Category: Uncategorized

Kensington Brooke is 13 months old today! This picture is complete real life for us at this age. Wild hair. Milk on her dress. Food on her face. Bruise on her forehead. And had to be quick with the snap on this one because she gives you about 3 seconds of posing and all hopes of her holding still are out the window.

Regardless, and minus the falls that give me mild heart attacks, I am loving this age!!!

KB is officially a full night sleeper!!! We’re on night 7 of her sleeping completely through the night for 12-13 hours! 🤗 She still takes 2 naps a day and I am in no rush for her to graduate to 1.

K loves to dance, run (she just learned that one – pray for me), throw (more prayers needed), push things with wheels (like other people’s strollers), do squats and point. Pointing is her number one skill at the moment and she thinks it’s extra fun to trick people into giving her exactly what she wants with the power of that little finger.

Kensie has discovered how to get into the pantry, grab what she wants, and bring it to someone to open for her. She is drinking whole milk and finally starting to eat table food! Some days are better than others, but we are getting there! Lately she loves yogurt, oatmeal, peanut butter sandwiches and teething cookies.

She is mimicking sounds and motions more and more and some are pretty entertaining. I make an “oooo ooo ooo” sound before I give her raspberries or tickle her so now when she wants to play she starts saying “oooo ooo ooo” to the same tune I do it! She also copies Daddy when he whistles. Home girl whistles better than I do! (And how did she figure that out?!?) She tries to open doors by the handle, “type” on computers and scrolls the phone with her finger. 🤦🏼‍♀️ When she got a fever after her shots she watched me take her temperature and then kept grabbing the thermometer and putting it on her own head. She loves to “clean” and takes paper towels and napkins and starts wiping things with them.

Her favorite toys are…anything that isn’t actually a toy. Remotes. Coasters. The computer mouse. Cell phones. Bags. Oh my gosh she has this weird love for bags. She does climb in and out of her car on a daily basis. She likes to sit in it, swing her feet and drink her milk.

K is 18.12lb, just under 28″ long, has 2 teeth on the bottom and 4 on top. Teething or not, EVERYTHING always goes in this kids mouth. I have to completely disinfect the steering wheel on the cart at Publix because she always licks it.

I don’t think Kens added any words to her vocabulary this month, but it is getting easier to understand her and she’s got some very creative ways of communicating what she wants! She STILL isn’t saying mama but when I say “can you say mama” she does the sound where you move your finger up and down on your lips. Maybe that sounds like “mmm” to her. 🤔🤷🏼‍♀️

KB is the BEST sharer. Be careful with joking around while asking for her food. She will straight up put it in your mouth. Sometimes she takes it back, but she’ll at least pretend to offer it.

Life has changed a lot this month as we finished breastfeeding and she’s made her official entrance to toddler hood. It’s a whole new adventure and this little lady adds a lot more fun to each day!

The force was strong with this one this weekend; that force being gravity. Just shy of 13 months in and we had our first trip to urgent care today. 🤦🏼‍♀️ I’ll start this off by letting you all know that Kensie is a-ok. 👌🏼 She’s got quite the hard head. Or maybe a soft head that cushion the falls. 🤷🏼‍♀️ You get the idea.

Saturday night was Chris’ company anniversary party. Kensie had a BLAST. She stood in her chair and ate tortilla chips for almost an hour. By ate I mean played with them in her mouth for a while and took them back out. She did swallow some of them. It was a huge mess but hey, she was happy!

K was also loving the tunes and kept dancing in her seat. After a while a few of the little girls were running around on the dance floor and Kens really wanted to play with them. She started strutting her stuff all over and watched them run back and forth. The floor had a tiny little ramp on the sides.

While Kensie was busy cheesing and making friends, she took a stumble and her head hit the side of the chair. 😦

Half of me thought “of all places of course it’s the one part sticking out”. The other half of me was so thankful she didn’t completely split her head open.

Kensie recovered quicker than I did. I still feel bad for her. Poor babe. She wouldn’t let me hold an ice pack to her head but luckily the swelling went down rather quickly and now she’s just got a pretty little bruise.

