Location: Toledo, OH, USA

Happy 4th of July friends! I hope you're celebrating our beautiful country with wonderful friends and family with all the fireworks and BBQs today! We're planning on spending a relaxing day with our family and BBQing later tonight for dinner. Kai Bear goes to bed before all the fireworks start so those will have to wait for next year. Always something to look forward to though!

At the beginning of last month, we took our first road trip with Kai and it was for our family reunion that was in Toledo, OH. Toledo is where my dad grew up and the last two years we've been having family reunions with our entire Karavida side of the family. They have been so much fun reuniting with our family and meeting new family members each year! Our family is so big and spread out all over the country that there are actually members that I've never met before so it has been so wonderful to bring everyone together to create bonds with these family members as well as make new memories with all my amazing cousins.

We drove out on a Friday afternoon. Kai did fairly well in the car for it being his first road trip. It got a little sick of the drive around the half way mark but who can blame him!? Five hours in a car seat would be annoying for anyone but it was nothing a little bit of me crawling in to the back seat and entertaining him for awhile couldn't fix. Once we finally arrived in Toledo and got all checked in to our hotel (we stayed at the Radisson at the University of Toledo and we highly recommend it!), we headed out to dinner with some of our family at my favorite spot in all of Toledo, Shorty's True American Roadhouse. This place is so good you guys. We have to eat there every time we visit. They have the most yummy corn bread you can possibly imagine. We discovered that they use cake batter to make it, so no wonder it's so delicious!

The next day was reunion day! The shindig didn't start until the afternoon and now that we're early risers thanks to Kai, we got up early and made our way to downtown Toledo to spend some time just the 3 of us that morning. We drove around and got some Starbucks then hit up the Toledo Farmer's Market in search of some breakfast. While we didn't find any pastry stands we did find the coolest food truck called Big C's BBQ. Caleb got a pulled pork parfait that had pork, mashed potatoes, and gravy in it and I got BBQ nachos. All of it was SO GOOD! We walked around the market for a little bit too and I got some amazing soy candles from Heaven's Gate Soy Candles as well as some all natural bug repellent to use on Kai and even Wrigley!

After our morning downtown, we headed over to my aunt and uncle's house for the reunion. We just enjoyed spending time catching up with family and reminiscing about great times in the past. I truly cherish these events and hope they stay an annual thing! I'm so glad Kai's first little trip was spent with family and full of so much love.

What was your first family trip you took with your little one(s)? I'd love to know! Leave me a comment and tell me your story! Hope you all have a great 4th!

Happy Summer everyone! I'm only a week late with this post but we've had a lot going on this last week with some family stuff and I haven't been feeling too hot thanks to another clogged milk duct. Thankfully I got it cleared out though and am on the mend!

These last 5 months of have seriously just flown by.. I've really be reflecting how wonderful life has gotten with having Kai in it. He turned 5 months old last Sunday and it's actually been hard for me to grasp that he's this "old" already. Lately I've been really nostalgic for my pregnancy and those newborn days as I watch him grow and become a little bit more independent each day. But at the same time I'm so excited for each new thing we get to see him do or do with him. Motherhood is so complex but I love all of it so much.

Weight: 16.8 lbs
Height: 25 in

Month four was incredible. You are so happy, active, and a total mama's boy. You're going through a major phase where you want me and only me, and I don't mind one bit. You are starting to love to play on your own more and more so I'm cherishing the times you cling to me so much these days. You've started rolling over and scooting yourself around in circles on your play mats so you can play with all your toys. You're really loving Elmo these days and laugh whenever you watch him on TV. My favorite thing you've started doing though is you grab my face and give me kisses! They are the most slobbery wonderful little kisses I've ever gotten. We bought you a jumper, too and that is probably your favorite thing in the world right now. You can stay and jump in that thing for hours and then when you get tired you just lean back and chill in it. It makes me smile so big.

We went on some more adventures this last month, too! You took your first road trip and it was out to Toledo, OH for our family reunion. You met a bunch of your cousins and got to spend time with your great aunt and uncle again. You did get sick of being in the car for awhile though but I don't blame you, I get sick of being in the car too long, too. It's something you'll have to get use to though little one because we're going to be world travelers with you ;)! Your Auntie Em also came to visit and meet you a couple weeks ago, too. She spent a few days with us and we showed her all around Chicago, We took her to brunch, shopping, and lunch at Cindy's Rooftop. You were mesmerized by the view out on the balcony at Cindy's! You were of course so well behaved. You make me so proud to be your mama! We also took you to the carnival at Liberty Days, which is the annual festival that is held in our little town of Libertyville. We got corn dogs and cotton candy and you were so fascinated by all the fun lights on the rides. Maybe next year we can take you on a couple! We celebrated Father's Day this last month, too! It was Dad's first one and we celebrated with brunch at Bistrot Zinc and a day at the Museum of Science and Industry. We went to see the Pixar exhibit that is currently there and you slept through the whole thing, ha! You did enjoy the wind vortex and the wave simulator that we showed you at the beginning though. 

