Ingenue Mom

So I've been pretty embarrassed by my blog for a while now because I hadn't put as much effort into it as I put into my Ingenue Perspective blog. Now I'm much more motivated to put effort into this one! So I'm getting a new blog design by Sour Apple Studio ! And I'm just going to be switching some things around! It's a much needed change that I am very excited about! After that, I'll be off & running with this one - hoping to make it everything I would love for it to be! We'll see how it goes!!

(Picture taken by Hannah ! The one on the last post was taken by her, too!) Melissa at Dear Baby posted this tonight. Totally made me cry a lot within like 1 minute. It's going by so fast. 5 months old on Wednesday. I can't believe it.

Interesting comparisons... The top song on the US charts the day I was born was What's Love Got to Do With It by Tina Turner - fabulous! The top song on the US charts the day Isis was born was Tik Tok by Ke$ha - ick! (Found via This Day in Music ) I share my birthday with Ingrid Bergman, John McCain, Elliott Gould, Joel Schumacher, Michael Jackson & Lea Michele (of Glee!). Isis shares her birthday with Cuba Gooding Jr., Christy Turlington, Taye Diggs, Dax Shepard, Paz Vega & Kate Bosworth. (Found by typing in our birthdays on Wikipedia ) Doesn't really mean much. Just interesting to compare. I got the idea here !

I've needed to post this for a while, but I never sat down to do it. And I'm sure this list will get even longer as I read more blogs in the TMC ! But as of today, these are my faves! (They are in order of the way they show up in my Google Reader - which is really random order.) Dear Baby twitter/withoutmelissa Really, this is my absolute favorite baby/mom blog! Melissa is a first time mom & her daughter Everly was born just a couple of days after Isis! So I find that following her experiences are so interesting because I know her timeline has mirrored mine. At the same time, her refreshing view on family & life will leave you smiling every single time. I probably check her blog 4 times a day just seeing if she's updated. Mamarazzi & Co This is a pretty new blog. She is a new mom & photographer & she gives specific advice for how to take the best pictures of your kids! Theta Mom twitter/thetamom She is the founder of the Theta Mom Community , but it all

I just joined the Theta Mom Community over at the Theta Mom blog ! Since becoming a mother just 5 months ago, I have found such a camaraderie with other moms. I love hearing their opinions, learning from their experiences & gaining insight in this new journey I'm on! The Theta Mom Community provides just that. It's a place where other moms with blogs can connect and learn from each other and share their experiences through reading each others thoughts & stories. I'm excited to be a part of this! Check out the other blogs in the Theta Mom Community by clicking here ! You can also click on the link in my sidebar!

Oh I love this picture!! I am just so excited about Isis being older so I can continue to dress her in cute things & fabulous headbands like this one from Jek in the Box on Etsy!! I found the picture on the Modern Kiddo blog, which you must check out if you haven't already!

I've had several people say things to me when I talk about life & scheduling & baby planning & things like that - but they'll say, "Oh, you're a first time mom. Just wait until the 2nd one. You won't be like this." I find it interesting because I've also recently heard, "oh, just wait until you're in labor. You'll get the medication" or "just wait till you've changed a few of those cloth diapers, you'll use disposables" and neither of those things happened. So now, with these "first time mom" comments, I don't know how to respond. Should I say, "uh, thanks??" I'm not sure. Because the truth is, maybe I'm needing to be in control and particular and worried about germs and sickness and things like that because I'm a first time mom - and maybe I'm doing all those things because I'm CAMERON and it's just what I do. I was pretty particular before Isis arrived. I'

One thing I forgot to tell everybody about our 4 month doctor visit was that he confirmed what I was thinking that Isis eats a LOT. I'd been keeping her at 5 feedings a day because I was worried about my milk supply and about her getting what she needs. But I told the doctor that if I pump, I get a lot of milk - like at least 6 oz, sometimes 12 (!!) if I pump in the morning. If I'm not around and Isis takes a bottle, she will eat almost an entire 8 or 9 oz bottle. This means that in 5 feedings, she is getting more than 32oz, which is what a formula fed baby eats at the max. I also told him how she wasn't eating well for her last feeding if I do 5 feedings and she wasn't eating well for any feeding if I only fed her every 3 hours. She seemed to want to stretch and I talked to him about how I'd been starting to stretch her schedule. He told me that she is in the 90th percentile for weight, so as far as that goes, I'm good to go. If she seems like she wants to stre

Lewis & I were talking yesterday about how fast everything is going with Isis. We were actually talking about changing diapers specifically and somehow it turned into a conversation about how fast things were going and about our perspectives. For example, with the diapers, Lewis and I had both read about some studies that were done that showed that children bonded and felt more connected to the people who changed their diapers because it's such an intimate and also very necessary part of their day. You can tell in the way they look at the person changing their diapers. There is another study that we read that showed that specifically dads who got involved with the details, like changing diapers, from birth impacted the child's academic achievement throughout life. It just set a tone for involvement and attention throughout the child's life. How does this relate to anything, you may ask? Well, I'll tell you. Lewis said he had been thinking about all these milestones

On other blogs I read or on Twitter or just in general searches on BabyCenter message boards or other online forums, I'm constantly seeing arguments related to different decisions or styles of parenting. I find it so frustrating. Even I have received criticism on my different decisions. When do we just let it all go and encourage moms & dads to take care of their kids & make decisions based on what is best for their families? Breastfeeding vs. Bottle Feeding? I'm in favor of FEEDING your babies. There are many proven benefits to breastfeeding, but there are many reasons why breastfeeding may not work for someone. Stay at home vs. Working moms? I'm in favor of WORKING HARD to provide the best possible life for your children - at home or in a workplace. Both stay-at-home moms & moms who work outside the home are working moms. It is tough staying home with your kids & it is tough keeping a job during the day & coming home to a house with kids. In both situa

