Mommy Night Out

Before getting married and then having a baby I was quite the social butterfly.
Not to say that I'm not now, it's just that I don't get invited to as many events as I use to.

That could be for many reasons, one of the biggest being, that I'm not in television news anymore. Instead I work in corporate television producing internal messages and training videos.

But, back in the day I went to charity events, political events, you name it, if I was invited I went.

Well, last night I had a glimpse back into my 'former' life being invited to an event at The Charlotte City Club for the Former NFL Players Orgnanization and the Kiwanis Club.

My former colleague from Fox Charlotte invited me.
Alexis and I go way back.

The event was a fundraiser for charities helping children with childhood cancer and the place was packed!!

The bartenders were former NFL players. It was so fun to see just how many different people live in Charlotte that never necessarily played for the Panthers.

And, it was fun and amazing to see just how many teams some of these guys played for!

There were several players there from the Panthers team that traveled to the Super Bowl.
Colin told me that the year that they went was actually his rookie year!

Can you imagine?

The highlight of the night was getting to see this guy.

I worked with him for YEARS at Fox and he was always available for a last minute interview or to fill in on the set. He was a TRUE life saver!

I had not seen him in 8-years. It was fun to share with him that I had gotten married and had a baby.

The entire night brought back so many memories and back to a place in my life that has long set sail.

Would I give up my time with Shelby, Brad and Buddy to do this every night?
NO!!!!

But, I have to say it was nice to get out and have a little 'Mommy night out' and catch up with old friends and colleagues.
Thanks to Alexis for inviting me!!

4-Months and Life Update

Happy Monday My Loves!

Hope everyone had a fabulous weekend!

Ours was nothing out of the ordinary.

Doing things around the house(this weekend was sprucing up our deck), cooking, hanging with Shelby and hanging with neighbors.

Brad and I are going a little stir-crazy though and are in need of an occassional sitter so we can get out.

We've got one for the end of the month. I'm thinking we might line her up in advance for a couple days a month.

Unless we have a sitter we can't really do dinner out or even go to a friend's house after 7pm.

Shelby goes to bed at 7pm every night and she's sleeping 11-1/2 to 12-hours.

If we bring her after 7pm she gets off schedule and I'm afraid of screwing up the good thing we have going.

Thoughts?

I know every now and then it's not that big of a deal but it just makes me anxious, not to mention, she's so use to it that she's fussy beyond belief after a certain time of being up.

Other than that life is pretty good.

We're really enjoying watching Shelby grow.

Each and everyday there's something new.

Friday was her 4-month birthday. Which means, of course, I had to take pictures complete with month stickers.

How cute is she?

Oh, my goodness....

This past month she started to really laugh, play in her exersaucer and master the Bumbo seat.

She's also started to notice Buddy some.

I had seen other bloggers mention about when their babies really started to notice the dog and how neat it was.

I'm hoping the two will be best friends.

I've received several tweets, Facebook and email messages asking me about how I like being back at work and having Shelby in nursery school.

I'm really happy with both!

I truly love being back at work and in the midst of everything. It's a nice break from being home all day long. Don't get me wrong, I LOVED my time off for maternity leave and was initially sad about coming back, but I'm happy working.

It's just me.

As awful as that might sound to those who have chosen to stay home, we have the right to make our own choices.

This is what's right for our family.

I'm starting to master the schedule too.

I'm able to get in a power walk a few times a week after getting home.

The only thing I really need to work on is cooking more.

Brad really does the heavy lifting with that and it makes me feel like a bad wife a lot of times.

All in time... All in time..

And, you know what?

Shelby really loves her nursery school!

Brad says when he drops her off in the mornings she just smiles and smiles at her teachers.

They love her too.

I have to believe she's a favorite!! :-)

Shelby is social like her Mama too.

One of her teachers says she's good doing tummy time when all the other kids are doing it but when she's by herself she goes bonkers.

HA!!

And, that's life as we know it right now.

Working, trying to exercise more, cook more and be the best parents we can to Miss Shelby.

Oh, we're still swaddling.

We have her 4-month checkup in another week so I'm sure our next step will be solids!

Can't wait to see what her first food will be!!

CIAO!

I May Have a Problem

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First off, thanks to everyone who commented on my last post about swaddling!
I have decided to wait and let Miss Shelby decide when it's time to stop.
We currently use the sleep sacks with the swaddle option so she's use to the sleepsacks for all of you who suggested that.
That's also what they have them nap in at school.

Onward to today's post.
I think I seriously have a problem!!
It's called being OBSESSED with dressing our baby girl!!
I would have never thought I would be more into dressing her than myself!!
I know a lot of you other Mommies on Instagram have expressed the same thing!

I really can't wait for the weather to get warmer because she has about 5, 768 cute outfits that she needs to wear before she grows out of them all!

At least she goes to school now so someone other than Brad and myself get to see her cute self all dressed up.

(And, of course those of you who follow me on Instagram)

Shelby has outgrown her newborn clothes but I'm keeping all the really cute outfits for her to be able to use for her baby dolls when she's older.

My Mom did the same thing and I was obsessed back then when it came to dressing my babies.

In fact for about 3 or 4-years, for every holiday that involved gifts, I asked for clothes for my babies.

I even had a baby shower themed birthday party one year.

I posted about that last year.

Click here.

I guess I should enjoy dressing her now because I know it's only a matter of time that she will decide on what she wants to wear.

My only hope is that she likes bows as much as I do!!!

Happy Thursday!!

Swaddling - HELP needed!!

