She needed one (or at least something for her toys to hang from) and I didn’t want to spend lots of money on something she won’t be using for long, so I spent a few dollars at Home Depot and made one myself. My super crafty mama sister designed it and made one for my niece. Instructions to make your own baby gym can be found on her blog. Baby Girl loves it and spent lots of time playing with it this afternoon.
Oh, I almost forgot. The cute bunny blanket she is laying on was made by my grandma.
Paige got a lot of Christmas gift and I think it’s important to send thank you notes. So instead of purchasing boring, unoriginal thank you notes for her to send to the awesome people who spoiled her for Christmas, I decided that we had to do something special. I considered letting her create the artwork for her cards but since she’s just 3 months old (er, a few days shy of 3 months), I thought something different might be a better idea. This is what I came up with:
Cute, right? I think so. The husband took a picture of her next to the Christmas tree at my sister’s house that I really liked. So I submitted it to Costco online and had it printed as wallet-size prints. For $.39, you can get 4 wallet-size prints to a sheet. Fabulous! Baby Girl and I took a trip to Michaels for the rest of our supplies. I wanted to find blank cards that were slightly larger than the photos, but those were unavailable so I got some that were bigger than what I wanted. I knew the photo would be too small for those cards, so I found some Christmasy looking scrapbook paper that I could use to frame the photos. I hadn’t planned on doing this, but fortunately I wasn’t able to find the smaller note cards I had originally wanted and came up with something even better and cuter! I also picked up some black photo corner mounting thingies to use to stick the photos to the cards. This way the thank you note recipients can easily remove the photo if they want to keep it. I used my Fiskars wavy edged scissors to cut out the scrapbook paper photo frames. I glued those to the front of the cards, stuck the photo on with the black photo mounting thingies, stamped a big P (found in Michaels dollar section) on the back of each card, and the cards were done! I also used the P stamp on the back of each sealed envelope.
Christmas 2010 was Baby Girl’s first Christmas and she wanted to give her dad something nice. Since she was just 2 months old, she didn’t have any money to spend so she decided to paint him a picture. We went to Michaels and picked up an 8×10 artist’s canvas for half price and some kid safe paint and headed home to start our project. I already had paint brushes for her to use. I considered letting her finger paint, but quickly changed my mind when I realized what a mess that would make. I put some old towels on the kitchen floor, stripped Baby Girl down to her diaper, and let the creativity begin. While she sat in my lap, I dipped the brush in the paint, put it in her hand gave her a little support to keep the brush in her hand, and let her put paint wherever she wanted to put it. Here’s the finished product:
Guess what I got for my birthday in October. A baby girl! She was born on my birthday. What a great gift, huh? She was born via emergency c-section, 5 days late, weighed 6 lbs 4 oz, and was 19.5 inches. She’s 2.5 months old now, 10+ pounds, 22ish inches, and I love being her mom. Life has changed drastically since her arrival. I naively thought I would be able to return to work shortly after her birth. Ha! Wrong. I don’t even know what I was thinking. I took my maternity leave from the salon and ended up quitting. I went back one day when baby girl was 3 weeks for a few hours to see a client and that was the worst 3 hours ever. She stayed with one of her grandmas so I knew she was fine, but I hated being away from her! We were working really hard on getting breastfeeding worked out, so being away from her would have made that even more difficult. So I am now a stay at home mommy. I love my new job as a full time mom, but wowza. When people say it’s the hardest job ever, they’re not kidding. It’s seriously a 24/7 job. But it’s also the greatest job ever. And lowest paying. Although I love it, I’ve also found that it can get really lonely staying home all day with a newborn. I’ve discovered that when you have a baby, all your baby-free friends feel like they need to give you space because you’re too busy to see them. In reality the opposite is true. I feel like I need my friends more than ever! Sometimes I just want to have adult conversation or a trip out to lunch. Lesson: when your friends have babies, they’re not too busy for you. Sure, it’s a little rough at the beginning, but once they get into the swing of things with the baby, they’ll be ready to hang out with you again.
Before baby girl was born I thought I’d have tons of free time to myself while she slept. I thought she’d be sleeping all the time. She is sleeping lots, but free time…what? It doesn’t exist. I used to think I didn’t have any free time. Ha! Silly me! I used to be the queen of Facebook. I kept up with everything. Over the past 2.5 months, I’ve barely read anything on Facebook. During those precious moments I’m supposed to have to myself while she sleeps, here’s what I do: check the baby, frantically search the kitchen for something to eat, check the baby, shower very quickly, check the baby, laundry, check the baby, fold laundry, check the baby, attempt to check and respond to email and Facebook, check the baby, attempt to get dressed, check the baby, try to clean the house up a bit, check the baby, attempt to make dinner, check the baby, and lots and lots of other things. Yes, I’m one of those obsessed, paranoid parents who is constantly checking on my baby. Go ahead, make fun of me. I don’t care. The point is, free time does not exist. Baby girl always knows when it’s time for me to eat because, as soon as I get my food prepared, she wakes up. Every time. How does she know? Ah well. It’s chaos but I love it and I love her and it’s all good.
Baby Girl on her birthday.Baby Girl and I. She’s 13 days old.My girl and her BFF, Minnie. She’s almost 2 months in this pic.
