Missed 3 Months

We have been very busy lately which has lead to me completely neglecting updating everyone and inundating you all with pictures! I can't believe that Hannah will be four months old next week. Time goes by so fast as I'm sure you have heard every parent say. She is incredible. She learns something new practically every day and is just so much fun to be around. I have went back to work with although was a hard transition for me has been really great once we got over the first day hump. It gives Hannah and Will time to be together without me which has proven to be a great thing so far. Will even has some tricks up his sleeve that have made an appearance. Things like, he has the ability to sooth Hannah when I can't! He's such a good dad.

Ok, enough of me being sentimental. There are lots of new things since the last update however most of them are very small things that new parents are proud of but everyone gets sick of hearing about! Disclaimer: We are new parents and therefore don't care if you are sick of hearing about the small things that every child does.

Hannah had her first Halloween! She dressed up as a banana. We thought the costume was fitting since we have taken to calling her Banana on a regular basis. Will went all out and bought a gorilla costume which he wore on Halloween and I proceeded to wear the following day when we picked my mother up at the airport. Apparently Gorilla's and Banana's make her cry. I might post that picture someday if I can get a copy from her!

I also completed my cloth diaper stash which Hannah or Will could care less about but I'm pretty excited about.

We got our family pictures taken.

We spent almost two whole days shopping for new furniture since ours is pretty torn up. I am borrowing this beautiful ringsling from the local Babywearing International group and little miss Hannah fell asleep while shopping...thank goodness they had tons of rocking chairs!

Hannah got an early christmas present from Grandma and Grumpa.

And lastly, Hannah took on a new gig as Miss Potato Head.

Words of Wisdom:

1. It doesn't matter how normal something is for a baby to do, as a mom you think everything your baby does is extraordinary and must talk about it with anyone who will listen
2. Anxiety does decrease over time, worry does not
3. You will use your child as a silly/cute photo prop at some time (for example, see picture of Miss Hannah Potato Head

Lions and Tigers and Shots...Oh My!

Hannah and her favorite paci. Don't let her fool you with her devilish good looks, she is stinker!

On the way to the doctors!

Hannah has been taking us through the ringer. Since the last post she has been to the doctor five times. No joke. The first time was because she cried for almost two days straight and we couldn't figure out why. Turned out, she was hungry. Long story short, we have started supplementing her with formula. She still get's momma's best at every feeding but then tops it off with good old manufactured milk.

Second appointment was to make sure she was gaining weight since she had stopped gaining during her hungry period.

Third appointment was because she came down with this super strange rash that ended with two of her poor little fingers being swollen and the rest of her body covered in a rash. Of course by the time we went to the doctor it was completely gone and they probably thought I was looney.

Fourth appointment was just this week. Little Hannah had her first cold. We are still weathering that storm but at least it's mostly over and I can sleep a little!

And the last appointment was yesterday for her two month appointment. We got half of her shots since we have decided on an alternative vaccine schedule and I made Will hold her while she got them because I was so anxious that I was sick to my stomach! Hannah handled it like a trooper and only cried briefly before she proceeded to fall asleep...and stay asleep for the next two hours.

Last night I also had my first mommy's night out. I went to a class at Barre3 with my bump club friends and got my booty kicked for the first time since giving birth. Afterward we had wine and snacks and they gave out awesome prizes (none of which I won - boo). It was pretty awesome thought and to quote my dad, "Will is a really great guy". Why you may ask? Well, the man stayed at home and took care of Hannah from 7pm until I got home at 10:30pm. It's true. He always encourages me to take some time for myself and supports his words with his actions. I couldn't ask for a better partner in crime.

I like to dress her in crazy clothes since I can't get away with it. 

The other things that have happened in the past few weeks are: Hannah has discovered her feet, her voice, her hands and her smile even more than before. It's awesome. Now on to pictures!

Go Green! This was Will's day to dress her.

This is Will's custom made Mei Tai. He's pretty excited about sporting it at  Comic Con this year.

We have also started to wear Hannah around a lot. No, it is not spoiling her so don't even let your mind wander there. 

I like the moby for around the house, makes cleaning easier.

Hannah likes to fall asleep in the moby.

We have discovered cloth diapers and Hannah likes them just as much as I do :-)

Now to close us out, here are my words of wisdom as a new mom:

• Your baby will get sick, no matter how much you try to shield them...embrace it
• Shots suck, probably more for mom than baby
• Poopy diapers are still funny (especially when dad ends up sticking his finger in one. Yes, this happened)
• No one can take care of your baby like a mom, but a dad can do a pretty darn good job
• Exercise hurts but wine makes it better!

