Happy Birthday to me!

29 today - I can't believe it! Where the heck did my 20's go?! I feel like time is going SO fast! Well, I can't complain, I feel very lucky to have wonderful friends and family, be married to a man I love, and to have a house and a beautiful baby girl. Here's hoping that my next 29 years are just as happy! :)

Rolling over

Well, today Zoey finally rolled over from her back to her tummy, and I missed it again. She had done it once before when she was about 7 weeks old and I missed it that time too! I had been changing her diaper, turned around to get something from the diaper bag, and when I turned back around, she was on her tummy. But that time was definitely a fluke because she didn't do it again until today. And of course it was while I was out of the room! She was playing on her playmat, and I was in the kitchen getting something to drink and then when I came back in the room, she was on her tummy. So I rolled her back over and then she rolled right back to her tummy. We did this whole scenario a few times. so I think that she has mastered the skill! Yay for another milestone accomplished!

And here is my attempt to post a video of when she started rolling tummy to back. This was from a few weeks ago and I never got around to posting. It's just a silly little video from my phone, so it's not that great of quality, but I'm trying out new things with my blog and want to see if I can figure out putting in a video. Hopefully this works!

too much Christmas shopping

Can't you tell how thrilled she was to go Christmas shopping early this morning? :) I got brave and ventured out to Target. It wasn't too bad since it was early in the day - we left the house shortly after nine. So things were not too crazy yet and I was able to pretty much finish up the shopping that I had left to do. I'm still waiting for some of my online orders to arrive and I have a few gift cards that I need to pick up, but other than that I'm pretty much done.

making friends with Lexi

Zoey is starting to be really interested in the animals. Whenever they get close enough, she tries to grab at them and pet them. It's so cute. Yesterday she was having so much fun with Lexi - laughing and smiling at her. We tried so hard to get the cute moments on camera, but these pictures really don't do it justice. Oh well, I have a feeling Zoey and Lexi will grow to be good friends and we will have tons of cute pictures of them!

Here's a few of the pics anyways.

Lexi was so cute and sweet and tolerated me posing them together to try to get a cute pic. She's such a good dog! :)

5 months old today!

I can't believe that Zoey is 5 months old! The time is really going by so fast. I took her 5 month picture today, but it was quite a challenge because she kept trying to eat the paper! I guess either one of these could be the "official" 5 month pic. That's about as good as we could get before she had enough

And here are a few while I was trying to get her to hold the paper and look at the camera - not the easiest task!
And then just a few more throughout the day today. Can you tell I love taking pictures of her? It's so great to have a digital camera and be able to take tons and tons of pics and then only keep/print the good ones.

In the bumbo - she loves being able to sit up

On her play mat - she finally will tolerate "tummy time". She holds her head and chest up so well now - such a big strong girl!Standing (okay, really just leaning) and playing with her activity table. She loves it!

still sick, but such a happy baby!

This is a picture of Zoey that I took yesterday, and as you can see the cold that she is dealing with has not seemed to put her in a bad mood at all. She's still happy and smiley and such a little sweet heart. I just feel so bad that she is so sniffly and congested and coughing. But really, it doesn't seem to be bothering her all that much as you can see from the big smile in the pic above. I think it's got to be one of my favorite pictures so far. I can't help but smile every time I look at it - her smile is contagious! :)

First night in the crib was a success!

Well, I did it. She slept in her crib last night and it actually went really well. She went to bed on the early side because she really didn't take a good nap yesterday. So, she was asleep in her crib by about 7:30 and slept straight through until about 4:30am. And I actually slept really well too. I only got up twice to check on her once at around 1:00 and again at about 4:00. She was sleeping peacefully like a little angel both times, so I really think that she will sleep a lot better in her own room where we don't have to worry about waking her. She slept 9 hours straight last night (7:30-4:30), then I nursed her and lay down with her and she went back to sleep until 8:30. So she actually slept for 13 hours last night! Yay Zoey! :) Hopefully we will have the same luck tonight.

I think it's time to move her to the crib

Actually, it is probably long overdue but I just haven't been able to bring myself to move her. :( And it's not like her room is that far away - her doorway is literally two steps from our doorway, so she is so close that we can probably hear her without even really needing the monitor. But still, I have continued to put it off. I just really like having her in the cradle next to our bed. It's nice to be able to just peek in at her without even getting out of bed. But....I really feel like she is not sleeping as well as she could because of being in the same room with us. She is starting to become more senstive to light and sounds while she is sleeping and so it's hard for us to go in and out of the bedroom once she's asleep without waking her up. Like last night - Joe finally stumbled into bed at about 3:00 am and as soon as he is all settled in, she started fussing so I had to get up with her and feed her. It's not really that big of a deal because she will usually just nurse for about 10 minutes or so and then go right back to sleep, but I know that she doesn't really need to eat because some nights she will sleep 9 or 10 hours before waking up to eat. So, I really don't want her to get used to waking up and eating in the middle of the night because I think then she may start to just do it out of habit rather than really being hungry. So...I definitely think it's time for her to start sleeping in her own room. I just have to do it. I know that she will be fine - I am the one who is going to have a hard time with it. And surprisingly, Joe has not been in any hurry to move her out of our room. I thought that he would be anxious for us to move her into the crib, but any time we have talked about it in the past, he's always told me that he thinks we should keep her in the room with us and he likes having her there. Awww....Daddy loves his "little bean". :)
So anways, I think I just need to set a goal or deadline for myself or else I will never do it. Maybe if I get brave I will try putting her in the crib tonight, but I definitely want to try to do it in the next week. She will be 5 months old next week, so by that time I am really going to try to have her in the crib. We'll see how it goes....

First attempt at holiday photos = FAIL

Well, of course I want to get some cute pics of Zoey for Christmas so today I attempted putting on one of the Christmas outfits that I have for her and taking some pictures. Let's just say she was less than thrilled. None of them turned out all that great - she looks way too sad for a "Merry Christmas" photo - ha ha. I'm debating whether or not it would be worth it to take her somewhere to have professional pictures taken. I'm just not sure how much they would be able to do with her since she can't even sit up by herself yet.

Here are some of the pics - none of them are a great holiday photo, but I think they are pretty funny. She was looking everywhere but the camera and kept getting distracted by the pets. When I finally got her to look at the camera, she didn't look all that happy. Oh well, we'll try again in a few days.

Sicky sick sick :(

So, it's that time of year -the three of us are all sick with awful colds. Zoey has seemed to have the sniffles for about a week now, but now she's coughing and sneezing too and so congested. And now Joe and I have it too so the three of us are all feeling awful :( Surprisingly though, Zoey is in pretty good spirits - she doesn't seem to be too miserable although she is wanting to nurse more often and seems to need to sleep more. We had a rough night earlier this week where she was up about 5 times. I think she's just having a hard time breathing when she's laying down flat - poor baby. We used a vaporizer last night and that seemed to help. Hopefully we will all be feeling better soon - I hate being sick and hate having a sick baby even more. :(