In Need of Some Serious Relaxation

For the past 2 weeks I've been feeling so tired; but not just like exhausted tired but physically my body is in pain. Mostly the pain is concentrated in my lower and upper back and neck. I know that having never fully recovered from the bad car accident and then getting pregnant and now working with kids that love to beat me up on a daily basis has probably bought me to this point where I feel like my back is going to give out.

I should have kept doing the physical therapy exercise that I was doing when I was recovering from the accident but they are time and space consuming. After graduating from The U and in doing our planning on trying to get pregnant Derek and I started working out and going on daily walks to try to be as fit as possible when we wanted to start trying so I felt great and a lot of the back pain was almost not existent but obviously once I got pregnant, even though I didn't gain a lot of weight it still brought on a lot of pain.

I've decided I need to start setting some pampering goals for myself. I want to start getting regular massages, maybe starting out with once a month and working my way to twice a month, ultimately 3 times a month would be ideal for me and also I definitely need to go back to the gym. I miss working out and I know that will help to relieve some stress, that I'm sure is also contributing to my aches and pains.

Enough about my complaining, let's talk about what is making me happy right now! I am so excited to be going home to visit the family this upcoming weekend. I haven't seen them since July, 6 months!!! That is crazy! I think that is the longest time I've gone without seeing my family, ever. I'm also excited to see my friends! None of them have met Alexis yet; well none of my friends from back home i guess :) I just can't wait to be back home. Especially because I know how much my mom misses Alexis and I know she'll be soooo excited to spend time with her.

Speaking of Alexis, she's getting so big. Today we moved her up to size 3 in her diapers. Size 3 makes me think of an older baby so it's still blowing my mind that she's wearing those now. She still only has her 2 bottom teeth :) and she's still rolling like crazy. Sometime in the next week or two I'm going to be getting a haircut and taking her in with me to get her haircut for the first time, I'm sooooo excited, but a little sad.

Also I need to get her ears pierced, I really wanted to do it at 6 months but we decided to wait, so now I feel so left behind. I'm also not sure though of where to go, only because I want to her to have them pierced with a needle not a piercing gun. I've read a lot about how ear piercings with guns are less sterile and how with a needle the piercing is more clean all the way through. My ears were pierced when I was just a couple months old and I know they used a needle. So I'm trying to research some places in Southern California that also do infant piercings, because I'm not sure if our pediatrician's office has someone who does it.

I wish I had more to update but for now that's it :)

Ideas For Alexis' 1st Birthday :))

So I've been wanting to do a zoo themed birthday for Alexis since she was like 3 months. So I've known for a while the type of things I wanted and just recently started pinning ideas on Pinterest for what I want to do.

Derek and I want to take Alexis to the San Diego Zoo for her birthday and since it's not like a traditional birthday party where you have it at your home or at a park, we still are going to be inviting family and friends to join us for a day at the zoo and then we will be heading to a restaurant after for a birthday dinner and for cake :)

I have some ideas for invitations:

I love this invite because we can put pictures of Alexis on it, but I don't like that the wording doesn't seem to pop(except for the name).

I love this invitation because it's cute and I love that the number 2 is big and noticeable as opposed to the first invitation.

This invitation is sooo colorful and it has a ton of different zoo animals so I like that, but I don't like that there is no place for a picture and that it doesn't showcase the birthday number in bold or in big letters.

Some cakes I absolutely love:

I think this cake is soooo cute.

This cake is very similar to the first one but I think it looks sharper and just plain better. I love this but want it to be a hot pink with black zebra stripes and the other layer with the giraffe print to maybe be lavender with white print, so basically just like this but girly.

I love these cake toppers :)

Other fun stuff:

Instead of a typical cone shaped birthday hat I am loving the idea of getting a crown likes this for Alexis, but in a purple or lime green color :)

Potential Birthday Present:

I love these little diamond earrings. Since we're going to be getting my baby ring plated white gold for Alexis I really want to get her these diamond earrings to match :)

At first when I told Derek I wanted to get her some diamond earrings he thought that was too much but I told him that I think having things like that, that our daughter(s) can pass down to their children would be really awesome, like my ring that I'm giving to Alexis. Plus they're not that expensive.

I had some more ideas but I'll leave those to my Pinterest board. I'm so excited to keep planning! I can't believe she's going to be 1 soon!

