Baptism post

Yes, I'm backdating this post. And I don't care.

Hannah's baptism went very well.

We got ready to go in the morning before grandma and grandpa arrived.

She had a bottle right before the service.

She fell asleep right before we went up to the baptismal fount. She very briefly opened her eyes when Pastor Gail put the water on her head, but went right back to sleep.

And Diana is going to be a great sponsor. Here she is holding the faith chest that each child is given by the church on their baptism. We're friends with the couple who makes them so it is super special. It's for holding all of the things related to Hannah's faith journey. So for now it will hold the bulletin from her baptism, her baptism candle, the handkerchief used to wipe her head, a little medallion from Thrivent, etc. Eventually, it will have things like her Bible, Confirmation stuff, etc.

After the service, we took a bunch of pictures. In fact, John took over 1.2G of pictures. Here are the highlights.

This is us with my brother.

Us with Diana, Hannah's sponsor. No, she's not my sister. We've just known each other since we were 14.

 Hannah Banana and Diana Banana

The four of us goofing around.

The three of us being goofy.

Hannah and Pastor Gail having a goofy moment.

After we finished up at church, we had everyone back to the house. As I posted earlier, we had more than 20 adults and around half a dozen kids under five all in the basement. Eek. It went remarkably well. We had ham and rolls, a Teschner (my side) family tradition as well as some salads, a veggie tray, and chips & dip. There was beer that only Matt drank (weird!) and lots of pop. We also had a beautiful cake.

And there were more pictures. We each had grandparents that were able to attend, so we took four generation pictures.

Note Hannah's different outfits. Right after we took the picture with my family, she spit-up all over both of us so we both ended up changing clothes.

We also took pictures with my parents. Sadly, between Hannah getting fussy about church and needing a nap at the house, we ended up not getting a picture with Matt's parents. We did get a kinda cute one of her with Matt's dad though.

We also got some very lovely gifts from those in attendance. Overall, it was a long crazy couple of hours, but we all survived. It was a great day though.

I'm glad that the next time I have to host that many people it will be summer and we can be in the backyard.

Phew

We made it. We survived Hannah's baptism and the accompanying lunch at our house. We hosted more than  twenty adults and about half a dozen kids under 5. It was crazy. We all fit downstairs, everyone got food, and no one fell down the stairs. Pics are coming.

It has also been exactly a year since we saw this:

I can't believe how far she's come.

Ramblings on the future

A friend posted a link to this article yesterday and it made me think. She wondered, as they discuss the possibility of more children, if her physiological reaction to the article is trying to tell her something. It's an interesting thought, and while I didn't feel the same reaction, it definitely got me thinking about our own situation.

It's a very well written article, and even if I wasn't already firmly convinced that I wanted another baby, I would be after reading it. Right now, Matt and I are dancing around the subject: me with my absolutely certainty that we could and should have another baby in a year or so and Matt who struggles with being content having just one as well as the financial incertainty that having another would bring.

I'm not working too hard on him because I'm okay with waiting a year before we start trying again and I have a feeling he's going to come around on his own. He is already missing those baby snuggles as Hannah becomes more and more independent and wanting to do things. I do think that two will be it for us. It's how I've always pictured things, although we have talked that if we were to have two of the same (girls since we had Hannah), we would discuss adding a third to try for a boy, in this case.

I would be happy with Hannah, but I know how much our siblings mean to us and I want her to have that experience. She probably isn't going to have a ton of biological cousins, at least not around her age (my sister's kids are almost teenagers already) and the rest of our siblings are single. She'll have several non-biological 'cousins' since we have multiple friends who have kids born within a year or so of Hannah. One good friend's daughter was born the week we found out we were pregnant.

Thoughts.....

I'm trying to blog more, so when something comes across my mind that provokes more than a passing thought, I'm posting. I'm also going to sign-up to guest host for PAIL so that might drum up more traffic here and inspire me to write more.

Loose New Year's Goals

Now that the new year is here, I have some goals for myself. I'm not making resolutions this year because I feel like they sound like things that have to happen overnight and years of trying for dramatic change instantly has shown me that it doesn't work.

Knitting: I have several WIPs to finish up in the coming months. I recently (finally!) took pictures of all of my yarn from the last two yarn crawls and am slowly working on getting it plugged into my stash. I’m sure some of my yarn will get moved to trade/sell as well.

I’d like to make more drool sweaters for Hannah as well as finish the sweater for myself that I started over break. I am in love with cowls this year, so I have plans for another one of those as well. I’m hoping to knit as much from stash as possible so I feel less guilty about buying yarn at the yarn crawl in August. I’d also just like my kid to have tons of knitted stuff!

Health: My goal is to be healthier this year. For the first time in ages, I am not going to try to lose weight. I do think that if I stick with a healthier lifestyle, I will lose weight. I just want to make gradual habit changes. So every few weeks I'll pick a new goal to add.

