what I'm loving wednesday: the newborn edition...

sorry if this blog is turning into a baby blog - I promise some posts on random jibber-jabber and cute pictures of Oliver soon but for now - all things baby are taking over my brain so that's what you're getting!

hopefully the hospital essentials (first, second and third trimester essentials) that I shared have been helpful to some of you out there! so to continue on with sharing my all-knowing wisdom experiences... here are the things that made our first few weeks adjusting to being a family of four [what? oliver counts] so much easier!

so with all that being said - here is what I'm loving when it comes to "newborn lifesavers" - these are the things that have just made our lives so much easier the past few weeks...

first, I'm obsessed with our aden + anais muslin swaddle blankets - they're great for swaddling as well as just a nice lightweight blanket that we can use all the time and all over the place... these get used daily if not every hour on the hour in our house...

another thing that we use daily/hourly are these Gerber Prefold Cloth Diapers - but not as diapers... we use these as burp clothes, to wipe Penny's face, as a bib when breastfeeding - for SO many things... these are so versatile and I literally find myself always looking for one/grabbing one - especially when I'm nursing Penny!

a huge time/laundry saver in our house are these Boppy Changing Pad Liners - when people say that you'll get peed and pooped on by your baby they're not kidding/lying - who would have thought?! these changing pad liners help us not have to change our changing pad cover every hour day - they were a last minute buy that I'm SO glad we got! I'm not kidding when I say you NEED these...

now - let's talk about breastfeeding -- here is something that I think people tried to tell me but I just either didn't hear or flatout ignored- breastfeeding is HARD. okay, not hard perse - but challenging at first... let me start by saying we were really fortunate - Penny latched right away and [knock on wood] we have had no issues so far with her getting enough to eat/breastfeeding. however, she is a hungry little bugger and those first two weeks she definitely used and abused me to get what she wanted [mommy = food, all day and all night!]. with that being said, I am so glad I had a medela nipple shield - I won't go into details because you really don't want to know but let me just say this SAVED me - around a week and a half in and Penny was bringing me to tears every time she fed... using a nipple shield saved my sanity and made breastfeeding that much less painful while I "healed" - yup, I'll leave it at that...

we currently have two large trashcans in our nursery - one for cloth diapers [which we LOVE but that's a whole other post] and one for disposable diapers/trash... and believe it or not our nursery does not smell?! AMAZING. I did not want our cloth [or disposable] diapers stinking up the joint and I got these Munchkin Arm and Hammer Nursery Fresheners I dropped two of these in the bottom of each trashcan and I really do believe they're the reason that we're still smelling fresh and clean!

lastly, I'm SO happy we have a video monitor -- Penny has slept in the nursery from day one and our monitor definitely makes it easier to check in on her and to at least give us an idea behind why she's crying [has she gotten out of her swaddle? are her eyes open?] - our monitor [Summer Infant Best View Handheld Color Video Monitor] also lights up (green to red) based on how loud things are in the nursery, I really like this because I can turn the volume off when we're eating dinner/watching TV but can still see if she starts crying and turn the volume up/turn the screen on and see if she's crying/what she's doing - I was back and forth between what monitor I wanted to get and I'm SO glad I got this one! 

so there you have it...

definitely not a comprehensive list of our "favorite things" (I'll post that in a few weeks after we've had more time to play with everything and get a real solid opinion) ...just the things that have made a big difference and that I think have made things that much easier to adjusting to this whole "taking care of a baby thing"

speaking of babies... here are some pictures of our sweet little girl... 

I know, she's pretty darn cute.

I think we'll keep her.

yup.

we're keeping her.