Sleep

It's almost 0500 and Joey is wide awake, thus I am awake. If he doesn't show signs of falling asleep soon, I'm passing him off to Dan so I can go back to bed.

The sidecar has been up for just over a week now and I have definitely noticed a difference in my amount/quality of sleep. Joey still wants to use me as a pacifier all night long (and I still try to give him an actual pacifier and he's having none of it), but because I don't have to get up, we both fall back asleep pretty easily. Most of the time. This morning, I had to go to the bathroom. Joey was hungry and eating and when I put him down, apparently he was done and ended up waking up all the way and that was over a half an hour ago. So now he's playing happily in his chair while I type.

Most nights I can just nurse him and we both go right back to sleep, even if he's up every hour, I still wake up in the morning feeling more rested than when he was in the PnP. I've noticed that Joey has also started sleeping in slightly longer increments too, which is awesome. Still not nearly what he was doing before teeth, but still better than every hour. He also wakes up for good every morning right at 0730, so not too much sleeping in for me, but better than nothing.

Now he's fussing, maybe we can go back to bed...

Joey's First Thanksgiving

I made the mistake of looking back at last year's Thanksgiving post and found out that I had written it completely about Luke. Cue tears. It still hurts when I think about him for more than a few minutes or when I go visit my parents and he's not wagging his tail at the top of the stairs as I open the door.

Anyway, on to this year!

My uncles and cousins came over and we had a delicious Thanksgiving dinner complete with, not one but two sides of sauerkraut (which is apparently a Baltimore Thanksgiving staple). I'm not a fan of it so I stuck to the turkey, potatoes, and gravy myself ;) I fed Joey before dinner so he chomped on foam pieces out of a toy book while we all ate actual food. Next year he'll be able to try a little bit of everything and I'm sure he can't wait. Joey was pretty good about letting other people hold him, which can be hit or miss lately. He even liked meeting Hailey, my uncle's dog, and she was pretty curious about the little human.

How To Sidecar a Crib

Co-sleeping is awesome. It's not the right choice for every family or every situation, but we were fortunate enough to try it, enjoy it, and make it work for us. After Joey got too big for his bassinet in early August, and we moved him to the pack 'n play, I thought I'd overcome how much I missed having him next to me at night. I figured that eventually we'd move him to his own room and I'd be ok with it. Not only did the feelings not go away, they got stronger and I began to really, really miss co-sleeping. Especially when the teething started and he woke up more often to comfort nurse. So I began researching options for co-sleeping that would work with a larger baby and in the confined space that is our house. I came across How we sidecarred our crib and knew that I wanted to try it with Joey! Now, without further ado, here is how we sidecarred our crib and are again co-sleeping full time after 4 long months!

We got a crib off of Freecycle.org from another family no longer using theirs. It is a drop-side crib, but because we left off the side that comes down, the danger is no longer there. Our bed is also super-tall, so I purchased bed risers to add height to the crib. If I had only added height under the mattress, eventually, when Joey is pulling himself to standing, he would be able to fall over the side. This way, the sides get height added to them as well. It's important to place the crib in the corner of the room for added security so it can't separate from the adult bed.

Not pictured: we used ratchet straps also to secure the crib to the adult bed frame. There are two straps that run from the crib, between the mattress and box spring of our bed, to hook onto the frame on the other side.

We're pretty sure we were missing pieces of the crib because upon initial assembly, we couldn't figure out how to attach the spring part for the mattress. So Dan finagled something with thick pieces of wood, and I actually like it a lot more than just the flimsy-looking pieces of metal.

Proof of Dan's hard work! He sat there and bounced without any problems!

As suggested, we used high-density foam to fill gaps. We only needed one 2in thick, 8ft. piece to fill all our gaps, score!

Crib mattress is flush with the adult mattress, foam is wrapped in a twin-size flat sheet, and mommy and baby are happy to be co-sleeping again!

