Feed, Wake, Sleep..... Feed, Wake, Sleep.....

Kaitlynn is 7 weeks today - October 8, 2009

I also decided to start working with her on a daily routine. Little did I know how much work and effort it would take putting our daughter on some short of routine. I guess I assumed that it would be pretty easy since I'm a very scheduled person. I was proved quite wrong today! However, even as frustrating as today was, I am going to stick with it even if I end up with no hair on my head as a result :)


Wake time photo - Kaitlynn in her Play Place


Our precious daughter - 7 weeks today!
*October 8, 2009*


In the midst of "talking"

On the bright side, I was able to get some laundry done and have some down time this morning during her 2.25 hour nap!! After that nap, much of the day was a blur to me because I spent all my energy working on the routine with Kaitlynn. Once Kelly came in from work today, the four of us took a long walk around our complex - it was such a beautiful day that we couldn't resist! It does wonders getting out in the fresh air - especially after a tough day with working on a routine! With Kaitlynn content in her stroller, Kelly and I were able to spend 30 minutes talking and goofing off with each other while taking our walk - it was wonderful! After our walk, we came in and Kaitlynn passed out on Kelly - it was precious! Since she missed her mid-afternoon nap we decided to just let her sleep in Kelly's lap.


Kelly & Kaitlynn - 6:00pm nap in daddy's lap :)


Precious site - my baby girl napping!

However, the main question is - did the routine help with her bedtime process tonight?? The answer is........ YES, I believe so! Even though she didn't get all the naps in that Baby Wise suggested, we did keep with the "feed, wake, sleep" schedule which I think overall helped with her bedtime routine this evening. We headed over to Janet & Vance's house tonight for dinner and to see our bible study group - haven't see some of them in about 3 months! Kaitlynn did well for a little while but then started showing huge signs of being tired. We left around 8:30pm and headed home to start her bedtime routine. Once we got home we dimmed the lights, gave Kaitlynn her pacifier to help soothe her and made the decision to leave out bath time tonight - again, she was showing huge signs of being sleepy so we wanted to go straight to the bottle. Even though we had just hit the 2-hr. mark with feeding, we decided to go ahead and feed her to see if she'd fall asleep.

The result??
Kaitlynn ate at 9:00pm and Kelly came out of the nursery by 9:30pm - Kaitlynn was successfully asleep :) Good job baby girl!

Because she went down early tonight, we were finally able to spend some quality time together before heading to bed ourselves around 10:30pm. I forgot how nice it was to just sit and talk to Kelly without having our daughter keep our attention for us! What a good night after a hard days work of routine time!

Kaitlynn did well over night last night - waking up as normal about every 3.5-4 hours. She is still only taking no more than 3oz. at a feeding - her tummy still doesn't have much room for a lot of food! Kaitlynn went down at 9:30pm, ate at 12:30am - back down, ate at 4:00am - back down, ate at 6:30am (thought about starting feed, wake, sleep routine) - fell asleep during feeding so I put her back down and she slept until 9:15am. We started her feed, wake, sleep cycle at that point!!

Here are some pictures from our wake time this morning:








Wake time before Kaitlynn's 12:00pm meal


Willa Grace hanging out!


Kaitlynn take her nap in the swing!

Kelly got home from work early today - he walked in the door around 4:00pm. I'm so excited about our 3-day weekend together!! We headed out tonight to Red Lobster for dinner once Kaitlynn ate around 6:30. Little did we know our evening would be full of events :) When we got to Red Lobster, before heading inside, we went ahead and changed Kaitlynn's wet diaper. Once we got inside Kelly ended up having to rock Kaitlynn a couple of times - she was a bit sleepy!! She hadn't slept since her 3 hour nap this afternoon! I thought about waking her up at the 2.5 hour mark, but since she had one small nap - 45 minutes, and one long nap - the 3-hr. one I decided to let her sleep. Back to the story.... Kelly ended up having to rock her a couple times to get her drowsy so we could put her back into the car seat. She ended up having a wet diaper - I changed her in our booth!! This was a first for me! I should have waited on the diaper changed since 10 minutes later came a massive poop! I took Kaitlynn to the restroom for that diaper change - this was also our first diaper change in a public restroom! Thank goodness for diaper changing areas! We had a great time out at dinner even with our handful of events with miss Kaitlynn. It was wonderful getting out of the house and spending time together as a family. We sure did miss our precious Willa Grace.......

Since Kaitlynn was showing signs of being sleepy - we came home and started her bedtime routine around 8:30pm. Kelly gave her a bath while I took Willa Grace outside for a few minutes. We got Kaitlynn fed around 9:00pm and tonight she went down by 11:00pm. Not bad! I told myself that anything before 11:00pm was great so I'll take it. Great job, Kaitlynn!

