Roley Poley

We had our first "witnessed" rollover on Sunday night! I have been watching Reese very intently every time I lay her down on the floor, as she gets about 3/4 of the way over, hoping and hoping that she would just roll right on over. This past weekend back in Illinois she practiced and practiced, but just could not get her arm out from underneath her. Sunday night after we got back to our house, I laid her down in the living room, and Kyle was in the kitchen. She looked like she was working on it, so I hollered for Kyle to look, and sure enough, the little stinker kicked her way over. The look on her face was priceless. She was shocked!! It was almost like she did not know why she was now lying on her tummy! Such a cool thing and I am glad we both got to see it at the same time. She has not rolled over since, but I don't think it will be long before she does it all the time. She is just about there each time, just a little kick is all she needs.

Minutes later as I was changing her diaper, she also found her feet for the first time. She kicked her feet up by her head, grabbed her toes, and looked at them like "Are these mine???" She got the biggest smile on her face, and now loves grabbing her toes each time you change her diaper.

A lot of firsts for one day!! Tomorrow we head to the dr. for her 4 month shots. I'm curious to see how much she weighs and how long she is. All of her teachers commented about how they thought she grew over Thanksgiving break. My guess is 24" long, 14.5 lbs. We'll see!!

4 mo old/ Turkey Day

We celebrated Reese's 4 month birthday last Wednesday. Apparently she got a song and dance number from Kyle that morning, which I'm sure was very entertaining :) We headed down to Illinois Wed. afternoon for the long weekend of Thanksgiving. Thursday we had Thanksgiving at my aunt's house on my mom's side, and Reese got to meet more family members. She had a great afternoon, but was a tired baby come 4:00. She took a nice long nap in my arm's while watching football :)
Kyle left Thursday afternoon with some friends to go down to the high school state football championship game, which Lena won! It is pretty neat to see a local team win the state championship. Kyle and I went to their pep rally on Friday night when the team got back into town, and it was awesome to see the community pull together and support the team.
Saturday was filled with another Thanksgiving at Kyle's grandma's house. Reese met even more family members here as well. She was pretty tired, and took a few catnaps while we were there. Reese tends to be a creature of habit, so by Saturday, she was wiped out since her schedule had been all messed up for the past few days.
Today we all took a nice, long afternoon nap. Reese must be tired, as she has already been asleep for 2 hours and is still out like a light. I'm hoping we can all get a good nights sleep and be rested for the day tomorrow. Hopefully the transition back to daycare for her will be an easy one. :)
This week we plan to get the Christmas tree up and decorated and get the lights hung up outside. Tis the season!!

This Way?

I had to chuckle yesterday. Kyle had the day off, so he decided to keep Reese at home with him and have a father/daughter day. I am always happy when she gets to stay home with one of us, so I was excited for them. I called during my lunch break and things were going very smoothly. When I got home, I had a pretty good chuckle only to find out that Reese's shirt was on backwards, all day long. I said to Kyle "Do you notice the flower that is on her back?" He said "Yea, I wondered why that was there!" We had a pretty good laugh.

Last night Kyle's mom came up and spent the night so Kyle and I could go to the Comedy Club in downtown Madison with a group of friends. I am on their email list, and randomly won 10 free tickets to a show of my choice. So, three other couples and us enjoyed the evening out. The comedians were actually pretty good. Two of them have been on HBO specials. It was a great stress reliever after a long work week. Today Kyle will be listening to the Lena-Winslow State Playoff Football game on the radio. If they win, he plans on making the trip down to the state championship game next Friday. Lena was always a rival of Pearl City's in sports, but it is nice to see a local team go that far in the playoffs. Kyle's cousin also plays for the team, so we wish them the best of luck!!

I am looking forward to a short work week next week and getting to spend time with family for Thanksgiving. It is always nice when everyone can get together!

Busy Bees

We have been busy, busy bees lately. So much I haven't had more than 15 minutes at a time to sit down and enter a new blog. But, with Kyle down in East Dubuque watching the Le-Win playoff football game, and a sleeping baby, I figured now was my chance to catch up!

