I just want to say that Conway Twitty is magical.

sleep......please just sleep

Since I've not posted in a few days I will catch you up on the goings on of the Palmer Household. Mostly we've spent the last few days and nights struggling for good restful sleep. I obviously spoke way to soon about Jack learning the ropes of night time sleep. I've been trying hard for a couple of weeks now to stay to a good routine throughout the day of sleep, eat, play and then a regular routine at night..just like everyone says your supposed to do, still the kid just did not want to sleep in his own room for more than an hour or two. That hour or two being divided up in like 15 min intervals of course. I would go back and forth from the living room or our bedroom to cribside and just stand there. For some reason that's just what he needed to sleep was me standing next to his crib, never had to talk to him, touch and sometimes he wouldn't even be looking at me; he just knew I was there. After waking up one night with my face stuck to the crib rail I decided that enough was enough. I sat down and thought as hard as a person can at 3 AM with approx 45 minutes of sleep, " what does he need to fall asleep and stay that way without me??" We had been playing the special lullaby music since he was born and it was just not working out-I think some of the sharp notes were actually waking him up. Then we got a sound machine that plays heartbeat tones and that just creeped me out in the middle of the night and didn't do much to soothe him either. Finally I realized the difference between our room and his room is the voices from the tv, I can't sleep without the tv on. So while he's fussing and wondering where I am and what I was thinking for leaving his side, I fumbled over to the radio and turned on some good ole country music. Magic I'm telling you...he slept the best he has probably in weeks and best thing of all I got to actually lay in my own bed and not get up till he was actually hungry. He was all smiles and hardly even got fussy today!! By the way in the past week he's been to not just one public place but 5-to include walking through the mall with everyone and their brother. Everyone say "Good job Sammo for relaxing a bit!! YEY!"
I have more to post about, but I have to go right now because the silly teenage realty show I'm addicted to just came on and I can't miss it!!!

any advice?

Sam and I have decided that it is time to buy property and start building a new home, which means putting this house on the market. I'm kind of nervous about all the finances (mostly because I've never done anything that big) and the steps that go in to getting a house ready to sell or settling house plans. Anyone have any advice on the topic?

too early for separation anxiety?

Last night we decided to let Kat-Kat and Papa Jeff babysit so that we could actually go out. All went well while he was there and the outing was productive for me as well. We went shopping and apparently having a baby did something for my figure because I've never put on so many pairs of pants that fit, let alone the shirts that didn't look like empty bags in the chest area. Anywho..the point of the story is that once we returned to Mom's house Jack decided that he needed to nurse-though he had just had a bottle. The fussy baby act continued once we got home and he was not happy unless he was nursing or laying just at my chest sleeping. Anything else was less than acceptable and he let us know by crying the most horrible cry I've ever heard. Fast forward to 3 AM and the two of us are awake, I've given up on him sleeping in his own room at this point and have him laying in the little crib in our room. He's all nice and sleepy, quiet and barely able to keep his eyes open at this point. That is until I move out of his line of sight, then the crying continues. The only way I could get this child to sleep and stay sleeping was laying with my head at the foot of our bed and my arm stuck through one of the slats in the crib to put my hand on his stomach. I laid there for over an hour with him clutching my hand with both of his until he finally relaxed his arms. So one hour of sleep later and of course it was time to nurse again. I think I jinxed myself with that crazy post yesterday...routine...HA!

Six weeks!

We have reached that "magic" week and everything is slowly coming into routine for us now in the Palmer house. I say it's a magic week because it seems that the majority of mother's return to work at this time as it is the standard amount of maternity leave. I could not imagine doing it. I've been nervous about this point because my sister, Kristen, returned to Boise this weekend and Sam is now back at work full time leaving me with Jack. It's not that I feel scared about taking care of the baby by myself-that I can handle. It's the fact that I'm used to talking to a variety of people at work all day and now I'm with someone who can't quite talk back yet. We will see how well this goes, luckily I have a very supportive husband and a long list of projects to complete.