A Doozie Of An Update On My 8 Month Roly Poly!

Alexis is 8 months now! I feel like I haven't blogged forever. I guess I have blogged recently but not really about anything "substantial" it feels like. I know that I have been meaning to write a lot about what Alexis has been up to lately, I've just been really busy working a lot and Alexis has been keeping me busy too :)

So about 2 weeks or so ago Alexis went from rolling over every once in a while to rolling over all the time and all over the place! She is like a roly poly, she's in one place one moment and then another the next. I love that she's moving around so much but at the same time it makes me sad because that just means that she's growing up and soon she's going to be crawling too; which she is doing a little of, but not enough for me to document it as "real" crawling, just yet. Also I think I already mentioned on here that on Christmas we discovered that her 2 front teeth had started coming in. She is sooooo cute with her two little teeth. For now it looks like she doesn't have any of her other teeth coming in but I've heard that more teeth should be soon to follow, once the two front ones come in. She's growing up so fast.

Aside from rolling and her teeth coming in Alexis has also been a blabbermouth for the past 3 weeks. It sounds like she's saying "mama" when she's crying and wanting me to pick her up, but I can't be sure that she's not just mumbling random noises that seem to sound like "mama", so I'm not counting that as her first word yet. Alexis likes to be alone in silence sometimes, so I'll put her in the bedroom and have the baby monitor on in the living room and I can hear her talking away, having little conversations with herself it's sooooo cute; I wish I knew what she was trying to say to herself.

Alexis loves smiling, she is such a happy girl. For months now I've been calling her "Chica" and every time I say it she shakes and smiles, she loves it. Alexis loves to be tickled and giggles so much; She seriously has the cutest giggle ever! I love love love what a sweetheart she is to me. Last week she was having a rough morning with Derek at home so he went on Facebook and looked at pictures of me with her and she calmed down right away, stuff like that just warms my heart and brings tears to my eyes :) I feel so lucky to have such a beautiful little girl love me that much. Also, I have a picture of Alexis as my screensaver and background on my iPhone and I show it to her from time to time and she just smiles at herself (of course she doesn't recognize herself yet but I think it's so funny that she smiles at a picture of herself).

We've been feeding Alexis solids for the past 3 weeks and she is so good with it. We started her off on veggies first. So far we've only had her try 4 veggies: Squash, Peas, Carrots, and Green Beans. I really really want to make my own baby food but I haven't gone out and bought a baby bullet or anything like that yet, hopefully I can get one of those and start giving her other vegetables to try. Now that we got the veggies out of the way, we've started on fruits, after we're done having her try all the fruits, then we are going to mix the veggies and fruits. I'm thinking we will do a fruit in the morning and evening and do veggies through out the day, so she's eating mostly veggies. So far she's starting on one fruit, we decided to start her off with bananas. So far I think Alexis likes the bananas, maybe not her favorite but she doesn't hate them. I think out of all the veggies, carrots are definitely her favorite so far.

Alexis is fitting into her 6 month clothing pretty good; It's still a little big on her but her 3 month clothing were a little too tight. I really need to go shopping for some new clothes for her and I really want to buy her new bottles and move up to the 6oz bottles, I think she's ready for it.

So I still have not been able to bring myself to cut her hair. It's getting really long but now her "bangs" seem to be easier to sweep to the side but I know she still needs a haircut, I'm in need of one too, so I'm thinking when I go in to get mine I'll just have them cut her hair too.

Now that she's 8 months I am really getting into [1st] Birthday-Party-Planning-Mode! I will update more on that later.

P.S. I really really really want this diaper bag! [In any one of these designs.]

Not that I don't love my Coach diaper bag(thanks Mags and Debbie) but I really want one that is more zoo/park/activity friendly. I love the Coach bag for going out to dinner or the the mall/store but I would hate to ruin it by taking it out to the zoo or something like that.

P.S.S. My older brother and his girlfriend are expecting a baby sometime in July :) My brother and I weren't speaking for some time but we've since both apologized and are on good terms now. I am excited for Alexis to have a little cousin. I think it would be cute for them to have a little boy :)) but of course would love a little girl playmate for Alexis. Regardless of what it is I am going to be the best aunt ever :)))