Baby Be Mine Giveaway!

Our Baby Be Mine collection features so many items to pamper and care for your baby. From wonderfully natural products, to gear to make feeding and soothing easier on the go, this gift collection is the perfect Valentine's Day treat!

Dear James,

You are eight months old(note-blogging a bit late he was eight months February 2). I can't even believe you are this old. To me you still seem so small, yet you're so big. I can still vividly remember the early morning hours of June 2, leading up to your arrival. It still seems so fresh, so new. One of these days I should write your complete birth story so it always is fresh, and detail filled. I'm sure I've forgotten some of the minor details already but I will never forget the major moments of your eventful birthday. Fast forward 8 months and there you are. A handsome young boy with crazy hair! Yet to me you still seem so small.

I looked back at younger pictures of you recently and I cried. My baby isn't that much of a baby anymore. As you get closer and closer to being refereed to as a "toddler" I can't help but cry. My baby isn't a baby. Your hair was so dark, so thick. Your skin was so red. Your face so round. Now as I lay in bed staring at you, your not an infant. You're so old. Now that the sappy things are out of the way, James, I love this stage you're in. You can move baby! You are officially a speed crawler. It's not even like your trying to crawl anymore, YOU CAN CRAWL. Something else that is exciting is you can pull yourself up on things, to a standing position. And just today(2/11), you let go of the couch and for about ten seconds you were standing on your own. Of course once you realized what you were doing you fell, but hey, that's a start!

Your favorite thing to eat right now is....pretty much anything you see someone eating. You strive to be just like everyone else. If I'm drinking a smoothie, your drinking a smoothie. If I'm eating chicken, you're eating chicken. Something you do now, which I adore, is reach for people. If you want Grandpa, you're getting Grandpa. If you want out of your exersaucer, you now know how to express that. Sleeping is now down to a rhythm. You take two naps a day, one at ten and one at two. You fall asleep for the night by the latest 10:30. You are still addicted to pacifiers. Your favorite toy lately is the big legos. You love being able to sit on your own and play with the "big kids". You love untying everyone's shoelaces. You are OBSESSED with shoes. If there is a shoe left out where you can get it you better bet you will. You love going on walks and looking around.

You love being at restaurants. You are a huge flirt now, you love smiling at everyone. You still don't like sippy cups or water. You only get about 5 bottles a day now. You really like paper/magazines and ripping them up. I officially gave up even attempting to get you into your crib. Cosleeping is your top choice, and I don't mind it at all. I love being all snuggled with my baby. You still do not have any teeth. Although just recently it feels like we can finally feel a bump where one on the bottom is coming in, but who knows if I'm not just imagining that. You love my camera, any time I try to take pictures of you the first thing you do is reach right for it. Which has made it increasingly difficult to get good pictures of you lol.

You give kisses. If someone makes the kissing noise(and you're in the mood) you open your mouth as wide as you can and lean in. It's literally the cutest thing I have ever seen. Recently you have started having temper tantrums. If you are playing with something you shouldn't be and we take it away you let us know you didn't like that. By screaming as loud as humanly possible. You hate getting dressed and cry every single time we change your clothes. But you L O V E taking baths, and playing in the water. Which excites me for this summer when you get to swim in the pool. You love books and flipping through all the different pages. You make the "oooo" sound a lot. You are at my favorite stage right now.
I cannot wait to see all the changes that take place in the up coming weeks. I love you forever.
Love,
Mommy

James 5-6 Month Video

The Things They Don't Prepare You For

When I was pregnant, along with most pregnant woman, read tons of information about babies. Everything I looked at online was about my pregnancy and my baby to be. I learned how to swaddle, how to feel even what to do when the babies choking. However, there are certain things the books and websites fail to mention.