Today she decided to top her goose egg from last night. K was playing on the couch like she always does. She knows how to get down by sliding on her belly until her feet touch. She does not know how to get down by falling backwards. Kensie had crawled over to the chaise part of the couch where there’s no armrest. She lost her balance, fell backwards and hit her head on the corner of the wall. Introduce: goose egg number 2. She cried for a minute and I checked her pupils and she seemed fine. No more than 60 seconds later she wanted to get down and play again. I sat down with her for a second to see if i could tell where she hit and that’s when I discovered the huge knot on the side of her head. 😔

It’s hard to tell in the photo, but there was a little blood line from where the corner hit and the rest was swollen and blue. She wasn’t bleeding. Even though she was acting normal, the lump looked pretty bad and paired with the face smack from last night, we felt a little uneasy.

So, yeah. That’s how we ended up taking our first trip to Children’s Urgent Care. Sunday Funday!!! Kensie checked out perfectly fine and was cleared to go run around and fall some more. 🙄 Will it affect her head shape if I make her wear a helmet all day? I’m considering it.

As for some good news…on Friday I figured out why Kensie wouldn’t take her bottles and we are back in action! She was using a size 2 nipple and it was coming out kind of slow, so I bought the next size up. Mistake. I should’ve known. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”

The new ones were too fast and she didn’t like how much came out so she wouldn’t drink it. I put the size 2 nipple back on and boom – she’s chugging her bottles again. Even 100% whole milk, while it’s cold! Score!!! Back to the chug life.

Kensie even ate a whole normal breakfast for me Saturday morning. We had oatmeal and a banana and applesauce and guess what?! WE MADE IT THROUGH OUR FIRST MEAL WITHOUT HER THROWING ANYTHING ON THE FLOOR! K was a great eater this weekend for all of her meals. She’s finally starting to figure it out! And for my momma friends still breastfeeding – oh man it’s a whole new world. 13 months later I had forgotten what freedom felt like! I was able to go get my nails done and run some errands and take some alone time Saturday afternoon while Chris hung out with K. It was worth every second of the last year, but since I’ve been feeling guilty about stopping it was nice to feel one of the “perks” to being done!

Before all the drama of the weekend kicked in, Harper and Riley came to play with us Friday morning! They had so much fun playing together and Riley even took Kensie for a ride in her car. Since she’s too small to drive it she just gets her boyfriend to drive her around…foreshadowing? 😯😜

Overall we’ve had a pretty good weekend, despite the Great Fall(s) of 2017. At least I hope it’s the great ones. I’d really appreciate her not outdoing herself on this one. As you can tell, K was still happy as could be and barely phased by her lumps and bruises and has no intentions of slowing down!

 

Sleep training. Such an ironic name since little sleep actually happens. At least that was the case for us last night. It didn’t go nearly as smoothly as the last time we did this! K yelled/cried on and off for almost 2 hours from 9:20-11ish.

It would be 5 minutes at a time then she’d be silent. Put that on repeat. 😫 She woke up again around 2am and did the same on and off fussing for another 30 minutes.

The good news is we made it through the night without a bottle, and she was nice and tired today which led to lots of hugs and extra long naps. 🙌🏼As you can see, she somehow woke up super happy. Maybe it was because I finally gave her what she wanted and took her out of bed. Ha! This morning was one of those mornings I went back to considering daycare. Kensie was a screeching banchee that wanted to be held the whole time.

It was probably the combo of her crying all night that had me over it. KB has this new game where she wants you to carry her around and she points at different things and wants you to walk there so she can grab it. The catch is she doesn’t actually know what she wants so she points and then you go and then she just gets pissed. 🤦🏼‍♀️ Today she wanted to grab the candle. Sorry about your luck, kiddo.

Oh. And I can’t leave this out. This happened at least 4 separate times while Kensie tried to get past Jack…

We had out at swim today and Kensie did AMAZING!!! She had to wear her PJs and a normal diaper to make sure she would perform her rollover to float with the added weight. Success!

Tonight is at least starting off better than last night. She woke up about an hour ago and made a few “eh eh” fuss noises for a second and went right back to sleep. 🤞🏼

She wouldn’t finish her bottle but she crushed a pouch with chicken in it (she never eats the meat ones. Always throws them after one taste…🤷🏼‍♀️) and kept asking me for bites of my burger so I️m hoping she’s nice and full…and tired enough to sleep 12 hours. 😆

I️ really need to go back to my daily posts because this one is way too long. First off, I’ve got a bone to pick with all the mamas that have gone through weaning before me. WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME HOW BAD THE POOP WOULD START TO SMELL?! To all my friends who have yet to experience this, I️’m going to be a good friend and warn you. I mean I’ve heard their poop smells worse when you stop breastfeeding, but I am not sure why it is just briefly mentioned so nonchalantly. I feel like the order is backward. Babies need to be potty trained and THEN weaned so us moms can make it out alive.

