Friday, October 28, 2011

3 Months


Happy 3 Months Baby Girl!!!It still seems like just yesterday I was as big as a house thinkin I was lookin cute wondering when you would show your pretty face. I feel like the time has already flown by and you have changed so much and it is amazing to see how you change so quickly from 1 day to the next. The other day your daddy told me that I am pretty darn good mommy and the great thing is I absolutely love being a mommy. Especially your mommy. You make all of the hard work worth it and the daily laundry and dishes aren't really that bad.

You and I got to spend the whole day together yesterday and it was amazing. You actually let me cuddle you which was a treat because you are too busy for snuggles these days. Any day now you will be sitting up on your own and you throw a tantrum if I even try to lay you down on your back unless you are in the mood. I can't believe how well you hole your head up all by yourself you are such a strong little lady. You definitely still do not care for tummy time, but you love your exersaucer and soon I am going to set up your jumper to strengthen those little legs.  You have started grabbing and holding onto things with your tiny little hands and you love shoving them in your mouth especially your little rings and your brand new Sophie Giraffe. I know she was supposed to be a Christmas present, but I just couldn't help myself and you love gnawing on her face so much.

You don't need to be swaddled anymore when you sleep and that makes me sad because you are growing and changing too fast. I miss nursing and rocking you to sleep then wrapping you all up all snugly and warm, but I am so proud of you for being such a big girl and I love that I get to put you in your adorable footy p.j.'s. I still can't believe you go to bed all by yourself every night. I am still not sure how we got you to do this, but I like to think we are just super awesome parents and you are a super awesome baby.

I can not believe we have made it 3 months with breastfeeding and pumping without any help. Now that we have reached our first goal I know we can make it to 6 months and by then you will start eating real people food. We are going to skip that yucky ole rice cereal because it seems silly to me to give you something with absolutely no nutritional value and you seem to be doing just fine on good ol mama milk and when you are ready we will give you the good stuff. I know you will love eating fruits and veggies and you know I will take a million pictures of you eating them cause that's what I do.

You are such a gibber jabberer and I just don't know where you could have gotten that from. You talk constantly and just today you have started screaming randomly. You scare the bejezzus out of me when I am changing your diaper, but it is so freaking hilarious. Don't worry your changing table is still your favorite place for us  to have long conversations and talk about boys.

You love going to Mrs. Julie's everyday and it just makes me feel so good everyday knowing that you are so well taken care of and loved so much. It makes me so happy seeing your gummy little smile after a long day of tattle telling and being asked a million questions by my sweet little babies. I love all 15 of them, but gosh darn it I don't know if I could ever love anyone as much as I love you. I know my heart will make a little room someday, but you will always have that first piece.

Our diapers are still going great even though we are really starting to like our Best Bottoms better. We have yet to have a leak or blow out in them (except the times you pee even before I can get the diaper snapped. Hopefully the medium g diapers will workout for us as soon as your tiny tush starts fitting into them. That would really lighten my laundry load and I could go almost 3 days without washing (that might start stinking though). I love hanging your diapers out on the line to sun and when I walk past the window and see them hanging out there it just makes me happy knowing we will never have to buy any more diapers (unless they come out with new patterns). We are still hoping since you hate the feeling of a wet cloth diaper on your bottom you will potty train more easily.
I keep telling myself to remember every little detail because we will never be first time parents again. The next time around we might have a little clue of what we are doing. This time we are totally winging it , but I am so proud of us. I feel like we haven't really screwed you up yet have done a really good job so far. We are about to experience a lot of firsts very soon like First Halloween, Thanksgiving and the big one Christmas.  I can only imagine how insane Christmas will be with the Grandparents, aunts, etc. going nuts with presents. And one more big first is coming up quickly. Baby's first Christmas Card Pictures, but we will save that post for another day. the plans are already taking shape for the first in many parental embarrassments in your life my sweet baby girl.

I love you more then life itself and I hope you always know that because I am going to smother you with love until I can't smother you anymore.

Happy 3 Month Birthday Baby Love!
T-I-G-E-R-S TIGERS!

