Lankford Love

Since I am FINALLY starting to feel better, I thought I'd give a pregnancy update! I am now 14 weeks and definitely showing. I haven't gotten any "When are you due?" comments though, so I'm pretty certain I'm still in that awkward "Is she pregnant? Does she just need to watch the desserts?" stage. But I know it's only a matter of time! Sickness As far as sickness goes, I was basically "sick," as in hunger-induced nauseous, every night by 5 or 6 PM, if not before, and on through the night. I am so so so thankful for a hubby that loves spending time with his little girl and can get home early enough to let me retire to bed during those evening hours. We resubscribed to Netflix, and I've been watching Good Luck Charlie , mainly because I've had a few people now tell me Lilleigh looks like the little girl in that show. It's a Disney channel show, but let me just say, I love it. No drama. All funny. All cute. So how ...

Back before our little pumpkin was born, I showed you our gender neutral nursery . I thought I loved it then. I had big plans for how I'd change it if we had a boy. And though I was hoping for a girl, I had no idea how I'd spruce up the nursery for a girl. Just knew we'd add pink! But then in the spring, we got a Pottery Barn catalog that had super cute paper flower cut outs on the walls advertising "Lily" bedding. Coincidence? I think not. Anyway, I'm sad to say that the images of the flowers are not online. They are only in the catalog. Photos of the bedding collection online are too close up. So if you don't get their catalog, you'll just have to trust me that it was super cute! So with that inspiration in mind and the cute green and pink flowered glider which we already had, I decided to play up the green and pink for the nursery. My goal is to be able to reuse as much of the baby stuff as possible if we were to ever have a boy and make it boyi...

Image from Keeper of the Home This question has been one I've been asking since before we had kids. I first began thinking about this when I picked up the book A Shot in the Dark , which discusses the possible link between the "P" (Pertussis) in the DPT vaccine and SIDS as well as other neurological issues. Thankfully, the P component has been altered, and now the vaccine is DTaP. (So, moms, breathe a sigh of relief.) Still, this has been an issue heavy on my heart. There's no easy solution to it. So I'll just tell you right now that I'm not going to give you a solution. My husband and I have come up with a solution that we think works for our family at this point in life, but I'm not going to share that with you. I'm sorry. I was anxious during pregnancy about vaccines and unsure what we would do for Lilleigh. After reading that book, I was sure I would not vaccinate. But then I talked to my uncle, who was a pediatrician, about all this, and...

The first post of Mommy Lessons that I did got such a good response that I thought I'd do another! So here it is - from the first four months! Babies progressively drool more and more as they get closer to getting their teeth in! Around 2 months, Lil started drooling. At 3 months, I'd say she drooled a lot. Last week I said she drooled much more than at 3 months. Today she has drooled much more than last week. Her shirt is soaked. It's our 3rd outfit. No idea when those teeth will appear - could be tomorrow, could be two months. Who knows. Bibs are a must. Like I said, drool-central. Spit up and drool are directly related. As drooling increases and teething approaches, spit up also increases! That's my experience at least. While we're talking about teething, let me mention this: teething diaper rash . Apparently not every baby gets it. It might be because she's drooling so much. It might be because her hands are constantly in her mouth and she's touch...

Okay so that statement isn't exactly true. There are bottles here. Lots of bottles. More than we know what to do with. I have tried essentially every type of bottle that claimed to be the "miracle bottle." My baby girl doesn't want any of them. I have tried them all multiple times. Multiple times in a day. Many days a week. I've had my husband try without me in the house. My moms and mother-in-law have all tried. My neighbors and friends have tried. Lilleigh doesn't want anything to do with a bottle. Lilleigh didn't always do this. She DID take a bottle. We began giving her a bottle right around 4 weeks, when the lactation consultants suggest you introduce it. I thought we were doing everything right. She took it, which was awesome. But we weren't consistent. We didn't realize we weren't consistent though because I'd leave and leave a bottle with the person watching her. I guess I didn't realize that many of these times she didn'...

I know many of you were excited about my cloth diaper blog post, The Truth About Cloth Diapers . I just wrote a follow up to it! Check it out on my other blog, Thankfully Thrifty .

No this is not a picture of me and sweet Lil. I took it from How Mama Got Her Swag Back .  Funny baby weight post actually. Check it out. I am thrilled to report that since my baby weight complaint , I have lost 5 lbs! Yea! And that's something, especially since we went to Colorado and then Houston and ate terribly. I was dreading stepping on the scale. I was feeling terrible about myself. But my curiosity got the best of me. I stepped on the scale and cringed. But then I opened my eyes. FIVE POUNDS! Only 12 lbs to go! I am making progress!! And funny thing. Once I stepped off the scale, I was beaming. Five minutes before I had been feeling awful about my weight and my body and suddenly I felt like a superstar. Funny how that works. I'm not sure what I'm doing. I am trying to eat healthier, but I already confessed about the unhealthy food we ate while traveling. I am walking daily, but I've been doing that pretty much since Lil was born and before. I did recent...