Kelly made us breakfast this morning before Kaitlynn woke up for the day! We had biscuits and gravy - one of our favorites. I love Saturday mornings!! We headed out this morning once Kaitlynn woke up for a morning walk with the girls. After our morning walk, we got ready and headed out to run some errands! Sears was 1st on our list to check out the treadmills. We ended up purchasing one - NordicTrack T9 ci Treadmill. It is getting delivered on Thursday the 15th!! I am so excited! We are going to set it up right next to our NordicTrack Elliptical :) After making that purchase and noticing that our daughter was sound asleep, we headed to the food court for lunch. Our last stop today was looking at several kitchen appliances. We recently redid our kitchen - paint & granite counter tops, then had our refridgerator die on us = new stanless refridgerator. We wanted to complete the look in our kitchen so we headed to Appliance Smart (thanks dad!) to check out the stainless ovens and microwaves. We ended up getting a really good deal on a Whirlpool Oven and a Fridgedaire Microwave = 2nd purchase complete! Delivery of these will be Wednesday the 14th. The dishwasher you ask?? All we have to do with that to complete the stainless look is to replace the front - that's being taken care of on Monday at Fox Appliances! What a productice and exciting Saturday afternoon!

**Highlight of today - we had to change Kaitlynn's diaper as we were leaving the mall - since we were in the Honda, we popped open the trunk and used our massive space to change her :) Another 1st for us!

Sunday was spent in Greenville, SC. Kelly and I left around 8:30am once Kaitlynn had her morning meal. It's so much easier to leave after she eats since we can usually make it 2.5 hours before she's thinking about eating again. She did fantastic on our drive up! Since we left in the morning, she slept the entire time to Greenville. Willa Grace slept the entire time as well, but I doubt that's much of a surprise! We got to Greenville around 10:45am and were able to spend some time with my mom before Mark, Bridgette & Elizabeth arrived for lunch. It was so good seeing them! We haven't seen the three of them since Kaitlynn was born a little over 7 weeks ago. Elizabeth has changed a lot! She's absolutely adorable and taking on a very girly look - she got her ears pierced! I know Kelly and I will get Kaitlynn's ears pierced at some point, but I'm a bit nervous about it so I'm not quite sure when that'll happen. After lunch, Grandmother June - my dad's mom - came up to the house for about 1.5 hours! This was her first time seeing Kaitlynn and she definitely enjoyed herself! My mom's parents - Pop & Jaja - came to the house around 2:30pm and were able to stay for about 1.5 hours as well. This was also their first time meeting Kaitlynn :) Lots of firsts! Somewhere between the two grandparent visits, one of my mom's close friends, Judy Churchwell stopped by for a few minutes. Unfortunately no pictures were taken of Judy & Kaitlynn because she was sound asleep in my mom's arms! Judy did get to check Kaitlynn out, but will have to wait until Thanksgiving to really get a hold of her!! The afternoon went smoothly and the weather was amazing - Willa Grace was able to spend the afternoon outside in my mom's backyard! She never gets to be outside for an extended period of time since we live in a condo. Once Kaitlynn ate around 4:30pm, we grabbed our things and headed home to Atlanta. She did well on our trip back home - we did have to stop in Commerce at Starbucks for a quick diaper change and meal - but other than that she slept then entire way! This time we put a blanket by her head to keep it propped up so it didn't fall down during her sleepy time. She also looks so uncomfortable when her head falls.....

*Schedule?? Kaitlynn was able to put herself on the feed, wake, sleep schedule while we were out of town! She ate twice at my mom's house and took two naps after 'wake' time - great job, Kaitlynn!!*

Here are some pictures from today!

Nanabug & Kaitlynn -
My mom decided she wanted to
use the name Nanabug -
my grandpa (her dad) always
called her Annebug*

Laughing at Nanabug :) ......................Playtime with both my girls!

My beautiful daughter .......... Grandmother June & Elizabeth (12wks)

Grandmother June meeting..................Cousin play time! K - (7wks) E - (12wks)
Kaitlynn for the 1st time! (7wks)

Pop meeting Kaitlynn! ...................... Jaja meeting Kaitlynn!

4 Generations:
Pop & Jaja, my mom, me & my daughter - Kaitlynn


4 Generations:
Pop & Jaja, my mom, Mark & his daughter - Elizabeth

Pop & Elizabeth .................................... Jaja & Elizabeth

Family photo & matching Halloween outfits


Family photo - Willa Grace was outside playing!