Go Tigers Go

Precious Baby Hands
Girls got a good grip

Sick Baby


Grabbing

Bath time with Mama

Puppy Love

Sweet Feet

Sleeping like a big girl

Silly Girl

Precious

Lovin on  Sophie


Chillin on a sick day
Not a happy punkin
Lamby

Crazy Bebe






Monday, October 24, 2011

Friends

Brent and I are very lucky to have some very good friends in town and all over. We are even luckier because so many of our good friends also have babies almost the exact same age as Kinley. This past weekend we got to spend some much needed quality time with 2 couples and their precious babies. We hit up the pumpkin patch for some pictures and yummy food.

I am what you call a picture whore and I may or may not have a million pictures of my child's feet ( my goodness they are so perfect) and my child might be blind from a flash going off in her face and she might be able to sleep through a bunch of flashes. I just love being able to look back at the things we have done and places we have been. Good news about my picture taking problem is I got some amazing pictures of baby girl and our little family (Go Team D).

Our Little Family

Punkin Bebe

Me and My Baby

Precious


Team J

Pretty Ladies

BFF'S

Team H


Kinley's Boyfriend


My Little Punkin

Sweet Baby Girls

I can't wait to do this again very soon. Christmas is coming up people that means Christmas outfits and lights!

Thursday, October 20, 2011

More Craftiness!

We haved moved onto hairbows. I taught myself from watching this tutorial

and making my own little template out of the school birthday cakemix box I made lastnight. I was super easy and I think my first attempt turned out pretty cute.



Saturday, October 15, 2011

Long Night

These past 3 nights have been very long ones. My beautiful baby girl who has been sleeping through the night for almost 2 months now has turned into a bedtime monster. 11 seems to be her witching hour right now and I am very tired. Thursday night I was able to rock my precious child to sleep in her bouncer, Friday night I got the honor of passing out on the couch while she lounged in her swing, and last night I couldn't even get her arms swaddled so this was our first night of sleeping like this

 

It took a few times of getting up and changing and eating around 3ish, but we eventually slept until about 8. Is it silly that this makes me sad. I love all of the new things Baby Girl is doing, but the time is going by too fast.

Today we are heading out to the pumpkin patch with some dear friends of ours and their sweet baby girl. I am hoping we can get some cute pictures of our little family. I am looking forward to having some pictures of my girl and myself where my arm is not in the picture. Then we are off to dinner with even more good friends. This is going to be as good night I believe.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Chuckles

We have our first laugh people!
 Please for the love of god ignore me.
The things people will do for a baby laugh.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Dear Mckinley

I have already written my 2 month update but there are so many new things you have started doing in just the last week I had to write them down so I never forget. I am not sure why Mommy is awake since you are still asleep. We went out with friends last night to celebrate a birthday and you were so good. It was so loud and crazy at the restaurant, but you just smiled and laughed the entire time. I love when people tell us how cool you are and what a good baby you are because I have to feel that way because I am your mom, but it makes me happy that other people see it too. You already have the funniest personality and even though I don't want you to get any bigger I can't wait until you are are walking and dancing and singing. I am sure you are going to be a wild child and I would expect no less of you.

You are still eating and sleeping so good and we have still to really go through a "growth spurt" with all of the fussing and not sleeping and hopefully if you are this chill now when you start teething we will roll through it as calmly and happily as you have everything else. I have the feeling if you could that you would completely skip crawling and walking and go straight to walking. You get so upset if anyone lays you down unless you are eating or sleeping. You want to be sitting up looking around at all times or you will pitch a Kinley Fit as I call it and I hate to see you whine but gosh darn it it is so cute. You stick out that bottom lip and you make the fakest noises like you are crying. We are in trouble when the terrible 2's come around because you are so good at faking it already.

