Eden - Eight Months

It was so hard to get a picture this month!  Most of them came out looking like this:

Baby Girl just did not have time to squeeze a picture-taking session into her busy schedule of exploring rooms, chewing on stuff and chasing the cat.  Finally, I started singing, and that managed to catch her attention long enough for me to get one!

A few months ago, I was holding her and singing to her, and she stuck out her little hand and put it over my mouth.  I'm not sure if it was an act of love or if even at six months old she knows that Momma does not have a good singing voice, and she wanted to shut me up.

Eden is still army crawling.  She has yet to crawl crawl.  But boy is she quick.  (As you can tell from the first picture.)  She is pulling up now though which is super cute and also scares me to death!  She was hanging out in the freezer the other day (it entertains her and occupies her while I cook), and she pulled something off of one of the shelves.  She decided to hold it with both hands, so she let go of the shelf and of course crashed to the ground.  I realize she doesn't have far to fall, but I always have little mini-heart attacks just the same.

Now that Eden is a big bad eight month old, I've started thinking of all the little things that I never want to forget.  I know parents always remember the big milestones... I think the majority of moms out there recall the first time their baby took a step or their first word.  But I want to remember the little things too.  I don't want to ever forget the way she looks stretttttching and blinking as she wakes up in the mornings or the way she freezes and scrunches up her face when she sees one of the dogs coming in anticipation of the inevitable lick or cold nose on her face - grinning, of course, because she loves her brothers.  I want to always be able to remember the sound of the little shriek she would let out if you put her foot onto the cold counter top when she was just a couple of months old.  (Okay, I admit we used to torture that poor girl and put her foot on something cold just to hear that adorable sound.)  One day, when I'm really old, I want to be able to lay in bed and picture her tiny self laying in her crib, sucking her thumb.  I want to be able to recall the way her face lights up and she gets all excited when I walk into her sight.  I don't want to forget the way her tiny body feels when I pick her up out of her crib in the middle of the night when she's been crying... I can feel her just relax against me, relieved that I'm finally there.  Or the way she clings to me when I turn on the Baby Bullet to make her food, and it's so loud.  She'll cry unless I'm holding her when it happens.  I want to remember the look she has on her face every morning and evening when she takes her first bite of whatever it is I'm feeding her at the time.  She's always so cautious, moving the food around in her mouth slowly, making sure she likes it, and if she decides she does, eagerly opening her mouth again and again like a little baby bird.  But I think my absolute favorite is the sounds she makes when she's content and sleeping - those little sighs are heavenly.

Oh, and the lemons.  I can't forget the lemons.  Right now, lemons cure everything.  She's upset?  Just let her sit on the counter and play with the lemons in the basket!  They make her so happy!  If only it could always be this way.  When she grows up, and some kid is mean to her at school.  "Here Eden, sit on the counter and play with the lemons."  Some stupid jerk broke her heart?  "Here's the lemon basket, Eden."  If only...

I will continue to take 4,000 pictures a day and write it all down.  One day I will be able to look through my pictures and read my words and relive it all.

One more picture... I snapped this today as Dustin was leaving to go dove hunting, and I love the way she's resting her head on him.

My loves.

It's A New Day... And I'm Feeling Good

I'm up bright and early this morning searching the internet for Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas/1st Birthday Party ideas.  I realize I'm a little early, but this time of the year flies by, and well, I hafta make sure Eden's first Holiday Season is spectacular.  As much as I don't want to rush time, I am just so excited about the next few months!

We've had a rough week.  After I was on here bragging about how Baby Girl takes two hour naps now in the afternoons, she decided to just stop with that sleep nonsense altogether.  Naps... nighttime... all of it.  For a little over a week, nobody in the house slept... ever.  But the crazy thing is, Eden was happy.  She wasn't waking up fussy or upset.  She was waking up ready to go, ready to play.  (Well she would cry if left in her crib.)  So she would be in bed with us, crawling all over us at three in the morning, laughing and pulling our hair.  Poor Dustin... there are so many times that I would think, okay, I really need to get up and take her out of here so that Dustin can get some sleep.  But I would be so exhausted that I... just... couldn't... get... up.  So we would both lay there, half-asleep, letting her crawl all over us and sticking a leg out every once in a while when she got too close to the edge.  She would fall back asleep after seriously, HOURS of this, only to wake up every morning by seven ready to go for the day.  Naps were just as bad.  One morning she actually took a TEN MINUTE nap.  After just ten minutes, she was awake, awake, awake and ready to play.  Me?  I was cranky.  Irritable.  Exhausted.  NOT ready to play.  Going slightly crazy.  Two nights ago, I texted a friend to tell her about Eden and how she never sleeps and crawls all over us at three in the morning, and she immediately called me.  She said she had been in that exact situation, and after listening to me freak out and talk about how tired I was and how I was pretty much sucking at being a mom right now because I did NOT have any energy to play with my baby when she wanted to play with me, she assured me that I was not a sucky mom and gave me advice.  We made a few easy adjustments (eating her solids right before bedtime to keep her belly full, moving up her bedtime to keep her from getting overtired, making her room as dark as possible), and she has slept so much better the past two nights.  I am a happy mama today because I actually feel well-rested.  Now if only I could figure out how to get her to take longer naps!

But for today, it's a new day, and I'm feeling good!

Now I have a holiday season to plan!

Happy Friday!

 

Our South Padre Trip

We got back from South Padre last Monday, and then Dustin ended up taking the rest of the week off of work. It was great - we had nine wonderful days together. We (sorta) watched movies in the afternoons while Eden napped (she usually interrupted and the movie had to wait until later), cooked, baked, sat outside enjoying the dogs and cool(er) weather, had friends over, watched football, went and played golf, and one afternoon we left Eden with my grandma and went out to the movies. I was really sad when he went back to work this past Monday.

However, I didn't get much done while he was home. Monday and Tuesday were catch-up days, so here I am on Wednesday, finally looking over our pictures from the trip.

We had such a good time! Eden loved the beach. She ate TONS of sand. And she showed NO fear of the water whatsoever. She actually kept trying to crawl farther out into the ocean, and we had to stop her!

 

One morning, Eden and I went for a walk on the beach while Dustin slept in.  It was beautiful.

 



I carried Eden down the beach until my arms got tired and she started feeling heavy... but then I had to walk all the way back!  I thought I was going to die!  My arms hurt sooooo bad; I was practically running back to the room so that I could put her down!

We took Eden to the pool too.  And out to eat.  And shopping.  And when she napped or went to bed at night, Dustin and I would sit out on our balcony talking and drinking beer.

We found a store where everything was 50% off so we all got new outfits, and that night we wore our new clothes and went out for lobster and ahi and wine.  I wanted to get a picture of the three of us, but all I managed was Eden in her new little outfit.

We went to the beach one more time on the morning that we had to leave.

And then we had to go home.  Boo.

In Eden news: she has FOUR teeth and is pulling up!  Yay, Eden!