6 Weeks and Free?!

Marvel's face says it all. He is constantly full of anxiety about what Hannah is doing. So am I but I don't show it off with bug eyes like Marvel does.

Hannah is 6 weeks today! It's unbelievable. We said we were going to keep outings to a minimum before she turned 6 weeks and if we went out that we were going to wear her so that touching was avoided. We have actually adhered to that mostly except for the trip that we took to my work to print off some insurance information that we needed. She was bombarded with oohing and ahhing women...and one man. I did make sure to ask that if anyone was sick to stay away. 

The last couple of weeks has been lots of experimenting. We have been trying really hard to establish a routine. We start at 8:00pm and head upstairs to take a bath or dip in the water. Hannah LOVES her baths. After that we snuggle a little, put her in her pajamas, feed her and then wait for her to wet her diaper. She always wets her diaper about 30-45 minutes after she has fallen asleep for the first time and hates, I repeat, HATES wet diapers so she generally wakes up screaming. Then we change her diaper, feed her a little more and put her to bed where she stays for about 5 hours. That's right, 5 hours! This is a new thing and we are very excited about it. Although Hannah doesn't have a hard time sleeping as evidence of the picture below, she doesn't necessarily like sleeping alone. She actually co-sleeps with us from 4am until we wake up so she doesn't get too lonely.

Hannah has also recently discovered her smile and loves to flaunt it. Since she is a daddy's girl already, Will keeps telling her that her smile is going to get her far in our house since it's so dang irresistible. I have to agree. Enough of me rambling on. I know you are really here to see pictures of our little squishy. 

I have no idea why she looks purple but it's kind of funny because I can call her an oompa loompa.  My my embroidered the towel since we don't want her to feel left out! 

This is what my mother referred to as the Cedar Point shot. Sorry, only  people from Michigan and the surrounding states will get that reference. 

I love when she holds her hands like this. She just looked so peaceful I couldn't resist taking a picture. 

Our 6 week old baby using her powers of persuasion, tongue and all.

And now for my pieces of motherly wisdom and/or commentary:

• As your baby gets older you will get less worried about the pets being around and hair getting into everything because you don't have the energy to care
• It's hard to drive with a crying baby
• It's also hard to sit in the back seat all the time when you don't have to drive - sometimes you just want to be an adult! 
• Find safe places to start breastfeeding in public then move on to more advanced locations, this will make your anxiety much less
• Always schedule appointments on your husbands days off so he can watch the baby while you take care of business...so much easier

Until next time! 

It's No Longer About You!

As I'm sitting here excited that I finally was able to take a shower AND put make up on before Hannah started crying, I completely understand that it's no longer about us. My mom texted us yesterday to tell us happy second anniversary and remind us that it's now all about Hannah. Thanks mom, like we didn't know.

 Since this is my first post since Hannah arrived, I'll give you the down and dirty information that most of you already know. Hannah arrived at 11:44am after 7.5 hours of labor and only about 45 minutes at the hospital. Yes, we almost did have a highway baby despite everyone telling us first babies don't deliver fast. She was born weighing 9lbs 2oz and was 21 inches long. Yes, it was all natural and yes I will spare you those gory details.

Hannah's first day!

It has been a whirlwind since Hannah has been home. Not only do you have to deal with extreme sleep deprivation as everyone knows (but doesn't understand unless you have children), you also have to actually continue living life. Everyday becomes a challenge with new things that you need to reconquer. Things like, taking the dogs out, making food, taking a shower, thinking, and lets not forget dealing with the uber complicated, insurance. Will and I have decided you need a PhD in insurance just to be able to understand what in the heck is going on. Again, I won't bore you with the details.

Now on to the fun stuff. Everyone has been requesting pictures and in an attempt to keep pictures as minimal as possible on facebook, I'm going to try and update the blog with pictures and commentary at least once a month. Understand this is a tall order for a new parent. No, I'm not being sarcastic although I wish I was! So here you are, a few tidbits from Hannah's first month.

This is what I refer to now as squishy face. In fact, I like it so much I have also started calling her squishy. Pray that the nickname doesn't stick for her sake. 

 

We have had a bunch of visitors but one of the most important was my friend Bill. Although, he does make me nervous around babies he was more gentle than Will tends to be an has now earned the title of Uncle Bill, even though he isn't technically blood. 

