I have stayed away from these posts because honestly I don’t enjoy reading them on other people’s blogs, so I just assume other people wouldn’t want to see them here.
However, given the readiness of the photographs and lack of time currently, combined with the more “real” nature of cell phone photos, I thought I’d give it a try and you let me know if it’s something that I should occasionally share here or not.
I have a few weeks to catch up on, so let’s start with the week furthest back (top left to bottom right)
1. nursing at the pool 2. Lexi getting all excited about a red flower on the window 3. grumpy pants
4. all set with a fan and a Haba doll 5. out and about, had to put her to sleep in the car while hubby shopped 6. same day, woke up doing tummy time on the seat
7. she loves tummy time in the morning 8. trying to get things done around the house while Lex is in her Nordic carrier 9. more tummy time (seriously that girl is only happy on her tummy or trying to crawl )
1. more tummy time 2. nursing with a friend 3. more carrier action
4. our house 5. lounging outside 6. morning stroller walks
7. up from a nap 8. bathy bath time 9. her first pig tail
1. Loving the new sunny stroll arch 2. reading books ( really she was just interested in eating it) 3. she loves being walked around on mommy’s neck
4. check out that leg lol 5. don’t ask, she does that often with her favorite teether 6. “mommy, need boobie!”
7. more walks 8. out by the pool with friends 9. helping mama work
1. smiley morning girl 2. fathers day with friends by the pool 3. Leeka visiting
4. we can sit up unsupported now 5. more tummy time on our favorite supermat 6. kisses from mommy
7. crawling from supermat to her gym– our family room is her playground 8. women in black 9. going for a walk with another 4months old friend
oh these are so adorable! All of them! I LOVE Lexi looking at her friend in the last picture! ha! so cute! and the leg picture and the bath picture! So cute! 🙂
Really, all the research you do and you have her forward facing in a carrier? Please look it up in relation to babies’ hip/spine development.
I appreciate your snarkiness but the carrier I’m using has her hips in a correct position even in front carry.
<3 you Elena. you make me smile!
Lovely photo. what is your instagram name?
girl_on_e 🙂
Your little girl is beautiful!!! You can tell she is completely happy, and I love that.
Do I spy a 4 Mom’s Origami stroller? How do you like it?
I love it! The seat is still too upright for us to use it all the time but it’s a pretty neat stroller!
Oh she’s soooo adorable wrapped in that towel 🙂
Love all the pics 🙂
pic posts are fun. I’ll look through quickly and not really read much, but who doesn’t like looking at babies?
anyway, your comment on her only being happy during tummy time/trying to crawl made me think of something. I know Alexis has been very intense and alert from the start and she reminds me of my kid. I’ve been saying about her since practically birth that she won’t really be happy til she’s big like me. So far, I’ve been right with that assessment. Every time she learns a new ‘older’ skill (crawling, standing, walking, signing, talking) she gets easier. She’s now a fairly easy three year old. She still has age appropriate tantrums and behavior of course, but on the whole, she is much easier and more laid back than she was as a baby… including going to bed HAPPILY now each night rather than fighting me on sleep for ages like she did as a baby. Perhaps you’ll have the same experience with Alexis?
I’d like to believe my efforts at maintaining a calmer home with natural and logical consequences over punishments has something to do with it, but really? It’s just her personality. She still gets frustrated when she can’t do what adults do. She still wants to be held so she can be at adult’s level. I’m betting other than other age appropriate behaviors as we go from here, she’ll continue to get easier regardless of what I do just because she has hated being little since birth.
I’m guessing you’ve already looked into it, but I highly recommend teaching some sign language to Alexis if you think this might be her at all. As you probably know, it seems to help most little ones in the gap between baby and speaking but I found it especially useful for my baby who was resentful of being a baby haha. She only learned about 20 signs but they were a lifesaver. She also made up about 5 signs on her own which was ridiculously cute (including making up a sign for her special blankie and eventually using that same sign for nursing as well… it’s clear what was most important to her at the time <3) She forgot the signs as she learned to speak which kind of made me sad but I think it really really helped her feel bigger while she figured out that whole tongue/teeth/lips/sound thing. I'll admit, one of the main ways I taught her was by using the baby einstein's baby sign video. I'd sit and do it with her (usually, unless I was in dire need of a break so I'd set her up in her high chair with a toy) and it was the quickest way for us to learn some basic signs together since I didn't know many yet myself. Once we got a few down though, it went fast to add (and make up!) more. TV is not generally something I'm down for with babies (we started at 12ish mo though although I wished I started earlier) but it really helped get through harder days with her and learn.
