Mobile Project

At the request of one of my loyal followers, ;) here is the account of my adventures in making a mobile for my cute daughter!

More than a year ago I saw a clip while watching Studio5 in Utah about making a mobile from paper, ribbon, and an embroidery hoop. I filed that idea away. At the time, I actually thought that a butterfly mobile was really cheesy. Haha.

So now having a daughter who I want to fall asleep in her crib, I decided she needed something to look at while in bed. Hence the need for a mobile.

I found the tutorial online here.

My mom gave me a Cricut cutting machine last Christmas? I think. And so I decided to use the cartridges that I have and go with a butterfly and flower theme.
You may recall that her bedding has both flowers and a few butterflies on it from this post.
So I used my Cricut to cut all of the paper pieces that hang from the mobile. There are 136 punch outs--68 pairs (one on each side of a Zot glue dot). I cut my pieces at 2" and 1.5".

Then I stretched a wire that I found in the jewelry section of JoAnn's across the diameter of the hoop and twisted it around the hoop with pliers to secure it. I crossed a second wire and repeated that step.

Then I cut 20 feet of ribbon to tie around a 12 inch embroidery hoop. I only used the inside piece because I didn't want the tightening knob sticking out. We also decided to count out how many pieces of ribbon I had so I knew how many to tie in each quarter of the hoop. It would have had a few empty inches at the end if we hadn't counted it out. (Peter thought of this after I finished tying the first quarter.)

After tying on all the ribbons, I matched all of the paper pieces up and stuck them together on 20" pieces of fishing line using Medium sized Zots. Most of the time I stretched the Zots to make them cover more space.

Then I arranged all of the pieces of fishing line according to height. (I varied how far apart I glued each shape on every line.) The longest one went in the center of the two wires. Then the next longest went in the middle of the wires, and the rest went along the embroidery hoop.

I glued 3 thick pieces of ribbon around the hoop to tie and hang the mobile from (the length of the roll only allowed me 3 pieces at the size I wanted them to be.)

Then I hung it up in Claire's room.

It took me probably 3 weeks to do all of it just because I only worked on it at night after Claire went to bed and before I went to bed. Cutting the paper definitely took the longest, even with the Cricut. I don't know if it would go faster with a regular punch though. You could punch multiple papers at one time, but I didn't do that. I was going to tie an organza bow at the top to cover the lame knot, but I can't tie a pretty bow apparently. 

Overall, I think it turned out really cute. Obviously we put the picture up before I decided to put up a mobile, so that doesn't look so great. But Claire definitely looked at it for at least the first day. I don't know anymore though because she looks at me when I come into or even near the room.

One other note, I had a hard time finding papers to match her bedding, so I decided to just ignore it and do something that was cute and coordinated.

So maybe you too are interested in making a mobile? It's definitely an easy project to do while watching TV :D

4 Months Old

Here we are at almost four and a half months and I'm just getting to posting!

We kind of missed month three (oops!). But as I recall, I felt at that time she was a lot the same as month two except bigger and a little stronger.

Now at four months she has really changed! She smiles and giggles and plays little games. She still stares in awe when someone or something new comes along, but for the most part she reacts to everything! She stopped babbling temporarily and has instead chosen to communicate her thoughts through high pitched squeals. She isn't necessarily happy or excited when she squeals. She just discovered one day a week or two ago that she could make a funny noise with her voice that made her two favorite people laugh. Ahhh.

We're working on sitting up and pushing up onto her hands for tummy time. Just in the last week she's started sitting straighter in her bumbo seat. She still doesn't roll over regularly. I can tell she's getting over the surprise of it though.

She is still being nursed full-time. While nursing, she enjoys stretching her top arm and whacking me in the face with it.

Since doing a bit of sleep training a couple weeks ago, she sucks her thumb much more. She also has discovered her new favorite chew toy, my hair! She likes to grab a fist full of hair and then suck on her thumb with the hair.

I must have great tasting conditioner! Sleep training has also made bedtime 20 minutes shorter and much happier. If she cries, it's only for about 5 minutes. We're still working on self-soothing for nap times, but it's definitely better! I no longer spend 15-20 minutes rocking her every time she sleeps, unless I want to. It had gotten to the point where she would only go to sleep in my arms, holding a fist-full of hair, and nuzzled into my neck, arm pit, elbow, or cleavage. Now she snuggles for a few minutes and then goes into her crib.

She stopped sleeping all the way through the night, and I don't know if she's actually hungry at night or not. We wake up usually only once, eat then sleep again until 6:30am. It's really not too terrible.

