Happy 8 month birthday, Presley girl!

Here is what Miss Presley has been up to lately...

• This child is definitely loves to move!  I'm not kidding when I say she dances... she really does... and she mimics my silly dance moves and I LOVE it.  I can't take credit for these next dance moves though...

• Definitely does not like the vacuum.  She doesn't like the look of it or the sound of it -- especially if I'm not holding her.  Although, she is getting better.  My goal is to vacuum once a day until she's immune/indifferent to it.
• She has started waving!  And oh my goodness, it is so precious.  Alli & Molly (her baby BFFs who are 2.5 months older than her) started really getting their wave on lately and I think it's been rubbing off on Presley - which is usually what happens after we hang out with the older girls!  Presley LOVES to wave - especially to herself in the mirror.  She hasn't learned to do it on command... she usually starts waving when she's really excited!  We'll say "Hiiiiiii!" as we wave back to her and so she's started to scream with excitement when she waves and it sounds like "Haaaaaa!" (like she's trying to mimic us saying hi!)  -she excitedly showed this trick off to everyone this weekend!
• Speaking of Alli and Molly, here are some recent pictures of the three girls hanging out.

Alli, Presley, & Molly

Presley, Molly, & Alli

•  Sitting up is a lot more natural for Presley and she's starting to do really well with it.  If she is sitting up and the Boppy is around her, she does even better.

• She mostly sleeps on her belly these days, although we put her to bed on her back every night.
• Still nursing her and both Presley and I are still loving it!
• Making her baby food and still loving that as well - although I'm back to only feeding her baby food once a day.  For a time there Presley seemed disinterested in her pureed food, so maybe I will have to try more chunky/solid-type foods for her.
• She's also starting to eat more of the things I can eat - or at least more than before.  I've been giving her little pieces of bread and she tried a bit of my refried beans the other day! 
• She's up to 3 teeth - all on the bottom.  She now shows them off when she smiles - too darn cute.

See those three little teeth?

•  Still a mostly bald baby!  But her hair is slowly but surely growing and I don't know if it's getting darker now that summer has left us or what, but it is looking more brown than blonde.  Almost long enough for a mohawk!

• Loves to babble and she mostly just says, "Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh..."

• Got us an ErgoBaby Carrier and so far we love it - although - how in the HECK do people buckle it without help!?  I thought I could do it on my own the other day but I had to ask the help of a stranger at the grocery store the help buckle it at the top...!  A little embarrassing but the gentleman was so so nice and helpful.
• She has the best laugh...

• Oh man is Presley a little social baby these days!  People will stop us while we're out and talk to Presley and she will just take them in for a few minutes with a very serious look and then her whole face will light up with a smile and she will sometimes even giggle if the stranger is very friendly!  (So much for teaching stranger danger!  But I suppose that comes later...)
• I wouldn't say that Presley is crawling yet... but she does scoot around really well - mostly in circles to whatever interests her.  Tonight, though, she got up on her knees and almost lunged forward -- AHHH!  We are really really trying to get the living room cleaned up and baby proofed because it really will be a matter of days/weeks and she will be on the move!
• Loves to drink water out of her sippy cup!  We have a Tommee Tippee sippy cup as well as an Avent sippy cup and she seems to do better with the Avent sippy cup for now.  She can hold it herself but has a tough time with tipping it back so she let's us do that part, usually!
• Her next check-up is at 9 months and we have it scheduled for November 13th!
• P is still in size 3 diapers.  Starting to grow out of some of her 6-9 month sleepers depending on the brand.  It won't be long until we switch her to 9-12 month clothes all together!  Presley is so long/tall!!!!

