We're home!

After quite a few hours traveling due to delays and such, we have finally made it home.

The house is a mess, Roo finally cut her second tooth, it's dark and rainy out, and any initiative that I might have had to get things done is totally gone now.

The pic is from the Portland airport on our way to FL - Roo was watching some kids play with their toys.

I'll update later with more pics and more text, but for now - we're alive.

Happy Birthday, Mama!

Pick me, pick me, I'm the one!

Yes - it IS 3:20 am here. However, Roo DID decide to sleep from 9:30 pm til now, so I have to give her credit for that. I went to feed her in her sleep about 10 minutes ago, she ate the entire side, which after almost 6 hours had a LOT of milk. It just kept coming, so in her half-awake state, she just kept eating. You can imagine the size of her stomach relative to the amount of milk she was trying to fit in there. All of a sudden, I had a coughing, puking ball of joy, complete with milk coming out the nose. Ooops. Of course, after that, she was wide awake, so here we sit.

In other news, I have been hardcore carseat shopping. Why? Well, I had the startling realization the other day that Roo has already outgrown her infant bucket seat! It only goes up to 26" and/or 20 pounds. Weightwise, she is fine, but heightwise she is too tall. Fortunately, I also have a Graco SnugRide that will go up to 29" and/or 22 pounds, so we have a little bit of time, around 2 months, I figure.

The specs I had to deal with were these:

- Gender Neutral - I needed a carseat that was gender neutral, or at least could work for a boy since we are definitely having at least one more. Fortunately, that is not hard to find with car seats, but I didn't want brown, particularly.

- Tall Shoulder Strap Heights - I needed one that could grown with tall kids. The weight it went up to didn't really matter to me because I'm pretty sure our kids will outgrow a seat by height LONG before they ever outgrow it by weight. Also, Oregon has tough car seat laws and requires kids to be in a seat/booster until age 8 or 4'9" tall.

- Small While Rearfacing - Have you seen our car? I will be getting a bigger car down the line, but at this point the infant seat she has now only fits with the passenger seat pushed forward quite a bit, so anything that has a really tall back was kind of out for us.

- High Rearfacing Weight - Most nice seats nowadays go up to 35 lbs. rearfacing, so this was a fairly easy option to find. Babies are safest rearfacing as long as possible.

- Comfortable - We drive a lot and I wanted a seat that I would want to sit for long periods of time. Have you felt some of the car seats out there? They make airline seats look cushy.

- Safe - I wanted a car seat from a company with high safety ratings. Cosco/Dorel and Evenflo do not do voluntary recalls and so both those companies were out.

I narrowed it down to the Britax Boulevard - on sale at Amazon for 229.99 (normally 309), but in a color I'm not especially fond of. It is cushy though! Other choices included the Radian65 and the First Years TrueFit. Since I wasn't going to pay 309 bucks just to have a seat in a color I liked, the Boulevard was out. The Radian65 is very long rearfacing, and most likely would not even come close to fitting in my car. That left the TrueFit.



I like the True Fit because the headrest comes off while rearfacing so it isn't so long - that is important in our car where space is at a premium! It also has the most cushions out of all the car seats. The shoulder strap heights go up to 18" which is higher than the Boulevard and as high or a little higher than the Radian.

BabiesRUs had it for 190 with a 20 dollar off coupon making it 170 but did not have free shipping so it was 190 shipped. I had a gift card there but I also had gift cards at Target. Target DID carry the TrueFit and had free shipping on it - so I found a 10% off code online and ended up getting it for 170 shipped in Sporty Blue. I had 135 bucks in gift cards there so it only ended up being 35 bucks out of pocket!

I've researched the heck out of carseats now, so if anyone needs info - I'm here!

How much laundry?

SOOO much!















This looked so pretty I had to share with all of you - plus it's going to be one of the last days we see sun for months, I'm sure...


I am so glad we don't do disposables solely for the cost - this is 2 days worth of diapers.

Soy - definitely out.

Roo and I went to Target the other day and found her new bathing suit for FL on sale for 1.48 for each piece! She is proudly wearing it in the pic, as you can see!

I trialed soy yesterday and unfortunately that was a no go. I had a bagel with the last ingredient being soy flour for lunch and by 6 pm she was acting colicky and like her poor tummy hurt. She also started rashing out again. Poor thing. I thought because I can eat soybean oil and she doesn't seem to react that soy flour might be okay, but apparently not. I'll be taking soybean oil out as well for now just because I don't want to risk it becoming allergenic.

