'Twas Emmett's First Christmas...

...and all through the house, four other creatures were stirring and thank god none of them were a mouse. Emmett was nestled all snug in his crib, while visions of milk danced in his head...

I am happy to report that Emmett's first Christmas was a wonderful experience!  Initially, we had thought we might head to California for the holiday, but after a lot of discussion amongst Todd and I, we made an important decision for our family- we will no longer be traveling for the holidays and are committed to spending Christmas in our home going forward.  Both Todd and I have great memories of waking up in our houses when we were kids, and want that for our children.  The thought of our child waking up in hotel for Christmas simply isn't what we envisioned for our baby.  Nor, is navigating airports and crowds and having stressed out parents.  It is time for us, as parents, to begin our own traditions for our family. This year we took elements of both of our families traditions, and meshed them together to create our own holiday.  From the Castellano side- Christmas Eve Crab Cioppino and opening presents on Christmas morning.  From the DeCook side- Christmas Mass and a traditional Christmas dinner.  So we had a cozy Christmas in Portland, and enjoyed creating new holiday traditions and planting the magical seeds of Christmas in our 5 month olds mind.  

When we first made the decision to not travel anymore, we expected that there would be times that it was just our little family celebrating.  While we both would like to be able share the holidays with our extended families, we know that with everyone being scattered throughout the country there are going to be years when it is just us.  Thinking too much about this can make you feel very isolated from your loved ones.  Luckily we were reminded this year how lucky we are to be surrounded by people who we care about and were able to spend the holiday with Grandma Joan and the Williams Family.

The greatest part of this year's holidays was the opportunity to begin to share Christmas with Emmett.  Sure he is only 5 months and doesn't "get" it yet, but he definitely knew that we were excited and happy about something and that he got to spend lots of time with his buddies, Melina and Francesca.  He really enjoyed the sparkling lights on both of the big trees we have in our house.  His first experience with church was eventful for him- there were LOTS of lights and LOTS of singing, and as it turns out, the organ is a good way to induce nap time. All of the presents were a little bit overwhelming for him, but what really got him excited was all the wrapping paper to play with!  Did you know it makes noise when you crinkle it and tastes really good?! In my head, I am already beginning to plan next year's festivities.  I can't wait to see what he does! :)

Merry Christmas Mommy & Daddy!  Why are we up so early?

Ok, I am ready for church.  It's still really early, though...

I told you it was early.  I think we should get an organ for the house...

Yes, all of those presents are for one 5 month old.

These are all for him, too...

The stocking was a hit.

So were the blocks.

And the book that Grandma recorded a reading of.  Where is she??

Quite a haul for one little guy! Thank you DeCooks & Harpers!!

Little Christmas babies!  

Emmett, Emmett, Bo-Bemmett, Banana Fana Fo-Femmett...

Sorry it has been a while!  I have been busy with the little guy and, well...just life!  My life feels so full that I am amazingly grateful (and exhausted) at then end of everyday.  Enough excuses, lets move forward.

I am starting to speak in rhyme and think in song.  I have become that women who talks, sings and makes funny faces at her infant in public and doesn't care about other people's reactions. Honestly, as long as my little guy is happy who cares if the general public thinks I am nuts?  And for the first time in my life, I have a captive audience that LOVES when I sing and doesn't care that I am tone deaf.  In fact, nothing makes Emmett smile more than when I break into random song.

Every morning we sing the standard nursery rhymes- Where is Thumpkin? and Itsy-Bitsy Spider, we sing our ABC's, we rhyme about his body parts, and go through all the little piggies...then we digress.  I first start with made up songs about changing diapers or bath time and inevitably I end up singing him baby-appropriate variations of greatest hits from the last 3 decades.  He doesn't know that Guns N' Roses and Snoop Dogg are not considered standard music for an infant or that as a boy he's not supposed to openly like Taylor Swift, and I am not going to be the one to tell him!  But seriously, do other mothers do this?   We have had a contractor in the house for the last 3 weeks remodeling our basement, and I am fairly certain that he and his workers refer to me as the crazy, singing women upstairs.  (Side note:  remodeling + infants = BAD idea.  That's all I am going to say because it was my idea!)