1. The amount of spit up- Yes they may mention it to you. Yes you may have read about this, but until you have a newborn you truly do not understand how such a beautiful little baby can create this amount of throw up. It will get on everything. You will go in public with it on your shirt. The scent is your new perfume. You will constantly have it in your hair. And it will never fail, when you finally look decent, maybe you even have makeup on, the baby will throw up on you.
2. Arguing with significant other- The books just so happen to regret to mention how often you and your significant other will fight. Combine the stress of a newborn and lack of sleep and it's just asking for a break down. There will be a point where you step back and look at what your arguing about to find you were just arguing about what speed the fan normally goes on. Just apologize and move on. Just don't hold grudges and pretend he didn't mean it.
3. Pre-pregnancy clothes- These won't fit right for months, if ever. The pregnancy weight doesn't just fall off like you see in the media. It takes work, lots and lots of work. Beware also for body shape change. Weight wise you may weigh much less than pre-pregnancy but those hips don't lie-and they wont be letting you back in those jeans! I suppose this probably does vary person to person, but don't beat yourself up if the weight isn't coming off as quick as you'd like.
4. Sleep deprivation- I don't really think an explanation is needed here. You will be surprised how well you can run on two hours of sleep.

All in all parenting is not just something you can learn from a book. It just happens. You probably will make mistakes but in the end those mistakes won't matter and won't be remembered. All that will matter is the fact that you raised a child. Your child will wind up only remembering mostly good stuff anyways.

My Natural Baby Boutique Review/Giveaway!

After getting started on becoming more "green" I was introduced to the website My Natural Baby Boutique. My Natural Baby Boutique offers only all natural bamboo clothes and accessories, eco-friendly non-toxic toys, all-natural unique gifts for moms along with so much more. My Natural Baby Boutique supports other woman run businesses and ensures that all products they carry are made by companies that follow Fair Trade and Fair Wage Laws, and they contribute to Non Profit organizations that stride to improve lives of women and children at home and around the world.

My Natural Baby Boutique is literally your one stop shop for all things organic and eco-friendly.

Happy Two Months James!

I took my two moth pictures of James today, and I cannot believe how much he has changed :(
My newborn doesn't look so much like a newborn anymore. He wasn't in that great of a mood when I took these so I was only able to capture a few good ones.

Top 5 Baby Products:

Life with a newborn can be challenging at times but with a few essential products you can at least ease the stress a little. These are in no particular order.

1. Fisher-Price Cradle n Swing, My Little Lamb

Although I said these weren't in order this is by far my favorite baby product. James will literally spend hours in his swing each day, which is a huge life saver. I honestly don't know how I would be able to do anything if it wasn't for this swing. I realize they now have the snugabunny and if I were to buy one I'd probably get that swing, since this was given as a hand-me-down it works just fine! The only difference between the two is the snugabunny gives you the option of plugging it it, which would be nice. I love how this swing has an adjustable headrest, great from newborn to six months. 

2. BumGenius Cloth Diapers

This was the first cloth diaper I ever purchased, and it was new. I purchased this after seeing it on The Eco Friendly Family. I purchased this one just to see what cloth was all about, and I fell in love. When building my diaper stash, however, I got a little bit of everything just to see what worked best with James. From the get go I should have just gotten all BumGenius. They work the best on James and by far are the easiest to use. You don't have to take the insert out before putting them in the wash which is a huge advantage over FuzziBunz. Although still not as thin as a disposable BumGenius are the slimmest I've found out of all the cloth I've tried on James. I now have 13 BumGenius and use these far more than any other brand. 

3. Mam Pacifiers

While pregnant I was planning on holding off on using pacifiers as long as I could. I knew I really would rather him learn to self soothe so I was planning on waiting until he was at least six weeks old. Well just like many of my plans changed after I actually had James so did this one. Fast forward to James at two weeks old trying to pacify at the breast and you will see why I was desperate. We tried many pacifiers, including but not limited to: Avent, Soothies, Nuk and GumDrop. After leaving the hospital the pacifier they actually sent us home with was the mam. Well because I was desperate and willing to try anything mam it was, and he LOVED it! Since then I haven't looked back, we currently have about ten mam pacifiers floating around and today, 8 weeks later, he still LOVES it!

