Chanel Moving Forward

A modern lifestyle blog dedicated to the moments in between

Weekend Wrap Up

Friday we met my husband for dinner at our favorite new Mexican restaurant. The food is so good and Henry just loves Mexican food. I love that they are loud, kid friendly and drown out a screaming baby or a tantrum. After dinner we headed to Target to wear Henry out and let him run around (plus, who doesn’t love a trip to Target after a few margaritas?) 

Even though the weather was overcast and cloudy all day Saturday, temperature wise it was perfect for being outdoors. After some coffee and Cars 2 we headed over to the greenway to get some exercise in and let Henry run around. It is the perfect outdoor place for him to run free (and safe too! nothing but woods).

We hit up Waffle House after, our favorite family breakfast spot. The food is good, the service is fast and your toddler can eat cheese grits with his hands without anyone turning heads.
After naps we headed to lunch for some carnintas enchiladas and then to the park so Henry could run around and play more. We are always trying to wear him out. This kid is non stop from 6am until we have to make him go to bed. Which has been between 8-9pm lately. You would think he would sleep a solid twelve hours but there must be sugarplum fairies in his dreams taunting him with playgrounds, lollipops and apple juice which makes him rise at the crack of dawn. 

The most exciting part of the weekend was our trip to the Atlanta Zoo on Sunday. Henry loved seeing all the animals but he mostly enjoyed running wild through the swarm of five thousand people. (Not stressful at all, right?) This kid never stops. We went along with some friends and their son and Henry liked having a playmate to hang out with. Evelyn slept 90% of the time except when I forced her to get out of her comfy carseat for a picture.

We ended the day with dinner at Six Feet Under which was so yummy. We had jalapeño hush puppies, gator bites, shrimp baskets and peach margaritas. The boys were being so cute together and kept dancing and hugging. 

Here’s to another fun and safe week! 

Two Months

{head wrap/monthly sticker)

Happy TWO months to my favorite girl! These past eight weeks have gone by in a literal blink of an eye. I am sad to leave her when my maternity leave is up next month. All I want is to spend my days just holding her and cuddling. I wish babies could stay small longer. (Side-note: how do I bottle that newborn baby head smell??) It’s so bittersweet knowing that each day is the oldest and youngest she has ever been. 
Size: She is still in newborn diapers but we are almost out of our last pack so she will move up to size 1 by next week I’m sure. We made it 6 weeks in newborn clothes, although there are a few random things she can still fit in (or that I force her in). She is wearing some 0-3 months but most are still a little big. She is kind of at an in between size: too big for newborn and too small for most 0-3. Carters make the best jammies and the 3 month fit her nicely so we kind of just live in those unless we have company or we leave the house. If you follow me on Instagram (@chanelvanreenen) you can see all of her outfits which she insists I put her in. Click the hashtag #eviemaeootd to see them all.

Features: She has dark blue eyes and dark brown hair (like her mommy). However her eyebrows have some red in them … a friend of mine told me that you can foresee their hair color with the color of the eyebrows. I would love a red headed little girl (and then my grandma’s red hair would have finally been passed along to someone in our family). I still do not see Jan or myself in her … but she does look like her big brother when he was a baby. I think it may be too early to really tell. 

Sleeping/Eating: Just like her brother, she has shown to be an excellent sleeper. Ever since 4 weeks she’s been going for 6 hour stretches at night and mostly still sleeping during the day. Knock on wood! (or my Ikea particle board bed which is the closest thing to me now). We started putting her in a swaddle at night just before four weeks and that helped tremendously with her nighttime stretch. She is eating a 100 ML cocktail of breast milk, formula and rice cereal every 3-4 hours. This was to help with her spitting up and weight gain but she occasionally still spit ups (and actually the past 24 hours she has thrown up every bottle. WHAT.THE.F.)
Stats: Her 2 month check up isn’t until next week but I know she has grown in height especially. Her little feet are already hanging over the boppy lounger. 
Favorite Things: her paci, drinking milk, spitting up milk, looking at faces, cooing, sleeping, bath time, snuggling, kisses and her mommy. this girl is a huge mama’s girl (but I feel like most newborns are since we’re their primary care giver and spend the most time with them). 
Least Favorite Things: her paci (they have a love/hate relationship), tummy time, the hiccups, her gassy nature. 
Here are some of my favorite pictures from the past month. I mentioned this before but I had no idea what I was missing out on when it came to dressing baby girls. I cannot believe the abundance of hats, bows, head wraps, booties, etc that there are available out there. It has been so much fun. Although dressing baby boys and now a toddler boy is still as exciting. Now they can compliment each other at holidays 🙂 

