Christmas Day

I had so much fun on Christmas morning this year. Nora actually got it, which was so awesome and fun! She was excited for Santa to come. We did have to wake her up on Christmas morning, she is our little sleeper. I am sure that not going to bed until 11:30 had something to do with it, but once she was up she was excited. We checked the cookie plate to make sure that Santa ate the cookies we left him. Then we found our stockings that he had hidden. Santa gifts are in red and green tissue paper at our house, so she was excited to get into them. I got the best picture of her opening her Little Mermaid set that Santa brought her. She was so excited that he listened and brought her Ariel's daddy, flounder and sebastian! We gave her Dinosaur Train stuff, which she loves as well! She is playing with it as I am typing this. The dinosaurs and little mermaid toys all play together, it is pretty fun to listen to her imagination take over! I was pretty lucky this year as well. We got a new family camera, a nikon coolpix! It is neat and Peter did a great job picking it out. I also got an Ipod touch!

She was so excited she got band aids in her stocking! Seriously?!

1st Christmas

Reaction to the Little Mermaid set!

I think she likes it!

 We celebrated Christmas with Grandma and Grandpa the week before. They came in to town for the weekend. We are all totally spoiled rotten! Nora loves her new Barbie car that aunt candace and uncle tim gave her and the new Barbie grandma gave her. She also got some more things to go with her bitty baby, Stella. 

 We had a nice relaxing morning to play with our toys and talk to Grandma and Grandpa via skype. We headed to my mom's house around 2:30. Holy moly you should have seen her living room! It was packed with presents. We were all really good this year. It took us forever to open all of the gifts. I think Nora's favorite gift from there was her Barbie dorm room house and the remote control strawberry shortcake car. My mom made homemade mac and cheese, which was really good and we had good sandwiches and appetizers. My mom got the game logos for christmas and we played that which was fun.

Overall, we had an excellent Christmas.

We are so blessed.

Christmas Eve

This year we had Christmas in St. Louis. We rotate years, which is nice because then we get to spend all of Christmas in one place. Christmas Eve in St. Louis is always spent with my dad's family. We started new tradition last year with having our generation start to host. So Katie hosted this year. We had an excellent, non traditional Christmas Eve dinner that consisted of Spaghetti, meatballs, garlic cheese bread, salad and wonderful appetizers. We arrived a little before everyone so we could open presents with my dad. Stella got a new activity gym that she loves! Nora got a dinosaur train toy and some other goodies.

 After church we headed back to Katie's house and finished celebrating. The Bromeier tradition is to bring a $5 gift or gift card and we play a left right game to see what we get. After that we play bingo! We had a lot of fun playing bingo as always. Katie was the caller this year since she was hosting. We had lots of fun bingo gifts. It is pretty funny to see 30 people sitting around playing bingo and getting excited over silly gifts! Stella did a great job and was okay being passed around all night. We got home and all were in bed around 11:30. Needless to say we had to wake Nora at 9:00 on Christmas morning to open presents!

 We went to church at the 5:00 service at Concord Trinity. Peter is having his membership transferred there so that will be our church from now on. I like it and I like the pastor too. It is a pretty big church and there seems to be lots of families, which is nice. My mom is even going with us from time to time. Anyway, the 5:00 service was geared totally for the kids, which was really neat. The pastor didn't even do the service, which was different, but it was fun and the "sermon" consisted of describing the members that were at the manger on that day and instead of candles being lite we all received glow sticks.

8 weeks

Wow, eight weeks has surely flown by! I cannot believe that our sweet Stella is now eight weeks old. That means I only have two more weeks at home with her. She has grown so much in the last two weeks! She is holding her head up more every day. She does not like to spend time on her tummy unless she is laying on her daddy's chest. When I put her on the floor she just yells and squaks for someone to pick her up. She is also smiling more everyday too! Just about anyone can make her smile. I love when she smiles at Nora and I think Nora enjoys that she can now smile too. I think it makes her seem like she is acknowledging her.

Stella is sleeping pretty well too! She has given us a couple of 7-8 hour stretches at night, which is glorious! Last night was 7 1/2 hours. After she does that she falls back asleep for usually at least 3 hours. I know my friends hate me, but I had to wake her up at 9:00 the last couple of days. She is staying awake longer too. Now we are going to start working on the nap schedule and getting those down. It is going to be an adjustment in a couple of weeks when we are all getting up to get out of the house, so I know everything is going to be changing soon.