Our bedroom is not gigantic. At all. I forget the exact dimensions but it's in the 11'x9' range (that could be the smaller bedroom but ours isn't bigger by very much) and we were able to make this work for us. Granted, we had to rotate the bed but that was the only major change to our room besides the addition of the crib. We did this last night and had a chance to try the set up. Other than night nursing is so much easier when I don't have to get out of bed, I don't have much to say yet. Last night was one of Joey's up-every-hour nights AND I had to be up early for work, so not a whole lot of sleep happening anyway. We'll see how it goes the next couple of nights and I'll report back.

6 Month Postpartum Belly

Right after staples were removed

Ok, so my postpartum belly is going to look different from the average person, but I'm curious about this stuff with other people, so I may as well share my stuff too. The picture below is from today, just 2 days after the 6-month-mark for Joey's birth and just under the 6-month-mark for my surgery (that's in another two weeks). I've been wondering about the "twin skin" for a couple of weeks now, because it seems to actually be on it's way back to normal. I decided to do a side-by-side comparison to see and sure enough, there's some change! The scar looks way better for one thing, still there, just much less noticeable. The stretch marks are fading more and I feel like when I take handfuls of skin there's less there ;) I still doubt I'll ever be "bikini-ready" but there's hope that it might not be a complete disaster area.

6 Months Later

The good news is my pants size! Not only am I out of maternity pants, I bought new pants and now, only two weeks later, they're falling off me! I now fit into pants from college and I bought a belt to help hold my other pants up! I've only ever bought a belt in the past because work required it, I much prefer buying belts for this reason. I've been wearing it the last couple days just to get used to it and don't even notice it's there. I'd like to think that my weight coming off is to make up for all the crap I dealt with because of the cyst and the way my stomach looks now.

We're still working on the whole co-sleeping thing. After attempting to put the crib together to get an idea of size and everything, we found out that we have no idea how the spring-part that holds the mattress attaches. There are holes that screws could go through, there are little bunny-ear-shaped metal pieces on the frame but the spring piece seems to be just big enough to rest on top of them and just small enough not to attach to the frame itself. If any of that made sense. Dan's going to work on figuring something out because we all seem to sleep better when Joey is next to me for the majority of the night. We do have some time to get this figured out because there are still two chairs being stored in Joey's room while we find time to drop them off to our church's new youth space. One is a bentwood rocker and the other is a super comfy armchair with an ottoman, both are hand-me-downs so I'm not attached to them, I just don't want to get rid of something that our youth would enjoy.

And because I'm in the mood for side-by-side comparisons, check out how much my bamboo has grown since the move!

Just a cute little bamboo stalk at the old apartment.

Turning into a monster bamboo stalk sitting in the bathroom window!

De-Cluttered House, De-Cluttered Life

Yay for a completely organized shed! We finished putting up the shelves and sorting through things (finding several treasures along the way) with room to spare in both attic and shed. At first, we attempted to put the bassinet in the attic, because it would have been slightly more protected from bugs, but it didn't fit. Luckily, we now have plenty of floor space in the shed and didn't have to worry about it at all. It's a very cool bassinet and I want to save it for the next baby.

My mom came over after work and played with Joey while Dan and I sorted and stored. It's so much easier to put things away when you're not 8 months pregnant! It was great having my mom watching Joey because when we worked on this earlier in the week, it was just us and it was difficult keeping Joey happy and getting work done at the same time. We moved him between the bouncy chair, his rocking chair, his playpen, and eventually me holding him while Dan moved the heavy stuff.

I'm so happy with how much we got done! Everything we don't need is stored and we have way more space in the house now, including more space in the laundry room. The next step is figuring out which room we want the bed-crib-combo in, assemble the crib, and get the bed risers (our bed is really tall so the crib needs to be raised) and the mattress. Hopefully by the end of next week we'll be co-sleeping again!

Ancient gas can that Dan's dad gave us with the lawnmower

Mostly empty half of the attic

Less empty half of the attic (still loads of room)

Newly cleared laundry room!

Organization: The Shed

Today was one of my days off this week and the weather was perfect for clearing out and organizing the shed! Not too hot, not too cold, and it's been dry for days so nothing will get ruined sitting on wet grass.