You my little one are so ready for solid food. You stare so intently at us whenever we're eating and drinking something. Just one more month little guy and you can try it all! You've upped your milk intake a little bit though to about 32 oz a day. You've started waking up a little early these last couple weeks, too, but you put yourself back to sleep after a few minutes. I'm going to blame the early rising sun...or the 4 month sleep regression. You are still very hit or miss with your naps but you are officially out of your Love to Dream Swaddle Up and just sleeping in a sleep sack all day, every day!

You truly brighten up every room, Kai Bear. Your smile is so infectious and your little giggles make my heart flutter. We started a new little tradition this last month, too. Every Thursday that we can, we've started going to the farmer's market during my lunch break. We get lunch and eat it in the park and then stroll around and get some goodies from all the stands. I get so excited to go with you and look forward to it every week. I can't wait to start more traditions with you like this as time goes on. I read something incredible a couple weeks ago and it went something like this "you only get 18 summers with them, cherish every single one of them to the fullest." While I know we'll remain close when you become an adult and go off to college, I couldn't help but resonate with this and take it to heart. I want to cherish every single little thing with you for the next how every many years possible. I love you more than I can ever imagine loving anything my handsome baby boy. Let's have the best summer ever!

Happy Hump Day everyone! I hope you all had a great long weekend. We we're very fortunate and had Monday off of work and were able to spend all weekend together. Saturday we ran some errands as a family and got some gardening done! I was so motivated last year to get our front garden looking great but then I got pregnant and basically missed summer. So this is the year! I know absolutely nothing about gardens and plants though so I've got some learning to do. If any of you have any tips for me please share them with me below! On Sunday and Monday we went to a couple of BBQs to kick off summer and celebrate Memorial Day. I want to personally thank all the men and women who serve our country and fight for our freedom. You are all incredible men and women.

How is Kai Bear 4 months old already!? I seriously can't believe how fast time is flying with this little one of ours. He is just getting more and more fun by the day. I wake up every day and wonder what amazing thing he is going to do today. Here are the highlights from this past month...

Weight: 17.12 lbs
Height: 24 in

We had a big month full of adventures! We celebrated Cinco de Mayo, you were baptized, and we spent my first Mother's Day together! You got to officially meet your new friend Avie Jo at Cinco de Mayo and you were both so fascinated by each other! Your baptism was such a beautiful day. You didn't cry at all and actually enjoyed getting the holy water poured on you. You looked absolutely adorable in your outfit but most importantly, it was so wonderful to celebrate you becoming a Child of God with all of our family. Then there was Mother's Day. You made this day so incredibly special for me, Kai. We spent the whole day together and I couldn't have asked for a better day. I will always remember that day. Thank you for making me a mama, little one!

So you love to eat and sleep. You've started eating around 30 oz a day and you sleep around 15 hours a day. You're still sleeping through the night and have gotten rid of your late evening nap. You also started sleeping in the Love to Dream Up swaddle now! We had to switch from the Swaddle Me Originals because you kept trying to get your arms out every night. You'd sometimes wake up pretty mad that you were stuck, ha! You've grown so much that you don't really fit any of your 0 to 3 month clothes anymore, too. We've been rocking all your new 3 to 6 month clothes and you always look so dang handsome. One of my favorite things we have for you is your little R2D2 PJs. Whenever you wear them I always call you little R2 and you think it's so funny! You've also started growing more hair, too! Its finally catching up to the size of your head ;)

Your little noises these days just kill me. You started doing this loud scream laugh earlier this month and it actually scared me at first! I thought you all of a sudden burst out crying, but instead you had the biggest smile on your face! It's hilarious when you do it! You also love to do this cute little screech and Dad calls you a screeching eagle when you do it. May 18th was a very special day though. On that day, you laughed for the first time. A real big laugh. You did it while being propped up in your boppy and I was tickling you behind your armpits. Mom and Dad were both home and it was a moment we will cherish forever! You also are so in love with Wrigley. You two are basically best friends now. You guys always do tummy time together and you've started petting him! We also started reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone to you. Dad bought you the illustrated edition and we read a little bit every night. You've been enjoying it so much, especially looking at all the pictures!

Kai, you make my heart burst right out of my chest. I look at you and I can feel it fluttering. I love you more than I ever thought possible. I look forward to every single moment of every single day with you. You are truly my everything, Little Kai Bear.

