Shots, Honey Face, and Birthday Sunsets

I know all moms feel this way, but I think our little girl is majorly beautiful.  I mean, look at these eye lashes! Goodness sakes! 

I love this little face.  She pulls it a lot at me lately.  What are you thinking when you look at me this way, Little Lady? 

Clementine had her two month check up with Doctor Witt last week.  I'm so proud of her, Dr. Witt basically said she's the best baby ever! She is in the 75% for height and 30% for weight.  Guess which parent she takes after when it comes to body shape.  I'll give you a hint.  It's definitely not me.  He said that she is very strong, and he was surprised to hear that she's already rolled from tummy to back 3 times.  He said  that she is healthy and wonderful.  The best kind of baby to be! 

She got her first round of immunizations at the same appointment.  She cried loud and hard and her face turned so red.  Once I calmed her down, she was tired and slept for most of the day.  Poor little thing.  She didn't get a fever, though.  And no diarrhea either.  Thanks, baby! I 

Just hanging out in the free sling that we got before she was born.  She only likes it for a little while at a time.  She would much rather be held.  Or on her playmate, kicking her butterfly. 

This part of the blog has no picture to go with it, but remember how my postpartum skin has been simply awful?  Well, I've been having a hard time finding anything that would help- aveeno, aquafor, vaseline, carmex, even melaleuca's awesome Renew lotion was doing nothing for the burning dry cracky skin around my nose.  In desperation, I google searched natural face masks for dry skin.  And that's how I found out about the honey face.  I guess honey is really good for your skin- topically.  Especially if you have particularly dry skin.  You can read more about it here.  So as weird as it sounds, I've been using honey as a face mask.  And things are finally getting better!  I am also trying red wine vinegar as a toner, and following it up with coconut oil as moisturizer.  So my skin care routine sounds more like the ingredients of a delicious salad dressing than anything else, but guess what?  The dry angry cracky skin is turning more the color and texture of normal skin.  And I'm starting to feel human again.  Put food on your face.  I recommend it.  :) 

I turned 28 yesterday.  It makes me feel kind of old.  (Did I mention that honey is supposed to be a really good age-fighting agent for skin?) It was a good day, which ended with the most beautiful sunset.  Camera phone pictures never do sunsets justice, but this one was purely radiant.  I felt like it was a personal birthday present to me from my mom.  I can just imagine her telling me that she had put in a special order to Heavenly Father to make the sunset extra awesome for me.  And it warmed my heart.  

After the sun went down, we met up with some of our favorite friends for birthday dinner at the Dodo- which is delicioiusssss, and then ate darling German (German's) Chocolate cupcakes via Ashley Archuletta, cake extrordinaire and Ghiradelli chocolate carmel hot cocoa.   We sang Jingle Bells instead of Happy Birthday, and it was perfect.  

Oh Tannenbaum… and nostalgic Christmas

We are real Christmas Tree people.

We both grew up in fake Christmas Tree homes.  But fake Christmas trees don't smell as Christmassy as the real deal.  And there is something magical about going to the Christmas tree lot each year to find the perfect one.  So we're real tree converts.

Since Samson is an unreliable babysitter, Clementine came with us to choose our tree.  She looked so cute all bundled up in the Bjorn! 

Our favorite lot isn't anything special.  It's just the one closest to our house, in the same parking lot as Jamba Juice and Dickies.  But it's tradition! 

We found the best little tree on the lot!  It's a shorty, but it's ok cause we're still young and poor.  Maybe someday we'll have a big ol' fancy Christmas tree.  But for now, I love our little humble tree. 

We took it home and were excited to set it up, but the trunk ended up being toooo thick to fit into our tree stand.  Luckily, and oddly, we own two tree stands, and it fit wonderfully in the other one.  We just had to bug Braxton to get it out of storage for us before we could use it.  Our poor tree spent it's first night propped up in the corner without a stand.  

Clementine is mesmerized by our tree!  One of her favorite things since it has been up is to look at the lights and all of the sparkly ornaments.  That could keep her happy all day! It melts my heart and makes me love Christmas time even more.  

 This year at Thanksgiving dinner, my Dad and siblings and I spent some time going through our family's old Christmas decorations.  Now that my Dad lives with Laurie, they don't need all of our old decorations any more, so we got to go through them and divvy them out amongst ourselves.  We didn't have very many of our own decorations yet, so we sort of cached in big time!  Now, living in my childhood home, decorated for Christmas with most of my childhood decorations, but without my Mom- with whom so many of the decorations are sentimentally attached, I'm having a nostalgic Christmas.

This wooden reindeer puzzle was the only decoration Nathan was adamant that we get.  I'm glad that he wanted it, because I love it too!  I spent so many hours as a child knocking the reindeer over and putting them back together in weird size and body part combinations.  I'm excited for Clementine to get to enjoy them too some day! 

When we were growing up, each kid got to pick out their own ornament for the tree every year.  My choices were always bears and angels.  I'm glad that my bears and angels still get to live on my tree.  

