A Return of Old Friends

I'm back from blogger hiatus! Whenever I have a spare moment, Will is always telling me to go to bed. I usually blog at night when The Boy goes to bed, but by the time I nurse The Girl and get myself ready for bed, I don't have any spare minutes. So, I'm taking these few minutes here in the afternoon to blog about our extremely exciting lives:)

This little lady has the same wicked latch-on that her brother had. Luckily, since I dealt with it last time, this time I was equipped with some coping mechanisms. I even had 2 lactation specialists come in and talk with me at the hospital this time. That is something new our hospital has added since last time I had a baby there. With The Boy, I had to go to Hoag and attend a one-on-one session with a lactation specialist. Now, our hospital has a lactation specialist and she makes house calls after you've gone home for the same price I paid to go over to Hoag for an hour. Cool, huh? Anyway, they checked her suck and tongue and said that she sucks perfectly - almost too perfectly because she has a really strong latch on and suck. You're telling me! So, I pulled out my old friends below to help through this first month until she becomes less of an eating machine and more of a baby:)

Will calls this my artificial nipple. Wahahaha!
It's a contact nipple shield and I use it to get her latched on
and settled and then I remove it. With The Boy I didn't know
I was eventually supposed to wean him off of it. So, here he
was 6 weeks old and I'm wondering if I'll have to use it for life. LOL
I called back over to Hoag and the nurse told me to get him off of it
ASAP so I didn't affect my milk supply. So, that I did.

These things are so awesome! They are complete lifesaver
and I recommend them to anyone that is thinking

of giving up on nursing because it's just too painful.

This week The Girl had her first bath. Finally! I think The Boy was only home like 3 days and I was already bathing him. It just seems like things move more quickly during the day now and before I know it, it's dark and I'm ready to roll into bed. She didn't love her bath as much as her brother did, but she did pretty well.

Check out this gorgeous hooded towel Baby T's Grandma made for her!
I was so excited to get it and even more excited that she made her two!

The Boy dressed himself as a pirate last night before going to bed.

Last night was quite the adventure. After naps we loaded into the car and headed over to W-town so that Will could change my oil at his parents' house. We got there and everything was going smoothly. Will visited with his brother, I hung out with his little sister while I fed The Girl, and The Boy played with his cousin. After a little bit, Will went out and worked on the car and I stayed inside and hung out with the family. The oil change seemed to go flawlessly and Will pulled the car down off the lifts and BAM all Haedes broke lose. The car exploded oil all over the place and Will couldn't figure out where it was coming from. So, he puts it back up on the lift and comes running in to borrow a flashlight. I leave The Girl on the ouch with Aunt H and head outside to see if I can help. It takes him about a half hour to figure out what was wrong. The seal from the old filter hadn't come off when he removed the old filter, so it left a big gap and oil just spewed everywhere. Once he got that figured out and put back together we were ready to roll on home. Our poor friend that was bringing us dinner that night was so sweet and just held dinner until we got home. I stopped by there after I dropped a very oily Will and The Boy off at home to pick it up. It was super yummy and we were super hungry by that time.

So, this little girl is an awesome sleeper. On Sunday night The Girl slept 5 hours straight. On Monday night she went to bed at 10:30pm and didn't wake up until 7:30am!!!! I was shocked (and in pain!) when I opened my eyes to the sun that morning. On Tuesday night I woke her up at 3am to eat because I couldn't go a whole night without feeding her. She ate and went back to sleep until 8am. What a nut! Last night when she fell asleep at 9pm, I just got in bed and hoped for the best. She woke up at 2am, ate, went back to sleep and woke up at 8am this morning. I'm so proud of her and so happy for the sleep.

Here are the last few pages for my December Daily album. I forgot to put the date on Day 29, so I'll have to go back and add that. So it's done and it was a fun project. I'm attempting to do project 365 this year. You take a picture each day of the year that is meaningful to do that day. Then, most people scrap one layout a week with the 7 photos from the week on it. Hopefully I can be diligent and take a picture everyday!