Halloween!

I didn't do anything overly crafty for the girls Halloween costumes.  It's good that I didn't pan anything elaborate because we had another bad sleep week so I was struggling anyway.  I think I'm learning my limits, maybe?  Months ago I ordered these shirts from Zulily (affiliate link).  R.Soup's is actually a onesie, but close enough.

I had a red tutu for L.Soup from a party and a pair of pants (0-3 months and a little short - but definitely still fit... thank goodness for tiny babies) with a tutu attached for R.Soup.  I ordered these socks from Amazon and made them into baby legs for L.Soup so their bottoms will match (minus the heels).

I put long sleeve under shirts and stockings on each of them for some added warmth.  I asked my grandfather to knit them each a red hat to keep their heads warm and my mom made them bows to attach to the hats.


We didn't go to many houses, but I figured it would be more fun for me them if we went in the wagon instead of a stroller.

I don't know how many times I'll be able to do this matching thing before they start rebelling against me. 

So I'm soaking this all in.

Already?

I have a 6 month old.

I've been thinking about it all day and I'm still having a hard time with it. 

This tiny little nugget is 6 months old.

She's trying desperately to figure out how to crawl. 

She's getting more balance and is now able to sit up on her own for a few minutes.

She's interested in absolutely everything.

She's so serious, but so completely silly sometimes.

She LOVES her sister and laughs at everything she does.


She's starting to make more than just "ahh" sounds.

She's chewing on everything.

She's tried three foods - avocado, banana, and pumpkin.

SHE'S SIX MONTHS OLD.

I don't get it.

Happy Half Birthday baby girl.

Starting from scratch

Things have been at a complete stand still in the Soup household the last few weeks.  We moved R.Soup over to her own room because she kept waking up at 3:30 in the morning to hang out with her mama.  No thank you my dear sweet baby love.

She hasn't been having a hard time going to bed.  Some nights she even sleeps all the way through to morning.  But then there are other nights where she wakes up multiple times throughout the night and I'm the only one that she wants to see.

I've spent the last few weeks trying to recoup from the the previous weeks when I was being allotted approximately 3 hours of sleep during the night.  

We've been making a point to go to sleep as soon as the girls are asleep, so that I'm not dying the next day.  Mess has been piling and piling and piling, and I haven't even thought about the projects going on in the basement.  On nights that we don't go to bed, we sit on the couch and watch some TV and hold our breath (well at least I do) waiting to hear crying coming through the monitor.

I finally broke down last week and invited people over to the house for a Sunday get together.  Which forced us to frantically clean the main level of the house in prep for them coming over.  I wouldn't care if it was a normal level of mess.  But this was hoarder style disgusting mess and was starting to affect my daily outlook.

So now the main level of the house looks... better.  Like 1000 times better but still not what I think it should look like.  But as long as we can keep up with this level of clean, we can work towards my dream clean.  Minus toys.  Nothing ever looks clean when its covered in a rainbow of baby toys.  Honestly I'm not (always) bothered by them.  Its the inch fine coating of sand under them that bothers me.

Upstairs on the other hand.  Disaster area.  Our old mattress is still standing up in the hallway outside our bedroom.  The cats have claimed it as their new climbing tree since its the highest place they can be.  I'm afraid at this point they might revolt when we move it out.  There's boxes of hand-me-down baby related things (mostly clothes... MORE clothes) that need to be washed and sorted.  I have a ton of things lying around currently that I want to put into the bathroom, but haven't had any time to actually WORK on the bathroom.

In addition to THAT - because that's not enough and I want you to truly understand the state I've allowed our house to get to - there's four... FOUR loads of clean baby laundry.  We also have one or two loads of our laundry.  We only have 4 laundry baskets. That means one of the "baskets" is dumped on the floor somewhere.  And the dirty clothes hampers are starting to fill up again.  It never ends.

Okay.  But enough about clothes mess.

Sometime in the last month, the light in our ceiling fan stopped working.  So the majority of the time that we spend in our bedroom we have to use our phones as flashlights and have the hall and bathroom lights on so we can actually see things.

D.Soup bought a kit to fix it the other day, but accidentally bought the ceiling fan kit instead of the light kit.  So now we are back at square one.

I think I'm finally finding a groove (and the energy) where - if R.Soup stays asleep - I can get things done.  I did what felt like a million things on Wednesday night when I got back downstairs.  I'm hoping I can keep that pace up.

Also, I need to be starting back over on an exercise regimen. Once I stopped sleeping, I stopped caring about my 30 day challenge.  Which is unfortunate because I had made it to day 14.  I'm going to start that back up here soon, and hopefully stick it out for the entire 30 days.  I'd also like to pick up with some "running" sometime in the near future.

Here's hoping I can get back on some kind of schedule soon.

Some paper crafting!

I've had a few Silhouette paper cutting projects recently.  That I've used a few of my "free nights" to work on.  It's taken forever to get some of them done but I'm glad I can finally make time for some sort of crafting again.

Two of my good friends are getting married (to each other) in 15 days!  A few months ago she asked me if I could help with some paper things for the wedding.  First up was a sticker to attach to the welcome bags that she had for hotel guests and the bridal party.  She gave me a general idea of what she liked, along with some examples for inspiration.  I came up with a few samples, but finally ended up with this:

(font is Janda Elegant Handwriting)

I printed them onto some full sheets of sticker paper that she had purchased and brought to me, and she said it almost looks like they were printed directly onto the bags! 

Next up, my mom asked for some help with developing a new business card for her Etsy shop.  She wants to completely remodel and streamline the look of her page, including the paper that she sends associated with her orders.  She wanted something on Kraft paper, so I came up with this:

(Fonts: Young & Beautiful, GeosansLight)

She loved that they looked like bows.