• Still not much of a napper.  I've actually kind-of given up on naps all together for her and while I hate it (for me and for her) it seems to be just fine.  Some days she naps, but it usually for a very short amount of time and pretty sporadic.  Hopefully this will change since we are now...
• ...on night two of sleep training!  And we're sticking to it!  We've already picked up a pattern of going back in there and giving her a little baby massage, and that really calms her down after the first "waiting" period.  (We're going with the Ferber/progressive waiting method!) *note: Presley has been sleeping through the night in her crib since she was 3 months old, but because Presley can be somewhat unpredictable at bedtime, we felt it was important to help teach Presley to put herself to sleep on her own - that is something that she will benefit from in the long run!  We still have a consistent bedtime routine that includes holding and hugging her, reading her a book, singing a lullaby, kisses, her bedtime light-up/noise-making puppy, and then bedtime.*
• Definitely still a mamas girl and going through an "ALL about mom" phase at the moment aka, her first real bought of separation anxiety.  If she knows I'm around but can't see me she will sometimes cry and become uneasy... even in daddy's arms.  It makes me feel wonderful but now I mostly just worry that I make myself too available - if that is such a thing!

She sure loves hanging out with her daddy, though!

• We are dressing her up for Halloween - she's got a pirate costume and a sunflower costume - so we will probably dress her up two times for separate occasions!

Happy little sunflower!

•  Still not really warmed up to dogs.  But as you can see in the above picture - she was doing alright next to Sammy (little Shih Tzu and she sometimes acted like he was a monster!  And he is so relaxed!) towards the end of our trip.

So, this update is a little bit late - Presley was 8 months on Saturday the 20th.  We were in Nashville this past weekend for my niece's baptism!  Anne Marie is about a week shy of 3 months - and it was Tony's first time meeting his niece and my first time seeing her since she was born so it was definitely an awesome trip.  Presley traveled like a rock star - for the most part (of course there was some tears, but that's to be expected!) and we really did have a blast.  We miss Nashville tremendously already.   My awesome mother-in-law drove in to Nashville to spend time with all of us and she brought Tony's Uncle Mike & Aunt Angie with her so they could meet Miss Presley! 

Sweet baby girl after her baptism!

Anne Marie and all her aunts, uncles, and cousin!  That's Jonathan (my soon-to-be BIL), Tony (my hubby), John (my BIL), Ashley in the purple (my little sis), me and Presley, Pamela (John's sister), Amanda (my big sister), Greg (John's brother), Anne Marie (my niece - Amanda & John's little one), and Greg's wife - Caroline.

My sisters, niece, daughter & myself.  Wish we all lived in the same area!

That's my mother-in-law!  I can't say enough good things about this woman so I will just share one ~ she is GORGEOUS and recently stopped smoking cold turkey for her granddaughter!  How awesome is that?

Mike, Presley, Selena, & Angie!  So happy to see them.

My mom with her two grandkids ~ Presley & Anne Marie

Such a fun time with so many special people-- can't wait until we are ready to move there, although we're not entirely sure when that will be!  Until those days, we will surely be enjoying the ones in the near future.  Halloween and Thanksgiving are just around the corner and in between those two holidays there will be a new baby boy in the family!  Maybe I will be able to talk my cousin Breanne into guest blogging about the labor, delivery, and birth of her son after he arrives.  (Keep your fingers crossed on that one!)  And then of course after Thanksgiving, there is Christmas and New Years to be excited for and now only 4 more months to plan Presley's first birthday bash!  So many happy times, family, and blessings... how exciting! XO, the duggans

Happy 7 Month Birthday, Presley Rose!

 Note:  These pictures were near impossible to take because she is so on the move these days!

Seems like just a few days ago I wrote about what she was up to!  That means I will probably definitely and accidentally repeat myself... so I apologize for boring anyone to tears but I don't want to forget anything.