Thanks, Bryanna! I gotta admit it’s a very interesting hypothesis you have there and it might very well be right on the spot. She also prefers our company to toys or anything else (and strongly). Her best entertainment is being talked to, sung to, or carried around and explained things. Toys- meh…she’ll play with them for 1-2 minutes at most. I’m very interested to see how she grows up to be, but so far she definitely gets less fussy as she learns to do things on her own.
As far as sign language, it’s funny you mention that- we started with 4-6 signs about 2 weeks ago and so far I really like it and so done she. She gets a total kick out of “all done” sign and always laughs and she definitely understands “milk” sign ( which we use for boobie), and I think is starting to understand the bath sign. I know she won’t be able to use them for a quite a while ( the sooner you start , the longer you have to wait), but it has definitely made her feel more at ease/in control when she knows what’s going to happen.
I just finished a chapter on TV in the book I am reading and I’m definitely not doing TV anything for 2-3 years, but as she gets MUCH older, I might consider the signs DVD as long as she does it with one of us. But I am sort of afraid to even get on the TV train.
Oh yeah, she sounds a LOT like my kid. My kid only really likes toys if you are down playing with her, and that only started after she became a toddler. As a baby, she preferred singing and talking and walking around and lots and lots of books. She still loves to sit around and read or go out for walks and learning. I have a 3 year old who is more fascinated with learning about the food chain than playing with her legos haha. She’s of average intelligence as far as I can tell, but it’s interesting where her interests lie.
As for TV, I can tell you that at least with my kid, although I started younger than I intended (I freely blame postpartum depression and anxiety with my need for some electronic babysitting) she really doesn’t care about TV. She’d MUCH rather go outside and find bugs or read books or color and watch me write things (doesn’t know any letters yet but I think that is only because she prefers to watch me than learn. She can recognize her name) She’ll watch something if I offer but she VERY rarely asks to watch if she has other things to be engaged in. I think that also is part of her personality. She’s too busy trying to learn things to feel bigger than to sit around watching Curious George hahaha. If she does ask to watch, she usually only watches part of it and is off running doing other stuff because she gets bored. Laying around is for babies after all! So I wouldn’t worry TOO much if you have to give in before your desired age for whatever reason because I bet your kid is going to be the same and wanting to get into stuff before sitting around watching a show, having their brains melt.
I also bet Alexis will have an intense ‘Why?’ phase like my kid. I mean, they all go through it but oh goodness is it intense with my kid. She needs to know EVERYTHING. and she doesn’t want kid answers… the more information you give, the better. And she knows when you aren’t giving the whole story and you’ll get an hour of BUT WHYYYYY MOMMY!!!! til you give more even if you know darn well she won’t even understand and will forget til it comes up again and you get a million more WHY??!s to reexplain it. Hopefully this means she’ll do well in school?
Wow it’s really cool to hear what Alexis might be like when she’s older. And Also good to know someone was exactly like her. How did you get anything done? I am struggling being able to cook or clean. Cleaning can be done with her in the carrier at least, but cooking is just a big old fail with how she needs our attention 24/7.
