Growing Girl

Stella girl will be seven months in just less than a week! Crazy that she is getting so big. Many changes are taking place with our girl and have been over the past few weeks, so I wanted to document them to remember and for future reference. Hmmmm...where to begin.

First of all, about two weeks ago I quit the dreamfeed cold turkey. I had been meaning to quit nursing Stella before I went to sleep, which ended up being between 10-11 pm. I always have a hard time dropping it for fear that the baby will wake up hungry in the middle of the night. So, I was trying to slowly wean it out when Jonathan looked at me one night and said, "Just drop it!" So, that night I didn't nurse her and truthfully expected her to wake around 1 am. But she slept through until 7 am. The next night she slept about 12 hours straight. To be honest, it immediately seemed like she was doing better without me waking her than when I woke her to nurse. I wonder if I was messing up her sleep cycle or something!?

So, cold turkey it was! I have only nursed her late when we were out and about and not getting home until really late at night. That has only happened once on Jonathan's mom's birthday. It's been at least a week straight and she's been sleeping the best she has in months. Praise the Lord!

Stella has also been stretching her feedings during the day. Her morning nap is at least two hours, sometimes longer...but I've been waking her around 12:30-12:45 pm so that I can be sure to get enough feedings in the day. She nurses at 9:30 am, 12:30 pm, and then the afternoon and evening are still kinda crazy and inconsistent. It seems like she is trying to move to a 3.5 to 4 hour schedule but isn't quite there yet. So, there are more feedings in the afternoon. She also takes a bottle in the evening before bed. I still nurse her before the bottle, but my milk isn't enough to make her happy so we supplement. Since she's dropped the dreamfeed she will typically take a good 4-6 ounces in the bottle in addition to whatever breastmilk she gets. I know she's not exclusively breastfeeding anymore, but she's happier and sleeps better at night which makes for a happier, more sane Momma. She still nurses so well at every other feeding so I don't care.

We have just added a third solid food feeding at lunch time since she goes so long between breakfast and lunch. I usually give her rice cereal mixed with fruit for breakfast, a green veggie for lunch, and rice cereal mixed with an orange veggie plus some fruit or yogurt at dinner. She has also started to like Puffs and is working on her pincer grasp skills. Slowly, but surely. And she is really into table food...much more than my others were. Maybe it's the peer pressure of seeing everyone else eat. I just steamed her some sweet potatoes last night, so I'll cut those up for her to see how she does with feeding herself and eating those chunks of soft potato.

I have also introduced a sippy of water to her. It took her no time at all to do the sucking from the soft sipper and she gets really excited whenever she sees it. She doesn't really get much to drink, but every now and then while she's sitting in her high chair I hand to it her. It's more of a toy at this point! I just feel like my other two were much older when they got into the finger foods and sippy cups, but maybe my memory just doesn't serve me correctly. Either way, there's no denying that this girl is growing like crazy. We love her sooooo much!

Stella Baby.

Just thought I'd post some pics of our precious Stella Baby. She is definitely one of the greatest gifts that the Lord has given us this year.

Tree Decorating 2011

Decorating our Christmas tree is one of my favorite things to do each Christmas season. I don't like to put the tree up before Thanksgiving, but as soon as possible afterward, I am all about getting into the Christmas spirit. This year we had to wait a little later than normal because we had many things going on, but the second Friday of December was family decorating day!

Our tree is tiny, but it's just perfect for our living room area. Here it is just at the beginning of our decorating.

This was the first year that Liam really got into decorating. He was a great help, although we did have to rearrange some ornaments to make sure every area got covered.

Jonathan was in charge of putting hooks on all of the ornaments.

Of course, we have our favorite stockings hung with care on the mantle.  We don't have a special stocking for Stella made by Aunt Hazel, but between Jonathan's mom and I, we hope to have her one made by next Christmas.  Hopefully, one us can figure out how to make those sweet, handmade stockings because they are so special to us!

And here is the final look at our tree!  You should see it now that all of the presents are wrapped and under the tree!

We also spent some of the day putting lights on the trees and bushes out front.  Clark Griswold, also known as Jonathan Bradshaw, decided he was officially tired of the traditional white lights (my preference).  Instead, he decided to go with some big multi-colored lights which remind him of the lights he grew up with.  I'll have to try to capture the front of the house when it's all lit up!  It may not be my favorite, but it sure does make my man super happy!

Can you believe that Christmas is just 4 days away!?  Where has this special month gone? 

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all of you!  We pray your Christmas celebrations are blessed and filled with joy, peace, and lots of love for the Savior.  Love, The Bradshaws

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Nora's Ballet Performance

Last week was the last official ballet class of the year!  We had ballet class yesterday, but the girls watched a Ballerina movie and ate cookies.  Then we joined all of the other Co-op kids for a big Christmas party.  It was so fun.  Anyway, last week at her last lesson of the year, the 3-4 year old ballet students had their parents (and grandparents) come and watch their class, which ended with a little performance.  It was adorable! Oh, and to make things even better, the girls got to dress up as princesses for their class time.  Nora was Rapunzel!