• We're still breastfeeding... YAY!  Seven months strong and I love it.  I don't think we could have kept this up if I weren't staying home with her.  I am beyond grateful that I've been home with her this long - despite so many days of feeling overwhelmed, under-prepared, and not qualified!  It's important to remember the ways in which I'm fortunate alongside with my daily complaints.  I don't think I have a thing to complain about when it comes to nursing these days.  It has gotten to be much less of a "chore" now that solid foods are in the mix.  It actually seems like I nurse her less than before.  (Which is probably true...)
• Speaking of solid foods, here is what the princess has been introduced to thus far:  Baby Oatmeal, Organic Brown Rice Cereal, Sweet Peas, Green Beans, Carrots, Butternut Squash, Pumpkin, and Sweet Potatoes.  Carrots were an instant favorite but honestly, she has loved each food more and more as we've gone on.  Today she had her first bit of sweet potatoes and she scarfed them down!
• When we started solids, she only ate one "meal" in the late afternoon.  Within the last week or so, I've added another solid meal after we get up in the morning.  She eats about 4 ounces of baby food a day (about 2 ounces per meal) along with some cereal mixed in to thicken it up.
• She is such a good little eater.  Since it was a rainy, overcast morning - we slept in.  This meant skipping over her breakfast meal.  She had it later on in the early afternoon and was bouncing around in the high chair as I was preparing her food!  She's a little foodie just like her mommy!
• We usually lay Presley down on her back/side when she goes to bed, but she normally ends up on her belly these days and seems to be pretty content there.  We've also added her new teddy bear to her nighttime routine and she seems to LOVE it.  The bear sings lullabies or plays nature sounds on a 10 or 20 minute timer and lights up during that time.  It really seems to have a calming affect on Presley and has helped at bedtime.  (Thank you Kelly for her nighttime bear!)  I also read her "Night Night Little Pookie" every night before bed!
• Still wearing size 3 diapers - Pampers Swaddlers being out favorite.  (Although we love Target brand, Pampers Cruisers, and love the Kroger brand of diapers.  Wish we had a Kroger around us for so many reasons!)  The only diapers we've found we don't really like very much are the Huggies with Mickey and friends (the Pooh and friends are pretty good) as well as Pampers Baby Dry - not a fan of those because of the poor quality.
• Just got an ErgoBaby Carrier and I am so excited to start slinging Presley around with me now more comfortably.  I hope we like it as much as everybody else seems to!
• Naps have been a struggle since teething reared it's ugly little head and it's been a tough few weeks in the napping department.  We finally seem to be turning a corner and I hope we keep continuing on in the right direction!
• Presley's still got some cradle cap that is hanging around and I can't wait until that decides to leave her alone so we can tell what her true hair color is.  (It really messes with the shade!)  Speaking of hair, she is started to sprout some additional hair up top!  Still not nearly as much as her cousin - Anne Marie, though!
• Because she had a fever last month at her checkup, we couldn't get her shots then.  I have been  a bad mom and keep putting it off!  I really want to wait until a time that Tony can be there because I don't like being the only one around when she gets her shots... so hopefully we'll make this happen in the upcoming week!
• This child still hugely prefers showers to baths, but we're going to keep giving baths a try in hopes she will get used to them.
• Still hanging out with our buds every week.  Got to love baby interaction!

L to R:  Presley, Molly, and Alli.  (I hope I got that right.  I'm slipping when it comes to telling the twins apart these days!)

•  Presley has started to think "Peek-a-Boo" is HILARIOUS.  She also finds older individuals to be a hoot, as well.  She's started to really laugh and squeal at people who talk to her when we are out and about and it's precious.

• I still have a baby clearance/good deal addiction.  It's bad.
• Still haven't put a pair of shoes on my child yet.  I have a feeling this will change as summer escapes us!
• As you can see from one of the first pictures I posted, Presley is getting pretty good at sitting up on her own.  She still needs a lot of support as she can only sit by herself for a short amount of time, but it's a start!
• Still going back and forth on whether or not to get her ears pierced.  Now that she messes with her ears, I'm not sure if it'd be a good idea at this point to have them pierced.  We'll see!

So that's all I can really think of when it comes to what P's been up to.  Can't believe Halloween is coming up in about a month!!!  So exciting.  I already have a few ideas for Presley's costume - but we aren't really doing anything crazy or over-the-top for her outfit this year.  We plan on going to Boo at the Zoo!  Very excited about that.  And then not long after that, Presley will have a new 2nd cousin then is Thanksgiving and finally... Christmas!!!!  This time of year absolutely ROCKS minus the snow and ice... not looking forward to that very much but all the rest of it will be so exciting.  And then not far from Christmas will be Presley's first birthday!  So much to look forward to in the next five months...

