Eilee Leighton is SIX MONTHS OLD

Today is Eilee Lou’s half birthday and I’m not handling it well at all. Six months! It’s been 6 months since i delivered this baby girl in a perfect, non pain medicated, peaceful, self assisted dream birth. It’s been 6 months since we found out that we were having another baby girl! It’s been 6 months since i met the rainbow that my heart so desperately desired. It’s been 6 months since i held our brand new miracle and bawled over her tiny body overwhelmed with the joy of God’s promise fulfilled. It’s been 6 months since my babies all met each other and made our world so complete. It’s been 6 months that I’ve solely breastfed her. Six months of being a mother to four. Six months of so many firsts and milestones. E has grown and changed more than you can imagine. She growls, smiles, laughs, blows spit bubbles, rolls any direction that you can think of, sits unassisted for brief periods, says ‘Mama’ and ‘Bubba’, pushes herself in a walker, has 2 teeth, makes a million hilarious facial expressions, sucks her thumb constantly, babbles and squeals as loud as she possibly can, weighs almost 18 lbs, is 28 inches tall, loves playing with her siblings, grins at literally anyone who talks to her, sleeps 8 plus hours most nights, can pass objects from hand to hand, and is seriously the most chill baby that I’ve ever seen. Anyone who spends any length of time with her will tell you that she’s smiley and calm but can quickly go from zero to sixty on the anger scale when it comes to her milkies. It’s the only time that we see her upset. She’s a milk monster for sure. She does this thing when she nurses that i don’t want to ever forget. She rolls my boob skin in between her fingers and pats me. 

She alternates rolling my skin and patting. It’s very sweet. I cherish all of these little traits that she has and things that she does. She also plays with her own hair when she’s eating or tired. She’s just all around a sweet and amazing baby girl. She’s such a blessing! We love you, Smiley Eilee. 

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from our family to yours. We hope that you had a wonderful holiday. We sure did. We spent it with our loved ones and not only was it Eilee’s first Christmas but she also saw her first snow too. It was an amazing Christmas and we are so thankful for all that we are blessed with. 

 

Our Christmas Traditions

Growing up we had many Christmas traditions. From watching the Grinch and drinking homemade hot chocolate to always opening presents on Christmas Eve to waking up Christmas morning and finding a huge pile of stocking stuffers to going to my grandparents house in our pjs and spending all day on Christmas there. The list goes on and one. Most of which i carried on with my own children. Christmas traditions are a huge part of what makes the holiday special to me so i want to shares ours with all of you. 

-Decorating together as a family. We do this the first of November usually. 

-Baking Christmas treats from scratch. We actually do this a few times a week throughout the month of December. We makes cookies, fudge, chocolate covered pretzels, reindeer chow, fruit cake, and cinnamon rolls. A lot of those we gift to neighbors, teachers, and family members. 

-Watching a Christmas Story, The Grinch, all of the Christmas classics, The Santa Clause, ect and making home made hot chocolate. I also watch The Hallmark channels constantly. 

-Opening presents at Brian’s parents on December 23rd, having the Hudson family Christmas on Christmas Eve night, having my parents person Christmas on Christmas Eve day, having our Christmas on Christmas morning then heading to my grandparents to have the Noblin side Christmas, and on Christmas evening going to Brian’s parents for dinner. The Cagle Christmas is on Christmas Eve night so Brian usually hits up theirs then comes back to my parents for the Hudson christmas. We have big families and a lot of celebrations. We love it. 

-Reading The Real Night Before Christmas (the story of Christ’s birth) and baking cookies on Christmas Eve night. We set out cookies and milk for Santa as well as carrots for the reindeer. Every year i wrap a gift box with pjs, popcorn, and candy for our kids to open on Christmas Eve night. We watch a movie, eat popcorn, and bake cookies in our pjs before bed. 

-Go see Santa at Bass Pro. This year we saw him in Branson twice though so we skipped out on Bass Pro. We’ve decided to replace the Bass Pro tradition with a Silver Dollar City tradition. 

-Go look at Christmas lights. Whether that’s in Tulsa or in Branson. We make sure to take the kids to see a lot of lights. They love it. 

-Adopting children to buy gifts for. Each year we adopt one child per kid that we have. We let our kids pick out the presents for ‘their child’. This year we also adopted 3 seniors from the nursing home. 

-Making a gingerbread house. 

-Elf on the Shelf is a tradition that we’ve done for 4 years now and the kids eat it up in a huge way. It’s the highlight of each morning for them. 

-This year i started a new tradition of homemade handprint ornaments. I love this so much and regret not starting it sooner. It’ll be neat to watch their hands grow then pass these ornaments down to them when they are grown. 

-Going big on stockings! This was hands down my favorite thing that my mom did for us growing up. She actually still does it for all of us including her grand kids and her bonus kids (Brian & Jessy). We’d wake up on Christmas morning with a couch full of stocking stuff that Santa left. I do it for my kids too and always will. 

