My baby is one...

I cannot believe how fast the year has gone. It seriously blows my mind. One year ago today, we welcomed Emily into our lives, and both Zig and I were forever changed. This tiny human came into our world, and our lives have never been the same. I would do it all again 10 times over, the sleepless nights, the tears (both hers and mine) the many hours I spent holding her and just looking into that sweet face, just to have a baby as amazing as Emily was. She was always such a good girl and we are blessed. And now she is a toddler. She walks, talks, throws tantrums, eats tons of solid food, and she keeps us laughing everyday.

To my Emily,
It is so hard to put into words how much you mean to me. I miss you every minute we are apart. I yearn for your sweet smile, and your arms that always welcome a snuggle from your mommy. You make me so happy. You make me laugh, and there are times when the sweetest things you do will actually make me cry. Thank you for being you. You are independent, you do things your own way, at your own pace. You are silly, and at times super serious. You have tons of friends, and you are the popular kid at school. You love your sleep, and you love blueberries. You are just the best baby. Your daddy and I love you so so much. This has been one amazing year and we look forward to many many many more watching you grow. I love you my little monkey.

Love,
Mommy

We had Emily's party today. It was great! There are any people in this world who love our little Emmy and it just warms my heart. I will post lots of pictures soon! And one last set of monthly pictures!! ::cries::

Warm and fuzzy

This is how I feel everyday when I go pick Emily up from school. She is the last one to leave, 2 of the 4 days she is there. Since she is so mobile, she spends the last few minutes of her day playing with the big kids in the main room of school. As I punch in my code, I see her waiting in the room for me. Her teachers points to me, and she runs as fast as her little legs can take her across the room, arms open wide, smile on her face, into my arms and gives me the biggest hug ever. It gets me every time. In that moment, nothing else matters. Life is truely perfect. She misses me, almost as much as I miss her. I have to hold her while I gather her things too. She hates it if I put her down, and honestly, that is totally fine by me.

Down for the count

Emily has croup. On top of that her first molar just poked through yesterday. It has been a tough couple of days for her. But we are armed with a nebulizer, some predisone and amoxicillan, so we should be good to go very soon. She is feeling much better. Two days ago was a whole other story. We are very lucky that this is truly the first time Emily has ever been sick ::knock on wood::, but for a baby that goes to daycare, that is AWESOME! We hope to be back to a 100% in a few days. In the mean time, there is lots of snuggling going on in the Ziegler household. (And lots of birthday planning too. ::SQUEE::)

Words...words...words

Emily is a chatter box these days. Of course her favorite words are still daddy and dog, she adds new ones everyday it seems. She FINALLY says mama and sometimes mommy. ::SQUEEEE!!:: Not always to me, but I take it however she wants to dish it. She is also trying REALLY hard to say Bodhi. She is so funny to watch and she learns something new everyday.

This weekend, thanks to her wonderful Daddy, she learned to get down the steps in our house. THANK YOU LORD! I had a heart attack every time she climbed them because she is super fast and before I knew it she was on the edge getting ready to climb back down. My mom and I had been working with her, but it finally sunk in when her dad stepped in. She is very cautious when she goes down them. She sits down about a foot an a half before the step, scoots on her booty to the edge and eases down. I love it.

She is also really into the Old McDonald Baby Einstein dvd. We really only try to let her watch tv on rare occasions, and we try to keep in educational, but until recently, she never really showed interested. And if there isn't music playing, she really doesn't watch. Anyway, she loves the Old McDonald one. She dances around and when the get to the animals, she calls every.single.animal a dog. It is so funny. Especially the horses. She gets really excited and says dog over and over.

She also learned to yell this weekend. AWFUL. Seriously. A whining, yelling baby is one of the worst sounds ever. She hated being in her car seat/stroller all weekend long. She wanted to run around everywhere, which is fine, but she REFUSED to wear shoes and socks, not fine. So she would just yell. In her defense, that darn molar is soo close to poking out. How many molars to babies have, because if the rest are any like this one, we are in trouble!

It's the most WONDERFUL time of the year!!

I truly love Christmas. I actually love Christmas more than my birthday and those of you who know me, I celebrate my birthday all month long! I love the smell of the first fallen snow, a cup of warm tea, snuggling up by a warm fire and spending time with my family. I LOVE Christmas.

