We have a tooth!

Well after weeks of heavy drooling and chomping on everything she could get her hands on we *finally* spotted the top of the cutest little tooth emerging from Hazel's gums! It is just barely on its way out, but boy is it sharp! We noticed this week that Hazel has been a lot fussier than normal (and waking up a few times a night when previously she had not woken up at all) and figured it was mostly due to me going back to work last week (more on that in a second) but it turns out that it was probably because that little tooth was working on making its first appearance! I honestly can't believe how quickly these little milestones seem to be coming... our little newborn baby is no more.

As for work, I went back last week to try and wrap some more stuff up. Marshall starts his job October 1st and we knew that we weren't ready for me to go back to work just yet so I was in a really difficult place as my work wants me to make my final decision now. I think I found a way to buy some more time and return to work part time when Hazel is a bit older but I have to wait and see if it will actually work out. In some ways it was really nice being out of the house and having adult conversations, but in other ways it was not fun at all since I was not a big fan of having to pump during the day at work. Hazel is still completely on breastmilk and my goal was to make it to six months exclusively on it. However, our breastfeeding infection came back and she seems to want to eat all of the time now just to comfort the pain of teething so we have been toying with the idea of possibly introducing some solids a bit sooner (around five months instead). We still haven't decided yet, so we'll see how it all works out.

Also, we are on Skype now (and we leave it on most of the time) so call us whenever! If we are busy we won't answer, so don't worry about it being at an inconvenient time for us since we just won't pick up :-) We have two logins - one is TheSchottFam and the other is TheSchottFam2, so add them both!

Who's a big girl??

Well, after much effort Marshall *finally* got Hazel's crib put together! We had been keeping it in the box in our garage these last four months knowing that a) Hazel would be sleeping in her bassinet and b) we didn't want to put it together knowing that we would be moving in the near future. We were excited to finally get it all set up when after about 5 hours of trying to follow the directions Marshall realized that there was actually something wrong with the way the pieces of wood were cut. A phone call to USA Baby (where we bought the crib) fixed the problem and a week later we received the replacement parts in the mail and finished putting it all together. Hazel has done incredibly well (sleeping from about 10 pm to 6 am) and definitely seems quite comfortable with her new sleeping arrangement! What is amazing though is how quickly she has grown, which was just brought to light today as we were packing up her bassinet. Check out the before and afters:


About four days old...



About four months old...


In other news Marshall now has an official start date of October 1st for his job which brings us pretty close to being able to make a huge decision since my paid leave runs out October 16th. Here's to hoping that it all turns out well!



Our Family



Marshall starting on the crib



It's finally done!!



Hazel's first night in her new digs!

M-O-V-E-D!

Well we survived the move! I think that survived is the appropriate word since it was quite a bit more overwhelming than I had originally anticipated. I think that part of the problem was that since we were moving such a short distance from our old place (only 0.2 miles) we really didn't formally pack anything and therefore ended up making about 1,000 trips between our two places! Thank goodness Marshall isn't working yet and was able to devote hours of time to hauling all of our stuff. Regardless, we are here now and thoroughly enjoying it. We definitely have room for visitors now which is something we really wanted. We are waiting for our new living room furniture to arrive and are hoping that it isn't too big for the space, since we bought it with the intent of using it in our future home (which we hope has a bigger living room than we have now). I will post some pics of the new place once it all comes together.