Okay I won’t make this post 100% about poop, but I felt a responsibility to you all. Start practicing breathing through your mouth now. Or holding your breath all together. Is 13 months too early to start potty training? That’s a rhetorical question. Because we are about to. I’ll report back. ✌🏼

On to the rest of our day: I️ got cheated out of a nap, but I did get to sleep in so I️ guess I’ll accept the trade off and be happy with it! K slept about 90 minutes later than normal this morning which meant her morning nap became nonexistent. Her naps are about the only time I️ can get work done during the day anymore, so losing one of them is not ideal.

Also, we are officially weaned AND I AM DONE PUMPING! While I was a little sad to end the breastfeeding I was ELATED to stop pumping. I absolutely hated it. Props to those mamas that pump exclusively. I couldn’t do it!!!

On to K…where to even start?! I feel like every day she does something new. This age is so much fun. I️ feel like a few things happened overnight – or maybe over the weekend and I️ just notice a ton of change after 3 days of being away from her? She’s starting to speak much clearer (more clearly? 🤷🏼‍♀️) and you can understand all of her words extremely well now! K has also discovered running. My mom informed me they played lots of “chase” this weekend so I️m guessing that’s where she figured it out. It might also explain why she randomly starts running and laughing at nothing. 😂

As she was eating breakfast today, Jack kept trying to take her food (never fails) so I️ kept saying “no, Jack!” After a few times of that, K spent the rest of the morning saying “no Jack” every time she saw him. 🤦🏼‍♀️ Pretty sure she thinks that’s his name now. Sorry, Jack. (Stop being a thief and I won’t have to tell you no).

Kensie started whistling last week. Today, I did it and she copied me. Home girl has a better whistle than I do! She also copied Aunt Shell on FaceTime! We were talking and she started playing with a toy that sings and dancing. We started going “dance, dance, dance” and Kensie started saying “dance, dance, dance” and shaking her legs. She’s a natural.

We ran some errands this morning and met up with Casey, Riley and Harper at Target! Ohhhh how our Target trips have changed. We turned Casey’s cart into the party cart and let the 3 of them have at it.

Then, I found the best thing of all. Christmas headbands. The 12 days of K-mas is coming, y’all. Get excited. 😜

Kensie has been doing AMAZING at swim test out this week. Heidi has been so patient with us and added extra lessons to make sure we got it right once K was done teething. OF COURSE the one fall in I didn’t video today was the one she went around the whole pool in the currents and told Heidi she was “all done” mid float. 😂

Tonight, it’s back to sleep training. Since teething threw off her good sleep patterns, we have to start over. Kensie had plenty of food & milk today, especially this evening, so I’m certain she’s not hungry. We just have to break the habit again. Oye. She’s woken up 3 times in the last hour so far so I’d say we’re off to a great start…

It was a GREAT, long weekend and we did it…we weaned!!!

Chris and I went on a trip this weekend so Kensie spent the last 4 days with Grandma! I️ missed KB a ton, but we had a great time with friends and K had the best time with her Gramma, Grampa and Uncles.

When I dropped her off, she hugged Gramma and wouldn’t even come back to me! That never happens with this mama’s girl.

So, I can’t remember how much detail I️ shared but I️ posted a while back that I planned to start weaning K once she tuned one. In my mind, the process was going to be a few months and I was going to keep a night and/or morning feeding for a while before completely stopping. I didn’t have an exact plan, just a loose timeline of what we were working toward.

For us, this weekend just happened to work out. Kensie wouldn’t drink any normal milk when I tried to give it to her. Her Pediatrician suggested having Dad offer it, since she knows I have something different to offer. That’s not an option for us since he’s at work 90% of the times she eats. I didn’t have enough breastmilk saved up to get Kensie through the whole weekend so I had my mom mix the milks to start introducing Whole milk. By Saturday morning, Gramma had her on 100% Whole milk and stopped the breastmilk all together!!

I didn’t think it would be that easy, but I was pretty excited it worked. (And relieved since she didn’t really have another option…lol).

I looked up some information on how to stop pumping so I could get my supply to slow down. Luckily, I had already done a lot of it the last few weeks as I started to spread out K’s feedings more and more and took some of them away completely.

