Dear Little Peanut,

You have captured my heart. You have started to smile and coo when you see us and each time you do it reminds me to stop what I am doing and take a good look at you; to remember the moments where I am your everything.

You celebrated being two months old by rolling over for the first time!!! You rolled from your tummy to your back earlier this evening and when I put you back on your tummy you did it again. It was so exciting!

You have grown and changed so much in the last month. You now hold your head up really well. When you are on your tummy you can lift your head all the way up for a few seconds and take a good look around. You are awake and alert for a few hours at a time. You have no interest in looking at toys, only me, your brother, or your dad will satisfy. This means you either have to be held or be close enough to see one of us. This is were the sling comes in really handy! You have also found your hands and are in the process of trying to stuff your whole fist in your mouth.

Your brother is still enamored with you. He wants to hold you all the time. And before he heads to his room for a nap you are the one who gets a kiss from him. He loves to help calm you down by giving you hugs or rocking you. He is very handy to have around because he will immediately inform us if you spit up or tooted.

When you first go to sleep at night you will sleep a 6-7 hour stretch. After nursing you will immediately go back to sleep and sleep another 3-4 hours. You still sleep swaddled up tight, but are strong enough to get out of it when you are awake.

You weigh 12 pounds 5 oz and are 24 inches tall.

One Month:

Two Months (and first time I caught your cute smile on camera):

Relaxing with Daddy:

Channeling the ’80s:

Looking at your world:

Playing with brother:

Snug in the ring sling:

We pray for you everyday, Little Peanut. We pray that you will learn and grow to know and love God. We pray that you will always find comfort in your family and in God.

Love you forever,

Momma

We packed it up!

And took it to the post office!

We hope Nana enjoys it!

I am a cloth diaper Momma. I am going to be really blunt here and tell you that in every way cloth diapers are better than disposables. They are better for baby’s bottom, better for the environment, and, best of all, better for the pocketbook. We switched Sweet Pea over to cloth about a year ago and I still can’t believe we used disposables for as long as we did.

So here is my confession: Little Peanut just started using our cloth diapers this past weekend. Yikes! The hospital sent us home with a few handfuls of disposable diapers and then a few friends who didn’t know we used cloth brought us a few packages. And when those ran out I pretty much made Charles go out to the store at midnight (yes…midnight) and buy some more. I just couldn’t bring myself to start using them on her. And here is why:

That’s right people. That is my laundry basket. I decided to not even show you the kid’s basket. And then there are Sweet Pea’s diapers to think about.  So adding another set of diapers to wash was really overwhelming. But I finally got over whatever it was (*cough*money*cough) and put Peanut in her cloth diapers!

Here are some pictures of the kids in their diapers:

In case you were curious we use a mixture of Bum Genius, Bum Genius Organic, and Swaddlebees Econappi. They are one size diapers so they fit both Peanut and Sweet Pea! No need to separate them. Although the Bum Genius seems to work a little better folded down than the Swaddlebees, but they both work. We also have one Bummis Bamboozle that was given to me by a friend that I love love love! But we can’t buy and more diapers…lol. So you know what to buy me if you need to get me a gift.

I wasn’t ever planning on giving Sweet Pea a pacifier. But when he was born his constant need to suck was incredible. It got to the point where it was either breast feed 24/7 or give in to the pacifier. And so I gave in. (Thankfully Peanut is nothing like this and only nurses when she is hungry…no need for a pacifier!)

About a month ago we noticed Sweet Pea would set his pacifier down and forget about it for a few hours. So we used this to our advantage and convinced him he only needed it during nap time and bedtime. He would wake up and put his pacifier on his changing table say “Have it again nap time (or bedtime)!” And we would go about our day.

This worked out so well that yesterday Charles and I decided to see how he would do without it at bedtime. Now this is silly but we told him that all his pacifiers were dirty and needed to be cleaned. So he helped us gather them all up and put them in a pot full of water on the stove. He said good night to them an off to bed he went. He asked me for a pacifier one time and I reminded him where they were and then he went to sleep! No fuss!

So today at nap time they were still “being cleaned”. Again he went to bed with no fuss! Well we had the usual I don’t want to take a nap fuss, but no pacifier fuss. Now I need to come up with something to get them out of the house. I need a good story because he will ask about  them at bedtime and I need something to tell him. I think Nana is going to need them soon. So she needs to get ready for a box of pacifiers from Sweet Pea to show up on her doorstep! This way Sweet Pea can be involved in the packing up and sending away.

Good bye pacifier!!

One of the saddest things about moving is the people you leave behind. This coming November will mark one year since we moved to a new city. We moved away from my family and many close friends. Thankfully we live only four hours away and can still see my family on a regular basis and welcome visits from friends that we miss so much. About two weeks ago (before Charles’ surgery), one of my good friends came for a visit and we had such a great time catching up!

She met the baby for the first time and little Peanut took to her right away:

Sweet Pea was so excited to have his Allie back in his life. He loves her sooo much! We keep a picture of the two of them on our bulletin board. Here they are sorting all of his cars into color piles:

She made these awesome shirts for them!

And of course, as with all our visitors, we took her to the Children’s Museum.

We had such a great time and can’t wait to see her again!

Charles went to the doctor today for his post-op check up. We learned a little more about what the doctor found during the surgery. Along with the ACL reconstruction, the doctor also trimmed back tears in both manisci. He said that as along as Charles can stay at a healthy weight in the years to come that his knee should work great and the arthritis will be held at bay.

Charles also met with his physical therapist today. They looked at his knee and planned out the next couple of months. He will be going to work out his knee three times a week starting next week.

Earlier this year we used our topsy turvy tomato planter for the first time. I wasn’t sure if it would produce any tomatoes, but last week we looked outside and found one! Now there are three! We are waiting for them to ripen so we can eat them.