My goal for the first few weeks is to drink more water/fluids. My plan is have 12-16 ounces of coffee or tea by 10AM, 32 ounces of water by 4PM, and at least 16 ounces before bed. That's between 60-64 ounces a day which is a pretty good. Most of this is going to be water. Any other beverages need to be after 4PM and I need to finish the first 44-48 ounces first. At work, I think this is going to be easy to keep on top of. It's at home that I usually struggle, especially weekends. All of this is going to be pretty flexible since it's rigidity that usually trips me up. There will be occasions when I have pop, and beyond limiting myself to no more than one a day, I'm not going to attempt to control my Starbucks consumption. Starbucks is more of a monetary concern than a dietary one, at least to me.

Personal stuff: I'd like to get better at balance. I think I'm doing a good job (even when I don't feel like it) being a mom and also as a teacher. My struggle is finding the balance between working, being a mom, being a wife, and being ME.

Finding time for things to keep me sane, namely knitting, is challenging. I have my knitting night, but other than that, there isn't much knitting going on right now. It hasn't always been this way; sleep is rough for Hannah right now, so I know it will get better. It's still a rough situation though right now. I also tend to feel guilty if I'm not holding her or playing with her or doing something with her when I'm home and she's awake. Since I'm gone all day, I don't get to spend the time with her and Matt spends all of his time with her. In my head, that means I should be spending as much time as possible with her in the evening. Unfortunately, that means no time for me which makes me irritable. As her sleep habits improve, I think this situation will work itself out.

I am also seeing that keeping the spark in our marriage is getting tougher. I'm not saying that we're falling apart or anything drastic; we're just getting in a rut. I don't like it. We need to spend more time together, even if we're just at home. Less electronics, more snuggles. Even if we're both on the computer, but sitting on the same couch. Sadly, that would be an improvement over where we are now. I come home from work and tell Matt about my day. He tells me about their day. Then we are completely focused on Hannah. Sometimes we'll go out to dinner and then we'll have conversations like we used to, but that's not a new problem. We've always talked more when we go out than we do when we eat at home. I think that's part of our issue with cooking. It's easier to talk when no one is stressed out about the food.

We also need to figure out how to get out of the house more without spending a ton of money. Babysitters are expensive and at this point, she's mostly luggage so I don't mind taking her places with us. Once she's mobile, then we'll start talking about getting a babysitter. I don't mind leaving her with my mom so we can see a movie, but beyond that, I just can't justify the expense of going out AND getting a sitter. It's pretty chilly for the zoo, so we need to find other alternatives even if it's just wandering around the mall and picking up Starbucks.

School: I need to finish my thesis.

I want to just be better at whatever it is I'm trying to do.

Houston, we have laughter.

We've heard a few instances of laughter, but we heard sustained laughter tonight. She'd been laughing for a few minutes before I shot this video. I'm so glad we were able to get it so I could send it to the grandparents and share it with friends. She apparently thinks "mmwah" is the funniest sound ever.

Four month sleep sucks

Four month old sleeping is lame. Wait, no, it's not; it's nonexistent  We've been dealing with a sudden change in Hannah's sleeping habits as well as the transition from her chair to her crib. Had I realized that the four month sleep regression/issue was going to be such an issue, we would have transitioned her awhile ago. If I could I would wait on it, but she's starting to roll over and has managed to get herself into some very scary positions when we checked on her. When we went to the movies last Saturday with my brother and his girlfriend, we came home to find my mom standing in the basement livingroom just watching Hannah sleep on my bed because she kept trying to roll over in the chair and freaked out my mom.

We have had some successes. Hannah spent all night in her crib on Saturday night. Then we had to travel Sunday/Monday and messed everything up. Overall, our travels over break were not all that great. Sleep was a major issue for her when we were at my mom's house for both Christmas and New Year's. It was just too much travelling, especially with the four month issue and the crib transition thrown in there.

She has rolled from back to front a few times on our bed, but tonight was the first night where she did it in her crib. I think that’s part of the reason she’s having such a hard time sleeping, that whole wanting to practice the new skill business. She fusses and thrashes about until she gets herself on her tummy then doesn’t want to be on her tummy which causes a new round of crying. Matt is waaay frustrated. He’s put her down at least four times already tonight, and she is still wide awake. Then she spit up all over both of them.

It is amazing to me how much purpose her movements have now. She will deliberately reach out and play with buttons or my necklace or the straps on my tank or the ties on Matt’s robe. It’s just amazing…… It also appears (at least to me) that she is starting to recognize facial expressions. After an unsuccessful attempt to put her down, Matt brought her back out to the livingroom. I made some type of sad face at her and shook my head. She suddenly looked very concerned, then smiled really big- like she’s trying to make me smile. It works every time. So I smiled back and she started talking up a storm. I know it’s not helping her sleep, but it’s so sweet. Tonight she sounded like she was practicing her vowels over and over: ‘ahhhh…… ehhhh…… ooooo’ over and over and over like a vocal warm-up or something.

This post was very random.

Now a picture.