My baby is sick :(

We woke up to our poor baby girl crying last night and went in to find her bed drenched with vomit :( It was one of the saddest things ever!! I cried over the thought that she could have choked, but luckily she was fine other than being sick. We cleaned her up as much as we could, she threw up a couple more times, I finally got her back to sleep in bed next to me so I could make sure if she was sick again that she would not choke. She woke early this morning and I was sure she was starving, so I nursed her just on one side. She was acting like her normal, cheerful self- babbling, smiling, cooing, etc. but within a few minutes of eating, all contents of her stomach covered our dresser ("projectile" is an accurate description of this event). She still got up and acted pretty cheerful, but after a bath and tiny one-minute nursing sessions to try and keep her hydrated, we went to the doctor.

(bad phone picture, but she was being so cute despite being sick!)
Of course nothing terrible is wrong- she has some kind of stomach bug, which will hopefully pass quickly... I knew this but had to be sure. Luckily she never had a fever, and still hasn't gotten sick again since this morning, but I still feel so sad for her!! I hope this is not something we have to deal with again any time soon. For now, I'm trying to keep her comfy as she sleeps (almost all day now).

Pictures!!

Our adventurous crawler:Fun bath time!
Thanksgiving with her favorite blanket and the card "she" made us at daycare... I've always loved hand-tracing turkeys :)
I realized I never posted a halloween pic! This was taken during the daycare H.ween parade.

First Christmas lights with her buddy

and that's enough for now!

Still here!

I'm not gone!

I can't believe how bad I've gotten about updating this blog :(

I really do want to keep a record of everything happening with our baby's first months, but they are flying by!! I can't believe she is already almost 8 months old. She definitely acts older than her age- she doesn't even seem like a baby anymore. As much as I loved my tiny baby, she is so much more fun to watch and play with now! Nobody can believe how much personality she has, and how happy she is (almost) all the time. She has the best expressions- it is hilarious to just watch her. She is such an adventurous little girl- she crawls so fast and goes room to room looking for things to explore. She wants to grab and feel everything she sees, and she flips things over and back and forth between her hands, and looks at every little part.

Standing...almost on her own already!?

When she isn't exploring, our baby is doing everything she can to learn to walk!! She spends a lot of time every day standing, using anything and everything in her reach. She doesn't need any assistance getting up or supporting herself, but she still hasn't mastered balance. She likes to stand against walls (especially of her pack-n-play or crib) and practice letting go. It's amazing watching her get her balance, and then slowly pull her hand back. Sometimes it takes a few attempts, she'll put her hand back on the wall after a second to regain her balance, and sometimes she'll stand with just a finger supporting her for a while, and then she lets go and stands there on her own! It is terrifying but so much fun to watch her face look so excited and proud. She is standing longer and longer each time. Luckily she doesn't do this much outside of the crib and pack-and-play, unless we are right there and she knows we'll catch her. She is also very good at falling on her behind and avoiding head bumps. A while back I went to a parent-teacher conference at her daycare, and they told me they expect her to be walking by Christmas. Back then I thought they were crazy, but now I'm seeing that it is actually a possibility. I don't think we are ready for that!!

Talking!! (well, babbling...)

Baby Beaver is doing pretty well in other areas as well. We finally have the joy of listening to her babble... and babble and babble and babble on and on. I was so anxious for her to start practicing consonants and was so excited to hear her first "dada" sounds (no "mama" yet), but now it seems I never have to go more than a few minutes! I love imagining what she is saying and having conversations with her. Mr. Beaver loves hearing her yelling for him ;). It is fun!

Eating... not being fed

The only skills our baby doesn't seem to be in any rush to master are eating skills... or at least that's what we thought. The first time we offered food (rice cereal), she was excited, eagerly swallowing spoonfuls and even grabbing the spoon and feeding herself a bite! After that, however, she did not have much interest, and pretty much refused to eat anything we tried to feed her (and we tried a lot- every single day). After more than a month of this, our doctor referred us to a food specialist- but I thought this was a little ridiculous (and we never went). She had eaten before, she has no issue with gaining weight, and she is interested in our food, just not in being fed baby food. So I took another approach... we started giving her table food to munch on, which I guess is called "baby led weaning".