This is a goat with three goat legs and one pig leg.  Because my mom was resourceful and creative.  

This bear says 1985 on it.  28 Christmases ago.  The year I was born.  Aw.  

It was a little bit tender for us to break up our family stocking set and send us all home with our individual stockings.  The most tender part was… who takes mom's?  

I love my childhood stockings.  I love that I was obsessed with bears.  I love that there was always an orange in the toe of the stocking each christmas morning.  And when I started playing the cello, the "string elves" would always leave new cello strings in my stocking as well.  

This is my Grandma Beckstrom's Precious Moments nativity set.  It is one of my favorite things of hers that I have to remember her by.  It reminds me of Christmas Eve family parties of Funny Mother and Don't Eat Pete! 

Just like the reindeer puzzle, I spent so much childhood Christmas time playing with this chunky wooden nativity set.  As I was setting it out this year, I felt 7 years old again, putting everything in the exact order and place that I had for 20 years.  I already told Clementine all about it.  I hope she loves playing with it too someday.  

Having Miss Clementine this year is making Christmas so much fun.  I love reading Christmas books to her and singing all of my favorite Christmas songs to her.  She loves Oh Holy Night, and lights up when ever I sing it.  I love watching her look at the Christmas tree and seeing the reflection of the lights in her beautiful big eyes.  We bought her some cute little Christmas presents, and even though I'm sure she won't know whats really going on, I can't wait for her to get them.  

How is Christmas already in 2 weeks?  

Gooooo Utes!

Nathan's sister, Kara, was given some tickets to the last U of U football game of the season against Colorado State.  Unfortunately (or fortunately for us, I guess), she hates football, and didn't really want to go.  So I shamelessly asked her if we could take them off of her hands.  And that's how we got to take our cute little Ute fan to her first ever football game at Rice Eccles Stadium.  

Right after we found out that Clementine would be a girl, Nathan picked up this cute beanie and frilly U of U socks at the gift shop of the hospital where he works.  And the cute onesie was brought to Clementine from her sweet Grandma Terri in the hospital the day after she was born.  We were excited for her to finally be able to put her team gear to good use.

It was a COLD day for a football, but Clementine was so good throughout the entire game!  She stayed warm in many layers and zipped up in her daddy's hoodie.  She spent the first half of the game licking the top of her Baby Bjorn carrier, and the second half she slept- even through loud cheers and cannon shots with each score.  The nice people we sat by were impressed by what a cute sweet little baby she is.  

 

We took Trax to the game and back home again.  When we got to the Trax station, we smelled that Clementine definitely needed a diaper change.  So we started to change her right there in the open breeze.  And then, right in the middle of wiping yellow poop, our train arrived.  For a split second, we considered gathering all of our stuff and running her, bare bummed, onto the train before it left.  But then we realized how gross that would be, and we waited patiently for the next train.  I'm not super skilled in public breastfeeding yet, but we managed to get Clementine an entire meal en route to the game.  Thanks for the "hooter hider," Cassie! It worked perfectly, and matched all of our bright red U of U stuff.  :) 

 Our seats were clear up high on the 53 row, or something like that.  And we were all the way into the end zone, on the shady side of the stadium.  But it was still a blast!  We love football, especially Ute football!  Especially when they win!  And they did- 24-17!  

GO UTES! 

(Do we look tired?  We had been Black Friday shopping at the Park City Outlets all night the night before.  What an adventure!) 

Paranoid Parenting 101

Babies get rashes, I guess.  And our baby got a rash this past week.  It was aaaalllllllllll over her face and scalp and neck and chest.  It was dry and red and angry looking.  I could tell it was bothering her, because she would constantly rub her face with her hands, or against my chest when I would hold her close.  Every mom who saw her in Relief Society on Sunday told me that she was just fine and that all babies her age get that very same rash.  But I wasn't convinced.  Trying to be a proactive and helpful mom, I put some  coconut oil all over her face a few mornings ago to try to give her some relief from the discomfort.  And then the rash got SO much worse! And I started to have a little internal freak out.  What if she was allergic to coconut?  What if Nathan had brought home MRSA or c diff from the hospital and it was now infecting our sweet baby?  What if she had some other kind of mystery infection that somehow looked exactly like a normal baby rash but was actually much much worse?  As the day went on, I got more and more paranoid, and finally I convinced Nathan that we should call the pediatrician.  The nurse at his office said that we should come in and have her checked out.  Our normal doctor was all full that day, but we could sneak in for a minute with another doctor at the same office.  And so an hour later, we were in the office of a different pediatrician with our little girl and her rash, which suddenly didn't seem so serious after all.  The pediatrician, who was wonderful and nice, said that all we were dealing with was a very normal case of baby acne.  Baby acne?? I didn't know wether to feel really really dumb or really really relieved.  The fact that it got much worse after the coconut oil was most likely just a coincidence, because apparently coconut oil is wonderful for baby skin.  The wonderful pediatrician said it was good of us to come in and get her checked out, because it could have been something more serious.  But Clementine would be just fine.

