Claire: 7 Months

Claire is now 7 months old! Still army-crawling all over the house. She will pop up on her hands and knees sometimes and lunge back and forth, but hasn't quite taken off in the all-out crawl yet. She can climb up on Ben or myself when we are sitting on the ground and she pops up on her feet :) Ben lowered the crib yesterday .. it will be very soon when she will start pulling herself up on things.

She had her first cold last week :( She had quite the runny/stuffy nose... the bulb suction thing is not her best friend. Sometimes we would have to pin her down... poor baby. She is getting better now though and finally slept through the night last night for the first time in about a week.

Claire is in 9-12 month clothes. A few of the big 6 month clothes still fit. It is incredible how fast you go through clothes sizes!

All is going great with Claire! She loves being home with her Daddy all day :)

Oh, I decided to become a Premier Designs Jeweler... more on that soon!

Claire: 6 Months!

6 months already!!! Wow, time has flown. Claire is doing so great... I'm such a happy momma. Last month (about 5 to 5 1/2 months) she started crawling everywhere. Not quite up on her hands and knees yet, but she is army-crawling all over the house. We really need to watch her more closely now since she can be across the house and chewing on a shoe within a minute. She is still super-active. Won't sit still unless she is asleep :) Whenever we go on stroller rides, she always has one or both feet up on the tray infront of her. Cracks me up!

At her 6 month appointment, she weighs 16 lbs and is 27" long! 55% for weight and 90% for height. Perfect :) Shots weren't so fun... but we managed.

She is eating usually 3 servings of solids a day. We have fed her zucchini, apples, and avacado so far along with the rice cereal. Just started squash too a couple of days ago, and she likes it! Love the Baby Bullet. So easy to make her food, and it saves $ and is healthy for her. She has been sleeping all night! Sometimes she gets up once sometime between 3 and 5, but the last several nights she has slept from 9pm til 7 or 8am. Can't beat that.

The transition of Ben staying home now while I go back to work has went quite smoothly. It is still very hard for me to be away from her, but its so nice knowing she is home with her Daddy :)

We have been busy almost every weekend between going to the U.P. and Harrison, or weddings and other events going on. Hunting season is pretty much here, so Ben will be occupied with that for the next couple of months. Overall, things are great at the Yost household... so blessed :)

Claire: 5 Months

Our beautiful baby girl is now 5 months old! She is reaching new milestones and is as healthy as can be. She just recently started sitting up on her own for short periods of time. She is on the verge of getting up on all fours. A few weeks ago, I started her on rice cereal because she started waking up at 3 or 4am hungry. The rice cereal keeps her full for longer at night, and lets me sleep as well :) It is pretty hilarious watching her try to eat from the spoon. Her tongue is all over the place and she wants to play with it. We go with about 4 spoon fulls before adding more milk and putting it in the bottle for her... but we are getting the hang of it.

Claire is a VERY active little girl... won't sit still :) This is challenging at times, but I can always get work done around the house when she naps :) Her sleeping schedule is still great. She goes to bed at about 9, wakes up at about 7, and has 3 naps during the day that last between 1.5 and 2 hours. Can't ask for much better! Found out that she does not like the harmonica or when my parent's house phone rings. She cries every time... poor girl. Other than that and the occasional naptime fussiness, she is a very happy baby!

I go back to work next week... and it is going to be hard. I'm used to being with Claire all the time. BUT... Ben will be done with work after today, so he gets to trade and stay home with her :) Makes me feel so much better about returning to work!

Got some good news... Ben's sister is pregnant so I will be an aunt again! With this one coming around the end of March and Chuck and Cassie's new arrival coming in February, we will have 8 nieces/nephews! The family sure is growing :)

We are so blessed!!!

Eternity is a long time... are you ready?

I have felt a pretty big nudge from God recently to write this. There has been news about a lot of death lately, and some very close family and friends have been affected. It has me wondering and asking myself what some of my closest friends and family members believe when it comes to faith. I know that all of my immediate family and many of my close friends are believers and have been saved, because we openly talk about it... but there are also those I'm not sure where they stand. So here it goes.

