Happy Halloween!!

Our little giraffe wants to wish everyone a Happy Halloween!!

We just drove around and visited a couple friends, along with going to see Meme!!

Hope everyone had a great day/night!

This Week

I know, I'm so super creative with my titles lately, right?? I have mad skills!! :-)

Another week has passed and another Saturday is here...yes!! Too bad there aren't more than 1 Saturday in a week. Oh well. This week has been pretty uneventful. Sara Kate is still on the 'off' teething cycle...that's what I'll call it...on and off. She's slept great all week, except she woke up one morning at 5:30, but I think that was a hunger wake up. She's taking her morning nap right now and has been down for about an hour. When she wakes up we're headed to the mall to do a little shopping before the Hog game tonight.

Isn't she doing well sitting up?!?

She wore her little Halloween outfits to school this week...gotta get them in one last time! Also, on Friday we were supposed to bring her 'costume' and they played dress up after nap time. They said they got some great pictures of her. She sacked out on the way home! And of course, these pictures are for Aunt Laura (who gave her this cute outfit)!

My little giraffe!! I LOVE giraffe print so when I saw this online, I had to order it. These will make great pajama's this fall and winter when it's cold because they are so soft and warm!

One last thing - we had Sara Kate's 6 month pictures taken yesterday afternoon at Wilson Park. There were actually some really pretty tree's and Beth (our photographer...she did Sara Kate's newborn pictures, too) said they looked pretty with the lighting. Hopefully she got some great shots. We did family pictures too. I saw a little sneak peak of a picture of Sara Kate and Chris, and it was so fantastic! I can't wait to share them on here when we get them back!

And here's one more funny picture from last night. She's hilarious sometimes!

Last Week

Guess I've been a blog slacker the last week, and I apologize to all my faithful readers (haha!!!). To quote my best friend this morning, 'hey, how are you? how was your weekend? no blog update?' :-) Last week was very tiring, so that explains my lack of posting. I'll do my best to recap what's been going on in the Michaels' household.
I believe Sara Kate is now teething. It started last Sunday morning, she was awake at 3:30 and would not calm back down. Then Monday morning she was awake at 4:00 and wouldn't calm down. Tuesday morning her unhappiness began at 4:30. Wednesday morning provided a change of pace and she was up at 1:30 and I managed to get her calmed down and back to sleep by 2:30, and Thursday morning was similar to Wednesday. Thursday night she slept through the night, although I was on pins and needles expecting her to wake up so I didn't sleep good, despite my exhaustion. She has continued to sleep through the night all weekend, thankfully, because it was a very tiring weekend! More on the weekend in a bit. Along with the restless nights, Sara Kate has also had a clear runny nose, a cough, and I think she had fever a couple mornings. Nothing a little Tylenol didn't solve because I never got a call from her school telling me to come get her because of fever. I bought some all natural teething tablets that dissolve on the tongue, and I think that helped her relax on Wednesday and Thursday mornings so I could get her back to sleep. She seems fine during the day (I assume...notes on her daily report cards at school had happy baby written on them), and she has been getting upset at night, with I guess her gums bothering her. Poor thing...it makes me sad when I couldn't do anything for her. As thankful as I am for the nights she slept through, it kind of threw me for a loop. So yesterday at church I talked to a friend who has a daughter 2 months older than Sara Kate. She said the symptoms come and go before the tooth comes in. So who knows when the painful nights will return, but for now I'm taking advantage of the sleep filled nights. Guess I'll update more on this as time goes on!