If you aren't comfortable with the topic of breastfeeding, skip this post. Can I just say that I never thought I'd love breastfeeding so much. I know it sounds crazy. I thought it'd be so painful. And such an inconvenience. But the truth is, I love it. The surge of oxytocin makes me happy. It makes me fall more and more in love with this baby girl. As my neighbor put it, "It's like a drug. If I'm having a bad day, I just put the baby to the breast. The oxytocin feels so good. I'm suddenly relaxed." For anyone unaware, oxytocin is the "love hormone." Females release it during labor and sex. This hormone acts as a bonding agent. So when you see a sexually active teenage girl all hung up over some loser of a guy, you can thank the oxytocin. The hormone has been released during intercourse, and now she feels bonded to him. This is why girls can't "play the field." It's also a great reason to wait to have sex until marria...

Last weekend we took Lilleigh to meet her great grandparents! (She's so blessed to have lots of great grandparents around and even one great-great!) This set of great grands are her daddy's grandparents, his mom's parents. They live in Colorado. For the past few summers, we've gone up to visit them and brought Sammy! We do plan to go on our annual trip, which we make in late summer, again this year - and to hopefully drive and bring Sammy! But we decided to make an extra trip now for Lil to meet them early! It's so fun to go visit. They live in a subdivision on a ranch with a river running through it, so it's beautiful all around them! A great place to go on walks and enjoy God's creation.    Lil chatting with her Grandma Hunt And laughing at PaPa making faces And a picture of her dad being a "boy"  Yes, that is a snake he's holding. I was very excited that at least one of our ten or more family photos actually turned out! Enjoying the ...

Many of you have asked about cloth diapering, which is so encouraging to me! So far I'm loving them! I've been using them for about a month now, but I have a system in place. It's really not more work, in my opinion, than disposable diapers. Our Cloth Diapers In our collection, we have 3 Happy Heinys, 14 Bum Genius 4.0s (a combo of both velcro and snaps), and 7 small & medium gdiapers. Happy Heiny's One Size Cloth Diapers (Silly Monkeys) These diapers are one size fits all. The rows of snaps you see are  used to fold the diaper down, snapping it together, to make it smaller or larger. The great thing about one size fits all is that the diaper works from the time your baby is a newborn (or really about 8 lbs) to potty training. I like how the velcro tabs on Happy Heinys are thicker than the Bum Genius. And the pink on the left can velcro onto the white on the right, making for a tighter fit. On that note, it also seems slimmer than the Bum Genius, in my opin...

Lil is in LOVE with this new mobile I got her today. After taking note of how much she loves her swing mobile, I headed to BuyBuy Baby with gift cards in hand, and bought this new Tiny Love Nature's Serenade Mobile * for the babe. She LOVES it! And Mom and Dad love it too. Not only does it play music for 20 minutes (a long time for a mobile!), but it also has a remote! Woohoo! I can turn it on without going in her room - a big plus. So after setting up the mobile, I set Lil in her crib. I started hearing a lot of commotion, so I thought she might be getting fussy. But noooope. This is what I found. (And there was a lot more babbling pre-video.) *I really wanted a mobile that was a little more clean looking... this one is sorta an eye-sore, along with all of the other Tiny Love mobiles. But this was got the most recommendations from friends and had the best reviews on Amazon. Plus the 20-minute music playing and remote are major pluses in my book!

I've been thinking I need to do a post like this all month. And because I have only been jeeping mental note, I know there's much I have forgotten that will be left out, but here it goes... Always have a diaper ready. When changing diapers, quickly remove the old and pace the new underneath... can't risk any accidents... The 5 minute rule. I now have a 5 minute rule when it comes to Lilleigh's poop diapers. Baby poops are loud, so when I hear her, I have to wait 5 minutes from the last poop sound heard before changing her... that's just the safe bet. She has only worn Huggies twice, and both times she's had blow outs. Just saying. While we aren't officially cloth diapering yet (I'm waiting till the amount of diapers slows down.), I am amazed at how well they hold it all in on trial runs that we've done. That said, when a cloth diapered baby is wet, they'll let you know. Those $10 Amazon coupons are handy for buying wipes for free! See how ...

Lilleigh Bear is one month today! My time flies! Here are some photos from our little photo shoot.

  This is my favorite. She so loves this glowing seahorse. Mr Seahorse makes diaper changing time so much better.   Lil's first stroller ride. We are loving the Snap N Go. So light weight and easy. So glad we didn't register for a travel system.   Big yawn!   Look who's awake!   Mommy giving Lilleigh a bath.   Daddy and Lilleigh after the bath. I just love how she's looking at her daddy. So sweet.