Since you hate tummy time so much I have started letting you sit in your exersaucer with a blanket shoved in it to help keep you up. You are so darn good at holding your head up and you love being able to see everything that is going on. We are still doing tummy time young lady because mommy needs a video of you rolling over. My new favorite thing that you have started doing is locking your fist like an ice cream cone. Basically you like everything these days especially any kind of cloth remotely close to your mouth. If I put you in the carrier you lick it the entire time you are in there and you are content so I am happy.

Ya Ya and Grandpa babysat you for the first time Friday night and you were of course perfect. Mommy and Daddy went out on a date to dinner and a movie and we had such a good time, but we were so glad to get back home to you. You also made your first visit your Mommy's happy place and the place where Daddy asked Mommy to marry him. Sadly your awful mommy forgot her camera and daddy left his phone in the car so no pictures of your first visit to The Park as we call it. You looked so cute too. You wore your giraffe print glasses and of course every person who passed by couldn't take it how cute you looked. You LOVE being outside and you love when the wind blows on your face.

Alright sweet girl wake up so we can cuddle. I love that you are sleeping so long now, but you are cutting into Mommy Kinley time.


Friday, October 7, 2011

Do You See What I See???

Do you see the tiny pink paci in the bottom of the washer???


Crisis averted. All is finally well in our house the missing paci has been found. I find it quite funny that 2 grown adults have spent many days worrying about 1 tiny piece of plastic and rubber. Shockingly the runaway paci was found somewhere quite random. Let me explain.

We did not have school today because of a diocese professional day and I had the good luck of getting to leave early because I had to pump (I definitely don't care for pumping, but if it gets me out of sitting still for hours and picking up my girl early then I am ok with that). So I have been home for the past few hours hanging with my lady baby and cleaning the house a little. I vacuumed and swiffered the floors and was starting some laundry. I always do Kinley's first and was going back to switch her's into the dryer and put a load of Mommy/Daddy laundry in when I see a flash of pink in the bottom as I pulled out a tangle of blankets. And there it was . The bed paci. Praise the lord. I was so scared it had been eaten by a dog or thrown away somehow.



Wednesday, October 5, 2011

My Confession

I have a bit of a problem and the first step to recovery (This one's for you Brent) is admitting that you have a problem.

My name is Roxanne and I am addicted to cloth diapers.

Cloth diapering started off as strictly a way to save money, but it has evolved into so much more. We live a very simple life in the Doyle household and I am pretty environmentally conscious (i.e. recycling every tiny scrap of paper and anything that could possibly be recycled) so this was also a way for me to feel much better about the impact I am making on the Earth. Cloth diapers do use more water then we normal, but I am more ok with that then filling up landfills with diapers that take forever to biodegrade.

I started researching cloth diapers waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay before we even started trying to get pregnant and I fell in love with Gdiapers. I liked that they were cloth but I didn't have to wash the entire diaper unless there was a major blowout or a leak. We have thankfully made it 2 months before I had to strip any diapers and the only reason we had to do this was because my dumb self new better but i was using regular diaper cream on Kinley's cute bum because we were having a little redness issue. We have been through a  few trials with different cloth diaper safe diaper rash options and I think we have a winner winner chicken dinner.  

Enter the awesomeness of Pure Coconut Oil. It comes in a giant tub and looks like crisco, but when you touch it it melts. It is the softest creamiest jar of lard lookin stuff ever. Mckinley's bum has never looked or smelt better. I was so excited when I was searching the organic aisle in Kroger for my Fenugreek to find the giant tub for $11. This stuff will last us forever and it is 100% safe for cloth diapers.

This not our brand but I couldn't remember what it is called.


Now let's return to my Cloth problem. I have bought all of my diapers from Diaper Swappers and
Nicki's Diapers (where we bought our Best Bottoms). I have written about this before because so many people gave us so much crap about this and we never could understand why. Everyone kept telling us we would only do it for 2 weeks and then give up, but little did they know I am we are so stubborn that the more they said that the more we were confident in our decision and the longer we would last and by golly no matter if we hated the darn things we were still going to use them just because they said we couldn't so THERE!

