Christmas 2016!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas! I know I haven't updated in a while on life, but that post is coming this week. 

Honest Thankfulness

With Thanksgiving behind us and entering into this season of gratitude, I’m so thankful for my now four children. I’m thankful every day for them. They are my greatest blessings in life and they give me such joy. With the baby now being 14 months (who needs to be the last baby mind you), I’ve definitely felt myself clinging to her last little baby-ness, which is one of the reasons I haven’t stopped breastfeeding even though I’ve been saying I was going to stop early with her for months.

Being able to nourish my children has been a gift for me. I’ve exclusively breastfed, I’ve formula fed, or done a combination of both at various points in my life. I’ve also breastfed well into toddler hood. I love breastfeeding….It’s a beautiful and natural thing and it gives me great pride to have nourished my babies. Women should be able to breastfeed anywhere and they shouldn’t need to hide, or be made to feel ashamed for feeding their babies. They also shouldn’t be made to feel bad if they’ve formula fed. A mother has to do what’s best for her and her baby. If the baby is being fed, that’s what matters.

Learn more about your feeding options from The Honest Company.

Ava's 1 year pictures!

I can't believe I didn't post Ava's 1 year pictures. She turned a year on September 12th and we had just a quiet party at home. My mom and some of H's parents were able to skype in when we sang her happy birthday so that was nice. Currently she's 14 months and I'll be doing an update on her soon. 

Have a great Wednesday!

Birthdays, birthdays, birthdays.

Super late on this since Serena's birthday was on November 12th. As always it's hard to believe she has turned another year. She's 14 now! I'm so proud of the girl she's turned out to be. First children don't come with a manual, so it's often on a parents mind if they've gotten the child rearing right. Serena is kind, helpful, smart and caring. I think maybe we got some things right. ;)

In the Fall spirit

Rose lace headband: {FHJ Baby}

Fringe booties: {Old Navy}

I don't know about you...

but in 2048 I'm voting for Mariam!

Happy 4th birthday Mariam!

Yesterday November 5th was actually her birthday and it was a great day! I'm feeling so thankful this spunky, free-spirited little wildflower is ours. 

Have a great Sunday!

Hello October..

I've been absent from here again lately. Always something I tell you...

October has felt, I dunno, weird in a way, and mundane. Not boring for sure since there is always, always something to do. I think October and I got off on the wrong foot here. Maybe the beginning has started off a little quiet in regards to running around like a chicken with it's head cut off, and it feels out of my element. Regardless, it's about to pick up again and pretty soon I'm going to be complaining about how overwhelmed I am with it all.

Onto the usual, Mariam has been doing great with her schooling at "mommy school". She's usually eager to work on her letters and numbers, and it's been awesome to see her really grasping things and understanding. Her temperament has much improved as well. Now if she could stop asking for snacks like every 30 minutes that would be cool.

Layla is doing great in Kindergarten. She loves doing her homework as soon as she gets home, and she never gives me a hard time about waking up early. Serena is doing fantastic at school as well and has been occupied with church choir, her keyboard, and training for the track team lately. Onto Ava. Hoh boy. My stage 5 clinger lately. She's been hard lately. Super attached. Hardly wants me to put her down or else she cries. She's also still sleeping terribly. At this rate, maybe I'll get a decent nights rest by the time she turns 2 and a half. I really need this child to sleep. It's been hard trying to get some of my business needs taken care of and also to enjoy some down time. I tried letting her cry it out one night for about an hour last week--nope! Not doing that again. My next step is trying to cut down her night feedings, but she gets so upset and I'm so tired that I end up giving in after she won't calm down. I fully understand I'm part of the problem. Sigh. We'll see what happens. 

Today..

At this point does anyone believe me when I say I'm going to be blogging 2-3 times a week again? Ha! I know I said that in my last post on the 11th. Life, man, what can I say? I've got a ton of back posts, but I'm going to just keep it simple today and start with....today.

As usual I had another sleepless night with Ava. Every night is consistently bad, but some are worse than others, The past two nights have been hard. Sleep deprivation has a way of playing with your head. I definitely get more emotional and easily agitated when I've had a rough night. I felt like I had a touch of the blues, but everything is wonderful. There is much to be happy about and I knew I needed to count my blessings. I thought that maybe a little beach therapy might help. There's something about the ocean that instantly makes you forget any troubles. I loaded up Ava and Mariam and we were at the beach by 9:30 am. It was actually my first time taking Ava by myself and it went surprisingly well. I wore her in my moby wrap and wore a backpack. I also brought a mini umbrella, so despite these pictures, she was otherwise shaded from the sun. 

Ava 11 months!

Super behind on these seeing how she turns one tomorrow, but here is a recap of 11 months.

Weight

I haven't weighed her in a while so I'm not sure, but she's probably around 20 pounds by now. She'll be having her one year checkup soon.

Health

Over the summer nobody got colds, but with Serena and Layla back in school, the back to school germs are back. Layla started to get a cold which Mariam then got, and then Ava. She never got a fever with this one, but it was over a week of a runny nose. She sleeps even worse when she's sick, which is expected, but super hard when she already wakes up 2-3 hours a night on the regular.