 Stella absolutely loves her bath time! We are still working the kinks out, but finally figured out how to do it without getting mommy soaked! She just smiles and looks around when she gets a bath. She likes the water really warm too. As opposed to her older sister who lately likes taking cold baths.

Sisterly love!

So I finally finished her letters! I wish they would have been done for the birthstory pictures, but oh well, what can you do. And as much as I would like to say I painted these, I did not. My neighbor shared a great idea with me! This is scrapbook paper that is cut to the letters! It did take me a little while to do, but I think it is super cute and much better than I could ever paint!

Cookies

This morning we had Grandma, Great Gran and Jalen over to make cut out sugar cookies. We had a lot of fun making the cut outs and decorating them. Great Gran now know that Nora's favorite color is PINK! Great Gran would ask Nora, what color she should make a cookie and Nora's response 95% of the time was pink. Aunt Kiki would be proud ;) We used to do this with my Grandma as kids and I have fond memories of this time of year with her. I am so glad that I can continue to share this with her and my own daughter. We made three batches of sugar cookies and can't wait to eat them!

6 weeks old

Stella is 6 weeks old today. It amazes me how much they grow and change so fast. Our precious baby is now smiling!! I love it! She just smiles away. She is starting to coo as well. Nora has a stuffed leopard and that is Stella's favorite thing to look at right now. She just smiles at the silly leopard and today she was trying to talk to the leopard. She is growing and I am estimating around 10lbs right now. She is sleeping at night for around 5 hours, which is awesome. So it gives me a solid 3.5 hour stretch of sleep. The second stretch is closer to 3 1/2 to 4 hours. No complaints here! I am hoping that by the time I go back to work she is sleeping through the night! Fingers crossed!!!

5 weeks & growing

Stella is 5 weeks old! We went to the doctor yesterday and she is a growing girl. The last time we had been to the doctor was at her two  week visit. At that visit she had not gotten back to her birth weight so the doctor recommended still waking her through the night. Well we no longer need to do that!!

 Here are her current stats...

weight-9 lbs 7 oz  50th %ile

length-22.5" 90th %ile

I cannot believe she gained that much in three weeks! What a porker! A lot has changed in 3 weeks. She is getting formula at her last feeding of the night and her middle of the night feeding. Formula sits a little heavier and helps her sleep a little better. We are also doing this so I can take what I am pumping at those feedings and stash it. She is no longer nursing. We got thrush and it was just too painful for me. Luckily I was able to pump through it and am now exclusively pumping. While I was in Chicago Grandma helped me make a hands free bra so I can pump hands free! That is how I can blog right now. My plan is to try to pump until after Christmas and start slowing down before school starts. For me it is really hard and I just need sleep. I will need to be able to sleep through the night before I go back to work. So if I can still pump a few times a day and still get enough then I will do that, if not I will be done. That is just the way it is for me and sometimes it is hard for me to come to grips with, but a healthy and happy momma is better for all!

Enough about nursing and pumping. Stella is such a great baby! We are so lucky. She only cries when she is really hungry or tired. Right now she is sleeping in 4 hour stretches through the middle of the night. She has started smiling at us. It is not always, but enough! I just love that. She has started to coo just a little bit. She is more alert and staying awake a little longer than before.

Nora is doing well too! She loves her baby sister. Tonight we start counting down the days until Santa comes. Everything she sees on TV she wants. We went through the toy catalogs and she wanted to circle just about everything. We were coming home on Monday evening from somewhere and she saw christmas lights and asked where ours were. She wants our lights up! We are going to do it all this weekend. She asked about the tree too. I am really excited for Christmas this year. I think it is going to be so much fun!

Happy Thanksgiving

Wow, what a week. We decided before Stella was born that no matter what we would be going to Chicago for Thanksgiving. We rotate years between St. Louis and Chicago and this year was our year to be in Chicago. We thought that we might as well make it worth our drive so we decided to stay for a week. We were not sure how the drive would be so we might as well stay.