I kind of went a little crazy for a while there trying to find the best deals and I got some pretty good ones. All in all over a few months I probably spent around $400 for all of the diapers we will ever use for the entire time all of our children are in diapers and hopefully they will potty train early because they can feel the wetness better then babies in regular diapers. I have a ton of cute colors and the darn companies keep coming out with new ones and I need all of the new colors. To make matters worse I got an AMAZING deal on Zulilly. I bought 2 Fuzzibunz pocket diapers for the price of 1. These diapers are different then any of the diapers we already have so instead of the cloth insert sitting on top of a cover or inside of a liner they slide into a pocket inside of the diaper making them more absorbent, but this means you have to wash the entire diaper when baby does her thing, but I am hoping this will cut down on having to change Kinley's sheets every now and then because of leaks. I can't wait for them to get here so we can try them out. Tonight we are trying our Best Bottoms with a doubler and hopefully we won't have any leaking issues.


Missing

Have You Seen Me?
Missing since 6 a.m. Wednesday October 5, 2011.
Reward $100,000,000,000 if found.

Why is there only 1 kind of paci my child will take???????
Why can't I remember where I left the darn paci this morning??????
Why was I more tired this morning then most mornings I got almost 8 hours of sleep?????
Why am I still awake??????

For Dad

I have read this blog post so many times and it makes me so happy everytime I do. It reminds me how lucky I am to have the best Daddy and the best Husband in the world. Mckinley has no idea what a lucky girl she is, but I know her daddy would give her the world if he could.

50 Rules For Dads Of Daughters





Monday, October 3, 2011

Punkin Patch

Our good friends Russell, Amber, and Kinley's BFF Ellis are coming in town in a few weeks and I thought it would be fun if we took the girls to the pumpkin farm to pick pumpkins and take some pictures and maybe go on a hayride or 2. I had to find something super cute for baby girl to wear and I think we found it yesterday at Gymboree. The outfit on the left is what Mckinley will wear to the pumpkin patch and the outfit on the right will be for the other pictures. I think she will wear the candy corn leggings for both set of pictures.


Baby Girl is gonna look so stinkin cute!

These pictures don't do the outfit justice.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

This Is Me Pretending To Be a Real Blogger

I started this blog to keep friend and family updated on everything Mckinley and I have LOVED keeping it up. It has also become a place where I write ideas down so I won't forget them because sadly I would lose my head if it wasn't attached to my body. Today I feel like a real blogger because I am about to post an interview with the creators of The Swaddle Strap

I emailed Anna a few questions to answer about Anna and Eve and The Swaddle Strap. She was sweet enough to put up with me and answer my questions so you guys could get to know them like I have.

So here you have it. My first blogger interview.

