Lucky Number 7!

So I'm really hoping that 7 months old means that we'll have good luck this month. :) More about that later as details progress.

In any case, Sophia is 7 months old today! Yay for getting older! I just thought that (like every other month) I would post some of the things that she is doing now:

Sophia is a champion at sitting up now. She almost never falls over, unless she's trying to look at something really tall or that's behind her, or if she gets too excited then sometimes she'll tip. Lately I've been letting her take baths in the big bath tub and I'll fill it about an inch or two high and let her sit (with my hand on her back so she doesn't fall, of course) and she loves to splash! She has so much fun in the tub now that if I take her into the bathroom at all then she'll start to squeal and shake with excitement! One of these days I need to take her swimming...

Sophia is trying to learn how to crawl. You can see it in her eyes that she desperately wants to be able to move around, but she hasn't quite figured out the mechanics of it yet. She is starting to be able to push herself backwards, but that only makes her angry as it takes farther her away from the toy that I placed out of her reach. She can also turn in circles. We'll see how she does the next few weeks. :)

Sophia still loves to eat new things! This month she's tried a few more flavors of baby food (eh, not so exciting) and she also started to be able to eat little cereal things! They're specially for babies, so they dissolve really fast (which I really like) and she just loves them! Other real food that she likes is watermelon, bananas, and graham crackers. She also tried grape juice for the first time last week, and it's the only way I got her to actually drink out of her sippy cup and not just chew on it! :)

She still loves being outside. If she's cranky at all, I can take her outside and sit her in the grass and she'll just calmly sit there as long as I let her and listen to the sounds or watch cars drive by. I just love it. But even more than sitting outside, she LOVES to walk around! I'll hold her hands and let her lead the way, and even though we do this in the house a lot, for some reason when she's outside she'll start laughing while she walks! Maybe the grass tickles her toes or something, I dunno. But, it sure is cute!

Sophia's latest noises are all centered around using her tongue. She tries to click her tongue (getting closer!) and she'll stick her tongue out and just start making all the noises she can! I was trying to get her to say "Mama", and she promptly stuck out her tongue and said it! Well, it could have been anything, and really I think it was "Baba", but either way she's getting closer to that too. :)

Here is her height and weight as of today:

Height: 26 3/4 inches

Weight: 16.6 lbs

I'm not sure of the percentiles or anything because I did these myself, however based on this she is in the 34th percentile for weight and 53rd percentile for height! Man she's come a long way from her Gummy Bear days... :)

She's getting more and more personality every day, which surprises me because she already has so much of it! I just love her to pieces and love seeing her grow and develop. Love you Baby Girl!

(P.S. Sorry I don't have any pictures up yet - it's been a crazy week! I'll get her 7 month old pictures up in a separate post soon though!) :)

I Hate Big Boobs

Yep, it's true. I suppose however that I should be more specific. I don't hate all big boobs. Most boobs don't really catch my attention or bug me at all. However, I do hate MY big boobs. I'm sick of them. I want them gone. I want my little A's posing as B's back. I used to complain about their smallness all the time - and then I got pregnant. And they kept getting bigger. And bigger. And bigger.

Then I had the baby, and they got ridiculously huge. In fact, I actually broke my first nursing bra. No joke! While I was wearing it - not tugging at it or playing with it or anything - the strap in the back just came off. When I went to look at it, I saw that the stitching had popped! It wasn't a weak stitch either - no it looked like it had been pretty strong - but the boulders on my chest proved to be too much for the poor little strap and it just couldn't hold on any longer. (Sigh)

Yeah so that was fun. After that, they were always big and sore. Now, they range from big and sturdy, to loose and floppy. My bra is always either too tight, just right, or way to big - depending of course on the time of day and which meal it is. Sometimes one side fits and the other doesn't. This bothers me. A lot. I'm sick of having deflated water balloons on my chest. I have the highest respect for those women who can breastfeed for a whole year - because Sophia will be 7 months old in 2 days and I am SOOOOO ready to be done. In fact it's something I've been thinking about all month long. I've looked at the benefits for breastfeeding past 6 months, and yes I can see that there are some - but it also seems that the most critical time period is from birth to 6 months. I'm thinking that it's time to wean. However, there are things to consider with both options:

Things to consider for formula feeding:

1. How are we going to afford all of that formula?
2. Do I really want to make a bottle that early in the morning?
3. Sophia hates the taste of formula, so I'll have to pump and then mix - which also sounds like a pain compared to just having it ready on hand.
4. Formula poop is stinky - and so is formula spit up.
5. I will not keep losing weight as steadily - breastfeeding has been helping a lot with that.
6. Hard to leave Sophia anywhere where I'm not at because she doesn't like formula and she doesn't like bottles again, however if successfully weaned then it will become easier
7. I can have my little boobs back

Things to consider for continuing breast feeding:

1. I will have to keep my fluctuating sized breasts even longer
2. She will get teeth eventually....(shudder)
3. If I were to get a job right now (considering) then I would have to pump at work and store it at work. Hmmm...
4. Supposedly breastfeeding for a year will reduce the risk of her getting diabetes, asthma, braces (don't know how that one works...) and some other diseases later in life, as well as the fact that breastfed babies tend to score up to 8 points higher on IQ tests. (Though I have no idea how old they are when they test them, because I've never seen a difference between breast or formula fed babies when they're still babies)
5. I will be a prisoner of my child for up to 5 more months (I refuse to go past a year)
6. She is very good at pulling blankets off of her face - not good when feeding around other people
7. She may figure out that the food is under the clothing and try to get to it while in public places - could get awkward.
8. I can continue to lose weight a little easier

So there you have it. Mentally and emotionally, I'm ready to be done with breastfeeding. However financially and physically I may not be ready. (Sigh)

I know that there are a lot of people out there who will want me to continue breastfeeding for a year. Who knows, I might. Then there will be people who say that I should wean now. Who knows, I might do that too. I just wanted to get all of my angst over this out of my head so that I can work through it easier

Running + Mindy = Marathon?