Baby Moccasins

Having a girl has opened my eyes to a whole new world of baby fashion. I thought I was obsessed with boy clothes and boy style but I had no idea the cuteness that was out there for baby girls. I have always had an obsession with shoes and lately I have passed that onto my husband. One of my favorite baby and toddler shoes are moccasins. They are always so durable, washable and easy to put on, especially when your child takes them off 100 times in a row. Plus you can dress them up or wear with a t shirt and jeans from the retro club collection.
Now I know the queen of baby moccasins is Freshly Picked. She started the whole thing and her quality really is the best of the best. However most mothers I know (myself included) cannot spend $60 per pair! Especially if you’re buying for a non-walker … that’s like paying sixty bucks for leather socks. I own one pair which I splurged on for Henry last year and Evelyn will also be able to wear them eventually. Unfortunately I spend half my life browsing etsy and I have found so many adorable and affordable baby moccs (most $40 and under). I love how so many different designers have put their own twist on moccasins. The ballet flat style is by far my favorite and I am definitely putting all of them on Evelyn’s wish list!  (I have been secretly trolling etsy to find some in my size). 

 

Our Valentine’s Day Weekend

{hello shirt}
Valentine’s Day is one of my favorite holidays. It’s way more fun now that I have kids and can channel my inner craftiness and have a real reason to buy red and pink heart decorations starting after Christmas 🙂 Henry had his Valentine’s Day party with our playgroup friends on the 13th. Thanks to Pinterest, I found a super easy Valentine favor to make. I used this free printable and bubbles from the Dollar Store (a 3 pack for a buck, so cheap). The bubble label was printed on regular printer paper and thick enough to cover the existing bubble labels, so I didn’t have to remove each one. Then I tied each bubble with a tag and voila! done. Such an easy and cute favor. And believe me when I say this … all kids love bubbles. You can’t go wrong. 

For his favor box, I used a box from Target that had some fun tattoos in it. There was already a cut out in the front and since my first try at making a box turned out like crap, this was my only option. It was a tad on the smaller side though which I need to remember for next year since a lot of his Valentine’s were too large to fit in the opening.

Saturday morning I got up with both kids so Jan could sleep in (which didn’t last that long, he was up within an hour). Henry helped me make coffee and red velvet heart shaped pancakes with cream cheese frosting (but mostly he just stood cautiously in the kitchen corner while the hand blender was going). I also added some pink food coloring to his milk and set out a few goodies for him since it was a holiday. He was so sweet, waiting patiently with all this yumminess in front of him so I could snap a quick picture. This lasted maybe 5 seconds before he got down to business: eating, making a mess and opening his new crayons, cars and paint. 

This was the outfit he wore to the party. How funny is this shirt? Also, I love his little smile lately. The gap between his teeth and his scrunched up eyes are just the cutest. 

{kanye shirt}
On Saturday night after both kids were in bed, we had our annual fondue dinner, which we have done every year since we’ve been married and we only make this on Valentine’s Day. It really is something fun and special to look forward to. 
And because no holiday is complete without holiday pictures:

Until next year! <3

one month

The first month always is the fastest when you have a baby. From the whirlwind of delivery and being in the hospital to those first weeks stuck at home because you’re a walking zombie. It all just ends up being a blur. Evelyn turned one month on Tuesday (she is 5 weeks today) and it feels like just yesterday we were rushing to the hospital to meet our sweet girl. You can read about her birth story here. 
She still loves to sleep and recently has been loving the swaddle for night time. It has made such a difference. (you can read about her previous sleeping troubles here). When we first came home, she hated the swaddle so we didn’t push it and I just accepted that I would never sleep at night again. However we tried it again once she got a little bigger and she loves it. It’s been 9 days now and she is going for 6 hour stretches at night (which to a new mom might as well be 20 solid hours). She is still wearing newborn clothes and newborn diapers (at 5 weeks). She is eating every 3-4 hours and sleeping the majority of the day still (I’m not complaining because I am able to get so much done). 
Her weight is still an issue which we are still trying to get back up to her birth weight. When she was born she was 8lbs and 8 ounces but dropped 8 ounces when we left the hospital and still hasn’t gained it back (she was drinking breast milk only) so the doctors have put her on a “feeding” plan which consists of 40 ML breastmilk, 50 ML powered formula and one tablespoon of rice cereal at every feeding. They are hoping that this will help her constant spit up issues. However I will say that she is a happy spitter and it doesn’t seem to bother her. She is still gassy as hell and that gives her some pain in her tummy. We go back on Tuesday for a weight check to see if this has made a difference. I’m hoping it has because I don’t want to have to put her on medication at this young. 