Emmett is 21 weeks or nearly 5 months.  He is a happy, healthy, funny little guy.  It is AMAZING how much his personality has developed in the last month.  He is a little ham, quite a little chatter box and a little flirt. (I wonder where he gets those last two from?)  This kid will seriously smile at anyone who glances his direction.  My Mom used to tell me that the biggest problem with me as a toddler was that I would walk up to strangers and introduce myself- I have a feeling I will have this problem with Emmett in the coming years!

We had Grandma and Grandpa DeCook out for Thanksgiving.  It was a great visit!  We got to spend Thanksgiving with family for the first time in years, Grandma and Grandpa got to love on their grandson and Todd and I go our first day away from Emmett since he was born to go wine tasting with our friends.  Right before their visit, Emmett had his 4 month appointment.  Dr. Meyer said he is doing great and is right on track for his age.  He measured around the 60th percentile for height and weight, so Mom is doing her job!  She also said because he is so aware that we could start him on solid foods a little early so in the last few weeks, we have introduced:

• Rice Cereal (It eventually grew on him.)

• Sweet Potato (YUMMY!)

• Peas (NOT a fan...AT ALL)

• Pears (Another big hit!)

Taking Care of Number Three

Simply put, in the last couple of weeks I have hit a wall.  The onslaught of new emotions, coupled with the hormones and exhaustion of being a new mother finally caught up with me.  I have spent the last few months trying to strike the delicate balance of nurturing and caring for my baby, maintaining my household,  and making sure that my husband is happy and able to relax when he gets home from work. Caring for myself and allowing my body, emotions and mind to recover from having a baby has not been my daily focus. Our doula warned me about how important making myself a priority and taking time for myself was when we first came home from the hospital. She cautioned me not to push my recovery and expect to be back to the "old" physical and emotional me too quickly and explained that she typically sees mothers who are impatient with their recovery start to feel really worn out and defeated by the time their baby becomes 4 months.

Truth be told, I was probably just arrogant enough to think that this wouldn't be an issue and  heeding this warning was much easier said than done for me. When your job is maintaining your home and caring for your family, work is constant and there is always something more important to do than take care of yourself.  There really isn't even time to stop to realize that you are not taking care of yourself.  For those of us who wait until we are in our 30's to have children, it's a complete paradigm shift from the past decade (and a half) we have spent completely focused on bettering ourselves. The time I now have to spend on myself is so limited, I often have to make decisions like, should I make myself a meal or try to squeeze in a workout?  Should I go to sleep or should I respond to emails and read the news so I have some idea what is going on in the outside world?  Should I sit down and have a conversation with my husband or should I do our laundry and clean the kitchen?  How to manage important, yet time consuming tasks, like returning calls from my family, checking my email and generally maintaining communication with the outside world seem to have escaped me.

I feel like I am starting to come out of the funk of the last few weeks, and begin peeling myself off of the wall. Part of what has allowed me to do this is to realize that emotionally, I will never really be the same again.  I have given a whole chunk of myself to this little person I am responsible for shaping and caring for and I will never get that part of me back- it belongs to him.  Intellectually, I am sure I am still capable of the tasks and conversations I used to complete on a daily basis.  However, it is more important in my new world to know how to sing "Where is Thumbkin?" and practice my ABC's then to be well versed in the European financial crisis.  Physically, I know my energy will return and my body can (and will!) get back to a form that is close to what it used to be, but it will also never be quite the same because I created another life with it. Pushing myself too hard to be the old me in my new world has only lead to my being exhausted and frustrated and upset about all of the changes within me.  I have had to slow down and begin adjusting and accepting who I have become.  Once I know how to take care of the new me, I will successfully be able to reintegrate with the rest of the outside world.

