Newness

I love the way my daughter smells. This morning, she woke up crying at 6:30, but I knew she wasn't ready to be awake so I decided to rock her back to sleep for a while. I really just wanted to bring her in bed with me and let her sleep on my chest (we do this on occasion), but I had to get ready for work. So I'm sitting in the rocking chair with her sleeping soundly while I'm holding her and all I could think was that even after almost six months, she still smells so new. It's the greatest smell in the world and I hope it never goes away.

Top 10 things no one tells you before you have a baby

Everyone tells you that you will never love anything the way you will love your children and that having a baby is so wonderful and will change your life for the better. Mind you, I have found all of these things to be true. But I'm pretty sure no one told me about the hard stuff. Here's my list of top 10 things no one told me.

10. The pets you once loved will begin to annoy the ever-loving shit out of you.

9. The phrase "sleeping like a baby" is somewhat misleading.

8. When the baby does start to sleep better, you still won't.

7. You will want your mother to come live with you for an indefinite amount of time.

6. Your hair will always look like crap.

5. You think you can do it all, but being a full-time working mom will test you beyond belief.

4. Your baby will bring both joy and stress to your marriage.

3. You will miss the way your life was before.

2. You will feel immense guilt for #3.

1. You will become an expert at inspecting another human being's poop.

Poor sick baby

Mia had her first stomach bug last week and I'm hoping it's finally over. She started projectile vomiting last Saturday and continued to do so off and on for a full week. She kept everything down yesterday and seemed guininely hungry all day, even woke twice last night to eat. Yay. I keep telling myself that I won't get that extra snuggle time with her very soon, so to consider myself lucky that she goes right back to sleep after she eats. However, I'm hopeful that she will stop those middle of the night wakings soon, or that she at least goes back to one waking tonight. I think she's too young to wake out of habit and the times she wakes are all over the map. If it were the same time on the dot every single night, then I might be skeptical. Plus, her pediatrician believes that she still needs those feeding(s) if she's waking for them, which makes total sense.

She's really at a fun age right now. She loves to grab for things. I had her sitting up on her changing table the other day and the wipes were open and she was just reaching for them and trying to pull the top one out of the box. She also spent a lot of time on her activity mat this weekend. She was concentrating so hard on getting one of the rings. It was neat to watch. Soon, she'll be sitting up unsupported, then crawling, then walking, then oh my...things will get interesting really soon!