10 Months

Sammy turned 10 months old yesterday.

Only 2 months until she is a whole year old! I can't believe it!

This month she has grown taller and heavier and has gotten even better at standing and walking along furniture! She is so smart! But other than that there isn't much change from the last.

Pottying is about the same. Still having more misses than a while ago but we did better than last month with getting timing down.

Sorry for such a short post but stay tuned for weekly pictures!!

Mamatograhpy 2013

I decided to partake in Mamatography 2013. Basically I will be attempting to take a picture everyday of something that happened that day. Most will be of Sammy so that at the end of the year I can see how much she has grown! This last week was my first week of photos. Hope you enjoy!

January 14, 2013

 Gotta love silly daddy time!

January 15, 2013

After

Before

January 16, 2013

Cute Girl!!!

January 17, 2013

Ignore the fact that she is wearing the same outfit as the day before...Mama was sick and her clothes were still clean! But aren't those leg warmers so stinking cute! 

 

January 18, 2013 

Only got one shot on for the day. Grain free cheesecake brownies...YUM!

January 19, 2013

Poor girl scraped her face on a concrete step outside.

Then later she had some delicious avocado!!!

January 20, 2013

First pig tails!

Sammy is 10 months old today!

 http://s70.photobucket.com/albums/i109/Luschka/?action=view&current=mtbadge2.jpg" target="_blank">http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i109/Luschka/mtbadge2.jpg

" alt="mtbadge2" border="0" />This post is part of the http://www.mommajorje.com/2012/12/mamatography-2013-invitation.html" target="_blank">Mamatography 2013 Project withhttp://www.diaryofafirstchild.com" target="_blank"> Diary of a First Child and http://www.mommajorje.com" target="_blank">Momma Jorje.

We are taking (at least) a photo a day to keep a record of our year. Join us at any point during the year and start sharing your own daily photos!

Here's a list of current participants:

 ***

Without further ado, here are the Mamatography 2013 participants!

http://www.diaryofafirstchild.com/category/on-mamas-mind/projects/mamatography/" target="_blank">Diary of a First Child

http://www.earthmamasworld.com" target="_blank">Earth Mamas World

http://bakingmommaoftwo.blogspot.com" target="_blank">Baking Momma of Two

http://emmaslittleworld2.blogspot.com/p/365-photos-2013.html" target="_blank">Emma's Little World

http://quacksandwaddles.com" target="_blank">Quacks and Waddles

http://threecountiesmum.blogspot.co.uk" target="_blank">Three Counties Mum

http://seasidechelle.co.uk/category/a-photo-a-day" target="_blank">Seaside Chelle

http://gentlemum.wordpress.com" target="_blank">gentlemum

http://ben-and-hannah.blogspot.com" target="_blank">The Cutie and The Beauty

http://cfaculjak.blogspot.co.uk" target="_blank">Charming Gardener

http://maydela.blogspot.com" target="_blank">Pineapples & Artichokes

http://jessicascasserole.blogspot.com" target="_blank">Jessica's Casserole

http://life.urbanvox.net" target="_blank">Dad of The Monkeys

 

http://www.mommajorje.com/search/label/Mamatography" target="_blank">Momma Jorje

http://anaturemom.com/category/photos/mamatography/" target="_blank">A Nature Mom

http://mommyandlittlei.blogspot.com" target="_blank">Mommy and Little I

http://www.urszulasztukiel.blogspot.com" target="_blank">too tired to blog

http://thefamilypatch.com" target="_blank">The Family Patch

http://www.theprincesspoetslifeadventures.com/search/label/Mamatography" target="_blank">The Princess Poet's Life Adventures

http://harleyfamdamily.wordpress.com" target="_blank">harley famdamily

http://mamaunfurling.wordpress.com" target="_blank">Mama Unfurling

http://themommymetamorphosis.blogspot.com/search/label/mamatography" target="_blank">the mommy metamorphosis

http://mothersknowbest-cbe.blogspot.com" target="_blank">Mothers Know Best

http://questforlifespassion.blogspot.com" target="_blank">Quest For Life's Passion

http://frugalbritwitch.tumblr.com" target="_blank">Frugal Brit Witch

http://www.amywilla.com/category/photography/photography-projects/mamatography/" target="_blank">Me, Mothering, and Making it All Work

Its been a while...

