You Capture- Shapes

This week's You Capture theme is shapes. Of course, almost all baby toys have shapes. The above picture is of Remington getting used to his excersaucer and its shapes. There are shapes all around the house and here are a few of them.

Next is the shape of a star on Remington's swing.



Then there is an oval shape on our couch.
 
A circle in a bowl.


Triangles in upholstery.


Diamonds on the kitchen cabinets.


Squares and circles on the sewing machine cabinet.


And I've posted this photo three times now, but I just love it! A heart.


And rectangular stairs. 

For more shapes check out I Should Be Folding Laundry:
Photobucket

i ♥ faces: Hands

This week's i faces theme is hands. I have the perfect photo of Remington's hands. Photo edited by me with some Coffeeshop actions.


For more hands, check out i faces.


You Capture- Kisses

This week's You Capture is all about kisses. I've taken pictures at a few weddings now and most of my kiss photos are from those. The last photo is from my brother and sister-in-law's engagement session. These won't be eligible to win the giveaway, since they weren't taken in the last week (the last photo was 2 weeks ago), but I still like them and wanted to share. Enjoy. All photos taken and edited by me.






Click below for more kissy pictures.
Photobucket

We Sleep Through The Night

For over a month now, we've been able to sleep through the night! That's right, we have an almost 4 month old who sleeps from 7-9pm to 5-7am without waking up. Want to know how we did it, well read on.


Remember this post and this post about how hard it was to get him to go to sleep. I know that many of you are amazed at how this sleeping through the night is possible, so I'll give you some hints and explain about what we did.



From the very first time we brought Remington home, we wanted him to learn to sleep in his crib. I think co-sleeping is a great idea, but I'm too freaked out about SIDS to do it. We did try it twice, in desperation, but I still didn't get any sleep because I was too worried about rolling on top of him, or him smothering in the blankets or soft bed. The first couple weeks, Remington slept a lot (as newborns often do), but I still had to make sure to wake up every 3 hours to feed him. That was such a pain. We had to do that until he got back to his birth weight (and remember how hard that was). A side note: I started reading The Happiest Baby on the Block when I was pregnant, but I never finished it.

After he was able to be allowed to sleep through the night, he still woke up about every three hours to eat. When we switched to formula supplementing, he slept better because he seemed fuller. Formula also takes longer to digest. Soon, he was sleeping for 4 or 5 hours at a time. He wasn't always in the crib at this time, though, because sometimes we had to settle with the vibrator chair out of desperation, and we had trouble getting him to fall asleep before 10 or 11pm.

We tried everything. Some of them worked a night or two, while others didn't seem to make a difference.
  • Cry it out did not work for me. I couldn't let him just scream, and I wasn't going to sleep like that anyway, so I might as well hold him. 
  • Swaddling worked for a little bit, but Remington is so squirmy all the time, he eventually didn't like having his arms confined. 
  • Giving him a bath before bed worked a little, but I didn't notice much difference if we didn't give him a bath a night.
  • Lights out and silence really didn't work. He's too much like his parents. We may only have one child, but our house is super noisy and I have to have the radio on to fall asleep. Besides, we live in an old house with creaky floors. Every time we left the room, the floor creaking woke him up.
  • The mobile worked a little bit. It gave him something to listen to and look at, but he would occasionally wake up when it shut off. (We had the Baby Einstein fish mobile.) He also tended to just watch it and not go to sleep, so we stopped that and fazed it out after the batteries died. We replaced the batteries a while later, but it didn't seem to make a difference for his sleep anymore. 
  • The Wubbanub helped a little bit when he would wake up because he lost the pacifier. However, he moves his arms around too much when he's fighting going to sleep and would fling the Wubbanub away, so we just use regular pacifiers now (using pacifiers to sleep is supposed to help decrease SIDS).
  • We also tried making the crib mattress softer/warmer. This freaked me out because, like I've said, I constantly worry about SIDs. It irritates me to no end when I see pictures of people's babies in cribs with blankets and toys thrown everywhere! Remington's crib is just the mattress and sheet, period. He sleeps in warm pajamas, and we have the temperature set in his room. We don't even use the bumpers, since they can be a SIDs hazard. Anyway, Landon folded up a blanket and put it under the sheet. It didn't seem to make a difference (at the time, Remington still didn't want to sleep in the crib), so we stopped that.



