i feel like there are major decisions to make every day and people are very very opinionated about each one.  i'm just trying not to be crazily over-analytical about everything (yeah, right) and do what i think works best for emme and for us.  for example, last night, the little miss learned how to roll over from her back to her tummy.  she has been super duper close for a couple weeks now and has had a few rough nights of sleep in a row - she would roll her body completely over but couldn't figure out how to get her arm out from under her, so she was awake (and so were we....) for HOURS trying to make it happen.  anyway, as she was crying going down last night and trying to flip herself over, justin just moved her arm out from under her so she was lying on her tummy and she passed out in about 40 seconds.  maybe less.  amazing.  i was so torn about whether or not to roll her back to her back before we went to bed.  we decided to just let her sleep and see how it went.  she loved it - and now she can do it herself, completely, so i guess she is making her own decision where sleep position is concerned.  i am sure everyone has an opinion about whether to enforce back to sleep for the full first year or to let your kiddo do what she wants when she's physically capable....i admit i am still torn, but i think we're just going to ride this tummy thing out for a little while and see how she does.  don't even get me started on the brain muddle i'm having about starting solids and iron absorption.  yeesh.

anyway, here are some pics of miss emmeline kay, age 4 months and 2 days.  we shot a few on our bed yesterday when we got home from work, and then just had the camera around for our walk with the dogs and bath time.  i promise justin was here for all of this stuff - we joke that i'm going to tell emme that her daddy was in prison for her childhood because he's always behind the camera.  one of these days i promise i'll do some of the shooting....

four months old.

i know i say this every month (possibly even daily), but oh my gosh time is FLYING by.  you are definitely not the teeny tiny baby you once were - every single day you are becoming more interested in the world around you, and you're gaining more and more independence.  it's a sad and happy thing, of course. i am absolutely enthralled with everything you do, but at the same time i miss the newborn stage already.  i'm trying to just spend as much time soaking up every inch of your baby sweetness as i can.

even though i think you're growing up too fast (kk likes to remind me that i'm almost 30 if i think the first four months of your life have been quick - ha!), this current stage is the most fun yet.  you are laughing more, but you don't give your chuckles out for free and we never know what's going to tickle your fancy.  yesterday in yoga i got a few and every time i think i could just about pass out from the sweetness.  you are incredibly grabby and you love to reach for things and give them a taste.  fingers are your favorites, although you're content with some of your toys, too.  you scoot around on the floor or in your bed by digging your heels into the ground and launching yourself.  you squeak and coo and gurgle all the time and you love to have us paying attention to you.  you're still a very good sleeper and enjoy your naps - sleeping in whatever position in whatever location you happen to be in.  you have found your toes and feet and i could watch you grab them and roll back and forth holding on to them all day long.  you still have an exceptionally sweet disposition and hardly cry at all, except the past week as you've been fighting your bed time.  we have begun a little sleep training which is (like most things) harder on me than it is on you.  i don't like letting you cry anything out for more than a minute or two, but i'm told a little bit of crying it out (when all your needs are met) is for the best, ultimately.  bath time is your favorite and you're becoming more aware of books when i read to you.  you reach for the pictures and try to help me turn pages (or maybe you're trying to grab them so you can eat them....).  you love songs and rhyming words and the dogs and being outdoors.  and we love everything about you.

i brought you to the pediatrician for your four month check up this morning.  your stats:

weight: 13 lbs 9 oz
height: 24.5 inches
head: 42 cm

you're in about the 50th percentile for height and weight and the 75th for head circumference.  the doctor said it's normal and totally fine to be down a little in weight/height but that it's really good to stay consistent for head size, so i was happy to see you maintaining there.  she also said you're grabbing very well and tracking perfectly with your eyes and all in all you look awesome.  she suggested that we eliminate your pacifier cold turkey since we're already working on the sleep training.  i'm going to have to think about that - i am ready to be done with the beanie, but it is really nice to have a go-to object to help you calm down if you need help.  she also said we should probably stop swaddling you since you kick out of it and it's unnecessary.  finally, she suggested we start you on rice cereal.  i'm having an internal debate because i've read so many conflicting opinions about it.  i really really didn't want to start you on solids until 6 months, but she says you need iron and you can get it from a multi-vitamin or from the rice cereal.  she also thinks the rice cereal may be a little heavier on your tummy, which may help the spitting up situation (have i mentioned you still spit up like a champ?  you do!).  on the other hand, i don't think rice cereal has much of any nutritional value and starting solids too early has been shown to increase the risk of food allergies.  then there's the whole debate about iron absorption and whether offering inorganic iron hinders a baby's future ability to absorb iron.  it's all just so much to consider, really.  i will probably read some more about it and i guess come to some sort of conclusion soon.