I was so blessed to get to share my pregnancy experience with 5 lovely ladies who were also expecting about the same time as me in our Centering Group! Since having our babies, most of us have kept in touch & been able to talk about what's going on with the babies or just hang out as moms & babies! It's been really great having people I could talk to! Isis was also the last baby to arrive, so it's been great talking to several moms whose babies are just a couple weeks ahead of Isis, so I know what's coming! At the same time, I've been equally as blessed to have a best friend with 2 girls & to reconnect with several moms like my friend Laurel who also has 2 girls. They have similar parenting strategies as me, so they've been able to troubleshoot & work through issues with me. Plus it's more friends for Isis!! It's such a relief to have these people to ask my questions & get advice. Now I'm starting to be the one that some of my fri

We had Isis' 4 month visit with the pediatrician today! She's perfectly healthy...and chunky!! I love it!!! She weighs 16 lbs 2 oz & she is 24 inches long! She's gained almost 4 pounds in 2 months! She's in the 90th percentile for weight & the 50th percentile for length. I like it! She's doing just great! He told me that she doesn't have to start solids until 6 months, which definitely works just fine for me! I am curious about starting solids & excited about getting to make baby food (hopefully with the Williams-Sonoma baby food maker!), but I'm not super eager to start anytime soon. For one thing, it's just one more thing I have to do. For another thing, she's clearly getting what she needs from the breast milk. I can tell she's interested in the food we are eating, but I'm still going to wait a while. We'll see how I feel a month from now. I always feel better after seeing the doctor & getting my questions answered. It&

(Me, Isis & my friend Katisha! Check out her blog about her student teaching in Australia here !) I graduated college on Saturday!! I still have to complete my student teaching in the fall, but I got to walk in graduation & for the most part, everything is done!! Yay!! I was so happy Isis got to come, too & see her mama graduate! I hope she will one day follow & become a college graduate herself!

So I tried it for a little while & it's not going to work. I did find that I could tell when she needed to go most of the time, but I only tried actually putting her over the potty a couple of times. The reason it didn't really work is that I'm not at home as much anymore! I just am not always around a bathroom where I can get pants, a diaper & everything off before she goes. I'm watching my friend's 2 girls on Tuesdays & Thursdays, so it's me & 3 kids! Not so easy to run a baby to the bathroom. haha. And then I've been getting together with family & friends on other days during the week, so I've just found that I'm not around the house enough to really devote the time I think it would take me to do this. SO, I tried something different, but it's a no go. Looks like we'll just be doing potty training like normal! Hopefully that will still be something we can try a little early because of the cloth diapers. I've read th

If you've been following my blog at all, you know that Babywise & scheduling in general has really worked for us. There seem to be 2 sides to the Babywise issue & very little "in between" space - most people either LOVE it or HATE it. We love it. It's been difficult dealing with some of the negative opinions, but we've stuck with it and I believe the results in Isis' case speak for themselves. It's hard, though, to figure out any kind of schedule or routine for your baby. Some things don't work for different reasons and it's tough to figure out what may be wrong. With Isis, for example, when I moved her from her swing to her crib for naps, her naps got a lot shorter. They went from about an hour & a half to about 30 minutes. I couldn't figure out why they were so short. I posted a question on the Chronicles of a Babywise Mom blog & got a response (2 weeks later because she is BUSY!!) to put her down 30 minutes earlier and see i

About a week ago, I started noticing that she wasn't eating well if I fed her on her regular schedule. For about 1 month to 6 weeks, we'd been following the feeding schedule below: 7:30am 10:30am 1:30pm 4:30pm 6:30pm But about a week ago, if I fed her at 3 hrs, she would maybe nurse for a minute or 2 and then just be totally distracted by everything around her. I tried everything to get her interested in nursing at that point, but nothing working. I'd usually just wait another 30 minutes and try to feed her again and she'd finally eat well when it had been 3.5 hours since her last feeding. So this made me think it was time to try to stretch her schedule. Although I've been doing Babywise, I've never really had to MAKE her go longer to get a feeding. She started out about 2.5-3 hours everyday, then as she got older, I noticed the same thing as above and would move to offering a feeding around every 3 hours. So now she seems to be ready to go longer. I started try

Man oh man my baby girl is growing up!!! Seriously in the last week, it has felt like I've seen so many changes!! She is "talking" all the time now! It seems like she always has to be making noise! I love it and look forward to the days when she's just chatting all the time! I was in Target the other day and kept walking past a mom & her son, who was probably about 8 or 9, and he was just talking & talking - I mean every time I passed them, he was just non-stop. She kept looking at me with this, "I am so sorry" look on her face, but I LOVED it! (I am totally cut out to be a Kindergarten teacher.) She's started batting at toys and grabbing things and she can definitely pull things to her mouth now! She tries to put everything in her mouth! We went to eat at Olive Garden last night and she was sitting in my lap & I was drinking water from my glass & she kept touching the glass & then trying to put it in her mouth. I think it's reall

I've posted before on the books I've read so far about sleep, schedules or other general baby info. I'm ready for some more books now! Here's what I've got in my Amazon cart right now. Before I buy, I want to see if anyone else has any that they like! NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children -I'm interested in this one mainly because it's the top seller in the Amazon parenting books right now. It's premise is that many of the popular strategies for raising children are backfiring right now. I would agree with that as a general statement based on things I've seen or experienced. I'm not sure if I'll come down on the same side as the people in the book, but I'm interested in at least reading it & seeing what they say! On Becoming Babywise: Book II (Parenting Your Pretoddler Five to Fifteen Months) -I want this one because we read Babywise & LOVED it. It has really worked for our family. It has totally helped Isis to get on a great