Call Me Cassie

So this morning I awoke to an unsettled, teething and hungry little one, at the glorious hour of 4:00 am.  If you can’t sense the sarcasm there, I can try to kick it up a notch. Anywho… Sometimes Annaliese gets a little off schedule and naps real early in the morning to where she stays up all day and gets tired around 6:00pm which is way too early for her to go to bed for the night.  This happened yesterday.  She fell asleep around 7:00pm and there was no keeping her awake at that point.  So we laid her in her crib and pretty much placed bets on when she would be getting up next.  Around 9:30pm I had finished watching Mr. Popper’s Penguins - great Jim Carrey movie by the way,  and headed to bed thinking “Maybe she will still sleep through the night”.  Well I was wrong.  She woke up about 10:30pm hungry and because she fell asleep too early the two nights prior, we decided to give her a calming bath and make her bedtime bottle and try to put her back to sleep.  Well this actually worked.  It took her until about 11:30 to go back to sleep, but she did.  She woke up again around 1:30am with some gas, so I burped her and rocked her back to sleep.  Here’s the 4:00am part.  The sleep stopped there.  Now I can’t complain.  I mean really she got a lot of sleep between the hours of 7:00pm and 4:00am, however…mommy didn’t.

I said all that to lead me to this.  I made her a bottle, got myself a cup of coffee and was barely ready to start my morning.  As I was feeding her in the living room on the couch, I was browsing the TV guide.  Yeah.  Not a whole lot to choose from on TV at 4:00am.  Pretty much a bunch of infomercials and stuff that I wouldn’t even let my cat watch, but after I browsed all 9,000 channels, I finally came across one of my ALL TIME FAVORITE movies, “The Newsies”.  This movie /show/play is just one of those movies that can uplift me at any state.  I have seen it at least a bizillion times and wouldn’t mind seeing it a bizillion more.  I jam out to the soundtrack on my iphone in my car, in the shower, while I cook…anywhere!  ”The Newsies” has a way of taking me back to my childhood.  When I didn’t really have a care in the world and wanted to sing and dance all day.  The days when I came home from school, played some video games with my brother, and had a family bicycle ride around the neighborhood.  Sometimes we would even head to the beach.  (I lived 5 blocked from the Pacific Ocean in California- yes I miss it).  Watching that movie just makes me want to “Open the gates and sieze the day” (one of the songs in the soundtrack).  It also makes me want to break out my old posters of Christian Bale too, but that’s besides the point.  It’s just my favorite movie.  It’s my feel good movie.  I think I can honestly say I love “The Newsies” better than “Grease”, which is almost insane to even think about, because for years I was obsessed with that movie and it’s soundtrack also.

And there I was…watching my favorite movie, with my favorite little human drinking my (new) favorite beverage.  It made getting up at 4:00am much more bearable.  I sat and thought of a post that my fellow blogger friend, Alison had recently written called “Notes To Self: The 3am Edition” and what she says is true.  Waking up with your baby (in her case, a newborn) in the middle of the night isn’t a sacrifice, it’s a privilege.  They aren’t going to need you forever, so soak it up now.  It’s very easy to get lost in life and forget the little things that we take for granted each day.

So for the last  nearly 8 months, among many other lessons I’ve learned being a mother, I’m reassured every day that time is oh so precious and flies by oh so fast.  That’s the bittersweet truth.  And when waking for a 4am feeding, 3am feeding, midnight feeding… take it all in and enjoy every single sleepless moment.

What’s your favorite movie of all time?  What does it make you think and feel when you watch it?

“You have to live life before you have anything to blog about.” – Sam Kanatzar – My Life As Wife

Truthful words spoken from my fellow blogger friend on a day when I was venting on Twitter about missing the time I used to take just to write a little blog post.  But for the past 2 months, I’ve been pretty busy living.  I’m not upset about that in the least.  I’ve been having fun living my life!  Of course I still update the occasional Facebook post or tweet here and there, but haven’t really had a chance to sit down and write freely.
Here’s why:

“The Girls” – Jessie’s Bachelorette Party

I’m privileged to be the Matron of Honor in my best friend’s wedding on May 19, 2012.  So of course before she ties the knot, there had to be a “last night out” and a bridal shower!  So the other bridesmaid, Gretchen (who happens to me one of my good friends) and I had been working on the plans for both of those special and important events.  It’s bittersweet that they have come and gone, but the next and final event is the wedding!  Only 11 more days!