I did not do much research into baby led weaning, but I read enough to feel confident that it is safe to give our baby healthy food without pureeing it, as long as we are right there carefully watching. She loves it! We haven't been at it for long, but so far she seems to really enjoy large slices of yellow carrot, avocado slice (with peel still on- otherwise she has no chance holding it), baked sweet-potato slices and sticks, chunky mashed butternut squash or slices of it, and her two absolute favorites- turkey and broccoli. She LOVED the turkey we deep fried for Thanksgiving... we give her a large piece, and she just holds it and sucks on it, kinda chewing small pieces of. With the broccoli, the floret part goes in her mouth and comes out missing all of the little bud pieces! It is fun to watch her figure out how to eat, and I really love sitting together having family dinner, with her eating some of the same foods we have and feeding herself.

Favorite things!

Our daughter has many favorite things, but just to mention a few for my own sake of remembering down the road...

Comfort item: a hand-made blanket. A friend of my mom had it made for our baby shower, so it is a pretty tan and brown pattern to be gender neutral. It's small -- a great size for cuddling with while we rock her to sleep or in the crib.

Toy: our Imaginarium Puzzle cube is played with the most- but this is like 6+ toys in one... and she can use it to stand up and scoot around on her feet. To narrow it down, the magnetic shapes on this toy are her favorite. She loves pulling them off and chewing them, banging them on stuff, and just crawling around holding them.

Play activity: crawling around outside and playing with grass and leaves. Unfortunately it is now waaay too cold for this, so we're going to have to find a fun alternative.

Thing we do: she LOVES when we count to three when doing anything... picking her up, bouncing her in the air, clipping her nails... it doesn't matter!

Routine activity: bath time is by far a regular, favorite part of the day. We use it to get some energy out before bedtime, and it works! She is great in the tub. She usually just sits and scoots around that way, but maybe once each night she crawls around a little bit. Unfortunately she has started standing in the tub, which we are working on stopping. We give her one warning ("No standing in the tub, or bath time will be over") and turn her a different direction with a toy distraction, but typically bath time ends after about 15 min because we can't keep her from standing any more.

Book: This is a toss-up... she loves Dr. Seuss's A B Cs, but at bed time it's between one of the "Goodnight" books... either Goodnight Moon or Goodnight San Fransisco. My favorite is Guess How Much I Love You :)

Food: I'm gonna say Turkey.

Song: Anything we sing! She seems to like when I change words to songs to include her name, or make up songs about her.

I'm sure there are many other things that I could think of favorites for... she is such a happy baby she seems to love everything!

And finally, to make this post just a little bit longer, the survey I haven't done in so long:

Age: 34 weeks now!

Stats/Size: She's wearing 6-9 month clothes, 9 month clothes, 6-12 month clothes, and even some 12-month pants and 9-12 month clothes. Not sure about weight/length, but I'd guess around 18.5 lbs?

Sleep: Still waking once a night, sometimes twice. Naps are harder to begin, but once she's asleep she's out for a good amount of time... usually closer to two hours than one! She sometimes even hangs out playing in the crib for a while after waking and I don't even notice she's up :)

Eat: I went into a lot of detail above, that about covers it.

Getting Around: Also see above!

New People: She already met Santa, twice! Once when we went to get pictures with him for our Christmas card, and then another when he just happened to be out while we were shopping.

Best moment this week: Hmm... well since I haven't done this in a while, I'd say a few weeks ago it was hearing Dada... I know she isn't actually referring to Mr. Beaver but it's still great to hear. Last week it was Riley's first Thanksgiving and then getting our Christmas tree up and decorated (we do it the day after Thanksgiving). This past week, I guess seeing Santa and the huge smiles that came with it.

Worst moment this week: .Thursday night, we had a two-hour wakeup (3-5) when I had to get up at 6 for work :( Not fun!

What I miss: sleeping in! Every now and then drinking alcohol... especially when my mother-in-law visits ;)

What I am looking forward to: My girls-weekend in less than a week!! They are awesome and coming here so I don't have to leave or travel with the baby alone. It is always a great time! Hopefully we don't get a blizzard this time. Oh, and related to this, seeing my friend for the first time since she has gotten pregnant! Soon our baby will have a new friend!

Weekly Wisdom: hmm... I guess maybe to be open-minded about things like eating. I never really considered skipping baby food, but it seems like that might make the most sense for our situation.

Stay tuned for pictures! I think this post is long enough on it's own :)

Sorry for the lack of posts...

Hopefully I'll get some time to write an update this weekend. I haven't even uploaded pictures from my camera in weeks... Here's a couple from my phone for the time being! Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Quick update

Two exciting things happened right before our trip to FL this weekend...

