Mommy Musings

Sadly with all this evacuating, flooding, and power losing I've been going through, I'm a little behind on posting my final guest post.  I'm so happy that Jackie decided to write a post for me!  She doesn't have a blog of her own {maybe this will inspire her though!} but she is one of my closest friends.  She is a newlywed and I was so lucky to share in her special day back in May.  Jackie has a great post here about her honeymoon vacation.  Make sure to leave her some love! Hi everyone, my name is Jackie and although I don’t have a blog of my own, I love to read Mommy Musings and other mom blogs and learn all about the adventures of being a mom. I’ve never blogged before so I was excited to have an opportunity to give it a try when Mandy asked for guest bloggers while she vacations at the beach. I also love the beach and traveling so I am going to tell you today about my favorite vacation spot; one I recently just visited this summer as part of my honeymoon. Wh...

Just wanted to update you all real quick.  So we're home from vacation almost a full week early.  As I'm sure you all heard, there is an ENORMOUS hurricane is headed our way and so we felt it was safest to be at home and away from the shore {since we were staying just a block away from the water}.  Thankfully we rushed to pack and left last night, since the place we were staying was issued a mandatory evacuation this morning.  I'm glad we beat the traffic.  I was running around like crazy today buying supplies and Skip secured everything outside.  My friend Jenn is coming over to 'hurricane' it with us {yes I just made it a verb} since her town is under volunteer evacuation right now.  Shelters are set up in the towns surrounding me.  \ To be honest?  I'm a little scared.  I've got two babies and two puppies to take care of, and my house is FILLED with windows.  And I've shown you the pictures of how bad my yard floods in just a thu...

How could I not get along fabulously with our next guest blogger Rusti.  She is the mom to a beautiful little girl and a fellow cop wife!  You can pretty much always find us on Twitter keeping each other company while our husbands are out 'serving and protecting'.  She has a great post for us today on how to break your child's pacifier habit.  I should be reading this closely since Little M still gets hers at nap and bedtime {hangs head in shame}  Make sure to leave her some love and check out her blog over at My Life as an Officer's Wife! first, I'd like to say thanks to Mandy for letting me take over her blog for the day - I think she's a sweetie and an amazing mom, and I hope that someday she'll guest post for me someday :) now, on to the post. :) if there is one thing that people will give advice to new parents about it's the pacifier. guaranteed. they'll advise about whether or not to use one. what brand, style, size, shape, color even. when to ...

I am so happy Ana wanted to do a guest post over here!  Ana and I were pregnancy buddies as we were both pregnant with little girls...and had the same exact due date!  She has some great insights on struggling with infertility and being a new mom so head over to her blog at Life and Love Beyond Infertility !! I first want to thank Mandy for letting me write a guest blog post for her blog. I “met” Mandy about a year ago. We were pregnant buddies. Now, I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Ana. I am a SAHM and am in my mid-twenties. My DH and I have been married just over five years. We were blessed enough to get pregnant via our first IVF cycle, after four and a half years of TTC. We had a rough and what seemed like a long infertility journey. I started blogging April 2010 and have fall’n head over heels in love. I want to share my ten steps to survival as a first time mom. I should also mention that due to my DH working in a different state it also feels like I ...

I am very excited that our next guest offered to do a post this week.  Patrice started a blog, T ake a Walk in my Shoes Before You Judge Me , a pretty long time ago.  She's starting to get back into now and am glad this guest post spurred her on!  She has some really great things to say.  Hopefully nothing about young me as we've been friends since high school!  So leave some encouragement for her to carry on in this wonderful blogging world! When Mandy asked if anyone would be willing to write a post for her blog while she was on vacation, I decided it would be something fun to do. I thought for awhile about what I could write about. I don't have kids, I'm not married and I am single. So that rules out writing about kids, husbands or boyfriends. I thought about telling you stories about some of the crazy men I have gone out with, but I think they would be better if you knew more about me. So I thought some more about what I could write about. I finally came up ...

I am very excited to be kicking off my week of guest bloggers with Ashley, more commonly known as 5ohWifey!  As a fellow cop wife and mom to a brand-spankin new baby girl, we have lots in common!  We have spent many times pregnant and alone {while the husband's were at work} chatting the night away on Twitter to keep each other company.  It is always nice to have someone to relate too!  Well Ashley is here with some *fabulous* tips for new moms....and some great reminders to us veteran moms too!!!  Enjoy and make sure to give her some love! What Is A New Mom To Do? Hi everyone! I'm Ashley from over at 5ohWifey . I am so SO  excited that Mandy has allowed me to guest post here on Mommy Musings! I am also a police wife and as if that wasn't complicated enough, we just recently added 5ohBaby to the mix. Before we had her everyone told us "Your lives are about to change" and they sure have, but not the way I thought they would. She's cute, right...

