Oliver the Overachiever

We've been joking on and off since Oliver has been born that he is a bit of an overachiever.  He has been trying to hold his head up on his own since his second week of life, he has been trying to stand with assistance almost that long as well, he seems to hit his growth spurts about a week to even two weeks before the normal age.  Well we can add one more early bird milestone to the list.

Teething.  TEETHING?  Lord, help us all.

I wish I was kidding.  Over the weekend we noticed he seemed to be a little extra fussy again and we thought that was odd because he had seemed to finally be outgrowing his fussy stage.  He was kind of resisting the bottle too, which again, was odd because he was finally starting to get pretty good at the bottle within the last week.  Sunday night he had two extreme crying episodes, one while we were over at my in-laws for dinner, and at first we chalked it up to maybe daylight savings time messing with his bio-rhythms.

Then yesterday I started putting two and two together when I looked at some other behaviors he had been exhibiting - chewing on his fists like mad, drooling so much his PJ's were soaked beyond being able to be warn, seeming perfectly happy until it was time to eat - I started thinking, maybe this is the beginning of teething.  I don't rely on Dr. Google for everything - but much of what I was finding from very reputable sources also said it's perfectly normal for teething to begin as early as three months or as late as twelve months.

My mom ended up calling me late in the afternoon when he had another uncontrollable, inconsolable crying fit and said he wouldn't take the bottle or anything.  I left work early and managed to get him to nurse - but we checked his gums and sure enough, the bottom gum has a little swollen bump.

Now that we know what we're dealing with we can try to help him.  I tell you nothing is worse than knowing your baby is in pain and not being able to magically make it go away.  Thankfully it hasn't seemed to affect his nighttime sleep too badly, he slept pretty well last night.  We also took him for a walk yesterday evening - our first one outside in our neighborhood.  It was so nice out we just couldn't resist and I think the fresh air really helped relax him a bit.  I just hope and pray this phase is a quick one and we have our happy guy back as soon as possible!  Until then, the best remedy is cuddles and patience.

Even on the worst of days we still get some smiles - he's pretty damn cute if I do say so myself.  And hey, if he keeps on this overachieving track in life maybe we'll hit other more awesome milestones early - potty training perhaps??

Everybody wins

Well, I tell you, I just had an interesting weekend.  What started out as a simple plan to put new tires on my existing car somehow turned into me finishing the weekend with a new to me car instead.  Never a dull moment friends.

My old car was a 2001 CR-V.  We've slowly been doing work on it here and there to keep it going and it's been treating us pretty well.  After getting the new tires put on it on Friday, the tire guys mentioned that we had some broken sway bars that we might want to have replaced so they wouldn't cause problems for the new tires.  My dad was with me since Mr. Monkey was at work and he said he'd go to my mechanic with me and pick me up while they worked on it if I wanted.  I figured, I have the day, why not.  My mechanic said they'd call when they had everything figured out.  Well, when he called it turned out there were far bigger issues going on with the car than we realized.  Major issues that would be cause for safety concerns. The cost to repair these things were suddenly almost as much as the car was even worth at this point.  My parents had a quick pow-wow away from me and then came back into the room and offered to sell us their much nicer newer 2008 CR-V for a very generous amount of money considering it has extreme low mileage and has been very well cared for.  I got the Pants Monkey on the phone and we chatted briefly and agreed we'd be foolish to turn this down.  My parents had been wanting to upgrade to a newer one anyway, so they got themselves a nice new 2014 and we get their 2008.  Somehow everyone wins, but this certainly wasn't how I expected my weekend to turn out!

Tank top - Old Navy

Blazer - Bill Blass, thrifted

Skirt - Tandem Vintage

Necklace - Gumeez teething necklace via Zulilly

Boots - Target 

We will be under a bit of a tighter budget even with my parents giving us a nice deal on buying their car, so it looks like I might be giving up shopping for Lent after all.  I wasn't going to this year!  Fortunately, I had a gift certificate to Tandem Vintage - so I picked up this fun leopard skirt at their sale this weekend.  I had done a little shopping at Target and Old Navy last week before this all went down too, so at least I got myself a handful of pretty new things.  Time to lock up the wallet for a little bit though!  But hey, I have a pretty nice new ride, so I guess things could be worse!