Last weekend we went down to Dubuque for a family friend's wedding. It was great to catch up with all of my high school friends, and see some that I haven't seen in years. Every one's lives are changing with marriages, babies, and new jobs. It was great to see what everyone is doing these days. Kyle's parent's came up and stayed at our house with Reese, so Kyle and I enjoyed the "adult focused" evening :)

Work is going well, for both Kyle and I. We have seem to have gotten in to somewhat of a "schedule" with Reese now with daycare. We get home around 4:30 pm from daycare, she takes a nap, wakes around 7, eats, and goes to bed around 8:30 p.m. She is waking twice in the night (around 1 and 4:30) and goes to daycare with Kyle around 8:30 am. My mastitis is gone (once again) and I have been pumping to keep my milk production up. Until yesterday, I was dumping it every time since I was on antibiotics, but now I have begun to save it again. I had enough milk in the freezer to make her bottles for daycare, but we ran out yesterday, so good thing I am able to start saving it again. I am still mixing her bottle (2 oz. formula, 3 oz. breast milk). She just doesn't want to take the bottle when it is all 5 oz of breast milk. I figure some is better than none, so I'll make whatever she will eat :) I am hoping to keep up pumping for another month or so, and then I will try starting her on rice cereal (around 5 1/2 mo.) I will probably be done breastfeeding when she will start taking cereal.

Our little monkey is almost 4 mo old (on the 24th). Here are some things I have noticed recently:

When giving her a bottle, she now likes to try to "hold" it. She puts both hands on it, but can't quite grasp it on her own yet.

Her neck is SO much stronger than even a few weeks ago. She can lay on her tummy with her head up for about 20 minutes, and like to "pull" herself up when you lay her down in your arms. She is also now able to sit in her Bumbo seat all by herself, and her neck is in complete control.

She is very interested in the outside world. She likes to examine everything, especially colorful books and toys. She loves to sit by the window and watch outside.

She is now "batting" at toys in front of her, and if we put a toy in her hand, it goes straight up to her mouth. She has also begun drooling more, which is a sign of early teething. I bet those teeth that are deep in her gums have begun their decent to the top. I am not looking forward to the teething days.

She talks constantly. If she is awake, she is talking up a storm. She likes to tell you lots of stories about anything and everything :)

Halloween and more

Reese celebrated her first Halloween on Sunday, and did so by dressing up as a cow :) We handed out candy to the neighborhood children (I think we had about 60). Trick or Treating lasted from 5-8, and little miss Reese was asleep by 5:30. She is still fighting off a cold (going on a week now) and napped much of Sunday. She did wake up around 6:45ish for some of our friends who cam over to see her. She was awake though for our pumpkin carving that afternoon. She sat and watched mommy and daddy carve away. According to our friends, my pumpkin beat out Kyle's, even though I carved off half of my cats ear :)

We also celebrated Kyle's birthday yesterday. We went out for dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, and Reese was a happy baby through it all. When we got home, he opened his present from us and my parents, a new golf bag and golf balls. Now he won't have to hold the bottom of his bag so his clubs won't fall out :)

And I want to say thank you....thank you to mastitis for returning to me. Oh how I have missed it. NOT. Yesterday morning, I began to feel quite engorged while at work. I tried to feed Reese twice, and she was not having it. I was too engorged for her to get a good latch. So I pumped and almost nothing came out. I thought maybe if I could just get her to eat, my milk would drop. Not so. It kept getting worse throughout the night, and by 4 am this morning, I could barely move my right arm because my chest hurt so bad. This time it is worse than I have had it before. Im am VERY sore, all the way up to my neck, and I have the flu like symptoms that go along with it. I have an appointment at 1 today to get back on antibiotics. Having mastitis really does ruin the breastfeeding experience. I may just have to pump now and give breastmilk to her in a bottle. She is doing much better taking it out of a bottle since starting daycare, so that may just be what we have to do for the next couple of months. I am hoping to still give her breastmilk until she is around 6 mo old. We'll see how it goes.

Here are some recent pictures:

Carving pumpkins on Halloween

Ready to hand out some candy in her cow costume!

Another cow pic...