Erin Akin Carroll

who is 6 weeks old today?

Filed Under: Baby

Jul172009

This guy.

I can’t believe it has been six weeks. But then I can. It feels like he has been with us longer than six weeks, but then it also feels like I was still pregnant just yesterday.

Hudson is such a good baby. He has been sleeping in his crib since the day we brought him home. I never even considered the Pack ‘n Play or bassinet. Our bedroom is upstairs, but because of my surgery, I can only take the stairs once a day. We’ve been sleeping downstairs in the guest bedroom next door to Hudson’s nursery. He loves his crib. We have a great new sound machine that plays all night long and he’s on a great schedule and lets us know when he wants to eat.

He is eating every three hours during the day. At night, we feed him at 11:00 p.m. and he goes five hours before the next feeding. We really appreciate him letting us sleep.

Because of all of my complications, I gave up on breastfeeding last week. Hudson was doing fine, but I wasn’t able to satisfy him, so we were supplementing with formula at every feeding, too. It just got to be too much trying to nurse him and bottle feed at every feeding. We had a good five weeks with it and hopefully my situation will be different with the next baby. (Spare me the what I should have done to increase my supply comments– we tried it all. This body just wants me to heal.)

I don’t have an official weight on him at this point, but he was 9 lbs 6 oz at birth, 8 lbs 6 oz at two days old, back to 9 lbs 6 oz at one week, and he weighed 10 lbs at two weeks. We’re guessing that he weighs at least 12 lbs now. Maybe 13. My left arm is getting really strong!

We go to the beach August 4-11 and we’re going to use that time to work on getting him to sleep through the night. A good bottle of wine and the sound of the ocean might help me through it!

Millie Holloman photos of Hudson

Filed Under: Baby, Hudson

Jul152009

Note: Many of you asked questions about our gallery wall in your comments, so I’ve answered the most common question at the end of the post.

A few weeks ago, the amazingly talented Millie Holloman of Wilmington, NC came to our house to photograph Hudson. I first heard about Millie through our wedding photographer, Kelly Moore. Millie and Kelly (along with two other photographers) host the Love Affair workshop for female photographers every year. I found out about this workshop and Millie’s work through Kelly’s blog.

We wanted newborn pictures of Hudson for our family wall, but also for the birth announcement. Millie was such a joy to work with. I knew that she is a brilliant wedding photographer, but she was so great with a baby. I think this is pretty rare. She was so patient! Hudson was not wanting to fall asleep and Millie just waited it out with us for him to be in a good mood… and finally for him to fall asleep. It’s easy to get stressed out when your baby won’t stop crying and you’ve got one of the best photographers in the country in your house trying to take his picture! But she was so great and I can’t say enough good things about her.

The images are just so precious– especially because he’s growing so quickly. I can’t wait to go to Wilmington to get some family photos on the beach with Millie.

I’m not going to share the birth announcement with you until we mail it out, but here’s a peek at some of the photos she took. Isn’t he dreamy?

04hudson 05hudson

10hudson 11hudson 13hudson

home tour tuesday: the gallery wall

Filed Under: Home Tour

Jul142009

We’ve lived in our house for over a year and I’ve only given snippets of a tour on the blog. You’ve seen the nursery, the study, and the downstairs bathroom. I decided that I’m going to devote every Tuesday to posting photos of the house and give all of you a glimpse into our home.

Last fall I posted about our plans for our hallway and our wedding and engagement photos. I never posted photos of the completed project. (We did meet our goal to have them hung by Halloween though) Then the other day, my friend, Kate, asked for real life photos for her own gallery wall inspiration. We took all of our wedding and engagement photos and then we recently had Millie Holloman come take photos of Hudson. We plan to use Millie’s photos to fill up most of the rest of the wall.

The goal is to cover the wall from top to bottom with family photos. I used to love standing in the hallway at my grandparents’ house and looking at the pictures of everyone. We would stand there and count to see who had the most pictures of themselves in their hallway. I’ll post pictures when we get the rest of the photos hung up.

Next week: the master bedroom.

ETA: Many of you left comments asking where we purchased the frames. A local frame shop did them for us. It wasn’t inexpensive, but many of the photos were printed in unusual sizes so it was difficult to find ready made frames for them. The shop did, however, have some museum quality ready made frames that already had mats cut to fit. They told us that they would just put new mats in the frames to fit the photos, so that saved us a lot of money so we didn’t have to have all of them custom framed. There are about three or four that had to be custom framed. For the 5×7 and 8×10 photos that we ordered, we just purchased those size matted frames at Pottery Barn. It was important to me to buy frames with protective glass and museum quality mats to protect the images over time.

randomness

Filed Under: Baby

Jul132009

We had a great weekend. Nothing particularly exciting happened, but we were just a little family running errands and getting things done. My doctor is allowing me to get out of the house more as long as I take it easy and don’t try to lift Hudson and his car seat by myself. I’m still a bit uninspired for posts because we’ve got so much going on, but I’ll just let you in on what’s going on at our house.

The new Sonic Cherry Limeade Chiller is delicious. If you love the original Cherry Limeade you’ll love this. I heard on Twitter last night that the Strawberry Limeade Chiller is equally delicious. I’ll check that out today.
I’m now addicted to two new TV shows– as if I had any room in my life for more television. Yesterday I watched Hung on HBO and Drop Dead Diva on Lifetime. Lots of fun– and obviously the return of good Sunday night television.
Todd and I (along with Hudson) joined Sam’s Club (and yes, Sam’s is supposed to have the apostrophe “s”) on Saturday. Love it. Can’t wait to go back. I just wish that I had endless amounts of storage so I could buy everything in bulk. The only downside is that they don’t carry the Pampers that we use– just the Pampers Swaddlers and Pampers Cruisers.
I finally replaced the horrible Blackberry Pearl that I’ve had for the past 20 months. Todd gave it to me for Valentine’s Day in 2008 and it was great for one whole day. Since then I’ve struggled with it on a daily basis and was having to take the battery out to end a call because it wasn’t responding to the buttons. Ridiculous. So we just replaced it with a Blackberry Curve. RIP you horrible Blackberry Pearl.
Fiona got a ridiciulous haircut. Her hair had gotten so long and it’s so hot outside. Every time she would come in from outside she would smell horrible. I called the groomer and just asked them to cut her hair as short as possible without shaving her. She is a tiny little dog and only weighs 10 pounds or so, but all that hair gave her some volume. She looks like she lost half of her size to the groomer!

Hudson will be six weeks old on Friday. I can’t believe it. Is this supposed to be a magic age or is that eight weeks? He’s pretty great now, but any little secrets for more sleep would be great. He has been sleeping in his crib since the day we brought him home and I love that. I’ll write more about that process later– for those of you that are interested.

While Todd was playing golf yesterday and Hudson was sleeping in his swing, I attacked the pantry. I love to organize and I love to throw away crap that we don’t use. Our pantry is now beautiful and there’s a place for everything. I wonder how long it will stay that way.

How was your weekend? Did you do anything exciting?

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