Today Skip, Little M, Baby C, both dogs, and I are all heading down the Jersey shore for our very first vacation as a family of four!!! {and no I won't be fist-pumping at the club all night, but I do plan to get in a little G.T.L!}  I am so excited for some sun, sand, relaxation, and tons of family bonding time.  I can't wait to see what Little M will do as a whole year older and of course to see Baby C's reaction to the new surroundings!  I'm going to be taking a little blogging break while we're away, but don't fret because I have some *fabulous* guest bloggers lined up!  So make sure to check back here and give them as much love as you give me! See you in September!

So the very first couch that the hubs and I bought together bit the dust the other day:(  It had been on it's way out for a while, but when we weren't able to pull out the couch part of it, we knew it was time to kick it to the curb.  Unfortunately a brand new couch isn't in the cards right now, but we still wanted a place for guests to be able to stay.  I decided to pull out the old futon we had and give it some new life.  Five cans of spray paint later, it was looking good. We brought in inside and before we had the chance to put it together, Little M decided it was a new fun toy to climb on!  Yeah, that is totally a Mr. B footprint.  Guess he decided to get into the action as well! 

Two posts in one day?  Why not!  For this second post I'm liking up with Katie for her Saturday Morning Scenes. While Skip was out on a bike ride this morning, the girls and I just relaxed and hung out. We played games on the computer Practiced lifting our head during tummy time And of course had a little girl talk!  What's the point of having a sister if you can't share secrets!  How did you spend your Saturday morning?

- Here I am just over two months post-partum.  I have to admit I LOVE not being pregnant anymore!  Seriously not being nauseous 24 hours a day for 9 months straight is the best feeling eeeevvaaah! I love having a squishy little newborn in my arms so much better than in my belly - I am very lucky to have never suffered from any post-partum depression or even the baby blues.  I think it's because my pregnancies are so rough that even being totally sleep deprived doesn't bother me! - I still have 20 lbs to lose....yuck.  I'm frustrated because NONE OF MY CLOTHES FIT and also the weight just fell off after having Little M.  I started the Special K diet this week and have been hitting the gym pretty hard core so hopefully it will start to come off soon.  I've also been doing the Shred this week to start to tone up.  I have such a love/hate relationship with that DVD! - I am slowly getting into a routine with the girls now that Skip is back at work, well as ...

- I swear Little M has grown six inches the past few months.  All of a sudden she is so tall!  All the shorts we got her at the beginning of the summer are short-shorts now!  We had to do a major late summer / fall clothes shopping for her the other day.  Thankful for Kohl's and all their great sales and coupons! - Little M is going to be a computer genius.  Seriously.  She just hops right up at the desk, turns on the family 'puter, opens up Internet Explorer, clicks on one of her favorites {Disney Junior or PBS kids} and starts playing some games.  Girl can double-click with the best of them!  And don't even get me started with her expertise on my mom's I Pad or my I Touch.  I'm going to have to look into those parental controls ASAP.  - I really not sure where this kid running around my house has come from.  Wasn't she just a baby...or at least a toddler?  Now she is a straight up KID.  She carries on long conversations,...

- Over the past month Baby C has been getting into a MUCH better nighttime routine.  More sleep for baby = more sleep for mommy = everyone is much happier!  95% of the time now, Baby C goes down for bed right around when Little M does, between 7:00 and 8:00 pm.  She then sleeps until about 4:00 am when she wakes for a feeding.  That normally takes between 30-45 minutes and she goes back down pretty easily.  She and Little M wake up around the same time every day, between 7:00 and 8:30 am.  Of course I'm not going to bed until midnight or 1:00 am so I'm not get a ton of sleep, but it's my own fault!  I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to get more than one or two hours of sleep at a time! - Since about 5 1/2 weeks, Baby C is a formula-only fed baby.  Because of her reflux I was exclusively pumping during the day and formula feeding at night.  But the breast milk was not filling her up enough {we had to top off with formula after every...

I promise a real post tomorrow!

I am SOOO very excited to be linking up with Lindsey from Running Down a Dream today!  I mean what better way to get out of a blogging rut/funk thank to talk about none other than the New York Giants!!! I have been a football, and most specifically a Giants fan for as long as I can remember.  I grew up with names like Phil Simms and Lawrence Taylor and spent many Sunday afternoons relaxing in front of the TV watching Big Blue. As I got older, my love of the team just grew, as did my love of the sport as a whole.  I soon devoted entire weekends to watching the sport and the stats of Tiki Barber and Michael Strahan were a constant conversation.  I started going to games on a regular basis.  Every year I went to the Draft Day party down at the stadium, and waited for hours at a few book signings just to meet some of the players.  Skip and I joined a fantasy football league, which I am now the treasurer of!  I was once even in an article in the New York P...