Week 8 & 9! Oh my! So much to say!! I didn't write a blog post for Week 8 because it was pretty much the same as Week 7. It was smooth sailing and my son was so adjusted to the schedule I didn't want to write a blog that said: same as last week, have a good one!!!

Now, Week 9!! WHAT A WEEK THAT WAS!!! My little one has had a couple of colds, but they were very mild! Last week he got his first very big cold and guys, let me tell you, it was bad. When I say it was bad, it was more like, soul crushing, sleep deprived, snotty fuzzy bundle of AWFUL!

I replace a nursing session usually on Mondays. I picked the bedtime nursing as the one I was going to replace. It was a very tough decision but I picked the bedtime feeding because I enjoy the morning feeding the most. The bedtime feeding was getting to be too much. My son would thrash during the whole feeding, he started biting and it was just so frustrating that it was taking all the magic away from nursing him. I wasn't looking forward to it. Not only that, I loved nursing him to sleep but because he was fuzzing so much while feeding, I had to cut them shorter and he was still awake and upset so I had to rock him for so long to get him to sleep or let him cry too long. Because of all of this, I decided to replace that feeding with a bottle. Monday came and I noticed after nursing my son in the morning that he wanted to nurse again after an hour had passed. I gave him a bottle with a couple of ounces and gave him extra cuddles. This kept happening all day long. By the end of the day I suspected that something was brewing and maybe he was either going through a growth spurt or he was getting ill. I decided to wait and see what was going on so I nursed him that night and put him to bed. My instinct was right!! After 30 minutes, he woke up crying. We settled him and 30 mins later he woke up crying again. He was so stuffy and he just couldn't breathe. That was waking him up. To make the story short, he cried all night. He finally went to bed at 3 am and woke up at 6. The rest of the week was the same. No sleep, fuzzy, snotty baby. It was so hard to see him like this and I just kept nursing him in the morning and in the afternoon the rest of the week so he could get some antibodies from me.

Now, Sunday I finally was able to replace the last feeding for a bottle and it went fine. I didn't feel engorged this morning so hopefully this week will go smoothly. I have to say, I love nursing my son in the morning!!!! My husband usually picks him up around 6 am and brings him to our bed. I lay with my son and nurse him while cuddling. I let him nurse for as long as he wants and he always falls asleep cuddling with me. We stay like this until 9 am when we wake up and get ready for our day. It is the most special time of the day, and the one I love the most. I have to admit, I am not sure if I want to give that one up just yet. Maybe I will take longer to stop nursing just so I can enjoy the extra cuddles I get from my baby boy!!!! I will update you next week!!!

Hugs,
Frances

Hello my lovelies! It's been a hot second since I reviewed a makeup product, but here I am. I had my eye on the Tartelette 2 in Bloom Amazonian Clay Palette for a while. My amazing dad and stepmom, who know me quite well, gave it to me as a birthday gift last week! Yay parents! I was so excited about this eye palette. I already own the Tartelette Amazonian Clay Matte Palette and I absolutely love it. It was my hands down favorite eye makeup palette, until Tartelette 2 in Bloom! Oh my GOD, this palette is to die for!

The first thing I have to say, the pigmentation of these eyeshadows is amazing! They deposit color perfectly and the color does not fade away during the day. They blend very easily and they never get chalky or patchy. Lately I had been preferring matte eyeshadows, since I think they compliment my skin better but Tartelette in Bloom changed my mind. The color Firecraker is so incredibly beautiful! It can be used as an all over the lid color and nothing else and you would still look like you spent the whole day doing your makeup. It is so pigmented and so sparkly and beautiful I might cry! The palette itself has a perfect combination of true matte colors, satin colors and shimmers. It is quite nude but you can achieve some pretty dramatic looks with it. You get 12 shades in total, some neutral, some warms and some cool tones.

My top favorite shadows of this palette are Firecraker, which is a bronze cooper. Like I said it is my favorite shadow of all of these. I also love Charmer, which is the perfect eyebrow highlighting shade. Another beautiful color is Rebel, which is a chestnut brown, and it is the perfect shade for the crease. Lastly I love Leader, which is a true aubergine color and I have been using this color as a liner and for the outer corner of my eye.

Like I said before, this is by far my favorite eyeshadow palette of all time! I have been using it nonstop since I got it last week!

Swatches. First two colors are Rebel and Leader. I ran out of space so I had to put them out of order!

This is definitely a must have if you are looking for a neutral palette that offers you shimmers and matte shadows. You can find it at Ulta and it retails for $45.00. I hope you find this review useful, and until next time, stay gorgeous!

