Life as a Mom Part I

Well, I've been a mom now for a little over 6 months. Thought I should blog about my mom experiences!

Being a mom is great, at times exhausting, but great! We have a pretty good routine going on. Since January, Carter has been going to a sitter in our neighborhood. She watches several other kids as well. He goes Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays. On those days, I know I can schedule showings and go up to the office to get work done. I enjoy real estate and am glad that is a flexible job where I can stil work and get to spend quality time with my son. This past year has been the busiest and best year for me in real estate and I wanted to keep it going. I enjoy having me time away from the house too. So MWF Carter goes and hangs out with other kids while I work. I drop Carter off around 9AM on MWF and pick him up by 4PM. On Tuesday and Thursday I get to stay home with him and of course the weekends as long as I'm not needed to show any properties. I'm really loving the schedule as I get to spend time doing work I love as well as being a mom.

Since having Carter we wanted to still go out and do things even though we have a kid. We also wanted to take advantage of the short time it would be easy taking him out. When he was little he obviously slept alot. We would go out to eat at least once a week and he'd sleep through most of it. As he's gotten older, he's been more awake but for the most part is such an angel when we go to eat.

Shopping with Carter when he was younger was much harder though. I didn't ever feel comfortable putting his car seat on the top of a shopping cart, so I would take him in his car seat and snap and go stroller. But obviously, I didn't have much room to put stuff when I shopped I soon learned. The lower section of the stroller was available, but not much room. So I started taking reusable bags with me and just carrying them and filling them up with stuff while I shopped. Needless to say, I didn't buy a ton of stuff at once. In the last few weeks though, Carter is sitting up better so he's been sitting in the front of the shopping cart and doing great! He's just so in awe of everything that he is so quiet the whole trip, just looking around.

Getting ready was a challenge at first too. Once Kevin went back to work, I thought, how am I going to show and get ready with this baby. So the boppy bouncer seat became my lifesaver. I'd hook him in that while I showered and got ready. He gets bored pretty fast these days so I'm always giving him something to try and entertain him again, while I quickly get ready!

Pumping takes dedication! Since Carter started going to a sitter, I've pretty much been pumping exclusively, except for when he first wakes up in the morning, I'll nurse him so I dont have to warm up a bottle. Thankfully he still nurses great for that feeding. Other than that, pumping it what I do during the day. I know I am very blessed as I have a great supply! So really I am only needing to pump 4 times a day and I still have a freezer full for backup. I'm really going to try hard and breast feed Carter for an entire year. We'll see how it goes, but thats my goal. I pack up my double electric pump and it goes with me to work. I really only have to pump once while I'm there so that is nice. There have been days when its hard to fit it in the schedule, but I make it work. I'm in a routine right now, so I'm just keeping on. **PS** Mom-to-bes...while I was pregnant at one of our classes they mentioned that some insurance providers pay for pumps for moms. I was surprised as I had never heard of this. So I called my insurance company and guess what they pay 100% on it. They just needed a prescription for it from my doctor. DONE AND DONE! Saved us a ton of money. So if you're pregnant, look into that.

First glance into my life as a mom, I'll try and make this more regular and show different areas of our life in this new venture!

Talking & Playing

Here is a cute video of Carter playing and talking. He's really got his tongue going now!!

Lately Pics March-April 2013

Carter's 6 Months Old

HALF OF A YEAR?!?!

It's even crazier to think in another half of a year, we'll be celebrating Carter turning 1!! Man!

6 Month Stats:

Weight: 18lbs 14oz (75%)

Height: 27 1/4 in (80%)

Head: 44.5 (75%)

He's slowed down as far as percentages are concerned but the doctor said today that is normal to start slowing down at this point.

Carter is moving around like crazy these days. He rolls wherever he wants to go. He can scooch backwards and he can pick himself up and rotate 360 on his tummy. If he wants to get anywhere he can.  Crawling may happen sooner rather than later.

Carter can sit up by himself now on the floor without assistance.. If he gets off balance he topples over to one side or falls backyards. But he gets better every day.

Carter nurses first thing in the morning, but then takes a bottle the rest of the day. He drinks about 7 oz at each feeding. CRAZY! Thankfully I'm still producing alot to keep up!

He started solids last week and is really enjoying it! We stuck to bananas and rice cereal the first week until we met with the doctor today. But we are going to be branching out and trying new things every 3-4 days. We'll keep tabs on what he likes and doesn't.

Carter is naping much better these days. He'll sometime sleep an hour and a half at a time.

He's sleeping around 10-11 hours at night. He goes to bed around 8:30pm and sleeps until 6:30-7:30AM. Sometimes he wakes up once or twice a night, but we just go rub his back for a few minutes and he'll go back to sleep usually. Every once in a blue moon he'll wake up and not go back to sleep and we have to rock him or something until he does. Usually after he wakes up in the morning and I nurse him, he'll either fall back asleep for an hour or two or he comes and gets in bed with us on his boppy pillow and plays around a bit before he falls back asleep.

He has the sweetest laugh.

He loves when mommy sings to him. If he's fussy, all I have to do is start singing to him and he stops.

He is loving bath time right now. He's too big for his little bath and still can't quite sit up in the bath by himself, so he takes a bath with mommy. He loves splashing the water and grabbing his toys.

Carter loves to put EVERYTHING in his mouth! And he's drooling soo much these days!

He is really good and reaching and grabbing things.

Carter can now sit in a shopping cart now! So nice not to have him in his car seat anymore to go into stores. Carry a car seat with an almost 20 pounder is ROUGH!

It's definitely a challenge more now to change his diaper as he loves to try and roll over or reach for things behind him while we are changing him.

Carter loves going outside and looking at everything.

We are so blessed with this little boy!! He brings Kevin and I so much joy!

Carter's First Food

Today was an exciting day as Carter has his first food!!! I have a baby bullet and love it after trying it out for the first time today. So easy to make your own baby food. We started out today with bananas and rice cereal. The rice cereal was much watery than I expected. But the bananas were great! Here is Carter's funny reactions.

Laughing Carter