Sleep

Still the same. Two short naps a day and then waking up every 2-3 hours at night. Only once a month will we get like a 4 hour stretch thrown in there. Several friends tell me to let her cry through the night, or feed her something heavy right before bed, or stop nursing her etc. The list goes on, but H and I don't feel comfortable letting our kids cry it out. I've debated not nursing her anymore since everytime she wakes up she expects it, but I'm not ready to end this bond yet. I really want to make it till two years old like I did with Mariam. I know I need to make some changes as the pediatrician suggested, like cutting down on nursing at night. Start trying to wean her off the night time feedings. Believe me my muscles are tired and I don't want to nurse her almost every time she wakes up, but I'm so tired and I know it makes her go back to sleep pretty fast instead of thrashing around for an hour. I have some great news though! She slept through the night last night! After rolling around in her crib for what seemed like forever she fell asleep around 10:30 am and didn't wake up till 5:38 am! I nursed her and then she slept for another hour. I can't stop smiling. I want to shout it from the rooftops! Tomorrow is her one year birthday so she picked an interesting time to do it. I hope she does it again. 

Clothes

She currently wears 12-24 month clothing. Depends. If we are at home I usually put pants and knee pads on her since we have all hard wood floors. 

Diet

Still exclusively breastfeeding and eating solids. She loves beef and she's not a fan of anything green unless it's mixed in with other foods and she can't see it. We still don't give her eggs and dairy since she starts getting a rash when we do, but we'll try again at a later time. She's never taken to a bottle, but she has started to take a sip or two from a sippy cup. 

Milestones

She's done so much these last few months. I haven't updated since she turned 8 months, but she's started to take a step here and a step there. She also points to things and says "da" when she wants something. She enjoys blocks, getting into the spice cabinets and knocking her sisters books off the shelves in their closet. She tries to repeat words, she loves to give hugs and she's just so sweet and getting more social. I know I'm missing a lot of things here, but it's not all coming to mind right now. 

Life Lately....again

Soooo...looks like the last time I updated was when school started. Silly me. I don't know why I thought things were going to get easier and more relaxed with 2 out of 4 in school again. Quite the opposite. I think it's gotten busier, less stress then with all 4 kids at home during the summer, but busier. I love it though and I plan on getting back to blogging 2-3 times a week again.

In the past few weeks, I joined the Junior League (which I'm super excited about and will go into detail later), the school advisory council for Layla's school and the PTA. Meetings, school functions, play dates, my business and 4 girls, well you can imagine that it's been go, go, go. The past weekends we've kept it pretty low key as we try to reel down from the busy week and still sleep deprived. A beach outing here, a pool outing there, baking, church, walks, grocery shopping, etc.

Oh I almost forgot to mention I've been home schooling Mariam who is 3 as well. She'll be 4 in November so with a late birthday, she misses the cutoff age to enter pre-school this year which means she doesn't get to start till next year. I want her to have a head start so we've been doing school in the mornings, broken up since I still have Ava to tend too. So far it's been working out well and I've noticed it's been helping her temperment too. She's very strong willed and challenging to put it nicely, but she can also be very sweet and she's pretty articulate for her age. 

Happy Labor Day!

School days!

My first born started 8th grade on Monday! Omg. It's hard to believe she'll be in high school next year! Layla also started kindergarten yesterday. She did great and she loved it! Her school does a staggered start so she had no school today, but she'll be back tomorrow. So now it will just me Mariam and Ava home with me. Yesterday was our first day back with this arrangement and I'd like to say the day was easier, but it wasn't. Ava hardly napped and I had to fight Mariam to get in the car to pick up Layla. One day it will be more quiet and I'll be less stressed, but I know by then I'll be missing the kids when they were small. 

Late Marco Island Pictures

Ava is napping thank God, so I have a few moments to spare to get some words out and share some pictures. We had a rough night last night. Well it started out great, I got to enjoy some "me" time alone from the kids. Met a girlfriend up for dinner and margaritas, and then we went to watch Bad Moms. I came home and H had miraculously managed to get Ava to sleep. I actually thought maybe I'd get some decent sleep tonight. I don't know why I thought that because she sleeps bad every night, but a gal can dream. So I do my business of changing, brushing my teeth, etc. I climb into bed, settle down to read some emails and 10 minutes later she's up, and she stayed up.

All the way till 3:00 am in the morning. 

I've spent many a sleep deprived night with my babies, but can't say I ever remember staying up that late with them. Needless to say my head feels like it's going to explode and I'm counting down the hours for H to arrive home from work. I could really use some rest today and while I'd also love to drive down to the beach which is just a couple miles away, there's no way in hell I'm taking the 4 by myself right now. Serena is old enough to help, but I'm just not up to dealing with the cleanup of sand, baths, and laundry which comes after every beach trip. Instead I'll just reminisce about our recent weekend trip to Marco Island. I can't wait to go back. We stayed at the Marriott's Crystal Shores and we all absolutely loved it. The amenities were great and the beach was beautiful. 

Have a great Wednesday!