September 2020 Recap & 6 Month Milestones

Hello and strap in! I drank a double dose of Spark this morning, and I have ALL. THE. ENERGY. Welcome to #MomLife, where you need 240mg of caffeine to function productively.

No, seriously.

We are breaking Morgan of her beloved swaddle, so I haven’t had a “normal” night’s sleep in like two weeks. We put her in the Zipadeezip, so it’s safe for if/when she rolls over. Which, let me tell you, happens ALL NIGHT LONG. WHY does my child A.) Roll so damn much in her sleep, and B.) Find the most comfortable position to be on her belly, FACE DOWN in the mattress? Uh, no ma’am. I am constantly staring at the monitor from my bed, and running in her room multiple times a night to adjust her head. She has also figured out how to slip her feet in the crib spindles and push herself upwards and/or sideways. It’s great.

Ya’ll, pray for me, and my too-tired-to-function Mom brain.

Anyways, I digress…

Yet another month of 2020 has flown by, so I thought I’d fill you in on what The Petes were been up to in September. You know, besides sleep training (can I call it that?) a six month old.

Our Anniversary

Justin & I celebrated three blissful years of marriage! We let my mom babysit Morgan for a few hours while we went out for the first time since March, on a little day date. We went to Condado Tacos on the Cincinnati Banks for a late lunch, and not only was the food delicious, the atmosphere was awesome! It felt so good just to get out and enjoy ourselves, while the open-air style eating still made us feel safe. Two thumbs up for their house margaritas, too.

After we ate, we walked around the Cincinnati riverfront to burn off some of the many calories we had just consumed. Our city really is so beautiful!

We had planned on going to Rhinegeist, our wedding location, for more celebratory beverages, but when we pulled up and saw the 50-something person line out in front of the building, we decided to go to Madtree instead.

Meanwhile, Morgan had so much fun at Mimi’s! We picked her up around 7:30 and were home by 8:00 for snuggles and bedtime. The perfect way to end the day!

Updates

Also in September, we made a couple of home improvements!

I got some new dressers for my office/getting-ready room.
Our mailbox got a refresh! Out with the old Rubbermaid-style mailbox, and in with a new wooden post. (We still need to decide on the landscaping.)
We updated the address numbers on our house to match the new mailbox ones.
We replaced the outdoor lights on either side of the garage and the front porch with dusk-to-dawn lights.
Oh, and Justin got a new car!!! A 2020 Toyota 4Runner. Hello, Dadmobile.

Morgan’s 6 Month Milestones

Besides the aforementioned “sleep training,” Morgan is working on sitting up unassisted! She does really well with it, but gets tired after a few minutes and will topple over into our laps.
She is still drooling like CRAZY but no teeth have cut through. We are constantly changing her bib and her clothes, because they get so soaked with drool.
We took her OFFICIAL 6 Month Photoshoot! Oh, and I finally posted her Nursery Tour too, if you missed that.
We discovered that Morgan loves books! Turning the pages is her favorite part. Check out the children’s book my friend Jeff wrote called, Don’t Be a Butt. We read it to Morgan and laughed our own butts off.

We visited her Momo & Papa (her great-grandparents) about once per week. We just love spending time with them, and I think they love it too! 🙂
Morgan made brownies with Mama for the first time, in celebration of our friend Nikki’s birthday. I held her in the baby carrier and she LOVED watching the KitchenAid mix the batter. She was mesmerized.
We took TONS of walks this month. We are really trying to soak up every second of this cool, fall weather. I’m totally going to be heartbroken when it gets too cold to walk every day.
We purchased Morgan’s Halloween costume! Stay tuned!
We have fallen into a pretty good groove during the workweek. Morgan goes to the sitter Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and on Tuesdays & Thursdays my mom picks her up at 3:00 so she can spend a couple hours with her during the week. Our sitter started sending home daily reports which we call her “report card” and it’s so cute to tease her, “You better get a good grade on her report card today!” She seems to truly love playing with the other kids all day. 🙂
And last but not least…

We survived her first illness.

At Morgan’s 6 month checkup, she weighed 13 lbs. 15 oz. (12th percentile) and was 26.5 inches long (73rd percentile). She got her normal vaccines plus a flu shot this visit, and by that evening, she was not acting herself. Very fussy, and was refusing her bottle. We checked her temperature and it was 102.9! I immediately called the pediatrician while Justin stripped all of her clothes off of her. The nurse advised me to give her a double dose of Infant Tylenol (since we didn’t have any Infant Motrin on hand), keep her body cool, and use a cool mist humidifier in her room to help her breathe. If her fever hadn’t subsided by morning, we should call back. Thankfully, she felt so much better that next day and had returned back to her spunky self by that weekend. She was also fighting her first cold simultaneously, which is why I think the vaccines affected her so much in the first place- her immune system was already slightly compromised. Nonetheless, we all survived!