The day we were leaving for Chicago Stella decided to sleep for her first 4 1/2 hour stretch, which threw our game plan off. Of course leave it to a baby to do that! She woke us up at 4:15, so as Peter was feeding her and I was pumping we decided to get the car packed when we were done and go. We didn't want to wait until after her next feeding because Peter wanted to get there before the Bears game and we didn't know how the drive was going to go. So we packed up put two sleeping children in the car and headed on our way. We got on the road at 5:30 am. Stella did a great job! We see the makings of another great traveler. Nora is an awesome traveler and hopefully Stella will be the same way. We made it to Grandma and Grandpas house in 5 1/2 hours, which was great time!

We had no plans for most of the week. It was really nice to see both sides of the family. A lot of family got the chance to meet Stella and we are so thankful that you came to meet her!  Tuesday Grandma, Nora and I headed to the American Girl store. Grandma got Nora a bitty baby for Christmas. Nora picked out a baby with reddish hair and blue eyes and named her baby Stella. Now, it has been a little confusing, but you just have to make sure you ask which Stella she is referring to, her sister or her baby. I think it is pretty sweet that she named her doll after her sister. It just goes to show how much she really does love her sister. More about that when I post an update on Stella and Nora after Stella goes to the doctor on Wed.

On Thanksgiving Day the Harrigan side of the family came over. I got to meet Peter's cousins baby, Emily. There were 3 girls under 7 months! It was fun to have Nora be able to play with her cousins, Shamus and Molly. They had a blast playing together and Nora now refers to Molly as her "new friend".

On Friday I did a little shopping, but nothing too crazy. I hit Kohls up at around 10:00 and then went to Old Navy and Carsons, which was all in the same mall. That evening we had dinner with friends, which was great as always.

We headed back on Saturday around noon time and it took a little longer to get home, but not much longer. The ride home was 6 hours, but still not bad considering we were traveling with an infant. We had a great week in Chicago!!!

2 weeks

Our sweet baby is 2 weeks old. Some days I feel like wow that was fast and other days i feel like she has been here a while. Stella went to the doctor at 5 days old and had lost a little more weight, but other than that was great. Grandma and I took her yesterday and she has gained back some of that weight! Yea! I am nursing this time around and it is going pretty good. There are definate days when I question if I should nurse, but that is usually at night when I am tired and then the next morning I feel better about it. She is taking well to the nursing and latching well and eating well. That is all I can ask for. It is hard and we have been busy the last few days running to the doctor, getting diapers and other stuff, and visitors. That can complicate things with nursing, but Stella seems no worse for the wear. I want to keep nursing at least until I go back to work.

Grandma has been in town since Stella was a week old. She has been a great help. She has been cleaning and cleaning and doing laundry. My house is going to be a mess when she leaves. Grandpa comes in to town today and will be meeting Stella for the first time! Nora is super excited Grandpa is coming in. She didn't understand why Grandma came without him.

Stella is a lot like Nora was as a baby. Nora was laid back and so is Stella. Stella only cries when she is super hungry or over tired. We are so lucky!!! I hope she is as good of a traveler as Nora was and is. We are making our first trek to Chicago in 9 days! It should be an interesting ride!

Well....here are her two week stats.

weight-7lbs. 10oz. (30%)
length-21.5 inches (89%)
head-14.1 (53%)

Here are some pics!  Nora and Stella at the same age!!! It is scary! Can you tell the difference? Leave a comment and tell me which two pics are Nora and which two pics are Stella!!!

And Jalen and his sweet baby cousin. He is such a great boy! I don't know what we would do without him. He just loves his cousins so much. He is so proud!!

Who am I?

Nora or Stella?

Can you tell the difference?

What baby?

Jalen and his sweet cousin Stella

Trick or Treat

Our little pumpkin

Ninja and strawberry

sugar high!

sisters!

Daddy and Aunt Boo took Jalen and Nora trick or treating this year. Normally he stays back and hands out candy and I go, but this year was a little different. Nora didn't have a joke to start with, but Peter called about 5 min. after they had been out and said that she started making up her own jokes. They last about an hour, which was more than enough with the amount of candy that she got! Holy Moly! We always have a great time at the Kountzman's!

Pumpkin Carving

Here we are carving pumpkins Sunday evening. We did not do carving with the rest of the family with everything going on this year. We carved two pumpkins. Nora wanted a scary pumpkin and that is what she got! She would not touch the inside of the pumpkin, wanted nothing to do with it. She did do a good job helping me carve!