Wow! Our life has been pretty busy the last few months and so much has happened! To catch us up:

Samantha showing her friend how to crawl.

We officially are moved into the intern house and have been for a few months now.

Samantha started crawling two days after we moved in!

She finally got over her diarrhea after having it for 6 long weeks!

So as of today Samantha is 9 months and 6 days old!!! Not only is she crawling but she is also pulling herself up on the furniture. She can bend down to pick something off the floor as long as she is supporting herself and she will sometimes walk along the furniture. She loves following me all around the house and loves to see what I am doing! Having her be mobile has been so awesome so far because the whole crying when I leave the room thing has finally ended since she can just go wherever I go!



Crawling and pulling up has also allowed her to reach many other things she couldn't before and since we also have a much larger house there is even more to get into. But we have been training her as you have probably read and she is very good at understanding what we say (although she doesn't always like it!) She now knows "Don't touch" "Don't eat it" "Let go" "no"  and "come here". Eighty percent of the time she obeys right away but occasionally with something she really wants she will give us a little fight, but we always make sure to win so that she doesn't lose.


As I mentioned earlier she finally got over her diarrhea. Pottying was going great for short time there afterwards but as she started getting more efficient at crawling she began cuing to us less. I have heard from other moms who EC that it is pretty common for babies to sort of "pause" when they hit a new major milestone like crawling or walking. Some mom's think that they literally stop caring and others see it from a more logical perspective. They are able to do and see so much more than they used to and just like we will wait until the last minute sometimes to go to the bathroom when we are preoccupied they will as well. The difference is that you and I know our breaking point and can accurately judge so as not to hit the point of no return. But an infant who is learning their body and gaining self control doesn't know that point yet. So I have had to start going off of timing again.

But she was so dang cute sitting like a big girl!

Another issue we have had was what potty I was putting her on. I bought a travel seat that lays inside the adult potty before she was born to use in public. But once she was big enough to use it I liked it so much I started putting her on it at home every time except in the middle of the night when I still use the Baby Bjorn. She was so cute sitting on the big potty like a big girl! And she was good at it too! I became comfortable enough with her on it that I would step away from her to get her diaper together or leave the room for a second which was a big mistake.

 One night I sat her on the potty right as we got home from being out. I left her side to take off my boots only a few feet away. I was talking to her and she was turning around to face me when she misjudged her balance and toppled right onto her forehead with her body collapsing on top of her face. She barely hit the floor before I swooped her up into my arms. My heart was racing and she was SCREAMING! It was the second most scary moment of her life! After a couple of minutes she finally calmed down and we assessed the damage. Just a bump on the forehead and broken capillaries on her little nose. She looked like Rudolph for a couple of days! I felt so bad that I ever got comfortable leaving her. I obviously stopped after that.

 But I also started noticing that she was pretty consistently not pooping on the big toilet and would instead wait until she was in a diaper (which you can imagine how frustrating that is given how far we have come). She would poop in her little potty but not the big one. Then I had a "duh" moment. Her little feet dangle off the big potty so she has no ground to bear down against when she has to poop. Imaging trying to poop sitting on the floor with your legs straight out in front of you. so we started sitting her on the little potty again in the bathroom and voila we've got poop in potty again!!! So maybe her falling off wasn't such a bad thing after all...just kidding!!!!!!



So Chris was laid off in November for the rainy season as expected and money is a little tight, also as expected. And I have been sewing things for Samantha and as gifts and everyone kept telling me I should sell them so I decided to start my own business! I am still working on all the details so currently I only have a facebook page but soon I hope to get my etsy page up and running. It has been so much fun so far deciding the name and creating the design. And I had my first two clients, my mom and a very close friend! But her you got to start somewhere right?! If you are interested please check out my page here and please like it also!

 So due to being so busy the last couple of months I failed to take Samantha's 7 and 8 month pictures. But I was sure to take her 9 month ones so at least I will have 1, 3,6, 9 and 12 month shots for her birthday (which I am so excited about!!) Here are other random pictures from the past months and her 9 month shots. Hope you enjoy!!!

