Motherhood: Month 3

It’s amazing how much babies learn in such a short amount of time. Over the past three weeks Quinn has started batting at toys, learning how to control his hands, “helping” with feeding, and using his voice to communicate even more. He sometimes yells very loudly, even when he isn’t mad. When he’s trying to get his hand in his mouth he opens his mouth as wide as possible and screams. He also does this to the shoulders of anyone holding him, making him look like an attack baby. He’ll actually pretty much suck on anything that gets close to his mouth at this point, including other people’s fingers. He has some major suction power. Sometimes, when he’s got a really good latch on his bink, he sounds exactly like Maggie from the Simpsons. He’s beginning to open his mouth in anticipation for what’s coming, such as his bink when asked if he wants it, his bottle when he sees it, and lips for kisses. I thought he was starting to understand kisses when I wrote my last post and he has definitely connected the word to the action. He almost always opens his mouth and half of the time licks my lips 😂. He attempts to hold either his bottle or your hand while feeding him. This is adorable but slightly frustrating sometimes as he constantly knocks the bottle out of his mouth 🤦🏻‍♀️. He’s “talking” so much now. He babbles anytime anyone makes conversation with him. He has “goo,” “boo,” and the “ck” sound down. Sometimes the cadence of his babbling sounds just like the sing song way we say, “I love you” to him. I have a feeling some day I’m going to regret teaching him to talk 🤦🏻‍♀️. He often even tries to babble while eating; a multitasker in the making! I’ve learned a few things this past month, too. One is that I recognize his cry. We went to Target last weekend and Philip was pushing Quinn and I walked a few aisles away to look at something and I heard a baby cry. I didn’t even get worked up because I knew it wasn’t him. That was the first time I realized that I know his cry from others’. I also learned that wearing shirts, rather than onesies, on a baby is annoying AF. I’m pretty irritated at all you experienced parents who didn’t tell me that they just ride up every five seconds so not to waste my money buying them for him 😣. Another thing I learned is that having a child means being excited when someone else poops. Hear me out: when your baby has been cranky all day because he hasn’t pooped for a couple of days and then he finally does, it’s a great relief for everyone involved! Something else I didn’t know is how fast baby fingernails grow and how vicious they can be. He has cradle cap pretty heavily on the front of his head and he scratches the crap out of it at night. We keep it oiled so I’m not sure if he scratches from itching or for some other reason. I’ve tried putting mittens on him but he somehow manages to always get them off after only a few minutes. I’ve taken to cutting his nails every couple of days. I even filed them but I must not be a very good baby manicurist because he managed to knick himself all up again. He looks like he lost a fight with a cat 🐈. 

Attacking MiMi 😂

Eating Aunt Lori’s thumb 

Working on getting that whole hand in there!

Almost. 

“Helping” his big cousin Haleigh feed him ❤️.

Helping Dad when he was super sleepy. 

Quinn isn’t the only one meeting milestones. I’ve been exclusively pumping for 3.5 months now. Although there are times that I don’t feel like doing it, for the most part it has become a manageable part of my life. I have also finished 7 weeks of yoga classes. Readjusting to a new schedule was a bit nerve wracking at first but things are really starting to become routine now. His bedtime and sleeping habits are going really well. I usually have a few hours each night that I can take to myself, minus, of course, all the trips I make into the bedroom to listen or to feel his chest to make sure he’s breathing. When will I stop doing that? Ever?

I was watching a show last night where a group of women went on a nature retreat and they all had to shoot a bow and say something that they had been feeling guilty about to release that emotion. One woman said that she doesn’t really feel like a mom, she just feels like herself but now has a baby. That really stuck with me because I feel similarly but didn’t realize it. Is that because I am an “older” mom who had established interests and hobbies and discovered myself before having children and being a mother wasn’t part of my identity until very recently? Or does every woman feel that way in the beginning? I’d be interested in hearing others’ opinions on this. What makes you feel like a “real” mom? 

As the time has turned to what I refer to as “muddy paw print 🐾 season,” the girls are driving me a bit nuts. During the summer I can just open the back door and let them out into the yard, leaving the door open, and they can come and go as they please. Now we have winter in the morning and leaving the door open is not an option. Sophie loves to play a game where she goes to the door, appearing as if she would like to go outside but when the door is opened, she may or may not go. Sometimes she just likes to stand and stare out the window 🖼. All the in and out is frustrating, as well as all the mopping that comes with the muddy paw prints. Ugh 😩.

