7 1/2 Months Already?

Lately I feel like a chicken with its head cut off. I've been working from home since Axel was born. In the beginning it was max 5 hours per week, but last week I clocked in 30 hours! That's crazy! One bad thing about it is that when you're already a full time mom, it feels like you should be paid overtime when you're working nights! But it feels nice to be able to help Johan out with the bills, and I really love my job. The only reason it works is because Axel still takes 3 naps per day, each nap is between 1 to 2 hours long. And he goes to bed at 6:00 pm, wakes up between 6 and 7 a.m., and doesn't wake up anymore to nurse. I don't know how moms survive without putting their babies on a schedule, it's been an absolute lifesaver for me.

On Friday we're meeting with a potential nanny that my friends recommended. I'm thinking of returning to work in a couple of months, so we've just started the process of figuring out the daycare/nanny situation. I'm thinking I'll go back to work part-time. And I like the idea of a nanny so that we don't have to rush Axel out the door, he'll have one-on-one care, and he can keep his schedule and take naps at home. But he's also very stimulated by other kids, so he might like a daycare. We'll have to take some time to do our homework and see what we think is best for him.

I've also been trying to make or buy Christmas presents, taking care of Axel, then on top of that it's grocery shopping, cleaning the house, doing laundry, etc. I have, however, had time to make some new recipes and do some sewing in my minutes of free time. I made this trifle last week that got lots of oohs and ahhs. I really just made it up by combining a cake recipe with a chocolate mousse recipe and threw in some berries. Here it is:

Chocolate Berry Mousse Trifle

Cake:

• 3 eggs
• 1-1/2 cups sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 75 g butter, melted
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1-1/2 cups flour, sifted
• 1 cup of any berries....blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, save 1/2 cup for cake topping

Preheat oven to 350. Mix the above ingredients in order that I've written them. Fold the berries in gently. Line a cake tin with butter, sprinkle with bread crumbs (I use crumbs instead of flour, but flour is ok too). Bake for about 30 minutes. But I always have to check, because some ovens might not require the same amount of time.

Chocolate Mousse:

• 4 (1 ounce) squares semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
• 1/2 cup water, divided
• 2 tablespoons butter (no substitutes)
• 3 egg yolks
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/4 cups whipping cream, whipped

In a microwave heat chocolate, 1/4 cup water and butter until the chocolate and butter are melted. Cool for 10 minutes. In a small heavy saucepan, whisk egg yolks, sugar and remaining water. Cook and stir over low heat until mixture reaches 160 degrees F, about 1-2 minutes. Remove from the heat; whisk in chocolate mixture. Set saucepan in ice and stir until cooled, about 5-10 minutes. Fold in whipped cream. Refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight. Of course, I am always too anxious and only refrigerate it for about an hour.

Once the cake and mousse are cooled, cut the cake into two or three layers. Get a large glass bowl and start the layering. Mousse, cake, mousse, cake, mousse, cake, mousse. If you have extra berries, throw them on top for decoration. Voila!

Here are a couple of really easy DIY things I've done around the house. I got this idea off of Pinterest. I got some old Mason jars and glass jars, filled them with salt, and added a tea light, so easy! I also love to decorate with trimmings from the Christmas tree.

I also had some dried hydrangeas that were turning yellow from age. I decided to spray paint them white and add some more Christmas tree trimmings.

We went surfing yesterday. A swell was coming in, so the waves were small but building up. I had also just bought a really nice new wetsuit and wanted to try it out. There is no better feeling than paddling out in the water on a sunny day. I have always been a country girl that loved the mountains, and I still am. But since I've lived in San Diego, I have grown a true love for the ocean. I'd love to teach Axel to surf and see him and Johan riding tandem one day. No pressure, Johan.

Nowadays, getting out and about is still a process of incredible time management. Since Axel takes naps every 2 hours that means I have 2 hours to run my errands because, unfortunately, he won't nap in his carseat anymore. So before Axel wakes up from each nap I have to have our next 2 hours planned out so I can maximize our efficiency. This is becoming a well-oiled machine.

Axel is becoming such a little boy, I can't believe it! About two months ago, Johan started putting his finger on Axel's lips while he was babbling so it would make a ba bab babab bab ba sound. Axel loves it! So when he's playing by himself, he'll take whatever is in his hands against his lips and try to make that sound, it's so cute! He's still not crawling, but can move around the house amazingly by pivoting and rolling. Another first is we started covering him with a blanket when he sleeps. My Mom started this when we visited her, and he loved it and slept so well. He has also started becoming really cranky on certain days. I don't know if he's teething or what. He is also his father's son. When he sees me preparing his food, he becomes SO impatient! He yells and fusses as if he's trying to say "now mommy, I want food now!" Johan's mom said he was the same way. He's started feeding himself too. I cut pieces of tofu up into cubes and he'll pick them up and shove them into his mouth. Except for the occasional crankiness, this is a really fun age. (See cranky Axel eating below).

Remembrances

So I created this blog really so I could keep track of everything we have and will go through during the "baby months" like sleep patterns, growth, milestones, etc. I would love it if other parents would comment on any of their experiences as well!