When I found out I was pregnant I was so excited to start planning and buying things for my baby. I didn't have too many friends that had babies, but I had a handful that did. Although they were very helpful on pointing out a bunch of things I needed, I feel like I missed a bunch of things that I didn't get that looking back on it now, would have saved me a lot of work, pain or valuable and needed zzzz's.

Here I have gathered a list of the 5 things I wish I had gotten for when my son was born:

Co-Sleeper (Arms Reach Mini Arc Co Sleeper)

Photo Credit: Arms Reach Website

When we found out we were expecting a very good friend of mine lend us a bassinet to use for our son. He ended up being a very light sleeper and it was kind of hard to put him down in the bassinet without waking him up. With a co sleeper I would have been able to just slide him there and it would have been so much easier to nurse him while laying down. This is the one I liked the best and if we have another baby it will be the one I will purchase

This would have saved us so much pain and it would have helped us to sleep so much more. We had a summer baby, so we had our A/C on when we brought him home. Some nights he would sleep well and some nights he would wake up every 30 minutes. There was no visible pattern to his wakings. At 4 months we moved our son to his own bedroom and our son started sleeping through the night. Sometimes he would wake up at 4 am to nurse but it was heaven. We went to Puerto Rico to visit my family and he kept sleeping wonderfully. After we came back home it all went to hell. He started waking up every 2 hours and sometimes every hour. We were so sleep deprived it was terrible. Then my husband bought this room thermometer. By then it was winter and we had our heater on. He bought the thermometer because our house would get really cold on the first floor but it would be a totally different temperature on the third floor where our son slept. So we started monitoring the temperature and noticed that every time the heater would kick in, he would wake up. That's when it all made sense. Our son loved to sleep in a very, VERY cold room. He slept through the night when it was between 65-67 degrees. I wish we had this from the beginning. We would have slept a whole lot more!

Photo credit Amazon.com

Our house has 3 stories. The first floor is our living area, second floor is our master suite and the third floor is the rest of the bedrooms and bathrooms. The first couple of months we had our son on the "living room" of our master suite. It was handy to have him there, since we didn't want to go up and down the stairs. I refused to buy a changing table in the beginning because I thought I didn't need it. A friend of mine told me that she never used hers and that it was a waste of money, so I listened to her. I regretted not having one and ended up buying one a week after my son was born. They are absolutely necessary. It is nice to not have to bend on the floor or put your baby with a poopy diaper on your bed, WHERE YOU SLEEP. I wish we would have bought three though, one for every floor on our house. This is the changing table we bought and I love it!

Nose Frida

Photo Credit Bing Images

Ok, lets be honest. The concept of this product is gross as hell! I didn't even put it on my registry, even though it was recommended by every single mom I knew. At my baby shower, a very experienced mom gave it to me and said to trust her when she said it was the best nasal aspirator out there. For months I didn't want to use it... it was so gross in my opinion, but after struggling with a bulb aspirator with my son for months (his nose is always runny) I decided to give it a try! Oh my gosh, what a game changer! This is the best product out there, hands down!

Crib Soother (Baby Einstein Sea Dreams Soother)

When we transitioned our baby to his crib he would cry and cry all night. As a parent, you do not want to see your child cry. We had to do the Cry It Out method, which is very heartbreaking. We tried every other way to get our son to sleep and nothing worked. So, we decided to give it a try. I know that the "CIO" method is very controversial and I understand it is not for everyone, but for us, we were at the end of our rope. Anyways, our son cried so much the first night, we did some research on how to soothe him and stumbled across an article that mentioned this, so we immediately bought it. It helped so much! Our son still cried a bit but it was so much less. He would focus on the soother and drift to sleep pretty quickly. We took this with us to Puerto Rico to visit my parents and it worked like a charm. I wish I would have bought it earlier.


If we decide to have another baby these are a few of the things that really made a difference with us. There are a whole lot of things you should have handy, but I feel nobody talked about these, when in my opinion they should!

Clear Improvement Active Charcoal Mask

Fruits

Vegetables

Grains

Cooking instructions:

Apple Baby Food and Pear Baby Food

Apple and Pear Baby Food (Apples left, pears right)

Avocado Baby Food & Banana Baby Food

Avocado baby food

Green Bean Baby Food

Butternut Squash Baby Food

Sweet Potato Baby Food

This was a giant cupcake I made for my son's baptism. The frosting was salted caramel buttercream. It was so delicious!

Obviously the center needed to be blue! And the flowers I made with fondant a couple days earlier.