Looking ahead to the next season, I’ve begun shopping for Christmas. I don’t do this because I just love Christmas so much (I don’t,) I just don’t like the overwhelm of waiting til the last minute. I’ve also been attempting to declutter our house so in an effort to avoid receiving gifts for Quinn that we don’t need, I started a gift idea list for him on Amazon. It has a link that you can share with others and of course, buying the items from Amazon isn’t necessary, it just provides a nice idea collection. I honestly wish more people would do this so the guesswork could be minimal and people would get what they actually want 🤷🏻‍♀️.  Quinn really doesn’t need a lot and I’m positive that this will be the only Christmas that I will suggest getting him toys 😂. I put a ton of books on his list, too, because Philip and I get tired of reading the same ones and it’s all about us, right? 😉 Speaking of books, we got our first one from Imagination Library. I know most people have signed up for this but if you haven’t and you have a child under the age of 5 (I think), you should. It’s a program that was started by Dolly Parton and they send a free book to your child monthly. There’s no catch. She just wanted to encourage literacy. Our first book was The Little Engine That Could. I bought a book for Quinn last week at Walmart called Trick or Treat in West Virginia. It’s a pretty neat book that lists many landmarks in our state and the story is good, too. 

Bed time story


Coen was holding Quinn and he started to fuss. He got a book and read him the story. Quinn is so lucky to have such awesome cousins! 😊

He got to visit with his other set of cousins and uncle and aunt this week, too! 

Aunt Carly 

Uncle Nate 

Our nephew Austin cuddling with Sansa. This just melts my heart ❤️. We got a surprise package from Nana in the mail and it contained 6 super cute beanies for Quinn. We decided to share with his cousins. This is one pictured on Austin and on Quinn below. They’re adorable! 


He participated in his first 5k last weekend. He did great, sleeping until the very last stretch of the course. 

Some of my “village” came out to support his first race. We love them so much! 💕

Auntie Chris shared her medal with him! 🙂

❤️

I am actually looking forward to Christmas this year since it will be Quinn’s first. I guess that’s something that makes me a “real” mom, that the future looks bright when I think about all the fun things we will get to do with him: take him to amusement parks 🎢, and on vacations to the beach 🏖 and on camping trips 🏕, etc. I can’t wait to show him the world. However, we’ll show him everything in due time, like how we don’t decorate for Christmas 🎄before Thanksgiving 🦃 and that Walmart and every other store is wrong for bringing out Christmas supplies in October! 😝 It’s ridiculous.

Cutest Pumpkin In the Patch. Gift from Aunt Gina. 

Photo credit: Aunt Lori

Mommy’s little pineapple 🍍😍. 

3 months! 

I haven’t forgotten about my other babies! 

I was trying to just get a pic of Sansa and Soph came over and sat beside her 😂. 

Saturday morning cuddles. 

My silly brown girl 

Photo credit: Philip on the new iPhone 11

❤️

It’s bed time for this momma. Assuming the weather isn’t freezing we’ll be going Trick or Treating this week with his cousins. We don’t care about candy, of course, but I think he’ll enjoy seeing all the people. He has a different costume for that. Find out what it is next time! 😉