Axel was a c-section baby. My water broke at around 4:00 a.m. on April 25th. We went in to the hospital all excited, got admitted. Then waited.....and waited.....and waited. Nothing happened. My doctor told me that he was giving my body 24 hours to go in to labor, otherwise, it was going to be a c-section. "No way" I thought, not me. I'm not going to be "one of those girls". I thought having a c-section meant failure, and I wouldn't have it. I waited around 18 hours and my body never went into labor. So I agreed to a mild inducer. After around 9 hours of some contractions, the doctor checked, I was at less than 1 cm and my doctor was not happy that I still wouldn't have a c-section. Okay, hit me with the Pitocin, Doc. I was on Pitocin for about 9 more hours when the doctor checked again.....I was only at 1 cm! Gasp. How could my body not cooperate? I was supposed to have the all-natural birth, no pain meds, I was going to tough it out! Johan and my friend Natalie were in the room with me. Natalie is a doctor herself and I asked her what to do. She said I needed to go under the knife. Ugh. Failure. But once I heard baby cries at 7:16 on April 26th, I was like "why did I wait 36 hours for that??? I could have heard those cries so much sooner!"

Since he was three months old I've been using this app called Baby Care. It was great while his schedule was irregular because it would track when he slept and ate. We started Axel on a schedule at 6 weeks and he took to it really well. He would basically take a nap every 1 1/2 hours and would nurse every 2 hours. We had him going to bed at around 7:00 and he would sleep through the night waking up a couple of times to nurse. But when he started a painful trend of waking up at 5:00 every morning, I followed the baby book (Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child), and put him to bed earlier. That really helped. However, ever since then, he has kept the 5:30 pm bedtime, which is SO early! But he has been sleeping around 13 hours ever since, so I'm not complaining.

Nursing in the beginning was extremely hard for me. It was painful, he wouldn't latch right, and he had reflux so he had to sleep on an incline. We both also had thrush from 2 weeks until four months. At 6 weeks Johan and I both got food poisoning and I practically lost all my milk. Then at around 6 months I got mastitis and almost lost my milk again. I can proudly say that we have survived it all, and at 7 months, I'm still nursing, and plan to until he's around a year old.

From the beginning, I told Johan that I would get up at night with Axel so that he could sleep, since he had to go to work. Even if Johan did get up to help out, I still woke up anyways so it's not like I was getting more rest. I figured it was better to have one well-rested parent than two semi-rested zombies.

During the first months, I recall getting up in the middle of the night to nurse, and hoping that he'd fall asleep in my arms. If he didn't, I had to rock him in our arms or do whatever it took to help him fall back asleep. In the first several weeks he wouldn't sleep unless he was laying on you! I couldn't put him down. We had him in the ergo or walking in the stroller constantly. I was always sweating because of his body heat and it was summer. Thankfully my mom was staying with us to help those first three weeks and she would take him after I nursed and he'd sleep on her chest. What a lifesaver!!!! We were so well rested!!! When she left we were terrified. Neither of us could sleep with him on our chest, nor did we want to even if we could. We decided we had to ease him into sleeping in his moses basket in his own room. He wouldn't let us put him down so at night I would put him in the Ergo infant insert (which is like a cocoon), and walk around for about 20 minutes. After he'd fallen asleep I would EVER SO SLOWLY take him out of it and lay him in his basket, still swaddled in the insert. I called it the Mission Impossible walk out of the nursery. If I stepped on the wrong part of the wood floor it might creak and wake him up, oh, what a frightful thought.

After a week or so of that, we slowly transitioned him into no insert, just swaddling blankets, and he soon got it. Sometimes it was easy, sometimes not. The day he hit 12 weeks, we implemented the cry it out method. I knew he was ready because he would cry himself to sleep in the car (not by force, it just happened by accident one day). We desperately wanted him to be able to go to bed without us rocking him to sleep. The Healthy Sleep Habits book recommends cry it out in order to teach the baby to self soothe and develop good sleeping habits. It really worked! Twenty minutes that first night was really all it took, and after that we just stuck with our bedtime routine and he fell right asleep in his crib without having to be rocked to sleep. Below is proof that I did make him sleep in the Ergo infant insert. I'm not totally proud of it, but I kept an eye on him while he slept, in case anyone is thinking of calling cps on me.

Until he was about four months old, he wouldn't nap in his crib. So we would take a walk or go for a drive and do errands and let him sleep in his carseat or the ergo. When he was around four months old, we did cry it out with naps. It didn't always work. We had to go in and get him and sometimes nurse him to sleep. It was off and on success, but we kept at it. At 4 months he finally started taking the pacifier, which made a world of difference and by now (7 months), he loves sleeping and napping in his crib.