you were a champion today with your shots - just a little wail and then you calmed right down.  you're sleeping more than usual today, but i think that's to be expected and i haven't even had to give you any acetomenaphin yet!

it's hard to think that last year at this time we hadn't even had our first ultrasound yet and now here you are enriching our lives daily.  i plan to post some four month pictures as soon as we take them....

snow's bbq adventure

piper wants to focus on easy meals in the crockpot, but i think we should be having bbq for breakfast, lunch, and dinner... especially after my recent trip to snow's in Lexington. piper was in florida, so i loaded up the camera, met joel and david at 7:30am, and rolled out to Lexington. snow's was rated the best bbq in texas a couple years back by texas monthly. #1 in texas is a rather bold claim, so our expectations were incredibly high. like true texans, we found ourselves with over 6lbs of smoked meat among the 3 of us for breakfast. saying their bbq was amazing = biggest understatement of all time ever. i want to go back. right now. here's a short video of the adventure -

outdoors and lasagna in the crockpot.

it has been fabulously beautiful outside these days.  every year around this time, justin and i reflect that this is why we live in austin.  in all honesty, we've got it really good where weather is concerned.  

we've been taking advantage of the slightly longer days and mild temperatures by taking strolls in the evening when jb and i get home from work.  sometimes one of us wears the little miss (she's recently been allowed to be forward-facing in her bjorn and she LOVES that) and we take the pups into the field by our house and let them run wild.  sometimes we plop the bunny in her stroller and we walk and talk and look at houses that have more than one bathroom....

anyway....we are having a great time these days, even though it feels like we are still learning how to adjust to everything.  justin summed it up well in an email this morning: we're still moving at the same pace as pre-emme and are having a hard time with it.  we will get there - i just have to manage my expectations of myself (particularly the orderliness of our house).  

one thing we're hoping to do better with is prepping easier meals in the crockpot during the week.  jb and i both love to cook (and eat) and in our earlier lives we would spend pretty much an entire evening on meal preparation.  this seems luxurious even without a bebe in the house, but overly decadent now.  however, we both think we can figure out a way to make food that is tasty that doesn't monopolize our night (isn't that the holy grail of meal time?).  

to that end, i made a spinach lasagna in the crockpot yesterday.  this was EASY and pretty fast.  it was also quite delicious and i am already planning modifications for next time - i think it would be really easy to do eggplant and ground turkey or zucchini and other veggies, etc etc.  i modified this from a recipe in real simple:  

- 2 packages frozen spinach, thawed and drained

- 1 small container part-skim ricotta cheese

- 1/2-1 cup of parmesan

- 3 cups of marinara sauce

- 6-7 whole wheat lasagna noodles

- 1 1/2 cups of grated part-skim mozzarella

- italian seasoning, salt, pepper to taste

* mix spinach, ricotta, and half the parm together in a bowl.  add about 1/2 cup of water to the marinara sauce in another bowl.  spread 3/4 cup of marinara on the bottom of your crockpot.  put down a layer of noodles then another 3/4 cup of marinara, 1/2 the amount of spinach mix, 1/2 cup of mozz.  put down another layer of noodles and repeat.  finish with final noodles topped with marinara, mozz, and half of the remaining parm.  cover and cook on low about 4 hours.  serve with a sprinkle of more parm and a side salad.  

it's not the prettiest lasagna, but it's yummy and fast.  

back on the saddle.

or is it in the saddle?  i never remember.  in either case, i am working out again, as of monday.  i meant to start last week (woops), but i kept forgetting my gym clothes, so this is the week.  gabby is my little personal trainer/accountability buddy.  she does all the hard work like planning our workouts and pestering me to meet her at the gym and encouraging me not to eat 17 loaves of bread.  i mostly just whine about how much i hate working out because i am ridiculously out of shape.  i also randomly burst into fits of laughter because of how silly we look doing all this plyometric stuff.  in any case, i am so sore right now i can barely move.  when i pick up emme (ouch), it feels like she's gained about 12 pounds.  it's discouraging to feel how hard all of this stuff is, especially knowing that i was in decent shape at one point (never great shape, but i can say decent...).  oh well...i will get there again, right?