Things seem to be going well, we are no longer walking around like zombies all sleep deprived. Jack has figured out that night is for sleeping. I'm very excited about that though I know that it could change at any night now. He is becoming more interactive as well, cooing and smiling reactively. Sam was impressed that he actually grabs at his little toy of the week and seems to enjoy it. Jack has a habit of being smiley and laughing for me but for some reason can't quite put it on for his daddy yet, which is upsetting to Sam. It's hard to believe that he is almost 2 months already, soon he will have to get his first set of shots!



This weekend was Jack's first big car trip. We decided that it was time for him to visit Grandma Rena and Papa Jerry. He did extremely well both there and back-slept the entire time. I guess that is what you expect from a baby his age. We enjoyed seeing everyone and Jack finally got to meet his Aunt Rhonda and cousin Sarah. Sarah seemed a little apprehensive about the baby at first, not really wanting to hold him. After watching everyone else take their turns and playing with him from afar, she finally got brave and decided to hold him. She washed her hands and climbed up on the couch, sat up straight and tall just like she was told. I lowered him into her awaiting arms and after about 5 seconds of this Jack began to go poo quite loudly and she yanked her hand away from his bottom faster than you would think possible. It was adorable. We also go to see Bailey, who is thriving there. She started jumping at the gate and whining for us to come play with her as soon as we got out of the car, which was nice to know she remembers us.


Here are some pictures of the little one, and you can see my chopped off hair if you haven't already.

A man and a woman had a little baby...

Presenting Jackson William Palmer:

At long last...

Sorry for being MIA in the blogging world, however I think Kristen is the only one that's been hurt by this.

I decided to post today because we have the nursery furniture in and everything is all set up, so I thought I would put up some pictures. We'll start with what we had to work with before:

This is not all that the room was prior to its makeover, however I forgot to take any pictures of that. Basically it was a home office, with junk galore piled everywhere. After about I would say 4 or 5 months of pregnancy I finally broke down and had a crying fit about how unprepared for baby we were, so my husband dutifully began the preparation to create a beautiful nursery for our little baby. It took a long time for our furniture to finally come in, but I think it was worth the wait.

This really doesn't do it justice, but it's a hard room to get a lot of good angles in.

We also have an adorable cradle/bassinet all ready to go. This is one that has been past down in Sam's family for quite some time. He's almost 30 and he slept in it as a baby, as did his brother who is 12 years older than him....I was nervous about it at first to say the least, but it is quite sturdy and safe. Here is Sam working so hard to get the darn thing back together after insisting it needed to be taken apart to travel in the car.

We've had two baby showers already, which provided us with a lot of adorable clothes and toys, as well as the little necessities like soap, lotion, butt balm and we are really appreciative of every one's generosity. I've actually kept up to date on my thank you notes for these. It's impressive when you think that it took me close to 5 months to finish my thanks you cards for the wedding. The one thing I have learned from the baby showers is that no matter how much you want to during your pregnancy don't buy a lot of diapers. I whined and whined because my crazy husband didn't want to buy anything for the first two trimesters until he broke down and let me buy them. Now after those two showers and the two packages I bought we have this in our baby's closet:

I know you can't really see the true extent of what is there and I thought about piling it up in the floor so that you could, but it took me forever to get them to stay in there. Mostly sized newborn and 1-2!! There's also enough wipes in there for I promise you 6 months at least. I know, I know- newborns go through a lot of diapers. They also outgrow them! I should have thought ahead and bought bigger sizes, luckily you can trade them in for different sizes at our Walmart-even without a receipt. I do feel extremely prepared in that front though.

Anyway, that's really all that's been going on is baby preparation, nothing to terribly exciting. With the exception of the very large fish that I caught recently while my husband remains getting his line caught up frequently. My belly and my dog continue to grow and look adorable. I also learned to make this incredibly delicious and not too fattening treat, isn't it pretty.

That's all I can think of for now . I was going to put pictures up of our trip to meet Alton Brown but for some reason can't get them from Sam's phone to the computer. Just remember Kristen, he wore a yellow sear sucker suit, he hugged me and it was awesome!!!