2 Month Stats

Length:23.7 in (75-90%)
Weight: 13.4lbs (75-90%)
Head Circumference: 39.5 cm (75-90%)

Looks like we have a big girl on are hands! The doctor was in shock how big she had gotten and kept asking if I had even her formula. It took a lot of convincing before the doctor believed us that it was only breast milk! She also got 3 shots, it was awful! I think Cole and I cried more than Grace did!

2 Months Old

Gracie,

I can't believe you are 2 months old today! The last months have flown by, yet at the same time I can't remember life without you, maybe it's because life without you just seems so trivial now. I can't believe how much you change from day to day.

(you today)

(you at 1 month)

(today)

(1 month)

I'm so fortunate that I am able to stay home with you, it truly is the most demanding, grueling, yet highly rewarding job I've ever had. I love watching you explore the world around you and boy I love that smile of yours. I love that you think I'm so funny, it doesn't matter what I say, as long as I'm talking to you, you're smiling.

You're feeling better these days. You were really miserable when I was eating dairy, but now that I've been dairy free for 3 weeks now, you are like a whole new baby! It's so nice to see you happy and relaxed! You also are starting to follow a schedule, I put you in your miracle blanket around 10p, you sleep until 1am, I feed you and you fall back asleep until 3 or 4, I feed you again and then you are awake and hang out with Daddy for an hour or 2 while I go to bed. Then you usually take a nice 4 hour nap with me in the morning. You still will only sleep on either me or Daddy, but that's okay, I like to keep you close anyways.

You still have some days where you just want to hang out at 4 in the morning and that's okay. I know in twenty years when I look back I won't say "man I wish I slept more when Grace was a baby" I'm sure I will say "I wish I cherished every minute with her!" Laundry and dishes will always be there, you at this time, in this moment won't, so I let the laundry and dishes pile up and just enjoy you! So I don't get mad, I just hang out with you, we talk, we play, we snuggle, we just enjoy each other, and yes we take pictures in our pajamas!

and then when you get tired we go back to sleep!

Speaking of sleep, I love watching you sleep, I could do it all day, sometimes I do!

( Yes you are sleeping in the pack-n-play, it's rare and usually only last 5-10 minutes, but that's okay we'll get there someday!)

You are starting to figure out what you like and what you don't. You may not like your swing, bouncy chair, or car seat, but you really like your stroller! I think you just like sitting like a big girl.

(note the leg warmers, they have become one of Mommy's favorite things, they make diaper changes so much easier!)

Man, I love watching you interact with Daddy! He loves you so much and you love him right back!

Keep growing Grace, but not to fast! Just remember how much we love you and keep smiling!

Happy Halloween

Grace had a great first Halloween! First we went to the doctor's for my 6 week check up, then we headed to the hospital to see Auntie and Jacob, and then we went to Grandma and Papa's house for some trick or treating!


Miss Lily enjoying some family time on the bed



Our girls



Miss Grace and I



Jackson the pirate



Jackson and Jacob



Grace sitting like a big girl



Grace all dressed up!



Grace and her cousins



Grace snuggling with Mommy while trick or treating

One tired Giraffe!

Jacob Daniel Brennan

Our new nephew Jacob is here and I must say he's absolutely beautiful! We are so happy for all the Brennan's!

Here's the whole family:
Jackson with his baby brother

Uncle Cole and Jacob

The Brennan Boys

Jacob and Grace

Cole, me, Grace, and Jacob

Me and Jacob

Comparing Cousins

Just comparing some pictures of Jackson as a baby with Miss Grace

For me

I found this post on kellymom.com, which is a great breastfeeding website, and thought I need to place this somewhere so I can read it over and over again..so this is for me, but maybe it can help you to.

