In a little over a month, our baby Mackenzie will be one year old and at 46 weeks old, she continues to surprise us. She’s grown up so quickly and we are welcoming it with wide open arms. This parenting journey has been so fulfilling. You don’t realise how much we put our parents through right from the time we are born and continue to put them through to this day until you raise a child. If Kenzie turns out to be either one of us, we’re in for some gigantic challenges that we’re already preparing ourselves for.
So far, here is her tally:
Nappy Changes: 44
Sleep: 93 hours
Feeds: 92
This week started with Kenzie having the sniffles again. Luckily, Ramon’s become a bit of an expert on using an aspirator. We don’t know if she caught it off someone at the playground or it’s because of the chilly weather we’ve been having but we’re hoping it won’t turn into a full blown cold or flu.
While we nurse Kenzie to full health again this week, we decided against taking her swimming. I feel for her because she absolutely loves swimming and she hasn’t been for a swim for a month now. Hopefully we’ll be able to go next week!
This week, we witnessed Kenzie poop a solid poop in her sleep and not flinch when we changed her nappy. We changed her diet up this week in the hope to help keep her sleep pattern consistent. We added more antioxidants and eliminated mangoes. After making this small change, she finally started to sleep through the night! We also tried to avoid (as much as possible) making her upset at night so that she wouldn’t get night terrors. So far, so good and we finally had a week of uninterrupted sleep again. I may be wrong, maybe Leap 7 is finally over and all these trials and changes we made didn’t actually do squat!
I swear, Kenzie gained a kilo this week because she feels heavier than ever! My arms and legs feel like they’ve been working out and we’re constantly chasing her around now that she is crawling and walking everywhere. It’s such a work out! Moms always get asked what our secret is to losing some of the baby weight (I haven’t entirely lost all the weight yet) and for me, it’s definitely due to breastfeeding, carrying your baby and chasing after your baby. I commend those parents who also get to squeeze a proper work out in between! I’ve been telling myself to wake up 1-2 hours before Kenzie does just so I can fit in some work or exercise but I enjoy sleep too much.
The final touches of Kenzie’s birthday are finally sorted and now we’re getting ourselves organised for our trip to QLD for an expo. We’re hoping the launch of our business in QLD will be a success! Fingers and toes crossed!
I’ve decided to DIY party favours for her birthday by attempting cakesicles. I had a midnight YouTube binge-fest and will pair them with sugar cookies. I don’t know where I’m going to find the time but I’m determined! I may have to wait till after Kenzie’s asleep which means I’ll be baking around midnight. Yes, this is my experience of #momlife and it’s exhausting, satisfying, scary and exciting all bundled up.
Towards the end of the week, it was “National Dog Day” and Ramon’s workplace celebrated by allowing all employees to bring their dogs into the office. We decided to take Kenzie as she adores animals. Her dad’s workplace absolutely love Kenzie and so did the dogs! She did not mind all the slurpy kisses the dogs were giving her and although she was showing some “stranger danger” and “get away from me” attitude to the adults, she loved being surrounded by the two dogs in the office. Although we live with both a cat and dog, we didn’t know how she would react to someone else’s pets. We took the chance and she enjoyed herself! As much as we loved seeing her reaction to the dogs, we won’t be getting her a dog any time soon. Having to care for an elderly dog has emotionally and physically drained us.
This week was not as stressful as last week and things were finally looking up for us. We know that not all weeks would be like this and because of this, we are more appreciative and living in the moment. Some days we forget to capture the moment and although people live by “photo/video or it didn’t happen”, we’re happy to live IN the moment.