Yolande

So here is my shelf-o-scrapbooks I've made, beginning with my freshman year of college through the present. My Mom gets the privilege of housing my high school scrapbooks [scary stuff, folks.]


One that I absolutely love is our Honeymoon album. I chose a Kolo album in aqua green fabric for this occasion:

When you have a trip or an event to cover, it's so much fun to include ticket stubs, itinerary, magazine clippings, etc. Hence the true "scrapbook" style:

Henry seems to like the smell of our honeymoon. Lots of blue backgrounds used for this.
One challenge I had with this album was the sheer number of photos to include. I think I had 200 or something ridiculous. In that instance, I could never ever have a one picture page or my book would be the size of the Bible [and I'd be burnt out in a day.] So it works to have a bunch of photos scrunched together when they have a similar theme. Then you don't even need a background paper or anything. Just pictures:

The last page of the book had our flight times and a little map of the island. I also included our room tab from the whole week....so that in 20 years, we'll look back on our "cheap" honeymoon and laugh at how much it cost.


Another personal fave: Henry's scrapbook. Yes, he has his own. Mostly just his puppy pictures since, as a new mom, I went a little overboard with the photos. It's super cute to see how much he's grown!

I wanted to show you guys this series. We tried to get the same photo of Henry on Nate's chest to show how BIG he became. The pictures are okay, but not perfect. I still love them, though.


I also made Nate a Spain album for his semester abroad. We had just begun dating at the time, so I tried really hard to impress him with my scrapping skills. It was my first attempt at making an album for someone other than myself. Back in 2002, I was big into ovals/circles for my photos. Now I'm all about squares.

So that brings us to today's album. Here is my chaotic dining room table. We all know how much Nate LOVES when I take the table hostage, right? It's pretty bad right now.

I've been using my pretty papers but not much else. I feel rushed with this album, knowing I have a butt load of pictures to include and I'd like to be done as soon as possible. It's not like that when I made the albums for our families. More on this in a bit.

I mentioned before that I love to handwrite and draw for my albums [I'd miss that with digital.] Here is a fun header for Hannah's shower and B.Party. The little metal tag at the bottom says "bride" and it's too cute.

Hannah's wedding: I had a ton of pictures for this one, and almost made it two pages. But then I kind of liked the collage look for her page. It keeps the eye moving on the page.

Nate's ski trip in two pages. I even found some cute skiing papers to use.

Love this paper so much, and I'm partial to the pictures, too:)

This page was fun. Yes, I showed up for part of my husband's b.party. Only for a few hours and only for one night. Totally G-rated while I was there but I can't verify anything after I left.

One of the first pages in this album: our Packers game. Nate loves this page, obviously. Since there are some good stories behind these pictures, the page includes a lot more journaling. Sometimes I don't journal at all, and sometimes I do a lot. Just depends.

Our rehearsal dinner and some wedding details. This will have to do until I get a REAL wedding album.

And the very first page in this album: Christmas 2005. Again, the ovals were my thing and now they aren't. I didn't even use a background paper for this page [the horror!]

So my thoughts? My best work is definitely the wedding albums I made for our families, pictures in this post. I didn't feel rushed, but I did pressure myself to make them absolutely beautiful and special. When I make my own albums I just want to finish and they don't turn out as well. Another reason I liked my wedding albums is because they were smaller and housed only one photo per page. That helped me focus on the picture and make each page special. But that simply does not work for all albums. Especially when you have a ton of pictures spread out over time [instead of one event only.]

If I go through with this mini-business for scrapbooking, I have a lot of decisions to make. Traditional versus digital. 12x12 size versus 8X8 size. How many pictures per page? How long will each book take me? How much should I charge so that I don't LOSE money, but knowing that I will not make a fortune on this either? And most importantly, would I live up to my own standards? I can be pretty hard on myself and I worry that I'll get frustrated with the results, always wanting it to be better.

Like I said, I have lots of ideas running around my brain right now. Once I sort through some of the ideas I will post on them, and ask for your help making decisions.

In the meantime, hope you liked the little snippet into my scrapbooking world!