Roo had been sleeping through the night (well, 5-6 hours in one stretch) but last night she was up almost every hour, if not more, wanting the boobies. I can't say that I blame her, I think she was wanting to settle her stomach. She is back to normal this morning though, thank goodness!

This morning, Joe was poking around looking for clothes and I had been behind on the laundry, I guess, because he had no more clean boxers. So laundry is the task for today. I needed to do diaper laundry as well anyway.

Our task for today, besides laundry, is to start packing for FL! We went to the Carter's outlet on Sunday when we went up to Woodburn and traded in all the clothes that no longer fit for ones that will - and they are oh so cute! I think we might have more outfits than days in FL though... oh well! She will just be the best dressed baby around!

Soooo sleeepy...

Well, we have gotten half the night down pat as to sleeping well... At least she is back on her old schedule (if you can call it that) of sleeping well the first part of the night. Though I really have no idea why she is so insanely squirmy the second half of the night! She just kicks and kicks and talks and eats and squirms from 2-3am on - the thing is, she isn't really awake, but it sure keeps me awake! I'm honestly so glad we aren't feeding her formula, because I really wouldn't get any sleep with having to go make bottles and warm them up all night.

We have discovered Roo loves the book Olivia by Ian Falconer. I suspect she really likes the colors of the book - it's in blacks, white and red, but it's the only book she will sit still for right now. I picked up a board book copy at Ross' the other day for $2, and so we have been reading it a lot. I'm going to have to pick up a few more of them.

Roo has taken to imitating our sounds lately - it's pretty funny. We'll say "hi" to her and she says it back and then grins away. She just thinks she is the bee's knees for figuring it out. Frankly, I think she is, too! She also had this funny cry now - when she is tired, she says "Nee"! Every time she does it, I automatically think of the Monty Python skit, The Knights Who Say Nee! It cracks me up :-) She has figured out that if she kicks her toy (in second picture) it will make noise and lights come on - so she sits there and kicks and kicks at it, all the while staring at the lights intensely. If she can't get the lights to come on, (sometimes she kicks it too far away) she gets very frustrated and tells me about it loudly!


Monday I'm hoping to get Roo ready and down to Eugene to go to a La Leche League meeting and then to Trader Joe's and Market of Choice to get some good food. I'm trying to rework our diet so that poor Joe isn't stuck with college food and I'm not making 2 meals a night. 3, if you count Riley's meal!

There is a VW show this weekend up in Woodburn, Joe wants to go, although he was wishy-washy about going when I asked him last night. I want to go so I can take all of Roo's outgrown-before-she-ever-worn-them clothes back to the Carter's outlet up there to size up. She is at the upper end of the 6 month size clothes right now - I'm sure she will be in the 9 month clothes within the month. Who would have thought my 3 month old would be wearing 9 month clothes?!?! I do love Carter's clothes though, I think they are so cute and durable!

VW Vixen

Roo has been phenomenal today. It seems like as the days go on, she just gets easier and easier. The dairy must have really messed her up!

She slept very well last night - partly due, I'm sure, to the fact that she didn't sleep much yesterday. Of course, well is relative. She still got up every 2 hours, but she slept solidly in between getting up, which makes it all okay. She was congested last night and a little this morning, I had a McChicken yesterday for lunch (was ravenous and didn't have a snack on me, so I chose the lesser evil). I didn't get mayo on it, but there is egg in the breading and I'm wondering if she is slightly intolerant to egg. I have been staying away from eggs, but figured I'd test it and see if she was intolerant or not. I guess she is. *shrugs*

Joe has a business trip at the end of October and I was talking to Mom today and she mentioned coming out to visit around that time which works out perfectly! I'm so excited; I wasn't really looking forward to a week by myself with Roo anyway. Our trip to Florida is coming up quickly - less than 2 weeks until we leave and 10 days until my birthday! I'll be over the halfway through the 20s mark to 30, which seems really odd. I feel too young to be closing in on 30. C'est le vie!

Just a quick post...

Roo ended up being 14 lbs., 12.5 oz (not quite as much as I thought, but I also have not had a whole lot of fat in my diet these days and I think it might be affecting my milk - I have since figured out how to get more fat, what a problem, right?) and 25.25 inches long, making her off the charts in height and weight!

She has a head circumference that is solidly right on the 50% percentile line though (trust me, I was happy when she was born for that one!).

The pic is from the drive in to town - poor Roo really didn't get to sleep between the ped's visit at 10 am and shopping, so by 3 pm she had about had it. We picked up Joe from work and headed home and she promptly slept off and on pretty much all afternoon and right into the night. Poor tired baby!

I'll update more tomorrow - she's sleeping and I'm pooped.