Keeping up with the Duggans!

Okay, so really it's just Keeping up with Presley, because Tony and I are chop liver these days!  But I'm okay with that.

I apologize for being M.I.A. lately... as I said in one of my last posts, Presley has had some big changes lately and they require more attention than before!

So, the big thing that's been happening lately is the addition of solid foods into our routine!  Things started off very slow in the food department for Presley, so I really chalked it up to her just not really liking this baby food yet and I'm honestly just happy she's still content with breastmilk since that is so cheap and (relatively) easy -- considering it's the only meal I can make in my sleep!  We tried baby oatmeal (hated it), Gerber Organic Sweet Peas (not a huge fan), and Gerber Green Beans (still not a fan).  I knew I'd like to try making her baby food so after we were home from our Memphis/Mississippi vacation, I decided to start with a batch of Carrots as well as a batch of Butternut Squash.  We started with the carrots and let me just tell you, this kid LOVES them!  She has been gobbling them up!  We started out with one cube (which means, one ice cube, for those who don't know what I mean by that. I puree her food and let them freeze in ice cube trays and then pop them out and save them in freezer baggies), one time a day (I am starting her out pretty slow, I know...) and she worked her way up to demolishing two cubes - still just once a day.

With how much she loves carrots, I was nervous to start the squash today.  I thawed two cubes (each cube is about 1oz each, just for a frame of reference - again, for those who haven't used this method) and realized that the squash turned out much runnier than the carrots.  I thickened it up using some of Presley's Organic Brown Rice baby cereal.  Like I said before, she wasn't a huge fan of cereal, so that on top of introducing a new food, I wasn't sure how she was going to like it!  Come to find out, I had nothing to fret over because she destroyed what I gave her in record time; I could not give her big enough bites fast enough!  SO, now I am thinking about adding another feeding to her day since she acted like a starving child (trust me, she doesn't look the part!).


Maybe adding another feeding to our morning schedule will help her take a nice nap in the afternoon - these days she refuses to nap.  This drives me crazy - mostly because she needs one or two a day - but since she is sleeping pretty good at night again, I kinda just think of it as a give and take.  Hopefully this will subside and just has to do with her transitioning from 3 naps a day to 2 naps a day.  (Even though right now she is 0 naps a day!)


Ever since she began the nasty part of teething a few weeks ago, her sleep has been all messed up!  This was made SO MUCH worse when we went out of town for a long Labor Day Weekend.  We drove from Moline, Illinois to Memphis, Tennessee (10+ hours each way... dumb....) and surprisingly, the car ride was the easiest part each time!  We stayed with Tony's family members - Aunt Kelly, Uncle Bob, cousin Lexi, cousin Bobby, & a few small pups! (They are the most gracious hosts and people just flock to the McQuages, I swear... but more about the fun we had on our vacation for the next post...)

This is what Presley did in the car... GOOD GIRL!

Unfortunately, my first night in town I started to feel really weird.  Tony was so exhausted from getting up so early to travel (4am) that when I told him I didn't feel good he just told me to sleep it off and knocked out himself.  I tried to sleep but I got so hot it was overwhelming - it was making it hard for me to breath, sleep, or even think.  I woke him up (he's so impossible to wake up once he's out...) and just pleaded with him to stay up with me.  He felt how warm I was and by that time I started to get a little freaked out by it all - it felt like my eyes and ears were full of warm liquid.  So he got up with me and we sat in the bathroom and he took my temp... 103.7!?!  I expected it to be high, but not THAT high!!!  So I took some ibuprofen and tried to sleep it off.  Eventually my fever broke and I got some relief and a bit of sleep.

To make an already long story short, I stayed sick (on and off) the entire time we were on vacation.  On top of that, in hindsight, I believe Presley was going through a growth spurt because she was up every 3 hours (or more frequent) throughout the night to eat.  She was crabby as a result and was SO clingy to me.  It could also have been that she was outside of her normal comfort zone, but being that I was feeling sick and spiking a fever every night, it was just awful.  Since we've been back, I've been trying to find our "new" schedule after the chaos and still haven't had much luck.


