4 Months Old

I can’t believe our munchkin is four months old. I can’t be sure because I’m not going to go back and read but I’m pretty sure all my monthly posts start out that way. Seriously though, time is flying. She has changed so much from when we brought her home. Zach and I were comparing her four month pictures to her one month picture and cracking up. We don’t go to her four month appointment until Monday so I’ll post her stats then. In the meantime here are some fun things she’s been up to.

• Her hands are in her mouth constantly. We will be relaxing and all the sudden we hear this extremely dramatic sucking noise. Turns out it’s just KMae.

• She talks a ton…she talks and talks and talks. She is so interested in what we have to say and she shows that in her responses.

• She has rolled from her tummy to back. She has started trying to roll from her back to belly. It’s so cute, she puts her feet in the air and then they fall to her side. This puts her almost over the edge. She has technically done it once in the middle of the night...oh it scared me. I heard her crying in her crib so I went in and she was face down. She was swaddled so she couldn’t use her arms to get her back over. Oh, worst feeling ever! We tried to stop swaddling her and that then became the worst night ever. She’s back to swaddled and in her sleep positioner.

• She loves her daddy to sing the peanut butter jelly song to her. If anyone is curious how the song goes call me. It’s seriously so funny! He even does a dance to it.

• She has discovered her toys and loves to play with them...and put them in her mouth.
  

• She loves to stand. She will do it all the time if someone is there to hold her.

• She still loves her swing.

• She is very random in her sleeping. She does great some nights and terrible other nights. There isn’t yet a pattern so we’re not sure what direction we’re heading. I do try to remind myself when I’m up in the middle of the night with her that I’m lucky. I’m lucky I even have the opportunity and I’ll take any extra time I can get with her. Especially now that I’m back at work.

• She is the world’s worst eater. She takes 30+ minutes on a good day to eat 4 ounces. Though, it seems others have better luck with feeding her. I have tried to move up to level two nipples but she’s so dramatic. She chokes so badly and I give in every time. Zach says we need to stick with the level 2 long enough for her to get used to it but I jump ship!

• She’s still tiny. I can’t wait to see what her weight and length are. Everyone that sees her says she is very narrow for her length. That could be due to her terrible eating…not sure. I’m really light and dainty so maybe she gets that from me. OR NOT!

She is just a joy to be around. I think Zach and I say "she's so cute" about 8000 times a day and we find it still doesn't get old. We laugh constantly with her...the smiles never end at the Howarth household. Good times!

Kenleigh's First Christmas

I’m sad to say I didn’t really get any pictures for Kenleigh’s first Christmas. What kind of mom am I? I’ll answer that…I’m the kind of mom that didn’t get any pictures of her daughters first Christmas! I guess we didn’t miss much. It’s not like she was opening presents all day! On Christmas Eve we went to Zach’s parent’s house. That has become tradition and I quite enjoy it! Zach, me, & Kenleigh got some great gifts. It was so much fun to hang out with all the family…Ok the fun part is actually watching all the little kids. They get cuter and cuter. When we got home we got KMae ready for bed and surprised her with one last present. My brother Jarod and his wife Lindsay want all their nieces and nephews (so far only nieces) to open their gift from them on Christmas Eve. Kenleigh was so excited…and by Kenleigh I mean me! Kenleigh made this year so much more exciting. It almost made it harder to wait on St. Nick. We managed. Christmas morning Kenleigh woke us up to see what Santa brought. Or she woke us up to eat…it is all a blur. We got ready and headed to my mom’s house. This was also good times. Again, fun to see the family! By now the girlie was getting tired and was done with all the people. She basically lost it. That was good enough reason for me to agree to hit the road. We got home and just relaxed the rest of the day….relaxed by putting all her entirely too fun toys together. Now that was good times! Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas holiday!

Oh Good Times!