Cereal update! Sara Kate is still getting rice cereal at nights. I feed her 'dinner' between 6:30 and 7, depending on when she got her afternoon bottle at school. I've been feeding her rice cereal around 7:45 or 8, and then we start our bedtime routine at 8:30, or 8:45 at the latest. Early in the week she was taking it , reluctantly. I was pretty much having to force her to eat it, and she spit alot of it out. Last night was the first night I would call a success!! At first, she was spitting alot out and was just not interested. Then all of a sudden she started opening her mouth and leaning towards the spoon. Yay!! I kept telling her what a good girl she was...kinda felt like I was talking to the dog. Ha! Oh well. We'll see what tonight brings! Maybe another week of cereal then I'll make her first real food. What should it be? Sweet potatoes (which I do NOT like)? I've read that's a good first food. I need to do more research!
Weekend update! I already mentioned, it was BUSY!! Friday night we had tickets to go to a concert at George's on Dickson Street. Chris and I never go out...we're pretty much homebodies so it was kinda nice to get out, even though we were both exhausted. We saw one of my favorites, Pat Green!!! Love him!! A grad school buddy took me to my first Pat Green concert when I first moved up here and I've been hooked ever since. I think I've only missed one of his show's since I first saw him, and that was in the spring when I was pregnant. Anyway, the concert was supposed to start at 9, and Pat didn't take the stage until 10:30...ughhh!!!! Once he started though, the show was awesome!! Unfortunately because it started so late, it didn't get done until midnight. My poor mother-in-law at our house keeping Sara Kate! We felt so bad! It was 12:30 when we got home and we were asleep by 1. That night I was VERY thankful Sara Kate slept all night!! :-) Saturday was Razorback game day!!!
Hogs were playing the Ole Miss Care Bears...I mean Black Bears. Completely stupid mascot!! I have extreme hatred for Ole Miss for many reasons, one of which is it's the BIG rival of my alma mater, Mississippi State. Poor Chris couldn't go to the game because he had to judge Jr. High All Region Choir. Super fun, right? Don't know why they always schedule that on a home game weekend. Oh well. Getting out the house was interesting but I dropped Sara Kate off at my in-laws and we were in the stadium by the National Anthem (me, my brother, and a friend). The weather was kind of iffy but we came prepared...rain jackets and trash bags! The first half was awesome. Hogs on top, kicking some Black Bear butt. Then the rain delays started. And then Ole Miss got a little momentum. And then more rain delays. We left after the second rain delay. The game started at 11:20 and didn't end until 4:15!!! Crazy!! But Hogs won so it's allllll good!!

Check out our awesome rain attire!! Yes we looked ghetto, but our butts stayed dry! :-)

Sunday was church, laundry, and errands...normal Sunday activities.
So that's what we've been up to. My parents are coming up this weekend and I'm very excited about that. They haven't seen Sara Kate since Labor Day weekend. And they get to babysit Saturday night because there's another home game!
Oh yeah, I wanted to document a few things Sara Kate started doing last week. She has started shaking her head 'no;' of course she doesn't know what it means, but she looks at us and smiles and shakes her head. It's cute. She's also doing this funny sway thing when she sits in her Bumbo. I tell her she's dancing! I have a super cute video but it's turned sideways for some reason and I don't know how to flip it. Maybe Chris can get it flipped for me so I can post it.

Oh, and one more thing...here's a little sneak peak of Sara Kate and her Halloween get-up!

Hope ya'll have a good week!

Take 2

Our 2nd attempt at rice cereal went a little better tonight. I bought some Gerber Organic Brown Rice Cereal from Target yesterday (that stuff is pretty cheap!), and I mixed it with a little breast milk.

She did good and took almost all of what we mixed for her. She would even open her mouth when I got the spoon close...a few times anyways. Other times I kinda had to just stick the spoon in her mouth and turn it over so the cereal would end up on her tongue. She was kinda fussy when we put her in her high chair so she doesn't look super thrilled in these pictures, but she got some good swallow's in.

All ready, mom!

What am I supposed to do with this stuff on my tongue, mom?

Ok, I'll have more!

Cody, this is my food!

About done with this!

All done...happy girl (not really, I just got her to smile)! :-)

Guess we'll try a little bit every night and see how it goes. Then I'm not sure if we're supposed to add another 'feeding' during the day or what. This baby food stuff has me confused!

Hope ya'll have a good week!

1st Attempt

Well, my first attempt at making baby food was a big old FAIL!!!! I made rice cereal last night and it just didn't come out right. I don't think it would have been so much of a fail if my food processor would have pulverized the rice completely like the recipe said to do. So without further ado, here's our first attempt at making and feeding rice cereal in pictures.

So part of the problem was the uncooked chunks of rice that didn't pulverize, but I may have thinned it out too much. I thinned it out pretty good with breast milk, thinking she'd be more likely to take it since it was mostly milk. Overall, she just wasn't a fan. I'm going to forgo making any more rice cereal (even though I have a small Tupperware that's mostly full with left overs from yesterday) and stick to making fruits and veggies, which we'll start in another week or 2 weeks. I'll buy some rice cereal from Target and we'll give it another shot!