PS - I wanted to let you all know that in light of the Cosmo After Dark series fiasco on Snapchat, I have decided to join the movement of #byesnapchat and have deactivated my account. There is a push for a mass deactivation on June 1st and I encourage you all the ask questions or do some research on the topic. As a parent, I'd personally like to see Snapchat as a thing of past now. So #byesnapchat! You can always see our fun daily photos and video clips on my Instagram/Stories though! Have a wonderful week, everyone!

Happy Friday everyone! I'm so excited for the long weekend ahead. It will be so nice to start celebrating the unofficial beginning of summer with some friends and family BBQs and have a day off of work on Monday! What are you plans for the long Memorial Day weekend?

So, Kai turned 4 months old yesterday (oh my goodness where is the time going!?) and in terms of weeks he is 17 weeks old. We did another feeding merge with his schedule last week at 16 weeks to allow him to have some more wake time in between his naps. It has been going so well so I wanted to share the change with all of you!

I want to highlight a few things before I dive in though. One, please follow a schedule (or don't follow one if you're not ready yet) that works for your baby. All babies are different and I am just here to share what works for us! Two, not every day is perfect for us even though our schedule is "working really well." Three, the 4 month sleep regression started for us last weekend and seems to be peaking these last couple of days soooo yeah things are by no means perfect with our schedule nor will they ever be! Sometimes you just have to go with the flow :) Ok but here we go...

7:00 AM: Wake Kai up, change his diaper, give him his vitamin D.
7:05 AM: Feed (nurse)
​7:30 AM: Playtime in bassinet while I pump extra milk
8:00 AM: Read a book
8:30 AM: Snuggle while I have breakfast
9:00 AM: Naptime in baby wrap
10:30 AM: Feed (nurse)
11:00 AM: Get Kai ready for the day
11:30 AM: Swing time/TV time
12:00 PM: Play mat time while I eat lunch
12:30 PM: Nap with me
2:00 PM: Feed (nurse)
2:30 PM: Tummy time + play time with me
3:00 PM: Go for a walk
3:30 PM: Playtime
4;00 PM: Nap in crib
5:00 PM: Feed (bottle)
5:30 PM: Rocker or play mat time
7:00 PM: Catnap if Kai wants it
7:30 PM: Feed (bottle)
​8:00 PM: Bath (every 3rd night), get ready for bed, read a book
8:30 PM: Down for the night
10;30 PM: Pump for stimulation and supply

This is generally what I do with Kai on days that I'm not working and we're at home. The weekends are a little different for wake time activities if we're out and about but his feed and nap times are always the same no matter what day or where we are. Caleb and our nanny follow the same schedule when they are taking care of him but they of course do different wake time activities than I do with him, he sleeps in his crib for all his naps when he's with them, and they of course bottle feed him at all feedings. I just like the extra snuggles and really enjoy baby wearing, so the only crib nap I do with him is at 4pm. When I work in the office or if we're out and about I nurse him at 5:00 PM. I also included the kinds of activities we do with him during his wake times for ideas for you other mamas that are wondering what to do with your little ones, too. We still follow the same feed, wake, sleep cycle we have been doing since he was born, but now instead of 6 feedings a day, he gets 5 feedings a day with about 2 hours worth of wake time between each nap. Now that he is bigger, his tummy is able to handle more milk per feeding so we've upped how much he eats at each feeding so that he still is getting around 30 oz of milk a day. The biggest indicator that he was ready for this merge though is at around 14 weeks he really started fighting going down for naps at the 1.5 hour mark. We started to allow him to stay up for 2 hours between naps and it helped a lot but that was causing him to get only 30-45 min of sleep per nap. He also would refuse to nap after his 6pm feeding and we would always end up feeding him early at 7:30pm instead of 8pm because he would get really cranky. We never make him wait to eat, so when we just kept having to feed him early we figured it was time to rearrange his schedule a bit. He also always needs to be woken up in the morning so we figured moving his feeding time up from 8pm to 7:30pm wouldn't hinder him making it all the way through the night as long as we made sure he was eating enough food all day long. Here are some FAQs about his schedule and sleeping:

What was Kai's schedule before?
You can read my first schedule post here. But to list out the times real quickly he would eat at 7am, 9:30am, 12:30pm, 3:30pm, 6pm, and 8pm. So as you can see he now has one less feeding. We merged the 9:30am and 12:30pm feeding to be 10:30am and moved the other times around to make sure he isn't going too long during the day without eating. He would usually get about an hour and a half of wake time between naps and now he is getting two hours.