Since we didn't know that Hannah was a girl prior to arrival, we had a lot of gender neutral clothes. This is her first every day dress that we scored from an ad off craigslist. We are cheap if you didn't already know that.

This was taken last night when we were getting ready for bed. Squishy face and daddy love snuggling right before bedtime and daddy is not only great at diaper changes, but also great at everyday tasks like dressing Hannah in those stupid footed pajamas that are so darned hard to get wiggly babies into.

Some other things that we have learned this month:

• Little babies make big noises, especially from their bottoms
• Type of diaper you use does make a difference - please note when purchasing for friends
• Growth spurts suck - as a mom, you have no identity during these periods, you are simply there to feed and comfort
• Crying because your too tired is to be expected
• Other mom friends are crucial so you can ask questions like, is her poop supposed to be that color?
• Fast moving swings are our savior!

Hope you enjoyed this little trip down recent memory lane and look for more in the near future!

Babies Living Accomodations

The title pretty much says it all. Today, I want to cover the important topic of babies living accommodations both now and in the future. Although it seems weird to write it like that, I'm not sure what else to call this post! I have lots of pictures to share with you so that is why you are getting the treat of two blog posts in two days, a rare item around these parts.

Lets start with current living arrangements, my belly :-) One of my friends is a budding photographer and you have seen her amazing pictures here before. She took our announcement pictures and she graciously agreed to try taking belly pictures even though she has never done it before and she had to witness me being half naked for some of the shoot. Sorry Callie! Here are our favorites from the day:

Seriously Callie, you are awesome.

Next up, future living space otherwise known as the babies room! We finally put the finishing touches on it last night by hanging up our Michigan picture wall and I don't actually want to leave this room once I'm in it. I really only leave the room because there isn't a place to put my feet up yet since we haven't ordered the ottoman that matches the rocker...but we will soon!

And finally, I will leave you with a not so flattering picture of me taken on Friday to commemorate my last day of work until I return from maternity leave! Again, please note, not flattering but this is what people have had to see at work every day :-)

How is your cervix?

It's been a while friends :-). I have a feeling I'm going to be writing that a lot in the upcoming weeks. I hate doing blog posts without pictures because that is really my favorite part so I have been avoiding posting because I temporarily lost my camera. This is kinda a huge deal since I'm about to have a baby!! Luckily, Will recognized that I have baby brain and went looking for the camera in all the right places only to find it exactly where it should have been. Doh!

On another note, it's 6:00am on a Saturday and you might be asking why I'm up. I have no idea. Perhaps I'm tired of getting up every 2 hours to pee, I'm tired of laying in bed looking at the ceiling, the list could go on but I won't pain you with th details. I did make it to my last day at work with was yesterday. I wasn't sure I was going to make it so I was pretty excited/disappointed. The good news is that in the past two weeks I was able to wrap everything up in a nice little bow, watch one of my kiddos get adopted last week and celebrate a case closing yesterday as my very last duty as a child advcacy specialist. It was pretty awesome.

Now it's on to bigger things. My parents are excited although somewhat stressed which has caused some interersting conversations to occur.   My favorite part of each phone call is the very beginning when my mom asks, "how is your cervix". My reply is generally, same as the last time we talked. Mom, I have no idea how my cervix is doing. I can't see my feet do I definitely can't see anything higher! There are all sorts of weird twinges and pains associated with impending labor so I also have no idea what is normal and what is not. It's kinda funny. I'm going into this totally blind and just have to trust that when people says, you will know when it's time that I will actually know when it's time. Sometimes I do envision myself being one of those people on the tv show I didn't know I was pregnant. Something in their exerience leads them to not know when they are in labor!

It's Independance Day

Today, although it was a day off I worked hard at catching up on work given that I'm preparing to leave for three months. I did however take a trip with Will into Austin where we ventured into Whole Paycheck...I mean Whole Foods to pick up an all american dinner for tonight. It's fun to be able to splurge every now and then. We got everything from hotdogs to yummy gummy stars (pretty sure neither are that healthy despite the price tag).

In baby news the baby has been pretty quiet today after bouncing around like a king fu kid yesterday. Oddly enough I've resorted to poking and prodding when I'm not satisfied with the movement which I'm pretty sure makes baby hate me even in-utero. The baby did decide to move more after I ate olives so I'm taking that as a sign that the baby likes olives. I've also decided that the last month of pregnancy is really going to suck. I've started to move pretty slow and am waddling like a duck. Quack quack. Needless to say, I'm ready for my personal Independance day only it's still over a month away!!