A Christmas Eve nap

I found her sleeping in her crib like this today!

Sad to Leave but Happy to Move!

I am just so excited to announce that we are moving next week! We have been in living in a studio since we got married...well actually I have been living here since a month before we got married; 17 months! We are moving to the intern house where we were both interns. I am so very excited to be close to lots of people again and especially close to some of our best friends! We have been trying to figure out if and where to move to for such a long time so to finally be at this point is super exciting.

When we first found our studio we were so excited! We were just engaged and didn't have much time to find a place. I looked online everyday for something we could afford and close to our community when one day I found it! For $450 a month we were so shocked and it was within waking distance of the neighborhood where most people in our community lived! We called right away and came to look at it.

The lady from the property management group looked at us like we were crazy for wanting to look at such a tiny place. She talked to us like we were going to laugh at the thought of moving in once we actually got to see it. Then she didn't know how to react when I said I loved it!!! And I did. It was perfect to begin our new life as a new couple and eventually family, although we weren't expecting to start so soon. We were so excited about it we didn't even notice the broken screen door or the kitchen faucet that has the tiniest amount of hot water flowing from it. It had character...sort of. So we moved our stuff in and I moved in the month before the wedding.

First Arbuagh Kiss!

I enjoyed making the space ours and preparing it for Chris once he became my husband. There wasn't too much to prepare but I loved laying in bed at night picturing what my near future would like like after we said "I do". A few weeks later on June 11 we came to OUR little haven and became husband and wife then went out to eat India Oven : ) . We soon left for our honeymoon and returned with an extra person unknowingly hiding in my womb.

BFP!!!

I started feeling different and suspected I might be pregnant. Anxiously I waited to take a test and took a few way too soon! Then finally the first day my period should have started the test was positive! I couldn't believe it! Just 2 weeks into our marriage we found out I was pregnant! We began taking weekly belly photos almost immediately...and then forgot after a while.

First Weekly Pregnancy Picture

I remember the air conditioner broke towards the end of my first trimester. Yuck! It took the a whole week to finally replace it. And a week to a nauseous pregnant woman is a long time! Then winter came and my belly grew. I loved when I could start feeling her move inside of me! I spent so much time sitting on our only chair staring at my belly waiting for her to move. We rearranged our furniture and set up the co-sleeper before I was even 20 weeks! My excuse was so that we could get used to the new layout by the time she came but really I just wanted to daydream about when she would be laying in that bed next to me!

Last Pregnancy Shot at home at about 5 months

Winter began to fade and my pregnancy was coming to an end when I got the worst pregnancy rash called PUPPP. Ugh it was horrific. I was already past my due date and all of a sudden this incredibly itchy rash spread over my entire body and was constantly itchy! Scratching became my drug of choice. During the day we tried everything we could think of to get my labor started and to distract me from the itch but at night I would wake to find myself scratching like a madwoman! Chris would hear me and get me out of bed to throw me into the cold shower. Terrible! We would sit there for so long with the freezing water pouring over my body while I sobbed begging God to make it go away. I think that was just as hard as labor!

Sorry its blurry; first time to inspect my daughter

Finally 2 weeks after my due date labor began! I spent my labor walking around our small home back and forth from the bathroom to the kitchen into the main room and then all over again. I was in the bathtub when I broke down and cried to Chris telling him how hard this was. And after 18 hours of labor my beautiful daughter was born on our bed in our tiny home into the hands of my amazing midwife. I will always remember that corner of my bed right next to the door to the bathroom where I met my daughter for the very first time.

First Potty

This is our first home as a family and where many of my daughter's "firsts" have occurred!
Like her first time to get dressed, first laugh, first cry, first bath, first time to potty in the toilet, first time to roll over, first time to sit up, first time to roll off the bed, first time to have a poop explosion, first time to understand "no", first time to eat a food other than breastmilk. For her first 6 months this has been her home!

