The Hodges: This is our life....

Two months have come and gone and I am back at work.  7:00 a.m. is one of my favorite times of the day because my little one wakes up in such a good mood ready to share her smiles and giggles with me before I head off to work.  I usually get about 20 minutes with her before I have to leave and those 20 minutes are so precious to me.  She looks at me as I approach her crib and once she hears my voice and realizes it's me, she gives the biggest toothless smile I've ever seen and my heart melts all over again.

I've come to learn that being a mom is one of the toughest jobs there is, but one of the most rewarding.  I spent two months scouring the internet for articles on issues my baby and I were experiencing or about to experience.  I held her in one arm and fed her and typed away at the internet with the other arm.  I became quite the expertise in doing activities one handed with a baby in the other hand.  I can now do laundry one handed.  I can cook (not using sharp objects, near the stove, or hot items).  One rule we have is she isn't allowed in the kitchen when the oven is on or near knives or other sharp objects!  So I have become quite inventive on getting dinner ready.  I had quite a few evenings where her nap coincided with time to cook dinner but then she thought she needed to eat at just the second we both sat down to enjoy a hot dinner.  Hot dinner….what is that????  Thank goodness for the microwave.  Somehow babies sense when you're hungry and they all of the sudden need your undivided attention! 

I had the time of my life staying home with my sweet Kylin.  She is precious and such a good baby.  I would stay home the rest of my life with her if I was able to but right now I must work and somehow each morning I will try to put a smile on my face as I kiss her goodbye and enjoy the professional job that God has given me. 

Kylin is growing so fast!  We go to the doctor this coming Thursday.  She must weigh a ton it feels like!  She is eating good and is already sleeping through the night (most nights at least)!  When she does wake up in the night she usually eats a few ounces and then dozes back off to sleep pretty quickly.  The fact that she is sleeping so good is such a blessing.  I know it would be a lot harder to go back to work if I were not getting as much sleep.  She absolutely LOVES bath time and screams her head off when we take her out.  We usually do baths around 8 and then she eats and little and is usually asleep by 9 pm.  Then she will wake up around 7 in the morning, just in time for me to change her, feed her, and enjoy her sweet smiles before I go to work.  Her days consist of eating, burping, sometimes spitting up (we go through a lot of bibs!!), being changed, being held A LOT!, swinging, staring AND smiling J at the ceiling fan, being walk around the house looking at all of our AMAZING stuff, walking around outside in her stroller, tummy time, being licked by our puppy Slade, laying in her crib looking at butterflies that hang over her crib and laughing and smiling at them as well, crying, pouting…and YES….she knows how to stick her bottom lip out and quiver AND get her way, taking baths (sometimes several!!), sleeping on Mommy and Daddy's chests, cuddling, and most of all just being cute!  We have a lot of fun with her!  She does enjoy short car trips…haven't gone anywhere yet that's farther than 45 minutes away.  She will usually, USUALLY fall asleep but we have had a few episodes where she screamed her head off in the car and we had to pull over to figure out what was wrong.  It's not as easy as one would think to travel far with a young baby.  You have to try and travel in between feedings, which for mine is difficult because she is not very predictable yet with when she wants to eat…we are getting there though.  And then she spits up a lot so we have to hold and burp her longer to try and prevent her from spitting up and I just really don't enjoy spitting up…so…we've kept our outings to close to home for now.  Hopefully, this summer she'll start to keep a little more predictable schedule and we can travel now.  One thing that is nice is that she does still take several naps throughout the day as long as you recognize she is getting sleepy and you arrange her surroundings to somewhere she can fall asleep…for example, she LOVES to sleep in her swing so every morning about an hour after she wakes up I put her in her swing and BOOM…she takes a nap!  Nice!  Well, I've got to go for now but I hope to start blogging more often now!