the hardest part of exercising right now is my easy lapse into negative self-talk.  i know i need to stop that (for a number of reasons), but it's so much easier (and occasionally hilarious) to be self deprecating for some reason.  i am clearly not a person that was back in her pre-pregnancy jeans 2 weeks after giving birth.  it would be easy to say those people are freaks of nature, but i know they're not.  i'm friends with/related to tons and tons and tons of them.  of course, you can always find people to compare yourself to if you're looking for them.  i've struggled with my weight pretty much since i became aware of my weight (sometime in mid-high school i think?).  i've been on a 10-50 pound yo yo since freshman year of college.  i certainly can't really remember ever feeling comfortable and secure in my own body.  when i ran the marathon is the closest i came, but i would have still told you i wasn't satisfied, even then (almost 30 pounds smaller than i am now).

but now i am realizing that i need to curb the judgment and self analysis for more than just myself.  i don't want emme to see her mom being so critical of her own body, knowing that it will teach her better than anything i can tell her to internalize that criticism of herself.  i want her to respect her body and love it for its remarkable form and its ability to perform so many amazing functions (the irony of its greatest function, housing a baby, being that which has brought out its greatest criticisms from me has not escaped me).  being a girl is really hard for so many reasons.  i need to be an example of the kind of woman i want my daughter to be - one who knows how to work hard and take care of herself.

weddings and family time.

this past weekend, emme and i ventured out on our first solo, out of town adventure.  we flew to pensacola, florida to attend my cousin robert's wedding.  it was so much fun.  like i told justin, e was a million times better than even my wildest dreams could have imagined.  she did not cry once on any plane ride or in the airport.  in fact, she hardly cried at all the entire weekend.  she's never been a big complainer in general, but she was just amazing for our travels.

our first flight was at 6 am on friday.  i woke up at 3:30, nursed emme, then let she and her daddy sleep a little while longer while i finished getting everything ready.  some friends let us borrow their snap-n-go stroller and that thing was a LIFESAVER.  i think it was actually easier than traveling by myself because i wasn't lugging all my stuff around with me - just the diaper bag in the stroller basket, and the little miss in her seat.  anyway...we connected in memphis and were magically on the same flight as my brother (uncle joey), seated next to each other all the way to pensacola.  emmeline slept through both flights and didn't even flinch at the change in pressure.  she was awake between flights and super curious about everything that was going on...

friday we spent time with kk and aunt elizabeth shopping for something for me to wear to the wedding.  i am struggling with my weight and my shape a lot and i didn't have anything that fit to wear, so everyone graciously attended to my shopping needs and we found a few cute things that were acceptable for the occasion.  aunt cynthia, the mother of the groom, joined us for lunch and we had a great time.

friday night was the rehearsal dinner.  i had planned to stay at the hotel with emme because it wasn't really an occasion for a baby, but everyone encouraged us to come for just a little while, so we did.  e slept the whole time there as well and i was so glad to get to visit and mingle with the guests for a bit.

saturday we drove to the beach because we planned to dip emme's toes in the gulf of mexico....unfortunately, it was really cold and SO windy on the beach, so that didn't happen.  we took her out there, so she's seen the ocean, but the tactile experience will have to wait for jamaica.  we did a little bit more shopping and looking around, and then went back to the hotel for a nap before the wedding.  all the excitement wore her out, and she took a really great nap curled up next to me in our bed.

robert and alex's wedding was at 3, so we all got dressed and headed to the church.  it was a lovely ceremony and everyone looked great.  emmeline fell asleep (can you sense a theme?) right before the ceremony started, which was awesome.  in the middle of the vows, i glanced down at her and her eyes had popped wide open...i was really nervous that she was going to choose that moment to get upset, but she just grabbed one of my fingers and closed her eyes to finish the nap.  whew!  my mom had bought her a dress and sweater for the wedding and i think she looked very grown up and lady-like....

saturday night after the reception, we hung out in the hotel room with jj and kk (and uncle joey for a little while).  emme was still in a great mood and she got lots of time to stretch out and scoot around on the bed and get loved on by everyone.  she is super talky these days and has a lot to say to her animals and anyone that's making eye contact.

sunday morning we got all of our gear together, visited with the extended family in the lobby for a little while, had a quick breakfast at the airport, and hopped on our flight to atlanta.  it was a whirlwind trip but SO much fun, and so great for emme to get to meet several cousins and other family members.  she was tuckered out after all the excitement and slept through both flights back to austin.  we were both glad to see daddy and the farm animals when we got back.  we have more adventures just around the corner, and i'm even more excited about them knowing what a good little monkey we have on our hands.

p.s. i didn't bring a real camera - just the iphone - so sorry there are so few pictures!  next time daddy will be there to ensure proper documentation....