So Zach and I thought it would be fun to get Kenleigh’s pictures taken professionally for Christmas. We had several reasons. She has way cute outfits that she’ll never have any reason to wear. She can wear them once, get the picture taken and never have to see it again. It’s fine. Works for me. She’s the cutest baby ever so why wouldn’t we put it on film every chance we got? And of course, we wanted to do some sort of gift for our parents for Christmas with Kenleigh’s pictures. So a couple weeks before Christmas we made an appointment. We narrowed it down to only two outfits. We napped her, fed her, changed her, and anything else you can think of to make a happy baby. Boy did we succeed. We had about the happiest baby on the planet; and boy was she cute! Well we got to the place and I notice that her eyelids are about as red as you could imagine. Our darling munchkin as you know is a red head. This generally means a bit of fair skin will be involved. Bless her heart – this means if she is tired it will show, whether she knows it or not. The place that was doing her pictures said they did not photo shop. I couldn’t figure out why her eyes were so red. She slept a ton. She was so happy. But it just wasn’t right. What kind of mom would I be to allow these pictures to take place? She just wouldn’t forgive me. So….we rescheduled for the next day. Even better – we napped her, fed her, changed her, and anything else you can think of to make a happy baby. Ha – Success! She was so happy and so darling. We decided to change it up…we used outfit two first this time. We got to the place and we were all ready. The photographer introduced himself and the conversation to follow goes something like this…

Photographer: How does she do on her tummy?

Me: Tummy? Um, ok if you're QUICK. (I really emphasized quick.)

Photographer: Hand her over…….

He puts her on the set ON HER TUMMY, positions her (so cute I’ll add) and then goes and fiddles with his camera for I’m not even kidding what felt like 3 minutes. That’s a long time in infant land. She was ready…and then she wasn’t. It was just too long. She started crying followed by screaming. Nothing calmed her except walking out. Zach walked out, calmed her down and we tried again. The second she saw the photographer she started screaming again. Actually it became pretty funny. She would only cry when she would look at him. Smart little girlie. I told him what makes her mad and he didn’t want to listen. After the second night of trying we gave up. We decided we’ll try again and have her pictures done next month. I posted pictures of her two cute outfits though since now they will likely go to waste! Sorry, the date on my camera is wrong!

Outfit 1 - Darling!

Outfit 2 - Too cute!

KMae Rolls!!!

Kenleigh rolled over today for the first time. I attached a video below. *Disclaimer ~ Please excuse my high pitched voice. I was super excited and I had no idea how I sounded on video. My acting career never took off. Though the dream has never died. Oh, enough about me. Back to the girlie. I was telling Zach last night that I thought she was getting close and low and behold...only a day later. She's such a big girl. I was hoping she would roll over on video and then get so excited with me...instead she rolled over and was done. She finishes off with a yawn. Time for bed! She seriously is the light of our lives. We keep wondering what we ever did before her. Enjoy!

