Category: Salem

Three months.  12 weeks.  90 days.  Where did it go?  In a practical sense, how was Thanksgiving three months ago?  How was Christmas two months ago?   It seems like only yesterday.  The time is going too quickly with this little one.

Salem is a smiley three-month-old.  As much as we can remember, she’s even smilier (is that a word?) than Tyler was.  Like many babies, mid-morning is a peaceful time for her, so I snapped her basket photos before church today. She was incredibly cooperative, and even Tyler wanted in on the action.

And in a wave of three-month-old maturity, Salem can suddenly keep a pacifier in her mouth.  Hurray!  Tyler never took one, so we have about 42 brand-new pacifiers that now might actually get used.

Thank you to Aunt Laura for the adorable owl hat and thank you to Laura Smith of RubyRedHandmade for the headband!

Last summer I was daydreaming about what we should do for the new baby’s nursery.  We had done the nursery for Tyler in gender-neutral green, gray, and yellow, and I still loved the way it looked (and functioned).  Light-bulb moment!  Keep the nursery the same! Tyler’s getting a big boy room!

I didn’t have a theme in mind for his new room, only that Eric and I really wanted it to be a playroom for him as well as his bedroom.  Our house is small and we want as few toys in the living room as possible. Four months before the baby was due, Tyler turned two and we had no idea if he would still be in a crib when the baby arrived.  Two months before d-day, we realized Tyler would probably sleep in a crib until he was six if we let him.  He, to this day, has NEVER tried to escape.  I don’t think the thought has ever occurred to him. So, I scored an IKEA crib for $15 and a mattress for $10 for Tyler’s new room.  Eventually we’ll take the side off of it but hopefully he sleeps in it as long as he fits in it, because a crib takes up way less space than a bed in his playroom/bedroom.

I found an adorable alligator duvet on PBK.com that I scooped up on clearance.  But that’s all I had to go on.  My parents came out in October to “do the room” so Eric and I had to make some choices.  We He painted the room gray and installed crown moulding with my dad. (Lowe’s makes a nifty kind with corner pieces that the boards pop into so you don’t have to miter, FYI!) We still needed curtains and while trolling PBK.com again I saw that the toddler duvet I had purchased was on super-duper-extra clearance ($9.99!) so I bought two more and my mom transformed them into curtains.  We Eric built an IKEA dresser and BHG cube shelves from Walmart, and painted an old bookshelf white.  Eric chose the softest, most comfortable rug from Home Depot.  I organized the toys and created art for the walls.  We absolutely LOVE how the room turned out!

I knew if we had a girl I would add a touch of girliness to the nursery, so I painted Salem’s letters pink and found a cute pink sheet at Target. Other than that, the room is pretty much the same, and we still love it.

Our girl is getting bigger every day.  She weighs in at 9 lbs, 10 oz and is in the 75th%ile for length.  However, when her height and weight are compared, she’s a string bean like her brother and is barely on the charts.  She loves to eat and sleeps well at night in 3 to 4 hour stretches.  Sleeping during the day is another story, but again, she’s just like her brother. She might nap for 10 minutes and be ready to party again.  She cries a good deal more than Tyler did, but she’s probably just trying be heard in this chatty family!

Salem was officially two months old on Wednesday (which means Christmas was one month ago…!)  I tried to take photos of her in the basket that day.  Five times.  She would not cooperate.  I snapped a few this morning when she tends to be at her mellowest.

Since she was really snuggled down in there, here are a few shots of her stretched out, and you can see her face in the bouncy seat.  I adore this penguin sleeper, and strangely enough we have two of them from two different hand-me-down bags.

About the only skills Salem has acquired are smiling and batting those delicious eyes. Here is a short clip of her being darn cute.  We love you, Salem Elizabeth!

Salem was baptized on Sunday, December 11 at Mt. Hope Lutheran Church in Boulder. It’s the church where Eric grew up before he moved to Oklahoma, and Eric’s parents still know some members of the congregation.  So, just as Tyler was baptized there, we had Salem baptized at Mt. Hope as well.

We are honored to have Katie and Mike Flood as the godparents of Tyler, and they happily agreed to be Salem’s godparents, too.  It is so fun to watch our children grow up together!

Since Eric wore a blazer, I dressed Tyler up in an adorable BabyGap velvet blazer I got off of Facebook.

Salem wore the baptismal gown from Eric’s side of the family that is almost 100 years old.

The gown is from Grandma Holle’s side of the family and all of her grandchildren have worn it as well as dozens more.

Pastor Adam made Salem cry, but just a little bit and less than Tyler did when it was his turn two and a half years ago.

A Lutheran baptism is part of an otherwise regular service, so at one point Pastor Adam called up children to the altar for a blessing.  To our surprise (well, not really) Tyler willingly walked up there on his own.  And let Pastor Adam hold him while he spoke!

Tyler sat between Mike and Katie at the service and was an angel the entire time.  He is such a funny kid that way.

It was so wonderful to have the Holles here from Arizona for Salem’s baptism.  We all went out to breakfast afterwards to celebrate!

The bump in Katie’s belly is Salem’s new BFF, Anna.

Anna Hope was born on January 12.  That makes our “little sisters” barely seven weeks apart. We visited Anna again when she was one week old and snapped these cute photos.

As Salem’s birthday is November 25th, she turned one month old on Christmas Day.

Yes, we’re doing the basket photos again, like we did with Tyler.  They are just too darn cute.

We did it.  We brought home Baboo #2.  She’s amazing.  We absolutely cannot believe we have a girl.  We thought we’d have another boy.  I put Tyler’s newborn clothes in the dresser, awaiting baby boy’s arrival.  I was going to be a #boymom.  I was ready for a life of baseball and bugs and stinky socks and (gladly) without Shopkins, princesses, and Justice. Yes, I know that boys can play with Shopkins and girls can have stinky socks…but still. Boys and girls ARE different.

We hardly thought about whether Tyler would be a boy or a girl.  With him, I had initially really wanted a girl, but early on we kind of just felt like the baby was a boy.  This was probably because I was huge and every person we met said it was a boy.  And he was.  And it never mattered one bit, because we would eventually/hopefully have another baby, so we just didn’t think too much about it.

But this baby, our second and most, most likely final baby–I thought about whether our baby would be a boy or a girl often.  Not constantly, but often.  I didn’t have a preference, really, but felt like our family dynamics would be different whether the baby was a boy or a girl.  Both good, of course, but different.  And we thought we’d have another boy.

Except for a couple of dreams I had.  I had dreams–intense, vivid dreams that I only had while trying or being pregnant…I never remember my dreams otherwise–after each round of IUI.  Three predicted I wasn’t pregnant (I wasn’t) and one predicted I was (I was!).  And then somewhere in the middle of this pregnancy I had two incredibly vivid dreams that the baby was a girl.  In both dreams, I was actively giving birth and the baby came out–a girl! And in both dreams, I asked the doctor to put the baby back in!  I don’t know why I became subconsciously averse to having a girl.  When people asked what I thought the baby would be, I said boy and said sorry to the baby if she was, in fact, a girl.  I think we both just got so comfortable in raising Tyler that we wanted another one of him and were scared of anybody different–girl or boy.

But here she is.  Beautiful, lovely, strong, amazing, perfect Salem Elizabeth.  We can’t imagine life without her.  Her brother adores her and she will grow up with a family who loves her no matter what.  Even if she insists on shopping at Justice.