That being said, its time to start planning our Christmas cards. If you know me, you also know I am extremely indecisive. So I am starting early and this year I am truly impressed by the amazing selection Shutterfly is offering for holiday cards this year. They have many different size options, colors, designs, flat cards or folding. I loved spending the times scanning their selection and spent well over an hour narrowing downs the finalists. Here are some of the designs I have narrowed down to choose from!







In addition to cards, Shutterfly also has some great options for Christmas gifts. From wall calendars to personalized mugs, Shutterfly has a great assortment of personalized gifts for family and friends! Our family pictures are scheduled for 12/4, so that will be the ultimate deciding factor on what card we choose. I can also see some cute calendar ideas in the works! I can't wait to see how they turn out! You guys should definitely check out their website and if you are a blogger, you can get 50 free holiday cards yourself, just by blogging! Easy enough. Go here to find out how!

ALSO, speaking of Christmas, for those who don't know, I have been selling Scentsy for about a month and a half now. These make awesome Christmas gifts and I am running a couple specials this month through the 30th. 6 gifts and 6 stocking stuffers for $150 plus tax! You can't go wrong. If you are looking for a great gift, check out my website. If you see something you like, let me know and I can probably even get you free shipping (if you are local), if not shipping costs are very reasonable! Just throwing it out there! Click the picture below to get to my website. If you see something you like, I set up a "Christmas Order" party on my home page, and if you order from there, I should be able to get you free shipping. You can always call me or email me with any questions! Happy shopping!

I will love you forever

On this night, 10 years ago, a 22 year old Zig asked an 18 year old me to be his girlfriend and to love him forever. If only I knew it would be the best 10 years of my life. Here is to many many more. I love you Sean Ziegler. You are my world and I will love you forever.

Ps. I am a blogging fool these days. I have had some time on my hands. ;)
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Family Photos

I wish I had a personal stylist. Seriously. I am awful at dressing myself. I am all over the place when it comes to fashion. We have Emily's first birthday/family pictures on 12/4 and I want to dress us in complementing outfits, but not be to matchy matchy. Here is are some options that I found while perusing online. I think I like the middle option of each one best. I found some slate gray slim leg pants at Ann Taylor loft that I may choose over a dark jean. Is grey the new black or what. They kind of pull eachother together no? Thoughts? Suggestions? Anyone want to be my shopping buddy?

 

 

 

Wordless Wednesday

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Weighing in

It took me 11 months and 11 days to write this post. Yes, this is a "my body after baby post." Breastfeeding was a miracle worker for me. Seriously. For those who have been following my blog for a while, you know that my weight gain during my pregnancy was very minimal. No I didn't starve myself, nor did I worry how much I was gaining (I actually worried about how much I wasn't gaining). I was very sick for the first 3+ months which resulted in me losing weight, and my doctor putting me on Zofran in hopes of stopping any further loss. I wasn't the slimmest chicken in the coop pre-pregnancy though either. I was extremely lucky in that with in days of being discharged, I was back down to my pre-pregnancy weight and with in a week after that, I was down an additional 10 lbs. It was AWESOME, and really I was amazed at how quickly my body bounced back to its old self. While I was nursing Em, I could eat whatever I wanted; however, since I stopped breastfeeding in September, that all changed and I put on 10lbs. And it sucks. I hate to see pictures of myself, so I decided there is no better time than the present to get back on track. I did Weight Watchers a few years ago, and I did really well. I lost about 15 lbs. and kept it off for a while. It was easy to fall back into old habits though. Breakfast and lunch was a breeze, it was dinner that was hard.

Enter E-mealz. We have been doing E-meals for about 3 months now, and I think its awesome. We needed structure. There were many nights when we both got home from work and had no motivation to decide what to make for dinner, and even if we did have something in mind, there was a very slim chance that we had the ingredients we needed to make it. E-mealz is great. Weekly you print off a grocery list and menu (recipes included). It gives you all the resources you need to make dinner for 2 or for a whole family. They also choose ingredients that can be used for several meals, so there is little to no waste. I don't know how many times I purchased a tub of sour cream to only use 2 tbs. This solves that, and the menus are really good! We haven't really made anything that we didn't like. They base the menus off of weekly sales ads, so if you buy your groceries at say Wal-mart, you can get a menu each week that is based on what they have on sale. Pretty cool. In the past we have done the low fat for 2, but I was really excited to see that they had a points plan menu. SCORE! That totally solves my dinner point issue! So starting yesterday, we are getting back on track. I want to be a good example and teach Emily how to make healthy food choices. I also don't want her to be embarrassed by her overweight mom. I am determined to lose 15 pounds before my sister's wedding in April. Plenty of time for a healthy loss. Wish me luck! And seriously, if your family is having the same problem that mine had with dinner, check E-mealz out. Click the picture below and you can see what its all about.