When we moved in, anything that I couldn't unpack got stuck in the shed until I could "consolidate boxes." Between having a newborn and now having a nearly-six-month-old, I never got around to the consolidating...until today! Not a day too soon either, we found my winter clothes so I could switch out my summer clothes for the winter ones in my wardrobe! I also got to make decisions about more permanent storage options for the various things in the shed. Things like my American Girl Dolls, the shed was only a temporary solution and the fact that I found spiders in their box when I unpacked them just reinforced that. I still don't know where their clothes and things are but the dolls are now safely stowed in a plastic box under our bed.


Dan picked out shelves to line the walls of the shed, eventually there will be 5 sets total, 2 on each side and 1 in the back. This leaves the middle floor open to park the lawn mower as well as walk in and see what crap we've got out there ;) Anything stored in a plastic bin will be out in the shed and cardboard boxes will be up in the attic, to minimize spiders and such. All of this is a step towards being able to co-sleep again, though it desperately needed to be done anyway. I can't wait until we're all done and we have a clean and organized house!

Before shelves...

After shelves.

Storage Space!

Joey is napping right now, and not ON me for once (though he is on Daddy lol) so I get to have a few minutes to myself before he wakes up. Normally, I wouldn't let him nap this close to 1900, but he hasn't really napped all day and I don't think it will interfere too much with bed time later.

I'm pretty stoked about what we got done today, well, what Dan got done while I watched Joey. We're in the process of figuring out a more permanent solution for Joey's crib. Currently, the pack-n-play is still outside our bedroom door. He has outgrown the newborn/bassinet feature and has been on the lower level of the PNP for a couple of months now. I recently purchased a mattress because the one that came with the PNP was just foam on top of cardboard and was bowing in the middle (something I read about in the reviews before I bought it, so not totally unexpected). The mattress is too small so I rolled up baby towels and stuffed them into the open space so that Joey can't roll over and get stuck. I have several of issues with our current arrangement:

1. With him being so low to the floor, he's often exposed to the colder air in the house. I have a wearable blanket that we use with him, but most of the time he doesn't fall asleep wearing it, which means that it doesn't get put on him until halfway through the night or later.
2. The very motion of laying him down that low wakes him up more often than not. Most of the time, when it does wake him up, it wakes him up more fully than he had been when I got up to feed him. This leads to him wanting to play at 0230, not cool.
3. On nights that Dan has a hard time sleeping and stays up to play Xbox, Joey and I will frequently fall asleep together in the big bed. While I tend to sleep lighter and can't move around as freely, I feel like I get more sleep when this happens because of how much more convenient it is to nurse Joey when he's lying right next to me. I like having him at arm's reach, I always have, I didn't want to move him out of our room but due to budget and space restrictions, it was our only choice at the time.

 We ordered oil for the winter. We didn't order as much as we planned so there's a little bit of money left over. I talked to Dan about using it to get us back to co-sleeping and he was totally fine with it. Initially, I looked into the Arm's Reach Co-Sleeper, but that seems to be a glorified bassinet and Joey would grow out of that quickly and we'd be back at square one. Determined to make co-sleeping work for us, I widened my search and came across a blog where the family had turned their crib into a sidecar for their bed. Bingo! This was exactly what I was looking for, a way to co-sleep but still be able to give Joey (and us) his own space. The only question that remained was: how? I came up with two options and presented them to Dan (who is still thinking them over). Both require measuring and other logistics before we can put them into action. One is that we sidecar the crib in our room as we have it now, but moving furniture around so everything fits. I'm feeling meh about this one. The idea that I really like is that we take everything out of Joey's room, move our bed and the crib in and sleep there while our current bedroom becomes like a big walk-in closet where we get dressed and we keep all of Joey's clothes and toys. Eventually we can put a toddler bed in there and keep our bed in the backroom. Again, both ideas require measuring to see if they're even feasible, so we'll work on that.