"I am never on Kellymom at 4:30 in the morning but since nursing my DD back down I have found myself awake thinking about Apple and all the other desperate moms of wakeful babies who may well be awake now too.? So to get back to sleep, I've decided to write a rambling sleep diatribe.? I am the mother of a baby whose sleep was abysmal pretty much the whole first year ? naps, nights, you name it.? I rocked, paced, bounced, nursed, reordered the day, reordered my life, so the frustration, the anger, the struggle, the exhaustion, the desperation has been my own.? I will also say that I don?t know anything about regular babies and sleep.? I only know from the inside about wakeful, nonsleeping babies.? This is the voice from the future for you as my DD is now 18 months ? my perspective is different now than from where I stood a year ago.You are horrified that the sleep is as bad as it is.? You are terrified that it could get worse, or not get better.? You know that there are bumps ahead in the road, even if you had a good sleeper ? there are teeth, mobility developments, night terrors, language, illnesses, and more looming in both your paths.? You imagine that to feel like you do now and to have a baby who sleeps, or not, as it does now, is how you will feel in 2, 3, 6, 9 months more.? It overwhelms you.? You don?t know many or any other moms who have sleep issues such as you and your little one have.? You have few places to go with the enormity of your feelings and get validity that it A) sucks and B) hasn?t been caused by either your omission or commission.? God help you if you are a working mom or a single parent with one of these children.I want to address the concept of teaching a baby to sleep.? I know you read all these books and articles in the baby magazines that assert you can and should teach a baby to sleep.? Step back from that for a minute.? What does that actually mean ? to teach?? Yes, I know, leave them alone, put them down sleepy, blah blah blah, I?ve read all that advice.? Teach.? I?m asking you to think critically about what that means.? How do you teach anything?? Is sleep a skill?? Before you say yes, think about it.? Is it?? Is hunger?? Is something so hardwired into the human biology a skill?? I don?t really see how the answer could possibly be yes.? How do you teach a biological drive to develop?? How did you teach your child to know it was hungry?? Did you know your newborn was born without binocular vision?? Did you know you were?? Who taught you to coordinate your eyes to see an image together? as one instead of as two, like a horse?? Did you teach your child how to do that?? Would you know how to stop looking at the world that way now and go back to monocular vision?? It is no different with sleep.Sleep through the night.? Through the night.? Through.? The night.? That?s your goal, yes?? You have a second goal too, right (maybe it?s the more important one for you even)?? Take a nap.? A real baby nap.? An hour.? Two.? Three.? Add on these two goals: Go to sleep.? Stay asleep.? How are you going to get there?? Is it all at once?? Is it gradual?? What is enough to make you happier, better rested?? Don?t say the whole night.? It isn?t true.? It isn?t.? You need a little better to keep the hope that eventually it will get totally better.? So what is a little?? A 40 minute nap, 3 hours of sleep at night?? Step down the goal, break it into its finest parts.? You want to win the Triple Crown when your horse isn?t even running in the Kentucky Derby.? Be realistic, don?t be desperate in this stage, because the desperation will mislead you.? Your sleep deprived brain will keep you from thinking rationally and honestly.? Get someone, your husband, a friend, your mom, to help you identify the tiniest, reachable goal to give you back some hope that it will get better.? Then have them help you get a sense of humor.? You need the sense of humor. I cannot guarantee that you will have an angelic sleeper in 3 months, or even in 6,? but I can guarantee you with the certainty that someone living in the middle of the desert can probably cross ?lose house to flooding? off the worry list, that your child will be sleeping better within the coming year.? And it will probably happen gradually.? You might not even notice initially that it is getting better.? But it will.? If nothing else, all babies will outgrow the need for 4 naps a day within the first year.? I hated naptime.? At 11 months my daughter was down to 1 nap a day (yes, I did help her make the transition ? she was ready, I just helped with the timing).? These wacky parents would say to me, ?oh it?s so sad when they give up the second nap,? and I would think h*ll no, I?m in heaven, thank God I only have to deal with one nap a day.? It was a relief only you moms of wakeful babies can know.? And the nap stretched into an hour long nap.? And then 2 hours.? And then back down to 1, and then back to 2. And here?s the most critical thing:? All the bad feelings you have, all the intensity, all the rage, the hatred, the fatigue, will diminish, maybe disappear.? Your child might still get up once or twice a night at 18 months, but you will not feel about it the way you do now.? You won?t.? I hadn?t thought about this last year, I didn?t know there would be the analogy, but I was thinking about it last night so I?ll share a story with you:? ?A few years ago now, when I was in my 20?s, my first husband died.? We had been married less than 3 years.? I can remember viscerally how I felt the night he died, lying in bed in too much pain to sleep and too much pain to stay awake.? It was physical.? The earliest hit of such grief and loss is visceral.? It sears.? Drawing breath burns your lungs and you feel like not just your soul but your body has been ripped open with a jagged knife.? I lay there asking myself over and over and over how could I live the next 60 years like this?? How could I survive living with this grief, this pain for so long?? How could it be?? I didn?t know then, I couldn?t, but grief changes over time.? It becomes less physical.? It becomes less painful all around.? Do I still grieve? Yes.? Will I for the rest of my life? Yes, but not like I did in the early days.? It is an entirely different experience now.And so it is with the sleeplessness.? Except, you aren?t only waiting for the feelings you have now about the sleep to be mollified.? Eventually your child will actually sleep better.? Or your son/daughter will leave for college.It?s hard to relax about the sleep.? Really, you can?t.? But don?t mistake that for a need to ?fix? the baby.? Put your singularity of purpose to good use.? Read the Science of Parenting, learn about your baby?s still maturing nervous system, understand what happens to your baby nuerochemically when faced with bouts of crying.? Then devise a plan to help you COPE, otherwise you?re bound for frustration:? You?ll just be the grandmother who gets cold so she asks her granddaughter to put on a sweater.? And find your sense of humor.Now I can go back to bed! "

Trying it all

Note: I apologize in advance if this post seems a little all over the place, my hormones make it hard to think straight!

