My Random Thoughts: A baby update, personal update, ASL, social media, and flowers!
Hello, Friend! Happy Tuesday!
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I just put Baby down for a nap (fingers crossed it’s more than 20 minutes!) and now time to write this blog post!
Coming at you today with a few random thoughts!
Beatrix is almost 11 weeks old! She’s on a 7-day Sleeping-Through-The-Night Streak! Yay! I LOVE sleep and take getting my sleep hours VERY seriously, so I’m PUMPED that Baby Girl is sleeping so well so early in her life! I know this can still shift over time, but for now I’ll take it!
Not only is she sleeping like a champ, but we’ve also traveled to a wedding and a family reunion over the last two weekends—including flying back and forth to Missouri!— and she crushed it! She met new people and was flexible with sleeping environments and schedules and a slight time change and everything!
Here she is:
I’ve been increasing my workout intensity over here lately! It feels good to be able to push a little harder but DANG do I feel weak! Weights and movements that used to be manageable are really challenging… and I failed a pushup the other day! I’m not getting caught up in it, because I know I can’t compare to what things were like before getting pregnant, but it’s crazy how different things feel.
Regardless of that, I’m really proud of myself for continuing to prioritize movement and getting in walks + workouts 5x per week despite all of life’s craziness and recent shifts and baby care! Bea just comes with us on a walk in her little bassinet stroller, and then sleeps or hangs out for a 15-20 minute workout back at the garage! Most of the time she’s chill, but sometimes I have to take breaks to rock her or replace her pacifier, a few times I held her and she became my weight, and once I ended the workout early to feed her! All good, but just sharing to show what’s possible, I guess! With this being said, I know she’s still young and is likely calmer than older kids would be in these situations, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it!
If this is TMI for you, go ahead and skip this point, but I’ve shared enough about my pregnancy and labor experiences to share this too… I got my period this week! I was MAD when it happened, feeling like I didn’t get enough time postpartum without it! While I still think that’s true, it’s “only” been 10.5 weeks and I would have loved more time “off”, I guess it can be a positive in the sense that my body feels like it can support both a period and breastfeeding. I know there are lots of reasons for your period to come back/stay dormant in the postpartum period, but I imagine that means I’m eating enough and giving my body enough energy to do so, so I feel good about that. I guess it has been a year since I had it so I’ll deal…
We’re learning American Sign Language over here! Okay, “learning” might be a stretch, but we got the book “Baby Sign Language Made Easy'“ by Lane Rebelo with the intention of incorporating some signs in our communication with Bea as she gets older! Apparently babies can start understanding and learning signs as early as 6 months old, which is not only crazy, but also is far earlier than they can communicate with words, so why not try?!
So far we know:
-How to sign and spell out all of our names (and also how to sign bee + trick… close enough)
-More + All done
-Eat
-Sleep
-Dog
-Banana, apple, pear, lemon
-Car
-Book
-Ball
-Bug, ladybug
-Milk
-Light
-I love you
I also think it’s awesome that in ASL not only can you represent yourself by writing out your name in letters (fingerspelling), but also that people can choose a Name Sign to identify themselves. This Name Sign can be changed over time as desired, too!
Changing the tone a bit here…. but I’ve been really disgusted with social media comments lately. Not posts so much, but people’s comments on posts. I totally know this is nothing new, but some people are just vicious out there and it makes looking at any posts really tough. Maybe I’m just more sensitive/hormonal/emotional these days but gosh it’s nasty out there. I find myself reading and reading just to see how bad it gets sometimes, which I know I can stop myself from doing, and will actively work on stopping in the future, but I think part of me is just amazed at the lengths that people will go to to assert their “correct-ness” and make others feel bad or dumb or less than, etc.
Speaking of, posting nutrition content on my social media has been like pulling teeth for me lately. I imagine it’s partially to do with point 5 and feeling badly about social media in general, but also due to time constraints. Making posts tends to be the easiest thing to NOT do if the day gets away from me or Bea has more needs that day, etc. I’ll work on scheduling more posts moving forward (and making them at a time when I don’t feel so negative towards the social climate!).
Rain is on every day of the upcoming 10-day forecast. *thumbs down* However, that also means that flowers are getting plenty of water! Here are some irises that are blooming in our back yard as of today!
And here are some peonies that a neighbor gifted to me the other day when she saw me out in her yard taking pictures of them! I was being a creep walking a little ways into her yard to take pictures, she saw me, came out with her scissors, and she was kind enough to cut me some flowers! Thanks, Neighbor Barbara!
Okay, that’s all I have for today! Please feel free to comment anything that came up for you in reading this!
Note: we made it 38 minutes on the nap… I guess that’s longer than 20 but still not long enough for me to finish this post in one sitting.
As always, thank you for reading!
xoxo,
Sara