What inspired you to start Anna and Eve and create The Swaddle Strap?
The inspiration was the birth of our sweet daughter, Eve, in late April (2011). And needing something to help us as parents, that didn’t exist.
(More detail follows in the next answers.)
How/Why did you come up with the idea for the Swaddle Strap?
This answer is combined with the next…
How long have you been in business?
We came up with and completed our first sample of Swaddle Strap in the first two weeks with Eve, and so we have been in business since May of this year, 2011. We officially launched to the public in July.
It was actually my husband’s idea. We had seen Harvey Karp’s “Happiest Baby on the Block “ DVD a couple weeks before having Eve, and were prepared to swaddle her as part of our plan for calming her. We had some gorgeous swaddling blankets ready to go and thought we were all set…well, swaddling was more difficult than we anticipated, especially in the middle of the night on no sleep with a squirmy little crying (albeit adorable!) baby flailing her arms. Robert was especially frustrated by it. When we would get a good swaddle with a blanket, we saw the magic of swaddling to help calm her. But she was so good at wriggling out and working herself back up with those out of control arms! And inevitably, once we’d get the rare excellent, secure swaddle on her, she would instantly need a diaper change! ACK! We joked a couple of times about needing a baby straight jacket for those flailing arms that she kept upsetting herself with (of course, we were kidding…kind of…) Then right around our third or fourth morning home, Robert awoke and said to me, with little Eve nuzzled up next to him as he held her arms down to help calm her: “Eve and I invented something last night and we are going to start a family business that will help new parents all around the world!”
He described it to me: a swaddle for the arms (since Karp had taught us that it was the arms that were key to swaddling, not the legs), that would go on easily in mere seconds, that couldn’t ride up over baby’s face, that you didn’t need to undo to change a diaper, and that we could then use whatever blanket we wanted over it - or no blanket - depending on the temperature. Rob got some paper, scissors, and tape and made a paper prototype of his idea. I thought he was really on to something. We discussed the design and I got started sewing our first of the 5 fabric prototypes we made to come up with the final design. (It’s hard for me to imagine now how we managed that with as little time as we had and as little sleep as we were getting with a newborn who wasn’t even a week old! I remember sitting at the sewing machine in the wee hours of the night as Rob laid with little Eve…) We used each of the prototypes on Eve, and they worked! But with each one, we thought of improvements in the type of fabric, the length of the straps, the placement of the Velcro, then the final steps were the pillows, which really kept those wriggly arms in no matter what. And Eve was sleeping so much better!
Once we had the final design, I made a few samples and we gave them to some friends to use on their babies, to see if it would work as well on other babies as it did with Eve.  It did! They loved it and their babies slept longer! Then we found a contract sewer in Chicago, came up with the name, designed the logo and a website with shopping cart, shot some videos…and voila!
Tell us what you envision for the future of Anna and Eve.
Our goal is to continue to come up with products that help make parents’ lives easier. We already have several more ideas for products that will do that. Robert and I are a great team, because he comes up with these wonderful ideas based on something he wishes we had to help parent, and then we put our heads together to come up with a design, I make prototypes and make it look pleasing aesthetically. Robert primarily handles the business logistics, and I handle the customer service and the promotional stuff, though we both do a bit of both.
Robert is amazing, the way he just does things. If it had been up to me, I probably would still just be using Swaddle Straps with Eve, and making them for our friends, and dreaming what it would be like to take them to market.  He shoots and edits our videos and I take our promotional photos and design our website and promotional materials.
We plan to introduce our next product early next year, and keep rolling them out gradually.
And in the process of growing the business, we would like ultimately for Anna & Eve to allow us to spend more time together as a family, i.e, not to have other jobs like we currently do. We designed the business so that we can basically manage it from anywhere, since it is all internet based. Eventually we’d like to have someone handling order fulfillment (which currently we do ourselves) because we want to be able to travel as a family.
What's your favorite part of your job?
I love communicating with our customers, and finding out that Swaddle Strap is helping them as much as it has helped us. That is really the best! We have met some really wonderful parents because of Swaddle Strap and we both think that is really cool!
I also really like the creativity of it…choosing the fabrics for the Swaddle Straps, making the prototypes and samples, the design of our website and promotional materials.
Tell us about your background. What path led you to do the work you do today?