Over the weekend I got down to 2 pumps – once when I wake up and once before bed, about 12-13 hours apart. Tonight, I only pumped one side and I stopped 1oz short of what I’ve been pumping to signal to my body that I don’t need that much anymore.

I️ am giving Kensie the rest of the breastmilk I’ve pumped until it’s gone, because no way I️’m letting it go to waste, she’s just going to get it from a bottle now instead of from me.

I was worried that once I saw K she’d dive for the boob; the thought of telling her no and her screaming slightly broke my heart. I wasn’t even sure if I’d turn her down or maybe still feed her once a night or something; hasn’t really thought through what I️ wanted to do. The good Lord must have known I couldn’t handle that kind of disappointment so by some miracle, she hasn’t done it!!! She even went to bed tonight without trying to get me to nurse her. It made me feel better that it seems like we were both ready for this transition.

I’ll admit I️ was (and am) feeling slightly guilty because I know the health benefits are great for her. A friend asked me a few weeks ago what made me decide a year was a good stopping point and my honest answer is slightly selfish. I️ was extremely proud of us for making it a whole year and am ready to have that little bit of freedom and my body back to myself for a while. Since she doesn’t necessarily need breastmilk or formula anymore, I️ wanted to take some steps toward weaning and see how it would go. After this weekend, I️’m confident the timing was right and this is just how it worked best for us!

It’s bittersweet but it was a chapter that would come to an end eventually.

The WordPress app updated and won’t let me caption photos now 🙄, but these are from what I thought may be our last time nursing! Chris actually made a joke about me taking one and I was like, hm, not a bad idea. Now I️’m glad I did!

I could write another 1,000 words and share photos of how great my weekend was, but since this is KB’s blog, I’ll leave you with photos from her weekend instead. 😜

And 2 of my now favorite videos. One of her first workout (squats for dayssss) and the other from dinner on our way back home tonight. Kensie always fake feeds herself when she has a fork and a plate and I find it hilarious. 🤷🏼‍♀️😂

Okay – I think I covered it all! I️ hope Kensie is worn out enough to sleep in tomorrow because I could definitely use some extra shut eye…but no matter what time she wakes up I️’m excited tohave my babe back!

Guys. I realized I left out the highlight of the day yesterday. While Kensie was at swim lessons (pissed) she was working on her float. Heidi let go of her and was making her actually work for it. Kensie lifted her hands out of the water and signed “all done”. 😂😂😂 This kid kills me. 

The highlight of the day today was that she FINALLY did her float correctly again! It was strong and beautiful and made me feel much better! 

The not highlight of the day is I had to…discipline? Kens for the first time. I guess that’s what I’d call it. She’s started doing this high pitched scream when she wants something and it’s not cute. Okay, it’s kind of cute/funny right now but I refuse to encourage it because it’s the start of temper tantrums. I learned a lot about how well positive reinforcement works at her age from her swim lessons, so I took that and refused to give K what she wanted until she did what I told her to do. (Put her binky in and relax 🙄) 

Other than that episode, Kensie had a great day with awesome naps. She even got to spend some time with B (her Grandma) today while I packed! 

This afternoon as we got ready to leave, I was walking around the house turning off lights, locking the back door…all that responsible stuff. Kens was wandering around and I was telling her it’s time to go. Next thing I know, she was at the front door, reaching for the handle saying “go, go, go”. 😳

Tomorrow she’s off to Grandma’s for the weekend and we officially have her on weaning duty. 😳 I came up with a (hopefully good) plan to get Kens on more solids and regular milk while I’m away from her for a few days. My original plan had this process drawn out a little longer, but to be honest now that she has 4 top teeth that shiz is starting to HURT. 🤷🏼‍♀️ 

Anyways, fingers crossed this works out. You know I’ll update you on the progress. 😉 I’m going to miss this little boog this weekend so I snuck her out of her crib onto the couch with me tonight to watch the CMAs. K snuggles are the BEST. 

I guess I should today’s post by clarifying that Kensie is completely fine. She only threw up because her genius mom (🙋🏻) gave her milk and spinach before swim lessons yesterday. I learned from my mistakes and we had zero puking today, phew! 

