No need to pay $80 for a nursing shirt, just go naked!

Ok, now that I've got you're attention, no, I'm not advocating going topless. lol I just wanted to toot my own horn and show off how wonderfully clever and talented I am!
I took this:

Plain, boring shirt that I forgot I owned because I never wore

And turned it into this:

Cute, practical nursing top

That I'll definitely wear!

Already tested it with Tali and it works great for an easy, comfortable and discrete nursing for both Tali and I :)

Baby Love Affair

Italia is 5 months old today!!!!! Where has the time gone?  How did I ever live without her?

I’ve been told by countless women that you don’t know love until you have a child of your own. I always thought this was somewhat false as I believed that as much as everyone does/should love their kids, isn’t their husband the one they should love more than anything?  I came to find my own truth in their words during the birth of Italia.

During our birthing I’ve never felt more love for anyone than I did for Brenan.  He was my rock that made the experience one of love and joy.  I long for my next birth every time I think about my last.  How can I describe the feeling of sitting in your bathtub wrapped in the arms of your husband, who has surely tired himself out holding you up so that you might bring a baby into the world together, as you both gaze into the eyes of your daughter for the first time?  There are no words.  I imprinted on everyone in that room that day.  I will forever love each woman that attended and supported me during my birth.  For all the back and knee presses, for rubbing my hands when they cramped up, for moaning with me so that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to find my birth song, for all these things I will be eternally indebted to them.  But my love for them, that came merely because they were in the same room with me when Tali was born.

Having a baby amplifies your love for everyone and everything.  I thought I loved Brenan before February 13^th, but I was wrong.  I didn’t know what love was.  Now, I can’t get enough of him.  I want to spend every waking moment cuddled in his arms, simply enjoying his company.  I miss him when he’s only in the other room.  Corny, I know.  But after experiencing something so amazing with him by my side, whispering words of encouragement and affirmation, how could I feel otherwise?  And when I see him holding our sweet little girl, there’s so much love gushing through me that I feel as though my heart will burst from the sheer volume of it.

My love for Italia is just as great, but different.  When I look at Tali I have to fight the urge to bite her.  I literally want to eat her.  I’m constantly nibbling her ears and cheeks, sucking on her toes, licking her head.  Perhaps it’s because she used to live in me that I feel the need to consume her once again.  Whatever it is, after 5 months I still can’t get enough of her!  And just when I think I can’t love her anymore, it’s time for her to eat and I’m flooded with oxytocin once again and suddenly her cheeks are ten times more adorable then they were a minute before.  Then she pauses in her nursing to smile up at me and I know she’s getting the love hormone too and once again I have to fight back the urge to eat her.

Love is such an amazing thing.  It makes the little things in life into precious miracles every day: the kiss that still brings butterflies after almost two years of marriage, the little hand that clutches yours even in sleep, the wonderful life that surrounds me.  I’m so very grateful for my little family, and I can’t wait for the joy that will continue to come as it grows.

This is Italia and Brenan when she was just 4 days old. 
Have you ever seen a baby so young with so vibrant a facial expression?

Oh the joys of a laughing babe

       Italia's been laughing for a while now. Anyone that's a parent knows that nothing captures your attention quite like a laughing baby. There is a special kind of joy, a rapture, that comes from every smile and giggle that a little one shares with the world.
      The very first time Tali giggled I was in the middle of changing her diaper and was playing with her legs and singing a funny/ridiculous song that I would be embarrassed if anyone else had heard. Of course I continued making a fool out of myself for at least another 15 minutes in order to get as many giggles as I possibly could. I'm sure anyone that's been around a baby has experienced this.  It doesn't matter how bonkers you're being as long as the baby is smiling and/or laughing.  She'd made sounds that I like to call "pre-giggles" before, but this was the first time that I knew with out a doubt I was making my baby laugh.
        I've since learned that Tali LOVES to bounce. She'll be laying on the bed and I'll kneel over her and jump up and down and she'll giggle up a storm, and if she's not giggling, she's cooing and talking to me.  I'm not sure which I love more, to hear my baby jabber away at me, telling me many, what I'm sure are very important, stories, or to hear her cry of joy and know that I caused it.
       Today, Tali released her longest string of full on belly laughs I have ever heard --hence the blog entry.  I was carrying her to the office and started to walk in a very bouncy fashion and she started to laugh like crazy.  I reached the office and continued to walk in a circle with my bouncy steps for a good 10 minutes basking in the joy that was overflowing from my daughter.  I'm sure anyone that saw me through the window must have gotten a good laugh themselves.
         I always knew that I would enjoy being a mother, I just never knew how much I was going to utterly love it!  I'm sure a lot of that has to do with the fact that I was blessed with the happiest baby I have ever met.  Every morning I get to wake up to my wonderful husband on one side, and my beautiful smiling baby on the other.  Yes, she does in fact wake up smiling, without fail, every morning. Who wouldn't want to start their day like that?
         I'm so very grateful for my hard working husband and his job that allows me to stay home with my little Tali girl.  I always planned to be a stay at home mom if I could, but I secretly dreaded it, thinking that I would miss the life I left behind.  Now that it's here, I wonder how I ever could have thought such silly things.

     Sometimes when I tell other, more experienced, mom's this they say "Just you wait, soon enough...blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."  I think it's sad so many wish to blast young mothers with the "woes" of motherhood rather than share all the joys that are yet to come.  So if you're reading this, please share what you love most about being a mother.  Whether it's the tender moments you share while quietly breastfeeding in the wee hours of the morning, or the nonsensical knock-knock jokes they tell that only a two year old would find funny.  Or if there's to many to choose from, share the first time you can remember hearing your little one laugh.