Inside the little bubble of my house, a lot of joy and fun has been happening.  Emmett is getting so big, so quickly, that I wish I could stop the clock and freeze time. The majority of my days are spent playing with him- he is just SO much fun right now and is SO happy that I have a hard time stepping away from him.   He lights up when either Todd or I walk into the room and we are greeted with a huge gummy grin and an immediate onslaught of a new dialect we are learning, Emmettian.  This boy LOVES to talk!  He is also holding up his head and sitting in his bumbo and anything else we can prop him up on.  We won't find out how much he weighs until next week, but he is wearing his 6 month clothes, so our little chunk is definitely growing in all directions.

Lounging in his bumbo.

SERIOUSLY with the camera, again Mom?

Watching college football with Daddy on a lazy Saturday morning.

Helping Dad make salsa.

He might hate us for this costume one day....

But we had a really fun Halloween.

I think I have Yoda beat on the cuteness scale, what about you?

Happy Halloween!

Modern Day June Cleaver

Emmett is 13 weeks or 3 months old, depending on how you want to count it.  This is about the time that most working mothers begin to return to the office, give or take a couple of weeks.  Simply put, I do NOT know how women balance having a career and having an infant.  Adding something as complicated as getting to the office by 8 am and concentrating for 8+ hours a day on something other than my baby is unfathomable to me.  The sort of efficiency, dedication and organization that this must require is incredible and I have unmeasurable amounts of respect for those who make it work.  I am grateful every morning that we have made the decision that I am going to stay home with our children.

I always had a picture in my head of what the life of a stay at home mother was like, and what she would do on a daily basis.  The reality is far from the vision I had in my head. I am not a domestic goddess, who is perfectly coiffed and has an elaborate meal prepared for my husband when he gets home from work.  Half the time I haven't even managed to make myself breakfast or lunch, but the baby is always fed and happy. Our house is rarely spotless.  When it is, it's thanks to the housekeeper, not me. It is always neat and organized and I always know what needs to be done when I can find the time.  I don't greet my husband at the door every day to find out how his day was. Generally when Todd gets home from work, Emmett and I are laying on the floor somewhere playing, with a bunch of toys and burp clothes leading a trail to our location like breadcrumbs. I have three goals every day, and in my opinion anything else I achieve before 1 pm when Todd gets home is gravy:

1) Have the bed made. Even if that's where we are hanging out and playing.
2) Kitchen cleaned, dishes done. At least from the night before.
3) Baby and Mom dressed.  Please note being "dressed" is subjective.  Yoga pants and a sweatshirt are fine, as long as it wasn't the outfit that Todd saw me in when he left for the office.  Having showered is ideal but not required.


If someone had told me 10 years ago that I was going to be a "housewife" or stay at home mom, I would have laughed at them.  I always anticipated that I would be bored staying at home with a baby, and would not want to forfeit everything that I had worked so hard to achieve.  I didn't think it would be challenging enough for me to be at home.  WOW- I honestly don't think I have ever been so wrong!  Staying at home is a different kind of challenge than having a career, but if it is one thing, it is filled with constant, new challenges and is so different than I envisioned it being.


Our challenge for the last week has been trying to begin establishing a sleep schedule and routine.  The first part of this was moving Emmett from our room to his nursery at night.  This was really, really tough for me.  Emmett has seemed completely unphased by it...in fact, he seems to be sleeping better than ever.  Maybe he was looking for a little space?   We are still on the same schedule during the day- he naps every hour to hour and half for varying lengths of time.  At night, however, we made some changes since he moved to his room and been able to establish a very promising pattern for the last week.

Everything that I have read says that part of creating good sleep habits for your infant involves establishing a set sleep time routine that he will recognize. So now, every night between 6 and 7 pm Todd and I read Emmett a book, feed him, kiss him goodnight, rock him for a little bit and put him to bed.  So far, it has been working out pretty well.  There have been a few nights where he fights going to sleep- he is, after all, mine and Todd's child. That stubborn streak runs deep in him!  And he woke up wanting food a couple of nights around 9:30 pm but went back to sleep while he was eating.  The result has been him sleeping until 4-6:30 am every morning.  At 13 weeks, I am MORE than happy with these results.  Of course, this doesn't mean that I am getting a ton of sleep.  Since he is now downstairs and sleeping so well, I get nervous and end up checking on him multiple times during the night just to make sure that he is ok.  Hopefully I will get over this and we will be a well rested family!