In the first year (and honestly, quite a bit of the second year) between her serious neediness and my ppd/ppa, very little got done honestly. I ate a lot of foods I could prep/cook really quickly or not cook at all and many things were left uncleaned or cleaned to the bare minimum. I was usually behind on dishes and laundry. A lot of people say that in the first three months, it’s just survival and you only do what absolutely NEEDS to be done for everyone to be safe/alive, but my experience was that the whole first year was survival. Also I eventually had to learn to let her cry for a few minutes no matter how much I hated it. It’s honestly why I started employing the TV… I needed SOMETHING to give me a break or maybe get a load into the dryer. Or I’d set her up in her high chair and let her play with my cell phone (because you know, she only likes to play with ‘adult things’ since she obviously doesn’t care much for toys.) Something I normally wouldn’t let her play with would entertain her for a few minutes. Also, once we introduced purees, I often let her self feed. She didn’t eat much anyway and since it would entertain her to play in it, I’d strip her down to a diaper and just let her play. She’d get some in her but otherwise she was happy getting herself covered. Like your Alexis, she thankfully loved (and still does!) baths hehe.
Yeah… It was all about survival and seriously lowering my standards. I had ppd/ppa to contend with too though. It’s not a time I care to repeat, to say the least!
I WILL say, thanks to her desire to be so big, she’s awesome about trying new foods and repeating back things about behavior such as not hitting or talking nicely or what have you. She also LOVES LOVES LOVES to help with chores. She is SO not helpful, being only three, but I can give her small tasks such as pushing the laundry basket to my room to put things away (we have no stairs) or putting her underwear away or putting spoons away. She hates cleaning up her things like any kid, but she’s willing if you remind her we all have to clean up our things and then challenge her to try to get it all put away before a song ends (or the alarm at online alarm clock goes off.) She likes to be challenged and to race. Since she can and is willing to do all those little tasks, it makes it TONS easier to get things done. Start Alexis early with helping. A rag to dust… it’s typical child stuff but SO helpful with a kid who demands so much attention and desperately wants to be big like you. I probably could have started her at just a year with some things if I weren’t still coming out of my ppd fog.
Also, once she is doing more, you’ll probably find that spending time on long walks and lots of attention on her will make her willing to give you time to do things while she does something like coloring, or even shockingly, play with her toys. I find my kid has an attention bank now and the more I put in, the more I can get back especially if the attention I give includes her using tons of energy (she LOVES playing ‘run’ where she runs from point A to point B and I just have to sit and count to see how long it takes her… no energy on my part besides counting but LOTS on hers!)
Oh great tips ( especially on the RUN game). I am thankful she doesn’t seem to mind the carrier as long as she is facing out, though I can’t count on that lasting, since she changes her preferences so much.
Thanks again, it’s nice to hear from someone who went through a similar experience. And I am sorry about your PPD. I can only imagine how hard it was for you. There are difficult days with my husband helping and no PPD, so you must have really had it bad!
OH! and the sooner you learn a back carry, the better. My kid didn’t care much for being worn facing in and of course being in front limits some of what you can do. I was always very nervous about putting her on my back but once I figured it out and had some confidence in it? AWESOME. Next kid is going on my back WAY sooner now that I have some experience. You get her high enough and she can see out just like a front forward carry but you can do things like cook hot foods or reach for things where you wouldn’t want the baby in the way because she’s behind you. She LOVED going for walks on my back because she was up as high as me, could see where I could see, could still see/feel me and all the breezes and everything. I still carry her (35lb) on my back in my baby hawk actually although she also loves walking herself now or riding in a stroller. I probably would have gotten more chores done from 6-18mo if I had learned it in that time period.
I can’t remember if you’ve posted about trying or her feelings on it, but yeah, babies on front are limiting if you ask me but babies on back means suddenly you have so many more options. Just watch out for hair pulling hehehe
I actually tried back carry today in an attempt to get something done, and she was sitting just way too low and didn’t like it much. But the way she was crying and then laughing, and then crying made me think that she just doesn’t like it cuz it’s new. I will continue trying as she gets bigger. And she HATED hip carry.
Awww, why wouldn’t we want to see Instagram pics? They’re cute and candid. You could do a “Foto Friday” or something that is only 1 day of the week and post a collage of them there. 🙂
Whoops, just noticed that you *did* call it “Instagram Friday”. Hah!
LOL thanks for a smile 🙂
i love seeing your pictures, but when it becomes too often I skip them ,because i have seen them on instagram and find that when blogs post it on fb, instagram and their blog I tend to follow all but just one because if its all the same, why even have them. (just my opinion) i think you have a great balance!
