Kitty & Kevin

It's 4:00 a.m on the day my youngest daughter turns 7 weeks old. You may be thinking, "that poor mom, you know its been a rough night if she is blogging at 4:00 a.m."

Wrong, I just woke my daughter for the first time in 8+ hours to eat. I can't say this is the "norm" yet, but she is consistently doing 5-8 hour stretches of sleep at night, before going down for another 4 or so hour stretch. If you're a mom of an infant, you feel like a million bucks after that kind of sleep and I had to share what we did to get here.


When we started "sleep training" our oldest, Lorelai, at around 6 weeks old...I started to think maybe we just had a good sleeper. She had colic, MSPI (if you don't know what this is...you're one of the lucky ones) and all kinds of tummy issues leaving us with a screaming baby any time she was awake. She wasn't exactly the poster child for a kid that would sleep well. I told myself that sleeping well was the least she c…

If you don't wear glasses or contacts, you may not understand the struggle I'm about to describe to you. My struggle is this:


These are my actual shampoo and conditioner bottles in my shower. Can you tell which set are shampoo and which are conditioner? Yeah, me neither. This is honestly what my bottles of hair product look like to me in the shower, as well as anything else when I don't have glasses on. When I started buying shampoo & conditioner that looked the exact same and have a toddler who loves to move around my bottles...it started driving me nuts. I have a system, rather than group brands of products together I put shampoo on one side of the shower, and conditioner on the other. I have a two year old who LOVES to move them around during the day...just one of the many ways she likes to make my life a little more challenging.

That is just one of the many reasons why I'd love to be able to see clearly without glasses. Another big event that happened this year…

If you've been a follower for a while, you may remember my post about nursing Lorelai 2 years ago. That I nursed her for 5 months before giving up the fight. That is truly what it was at that point, a fight between me and my 5 month old daughter. A very strong-willed daughter who after multiple nursing strikes (lasting many days each time) won the battle that she simply wanted the bottle.

When I voiced my concerns to friends about having another baby, and repeating the same struggles (whether nursing or others) we had that first year with Lorelai...I was always told the same thing "every kid is different." All I could think was "yeah right, we are going to get another colic child with MSPI and an egg allergy who hates nursing.

They could not have been more right.

Pepper is mild tempered, a cuddler and has wanted to nurse constantly since she arrived. Here is the problem...her nursing hurt...bad. Let me back up.

In the hospital the lactation consultants just kept tel…

How 3 weeks can go by so quickly and so slowly all at the same time, is really a mystery. Pepper is thriving and adjusting well to our little family...and we are adjusting to life with two beautiful little girls.

Lorelai finds Pepper entertaining at times (particularly when she emits a bodily gas such as a burp ... or a toot) or unintentionally moves her arms to touch Lorelai. Lorelai also likes to bring her things like a pacifier or the bear she was given at the hospital. Other than that, big sister pretty much leaves her alone.

We went through some struggles these past 3 weeks including multiple infections, lactation consults and a tongue tie procedure for Pepper. Not everything has been absolutely perfect.

I will say, learning to adjust to two is so much easier for us than learning to adjust to our first baby. With Lorelai it took us weeks to get comfortable leaving the house with her, both of us were living on very little sleep, and personally I was not handling life postpartum as…

Dear Pepper,

You are one week old today. To our surprise you arrived promptly on your due date, something I had no expectation of happening, even when it was occurring. Saturday morning I woke up at 6am to work on my "due date" project, the laundry room. I decided a couple days earlier I needed a project that I could complete if you did not arrive by your due date. That way I wouldn't be too frustrated that our little girl hadn't arrived. I needed a shelf in the laundry room to put the laundry basket on and plans to spruce it up just a little bit. I worked on it until about 8 a.m.

Once Lorelai got up we decided to spend the morning at the botanical gardens to see the new dinosaur exhibit. We invited your grandparents too. I was a kind of slow moving, but no signs of labor at that time. On our way home it was about lunch time and I started feeling more aches but chalked it up to my normal Braxton Hicks contractions. At home Lorelai ate lunch and went down for her nap…

Dear Pepper,

Its been a tough week. Although the weekend was great...we had lots of time to relax, see family and do a little shopping...Monday was rough. Stabbing stomach pains sent me to the doctor early Monday morning (after waking up at 4 am). Although everything was okay, we tried other methods to induce labor...but to no avail.

However, the rest of the week was a lot better. I knew I was doing what I can to start labor, and worst case we induce next week. At least there is a final day in sight. We've accepted that our little girl probably won't come on her own, despite all my attempts...and that's okay. We are praying she is just a healthy little girl.

We are looking forward to another relaxing weekend, spent enjoying our family time and freedom of leaving the house with a mostly potty-trained toddler who we can throw some goldfish crackers and fruit snacks at if she gets hungry (rather than having to stop and feed an infant). Thankfully the rough part of this first we…

Dear Pepper,

This week has been relatively uneventful. My feet are still big, but I do think this time around watching my salt intake has helped. Last time, there was simply no preventing my giant feet.

The weekly doctor appointment had me on the monitor to make sure you were moving well, and you were! I'm trying just about everything I can at this point to get you ready to come out. From squats to 8 dates a day, walking and the exercise ball...I really think it would be great if you came out without extra help. I really "feel" like you could come on your own...but who knows.

My doctor questioned me with an induction date this week...and what my end date was. Even though I knew it was coming (the question that is) it threw me for a loop. We decided we will be evicting you February 13th if you don't come on your own. Although I would have liked to wait longer, our Dr. will be out of town for a week...so its that or wait til almost 42 weeks...and that is just too long.

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