Emmett being cute...and showing off his developing neck control.

Now that he can roll over, using the Boppy is the only way we get tummy time in!

A wonderful Saturday afternoon out and about.

It's fall in Portland.  Time for cute hats!

The one problem Todd and I are having with the rocker- we put ourselves to sleep along with the baby :)

The power of a good mobile!  Yes, Emmett had the twins in his crib.

And as usual, Emmett and Milena ended up holding hands.  Isn't that sweet!?

Family of Sickos

I have never been a huge fan of souvenirs from trips or vacations.  Although, I understand that they can help with sentimental reflections, I've always preferred relying on photos and memories. This is particularly true with the latest trip that we took to California.  It was Emmett's first flight and time being away from home.  My brother married a wonderful woman who my entire family adores.  Despite all of the wonderful memories created by this trip I HATE the souvenir we brought back with us- a cold/flu bug that Emmett and I had a really hard time shaking!

I started feeling ill the day of my brothers wedding, a sore throat that was on fire and horrible congestion. While I was getting ready for the wedding, I sent Todd to Whole Foods to get me some lozenges and medicine.  By the end of the night, I was hitting my Dad up for Sudafed which he miraculously had a stash of in his suit pocket.  The next day, I headed to the regular pharmacy to ask the pharmacist which medicine was safe for a nursing mother to take, she recommended Advil Cold & Sinus.  By the time we left California the following morning, I had the full blown flu and felt horrible.  Unknowingly, I had also created a serious problem for myself on top of being sick- I took multiple decongestants and menthol lozenges, all of which are known to dry up a nursing mother's milk supply.  Our first day home, I noticed a significant reduction in my milk supply.  For the first time since he was born, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to provide enough food for my baby.  This coupled with Emmett being much more needy than normal and wanting to eat non-stop lead to complete  panic about my diminished capacity to feed my baby.

I have to say, that being sick and not being able to take any medication is really awful.  But do you know what is worse?  Having a sick 10 week old that you know is feeling as poorly as you do, who can't tell you how he is feeling or what is bothering him.  It was a horrible experience.  Luckily, Todd pretty much just stayed away from the two of us so he didn't get sick.  This enabled him to do crucial things for Emmett and I, like go and get me a nursing supplement so that my milk supply increased back to normal production and get food for me so that neither of us starved.  I also researched a few things that I could and did do for Emmett to speed up his recovery:

• Aspirate his nose with salt water so that it was clear and not congested. (VERY unpleasant for both of us.)
• Place him in a steam filled room for 10+ minutes to help him breathe easier.  (He liked this one.)
• Keep nursing him no matter how poorly I felt.  When a mother is ill the antibodies her body is creating pass to the child so that he recovers quicker than if his developing immune system had to create them on his own.
• Colostrum- the initial milk that a mother produces if filled with immune boosting agents and anti-bodies.  At the suggestion of our doula, I froze two feedings of this for an occasion just like this.

At this point, Emmett is feeling better- the gummy grin that greets me each morning and through out the day is what I am basing this on.  I am still mildly congested, but beyond that I seem to be finally recuperating.   The only real lingering issue is that either the cold or the traveling seems to have thrown Emmett's wonderful sleep schedule all out of whack!  He is still sleeping 7+ hours through the night, but for some reason he thinks that his night starts around 11 pm.  His napping is still great during the day, but come 8 pm he just wants to hang out with Mom and Dad and not sleep like he used to.  One day, he will understand that anything after 7 pm is supposed to be Mom and Dad ONLY time.  

On a more positive note, our little buddy has started rolling over!  Todd laid him down for tummy time one night while I was making dinner and BAM.  He just started going...and he hasn't stopped since!  Right now it is just tummy to back rolling (thank god!)  Check out the video below of our little guy rollin'.