In the meantime, there was no question that whichever solution we go with, Joey's room would need to be cleared out. We've pretty much used it like a storage closet since we moved in because we ran out of room in the shed and laundry room. The next step in storage was to start using the attic. Today Dan went to Home Depot to pick up plywood and a ladder so we can start storing things in the attic. There's going to be plenty of room up there which is fantastic because most of our stuff is still in boxes from the move. A lot of the stuff was in the closets at our apartment and since we only have two very small closets in the whole house, we've been pretty limited on long-term storage. Joey got cranky towards the end of hauling the wood up to the attic, so we haven't put anything up there yet, but we will. I also may have scored a usable crib off freecycle, so once I coordinate with the woman who's giving it up, I'll be able to see it and assess whether or not we can use it the way I want (and also how big it is for the measuring). We never did get around to getting "real" crib, that would be the financial limitations I mentioned earlier, the bassinet was $46 and the PNP was around $70 and purchased completely with a gift card.

So to sum up:

• Today was step one in cleaning out Joey's room
• The attic is ready for storage
• Possible crib is hopefully coming sometime this week
• I never saw myself being baby-wearing, co-sleeping, cloth-diapering, nursing-pad-making momma. The granola just sort of happened. I'm parenting according to my instincts and if that puts me in some sort of hippie category then so be it. I'm learning to be more unapologetic about who I am.

Cheeseburger Puffs

Take 1lb. browned ground beef, 2 packages of Pilsbury crescent rolls, and your favorite cheese.

Pre-heat the oven according to the Pilsbury package.

Roll out the dough so that you have two triangles next to each other--as a rectangle.

Put some of the ground beef in the center of the rectangle, add your cheese, and fold up the sides. Do this until you're out of ground beef or crescent rolls or both. This will make 8 puffs.

Place in the oven and cook until the puffs are golden brown (between 10-15 minutes).

Take out, let cool, enjoy!



I used shredded cheddar and that was nowhere near enough cheese. It ended up tasting like regular hamburger and not cheeseburger. Next time I will be trying Velveeta or American as well as increasing the amount I use. Also, the crescent rolls I used had a buttery flavor to them that didn't seem to match up with the hamburger (they were still good, just a surprise to taste butter), next time I will find plain rolls or use biscuits.

40! Well, we HAD 40 yesterday.

This is my freezer stash. After work yesterday, I had a total of 40oz. which is more than I've ever had stored up! Then because Joey decided to get up and play yesterday at 0230, I was super tired by the time Dan got home from work, so I let him give Joey one bottle so I could get some sleep. Joey ended up being hungry later on, but I had gotten to sleep an hour or two by then.

Yesterday was a short shift at work, only 5 hours, and because Joey mostly sleeps in the morning, he didn't eat nearly as much as he normally does. He ended up only eating 6oz. and I brought home 10oz., a whole "serving" more than he ate! This is so awesome because I haven't brought home more in a long time, much less an entire bottle's worth! I have to work 9 hours tomorrow then 11 on Friday, so I'm very glad we have plenty for both days. I've continued to pump on my days off, while not as routinely as several weeks ago I'm still adding at least one or two "servings" to the freezer a day. It's a slow stash re-build, but I'm happy to see the progress as opposed to seeing it eaten the very next day. I'm still determined not to supplement with formula if I can avoid it. I'll probably still be working several days well into January and I've heard from several working-full-time moms that they either had to supplement or wean completely before the one year mark. I don't know if they didn't have time to pump at home to add to the freezer stash or what, maybe they just weren't getting enough when they did, but that's not going to be me.

When it comes to the epic battle of me vs. Joey's appetite, I will prevail!

In other news, Halloween was fun. Dan had to work so I dressed Joey in his cow costume and gave out candy for the first time since we've been married :) At the apartment, nobody knew we were upstairs, plus our walkway was not well lit and I probably wouldn't have let my kids walk all the way down and then up the stairs, PLUS I don't think there were many trick-or-treating kids in that neighborhood anyway (lots of grandparents). So this year was fun, though we didn't get nearly as many kids as we planned on and have extra candy (not complaining). I didn't want to take Joey trick-or-treating because he's 5 months old, CLEARLY that candy would have been for me lol.