Baby's first tooth!! (this picture was taken yesterday, the second one showed up on our trip, which made for a sleepless couple of nights!)

and hands-and-knees crawling!! Her school thinks I'm crazy to be so excited, since she's really been crawling for a while, but it seems like such a big deal seeing her moving like this! I had a whole plan of not telling our families, so that when they saw her they would think they were seeing it for the first time... but nobody saw it because they refused to put her down. Their loss! J/K.



Pictures from her great-grandpa's surprise party, first halloween, etc. to come!

Six+ Months, eating, teething, sitting, crawling, and more!

Noooooo! I finally found some time to come back and post an update, and after writing so much about everything going on with our baby girl, I lost the post while trying to add pictures :( This is the kind of month I've been having, so I'm not really surprised... for example, I don't have a picture to post of our baby's first solids, because it is on my laptop, which crashed the night before needing it for work! Work is probably the reason it feels like everything has been so hard lately- I'm up at 5:30 every morning, and should leave the house each day by 6:45 to get to daycare by 7... I'm always late, but still early enough that I am exhausted! That along with waking up 2+ times a night with our baby girl, and my brain is definitely not functioning very well.

Anyway, I don't have much time to redo the post, so a quick recap- more time is being spent on hands-and-knees, but crawling is still army-style for the most part. However, the belly is coming off of the ground mid-stride, so I don't think it will be long before hands-and-knees crawling! Our baby sits like a statue now- she is so steady and has great control. It is making things so much easier- especially bath time! Solid foods are going okay so far, but we've only done rice cereal, oatmeal, and avocado. Will do more of an update another day. Teeth are visible, but I don't think they've broken skin yet. It's hard to get a good look- we have to settle with what we can see during laughs. Definitely feels pretty bumpy and sharp like teeth though!

That's all the time I've got right now, but I do have some pics from my phone until I can (hopefully) get my old laptop running again!

Preferred drinking method (over sippy-cup...I've got to get a baby cup with a straw now!)

Grocery store* after my mom went on a baby clothes shopping spree and played dress up:
(I have a shopping cart cover- my mom didn't have it... she promised she wiped off the cart with a disinfecting wipe. At least our baby will have a strong immune system ;))

Trouble- time to lower the crib mattress!!

(and no worries- the stuff you see between the crib slats is farther away than it appears here- she cannot reach anything she could pull into the crib)


And a preview from baby's 6-month photos:

Ahhh time...

It seems to be going by so fast! I need to do updates, but just thought I'd do a quick post for now. Our baby is becoming more and more amazing every day... she is getting so big and doing so much! She has been sitting unassisted (real sitting- no tripod-ing!) for a couple of weeks now, and she is army-crawling so fast! She gets up on her hands and knees but has only moved a tiny bit backward so far, no forward crawling yet. She is wearing 6-9 month and just 9 month clothes now and they fit her well! She is down to one nighttime feeding, but usually wakes a second time and just needs a little back-patting to go back to sleep. This is a HUGE improvement, and it's been going on a week today so hopefully it keeps up (and the second waking fades out). She is teething but no teeth showing yet... we see little white spots now and then but then they seem to fade. She goes crazy gnawing everything - especially cheek bones and chins, which is weird and not fun. For some reason she isn't a huge fan of teething toys... There is lots of drooling, a little fussiness, and lots of runny noses, but she's a trooper. I can't believe she will be 6 months old on Monday, and after her 6 month appointment we will be starting to feed her solid food! She is so ready, and hopefully by then I will be too :) I just still can't believe how fast these weeks/months are going by.
Okay that was a pretty thorough update! Some pictures to make up for lack of posting:
(I wish I was a better photographer and could capture how cute she is in person!)

Age: 24 weeks... that seems so old!

Stats/Size: daycare thinks she grew the week that she was gone :)

Sleep: See last post. Naps are going great though!

Eat: Eating very well still! I think baby is SO ready to start trying some real food... she is always trying to steal our food and pretends she is eating when we eat in front of her :) It is very cute.

Getting Around: closer and closer to crawling... any day now I'm sure. I'll have to get a video soon...

New People: Met some new babies, stayed alone with her babysitter for the first time!

Best moment this week: Getting to go to a Miami game and have some fun :) It was the first time baby stayed with a sitter, and she did so well! I was so surprised that it wasn't nearly as difficult as I expected it to be.

Worst moment this week: We had a bad scream-fest while driving in traffic one day this week- it was not fun!! Made me feel horrible...