First Tantrum

So although I am very excited to be moving and to have much more space for our family there is a part of me that is sad to say goodbye to the first place we called home as the Arbaugh Family. I will cherish every single memory that I have of this tiny studio; the good and the bad. And now I am looking forward to our next home and all the memories it will bring.

6 months!

She is half a year old! I can't believe it! 

It looks like my posts have turned into monthly posts...and I am just fine with that. Now that Samantha is getting older I am finding that I don't have as much free time to blog. And like I said when I started, I would rather be spending my time living my life than writing about it. So if I can only do a post once a month that will have to do. 

She has grown so much this month mentally and physically.It is such a neat experience to see her mind trying to understand something and then a couple of days later it clicks! 

She is trying to crawl. I thought she might be crawling by now but not quite. She is getting up on all fours and doing some push up type motions. (It actually kind of looks like she is humping the ground : ) ) She tries reaching her very hardest to get something out of reach but usually ends up pushing her self backwards. However she is getting very efficient at rolling. She can roll in any direction and get where she wants to go. Since we don't have too much room in our house I try to give her time each day outside to practice her rolling/crawling.

Two days ago she started getting on her belly from sitting position! We were in church when she did it (we go to a house church) and it was in the middle of someone talking so I couldn't say anything but I almost jumped out of my seat I was so excited!! And she has done it a couple more times since then. 

She is really talking now! She especially loves to yell as loud as she can when we are in public bathrooms, and she can be so loud! A few times I have come out and Chris told me he could hear her over the busy restaurant or mall! I think she likes the sound of her voice when in echoes. So cute! 

She is still to obey to the word "no". She definitely knows what it means but sometimes she just really doesn't want to let go of some things she really likes. We have had a lot more opportunities this last month to work on training her to obey. We like the saying house proof your child don't childproof your house. So we are teaching her to not touch certain things like cords. But they look so enticing! It is so funny to watch her process the decision to play with them. She will see them within her reach and stare at them. Sometimes she will just look away and find something else to play with. Sometimes she will look and start to reach for them and remember what happens and then pull her hands away without us even saying anything. But sometimes she just wants to touch so bad and she will just go for it. Then we switch and tell her no. She cried for a few seconds then looks at them again before finding something else to play with. She is such a smart girl! Hopefully we will have moved by the time she starts crawling so that I don't have to retrain her on what she can touch and what she can't. 

My poor baby got diarrhea this month. And she still has it. It has been almost 4 weeks now! When she first got it she had a low fever and just didn't seem to be feeling well. I started researching what it could be and the 2 things it could sound like are parasites or Rotavirus. We did a parasite cleanse for a couple of weeks but nothing seemed to happen. If it is Rotavirus there isn't anything we can do since it is a virus. We have been watching her to make she she doesn't become dehydrated and she has been perfectly fine so far. They say that diarrhea from Rotavirus could last up to 6 weeks!! Poor thing! She actually doesn't seem to be affected by it at all. Other than the first week she hasn't been uncomfortable or fussy so as long as everything is going well I don't see any reason to go to the doctor. 

I did read that taking probiotics can help it to go away faster by healing up the intestines when the virus is gone. So I started giving her yogurt last week. And she loves it! She especially loves her spoon! It has been very fun giving her her first foods! Since then we have given her a tiny bite of tomato, chicken, and broccoli. And then this last weekend we went to Apple Hill and I had a pickle. Once she saw it she immediately wanted to chew on it so I let her waiting for the much awaited reaction to a pickle...and I got nothing! She LOVED it! I had a hard time getting any bites in for myself! I am not sure how much of it she consumed herself but she sucked on it until it started making her eyes water and I was at the bottom of it! She went nuts over it like it was a drug! Funny kid! Loves her pickles just like her mom! 

Due to her having diarrhea, EC hasn't been going to great as far as catching goes. It is almost like she has reverted to when she was only a newborn and would have poop farts all the time. Almost every diaper has a smidge of poop on it because she just can't hold it in. It's a bummer but practicing EC has helped her during this process. It has been helping to keep her out of her icky poop diapers. She hates sitting in a soiled diaper especially poopy so she isn't in them for very long preventing a nasty diaper rash. At first she did get a rash but I can only imagine how much worse it would be if she had to sit in it. I think we are on the tail end of the runs because the color is going back to the traditional breastfed yellow. I will be very happy to be back to normal!