When Kensie started her swim lessons originally back in July, the instructor sent out some dos and don’ts that included foods to avoid during lessons. Since K didn’t really eat anything other than breastmilk at that point I didn’t hone in on the details too much. I DID know dairy was a no-no a certain amount of hours before but…I forgot. #mombrain 

However, I had no clue about Spinach! Fun fact: Spinach causes peri-oral cyanosis and restricts air from getting in the lungs. That might explain why I ended up wearing it after she attempted to regulate her breathing in the pool. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Anyways, K’s float was a little better today. Her fall refresher lessons was only supposed to be one week. We’re thankful for Mrs. Heidi for taking some extra time with us to make sure Kens gets it right!

If you read yesterday’s post, last night went as expected. Way too many wake ups and a fussy day because of it! (For both of us 😝). I think her teeth are the culprit. I’ve been giving K Motrin before bed because she just had 2 teeth cut through and she was waking up crying in pain. While I hate having to give her meds, I also hate us both waking up multiple times a night and her discomfort. The tooth broke through and  she’s seemed okay the last couple days so I was trying to skip it. That’s the only thing I can correlate between the bad nights of sleep lately and the good. It looks like she’s getting 2 more on the bottom now so I went back to the medicine tonight…and she’s been out for 4.5 hours so far. 

In better news, we got to visit with my sweet friend Robin and Baby Charlie today!!! Kensie was too preoccupied redecorating their whole house to be too jealous that I was holding another baby. 

And for all of you about to comment something about me having another baby: Pump your brakes. Kensie is going to live up that only child life a little longer. 

What started out as a promising day (minus the traffic ticket I got 🙄) ended with me wearing Kensie’s vomit. 

I’ll start from the beginning. (Saying that makes me want to break out in song from the Sound of Music. “A very good place to starrrrtt”. Just me? Okay, anyways…) 

K went to the gym with me, came home and took an awesome nap, and then we ran a few errands. Of course one of them conveniently involved Target. And Target conveniently has a Starbucks. 

Starbucks, the new cup designs are cute and all, but bring back the RED!! Please and thank you. 

We got home just in time for lunch and in typical Kensie fashion, she wasn’t eating much. She refuses veggies if they aren’t in a pouch. I gave her chicken, turkey and some cheese…and a little cereal because the girl needs some iron. She ate some bites here and there but a few minutes in she was signing “all done”. 

I remembered seeing a mom ask for advice in a group I’m in because her kid wouldn’t eat. Someone suggested smoothies. So, I gave it a go. 

Strawberries, Blueberries, Spinach, Whole Milk Yogurt with Probiotics and Whole milk. (Zero breastmilk)  Blend. 

HOLY SHIT SHE LIKED IT! (“Mikey likes it!” 😂)

​

​
So, I was pumped. Felt like we really accomplished something big. She went down for another nap and then she got up and we headed to swim lessons. 

Her float was still crappy today 😩 and she wasn’t exhaling when she needed to. She got out and I took off her wet clothes and wrapped her in a towel. Then it came. A big burp. Followed by a warm sensation all down my side. Yeah, that’s vomit. 

I froze for a second as everything ran through my head. Um what do I clean this up with? Where should I set her in the meantime? How do I get this off of me? Do I have time to make it home for a change of clothes before I go coach? (No). Super. 

Naked Kens is now standing on the pool deck with a towel half around her. I used the other towel to clean up the puke. Mid puke cleaning Kensie starts PEEING. ON THE POOL DECK. NAKED. Lawdy! Now one towel is covered in vomit. The other in piss. I’m covered in vomit still. My child is naked, wet and crying. 

It was definitely one of the finer moments in my parenting journey. 

We managed to get our shit together and make it to the gym on time. At least one of us was in clean clothes (hint hint: it wasn’t me). 

Before class I am telling one of the other moms who brings her daughter to the same swim lessons about what happened. Mid story, K takes her pacifier out of her mouth and hands it to her. I look at Kensie’s and luckily move my face to the side – vomit. Again. Twice. Luckily this time it resembled water instead of her spinach smoothie that I was oh so proud of just hours before. 🤦🏼‍♀️ (Thanks for helping us clean up, Suzanne!!) Kens seemed much happier after that episode. 

Daddy came to the rescue and took Kensie home early. 

At this point, Kensie has woken up twice in the last 4 hours screaming at the top of her lungs wanting me to nurse her back to sleep. (Yes, screaming. Not crying.) I’m going to give up any hope of a good nights sleep before I even brush my teeth. 😩