Love the pigtail, and the teether pic is high-larious!
Awwwww Elena, I *LOVE* these more candid shots. Lexi is a beautiful baby girl. I love how relaxed everyone seems in all of these photos!
Really? Thanks!
*went to see if we really look relaxed* lol
LOVE the matching striped outfits!
These are cute, I agree about enjoying the more candid photos. I don’t follow instagram or do facebook or anything, so I haven’t seen these elsewhere. It looks like you have multiple strollers- maybe three? Can’t tell. Are they all good for different things or something? Or do you just grab whichever you feel like on a given day? Sorry if you’ve covered this before!
Some great photographs above. It’s a fascinating insight in to the world of babies. They are just sooo cuuute….
Warm Regards Ally..
Cute babe! Looks like all our momma days are very similar. Eat, sleep, try to be productive, give in and go to the pool! Ha!
I saw the conversation below with the woman and sign language. We did it but onl do SUPER basic. My kids know/are learning “all done, more, please, thank you, hungry and thirsty”. I will tell you, keep it up! They won’t really “get it” or do it back for a while, but when they do, it makes all the difference. My oldest is 21 months and I swear she doesn’t have as many melt downs because she can communicate with us. Some of those words are really hard, but signing is so much easier!
On the other note, I have heard that the carriers can mess up hip placement, but only if they are in there a bunch. My youngest wants to be held all the time, but i realize it’s not being held that she really wants, she wants to be included. I found our johnny jumper and I love it!! And if your babe is wanting to crawl and act like a big kid, it might be worth checking out! And what is awesome, is that you can get so much while they are literally hanging out! Just a thought.
“Eat, sleep, try to be productive, give in and go to the pool! Ha!” that is so true 😀
No one really cares about seeing breast feeding photos pretty gross if you ask me. This is suppose to be private.
Breastfeeding isn’t sex. It’s not “suppose” (-d) to be private. It’s a simple act of a baby eating. It’s only gross to those whose parents failed to expose them to the idea of properly nurturing a child.
I love seeing breastfeeding photos. The more we see, the more normalized it is. Breastfeeding is no more private than bottle feeding. Hell, in countries where women remain covered head to toe, they STILL breastfeed in public. Because it isn’t gross, it’s a normal physiological function between mom and child with benefits beyond just calories and nutrition.
Really? This is a baby blog. Get educated and get over it.
Uh, you DO know what kind of blog you’re on, don’t you, Linda? And nobody was asking you about what you thought of the BFing pics. Have you ever heard of saying nothing if you have nothing good to say?
I, for one, love breastfeeding pics, so keep on Elena. Ignore ignorant people like Linda.
These are great! I have seriously thought about doing iphone dump posts as well, for the simple fact it would be better than NOTHING which is about what I have time to do anymore. Sigh.
I was reading the comments between you and Bryanna and nodding in complete knowing agreement. Lillian will be 13 months on Thursday, and all through her first year I honestly kept thinking, oh I’ll be able to do more around the house at least when she’s one…nope, now I can do even LESS. She does require my constant interaction. I haven’t tried Bryanna’s suggestion of back carrier yet though, I’ll have to look into that. My house, my cooking, my blog…it all takes a back seat to Lillian and I wouldn’t have it any other way…though it would be SO NICE to feel like I can do little things here and there. :/ I’ll keep trying!
Anyway, about the phone pics, am I missing some nice app or something? I see soooo many blogs doing these nice little grids like this of 9 photos from the phone, and I wouldn’t have time to manually do that in PS or anything. Do you have an app for that?
Sorry, long-winded comment…just to let you know we finally decided on (with docs approval) an iron supplement for Lillian – Floradix. It doesn’t have preservatives, artificial coloring, etc. While we hate to give her anything like this, it’s better than fearing for her proper brain/body growth and developement with the lower end of iron levels in her blood. It’s only temporary till we retest though!
No, it’s not an app. I use Lightroom for all my editing and put it together there. I think there’s a fast way of adding pics into a grid in PS. Some action, but I’ve never tried since I rarely use PS.
Oh and thanks so much for the tip on the supplement!