This month's photo session shows the difference between the 5 month old Sam and the 6 month old Sam who wants to go go go and figure everything out. She just would not sit still and give me her million dollar smile so I just decided to go with it and take pictures of what she was doing!!

Unless I find some downtime, be back next month!

My baby is 5 months old!

5 days old

Wow! I cannot believe how fast time has gone. She was just a tiny puddle laying on my chest just yesterday and now she is so big sitting up on her own and interested in everything around her! This is the fastest she will ever grow in her life and it makes me sad. It is so hard to remember every detail because one day she is looking and acting completely different!

5 months old!

So this month has been great! It has gone by the fastest! Like I said she is sitting up on her own now. She can grab things that she wants, she found her feet and loves to play with them, and she found her voice again. She was really talkative a while back and then went through a pretty quiet phase. But the past 2 weeks she likes to talk to anyone and everyone. She is very curious about EVERYTHING. She always has her eyes on what Chris and I are doing. It is so fun to watch her learning things. I still think she is teething which means she probably isn't lol. I dont know... sometimes I think I can feel them and then other days I don't anymore. She likes to chew on frozen things anyways so I keep letting her. Today I froze my orange peels and she really loved gnawing on those!

We have been going through sleep training this month. She will be so tired but will fight taking naps or going to bed so we started putting her to bed or nap after nursing and singing to her and then letting her cry until she falls asleep. It has been so hard on me! It is really hard to hear your baby crying like that especially when they start crying harder and harder. But we have to be consistent. The only thing with that is that she isn't consistent. Usually she falls asleep while nursing and all i have to do is lay her down and we are good so I don't have very many opportunities to let her cry it out and learn that she needs to go to sleep. So she is still crying almost every time it happens. This past week however she has been fighting sleep more and more. So we have been having a crying session at least once a day and they are getting shorter each time. Like tonight she cried 5 minutes then fell asleep : )

Another icky part of the napping situation is that we live in a studio so it is hard to keep a quiet house while she is falling asleep which can make it harder since she can hear us talking or moving around. But hopefully we will be moving soon and that will be changing. Part of me wants to make it silent for her but then I think about people before us or the millions now who live in one room homes do it. There is no way they were silent for hours everyday just to let the baby sleep. The baby would just get used to sleeping with noise. And so will Sammy. She can sleep through noise pretty well already; its just the falling asleep when she wants to be involved that's not settling well with her at the moment.

ECing is still going great. I am not sure if I have said this before but it is just part of our life. I don't think about it any more than I think of any of her other needs and we don't spend gobs of time doing it. I think about the same way other parents think about changing their babes. She loves being dry and I love her being dry and so that is what we aim for but sometimes we have misses and we clean her up give her a new diaper and move on. Easy Peasy!

Actually I have noticed this past month that we are getting better at our catch rate. We only have a 1 or 2 misses on an average day and have been dry most nights since coming back from kids camp! I am at the point where I need to wash our diapers because they can't sit that long without being washed not because I am running out. This last time our stash of diapers lasted us 2 and 1/2 weeks and we had a couple extra misses due to traveling mishaps. Those diapers really needed to be washed at that point!!!

I really want to become more dependent on training pants instead of diapers but i only have 4 and for some reason Sammy really likes to pee in them. It may just be coincidence but she pees in them pretty quickly after I put them on and since i have 4 I usually do diapers after that. So I am hoping to find some time to make some homemade ones so that she can get used to them. They are so stinking cute in her little bum!!!

Chris' new job required us to go to the bay area last week which was awesome!!! Our first mini trip as a family. We stayed in a hotel within walking distance to the ocean! Woo hoo! Saw a beautiful sunset and got to find some neat geocaches.

Oh and not sure if I ever followed up with my back wrapping issue but we finally figured it out. Just needed a good wrap! A very kind lady from the Sacramento Baby Wearers group is letting me borrow one of hers until I can buy one of my own and once I had that I got it down. We have been LOVING the back wrap since!

Here are the 5 month shots...so cute!