Funny, you never know when you start out where you will go…I am actually fine artist (sculpture and drawing) turned pastry chef with a passion for organics and nutrition. Pastry chef-ing segued into a job as an event planner for a high end catering company- but I missed pastry and then started my own organic pastry business for 4 years. Then one of my pastry customers offered me an executive position in his organic retail business and from there, for the past 4 years, I have been working running this really awesome program in Chicago’s primary food bank, where we train unemployed adults to get jobs in the food service industry while making meals for hungry kids. That has been my favorite job.
Since having Eve, though, my number one priority is being a mom, followed by working with Robert to run and grow Anna & Eve, which I love doing. So I am working part time at the food bank now, which is great.
And since we are a total team, I feel I should mention a bit about Robert’s background, too. Like me, he is an artist. He is an amazing painter and sculptor. And he also used to have his own business, making artist supplies from recycled copy toner. He works in retail management, so he knows a great deal about the business of selling.
Both of us had these businesses in the past that were incredibly complicated and difficult to sustain. We both learned a great deal from our experiences. So we created Anna & Eve completely differently, using the lessons we learned from our past ventures.
How do you come up with new designs and ideas?
As I mentioned earlier, the initial ideas, at least so far, have come from Robert…wishing we had a product that would help us as parents, that doesn’t exist.  Then we work together to make the product a reality. I am REALLY excited about our next one! You will be one of the first to hear about it when we are ready!
How has motherhood changed the work that you do and how do you balance work and family?
It has totally shifted my focus from my career, where I used to work 50+ hours each week in a director’s role, to my family with my job being part time and much less stressful than it was. I used to be the boss of the department, now I am just there 3 days a week reporting to someone who used to report to me. I love it that way! The business will ultimately allow both Robert and I to combine family life and career full time. Our goal is to spend as much time all together as possible. And if it is in the cards for us, we’d like to have another child. Right now it is a balancing act between being mommy & wife, the business, and my part time job.  And mommy gets the lead role, for sure! That is how I want it.
What does a typical day look like for you?
The 4 days each week that I am home, I balance being mom- nursing Eve, changing diapers, playing, singing & reading, laundry, meals…with doing things for the business when Eve is napping or sleeping at night. The 3 days that I leave to go to work, I take off the mommy hat and put on the culinary instructor hat. We found a really wonderful nanny that we love who spends 2 days with Eve, and Robert was able to rearrange his schedule so that he is home with her the other day.  I LOVE coming home to Eve after I have been working! I miss her so much when I am at my job. But I know she is in really good hands.
Tell us about your customers.
Our customers are awesome! They are parents like us, who want to do the best they possibly can for their babies, and they want to help their babies stay calm and get better quality sleep. They generally do lots of research into which products they want to purchase for their babies, like we do. We aren’t currently doing any advertising, so Anna & Eve is growing via word of mouth. Or as the case often is, word of keyboard! Blogs tend to be the primary way that our customers find us.
It is really cool that we keep meeting our customers via email…they will email us questions or comments, and we strike up an e-friendship. We compare our parenting experiences and talk about other baby products that we love. We have also met other parents who have started baby related businesses.
And I was even able to meet in person the mom we call Customer #1, Melanie. She found us just a couple of days after we launched our website, before we had gotten our first run of Swaddle Straps from our contract sewer. Her daughter wouldn’t get any amount of sleep, night or day, unless she was swaddled but in the summer heat, she had been hoping for something like a Swaddle Strap! She googled the term “swaddle strap” and we came up! So she emailed…I could tell she really needed one FAST, so I made one for her myself and sent it right away. Our daughters were born 5 days apart, but it turns out they had the same due date, so are the same gestational age! She lives in a different state, but it is clear that we are going to remain friends as our daughters grow. And she has family in Chicago, so we will definitely continue to visit through the years.
Do you see any other products in the future for your business?
Many! We already have 4 more in mind! We recently added a large size to our Swaddle Strap line. And as I mentioned, we plan to have our next product ready for market early in 2012.  We are really excited about it! I am not going to spill the beans just yet…but I will say that it will be a huge help to parents during diapering!!!