We got legs!

I also turned another year older on April 4^th, so I am officially in the last year of my 20’s!  Ironically, my husband’s birthday is 2 weeks after mine on April 18^th, so we had to celebrate both dates with a night out each.  For my husband’s birthday, his brother and his brother’s wife decided to get him his dream dog as a birthday gift and gave him/us a 4 month old bulldog pup, we named Otis (after Otis Redding).  That was exciting and nerve wracking all at the same time.  He’s a sweet puppy, such beautiful coloring and markings, but definitely a stubborn, bull-headed (living up to the name of the breed) chewer.  Being a stay at home mom to a 6 month old and trying to train a puppy not to chew, to go outside for all potty breaks, to not eat the cat we’ve had for almost 3 years and that human babies are not able to play yet was more than a challenge.  Unfortunately after only a week of having him here, he had jumped up on my daughter and my husband and I had to make the best decision for our family and have him taken back to his brother’s house.  We’ll still be by to visit, but it will be hard.  It’s already been almost a month since he left and it still hurts because he was quickly loved and became part of our family, but the timing just isn’t right for us to have a puppy.  The show must go on…
My dad and step mom came to visit from NJ last weekend for Cinco De Mayo!  (No I’m not Mexican, but I’ll take any reason I can to have some yummy Mexican food and a margarita)  We had a great visit with some great food and although the visits are few and far between, luckily we will be able to see them again soon when they return for my brother’s graduation of the police academy on May 31^st!  I also did a 5k for the first time in 7 years with my sister in-law and that was fun!  I walked and jogged the whole thing, but I enjoyed doing it!  It gives my sister in-law, Jenn, and I some time to hang out together, but it was a good fundraiser for breast cancer.  We’ll be doing other 5ks again I’m sure.

Jenn, Me, and Nicki before the 5K

With all of the birthdays, doctor’s appointments, dress fittings, “holidays”, and other events…it’s been pretty crazy around here.  But I wouldn’t trade it for anything!

Plus my little girl is growing so fast!  She is 3 days from being 7 months old, she can sit up by herself now, she has cut two teeth, she is clapping and laughing around the clock and with the HARD challenge of mastering the “Ferber Method” (letting her cry it out), after only 6 nights of this method she has been sleeping through the night and sleeping 10 hours!  It was very, VERY hard to do, but knowing that it was best for her to learn that she can’t always fall asleep in mommy or daddy’s arms was a good lesson for her to learn.  The nights she would wake up, I would go in her room (because daddy was sleeping so he could get his rest to do his hard job at work the next day), make sure she heard me and saw me, patted her back or rubbed her belly while she was lying down without picking her up, and stayed for about 30 seconds and then left.  I returned every 5, 10, 15… minutes until she realized that she wasn’t going to be picked up and she eventually put herself back to sleep.  Some nights I would only have to do this 3 times and she would put herself back to sleep.  One time I only had to go in her room once and she was back to sleep in 10 minutes.  The other nights she would cry for an hour to an hour and a half and it seemed like I was torturing her because she just wanted to be held.  But it was worth the sleepless nights and testing of my motherhood skills.  I just hope that the sleeping through the night continues.

My Little Ladybug

On another good note, I won a photo-shoot for my daughter and me for Mother’s Day!  I am so grateful for this opportunity because she has never had her pictures “professionally” taken and these pictures will mean so much to me.

Hopefully I’ll get back into blogging again after the wedding.  I still have to finish writing my Matron of Honor speech and rehearse because I’m not all that great with speaking in front of a lot of people.  Wish me luck!

So until next time, I’ll be living life so that I’ll have much to blog about later.  :)