Worst Momma Ever

That's how it feels right now, three days into sleep training.

Ella does not like sleep training (that is putting it very mildly).

She makes this very clear by screaming and crying for hours on end in the room that we have banned her to for nap time.

It's pretty traumatizing, listening to Ella's distressed cries at nap time. I call up my mom multiple times in a day to tell her how awful it is.

And to get back at us for our cruelty, Ella no longer sleeps through the night. She wakes up every few hours, demanding food.

The other night around 3am I sat up, which woke up Adam and he asked me what was wrong. 

"Ella is sucking on her hand. She's hungry."

Adam was quiet for a moment, listening, "You can hear that?"

Oh yes.

I can sleep through Adam's blaring alarm clock but the moment Ella starts softly sucking her hands I am instantly awake. 

My mom ears are amazing.

I would post more pictures but my computer is attempting to crash so I kind of can't.

"Family" Photos

I LOVE how Bleubird Vintage does family photos like this.

Those pictures kind of inspired these, but the camera was dying when we took these so we just took them really fast. Next time we'll work harder to imitate the Bleubird style, but I liked how these turned out too.

You may be wondering where Ella is in these "family" photos. Well, we took a lot of pictures with her in them and they all turned out to be completely out of focus (like this one):

 The only ones that were not out of focus were the terrible ones, like this one:

Um, what is happening here?

Stretch

There is this little stretch that Ella does that I LOVE.

she does it when she wakes up from a very long nap

I love the way she purses her lips 

(exactly like she did in her ultrasound pictures before she was even born)

And how she pulls her head back into her shoulders

And pushes out her belly

And how one of her pointer fingers points up to the sky

(she has a thing with her pointer fingers right now)

I just love it.

Back before a certain little girl arrived...

So, I did this drawing that was used for a charity organization called Carollama in Provo. They go caroling with llamas and collect food for the food bank-- pretty awesome!

They changed up the image a bit for their posters and t-shirts. 

I secretly wish they had sent me one of their t-shirts because that would have been cool to have one with my illustration on it.

Images from their facebook page

The latest pictures for the grandparents

2 1/2 Months

One week old

One month old

Two and half months old

Whoa. 

How can a little person grow up so much in two and half short months?

When Your Momma Dresses You Like a Crazy

Having a baby is like going back to those days when you played with dolls and half the fun was dressing them up-- it's pretty great.

Unfortunately, unlike dolls, Ella does not enjoy being dressed, she throws a fit about it every morning. But maybe that's because her mom dresses her like a crazy half the time, such as the outfit below. I may or may not think that tights and a onesie make one of the best outfits ever.

It's hard having a head that makes up half your body weight.

Lovely Long Lashes

The Lights in Vegas

A year ago we went on a weekend trip to Vegas. 

We were less than a month pregnant, and we didn't know yet that we were expecting.

And now, a year later, we took another trip to Vegas, this time with our third family member much bigger and much more vocal than before.

She did so good in Vegas! 

She LOVED the lights and watching all the people. 

She even took her daily naps in our arms as we walked down the strip and through stores.

Look at how much she adores her dad

Pink polka dots

After I got dressed and had dressed Ella I realized that I accidentally put us in matching outfits and those outfits matched her doll, so we took a matching picture of the three of us.

Adam loves it when Ella matches one of us, I think it's kind of weird. But I have accidentally dressed her in a matching outfit to mine on multiple occasions. I didn't realize that I had so many things to match her onesies.

Once this little girl was inside my tummy

Once upon a time I had a tummy like this:

39 weeks--a couple of days before Ella came

And every time I leaned toward the bathroom mirror to put on mascara, my tummy would dip into the sink and get all wet from the water on the sides of the sink. And now the thing that was inside my tummy looks like this: 

We started doing a nightly routine to let The Girl know it's time for bed and it starts with a bath, which she loves!

Her hair is growing all over her head, not just in that crazy patch on the back

Buddha tummy  

When you let out a little toot...

...just blame it on Dad.

"Blogs may help women transition to 'mom'"

 

My mom sent me THIS article about how blogging (both reading other blogs and writing your own) helps women transition into into being a mom because they have "a greater sense of social support and connection."

I completely agree with this article and this is why:

We moved right before we had Ella and so I have approximately zero friends here because I don't really have school or work to make friends and being with Ella all day doesn't really lend itself to meeting new people. There are definitely some really nice people that we know here, but no one that I could call up and talk to about Ella and who would care to see endless pictures of her. So thank goodness for this blog that is always available to listen to me talk about Ella and never complains about the ridiculous number of pictures I post of her. 

The greatest make-believe friend ever! 

Plus, there are so many other blogs about moms having babies and the crazy things they are going through (one of my current favorites is this beautiful mom who is pregnant with twin boys, I love reading her weekly pregnancy posts) and it's so nice to read about other people going through the same thing as you, even if you've never met that person. 

And on top of all that, blogging is one of the only things I can do with one hand while feeding Ella or rocking her to sleep or just holding her so that she'll stay asleep for longer than five minutes (see picture above). I cannot tell you the number of nights that I have been awake at 3am, Ella in hand, reading blogs until she falls asleep*. It's nice to have something to distract me from how exhausted I am. I feel much more patient with Ella's refusal to go to bed at a normal time when I have something interesting to look at while she dozes off and that's important to me to be able to feel patient at times like that.

Conclusion: blogs are a wonderful thing.


But in contrast to all that, I thought this blogger had a good point. I don't have the problem of feeling the stress of needing to respond to hundreds of comments on my blog each day, but I think she's definitely right about making sure you prioritize your time so that you are spending quality time with your child and not wasting that precious time on the internet or blogs. 

*Disclaimer: I realized that it might sound like I am the only one who ever stays up late with Ella, and let me assure that that is not even close to true. Adam is up with her in the middle of the night just as much as I am and is pro at getting that girl to zonk out. I don't know what I would do without that cute-faced boy.