Motherhood: Month 2.5

 I think it's safe to say that Quinn's face is mine from the nose down. As everyone who knows Philip has told me, and I agree, he definitely has his eyes. His eye color isn't permanent yet though and they're looking awfully dark. Philip has hazel eyes. He thinks they're brown but they're not so if Quinn's are brown then score one for Team Mom 😉. He has grown so much over the past three weeks. He's goo-ing like crazy and loves to have "conversations." Although I think he likes talking to the ceiling fan almost as much as us so I don't know what that says about how interesting we are 🤷🏻‍♀️. We've settled into a routine at this point and our new normal is a thousand times easier than those first few weeks. I'm sure the moment I start thinking things are going smoothly, he's going to prove me wrong. The past two days he has started perfecting his pouty lip and big scream when he loses his bink, which we tell him is an awfully dramatic reaction but he doesn't seem to care 🙄. Once he has it back he's good to go. It really sucks when I'm driving and he loses it. At every red light or stop sign I try to reach back and find it and quickly stick it back in his face. When Philip is with us and drives it's easier but sometimes he hawks it clear on the floor and I can't get to it so then I just hold his hand and that seems to calm him down 🥰.
I think he's made a connection in his brain as to what "kiss" means. He's been opening his mouth to give kisses when we lean in toward his face for a while now but yesterday I just told him I was going to kiss him and he opened his mouth. It was adorable. Even when he licked my lips 😛😆. He's been sleeping great, sometimes for 7 or 8 hours at a time! He's beginning to learn how to use his hands which is part of the losing his bink and screaming issue because he tries to bring his hands to his mouth when he already has his bink in and knocks it out, creating all the drama. When he gets them to his mouth when his bink isn't there, he licks them like an ice cream cone, which is pretty amusing. He's gotten his thumb in a couple of times but typically isn't successful just yet. He turned 12 weeks old last Wednesday, which means I've been exclusively pumping for about that long. It sucks sometimes because I can never take a break from doing it. Skipping a session would just result in a clogged duct, which has happened 3 times already and is super painful (usually from sleeping. It's great when Quinn sleeps for long periods of time but then I don't get up to pump). I joke about feeling like a dairy cow so Philip pointed out the name of the song that was playing when we were coming home from Lowe's today, saying it was my song 🤬(pictured below). The bad thing about spending so much time pumping is I have to have something to keep me occupied and Pumping and (Amazon) Priming is totally a thing. I've tried to enact a "wait 24 hours" rule before purchasing so that I can decide if I really need whatever it is that I put in my cart at 2 or 3 am or if I was just bored and made bad decisions 😂. I had so much milk in the fridge that I finally had to start freezing it. I had over a gallon! While I was pouring it into bags to freeze, Sansa laid at my feet. My dogs will beg for anything 🙄. I gave them some and they both liked it 😆. Now to get Philip to try it 😉🤣.

Finally got that thumb in for once 👍🏻

Sansa begging for milk 🙄. 

He’s getting so strong!

I’m pretty sure he’s the cutest baby ever. Yes, I know I’m biased. It’s still true 😝. 



Story time! (Said in a sing-song, high pitched squeal for anyone who’s ever attended playgroup and knows what Miss Marsha sounds like when she says it 😉). 

Kiki and Mimi loving on my boy 😃.

 

I've talked about how helpful all my friends have been with him but I've even had nice experiences with strangers. I was at the Dollar General one day last week when it was 9, 675 degrees outside and I had Quinn in his carseat in the cart. When I checked out the cashier came over and held the door open for us, which was nice. So I pushed him out to the car, put him inside and unloaded the bags before I realized they don't have a cart return outside. So I started to get him back out so that I could take the cart back inside when the same woman saw me and came out to get it. That was some great customer service and very much appreciated! 

His cousins are still doting over him, which is super sweet 😊.  They're always wanting to hold him. Well, until he poops anyway. Haleigh has a real knack for getting him to poop. He always seems to save it up until she's holding him 😆. She's a good sport about though 🙃.

Cutie Kate 



I'm pretty sure this was the exact moment he pooped 🤣.


So sweet 😍. 

Soph tests her limits with licking him EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. She won't stop sniffing and trying to mouth his hands and feet until she gets yelled at 🙄.


All of my babies on the couch 💜💜💙.

Poor Sophie doesn't do well with sharing all the attention so anytime she catches me sitting without the baby, she immediately comes over and demands some belly rubs.

I took them both to the vet the other day to get their nails clipped and this was her distressed reaction when the vet tech took Sansa back and closed the door. I've diagnosed her with codependent personality disorder. She doesn't like to do anything alone. Once Sansa was gone she came up on the bench to sit by me. She was ecstatic when Sansa came back a few minutes later. To get her to go back for her turn I had to walk Sansa over to the door of the room like we were going with her 🙄🤦🏻‍♀️.



Mommy & Sophie selfie while waiting for Sansa 👩🏻🐶.

I was sitting on the chair one day with Quinn on his lounger and then went to pee. This is what I came back to🤦🏻‍♀️.


This Mom Guilt thing extends to the none human children, too. We didn’t get to go for our walk today because it was raining. That is the best part of the day for Sansa so I feel bad that she didnt get to go. Hopefully the rain stops tomorrow evening so we can take her. That poor girl has to put up with a lot of Sophie’s shit, the least she deserves is a daily walk 😉.