In looking for new ways to decorate my house for Halloween, I kept coming across this picture.

source

I desperately wanted to do this on our garage, so I searched through the image options for the Silhouette and found a group of bats that I thought would work well.  I set them up (all 60 of them) and cut them out on some black vinyl.

Here's what my version looks like:

I feel pretty good about the very little bit of crafting I've been able to accomplish lately.  Hopefully soon I will be able to increase my level of production.

Cross your fingers.

But don't hold your breath.

Now... what, exactly?

It's been an interesting few weeks at the Soup house....

D.Soup now has a red meat allergy.

My self proclaimed "meatatarian" husband can no longer eat beef, pork, or lamb.  His hands and feet start to swell, rashes form up his arms, and he has terrible stomach pains.

Also, pork being "the other white meat" is a lie.  Rude.

All because of a tick bite.

The Lone Star Tick has been spreading across the country, and if it bites you there is a chance that you will develop an allergy to red meat.  The tick carries a sugar called Galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose(alpha-gal) in its belly.  It transfers the alpha-gal to you and your body starts to fight it like it would a disease.  Alpha-gal is also found in the fatty parts of all non-primate mammals.  So when your body processes the fat cells of any red meat that you have eaten, you have an allergic reaction.

...That's my very dumbed down explanation of this whole shenanigans.

What does this mean for us?

We will now be a fish and fowl loving family.  We are only in the first week of transferring over to our new lifestyle and we honestly don't know how much he will be affected by different scenarios.  A lot of people with this allergy have issues eating out because of cross contamination.  We will have to take it day by day.  He has been prescribed an Epi pen, and we now have Benadryl stored in every vehicle and multiple areas in our house.


The good news.

He doesn't (so far) seem to have any feelings of his throat closing up during a reaction.

We already eat a decent amount of chicken.  So transitioning isn't going to be TOO hard for a majority of our meals. 

The other good thing is that turkey is much healthier than beef, so it will help us in our weight loss endeavors.

There is a chance that the allergy will go away on its own (3 weeks to 5 years is the "average"), he has to be careful not to get another Lone Star tick bite, because that will bring the allergy back, or make it worse if he is still allergic at the time of the bite.   

The bad news.

D.Soup hunts.  Deer meat is included in the list of no-nos.  We haven't tested it, and some people say they can still eat it so we are feeling hopeful at the moment.  We shall see.

We also have bags and bags of beef - hamburgers, steaks, ground beef, cubes - in our freezers.  I'm going to have to package everything up and give it away.  At least we know people around us that will take it, so we don't have to throw everything away.

It's also possible that we could deal with cross contamination in our own kitchen.  We use cast iron pans to cook a majority of our meals.  Those could very easily have remnants of meat that might affect him.



There's so much more.  I start thinking about it and I end up in a rabbit hole of stress and panic.  We just don't know everything that he will react to so its a strange and slightly scary time for us me.  He is less panicked than I am, at least externally.  I think if I wasn't so stressed about it he would be more stressed, but for now he has to deal with all my craziness so he's taken on his job as the confident one.

I can't believe that a tick bite can do this to people.  Hardly anyone knows about it either. Almost everyone that we've talked to has been completely dumbfounded that this is even a thing.

The allergist that D.Soup saw to get tested for alpha-gal was actually excited (for herself, not for him) that he was there.  She told him "I've studied this but have never actually seen a case of it before!  I'm going to have to do some more research!"

I will continue to post any changes.

Milestones

R.Soup has hit a few milestones in the last few weeks.  She's scooting backwards all over the floor.  She's so close to sitting up on her own.  She had her first taste of real food a few days ago.

And then, just Monday night... This:

That's my baby.  All alone.  In the CRIB!  Gah.

I almost couldn't lay her down because I was so sad.  It couldn't be time for this already!  But then I remembered the night before.  Her waking up quite a few times just to hang out.  With me.  Her father wasn't cutting it.

So I plunked her down in the crib and ran.  And then stared at the monitor for the rest of the night.

She did great!  Slept from 9ish until 3:30.  It took until about 5 to get her back to sleep.  And again she only wanted me (...yay).  But when she went back to sleep again she stayed asleep until 8.

Last night was not as great, but I think it was more my fault than hers.  I honestly am not completely sure, but it took 2 hours to get her to sleep finally.  Then she woke up around 3 and again around 5:30.  That second time I had D.Soup go get her because I just couldn't convince myself to get out of the bed.

We have been soooo late to work this week.

Growing

I've watched over the last few months as the bigger of my little baby girls has grown and changed and turned into a not so little-little girl.  Hair that refused to grow for the first 18 months of her life has sprouted and stretched and is now consistently in her eyes if its down.  The back, with its beautiful ringlet curls, pulls down to the middle of her back if straightened out.  It makes her look so much more grown up then I'm personally okay with.

Her face looks less and less like a baby every day.  Her attitude screams teenager.  Sometimes I forget she's only 2, because she already seems so much older than that.

 I watched her one night this week take off running through a field full of other children.  Instead of just watching them, she joined in.  They taught her how to do a cartwheel, and I watched her try to maneuver her tiny arms and legs in the same way these bigger girls were.  She followed them around the rest of the evening, and they played with her.  Last month girls the same size ran around her as she tried to figure out how to include herself in their games.

A part of me wanted to follow her around, keep close to her.  But instead I watched her from a distance.  She would come running back to us to tell us what she had done, and with a smile take off again to find her new friends.

My beautiful big girl.