Doing their stretches.

Granna and Geegaw came to watch Nora dance.

Nora with her class and her wonderful teacher Miss Christen.  Also, forgive Nora's hair.  She had it all fixed in a pony tail with barrettes, but between all of the dancing and the fact that her hair is so fine, it had fallen.  One thing's for sure though.....this girl LOVES to dance and LOVES ballet!

Getting Ready for Christmas

Here at the Bradshaw house we are getting ready for all things Christmas!  It's been such a fun few weeks for us.  Busy, but fun!  Jonathan and I went to the Andrew Peterson Behold the Lamb of God concert.  Nora had a ballet performance and a big Christmas party yesterday.  We've been baking Christmas goodies like cookies and fudge.  And, we've got some other big baking plans in the works.  We have a Care Group Christmas party this Friday night and several other things in the next week.  Whew! 

Look who can sit up (sort of)!

In the midst of all of the busyness, I am trying to spend quality time with the kiddos.  To be honest, I have such high hopes of accomplishing so many fun things with them-- crafts, Christmas activities, baking, etc.-- but I am always running out of time!  I have to confess that although I love Pinterest, I get so inpsired by the millions of wonderful ideas and hope to do WAY too many things.  I keep trying to tell myself that I just can't do everything.  There are many, many years ahead of us with our children where we will be able to do more crafts, art projects, baking days, etc.  I don't have to do it all this year.  I can't do it all this year.  And that's okay!  So, I am pulling out a few things here and there, and the rest of the wonderful ideas that I am pinning will be stowed away until next year.  Or the year after that.  Or the year after that. 

One thing that I am trying to be consistent with is our Advent Calendar.  I feel that Liam and Nora are definitely at a point now where they can understand what Christmas is about (at least on their level), so we have started our very own Family Advent Calendar.  I am so excited about this!  The kids absolutely LOVE it and ask every day about our special Advent Calendar time.  We don't do much.  We learn a little bit about the Christmas story each day, open the day's calendar box, they get a small piece of candy, and inside each box is a slip of paper with a fun Advent activity on it.  Now, there are some days where we are busy and away from the home, so we'll just double up the next day.  But for the most part we've been able to talk about Jesus' birth everyday.

I make the kids sit on the couch, and I sit between then.  We are taking the story of Jesus' birth very slowly.  Each day we talk about something small, then we review it the next day and add to the story.  Liam is doing really well with learning it, although the first few days he couldn't remember anything except that it was Jesus' birthday on Christmas Day and he thought that everyone was named Beth.  Jesus' mommy is Beth.  Jesus' daddy is Beth.  I guess he was getting confused with the whole Bethlehem thing! 

On one of the days their Christmas activity was to play with some Nativity finger puppets that I had been given a few years ago.  They love those, and I have used the finger puppets to tell the story to them.  On Monday we talked about the shepherds and their sheep, and how they were sleeping on a hill when an angel appeared to them to tell them about the birth of Christ.  On the finger puppet, the shepherd has a staff so I was trying to teach them what a staff was and how the shepherds used it.  I explained that it is the shepherd's job to protect the sheep, so if a sheep is supposed to go down to the river to get some water to drink but it decides it doesn't want to obey the shepherd, the shepherd will use his staff to guide the sheep in the right direction.  Last night, we were reviewing what they had learned about the sheep and so I decided to act it out with them.  I made Nora be the shepherd and I was the sheep.  I told her to give me directions to follow, and I gave her a broom to use as a staff.  If I obeyed my "shepherd," then she told me "Good job!"  But if I disobeyed and wandered off, she had to use her "staff" to guide me in the way I should go.  It was so fun!  They would get a kick out of me 'Baaing" and wandering off to snack on the entertainment center or trying to eat the Christmas tree.  It was so fun and such sweet memories.  This morning, they were both acting like sheep! 

Anytime we are riding in the car listening to Christmas music, they notice when songs mention all of the Christmas words:  Bethlehem, angels, Jesus, manger, etc.  "Mommy, he just said Mary!!!"

It's been so fun.  I definitely want to make this a tradition we use every year.  It's been so helpful for me, personally, because I've been able to remind myself daily of how miraculous Christ's birth really is.

Here are some of the Advent activities we have done so far:

1.  Opened and played with our Little People Nativity.
2.  Decorated the Christmas tree together as a family.  (THAT was interesting!)
3.  Popped popcorn and watched a Christmas movie.
4.  Read a Christmas book together.
5.  Had hot chocolate and marshmallows with breakfast.
6.  Colored Christmas color sheets together.
7.  Shopped for our Angel Tree gifts for our chosen child.
8.  Had a candlelit bubble bath.
9. Played with the Nativity finger puppets.
10.  Had at-home pedicures (this was just Nora and I).

Nora and Daddy watching a movie and eating popcorn.  That girl loves to watch and eat popcorn!

I hope you all are enjoying this season as much as we are!  I'll be sure to post what the rest of our month looks like later on!