The rest of her schedule only changes slightly every day. She wakes up between 6:30 and 7:30am. Then she eats and goes to sleep again in an hour and a half to two hours all day long. She usually takes 3 naps. The first two had been only 50 minutes, but I recently learned that she would probably sleep another hour if I just let her cry. Today I just picked her up and held her for 5 minutes and she slept another hour and 15 minutes! The last nap is usually about 30-40 minutes at about 5 pm. Every other day we go on a walk around the neighborhood at 4pm and she falls asleep right before we get home. Then from 6-7p we are taking a bath, reading stories, and generally calming down for bed time. She's been falling asleep about 6:45p. Peter said it feels like a date every night because it's like we're escaping from the baby. Hehe!

Most of her hair is still on her head. She does have a ring where it is thinner though. She also has pretty golden strands that shimmer from underneath the dark tips. Her eyes are a sparkly blue like her daddy's.

Her feet are still fairly small. They aren't chubby like the rest of her. She doesn't quite fit into size one shoes which are supposed to be 3-6 months. I can pinch the toe of the shoe while she wears them. But the rest of her is squeezably and deliciously chubby!

She very comfortably wears 6 month clothes and will likely be transitioning into 9 month clothes within the next month. At her pediatrician visit on Wednesday, December 7, she weighed exactly 16 lbs and was 25 inches tall.

This is what she wore to the Doctor's office last week. Everyone thought she was so cute in all of her matching glory! The headband really made the outfit! Thanks Bonnie!

We won't be starting solid foods for at least another month to give her eczema more time to clear up. We don't want to confuse an allergic reaction with that. Her eczema is looking much better. The doctor thinks it is just a temporary baby thing induced by drool. My mom called it "acid spit"!

She has ticklish ribs and likes to play peek-a-boo. I read to her every day, but she's not terribly interested. She also doesn't care to watch tv. She'll look over occasionally but quickly gets bored and squirms away. She laughs a lot when she's tired, but not yet overtired. She doesn't spit-up or drool a ton. She also doesn't cry all the time. She can get whiney though! She also loves to stare at this musical turtle that lights up.

She's stopped crying every time we get in the car. I think it's because we got a mirror for her with dangling animals to look at. She loves to stare at it!

That's about all there is to know about Claire right now. I'm sure I'll get around to posting more later. Being a mom is demanding stuff!

Rocking, Not Rolling

This morning Claire is doing a lot of rolling onto her side. She goes to her right side, gets a little frightened and then rolls back to her tummy.
For the most part it seems controlled. Every time I tried to get a picture she rolled back over to her tummy. Basically, I know she Can do it, she would just rather Not do it.

Amendment:
She was spitting up a ton so I decided tummy time was over. I rolled her a little to her side then used her toys over and around her head to entice her to finish rolling. And it worked!

Baby's First Thanksgiving!

That's so weird! There must be something wrong with Google Blogger because it's January and this post about Thanksgiving (November 24) is just being put up. Mysterious!

Just kidding! We're behind and just catching up :)

We originally planned to do a mini vacation for Thanksgiving, but Peter's job had him busy right up until the end. So we thought it would be more relaxing and enjoyable to just have a little Thanksgiving meal together at home alone.

It was very nice to be together for a whole day!  Claire and Peter watched the parade while Melanie cooked the most amazing Thanksgiving meal ever!

Really, we all helped make dinner sort of!)

Melanie made the turkey, pie, sweet potato and green bean casseroles, rolls, and potatoes and gravy.

 Peter let Claire help with the rolls!

 Peter helped glaze the ham.

 The spread!

All dished up :)

Claire was obviously excited to be watching us eat dinner! Haha!

Before eating dinner:

After eating dinner:

 What? You say they're the same?! Oh no, the casseroles and gravy moved. And Peter and Melanie are very full and happy! Hooray!

So we had a small family Thanksgiving together at home. It was lovely. Sometimes it's just great to spend more than one day together doing whatever it is that you feel like doing as a family.

Happy Thanksgiving!

To Grandmother's House We Go

On Nov. 4th Claire and I went to Texas to surprise my dad for his birthday. Boy was he surprised!
He just loves his little grand baby!

This was Claire's first time on an airplane. She was amazing. On the ride there she fell asleep as the plane was lifting off the ground. Same story on the way home except that she woke up hungry about 2 hours into our 4 hour flight. Overall I think the travel portion of our trip went well.

Claire met some of her uncles and they just loved trying to make her laugh! We went to Marc's UIL concert together, went out to eat, visited mom's school to show Claire off to all of mom's coworkers, and generally had a good time.
It was so much fun spending time with my family; my arms got a much needed break from holding the babe all of the time. But it was good to get home to our dad. He missed us.