A few videos

i need to get all the photos and vidoes off of my phone before i get my new phone so here are a few. the most recent is the one of her eating pears and watching her Baby Einstein. that one is from yesterday. the one of her on the swing is from last week but the other two are from a few months ago. i just LOVE her little voice!

Good Intentions

When I started this blog, I had very good intentions of keeping a journal of our lives and document details that we might forget someday. I was obsessed with everyone else's family blogs and how beautiful and funny their children were and how even everyday happenings seemed prettier in their pictures. I still LOVE reading blogs when I have a split second but keeping one, not so much. I don't know, just the thought of catching up with uploading pictures and keeping this thing up to date is exhausting! so this is my last post for a while (as if i even update this more than once every couple of months anyway).

I'm on a mission to cut unnecessarily time consuming things out of my life and this blog is one of those things. I work full time (10+ hours a day, most days) and spend as much time as I possibly can with Raiah, during which I make sure to not check my phone or do anything other than being mommy. I'm still nursing and it's so tempting to be reading blogs on my phone while she's nursing but I'd really rather watch her and cuddle with her and kiss her little feet while she tries to kick me in the throat :) from the time Raiah goes to sleep around 9:30 till I go to sleep (which ends up being around midnight) i have a couple of hours a day to clean the house, do dishes, prepare food, pay bills, eat dinner, do laundry, shower and get ready for the next day with maybe a few minutes to spend sitting in front of the tv with scott after he gets home from work. sometimes i even have a couple of minutes to check my facebook, hotmail, gmail, yahoo, and browse pinterest before i fall asleep. most days i feel like i'm swimming upstream against time but i like swimming and i'm not complaining. The point is that I'm really grateful for the things I have to do, but the things that i don't HAVE to do, I can do without, like this blog. I was just looking through my phone to pick pictures/videos to upload and there are over 600 of them between my last post and this one!

As of today, Raiah is 8.5 months and can crawl or more like scoot backwards. she's super animated and fun. she finally got her first tooth when she was 7 months and 7 days old. she LOVES food. i mean, we've never seen her turn away from food or act full. ever. even if she doesn't like something (pears or avocado for example) she'll still eat it and make a disgusted face but then opens wide for the next spoonful. i have to get a better video of her eating. she LOVES Baby Einstein videos. she's absolutely mesmerized by them. there are 3 things that really piss her off: no more food (she'll throw a fit when you finish feeding her cuz she ALWAYS wants more!), taking her out of the bath when she's not done playing and walking by her and not acknowledging her on the floor playing. otherwise, she's the happiest baby ever.


I've been meaning to add some photos to this post for over 2 months. when I started to write this, Raiah was 7 months. now she's almost 9 months and crawling. I'm gonna post with no photos cuz I know it'll take me another couple of months to upload them :(

At 5 Months

Raiah is almost half a year old! I can't believe how fast she's growing. She's already developing a hilarious personality. Some things that she's doing by today are:

- She sleeps through the night and still takes at least 3 naps during the day. it's wonderful!

-  Chews INTENSELY on everything and especially loves hands. Sometimes she'll turn away when I'm nursing her just to chew on her hand (or mine). She can be 3 feet away from someone's hand and she still opens her mouth wide to try to attack it from far away. It's pretty funny.

- She's been saying DADADADADADADA for a few weeks now. She says it in times of happy/cooy-ness, boredom, anger, frustration, etc. but when she notices one of us leaving the room, she'll use it like a name, calling out to us. I know, you're thinking she's way too young to do that but SHE DOES! Scott was playing with her and left the room for a minute and she started saying "da da da da da" and when he didn't come back she started screaming "DAAAAAAAAAAAD!!!!" like a freakin teenager!!! (ok, maybe she doesn't know what she's saying but we like to think she's way advanced)

- Rolls all over the place. There's no need to even put a blanket on the floor for her because she'll roll off of it right away.

- She's a very happy baby. She wakes up smiling (and almost upside down) every day. mornings are her favorite time of the day. She's cranky at night tho. She warms up to people very fast and as long as we're close by, let's anyone hold her and smiles at them. If you let her chew on your hand, she'll fall in love with you!

- She usually falls asleep with a blanket pulled over her face. If she doesn't have a blanket, she'll pull her bib over her face. 

sleeping with her bib over her face

- She's still going bald and we find her fine little hairs all over the place!

- She LOVES when we sing to her. it can calm the biggest freakouts like magic. it's a good thing she doesn't judge my horrible singing voice.

- She used to HATE taking baths but the last 2 times she's been calm. The look on her face is still unsure and questioning like she'll freak out at any moment. She definitely doesn't enjoy it yet, but we're making progress.

- She loves to taste the wind. If we're outside and it's windy or even if you just blow in her face, she'll stick out her tongue.

outside tasting the wind

scott was blowing in her face here :)

- She's very interested in our food and expects the food to go in her mouth instead of ours. We gotta start her on solids next week. 

A visit with grandparents

my baby getting spoiled and loved :)

.....

I just want to write these down so I can look back and remind myself of what's been on my mind these first few months of motherhood and my 30's.

1. I can't believe how fast Scott and I have gone from "omygod, how are we ever going to handle this??!!" to feeling like she's been a part of our family forever! why was it so hard in the beginning? she's so chill now. major chatterbox, still very serious :)

2. I've never been more impressed and felt more love than I have these past few months. I'm forever thankful! I hope that I can repay the kindness one day. I know you have plenty going on in your own lives too and we think you're rockstars for doing such a great job all the while going out of your way for us. thank you. I promise, we see and appreciate everything you do for us :)

3. Raiah's the most important thing in our lives. It WILL effect my relationship with you if you're blatantly indifferent to her. If you're indifferent to her, I'm indifferent to you. I can't tell you how easy this is for me! :) If we care about each other enough, we should show interest in each other's endeavors even if those endeavors are completely different from what's going on in our own lives.

4. I realize that I spent the majority of my 20's trying to please everyone. Most of the decisions I made were to make sure I was doing things right by some general standard. This is a really hard habit to break! I'm not complaining. I think it worked out fine but my resolution for my 30's is that I will make decisions based on what's best for my family, not what suits everyone else's plans. In this decade, I will give you as much energy and respect as you give my family, no more, no less. If we've gone out of our way to show how important you are in our lives, I expect you to do the same. If you don't, I won't waste my energy either. I'm REALLY looking forward to doing this. I feel like in the past, we've given so much importance to certain people who have not deserved it that we've neglected the ones who are important to us. this has and will change.

5. we've been so pre-occupied the last few months that I have barely even watched the news and don't know what the heck is going on in the world. I'm going to make an effort to plug back in and connect to life outside of my home :)

6. more than once or twice I've heard something like "why are you wasting your time folding little onesies when you should be spending time with your little one" or "now that you have a baby, you'll be doing laundry 3 times a week!!" or "have baby stuff completely taken over your house yet??"..... I still do laundry once a week and my kid is in fresh clothes every day. my sink isn't full of dirty dishes, our bed is almost always made daily, the floors are mopped once or twice a week and our place doesn't look any different than it did before we had a baby (besides the baby swing in the family room). I don't think this makes us bad parents!!! I know I'm lucky to have a husband who definitely does more than his share of things around the house. what can I say, we're more relaxed in a tidy home :)

7. I can't get enough of my girl. in the past 3 months, the number of photos on my phone has gone from 232 to 1140 :)

ok, that's it.