OK, so I've been a terrible blogger, I know! I've been trying to get by with just posting pictures and saying as little as possible. Why, you may ask...it's simple, I'm lazy! I always, well, except for maybe an hour a day when I lay down and Daddy takes her, have Miss Grace in my arms. The task of trying to type with on hand is not appealing by any means. But today I am toughing it out and trying typing..yea!

So we are officially trying it all..and I mean ALL! Grace has become very colicky starting around 3 weeks, I tried to tough it out but I was going crazy. Grace was always crying, never sleeping, so there fore I was always crying and never sleeping. I started off trying a combination of Gripe water and mylicon to help with her gas pains. Grace seemed to get minor relief from this, but trying to get 5mL of Gripe water into a newborn is quite the difficult task, it fact I think I usually wore more of the gripe water than she swallowed!

Last Monday we finally called the pediatrician to get a prescription for Zantac..I could just tell by looking at Grace that she has reflux..she has those typical reflux glassy eyes and you could always hear her wet burps. So, Daddy toke her to see the doctor, while I tried to grab a nap. Since Gracie is breastfeeding and still refuses to be put down and Daddy's body just can't handle staying up at night, I usually sleep in the evening after dinner for maybe an hour, 2 if Grace can go without Mommy that long. That hour plus maybe another hour nap before Daddy goes to work is all the sleep I get..so that's a total of maybe 2-3 hours a day if lucky! Anyways, back to the doctor's...so Daddy and Grace went to see the doctor, she just wanted to make sure Grace didn't have any serious issues going on and happily wrote us a prescription for Zantac.

In the mean time, before going to the doctor's, I spent my days researching and ordering anything and everything that is suppose to help with colic. Before all this we tried everything we knew how to do, the 5S's (swaddling, swaying, shushing, sucking, side), the swing, the bouncy, the car seat, the car seat on the dryer, the car, the stroller, white noise, etc.. Some things worked for a few minutes, but no long term relief.

So, we started Grace on the Zantac and the first time I gave her the medicine she smiled, as to say Thank You, I knew then that we were on the right path. So she has been on the Zantac for a week know and I have noticed some relief, we also stopped using the gripe water, but continue to use the mylicon. We also started using Hyland's Homeopathic Colic Tablets, which are amazing! Yesterday I tried to shower, while Daddy took Grace, I was the target of a poop explosion...yuck! Well, once I got in the shower she started screaming, I knew she wasn't hungry or tired, so I gave her some of the Colic Tablets and within minutes she was our happy baby again, even Daddy was in shock how well the tablets worked.

I began to notice a few days ago that she had some mucous in her poop, which is a sign of a dairy allergy, so I have recently started on a dairy free diet. They say it takes up to 2 weeks for the casein to leave your body, so I'm hoping this will make her feel better. I'm also hoping that going dairy free will help my IBS and help with some weight loss, I've already lost all the baby weight and then some, but really need to lose a lot more. I know giving up ice cream and cheese will be hard, but if it makes her feel better it's so worth it!

We also have begun to receive all of our colic purchases in the mail, most of which seem to help a little bit.

Here she is sound asleep in her front carrier. I had a baby wrap, but she hates being held in the cradle position because it makes her reflux worse. The cradle position is the only position you can use the baby wrap in until they have good neck control, so the wrap is out for now. I popped her into the new carrier and she fell asleep and I had 2 hands again for the first time in a month! I didn't know what to do with myself!

Gracie has always hated swaddling, since the day she was born. She would always manage to get her hands loose and then her constant hand jerking always woke her up. So, I finally broke down and spent the $26 for a miracle blanket. I always thought $26 for a blanket was ridiculous. I thought I know how to swaddle, that was my job for a year and a half, this blanket must be a rip off boy was I wrong. Grace was always able to bust out of my swaddle, but not this blanket! I probably would pay double the price for this blanket, it really is a miracle! I wrap her up around 10p, feed her, and then she usually sleeps until 1am (which is usually her longest stretch of sleep). Granted you still can't put her down in the blanket, but at least now she will sleep for hours uninterrupted on me.

On occasion I am actually able to doze off with her as well!

So, I would say we are getting better. Grace's colic is developing more of a pattern and we have a few different options to help soothe her now. Granted they don't always work and we still have some awful nights, but overall we are getting there, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! Eventually we'll have to work on getting her to sleep in her crib, but for now I'm okay with all the cuddling, if it means I get to sleep a little bit longer. I mean no ones ever met a 10 year old who still needs his mom to hold him so he can sleep, right?

As a side note we are all anxiously awaiting the arrival of our new nephew Jacob! My sister was put on hospital bed rest Wednesday due to high bp. Jacob has a c/s scheduled on Wednesday, but we're hoping he'll come before then! We can't wait to see Jackson as a big brother!

Here's a picture of my sister with her 2 pumpkins!

And a cute picture of Gracie with her cousin Jackson!