Is he still sleeping through the night?
So far, yes he still is. Like I mentioned above, signs of the 4 month sleep regression have been showing up so I hope it only effects naps like it has so far. Only time will tell though...

How much milk does Kai have every day?
Kai eats around 30 oz of milk per day. Moving to the schedule we're on now has actually made measuring this out much easier because he will almost always have 6 oz at each feeding when we bottle feed him. We assume that's how much he gets when he nurses, as well, since he is content after both types of feeding. If he wants more or less that's fine, too. He's never had more than 8 oz at one time though. Like I've said before though, we try to not get too hung up on numbers. We feed him when he's hungry and until he's full. He is growing beautifully physically and developmentally with this method.

Has your supply gone down with taking out a feeding?
No, it's about the same. I've been struggling to keep up with the 30 oz per day for awhile now and have been taking steps to try to help it. I'll be doing a nice long separate post on my breastfeeding journey pretty soon here.

If any of you have any more questions I'm always here! I also answered a lot of questions in our original schedule post, too. Is your baby on a schedule yet or do you just wing it? I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Hello hello, everyone! I hope you're all having a lovely week. We've had quite the week... My dad had surgery to get his gallbladder out on Tuesday and we went to visit with him yesterday, which was a nice way to break up the week. Thankfully he's doing really well! However, on our way home though, Caleb's car broke down. So we've been having lots of discussions over if it's time to replace her or not. His car is the first ever car we bought together and on our own, so whenever we do decide to trade her in, it will be a very bittersweet moment.

ANYWAYS, we're trying not to let the stress from earlier in the week though lower our spirits today. Today is a very special day for us! Not only is Kai 4 months old today, but one year ago today we found out that our family would be growing! I thought it would be fun to look back on the last year and reminisce about all the good times plus see how much has changed in just one year.

I will honestly never forget this day. It is so ingrained in to my memory. It was around Mother's Day last year that I started suspecting that I was pregnant. Caleb and I were very private about growing our family at first, so literally no one knew. Not even our parents. I kept my suspicions to myself mostly with the exception of telling Caleb, of course, and confiding in one dear friend. I look back and I wish I could have surprised Caleb with the news but honestly we are such a team and we share everything with each other. I needed him during that week long wait of seeing if my period would come. I needed him to hold my hand while we waited the two minutes for the test to complete. So...maybe next time I'll surprise him, but looking back at it all, this day was so perfect.

I know I've told this story on here before but if you're new around here, here is how May 24, 2017 went...it was hilarious actually. Since being on birth control for many years I use to get my period like clockwork. The most it was ever late was half a day, so when I didn't get it in the middle of May I really started suspecting something. Prior to that though I had a few weird things happen like craving butterscotch pudding (like seriously, why Kai?) and not being able to tolerate some floor cleaner at Trader Joes (again, so random). So the 24th made it one week past when I should have gotten my period. I decided it was time to go buy a pregnancy test. I went to Walgreens on my lunch break that day. I was in the aisle with the pregnancy tests and all I could think about was how expensive these tests are. I decided to buy the cheaper analog one versus the digital one because it was $5 cheaper. I have no idea why I was obsessed with that $5 but for some reason I had in my head that I didn't want to waste the extra money on the digital test in case I wasn't pregnant? I know...I'm crazy. I walked over to the cashier and I was shaking when I handed her the box to ring up. I half wanted to be pregnant so bad and I was half scared out of my mind that I was pregnant. I went back to work and somehow finished out the day. I took the pregnancy test as soon as I got home and that was seriously the longest two minutes of my life. I was so nervous to look that I made Caleb look first. But we couldn't figure out if it was positive or not, ha! We were literally those two idiots trying to read the box and figure out this pee stick. The problem we were having is that the horizontal line was kind of faint. We finally realized though that the vertical line doesn't show up at all if you aren't pregnant and man was that vertical line clear as day. We started jumping around, hugging each other, crying, and just not knowing what to do.

Becoming a mom has been the greatest honor of my life. I didn't know it a year ago but that is when I became a mom. I know Kai wasn't here for me to hold yet but I was still caring for him in the most beautiful way possible. We grow them, we feel them, we share every moment with our babies for 9 whole months. Then we get to bring them in to this world and continue to love and sustain them now. Children truly are miracles and being a mom is such a beautiful wonder to me. I look at him all the time in utter amazement. It really does change you for the better and I can honestly say I love who I've become since becoming a mother. I have Kai to thank for this incredible gratitude I have not just for him but for myself. Growing our family has only made all of us stronger. We are all so madly in love with each other it's just remarkable. Even though some of the last 365 days were really really hard, I've loved every single one of them more than I can ever explain in words. Here's to many more years of being a mama and this crew of mine!