And, unfortunately, after being sick and feeling so overwhelmed by taking the trip, I quit the couch to 5k program.  I feel like a failure about it but I know I'll try again when the timing is better.  Tony and I are still scheduled to run our first 5k next weekend and I'm still really looking forward to it and plan on giving it my all!  I know we'll both still have a great time with it and I can't wait.  Hopefully the 5k will spark our interest in the program again.

Last night I guess I had too much time on my hands because I started watching videos of Presley that I've taken over the last nearly seven months.  This entire time I've been wishing for time to fly by to get us out of the baby stage and now that time has done just that, I've realized that isn't what I want at all!  For the first time, I was really crying just watching the videos and wondering where in the hell the time has gone.  Even more, where has that tiny little baby gone and why did I wish her away?  I'm sad just thinking about it.

Hey big girl!

As my friend Sharon said earlier this week...  
It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn't. - Barbara Kingsolver


Once I gather all the pictures together, I'm going to write a big blog about all the family and friends who might as well be family that Presley got to meet or see again while we were in town.  It was a big trip and so much happened that I want to dedicate an entry strictly to that!  Also, be looking for a guest post soon... pretty excited to start those!  I'll try to make sure there isn't such a big gap before an update, because as I said before... no one is going to be more sorry than myself for the lack of updates.

Love hearing from you guys... hope everybody is doing well with the transition back into the Fall/Autumn lifestyle!

BIG changes!

Well!  If I had waited just another few days to write Presley's 6 month update, it would have been a LOT different.  There have been several changes for Miss P in just the last 48 hours!

We gave Presley her first bit of baby cereal - oatmeal to be exact - on Saturday.  That was more exciting for Tony and I than it was for her.  She tolerates it, but she's not enthusiastic about eating cereal.  Her faces while eating were so animated and I couldn't stop laughing when watching the video Tony took of her eating.

It's insane how much older she looks in a highchair!

We tried to give Presley a bit of a nap Sunday, but she was only asleep for a short while.  When we found out she was awake, Tony and I went into her room to get her and we were completely surprised to find her laying in her crib on her BELLY!

She's rolled over several times since then and Tony caught one of her rolls on film....

Presley is loving the fact that she can roll over and does it each time I put her on a flat surface.  She doesn't realize she can roll from her belly to her back (she's done it before - several months ago!) so we will see how long that takes!

She had a couple very rough nights last week and it intensified over the weekend.  Yesterday was by far the worst of it and it was hard to watch Presley while she was so upset.  She refused to sleep - both in the afternoon at nap time and at night for bedtime.  It was rough on me and Tony, too.  I have been checking her gums religiously each day in hopes that this was brought on by teething and hadn't seen anything new.  However, yesterday, Tony discovered two openings on her bottom gum!  I was absolutely shocked and a little relieved to know what the fuss was all about.

We had another late, difficult, and very draining bedtime last night.  (Baby tylenol and baby Orajel don't seem to be helping!)  This morning Presley woke me up bright and early and when I checked her gums with my finger I was stunned to feel two sharp points!!!!!  No wonder she has been in so much agony - her first teeth are trying to bust out of there!  TALK ABOUT RELIEF!  I am really hoping that since they've broken the surface that her pain will ease.  (Mom friends, has this been true for you?  Please share your teething experiences!)

Even though she seems nearly back to her old self today, she was still having trouble calming down for her afternoon nap.  We took a trip to Target where I bought some of the Hyland's Teething Tablets because I've heard such great things about them.  I had attempted (and failed) at giving her a nap and when she continued to fuss and seemed tired I gave the tablets a try, fed her, and she was out within minutes.  It really seemed to take the edge off for her and I just pray it continues to work!


So over the weekend Presley had her first taste of cereal, rolled from her back to her belly, and the tips of her bottom two teeth cut through her gums!  Seems like she belongs to the right family - Tony and I seem to have many milestones in a short amount of time as well (welcoming baby Presley 9 months from our wedding day)!

Let's hope these teeth stay above the surface and pop all the way through very quickly -- we want our happy baby back for our upcoming trip!