What did I do with my time before I had a baby?

I ask myself this question almost daily. Not in a bad way, just that I don't understand what I did with all of my free time. I remember sleeping a lot, and watching tv...gosh I was lazy. I seem to be way more organized and get much more accomplished these days. Ellie and I have our routine in place: wake up and eat breakfast, put all clean dishes away from the night before and clean up the breakfast dishes, playtime, naptime/my time to get stuff done, lunch, clean up the lunch dishes, playtime/errands, naptime/my time to get stuff done, dinner, clean up the kitchen for the evening (all bottles, dinner dishes, wash the high chair), playtime, bath time every other night, bottle and cuddle time before bed. Once she's in bed I get to clean up her toys, finish any laundry or cleaning that I didn't get done during the day and then finally relax, usually around 8:30-9 pm. The one thing I need to learn is to be more relaxed with RJ on the weekends when I'm working and he has run of the house. It drives me absolutely crazy that the kitchen is a disaster, Ellie's schedule isn't followed very closely, and that the toys never get picked up. But I have to remind myself that nobody gets hurt, Ellie survives, and at least she gets to bed on time. I guess every weekend I'll have to read this to remind myself and spare RJ some nagging.

This last week has been incredibly difficult. It was my first experience being sick and trying to take care of Ellie. It was easier during my first trimester of pregnancy then it was this week. There were a couple of days I didn't think I'd make it. RJ was out of town overnight one night, my car broke down on him another day and I had to chase out to get him, and I worked for 2 of the nights. I made it, and am not looking forward to ever doing that again. Thankfully, Ellie was her sweet smiley self and napped wonderfully, which made it easier.

Ready for naptime.

Although I felt awful, RJ wanted to go out to dinner to celebrate our anniversary. I sucked it up, and am incredibly thankful we were able to spend some time alone. It's been a long time since we went out without Ellie. He surprised me with balloons and a gift, and took me out to my favorite steak place, Sullivan's Steakhouse.


My first pregnancy shot this time around, 16weeks.



Ellie thought the balloons were for her.

My biggest problem these days is Ellie getting into everything. I feel like she can grow ten hands and turn into Inspector Gadget by grabbing things I thought there would be no way she could reach. It's either that, or she's crawling and getting into everything, her favorite is dumping the dog's water bowl over. Today I tried cutting coupons while she was awake. Impossible. Everytime I would turn my back she either got ahold of the scissors or started eating a coupon. I lost some good coupons that way, and she thought it was hilarious.

I finally was able to get a video of her crawling, sorry for the dog's butt getting in the way:

Lunch Time:

Best Buds:

I wish I would've had a video of Ellie and Baron today. Ellie would wrap herself up in the blanket on the floor and Baron would grab it and pull it off of her. He, of course, was just trying to chew the blanket, but she thought he was playing with her. She kept smiling and laughing. It was so incredibly cute. She just loves him so much, and he is so good with her.