    

Also, we received our DVD of Emmett's newborn photo session from Kristen Honeycutt.  I can't believe how little he was!  Or how big he has gotten!!  Below are a few additional photos from the session and a link to the album on Snapfish for those of you who would like to order photos:

Emmett's Newborn Photo Session with Kristen

Sweet Home California

Last week we made our first journey with 9 week old Emmett. Uncle Rob (my brother) and Aunt Kacie were getting married, so the three of us hopped on a plane to my beloved San Francisco Bay Area.  I say "hopped" jokingly.  Those of you who have travelled with an infant know that there is nothing speedy about preparing for a trip with an infant this young.  At one point while I was packing Todd asked if I would like to just bring the whole nursery.  Yes, actually dear...that would be great!  Our days of being able to travel with just carry-on luggage are long gone.

I will say that in all honesty, the preparation was the most difficult part of our trip.  Flying was actually not bad at all and thanks to some words of wisdom from our doula before our trip I felt like we were well prepped for how to manage the trip, the travel process and what to bring.  For us, the trick for flying was simply keeping Emmett under my "hooter hider" the majority of the flight.  He nursed when his ears were bothering him and slept the rest of the time.  On the way home, Hertz even gave us a special curbside drop off at SFO and the airline accomodated our request for an extra seat because the flight wasn't full so we were able to bring the car seat on the plane with us.  We brought our normal stroller but used the car seat adapter and were able to check all of this big gear at the gate. The hotel provided a pack n' play, and we brought unwashed bedding from home so that Emmett would feel like it was still his bed because of the smell.  Overall, it was a pretty successful experience!

The trip itself was wonderful.  The wedding was beautiful, tear jerking (damn you postpartum  hormones!) and a lot of fun.  We were able to leave Emmett with a babysitter for the first time since he was born and it was a completely nerve wracking yet wonderful experience!  We used a nanny service through the hotel and had Emmett and the nanny at the reception with us for the first few hours and then took him and the nanny back to the hotel while we went out to party with the rest of the wedding guests.  First off, the nanny was awesome!  So capable and sweet.  Secondly, I say "party" jokingly.  I think combined Todd and I finished three drinks but it was still nice to be out past 8 pm.  Long gone are the wild days of Todd and Heather!  Waking up to feed an infant with a hangover was just not appealing to either of us.

It was wonderful to be able to introduce Emmett to his family.  It was the first occasion that all four of the Castellano siblings had been together in over 4 years, so it was a really special time for so many reasons. My only complaint would be that there wasn't enough time to spend with everyone. It was also great to be able to spend time in the bay area with my husband and baby.  As Todd knows, my home is always with him and Emmett but I spent 31 years in California and when I go back there I feel oddly torn about calling any other place home.  So I spent a portion of the trip taking Todd to a bunch of different areas and continued showing (selling) him the east bay.  You never know what might happen one day.  :)

Before we left, Emmett had his 2 month check up and his first round of immunizations.  Our little guy isn't so little anymore!  He is measuring over 23 inches, over 13 lbs. and has a head circumference of over 16 cms.  He was over the 65 percentile for everything- not bad considering he was born a week early.  The immunizations weren't nearly as bad as I expected them to be.  I had Todd hold him and I looked away for the actual shots and then I nursed him in the doctors office for about 10 mins immediately afterwards.  Luckily, he skipped the fussy phase that some babies experience and went right to the sleeping for 3 days part.  It really wasn't bad at all.  Dr. Meyer also said that because he is so healthy (and fat) that he should start sleeping through the night soon and that we don't need to feed him if he wakes up less than 6 hours after he went to sleep.  As if by magic, last week he started sleeping 6.5-7.5 hours a night and even maintained this when on vacation sleeping in a strange crib!  Yay, sleeping through the night!

Our brave little tiger after his shots!

Emmett's first blazer wearing experience for the Rehearsal Dinner.

Aunt Kacie and her bridesmaids.

Emmett in his first tuxedo :)

The full tuxedo effect.

Mr. and Mrs. Castellano!

The Castellano women- Me, Melissa, Cousin Andrea and Michelle.