We had our photos taken by C.Klein Photography a few weeks ago at Red Rocks Park and I love how they turned out!
Monthly Archives: March 2014
Winter’s 5 Month Update
BABY WINTER’S MONTHLY UPDATE: 5 months old
Baby’s Age: 5 months old
Height: 25 inches (approx.)
Weight: 15 pounds, 1 ounce
Head: not sure
Diaper Size: Size 2
Clothes Size: 6 months
Here is a look back at the past few months:
Here is Winter in her Bumbo:
What Winter is Like at 5 Months: Our baby girl is no longer a newborn! She is rapidly growing up and constantly learning. Sometimes we feel truly shocked at how quickly Winter is changing and developing!
A few weeks ago, Winter learned how to roll over from her back to her tummy. Ever since she learned how to do this, we cannot keep this baby on her back no matter how hard we try! She is just a little rolling machine. In fact, because she refuses to stay on her back for longer than 15 seconds, this affects her sleeping style–she no longer will sleep on her back. When we put her down for naps or night time in her crib, we always lie her in the middle of the crib on her back. Instantly she rolls on to her side and typically sleeps on her side/partially on her tummy. In the morning, I usually wake up to her either in the corner of her crib or with her legs stuck in the crib rails — always on her tummy. She is too funny! Honestly, her rolling all around scared me at first because I was afraid of SIDS, but now I realize there is nothing we can do to keep her from rolling, so I’ve accepted that is how it is.
Winter is the epitome of a happy baby. She has a stellar personality and absolutely loves anyone and everyone. As soon as she sees a person (whether in real life or on Skype/Facetime, she instantly lights up and grins from ear to ear. She is so social and loves attention! Whenever we take her to the nursery at church or the nursery at MOPS, we are always praised for what a joy she is to watch. Everyone adores her.
She is no longer content to lie down and observe or quietly bat at the toys in her play gym…no, no, no — she wants to play and interact constantly! As I mentioned, she won’t stay on her back for very long, so she rolls on to her tummy and then she plays with toys and wants to constantly be entertained. Sometimes it’s exhausting because when she is awake, I’m constantly playing with her and giving her attention. She does enjoy playing and jumping in her Little Einstein exercauser/jumper. For a while she was too short as her feet didn’t touch the floor, but now she is taller and has discovered how much she enjoys jumping up and down!
She has become very interested in our two pets (dog and cat). She really likes both of them. She loves petting (eh–grabbing and pulling) their fur. She enjoys when the dog licks her face.
Winter is really ticklish. She giggles and laughs when you tickle under her arms, on her toes and squeeze her chubby thighs. She loves being sung to. We sing “What Does the Fox Say?” to her multiple times per day. She also likes “Jesus Loves Me,” “You Are My Sunshine,” “Pat-A-Cake,” “Bushel and a Peck,” as well as other lullabies and praise/worship songs that we sing.
Sometimes if she starts fussing because she simply wants attention — I start to clap repeatedly and this gets her attention and she stops fussing. You’ll find me clapping a lot while eating dinner so that we can get through our meal without having to hold her! 🙂 It’s really kind of weird, but clapping works! It gets her attention.
Several weeks ago, she caught her first bad sickness–the stomach virus. In 24 hours she vomited 12 times and couldn’t keep anything in her belly! It was a truly awful experience. No mom wants to see their little baby go through that. We felt scared because we were very concerned about her becoming dehydrated at this young age. We closely followed the guidance of her pediatrician. We did take her in to see the doctor, and aside from losing a little bit of weight, she was just fine.
Overall, Winter is growing, learning and a very happy little baby. She is so much fun, and I enjoy every single day with her!!
Milestones: She can roll over in both directions, she is learning how to sit up unassisted, she puts everything in her mouth, she stands up while holding onto our hands, she sleeps through the night, she jumps up and down in her Little Einstein exercauser.
Sleep: Our champion sleeper sleeps 10 hours at night. She takes 2 long naps (2+ hours) and one or two shorter naps. She is such a great sleeper!
Best Moment: Finally getting well after her stomach virus. It felt amazing to have the throwing up stop and get back to normal.
Worst Moment: Watching Winter vomit repeatedly during her sickness. She puked so much and you could tell she didn’t feel good.
Health: Aside from the stomach bug, she has been doing great. She is growing and learning and reaching her milestones on time!
Eating: Winter is still exclusively breastfed. We are waiting to start any solids until she is 6 months. Though she is showing a lot of interest in foods, I am fine holding out for one more month. Once we start solids, I plan to begin with vegetables and eventually add fruits (start with bland and eventually add sweeter tastes). We might skip rice cereal as her pediatrician said there is very little nutritional value in cereal. As for now, she is nursing 5-6 times per day. Her typical routine for eating is this: 7:30 or 8:00 am, 11:00 or 11:30 am, 2:30 pm, 6:00 or 6:30 pm, 8:30 pm, 10:30 pm. Sometimes the 8:30 pm and the 10:30 pm feedings blend into one feeding somewhere in the middle–but it really just depends on what we have going on. I am very laid back and will nurse her on demand if she seems hungry at a non scheduled time. I still follow Baby Wise, but have realized that I make it into what works for me — I don’t worry too much if I don’t follow it to a T.