3 Months Old

Today Kenleigh is 3 months old. I seriously can’t believe how quick time is flying. My first trimester seemed to be the longest three months of my life. I love being a mother more.than.anything! I can’t imagine anything in life that feels more rewarding. It felt like it was a tough adjustment period for me for a little while. Kenleigh was pretty fussy early on and I wasn’t sure when that would ever end. I didn’t know the right ways or the quickest ways to calm her. I am her mother and I didn’t know the right ways to calm her. This was hard. I felt like my entire life stopped so I could take care of this little girl. For a long time I felt like I couldn’t leave the house or even function in the outside world. I was constantly stressed. All while loving my new little girl. A few people had mentioned that I seemed different. Of course I was different. My entire life just changed. Yet some felt that I didn’t seem as happy as I was. This made me sad. I didn’t want to be different. I didn’t even realize I was different. Looking back though I was. I was just as happy – I was happier actually. I just didn’t know how to emulate it. Of course in a quick conversation is seemed obvious but those around me closer sensed my level of stress. I’m not really sure if it was post partum depression. I’m sure to an extent it was. I know that it was a huge release of hormones into my body all at once along with a huge life change. It was scary, it was stressful, it was amazing. Over the last several weeks I personally have noticed a change. I enjoy Kenleigh even more. I didn’t know it was possible. We are figuring each other out. I calm her now – she wants me. We have our own touches with each other. I enjoy her differently. I enjoy her constantly. I stress less. My emotions are level. She’s my blessing. An incredible blessing. My life doesn’t feel like it’s adjusting anymore. I’m a mother. I will always be a mother. I’m sad it took me a while to figure out how to be a mother. To some it is very natural, for me I had to adjust. This shouldn’t have surprised me. I still burn toast. Of course it wouldn’t come easy. Not for me! I still burn toast but now I’m a lucky, lucky mom!
Anyway, Kenleigh was so excited for her three month birthday that I think she woke up every hour the night before. Actually I know she did. This morning Zach got Kenleigh up and let me sleep in for a bit. I guess he had plans of his own to celebrate. When I woke up I came downstairs and Zach and KMae were nowhere to be found…they must be in the basement. That was out of character. We haven’t hung out down there since she was born. Literally. I went to see what they were up to and this is what I found. Zach was down there entertaining her with a little Xbox. I seriously laughed so hard. She was so content lying on her play mat watching him play. They were bonding. It was cute. Father-daughter morning in our house was fun. I let them be.
For the last couple of weeks our good little sleeper has become a bad little sleeper. I’m not really sure what happened. She used to wake up only once a night for a quick bottle and was back to bed. Lately she has been up 2-3 times a night and sometimes (too often) more. I think in the next few weeks we are going to try some sleep training with her if we can’t get her back on track. Not sure how that will go. Here are a few more updates.
*She is still smiling a lot and laughing. She has even started belly laughing. Not a ton but when she does it I can’t help but crack up myself.
*She still hates tummy time. Any suggestions?
*She still hates being in the car. She has gotten better but it’s totally random on if she’s going to scream or not…more screaming than not still.
*She is ok to not be rocked to sleep for her naps anymore. Now I just put her in the swing at naptime and she goes right to sleep.
*She is the SLOWEST eater on the planet. I have tried faster nipples and she chokes. She just likes to eat slowly. She's dainty!
*She pays more attention to her toys and is actually entertained by them.
*She has discovered her hands. She is always staring at them and sucking on them.
*She pulls on my hair.
*She is starting to drool a ton.
*She’s still perfect.

Happy Thanksgiving

I have to say Thanksgiving was a little different for us this year with having Kenleigh and all. At the very least it gave us that much more to be thankful for. In general I have always hated Thanksgiving. Don’t get me wrong – I’m fully aware of the meaning of Thanksgiving. I get it. I’m thankful. I’m thankful for so much. I try to remember all year everything I am thankful for. For example: I’m thankful for Thanksgiving because I get another day off work, a long weekend, and time with family and friends. Yeah right until they fall asleep on me. Brings me to one of the reasons I’m not a fan of the holiday. EVERYONE sleeps…so lame! Seriously, we never get together and we finally do and now you want to sleep? We eat food that in my opinion is top of the line gross. It’s true, Thanksgiving feasts are not my favorite. Not even close. I’m not sure why…really, I’m not. The napping though, I still can’t get over the napping. I can count on maybe one hand the number of naps I’ve taken in my adult life…I think those were all during my first trimester of pregnancy. Basically what I’m saying is that I didn’t choose to nap. My body kept shutting down…it just did it…all on its own. I couldn’t nap if I tried. So while y’all are napping I’m sitting around twittling my thumbs in front of a television of football. Oh I can’t change the channel. Inevitably someone will complain. Even though I know they were napping minutes before. This year though was different. I had Kenleigh. She has no problem entertaining me while everyone else is napping. I’m thankful for Kenleigh. I’m thankful for my new little family.
This year we went to my mom’s house early and hung out there for a while. Kenleigh was a huge hit. She is so cute…so, so cute. Not sure if I mentioned how cute she is. My nieces Launa and Teiha are always so fun with her. I’ve been a little protective and haven’t let them hold her so I decided to give in on Thanksgiving. You know – give them something more to be thankful for. I’m thinking Kenleigh wishes I wouldn’t have given in. As soon as I handed her over she had had it and she was sure to let them know! After my mom’s we went to Zach’s parents for dinner. Just the five of us…it was a quiet night. But no naps – more to be thankful for! Now onto Christmas. I love Christmas!

Launa and Kenleigh - Launa cuddles even through the screams!

Teiha and Kenleigh

Our little family

My morning girl!

This is how Kenleigh wakes up every single morning. It's the best!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM7mfgNwApU