Any of us could die at any moment. We see it happen all the time... car accidents, cancer, heart attacks, a random shooting in a theater.... people die, and many times it is totally unexpected. If you were to die today, do you know where you will go? Where you will spend eternity? God loves us all so much, that he sent his one and only son to die for us to take away our sins so that we could spend eternity in Heaven with him. A place so majestic and incredible that we cannot even image. He did this because HE LOVES US. More than we could ever know. All we have to do is accept that love and ask Jesus to enter our hearts and save us from hell. We all deserve to go to hell. Yes, I know that is bold and scary, but its true. We all are sinners and fall short. I will be the first one to admit that I have made plenty of mistakes and I sin often. I also ask for forgiveness all the time and ask God to help me live the way he wants me to live.

God gives us this totally free gift of salvation. All we have to do is accept it. I pray that ALL of my friends accept this gift, because I want to see you all in Heaven some day :) It just breaks my heart when I hear of someone who died and not knowing if they were a Christian or not. When I say Christian, I mean someone who has accepted the Lord as their personal savior. I hear so much about "religion" and it being about a list of do's and do not's... That is not what it's about. That is what turns many people off to the idea of being a Christian.

The bottom line... GOD LOVES YOU. He has offered you a free gift of eternal life in heaven. I pray that everyone reading this will search their hearts and accept him before it is too late. If you already have, that is wonderful and I am so glad :) I hope I didn't offend anyone here or lose any friends... I have just felt God asking me to do this for awhile now. I'll say it here one last time- God loves you, and so do I! I am praying for you all :)

Claire: 4 Months

Our beautiful baby girl is 4 months old already! She is such a great baby... Doesn't cry very often, and when she does, I can usually console her pretty quickly. She is a great napper, and is sleeping through the night most nights. She is starting to push up on her feet and knees... I wonder if she will be crawling soon? She grabs everything in sight. She likes to grab my face when I am feeding her, so cute :) She also loves to yank on my hair. It has been up a lot more lately :) She is making all sorts of new sounds, mostly Oooooo's and Ahhhh's, with some Ma's and Ba's thrown in there every once in awhile. She looks my way when I say her name. She is SO squirmy... this baby will not stay still!

We took a quick trip up to the cabin in the UP this weekend. Claire hasn't been quite as fond of long car rides lately. I think she doesn't like being strapped down... she just wants to move. But we got through it. We have shots later today... not looking forward to those, but they are for the best. She is such a strong and healthy girl, we have been blessed!

I am back down to my pre-pregnancy weight-YES! Last month I was only about 2 lbs over, but it feels great to be back to normal. I'm definitely not as toned as I was before, but I can work on that :)

I have to go back to work in about a month.... It is going to be so hard to leave Claire. I just keep remembering that Cassie will be watching her and she will only be a few miles down the road. Plus, when Ben gets his lay-off for the winter, she will get to be home with him. I believe this is what is best for our family... for now anyways. Only God knows what the future holds :)

Update after doc visit: Claire did great at the doctor's... she weighted in at 14 lbs 2 oz and is 26". Back in the 97% for her height! She did much better with this round of shots... Only screamed for about 3 seconds and didn't have a reaction this time :)

Claire: 3 Months!

Our little girl is already 3 months old! She amazes me every day.

Claire is growing so fast, it seems like there is something new every week! At about 10 weeks, she rolled over for the first time. I had her laying on her tummy, and she flipped to her back... and I just happened to be recording! (see video on Facebook) She went awhile before rolling again, but the past few days she has been a rolling machine. The other day I layed her on her back on her play-gym and went in the other room for a minute... came back and she was on her tummy! I missed her first back to front flip, but she performed an encore shortly after :) On the milestone chart I have, it says your baby might start rolling by 4 months of age... I guess we have a little super-baby on our hands :)

She has been sleeping GREAT. Last night she slept... 12 HOURS STRAIGHT! I couldn't believe it. I changed up our routine a bit and we skipped her evening nap. I'm going to continue to do that and hopefully she keeps sleeping that long at night. Usually she goes about 8 hours and sometimes wakes up in the middle of that. I really can't complain!