What I miss: sleeping in!

What I am looking forward to: We are taking baby to a hockey game tonight! She has noise-canceling headphones, so we're hoping those work to keep her comfy.

Weekly Wisdom: Remember babies' ears are sensitive...I didn't really think about it until I realized I was bothered by loud music at an art show last week :( I'm sure she was fine because it was only a few minutes before I started covering her ears, and we didn't stay long. I still felt bad, though!

Last week's update

Oops, a little late!!

Age: 23 weeks

Stats/Size: She seems bigger, but no official update on size

Sleep: Eh, naps are good, night time is fine most nights but some nights I'm up two or three times.

Eat: still eating on-demand. She wouldn't take a bottle with the babysitter (and still never at home) but does fine at daycare.

Getting Around: she is getting SO close to crawling...up on her hands and knees all the time, even at night if she wakes up (which makes it hard for her to fall back to sleep!), but she still does more of an army crawl and/or pushes along with her legs.

New People: Baby met SO many new people at a family wedding this past weekend! Everyone loved her and she was so amazing with the hectic schedule and traveling. She also met several of her uncle's college roommates and friends, one of my college roommates and friends, and her new babysitter.

Best moment this week: Seeing how in love my brother was the moment he picked his niece up for the first time. I was not expecting him to fall for her so fast! We need to find a way to see family more often...

Worst moment this week: Ugh- the whole night before travelling... I went to bed at about 10, baby woke up at 11:30, 1:30, 3:30, 4, and then we had to get up at 4:30 to get ready and leave for the airport for our early morning flight. And we had two short flights with a connection, so I did not get any sleep... Although I think even worse than that was the one time that baby woke up the next night. We were staying with my college friend, and she and her husband had to leave for work at 6:30. Baby woke up SCREAMING at 4 am and did not calm down for a good half hour. She never screams at night- she hardly even cries... it was not fun.

What I miss: Being able to sleep on plane rides :)

What I am looking forward to: Last week I was looking forward to the Miami Hurricanes playing here! That is passed now, it was Thursday night and we won!

Weekly Wisdom: Make a checklist when you travel... it is a lot easier to forget stuff when you have a baby and all the extra stuff that comes with her. We left Mr. B's garment bag at home for our trip to Boston, which had his suit for the wedding and baby's dress she was going to wear!

Back in town!

I missed my post this weekend... we were out of town at Baby's first wedding :) She did great- no crying and mostly happy the whole time. She was so good, we stayed for the entire thing- from 2:30 until after 10pm! I was too exhausted to go to the after-party, but she had a couple of nice naps and probably would've been fine for that too if we'd wanted to go! Anyway- I'll have to catch up on the post this week, but for now here's a couple of picture from the weekend:

First wedding... she slept through the ceremony but partied it up at the reception

Sight-seeing in Boston

5 Months!

Age: 22 weeks... my baby is already 5 months and 1 day old!

Stats/Size: still unchanged I think... size 3 sleep diapers fit pretty well and haven't leaked (yet- fingers crossed I am not jinxing myself!)

Sleep: Nighttime sleep still not good. Although I shouldn't complain right now- last night I was up at 3:45 and then 6:45... much better than the now usual 2am, 4am, 6am schedule or the 12am, 3am, 6am schedule, between which she alternates. Naps are going well though- so that is a huge plus! And I'm okay with sleep only because Mr. Beaver gets up at 6+ with baby and lets me stay in bed for as long as I can sleep!

Eat: eating often, still on-demand. She's healthy and gaining weight- that's all I care about. She polished of a 6 oz bottle at daycare, and has been only eating one bottle there, so I feel like that's a move in the right direction for eating less often!

Getting Around: still the same, nothing new and exciting to report!

New People: Another baby or two started the daycare, and there is a new teacher in the infant room... nobody else new this week. Next week is the big week of new people!

Best moment this week: Hearing everyone at my football draft tell me how great baby deals with being dragged to all of my stuff :) She seems to do so well when we are out and about, I've started going to work on non-daycare days. I don't get much done at all, and really spend the majority of the day on walks or on a blanket at the park, but it's a lot easier to keep baby happy and she seems to love all of the action going on!

Worst moment this week: Miami losing to OSU last night :) Mr. Beaver really needs to get his language under control during football games too... but really I think it was the exhaustion felt one night after the third feeding... I remember being in tears as I tried to get back to sleep while stressing about how much work I had to get done that day.