Feline Friday

I haven't talked about the cats in ages here.  I feel for them, they most definitely have taken a backseat to Oliver, but we have done our best to show them as much love as we can, especially when he's sleeping.  His new evening schedule is working well for this, he goes to bed, we eat a little dinner and then we get kitty snuggle time.  And even though I mostly share pictures of Oliver here - believe it or not I still take pictures of my fur babes too - they were my first babies and I still love them like crazy!  Here are a few:

Pippin loves to sit pretty much anywhere she shouldn't be.  She was hanging out on the top of our basement bar the other night.  Maybe she wanted a beer.

Taylor has made friends with Oliver, it's really quite cute.  I really thought being that she's a little older and has some emotional issues (a lot of rescue cats do) that she'd have a hard time with him, but she seems to be handling him just fine - she'll even jump on my lap when I'm nursing or playing with him and lick his head. And he thinks she's the bees knees, he gets so excited when she comes near him.  I've slowly started teaching him how to "pet the kitty" - I fear for her when he really figures it out though!  I think Pippin will like him a bit more when he's just a little older and a little less noisy.  At least I hope so.

We have a giant homemade diaper bag that a friend of my mother-in-law made us and I use that to take back and forth to my parents house each day.  After I got home a week ago, Pippin decided it would make a nice bed.  Pippin is a huge cat - so that should give you some idea as to how big this bag is!

As you've heard me complain, it's been a freaking cold winter.  You know it's a cold day when these two are cuddled up together somewhere - and I found them like this quite often when I was home on maternity leave. They'd keep Ollie company when he'd be napping in my bedroom.

They're good girls and really, they've taken the whole "new baby in the house" thing pretty well overall.  It could be much worse, my parents had to re-home a cat after I was born, so I'm glad things haven't gone that badly at all!  Of course my son comes first, but I sure would miss these little furballs!

Pinned and Did It - Leopard

I'm linking up with Heather for Pinned it and Did It again and hey guess what, it's another of my pinned outfits!  This particular pin I was very excited about as I pretty much had everything necessary to duplicate it!

I didn't have a yellow belt - though it would really make this look pop I think if I did because my leopard sweater has more orange and yellow tones in it.  Overall though I felt like this was pretty easy to pull together.

Sweater - Mossimo, Target

Tank top - Motherhood Maternity nursingwear

Pants - Old Navy

Belt - unknown

Earrings - Stella and Dot

My mom actually commented on this outfit when I was dropping off Oliver this morning - she said "you're not usually a tuck in girl - but it looks good, you have a nice natural waist."  And she's right, I never used to tuck things in - I was just starting to get into it more right before I got pregnant.  I'm not sure why I've always been afraid of it, I think it has to look right.  If it doesn't hit at a good point, then it makes your waist look weird. These pants seem to work pretty well and this nursing top is nice and long so everything hits at just the right points I guess!

It's also my Friday.  I really need to get new tires on my car and my dad is doing a sleep study tonight (possibly mild sleep apnea) and my mom thought she might be too tired to take care of Oliver tomorrow since she doesn't sleep well when he is gone, so I said, you know what, I'll take a Friday off, hang out with my baby and get the tire situation taken care of.  I am looking forward to a slightly longer weekend!

Head on over to Heather's blog to see other Pinspirations - Heather herself is doing an entire month of Pinterest inspired outfits - mad props to her, such a great idea!

More minty freshness

Hmm, I'm sensing a theme here already this week - totally unintentional!  Second outfit with mint/teal tones in it though!  Honestly I just blame mommy brain on not realizing I am wearing similar things!  I don't know that I have enough of this color in my closet to go the entire week though, but then again, you never know!

I think I'm going to celebrate the fact that it's going to be not subzero and in fact up into the 20's to near 30 tomorrow by wearing a skirt.  Wild and crazy gal right here!

Sweater - Mossimo, Target via swap

Blouse - Decree, JCPenney

Pants - Old Navy

Boots - Merona, Target

Bag - Shiraleah via Zulily 

The weather people here are starting to make noises like the never ending winter may actually be subsiding a bit - and that we might actually have a normal spring - I don't know if I even remember what normal is anymore when it comes to the weather around here!  I'll just be happy to have it be nice enough that I don't have to pile 20 blankets on my child when we leave the house each day!