4. SwaddleMe's

Since being born James was a pro at breaking out of swaddles. I believe it was night one after birth that he figured out how to break the traditional blanket swaddle. What can I say, I gave birth to an escape artist. We would wrap him in the tightest, most secure swaddle we could and ten minutes along in the bassinet ruined it. We also knew James had colic from around week one. He just would never get comfortable enough to fall into a deep sleep, this all changed when I broke out the swaddleme's I received as a baby shower gift. I love how they have the velcro on them so there is physically no way for him to break this tight swaddle, the blanket simply doesn't move. I also love how they have tabs for laundry to prevent everything getting caught and tangled up in the wash. These now belong to our nightly routine and I believe they will for a while. The one thing I do want to give a shot however is the Aden and Anais muslin wraps, I just can't bring myself to spend around $40 on a blanket. For now the SwaddleMe's are doing just fine!

5. Similac Simply Smart Bottle

As I earlier stated James was pretty colicky since birth. We struggled to do everything we could to ease his discomfort. I noticed that a lot of the bottles we were trying would let a lot of air in with the formula. I stumbled across these bottles because I had a coupon and fell in love. The bottle features a smart close system which is to prevent leaks. It actually has a blue triangle indicator you have to match up to ensure you have the tightest possible close. It also has an easy mix option for the formula which is to prevent bubbles. There is also an air vent to let the air escape from there instead of into the babies mouth. Since switching to these bottles we have had far less gas and spit up issues and James will even sleep for 5-6 hours at a time.

This is james new favorite thing to do, wrap his hands around the collar of my shirt and put both his hands in my cleavage. I love this little man!

Dear James

Dear James,

I can't believe you're going to be five weeks tomorrow. It feels like just yesterday I was holding you on my chest for the first time. These short five weeks have flown by and I wish I could slow down time. I wouldn't trade all the sleepless nights and baby throw up all over me for anything. Every moment with you I cherish as I know I'll never get it back. Even at this moment while I'm writing this you're patiently staring at mommy on the computer. I love every inch of you.


Things I'm going to miss:

• How you love staring at the light
• The noise you make before you smile
• How you love flailing your arms
• How much you freak out when I change your diaper, the wipes make you make the cutest face
• How much you love your swing
• How you grab onto my finger when I feed you a bottle

• The grunting noises you make when you sleep
• How small you are
• What it sounds like when you cry
• How dependent you are on me
• How much you love the rocking chair
• How bouncing you will always make you stop crying
• How much hair you have
• How blue your eyes are
• How you love to make fists
• Your tiny feet
• How your just starting to look at objects
• Your tiny nails
• How you love "watching" T.V.
• How calm you get when I hold you
• Your smell
• Spending every second of every day with you
• How you love sticking your tongue out

I love you James

How my day went yesterday

So my dennis, james and I spent the day yesterday at my sisters house. Dennis was there to help build a tree house. Needless to say we had a pretty good time. They even started putting the floor in.

How I Spent my 4th of July!

My fourth of July was simply amazing. As usual my family had a backyard barbecue, which included friends, family, swimming and beer. Let's not forget the fireworks! Instead of going to see a fireworks show each year my family does them themselves. Just remember, don't try this at home!

Washing Baby Clothes

So last night I set out on my journey to sort through all the baby clothes we had received so far. I went through the clothes and took out all the ones six months and under, since I'm having a giant baby and I know he will fit in the six months pretty soon. So I washed all the clothes in Dreft and now all's I have to do is figure out his coming home outfit, it truly is a hard decision. I love the smell of these clean baby clothes and I can just imagine James wearing all of them! Now I sit with a basket full of clean clothes that I really don't feel like folding right now-no regrets.

I guess this is Hello?

I think I've been staring at this blank blog creating page for at least ten minutes. I don't really know how to start this or where to go. I know I want my blog to be about many things-my pregnancy(then raising my son), my baking adventures, my life adventures and so many other things that go on in my daily life. I'll start off with an introduction. My name is Patricia, but I prefer Trisha. I'm currently 20 years old and 34 weeks two days pregnant. I'm currently in a relationship with the love of my life Dennis, our 3 year anniversary will be this September. We are expecting our first child, due June 2, 2012. We chose the name James David, James was my grandfathers name and David is his grandfathers name. I'm currently a team member at Chick-Fil-A. I'm a Pinterest addict and many of my baking adventures are from inspirations off of that site! I can't wait to begin my journey as a mother and hope you enjoy the blog posts that may come in the future.