What I miss: I feel like a pathetic lush saying this, but I am a little sad I won't be able to drink at a huge family wedding weekend next week. Baby does not take a bottle outside of daycare (we've been trying...) so I'm not going to risk assuming that we can give her a bottle at the wedding and it not working. I know it's not really a big deal, but my siblings and cousins are all so excited about the many of hours partying ahead, so it's hard to feel like I can't really participate!

What I am looking forward to: The family wedding this weekend! Baby is finally meeting the last of her Uncles, and will get to meet TONS of my cousins, aunts, uncles, second cousins, etc. I know everyone is so excited to get to meet her, and I know we are going to have so much fun!

Weekly Wisdom: Hmm... I've got nothing... Oh- if you want a free board book or shirt for your baby, sign him or her up to participate in a research study! More below...

Infant Research (decided to write a short blurb so you don't think I'm subjecting my baby to some kind of torture!):
Baby did her first one this week and although I was supposed to not pay attention to what was going on, I did, and I'm familiar with the research and the methodology and I think she did awesome :)
It was a language learning study, so for about 3 minutes she listened to a fake language being played out loud, with syllables occurring together for different proportions of the total time they were played. "Words" were syllables paired together for 70% of the time (I'm making up that #-I don't know the exact proportions), where the baby should learn that hearing the first of these syllables predicts what comes next. It's a mechanism believed to be responsible for language acquisition, called statistical learning. Have I lost you yet? :) Baby then hears "words" or "non-words" (where the first syllable does not indicated which syllables will follow), and the researcher codes her attention to each of these stimuli using looking length. So when I say I think my baby did awesome, I mean that I observed obvious, distinct differences in her attention to the stimuli which I assume was due to hearing either "words" or "non-words", which indicates that she did learn that tiny bit of the fake language in only 3 minutes of exposure!

Anyway, there are tons of different studies with infants that use this methodology or other non-invasive, non-harmful techniques! It was fun to participate and I'm hoping there are more studies to participate in in the future. I still enjoy my own area of research and am not really tempted to switch, but it's still fun to be a part of on the participant side, and I plan to put any resulting publications from this study in Baby's baby-book :)

Some pictures from last weekend:

Meeting Curious George:

Visiting Mr. Roger's neighborhood! (should've visited a little earlier, before she passed out)

Happy labor day weekend!

Age: 21 weeks tomorrow...almost five months old already

Stats/Size: Baby weighed 16 lbs yesterday on our scale at home!! I've started washing the 6 mo and 6-9 month clothing and it actually fits her pretty well.We have started using overnight diapers, and they are size 3 and fitting well enough. She's growing so fast!

Sleep: We've transitioned to the crib! She has slept in it three nights now, and it doesn't seem like she notices the difference. Naps are still going extremely well, and Baby seems to have changed her bedtime on her own now, she has fallen asleep between 7 and 7:30 the past three nights, but only stayed asleep two of those nights. Last night she kept waking up and I would soothe her back to sleep, and she'd be up again 5 minutes later. After doing this about 8 times, we just let her get up. This was around 8:30, and she ended up going back to sleep around 10:30. I'm working on adjusting her nursing schedule to work with this new sleep schedule... she has been waking up twice to eat instead of once now. It's not bad- about 15 minutes of her chugging down milk in her sleep and then we're both back to bed.

Eat: eating well, still on-demand. She's healthy and gaining weight- that's all I care about.

Getting Around: Mr. Beaver is convinced that she is crawling at daycare and they keep hinting to me to see if she has done it at home... but I think if she could do it there, she would do it here. She is able to move pretty well in her belly-ish crawl (reverse army crawl?), so I think there is not much motivation to work on hand-and-knees crawling.

New People: The daycare expanded the infant room, so Baby B has a few new friends there! She used to be the only girl on Tues/Thurs, but now there are a couple more. I think there are still only 6 babies max though, so I feel comfortable with the expansion :)

Best moment this week: Watching Mr. Beaver with Baby... he seems to spend more and more time playing with her the more she is able to interact with him and her toys. I love seeing it, they both seem so happy!

Worst moment this week: Hmmm... maybe accepting that it really doesn't seem like a good idea to bring Baby to a night-time, college football game, and starting to think about a babysitter :( I don't know how I'm going to leave her at night, for so many hours, for the first time... I still only really leave her when I have to for work or for a 5 min trip to the store.