She loves to stare at her big brother and he just loves his baby sister. He is so sweet and gentle with her, always asking where she is and wanting to make sure she is okay. He probably asks me 100 times a day “where’s that baby?” even though he knows her name is Evelyn and likes to correct people when they say baby 🙂 She also likes laying on her stomach/side and immediately falls asleep in this position. I think it feels good on her tummy and helps with her gassiness.
A few other activities she enjoys lately: spitting out her paci and screaming until I put it back in. Then repeat 100 times, scratching her face with her baby talons, having a blowout at the same time we start the car to leave and throwing up breastmilk that I have spent hours pumping (this is my favorite too).
In one hour (at 11:38 pm she will be 5 weeks old. SO CRAZY!)

two and a half update

This past Monday we took Henry for his two and a half year check up. (I still can’t believe I have a 2.5 year old and a 2.5 week old!) He has grown 1/2 an inch since his last appointment and gained two pounds. Ha, sounds like he’s taking after his mommy 🙂 Hopefully he will be tall like his daddy and not a shorty like me! Here are a few things that have his attention lately. 

Likes:
Dance Parties: This kid loves to dance and listen to music. If we let him, that is all he would do. All. Day. Long. With the volume up as high as it could go. There is an old radio in our guest bedroom which he is literally obsessed with. He is always asking to do dance party and when we tell him he can’t, he acts like one of the deprived high-schoolers in Footloose. We had to hide the old radio since it has a power cord and half the fun to him is taking it around the house and plugging it in all the outlets, then dancing in every room. To avoid the forseeable tripping over the cord and tumbling down the stairs accident that would have no doubt happened, we bought him his own portable blue radio from Target which he can carry anywhere and is battery operated. I think that was a good idea? I will probably be kicking myself in the ass when he blasts it in the babies eardrum. But until then, it keeps him happy and he can get out some energy.  As if this latest obsession isn’t amusing enough, he always tunes the radio to 97.1 The River, which is classic rock. He has been getting down to Bob Seger, the Faces, Aerosmith and yesterday I caught him galloping around in circles to ‘D’Yer Mak’Er’.

Click here for a cute video of him dancing (and having so much energy right before bed time)

{admiring his new radio}

Outlets: Like mentioned above, this kid is still obsessed with outlets. He loves plugging in and unplugging different electronics and turning them on and off. He doesn’t stick foreign objects into the outlets, just cords, and then turning the device off an on. Maybe he will be a master electrician someday. 

Playgrounds: We finally took the plunge and purchased an outdoor playground/swing set for Henry. He has so many little toys already that we are running out of space in our house so we might as well invest in something he and his sister can use for a long time and can be kept outdoors. We went and checked out the sets this past weekend and ended up finding one that we all liked. The install date is mid March so that’ll give Jan enough time to work on clearing a spot in the back yard and time for the weather to get a little warmer.

{having a field day testing out playgrounds}

Power Wheels: My dad bought Henry a ford truck power wheels for Christmas and whenever he goes outside that is the first thing he wants to do. He really just goes around in circles right now with this blank look on his face which is so funny because he is obviously enjoying himself.

{out for a drive}
Dislikes:

The word NO. Sitting still. Going to bed. Listening. 

pumping diaries

pumping sucks. especially when your newborn finally falls asleep at 2am but you have to wake up at 2:30 because your chest is in more pain than your c section incision. luckily the hospital sent me home with some pretty good pain killers, because they have definitely come in handy some nights. baby evelyn has been having a tough time adjusting to bed time since being home. she has been a perfect baby during the day, literally sleeping all day long. however nighttime is a different story. the doctor said she has her days and nights mixed up (obviously) and that we would just have to wait out the change. there have been a handful of good nights but most of them consist of her being up and fussy until 2am and then settling down to go to bed. she also has a love/hate relationship with her paci. she loves the thing and needs it to fall asleep, but half the time she won’t take it and when she does she spits it out. oh yeah, and she is a little ball of gas. so her poor tummy rumbles all night (and man can this kid let them rip). it must be hard being a little baby, so many new feelings and emotions to deal with and you can’t tell anyone what is wrong. I feel bad for her so I have been trying to be as patient as can be and try to enjoy this stage since this will probably be my last baby. i need to get all my newborn cuddles in! 

this past sunday i took baby ev to her first girls lunch to celebrate my friend josie who is expecting her second baby in less than 4 weeks! it has been so fun being pregnant with all my girlfriends at the same time and josie is the last one to pop. we celebrated at a fun restaurant in downtown alpharetta and i even indulged in my first post baby alcoholic beverage. i still haven’t gotten my appetite back to 100% since the c section so nothing is really appealing to me, including alcohol. but the mimosa i had sure tasted good. evelyn even got a new dress for the occasion (since all her newborn clothes are jammies and onesies). it sure was a great shower and so fun to see all the girls <3

i hope everyone has a great week! 

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