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July 28 | Two months



Likes: mornings, mommy, napping, being outside, lights, picture frames on the wall, nursing, big brother Truman, busting out of a swaddle, Dave Matthews Band, our expensive nursery glider, ceiling fans

Dislikes: bottles, pacifiers, being in the car seat longer than 30 minutes, being tired, evenings, the coffee grinder, coming out of a bath, being in one location for longer than 30 minutes



Biggest achievement of the month: Smiling!! Enough of an achievement to make her mommy and daddy feel like all of the hard work we've put into this child is actually worth it. Maybe she even likes us a little bit!

Biggest challenge of the month: Refusing to take a bottle. Sigh.




Secret tricks of parenting: to calm this fussy baby, here are a few of our current secret tricks that will surely stop working before the next monthly update...

-swaddle + walking around the house
-loud music (preferably DMB) + rocking in the glider in a dark nursery
-walking outside + singing off key/discussing nature
-nursing

(another one versus two month shot. Note the changing hair do and how much taller she is than her bunny.)

Nicknames: C, CeCe, Cease, Cecil (as if she was her masculine counterpart-we find this one particularly hilarious), Sister, Sissy, pretty lady, baby girl

The Mecca (aka Sleep): Cecelia is sleeping pretty well at night but it's actually gotten a little worse as this month has progressed. Growth spurt? I hope so. I'm missing the days she could make it until 3 am without waking. She goes down for the night around 8:30 and will wake around 1:30, then again at 3:00 and 5:00 before the alarm goes off at 6:00. Of course, this varies GREATLY and sometimes she will wake up four or five times a night. I'm starting to get that new mom 'so-freaking-tired' look about me, for sure. Her longest stretch of sleep is still 5.5 hours and she still sleeps in our room all night. I just started putting her directly into her co-sleeper upstairs in our room at 8:30 instead of starting in her swing that is downstairs, which I think is a huge accomplishment. Now I don't have to carry her upstairs with me when I go to bed and if she can stay asleep in the stationary co-sleeper then I suppose she would stay asleep in her crib. She does love that swing, though.

Her naps are anywhere from 10 minutes up to 3.5 hours. She gets one really long nap in each day, usually in the mid-morning/afternoon, and does a lot of cat naps in the late afternoon and evening hours. In the morning she almost always stays awake for one hour at a time before needing an hour recovery nap.



Temperament/Personality: It's really easy to focus on Cecelia's intense crying and her strong opinions for this topic, but overall I have to say she is a very content and happy baby 90% of the time. She is super happy and smiling non-stop in the mornings and then after most of her naps, too. She really doesn't cry that much unless she has a reason and thankfully I can usually figure out what's bugging her and I'll attempt to fix it. I am absolutely LOVING her smiles these days, you guys. Can't wait for her to laugh, because I have a feeling it's going to melt my heart all over again.

Now. That 10% of the time when she is really ticked off? Horrible. I still claim she is a little more fussy than Truman ever was but you have to remember that I have horrible momnesia, so that might not be true. But in true estrogen-laden fashion, she has opinions that are not to be taken lightly. It's just crazy that she will go from happy and smiling and content to freaking the EFF out with over-tiredness in about 2 seconds. I think a lot of babies are like that, but I would label Cecelia's crying as pretty 'intense' at times. Thankfully it's not all that often that she flips the switch to 'freak out mode'.

I also like to use the word 'diva' but sometimes I think that is sort of unfair to her, because there are only a few things in life that will stir the wrath of Her Diva-ness. If she is over-tired and decides to fight sleep, it will usually cause an epic meltdown until I can convince her to rest those little eyes. This almost always happens in the evenings if we are pushing our luck and don't adhere to a calm, soothing environment around her bedtime. And then there are those bottles. Do I need to mention, yet again, that she will lose her mind over an artificial nipple? Besides being tired, hungry, and ticked about a fake boob, the other thing that might really force the water-works is being in her car seat when she has absolutely no desire to be strapped down in there. Poor babe. She really does get carted around so much more than her first-born brother ever did. I guess that is the plight of a second-born!