Comfort shopping

I made no secret of the fact that I had a hard time last month coming back to work and getting used to being away from my baby.  And I had the bug to go shopping, but just wasn't finding the time on the weekends.  I am a huge emotional shopper - it's something I do to make myself feel better and I know that it is a bad habit, but sometimes you just can't help yourself! I turned to the interwebs since I just couldn't get to the mall or even a thrift store. I bought a few things for Oliver from Old Navy online since he's growing like a weed and then I bought myself a couple of goodies from a Zulily sale.  You guessed it - one of them is a purse! Some women are shoe hoarders, but I'm a purse hoarder.  I can admit I have a problem, that's the first step right?

This bag is from a company called Shiraleah that is based in Chicago.  All of their products are made with vegan leather which I thought was pretty cool.  The Zulily deal was amazing - this bag was retailing for $100 or so new - I got it for $14.99.  I've been really liking satchel style bags lately, which is funny, I used to gravitate towards a hobo style bag more.  So anyway, I decided this was a treat for myself for surviving my first month back at work since it only just showed up on Friday - the only downside to Zulily, you have to wait awhile for the items to ship.

Sweater - Polo Ralph Lauren, thrifted

Tank top - Old Navy

Leggings - Simply Vera, Kohls

Boots - Target

Bag - Shiraleah via Zulily 

I also bought myself a few more nursing friendly items off of a Zulily deal and a teething necklace that I can wear when Oliver starts teething - it's safe for him to chew on.  He's already starting to grab and put things in his mouth so I may be wearing that sooner rather than later.  Maybe I don't need to join a Bag-o-holics support group, I think maybe I need to join a Zulily-o-holics support group!

Oliver - Three Months

Another month gone by?  It's so cliche, but every parent says it - I can't believe time is going by so fast.  I've been back to work for a month already and my baby is another month older.  Time for our monthly Ollie update!

 

Weight - 14 lbs, 11 oz
Length - 24 1/4"

Nicknames - Buddy, Buddy Boy, Ollie, Ollie-Monster, Little Man, Bubba, Monkey, Baby Boo, Sir, Mister, Monkey Butt, Little Mister, Mister Man

Sleep - We've regressed a bit on this, we were getting those nice five hour chunks early in the month but in the last week or two he's been doing more like three hours at a time.  However, he now goes to bed pretty early due to not always napping super great during the day, so The Pants Monkey and I get a little time for ourselves in the evenings too which is not all bad.

Eating - We struggled at first with getting more used to the bottle at Grandma's when I'm at work, but he's really doing well now and seems to be happy to go back and forth from bottle to breast.  He definitely still has a healthy appetite.

Diapers - Solidly in size two now.  We tried so hard to use up the last of our size ones but things started leaking out the back and it was just time to move up.

Clothes - We've moved up to six month sizes now.  It's crazy.  Some of his three month things still fit but it's mostly the ones that are labeled as "3-6 month".  Otherwise he's into the six month stuff.  We recently learned it has less to do with age and more to do with weight.  They should really re-do how they label baby clothes I think!

Mood - It's been a roller coaster of a month this way.  It definitely took some adjusting for him to get used to being with Grandma all day and then we had the diagnosis of the laryngomalacia.  He had a couple of pretty tough weeks - knock on wood though we've seemed to turn a corner and lately he's been very pleasant and only fussy when he's hungry or tired.  He's getting more of a personality every day and I'm really starting to like this age quite a bit!

Loves - The Food Network (judge all you want on the whole "too young for TV" thing, but he loves the colors and the soothing voices, so if it helps my mom keep him calm, so be it), playing with daddy, sitting up with help, standing on your lap with help, talking and cooing at mommy and daddy, Taylor cat (Pippin cat is still uncertain about him), his Wubbanub pacifier, the white noise machine ocean sounds to help with sleep,

Dislikes - Napping (though some days are better than others), clothes that are too tight, when the little boy in the mirror gets unhappy (seriously I think his own reflection frightens him a little bit), mommy's blow dryer (used to put him to sleep in the early days!)

What I want to remember/milestones - He talks in a lot more baby talk and it's so adorable, my favorite is when he says "ah goo!", his baptism day, the fact that he will sleep in a room without us there, learning to take the bottle, interacting more and more with his toys, starting to be able to grab and hold things, he survived his first shots without too much side effect, how quickly he calms down when I sing to him.

Every day he is becoming more and more of a little person and less like a little baby - it's bittersweet and beautiful at the same time.  Every day I love him more and more and it's hard to imagine life before him!  This coming month will have some fun firsts for him - first wedding in a couple of weeks when my cousin gets married and his first St. Patrick's Day - his mama is Irish, so you bet we'll be celebrating!