Monday was a gross day! It rained all day long - it also was Day One for another 5-day stretch of rain and flood watches! Just what we need - so much more rain! Kaitlynn spent the morning sleeping away in her swing while Kelly and I spent some time relaxing on the couch! Today also marked my first day back working out! I spent about 25 minutes on our elliptical and then did about 15-20 minutes of ab, lunges, and upper body workouts. It felt amazing getting back into working out - it definitely is my stress reliever! Kelly and I spent some time talking and we're both going to make the effort so we can workout each day if we want - it's a lot harder to do things for ourselves that we used to now that our daughter is in the picture!!

Monday night marks the toughest night we've had with Kaitlynn! She wouldn't sleep more than an hour at a time over night and was not a fan of being in her crib. She ended up doing the most consistent sleep in her swing with Kelly on the couch! We were willing to let her sleep anywhere at that point just to get her to sleep!

Kelly headed back to work today - Tuesday - Kaitlynn, Willa Grace and I were a little bit sad since we had him home an extra day because of the bank holiday! Kaitlynn didn't have a long nap until mid afternoon. She took a lot of 45 minute cat naps during the morning/early afternoon. She finally crashed in her swing around 3:30pm! Kelly came home for lunch today and I was able to grab some really sweet pictures of him and Kaitlynn:


Kelly & Kaitlynn





Also, before Kaitlynn crashed at 3:30pm I was able to get a picture of one of her cat naps:


Kaitlynn did much better last night. We noticed she was going in and out of sleep around 7:30pm. We decided to try a different approach with her - a short term approach we hope. After we fed her around 7:30pm we decided to watch for signs of her falling asleep. Once she was asleep, we put her in the cradle swing - she slept until 11:30pm! Once she woke up, Kelly fed her and was able to put her right back down, but in the crib. WONDERFUL! Her bedtime sleep started around 8:00/8:30pm and she slept between feedings until 9:30am this morning!! Great job, Kaitlynn!! Again - trial and error for now until we can get her down in the crib at 8:30/9:00 every night. Kelly and I were at least able to enjoy some time together while Kaitlynn was asleep in the swing before I headed to bed myself around 10:00pm. We're playing each night by ear and going with what Kaitlynn does - smartest move at this point!

Kelly came home again today for lunch - he always looks forward to seeing what outfit Kaitlynn is in. She wears mostly onesies and pants since that's the easiest outfit for me during the day. She seems to enjoy having hundreds of diaper changes each day :) The outfit Kaitlynn had on today - Kelly decided to tell me that she looked like she was a prison inmate - now, I don't think so, but check out the picture!


"Do I look like an inmate like my daddy said??"


Sticking her tongue out at daddy!


Upclose shot of the onesie -
See, it is black, white, and pale pink stripes!
Not a jail outfit! HAHA

Today we also received our new oven (range) and microwave! We decided to complete the look in our kitchen and get stainless steel appliances. First of all, I never knew an oven was also called a range - I had never heard it called that before! Kelly thought this was quite amusing, but I guess I didn't grow up in the time when "range" was used instead of "oven." Does that make my husband old?? :) Just Kidding! The oven and microwave look great in our kitchen and it definitely adds to our granite counter tops & new cabinets. We are looking into replacing our dishwasher front plate this weekend. Replacing the entire dishwasher is not necessary especially when we can order a new front plate in stainless steel!! I'm so excited about finishing up our kitchen! For now, here are some pictures of our new oven & microwave:

So.... you were expecting pictures of our kitchen in this blog. It's going to have to wait until next week! We got our oven installed - it looks great! However, when we got our microwave out of the box it was the wrong one :( This one was a stainless steel/blue microwave! HAHA - I don't think that'll go too far in matching our stainless steel/black look. Kelly is taking it back to Appliance Smart tomorrow during lunch - sad - and switching it out for our correct microwave - stainless steel and black. We'll be putting it in tomorrow night once he brings it home after work!

Also..... we get our TREADMILL tomorrow from 2:15-4:15pm!! Guess who's going to be running inside once Kelly gets home from work?? You're right, probably both of us :)

As for an update on the routine over the past week - Kaitlynn has been doing a GREAT job! We do not have a rigid schedule set in stone, but she does eat every 2.5-3.5 hours, plays, and then naps whether it's in my lap, arms, swing, couch, or crib. She's sleeping a lot better at night and we're slowly getting her into a bedtime routine! She has also started to really enjoy bath time. We are giving her a bath a little bit earlier than planned - usually around 6:30 or 7:00pm just in case it makes her a little bit cranky. Then we have time to calm her down before the bottle and bed. Our goal is for her to be in bed by 11:00pm and most nights we've met that goal - some nights have been earlier - her asleep by 9:00pm!

Anyways, she is doing great learning a routine!! Once Kaitlynn starts eating more than 3oz. I am sure her feedings will be more consistent, which will help her routine to become more consistent! For now, I don't mind not knowing how the day will play out :) I am just glad she's doing well, eating great, napping during the day again, and sleeping well at night!