-Church with all of our family for the Christmas service. 

We love Christmas so much. We love that it brings families together. We love literally everything that comes with it. Most of all we love what it represents. Christ’s birth. The gift that God gave to us. The gift of cleansed sins and the opportunity to spend eternity in heaven. I hope that whether you celebrate the holiday or not, you find yourself spending time with the ones that you love. If you have any traditions please share them. I’m always on the prowl for new ideas. 

Cheap Homemade Handprint Christmas Ornament

Life has been extremely crazy and I’ve done an awful job at posting. I have a list of 20 blog titles/topics written but can’t seem to find the time to write the actual posts out. However, I’m made a promise to myself to get FOUR posts out this week. A post about the Holiday Home Tour, a post about our trip to Branson, a post on our Christmas traditions, and a post on DIY handprint ornaments. This post will be how to make easy homemade ornaments. 

We have a lot of yearly Christmas traditions and I’ll get into details about that in a separate post but this year we added a new tradition. I saw an easy salt dough recipe on Pinterest and thought to myself how neat it would be to do handprint ornaments every year to watch the kids hands grow. The process is simple!

Dough recipe:

2 cups of all purpose flour

1/2 a cup of salt

1/2 a cup of warm water 

1. Mix ingredients in a bowl
2. Knead dough
3. Roll it out
4. Make shapes just as you would for cookies. Three of my kids are older so i couldn’t use a cup for the cutter. I used a bowl. 
5. Press their hands into the dough. Be sure to push fairly well to ensure a good handprint. 
6. Place on a cookie sheet
7. Bake for 2 hours at 200 degrees
8. Let cool
9. Paint to your likings. We did Santa’s and Reindeer. I plan to do something different every year and as the kids get older I’ll let them have total control over what they paint. This year i did most of the painting and let them paint on cardboard for fun while i decorated the ornaments.                       

This was super fun for us and super easy. It was also super cheap. Everyone has flour, water, and salt laying around. I️ already had the paint brushes, paint, and ribbon as well but if I️ hadn’t the total cost of supplies would have been less than $10. I’d love to hear about your DIY holiday ornaments. I’m always down for crafting. 

Essential Oils & Aromatherapy

As i became more and more of a veteran mom I found myself to be really natural based in the way that i parent. The term millennials use is ‘crunchy’ but old timers might refer to it as being a ‘hippy’. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll always love cosmetic products and I’m all about certain modern day luxuries. We do consume junk food and i don’t make my own deodorant (yet) but I am very into a lot of natural and authentic things. I don’t believe in circumcising or vaccinating. I use cloth diapers 95% of the time. I breastfeed. I grow my own garden. We harvest/raise and butcher our own meats. I use modern day medicine as a last resort. I make soaps out of my breast milk. We do detox baths regularly because the air is full of pollution and toxins. I make my own laundry soap and cleaning products. I made my own baby food before i did Baby led weaning. I buy products with the shortest amount of ingredients that don’t include words hard to pronounce. I keep it simple so that I’m more likely to know what we are putting into or onto our bodies. I could go on and on about my ‘crunchy’ ways but this post is specifically about essential oils/aromatherapy. I started getting into aromatherapy when i was pregnant with our oldest. I had all day sickness the entire pregnancy but i avoided taking medication for it. At that time my reasoning was the fear of taking something to hurt the Baby. After struggling for years with infertility i was basically terrified of everything and anything that could cause us to miscarry. I lived in a bubble as much as possible. I used peppermint oils to ease the nausea. It wasn’t until a month before she was born that i found that alcohol swabs also ease it. I swear by both methods and let’s face it when you’ve been pregnant as many times as i have, easing the pukey feeling is a must to survival. As time went on i found myself using oils for just about everything. Young Living is a popular brand and that is were i started my oil journey but I’ve definitely ventured to find brands that i love more. Two of my favorite EO brands are Eden’s Garden and Strixie. Strixie is locally made and Eden’s Garden is a small company as well. I’m all about supporting small businesses so the fact that i love their products so much is a huge plus. You can find Strixie on Etsy and Eden has a website. The shipping is fast and the products last so well. I recently ordered a shelf system to organize my oils and as soon as that’s all set up I’ll do a detailed post about it. I’ll also go through the specifics of our most used oils. My advice to newbies is to start small. Purchase a kit rather than separate oils. The Strixie kit is a wonderful place to start. I love that their products are roll on balms creates from Young Living oils. There’s so many things to cover in the oil world. Everyone’s taste is different and what i love, you may not. If you have an specific questions please message me. I’d be happy to help. I know that it can feel overwhelming at first. 

Please keep in mind that EO’s are not considered safe for babies under 6 months old. There are many reasons for this. From sensitive skin issues to some oils such as peppermint and eucalyptus which contains the consitituent (1.8, cineole) that sometimes acts negatively on the temperature receptors of children’s lungs and causes slowed breathing. Research it for yourself for further education.