I've mentioned on here before that we've been swaddling Shelby since the day she was born.
It's what they did in the hospital and it worked so why change a good thing.
Right?
Well, now Shelby is 3 months and one week old, or 14-weeks.
However you want to refer to it, and we are still swaddling her.
We only do it at night as they don't swaddle at her school for naps(and we had stopped that too).

Our pediatrician says it's okay to swaddle until 4-months so I feel the need to start the transition now.
But guess what??
Not sure it's going to be an easy one!!
We put her in a loose swaddle last night and she broke free twice and woke herself up and we had to go back in there and feed her to get her back to sleep.
(below picture was when Shelby was only 2-weeks old)

So, today I'm asking for advice!

What is the best way to transition?

Should I wait until she's rolling over??

She's sleeping 12-hours a night right now while swaddled.

Will she ever be able to do that without swaddling?

HELP!!!!!

Our New Normal

I'm now a full week into being back at work and we're still trying to figure out what our 'new normal' is.
I think it's going to take time but we're off to a decent start of it from what I can tell.
It doesn't hurt that Miss Shelby, who turned 3-months old yesterday, is still sleeping 12-hours a night(except for last night when she woke up at 1:30am and proceeded to eat 8-ounces!)

I thought I would share with all of you what our new routine is as of right now.
As I've mentioned on here before, Brad and I both work in Uptown Charlotte and used to commute together because of gas and parking costs, but we've decided it's just not going to work with us doing that anymore.
I don't want Shelby to be the last kid picked up from school and Brad can't leave work until after 5pm.
I always hated that and REFUSE to have it be that way with her.
So, here you go.

6am or 6:10am - I wake up and get ready. This involves makeup, brushing hair and getting dressed.
(We pack our lunches the night before, make her bottles for school, I shower and wash my hair(on the days I wash it)the night before along with laying out Shelby's school clothes.)

6:50am - Walk Buddy

7am - On the road to work
I'm in by 7:30am about the time Brad is dropping Shelby off at school. He wakes her up and gets her dressed starting at 7am.

4:30pm - I leave work to pick up Shelby.
Shelby is in a school near our house. There was no guarantee that we were going to get her into a school/daycare here in Uptown and I couldn't wait until the last minute to know so we enrolled here in a wonderful place 2 miles from our house.
This works out really good because they're able to do her first feeding and her 4:30pm(she eats every 3-hours). If she was having to commute with us we would have to wake up a lot earlier and feed her.

5pm - Arrive home to feed Buddy, change clothes and put Shelby in the stroller to walk Buddy.
This is where I'm still trying to figure things out.
Now that the time has changed I'm attempting to do a 40-minute power walk with Shelby in the BOB. So far she REALLY enjoys being outside and it gives her a chance to catnap.  This is probably going to be my extent of the gym during the week unless I want to go after dinner around 8pm.
Probably not going to happen.

6PM - Brad arrives home and he plays with Shelby while I attempt to throw together some sort of dinner.
I'm trying to keep dinners simple at this point. A meat, veggie and always a salad.

(here's a picture of Brad spending time outside with Shelby after he got home. I put the little hat on her because it was sunny.)

7PM - Start getting Shelby ready for bed.
Bath, bottle and book. She's generally down by 7:30pm.

From there the intent will be for Brad and I to spend adult time together watching TV, catching up, etc.

Really though, we've been prepping for the next day to start it all over again.

I hope to master all of this sooner rather than later but we shall see.

There are some nights that I wish I didn't have to shower and blow dry my hair the night before but then remember that I would have to get up at 5:30am and risk the blow dryer waking Shelby up before her 7am wake time.

So, there you have it.

Boring?

Probably.

But, something I thought I would share.

Do any of you Moms have tips or suggestions for me to streamline things??!!

If so, email or comment here!!

Sleep and First Day of Nursery School

First off!!

Starting last Wednesday our baby girl started sleeping 12-hours straight a night!

Gosh, I'M.SO.PROUD!!

We did the Baby wise method along with a nightly bath time routine and Shelby sleeps from 7pm to 7am.

She's been sleeping that for sometime but we were doing a dream feed.

Dream feed NO MORE!!

Just in time for me to go back to work too.

Tonight is my last hooray before having to go back.

Don't think that Brad and I aren't having a glass of wine!

Granted, we started taking Shelby to nursery school today.

(btw - we will call it school because it's not just a daycare. They actually teach them and it costs enough to be called a school. LOL)

I was TOTALLY nervous about it but did better than thought.

I decided to go ahead and take her in for 7:30am since that's what she will be doing when we go to work.

She's having her early feeding there.

I attempted to get a picture but she wasn't having it.

We did get a family picture at the school though!

I look horrific because I was going to the gym.

I did better than thought.

I left in tears and looked like a big nerd, but all was good.

I know she's in good hands and it's better that we get her use to being left now rather than later.

Daddy was so proud!!

We are both in love with where she's going.

The teachers are awesome and everyone is so nice.

Of course, as schools do, they left notes for us at the end of the day.

I only left her until 3:30pm today but come Wednesday she will be there until 5pm.

It's crazy to say, but I brought her home and she fell asleep for about 30-minutes(she only slept 30minutes while at school, what's new?)

Then, she was more happy and energetic than we've seen her in a long time?!

New environment maybe??

I don't know but I love her so much my heart could explode!

Girlfriend LOVES being told she's beautiful.

My Mom discovered this and I tell her all the time.

Check it out!!!

As for what I did today and what will I do tomorrow?

Run errands, shop and enjoy a few girls lunches before I have to hand in my SAHM card!!!!

Thanks for all the support!!