Here's what did work. To get him to sleep, we fed him and took him up to his room to hold and rock him to sleep. He would often fall asleep in our arms, but would wake up as soon as we put him down in the crib or the vibrating seat, or as soon as he lost his pacifier. We then tried laying down on the couch in his room with him tucked in our arm with the pacifier. He would fall asleep like that, lying pretty flat, so it was easier to transfer him to the vibrator chair or the crib.

Now we have a perfect system going on.
  • First, he usually gets hungry around 6 or 7pm, so we feed him and change him. 
  • Then, he is awake, alert, smiling, and playing for about 30 minutes to an hour. 
  • He starts getting fussy and we change his diaper, put him in his pajamas, and feed him a little more. 
  • Then, we hold him in our arms with the pacifier. He likes to be facing your chest (his stomach to our stomach- like they taught me to breastfeed) so that the pacifier stays in his mouth because you're there. He also likes to be patted on the butt and bounced a bit. 
  • He might cry a bit or struggle against us, but usually he's barely able to keep his eyes open. It also helps to shush him to sleep when he's struggling (hold out the sh sound). He falls asleep like that with the TV blaring (primetime shows) and the lights on. 
  • He lays asleep in our arms like that until 9pm. We take him up to his crib, lay him down, and he's good for the night.
So, good luck to all of you new parents. I hope you find a good system like we did, and I hope our systems lasts (I'm not looking forward to the growth spurts or teething).

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day from Remington!

Oo Oo That Smell

Can't ya smell that smell?

I knew having a baby would bring with it many new and interesting smells. I love how Remington smells after a bath. The baby soap just smells so soft. I don't like the other baby smells, though.

That's right, I'm talking about poop. Oh, and pee, and spit up. One thing I did not like when breast feeding didn't work was the smell of formula. It smells disgusting. If you leave a little bit in a bottle for even a couple hours, the smell multiplies. The smell of baby waste is gross too, of course. Yesterday, while walking through the halls at work, I swear I smelled baby pee diapers. Those middle school kids must have done something wierd, ha. I sure hope we don't smell like baby. I hate to know what our house must smell like to everyone. I think I have it covered with my candle obsession, I hope...

Baby's breath, when formula fed, is also nasty. Some of Remington's burps after his bottle are horrible. I've been told that babies get grosser when they start solid foods. I am not looking forward to that. I've always thought that babies are gross and having one of my own sure hasn't changed my mind. My mom told me that it's different when it's your own child and you know they can't help it. That makes it bearable to me, but eww. I can't believe the smells that can come out of something so small.

We Heart Kisses

With Valentine's Day coming this weekend, i faces' photo theme this week is kisses.

I love how this picture of my brother and sister-in-law turned out! They were nervous and awkward when I first asked them to kiss, but they warmed up to the idea when I had them close their eyes.

Photo edit by me with some CoffeeShop actions.

For more romantic, sweet, and funny smooches, check out i ♥ faces.


You Capture- Faces

This week's You Capture at I Should Be Folding Laundry is Faces. This week was super easy, I love faces!
This weekend, we celebrated my Grandpa's 90th birthday where I photographed many faces.

This is the face of Remington laughing for the first time! It's so cute and I was happy to hear him laugh finally.

Next, is the face of my brother as he spent the day sledding behind the 4 wheeler.

 Now, here's the face of the man of the day, my Grandpa!
And finally, here are the faces of my brother and his wife for their engagement/wedding photos.
Hope you enjoyed my faces.Check out the link below for more great pictures. Both pictures of my brothers edited by me, others are RAW.
Photobucket

i ♥ faces Places I Love


This week's i faces theme is Places I Love. It's a non-competition week, so everyone just gets to have fun uploading all of their favorite places.

My favorite place is where Landon and I went for our honeymoon: Seattle, Washington. It's so beautiful and green there. I love it! Here we are on the space needle.
Photographer: An unknown fellow tourist.
 
Another favorite place was the sandpit that Landon used to have. The lakes were beautiful there.

And finally, (or let me stop this before it's too long) I love our house. We've lived here a little over a year now, and it's still great.