Our friends let us borrow their jumper and I thought Claire might be a bit too small for it yet, but she's doing pretty good! Her feet don't reach the ground so we put some phone books under her feet. She loves it so far... all smiles :) I have been putting her in her crib for naps (as well as the swing sometimes) to get her used to it... We will probably be moving her into her own room soon... yikes. I'm sure that move will be harder on me than her. I'm so used to having her right by my side in her bassinet at night, within arms-reach. She is sleeping 8 hours in a row at night now, most nights... I put her to bed at 9 and she usually wakes up at 5. Sometimes she wakes up around 1, and I just put the pacifier in and she goes back to sleep. After I feed her at 5, she will sleep til about 9... so I have been getting a pretty good amount of sleep lately!

Claire loves going outside. When she starts go get fussy, I will step out on the porch and she usually stops fussing right away. We will sit and swing on the porch swing and she just loves it. Lately we have been going for walks outside in the stroller, and she loves that too. Last weekend, Ben and I started working on our first garden and she sat in the stroller the whole time, totally content. I think she's going to be an outdoors girl :)

We didn't have a doc's appointment this month, so I don't have weight/height stats... but she seems to be growing great! Ben helped her with her first doggie ride on Haley the other day.... so precious. (see video on Facebook) She is a very happy baby the majority of the time, and I just love watching her discover her world.

Our first Anniversary is on Monday... I really can't believe it has been a year since our wedding already! I have always heard that the first year of marriage/living together is the hardest. Well, if that was the hardest year, then we sure have a promising future ahead of us. God has been so good to us.

Claire @ 3 Months

My favorite baby products so far

Claire is 3 months old now, so I thought I'd share some of my favorite baby products so far-

1. Mommy's Bliss Gripe Water. If you have a colicky baby, this is the stuff to get. If she is crying/screaming inconsolably, I give her a little bit of this stuff and she almost always calms down immediately. She often falls asleep within minutes too. It is all natural, so I felt ok about giving it to her... and it made her feel SO much better.

2. Boudreaux's Butt Paste. This stuff is awesome... it works better than Desitin and smells WAY better. Trust me, you don't want to accidentally lick something off of your finger after you have had Desitin on it... nasty. You don't want to taste the Butt Paste either, but it is much more pleasant.

3. ItzBeen Baby Timer. I live by this thing when it comes to feedings. You just push a button at the start of one feeding and restart it when the next one comes. It is so hard to remember what time you last fed, and this makes it so you don't have to write it down. I tried just remembering times for awhile, but you forget. You can use it to track diaper changes and naps too, but I just use it for feedings.

4. Fisher Price 3-in-1 Baby Swing. I use this a lot. She falls asleep in it very quickly... I sometimes turn it off once she falls asleep so she doesn't "need" the swing to nap... but it hasn't affected her night sleeping at all, and she will nap in the crib just fine too. If she started relying on the swing to fall asleep, I would stop using it... but she does just fine :)

5. Medela. Of course I had to put my pump on this list... It works perfectly and I haven't had any problems with it. I also have a deep freezer full of milk :) I  was using the Lasinoh storage bags and those work great. Once I ran out of those, I have been freezing milk in 1oz ice cube trays. Once they are frozen, I put them in ziplock bags and into the deep freezer. Also works great!

Some other random tips-

-Olive oil (or baby oil) on baby's head when it gets flaky. Claire has had a really flaky scalp lately, so I tried some olive oil (I did not notice it was seasoned with herbs, so she smelled like olive garden haha) and it worked great!

-Babywise. I read this book and have done my best to stick with the eat, play, sleep routine. It has worked out great for us so far. Last night we skipped her last evening nap, and she slept 12 hours straight! I'll be sticking with that from now on :)

-Clean out those ears after baths! The other night, she was itching and tugging on her ear and fussing quite a bit... turns out, she had some soap left in there from her bath. I cleaned it out with a baby Q-Tip and that fixed it.

-Massaging the tear duct... Claire had a goupy eye that I had to clean out constantly. The doc told me she might have a partially blocked tear duct and to just massage it with my finger every so often. I tried it, and sure enough her eye cleared right up.

Ok that is all I can think of for now. Hopefully this will help someone.. if not, I will refer back to this when ever we have our next little one!