Missing pictures...I think

I have no clue what happened. I started using picasa to upload my picutres because it is WAY faster, but I think I can only do 4 at a time. The blogger picture upload takes WAY.TOO.LONG to upload. Anyway, here is some sweetness for your Tuesday morning. :)

 

 

 

 

Points down

Does everyone see those red "x" boxes or is it just me? SAD FACE. I have no clue what happened or how to fix it. The files are on my work computer though. I will see if I can find the missing ones and upload them tomorrow.

11 month pictures

She was super goofy this afternoon. Most of the pictures we got have Lamby in them, but at least she is smiling!

Every photo session has one of these.

And more recently one of these...

She was facinsated by her jumper today, so we pulled it out and she had a ball. She loved dancing to the music. Wish she loved it that much months ago when it would have come in handy!

Because this is why you people check my blog anyway...

One word. Pictures. Here are a shit ton for ya. Enjoy! Note: Since my child is in a perpetual state of teething, there is ALWAYS a stream of boogers coming out of her nose. Don't judge. We wipe CONSTANTLY. It's awful.

The great transition

To whole milk that is. Warning: This post is about boobs and how mine worked as God intended. Just sayin.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we switched Emily over to whole milk a few weeks earlier that we (and our Pedi) had planned. The main reason is that all my hard work spending hours and months pumping paid off. I was able to feed Emily only breast milk for the first 10.5 months of her life. My freezer stash actually would have lasted until about 8 days before her 11 month birthday. This was HUGE for me. Now, don't get me wrong, I have no issues with formula. AT.ALL. As long as you feed your baby, I don't care how you do it, but I was determined to make breastfeeding work. Back story:I breastfed Em exclusively, with the occasional bottle until she was 3 months old. Then she started daycare and I fed her only at night. I had a brief drop in supply by the end of the day (my supply was much larger in the mornings and I could still pump 32+oz a day, but by dinner I could only get 4 oz)and we had to do bottles at night instead of nursing. From that point on (around 4 months)she decided she preferred the bottle. This was devastating for me at first because that was mine and Emily's alone time, but we did what worked for our family, and I still got my snuggle time in giving her bottles at night. This was also around the time she dropped her bottles during the middle of the night. If she woke up during the night, I would still nurse her, but that was getting rare by this point. So I pumped and pumped and pumped. Everyday, several times a day till she turned 9 months old and ended up with 2 months of milk in the freezer. That's a lot of milk y'all. Like over 1,400 oz. It was hard, but worth it.

Anyway, our pedi and I were not on the same page for the transition. She was dead set in her ways that she didn't want Emily to have ANY whole milk until she was 11 months old. Not one drop, but on her 11 month birthday, she had NO problems with her having only whole milk. I was very determined and dead set in my ways not to switch her to formula for a whole 8 days and then switch her to whole milk. It just didn't make sense to me that there was a magic switch that turned on exactly at 11 months that made Emily ready. So after ALOT of discussions with other mom's and our daycare, we decided that mommy instinct ruled out in this case. I knew Emily and her tolerance for dairy has always been good (the girl loves her some cheese and yogurt). So we made the switch slowly. Starting on 10/19, we slowly started adding 1 oz. to each of her bottles for a couple days, then 2, then 3 and so on. In the end, I started earlier than I needed to and I didn't need to add it in that slowly, but she never had any problems. It has made her a little constipated,(Maybe I should have put a warning that this post was about poop too. haha oops) but we are getting through that. I don't regret starting early. I even mentioned it to the doctor when I took her in for her cough and she seemed totally fine with it. Meh. Anyway, the transition went good and Emily has been drinking all whole milk for a few days now. During the transition, she dropped another bottle, so now she is drinking about 12 oz of milk at best. I wish she would drink more, but milk in general just isn't her thing. She has always been below the norm in how many oz she drinks. We will make sure she gets all the calcium she needs and let her lead us in how much and how often she eats. So that is that!