Eating: Sister still loves to nurse about every 2 hours during the day. If she takes a killer nap she will sleep past the 2 hour mark but then there are also times when she wants to eat every hour. She mostly takes one side for a feeding, which last about 15 minutes or longer. I can tell she is getting full because she will spit up more when she's had a lot to eat. And she is still drenching herself, and me, and the house with gigantic/scary spit ups about once or twice weekly. They still don't seem to bother her though and appear to be totally random.

The superficial: The Hair is still in place! In fact, it's getting a lot longer by the day and is pretty red. I did notice a few flakes the other day but am choosing to believe it's just a dry scalp and not actually cradle cap. She had baby acne for 10 days this month but now her skin is clear. She is wearing mostly all 0-3 month clothes but we are starting to mix in some 3-6 sizes, because she is getting too long for the 0-3's at this point. No wonder, because at her 2 month well baby appointment we found out her stats and she is a TALL girl! She is already 24 inches long which is 92nd percentile, and 12 pounds 1 ounce which is 76th percentile. And her head is very average at 50th percentile. :)

(the hair)


Motor milestones: CC is attempting to get her hands into her mouth and maybe she could actually become a thumb-sucker, easing her need for constant boob suckage. (Please, God!) She started smiling this month and loves to kick her legs and punch her arms. Still not a huge fan of tummy time but she's doing a good job controlling her head when held upright. She loves looking around the room and focuses on objects, able to track them as they move across her path. She's just so much more alert this month and I know she's doing her best to absorb this huge world around her.

(hands? get into my mouth!)


(tummy time!)


Social butterfly: Cecelia met her great-grandma (two visits!) and great-grandpa this month, her Uncle Jon from Oregon, had numerous play dates with friends (although she mostly had to tag along with her brother's buddies), had another visit from 'Go Go' and numerous visits with her local 'Pa Pa' and 'Ya Ya'. She also met a lot of Nate's coworkers during her spa day at his clinic.



Out and about: a few trips to the local pool, daily trips to the playground, lots of runs with mommy in either the single or double BOB, Target, grocery store (epic fail), the zoo, her dad's office



Favorite baby gear:

-Our borrowed 'My Little Lamb' swing from Andrea


-The Boppy for nursing and hanging out (she has to tolerate the boyish covers, since I never did buy new girlie ones for her)




 -Activity gym


-The double BOB




-Bum Genius diapers, specifically the One Size 4.0's with snaps (the beginning of cloth diapering happened this month and we still love it second time around)








Little sister and big brother:

I mean, are they twins or what? Aside from Cecelia's hair and Truman's fat head I can definitely see the resemblance.


It's so hard not to compare kids, so I'm just going to oblige myself in this category.

I am known to say that every baby has their 'thing' and right now refusing the bottle is Cecelia's. Truman's 'thing' was always sleep (not sleeping through the night until 9 months, then waking up at 5 am for many months). I'm hoping that sleep is not also Cecelia's thing, but instead we might be challenged with stronger opinions than her brother ever had. Truman has always been labeled 'easy' and super laid back but he doesn't have the best sleeping skills. Maybe his sister will be the exact opposite.

Also, Truman was always really big and tall. And well, so is Cecelia, apparently! I know that the boys and girls growth charts are very different because at 2 months Truman was 24.5 inches tall and that was 85th percentile for him but his little sister is 24 inches and that is 92nd percentile for girls. Then Truman was 13 pounds 7 ounces being in the 87th percentile, and Cecelia's 12 pounds 1 ounce puts her in the 76th percentile for girls. So although she doesn't weigh as much she is still on the bigger side for girls. Just a little bit more dainty then big man Tru. And apparently she is almost as tall as her big brother was at this age! I find this stuff fascinating, in case you can't tell.

Currently Truman still adores Cece and she seemingly loves him right back---always looking towards his voice and tolerating the constant train talk like a champion Thomas fan. I am just so proud of my Truman for being the sweetest, kindest big brother to Cecelia. I love imagining them growing up together and I really believe they will be best buddies.

Two months down. And the fun is just beginning!