Likes: Pulling hair, putting anything & everything in her mouth, smiling, laughing, singing songs, sucking on her wabbanub pacifiers, reading books, putting her hands in her mouth, playing with toys, putting ANYTHING into her mouth, taking a bath, feeling textures, getting tickled, standing up, looking at her reflection in the mirror, getting her hair brushed, getting thrown up in the air, watching the dog & cat.
Dislikes: She doesn’t like it when we aren’t paying attention to her.
How Mommy is doing: Life as a mom is great! I love spending all of my days with Winter. We have gotten very busy and involved with my moms groups. At least 2-3 times per week we have activities going on during the day with my moms group. Usually walks or playdates at someone’s house. Sometimes we go swimming or do other fun activities. I love all of the mom friends I have made and Winter likes playing with other babies her age.
If you missed her previous updates, you can check out:
Photos of Winter and Our Family:
Post Baby Body – 5 Month Update
Happy 5 months to Winter and happy 28th birthday to me today! I am working on Winter’s 5 month update that will be posted this week, but for now it’ time to get an up-to-date glance at Mommy’s postpartum progress in relation to health and fitness!
Here is how I’m looking now:
Here is a comparison of last month versus this month:
And here is a look back:
28 years old today…I can’t believe I’m just 2 years shy of 30, which is exciting! I think 30 is a fun age to be. Not only am I marking a new age today, we are also celebrating Winter turning 5 months old. She is such a sweet little girl. My baby is much less of a newborn and much more of an interactive sweet baby girl!
I’ve continued making great progress in regards to my post baby body. At 5 months postpartum, I weigh less than I did when I got pregnant, my jeans are all fitting me better than they have in a long time, and I even am able to wear some of my size 4 jeans that haven’t been able to fit me for several years! It feels really great to whip my body into better shape than it was when I first got pregnant. I wasn’t happy with my pregnancy starting weight, so now I have taken control of my fitness and am getting close to my goal: getting back to my wedding weight from 2008. I’m almost there!!
If you missed my previous “Post Baby Body” updates, you can catch up here:
WEIGHT LOSS
To date I’ve lost 38 pounds. Wow! I lost another 5 lbs since my 4 month update in February. I’m getting so close to my goal weight! My goal weight is my wedding weight from 6 years ago 🙂
EATING
My calories are logged every day on myfitnesspal app on my phone. I’m eating anywhere from 2000-2200 calories per day. Previously I had reduced my caloric intake to 1900 and I found that it was unrealistic for me. Giving myself an extra hundred (or two or three!) calories makes me feel like I’m able to relax a little bit more. Obviously I’ve still been able to lose weight even though I increased my calories a bit. Breastfeeding really helps me be able to eat this much and still lose weight!! During the first week of March, I participated in a “7 Day Clean Eating Challenge.” During the entire week I only ate clean foods: mainly fruits, vegetables and chicken. It was kind of fun to “clean out” my body and focus on consuming zero processed or sweetened foods for an entire week. It was hard at some points, but overall I enjoyed the experience. It got me to eat a lot more vegetables than I’m used to eating. I made tons of fruit smoothies, which were absolutely delicious. After a week of 100% only clean foods, I feel lighter, fresher, and more energetic!
WORKING OUT
I workout 5-6 days per week (usually 6). I’m pretty much mostly running for the main source of my exercise. We are 4 weeks out from our half marathon, and yesterday we did a 9 mile training run. I felt GREAT on this run! My gym days are almost nonexistent. I am making it there barely once per week. But the reason is because I’d much rather run outside or workout at home because it saves so much time. When I go to the gym, I am restricted to evenings (so that Eric is home and can watch Winter) and I also waste 20-30 minutes roundtrip commuting=dumb! So I run outside, run on my treadmill, do kickboxing DVD in my livingroom and use my stability ball for exercise. My half marathon training has me running 3-4 times per week (2-3 shorter runs of 4-5 miles and one long run on the weekends). The non running days are either gym (approx. 1 time per week) or a kickboxing DVD.
GOALS
I want to successfully complete my half marathon in 4 weeks from now! I don’t know that I’ll achieve a new PR (personal record), but if I do, I would be absolutely thrilled!!
REALITY CHECK
Life isn’t going to go perfectly 100% of the time and sometimes I’m going to miss workouts. No biggie. We all got sick in this house recently. When I was sick I had to take a break from running for several days to allow my body the time to rest so I could recuperate. With my personality, it’s difficult for me to slow down and relax/take a break from fitness. But it was good that I took a few days off. We had to skip our long weekend training run–but honestly it was perfect timing because both weekend days that particular weekend were snowing and too cold to take a baby out. Such is life…sometimes we need a break.
I’m glad that I have a healthy mentality about my body. This has not always been the case. Years ago, I struggled with negative self-talk and basing my self worth on what the scale said. To help my disordered mentality, I put away the scale for about 5 years and didn’t weigh myself until a year ago when I started my pregnancy. The scale and I are now in a healthy relationship with each other, praise God! Instead of basing my value on how much I weigh or how I look, I now put my self worth in how Christ sees me–I am a daughter of the King! God sees me and loves me no matter what size jeans I wear, so I choose to love me regardless of that too. If you have struggles with negative self-talk and feeling insecure about yourself and your body, I encourage you — you aren’t alone! Though it never 100% goes away, it can get better, and I find that viewing myself through God’s eyes has been very helpful for me.
Here is a comparison looking back (wearing the same top!):
Baby Lute x3 