I personally can not wait to see what Anna and Rob come up with next. I am also so gosh darn excited that they have created a large Swaddle Strap since my chunky girl is getting too big too fast and I fear the day we grow out of our Emerald City Strap.

Thanks Anna for putting up with me and answering all of my silly questions. You guys are awesome and we can't thank you enough for creating such an amwesome product.

Kinley says THANKS!

I Call This Post The Rise and Fall of Baby Crazy Arms

I love my baby girl more then life itself, but I can't say I love her "crazy arms". That is what we call her random arm flailing that keeps her awake unless she is "in"something like a swing, bouncer, or swaddle. We have swaddled Mckinley since the first day we brought her home. The nurses of course taught us how to swaddle while we were in the hospital, but of course we could never do it as good as they did, but I like to think I am a pretty good swaddler. Mckinley will probably laugh at this statement because she knows no matter how tight and how well I swaddle her she can still at least wriggle 1 arm and 1 leg out. We tried those zippered full body swaddler things, but they just made her too hot and ended up waking her up all sweaty and very unhappy and have you ever tried to change a squirmy baby in the middle of the night when you are running on only a few hours of sleep and then you have to strap them back in the most complicated swaddle ever. I was at a loss. I wanted Mckinley to sleep for her sake and ours and I wanted to make sure she was comfortable so I started doing some research looking for something different and one day I came across something new. I think I might have actually skipped down our extremely short hallway in our tiny house to tell Brent about The Swaddle Strap. The thought of being able to coral the "crazy arms" yet easily change a nighttime diaper sounded too good to be true.  I had heard about The Happiest Baby On The Block, and even though I had never read it and I was using the 5 S's (Swaddling, side/stomach positioning in parents' arms, shushing, swinging, and sucking ) and I knew if I wanted the swaddling part to work I needed something that would stay on cue the Swaddle Strap.

Mckinley swaddled in a swaddle blanket. Can you see the arm she has wriggled free?
 Picture taken from out video monitor. I know it is kind of Paranormal Acitivityish.

 
I emailed the "company" (we will come back to this topic) and told them I thought their product sounded amazing and I wanted to buy one and if they were ok with it and if we liked it I would like to write about it on my tiny little blog. I soon received an email back from Rob and Anna saying they would love if I wrote about it and how about they send me a strap to try out. I almost peed my pants I was so excited! Cue my favorite time of day (3:00ish) a few days later I hear the UPS truck (Gibson's mortal enemy) rolling down our street and the delivery of our Strap. I was so ready to try it out I ripped it open and strapped Kinley in. She never fussed or fought it and just kind of layed there smiling. It was close to nap time so I layed her in her bunny swing to see what she would do. Before this she had never just layed in her swing for an extended period of time without being asleep first. Imagine my surprise when her eyes started getting heavy and shortly thereafter she fell asleep and slept for almost 3 hours. This had never happened before!

Since we had such a successful nap time I couldn't wait to try it out that night. We went through our usual night time routine and when it was time to get into bed I strapped baby girl popped her paci in her mouth and walked out. I climbed into bed and Brent and I waited. And waited. And waited and nothing. My stubborn girl had passed out. We weren't sleeping through the night just yet, but I was ok with that because I was excited to try out a mid-night diaper change. It came around 3am and it was the easiest diaper change ever. I just left Mckinley's arms strapped in unsnapped the bottom of her onesie, put a fresh new gdiaper on, put her back in bed, popped her paci back in and went back to bed. Next thing I know my alarm is going off at 5am and my girl was still asleep. 

Now let's fast forward a week. Anyone who has a baby knows that first night your baby sleeps through the night can be the scariest night of being a new parent. We put Mckinley to bed like we always do expecting to wake up around 3am to go through our routine, but this never happened. I woke up at 5am in a panic fearing the worst. I really thought I was going to go into her room and something would be wrong with my precious baby. I sprung out of bed faster then I ever had and flew into her room to find her sleeping peacefully. I was so excited I woke poor Brent up just to tell him the good news (he was SUPER excited). Ever since then we have all been sleeping really good in our tiny house and we all have the The Swaddle Strap to thank.

Along the way I have gotten to know The "Company" that makes this amazing new product. They are call themselves Anna and Eve. They are a family owned business made up of Rob (Papa), Anna (Mama), and sweet Eve ( Swaddle Strap model). Anna is a new Mama like me so we kind of have some things in common and I kind of like the lady. I know my blog isn't very big, but I hope that by writing about my good experiences help get the word out about this amazing new product.

I thought it would be fun to ask Rob, Anna, and Eve some questions to find out more about them and their company. This post is a tad lengthy (obviously I type like I talk. A lot) So I shall create another post for our interview (I feel so blogger legit) so y'all can get to know Anna and Eve a little better like I have. Before we get to that I think we need a few pictures of my wild child modeling her



Trying out our Swaddle Strap for the first time

I think it works!

It's a Swaddle Miracle!







 I call this next series of pictures What a good nights sleep looks like.

This smile is for Rob Anna, and Eve

Talking and rolling around.

Thank you Swaddle Strap!
 Check out my interview with Anna coming in just a minute.