Babies are fun but so are iPads

My husband came home today with this huge gift in hand that had happy birthday all over it. Note, my birthday isn't for another 22 days. After careful inquiry I found out that it was indeed my birthday present and I was told that I could open it but that I wasn't allowed to comment in anyway once I opened it. So I carefully proceeded. I got to the bottom only to find an iPad. WHAT!! I now realize I'm not allowed to comment because my first reaction is, this is way too much for a birthday or we have a baby coming what are you doing! Needless to say, William covered his bases so, I couldn't comment. I guess I'll just be excited. Really it's because I have been working from home a lot and he is tired if me hogging the computer. This is just going to get worse once I go back to work after maternity leave so I guess this is the solution to the problem right now. Speaking of maternity leave, we only have six more weeks to go! We had our first extensive visit with Julie last night. Will has been very busy around the house painting and decorating. I'll post pictures soon, maybe even pics taken with the iPad :-) I also had an appointment toady. I'm gaining appropriately, my blood pressure looks good, baby's heartbeat is around 150 and it's moving a lot and I'm measuring about a week ahead of schedule but aim not sure that really means anything. More to come soon. I promise I won't be so neglectful in the coming weeks.

Dream a Little Dream

I woke up this morning from my first baby dream. Now don't get me wrong. I have had dreams where I am pregnant in them but I haven't yet had a dream that alluded to the sex of the baby. Old wives tales will tell you that there is a very high probability that you are carrying the sex that you dream of. Only time will tell!

I was a busy girl this week above and beyond my dreaming capabilities. I started on a baby quilt for a friend of mine which continues to be a work in progress since my feet and back start to hurt after 10 minutes or so of sitting/standing. We also have a peach tree that is blooming with peaches and I can't keep up with it. I made peach cobbler and froze the rest which turned my kitchen into a sticky mess during the process. Yay! More cleaning!

Under Duress

 This whole, two weeks in between posts in just an indication of things to come. So lets start off by setting the record straight, don't expect more than this out of me right now. Work has actually been pretty crazy which has contributed to my lack of blogger motivation. I did attend this interesting and very intense training last week and one of the slides cracked me up because it made me think of everyone in our office as well as every pregnant lady out there. Fitting for our current situation no doubt. After thinking in my head, at least we still have our humor, our trainer wisely informed us that dark humor doesn't count which includes sarcasm. At this point all I can think is, crap, I've lost it all.

On another note, since I haven't posted pictures in a while I decided you deserve a reprieve from my writing efforts. Your welcome. 

This is me at 27 weeks. On memorial day I will be 29 weeks along.
I will do my best to post an updated picture :-)

I have to take a little time to talk about my partner in crime. No, not the baby but my amazing husband. Since about mother's day, Will has really stepped forward and is taking charge of the house. I like it. For the past two weeks he has taken over the grocery shopping and cooking dinners. He has also taken over laundry and partial cleaning of the house. Hooray! I mentioned to him that it appears that he is really enjoying cooking. His response what that he just enjoys eating food he actually likes. Ouch. Apparently my food is too healthy for him sometimes and lacks the adventure he strives for. At this point, I'm not even offended as long as he is cooking.

Speaking of dinners, we have recently started eating at the table because my belly is interfering with being able to eat off the coffee table while watching TV. I know this isn't the most cultured way to eat but hey, it's easy and it's the only way I can get my favorite shows in before bedtime. I like eating at the table though so it's been a good change even though it's pregnancy induced. There are a few other recent changes that have happened in the past few weeks that are notable. One is that some of my maternity clothes no longer fit me. This sounds crazy I know but apparently not all maternity clothes are made equally. For instance, a few of my pants now give me what I refer to as pregnancy muffin top. Pretty much just as bad as regular muffin top, just bigger. My favorite though is that the shirt I bought at a consignment sale that I was so excited about has started to show me busting out at the seams. It made me laugh so of course I took a picture.


Since entering the third trimester (yes, THIRD) I have also noticed my back starting to hurt and my ankles swelling. I guess that just means we are in the home stretch! Notice, slightly swollen ankles in the picture. Last night both Will and I were amazed as how swollen my ankles were after a 13 hour day. It was so amazing, I wasn't even mad.