Don't you think that with the technology we have today, paranoid moms could text in a picture of a mystery rash to the pediatrician, and he could tell from the picture if the baby should come in for a visit, or if they were just covered in acne?  I think someone should propose that to them.

I would have sent in this picture:

Poor baby!  Just our luck, the day after the paranoid pediatrician visit, her face started looking so much better.  I hope this isn't foreshadowing what she'll have to deal with in her teenage years.  I was hoping she would inherit her dad's skin genes, not mine! 

In this next paragraph, I am going to write briefly about boobs, it won't be graphic or anything, but if that's weird for you, skip over this part.  My birthday is coming up soon, and Nathan asked me what I wanted for my birthday.  Since I have been wearing nothing but sports bras for the past two months, I thought it might be nice to get a real bra that fit and made me feel a little bet less… Venus Williams-y when I wore it.  We were out running some errands, and since we were at the mall, we popped into Victoria's Secret to check it out.  The sales girl measured me (being a former Vicky's sales girl, I know that it's basically protocol to do so) and when she announced my new size, I was skeptical to say the least.  Two whole sizes bigger than I've ever been??  Are you kidding me?  So I hesitantly grabbed a few huge bras and headed toward the dressing room.  And guess what?  They fit.  My jaw was on the ground.  But I went home with a new cute birthday bra, and I'm more comfortable than I have been in months! Woo Hoo! 

Now if you've made it through my bra story, here are some cute new pictures of Clementine to make up for it.  She's 7 weeks old today.  She weighed 10 pounds and 2 ounces at the baby acne doctors visit.  This little "Thunder," as Nathan calls her, is growing up tooooo fast!  She coos now.  We have entire conversations made up of syllables like ah-goo and ay-ya and ohhhh.  She is so much fun.  

 Another case of paranoid parenting… I worry a lot that she is going to have crossed eyes like her momma did as a baby.  Apparently we won't know if it's a problem until she's about a year old.  Please have good vision, Clementine! 

 I caught Samson giving kisses.  BAD DOG!  He knows better.  

One last thing.  I FINALLY finished all of my thank you notes from my baby showers.  Since I failed to finish (or even start…) thank you notes for my wedding gifts, I really wanted to get on the ball and thank people for their generosity and thoughtfulness in welcoming our sweet girl.  It took a long time, but I have now stamped and addressed the very last envelope.  It feels so good to finish a daunting task, doesn't it?  

Stuff Like Murder Mysteries, Baby Kicks, Dougie Dancing, Etc.

OK, no more lists.  It was a good idea, but I'm not ready to stress about getting a blog written every Monday.  I'm just going to blog when the mood strikes me... and when I have a spare moment.

Here's what's new in the world of Jamilyn and such...

On Halloween, Nathan and I hosted a murder mystery dinner party with our awesome group of summer (now autumn) hangout friends.  I think it turned out well, and we definitely had a lot of fun doing it.  One of my favorite parts of Halloween this year was having actual trick-or-treaters to pass out candy to.  This is the first year in our married lives that we've been able to do that!  Little costume kids are so dang cute.  And we even ran out of candy from our big bowl of Kit Kats and Reeces.  Thank heavens that the Walkers brought Dum Dums too, or we would have had to turn kids away.  After the murder mystery and delicious dinner (dinner in a pumpkin done the RIGHT way!), we headed to the basement and watched Ghostbusters.  And I STILL haven't seen it, because I fell asleep less than half way through.  Maybe someday...

 This is an indicator of my mental state these days.  I made this sign for the party, and didn't realize until I was cleaning up a few days later that I spelled HALLOWEEN completely wrong.  What kind of doctoral candidate am I?  Jeez.

Clementine has some cute new things these days.  She started smiling last week!  It's so darling to pick her up from her bassinet every morning and be rewarded with a happy toothless grin.  She's also started kicking her legs like crazy, especially on her play mat.  It makes her really happy if she can get her feet to connect to her favorite jingly butterfly toy.

This is all that is left of Clementine's long dark hair that she was born with :(  This picture also features her fancy "cephelahematoma"- her major head bruise souvenir  from being born.  Poor thing.  

Nathan is also teaching our baby girl how to Dougie.  He's pretty proud of himself.  :)

.. Under the watchful eye of Jesus.  :)

And we just passed the 2 year anniversary of my Mom's death.  I've been missing her a lot lately, especially in the middle of the night when I'm feeding my little girl, and I have all sorts of time to be still and think about things.  Being a mom has made me think about my own mom a ton, especially raising this girl in the same house where my mom raised me.  She washed me in the same sink and paced with me in the same halls trying to get me to go to sleep. I feel like I understand her love for me more than I ever have before, and it makes me feel closer to her, but also a little bit guilty and selfish and ungrateful for all the things that she did for me my entire life.  She was an awesome mom and I think every day about what I can do to give Clementine the kind of wonderful childhood that I had because of her.  This November 10, I wasn't as sad as I was last year.  But my heart still aches for her listening ear and wise advice and spontaneous fun.  I'm so so so grateful for our little Clementine Gae.  She is my joy and comfort.