Yep, I've decided that I want to run the half (yes, just half) marathon in SLC next April! I was talking to my aunt in Boise the other day and she mentioned that a lot of people from her neighborhood are going to do it and that she was going to come down and she invited me to come too! (yes, that's a big time run-on sentence but I'm too lazy to fix it, just point out that I am aware of it.) :) But yes, I am going to start training right away for it. I've always wanted to run a marathon or 5K or something, but the problem is that I hear about them and there's not nearly enough time for me to train for it, and with my asthma I get all scared and just don't do it. But with this one I have almost a year to train! It will still be super hard for me, but I really really want to do this and I really want to still be alive and breathing at the end. So it's about 13 miles (yikes!) which is way more than I've ever ran before. Heck, I don't know if I've ever walked 13 miles before! Either way, I'm totally stoked and can't wait to really start running!

Soon I will go from the first picture (above) to this picture!

Getting Better...

So I was browsing Facebook while waiting for Sophia to fall asleep, and I saw that a friend from high school (who was in Legally Blonde: The Musical) had posted some pictures from when she was performing here in SLC back in April. I had gone to the performance and was excited to see her perform, and didn't even think about it but found out that other people from high school had gone as well (should have been obvious that they would, but I didn't think about it.) Well, that morning Sophia was really difficult and I ended up not having any time to primp myself up to looking good, but because I really didn't think I'd see more than 2 people that knew who I was I didn't mind too much.Then we got there, and immediately I see a group of people I went to high school with. None of these people knew that I had just had a baby 3 1/2 months prior, all they saw was the blob that was me. I knew how bad I looked that day and was instantly self-conscious. Even more so because the person that yelled to me across the lobby happened to be someone I dated for a very short amount of time - which you know, it's always nice to look disgusting in front of an ex (note my sarcasm.) So yeah, I actually fretted about this for a long time - even though I thought I had avoided all of the pictures, I knew that they had all seen me like that. I wasn't too happy about this, but after a while I forgot about it. Well, I just got a wake-up call when I saw that the girl we had all gone to see happened to have a picture with me in it on Facebook! Luckily I'm not tagged in it, but it brought back all of those unhappy self-conscious feelings again. But, I decided that I wasn't going to get all depressed over it and thought I would look at the plus side. I look a heck of a lot better now than I did then! And here's the proof!

So here we see the boy I dated, a girl I didn't know very well but still looked great, big ole' me (yes, I realize there is a severe lack of chin) and my friend Heather, who I had planned on seeing and I don't think would judge me because she's just super nice like that, and who also looks great.

And this was a couple of weeks ago at Willow Park. Notice just one chin? :)

So yes, I have been making great progress in losing all of my nasty baby weight and getting down to a normal-ish size for me, and if I were to see people from high school now I wouldn't be ashamed anymore and hopefully if pictures were taken I wouldn't look back at them and be embarrassed.

Yeah, this was bugging me so I just had to put a post on it. :)

A Review of May

So I had a bunch of pictures from May that I wanted to post, but I didn't want to do 12 different posts about all of them, so I put them all here in a review. Enjoy!

While I was packing up the car to go to my inlaws house, Sophia found her headband...and then she was angry.

Total Diva

Yep, she knows it too!


Beginning of the month - Sophia had allergies or something and her poor little eyes were all swollen and she was sneezing and sniffling a ton!

Poor little girl!

Getting loves from aunt Mary on Mother's Day

Jon, his mom Rosanna, Grandma Jenkins and Sophia

Me, Jon, Grandma Jenkins and Sophia

Getting loves from cousins Allie and Ty

Holding baby Emily! (Emmie didn't like it one bit!)

Sophia practicing walking

Sophia sitting up all by herself! What a big girl!

I just really like this outfit...

My neice Malia in her dance recital! They did the "Dig It!" song from The Frog Princess - she was so cute!

Malia again - what a doll!

Seriously, is there any cuter 4 year old out there? I don't think so!

Jen, Rosanna, Malia, David, Cole and Ryan

Sophia liked the recital too

(Sigh)

This is what happens when Mommy forgets to pack an extra pair of clothes and Sophia blows out while we're away from home - yeah that's my shirt she's wearing, but I think that the headband belt pulls the whole look together, don't you? ;)

Sophia's favorite thing right now is just sitting in the grass.

She seriously would stay out there for an hour if I let her!

She loves the feel of the grass on her toes and fingers...

and yelling at cars...

And seeing all the fun stuff there is to see.

Sophie can also stand up by herself if she has something to balance on!

My sister Julie bought her first house this month! This is my Mom (Grandma) and Sophia looking at all of the pretty flowers at Julie's new house

And Grandpa watching as she tries to eat them!

So pretty!

Mmmm, this is the yummy lunch that Julie and I had at Zupa's! Those salads are AMAZING!!! I got the Vermont Maple Blueberry or something like that and it had cinnamon almonds on top that were soooo good! I've dreamt about going back...

Julie with yummy Pina Colada salad

Sophia's first taste of a strawberry...

She wasn't a fan.

Sophia and great grandma Daugherty! (And Sophia's first time finding her toes all by herself!)

First taste of watermelon - she wasn't a fan at first...

But then she realized that it was delicious, and it was hard to keep her away from it!

She REALLY likes it now! :)

Okay so that was a lot of pictures, but hopefully you enjoyed them! Don't forget to leave a comment!