My Baby Care app has also helped me keep track of his weight, length, and head measurements from the doctor visits:

Birth: 7lbs 10 oz, 20.5" long
3 months: 13 lbs 8 oz / 26" long
3 1/2 months: 14 lbs 9 oz / 26" long
4 months: 17 lbs 1 oz
4 months 1 week: 17 lbs 13 oz / 26.5" long / 17.75" diameter head
6 months: 19 lbs 1 oz / 28.5" long / 18.5" diameter head
7 months: 21 lbs 4 oz

Yes, he is a big boy. The doctor laughed during his 6 month checkup and said that his head was in the 99th percentile. Since there is no such thing as the 100th percentile, he could quite possibly have the biggest head of any kid his age. The good thing is that his height and weight are around the 95th percentile, so at least he's not a little kid with a big head.

So we started solids at around 4 months. He has been a pretty great eater. I have been making his foods and following the book Super Baby Foods, which tells you how to make their foods out of the most nutritious ingredients for their age, and when they can eat what. So far he has eaten prunes, peas, asparagus, green beans, carrots, sweet potatoes, spaghetti squash, butternut squash, banana, avocado, mango, and rice cereal and oatmeal. He's going to try tofu this week, poor kid. I made his own rice cereal by buying brown rice, blending it in the food processor, and then cooking it. So easy! Making his food has saved me a lot of money as well, bonus for the frugal Peruvian.

So that was a summary of the early months that have already passed. I'll probably add more memories in when I remember them. As I read through everything, it sounds like so much work! But the truth was that Johan and I thought he was so easy. I have to give credit to Johan, though. He is an amazing husband and Dad and does more than his share of the work. That makes my job feel so much easier to have help. We have definitely had tough days and nights, but for the most part we were like "heck, let's have more!" As Axel gets older, I realize that the sleeping part has gotten a lot easier as he has learned to sleep more soundly. But lately the tough part is keeping him stimulated. So some things get easier, and some things get harder. I realize this is not the case for every baby, since they are all so different. I'm still in denial that he might be walking in a couple of months. Maybe that will happen to be the same time that I decide to go back to work.

Axel's First Christmas

So we got our Christmas tree yesterday. I like getting the tree as soon as possible after Thanksgiving so that we can have the entire month to enjoy it and feel like the season is upon us. We decided to stay home this year for Christmas. Since Axel was born, I felt like I would like to start our own family traditions during holidays. I feel like it's something we've put off until we had a baby. And since Johan's parents wanted to spend Christmas with their first grandson, they'll be joining us!

We've been talking a lot about our new family traditions that we'd like to start. Johan has his Swedish traditions, and I have my Okie/Peruvian/American traditions. A good example of how one would combine all of those in a day looks like this: Clay pigeon shooting in the morning along the Johnstons ditch and walnut orchards (Okie), eating tamales and alfajores (Peruvian), watching A Christmas Story all day long (American), and eating potato gratin with anchovies, meat, and glogg (Swedish). So this year should be interesting. We decided that on Christmas Eve, we'll have a Swedish lunch and go to church, then on Christmas day we'll open presents and go to my brother's house for Christmas lunch. I'll try and sneak the alfajores in there somewhere. By the way, alfajores are scrumptious Peruvian cookies that I always make at Christmas. I don't think I'll have time to make tamales this year, maybe next year. Sounds like a perfect compromise!


I started Christmas crafting recently. I made a wreath out of branches from our tree and some pomegranates. Very simple, but I love doing it every year. I also made a little decor by cutting out felt circles and sewing them on a string. I then had the idea to write the meaning of all three of our names on each circle, and it just turned out that I had exactly enough circles! Axel's name means "Father of Peace", Johan's name means "God is Gracious", and my name (Rosanna) means "Rose Full of Grace". I love it, I think it's like a prophecy of how God wants each of us to live, gracious, and as peacemakers. 

I also taught Johan how to sew. This was quite possibly the smartest thing I have ever done because he is now able and willing to help me out with crafts. He actually finished off this project of making stockings out of thrift store sweaters that I started up a month ago and never had time to finish. Then he put our names on each stocking with felt letters. They totally look homemade, but I love it that he made them.


Axel just turned 7 months old last weekend. Johan and I decided that he would speak Swedish to him, while I would speak Spanish, and we'd let the community around us teach him English. So we always joke that he'll be around 5 years old when he starts speaking. He is the absolute light of our lives. At the same time, I just recently realized that we have a kid. I think that realization hits most parents when the baby starts to be mobile. He can only roll over right now. But he has figured out that he can move across a room by rolling....no need to crawl. So I immediately baby-proofed the house. But once he realized that he has the capability to move, he started getting SO FRUSTRATED that he can't do more. So he moves around excitedly for a couple of minutes, then wails in frustration because he wants more stimulation than his body allows. This, of course, means more work for mom and dad. We have to go outside at least three times a day, and every day I try to do some activity, like going to the zoo, the dog park, shopping, playing with friends, etc. On the positive side, it's keeping me in shape. Although it can be tiring and frustrating, I feel like I am learning to not make a big deal out of everything. We will often get frustrated, and having a baby/child will be a lot of work at times, and things will feel overwhelming. But I often remind myself to enjoy this time as much as I can because he'll never be this age again. And I love him at this age, because he's still a precious baby. Here's a photo I took of him yesterday before we went out Christmas shopping. Mi chiquito rico!