What I miss: Being able to enjoy my coffee on weekend mornings, but I get to enjoy Baby's smile instead, so it's okay if my coffee gets a little cold while I am busy with her.

What I am looking forward to: Baby B is participating in her first study with the Infant Cognition lab. I'm hoping it will be something fun and interesting :)

Weekly Wisdom: The $1 board books in target's "value section" are a great chew-toy, but don't get upset when the pages then stick together.

Milestones: Sleeping in her own room at night!

I've been trying to upload a pic for a while now and am giving up- I'll post it later. I'm off to microwave my coffee from this morning :)

Update- picture working now :)

Sleep update

We tried changing Baby B's bedtime to be earlier. I don't know why I thought we needed to do this... the result was an extra bit of napping (at night, leading up to falling asleep at her normal bedtime), and her waking up for the day between 4:30-5:30 in the morning. This is definitely not what I was hoping would happen.

We decided to go back to letting Baby fall asleep for the night on her own schedule, but kept the bedtime routine (bath, lotion, pajamas, books) and just started it a little later. She has been falling asleep around 9, 9:30 at the latest, but a couple of times closer to 8 (!) and once at 10, and sleeping much better. She usually stays asleep -- besides waking up to eat around 3:15 -- until a reasonable morning hour (6:30-7, I'd prefer later but oh well).

Now I am working on creating a regular morning nap so that I have some time in the morning to get some house work and work-work done, and so that Baby can catch up on sleep if needed. This has been successful so far, and has really helped me to plan out the rest of the day! Depending on how early she gets up, sometimes there is a short nap around 9, but the big nap comes at about 11:30, and usually lasts at least two hours! She usually gets another decent nap in the afternoon, around 4:30, and then sometimes a short one around 7 but we try to keep her from that one so she'll go to bed earlier.

I think it's a bit hard for her to adjust to a schedule because she is at daycare Tues/Thurs, so it's a little inconsistent. She still takes a nap at 11:30 at daycare, but only stays asleep for about half an hour, and then takes another nap not long after, and another in the afternoon. They still comment every day about how short her naps are, but I think she just has a tough time sleeping when there is so much going on that she does not want to miss!

I don't have a cute sleep picture to post, so I'll leave you with an unrelated but still cute picture!

20 Weeks!

Age: 20 weeks tomorrow...only 2 weeks shy of 5 months!

Stats/Size: same as last week, as far as I know

Sleep: I need to write an update on our bedtime routine, but things are getting a little bit better (not with the routine I described). A big success to me is that we have started regular morning naps, usually around 11am, and I have figured out how to help Baby catch up on some sleep here- they have been consistently long, between 1-2.5 hours! It is great to know that I have a stretch of time each morning to do some work, and I feel better knowing that baby is getting this additional sleep.

Eat: eating well, still on-demand and no real schedule. She's healthy and gaining weight- that's all I care about.

Getting Around: Still trying to crawl but I think her arms are just too weak! She seems to have gotten bored of trying so often, which is nice because we don't have to deal with all of her frustration :)

New People: Baby B visited her CMU friends and had a couple of playdates, but nobody new this week.

Best moment this week: laughs at herself in the mirror. It seems easier and easier to get her to laugh!

Worst moment this week: Mr. Beaver trying to help with a night wake-up and waking her up completely... which means an hour of soothing and shushing to get her back to sleep instead of the normal 5-10 min it takes me :(. Oh and having to dump milk I forgot about and left out.

What I miss: Golfing on weekends when the weather is perfect!

What I am looking forward to: Baby gets to watch her first college football game!! And she will meet her uncle and lots of other family at a wedding in less than three weeks.

Weekly Wisdom: All babies are different... just because others go to bed at the same time every night doesn't mean that mine can or will do that. She is such a happy baby- I have to remind myself that that is what is important and as long as she is not cranky or fussy, we are probably doing things the right way for her!

Milestones: Going down for her morning nap without nursing or much work, and staying asleep for a decent amount of time!

Here's the pictures I forgot last week:

Bedtime routine

I think I mentioned in my last post that sleep has been a concern of mine lately. More like lack of sleep- for both me and my baby, but she is the one I am concerned about. However, over the past couple of days she has been starting to take longer naps on her own, and even fall asleep earlier than normal at night, so I think she also may have realized she needs more sleep! I decided to take advantage of the new bedtime tonight and try to start a bedtime routine.

Our current routine: 9:30ish see signs of hunger, change baby into pajamas, turn off lights, nurse to sleep. When I think bedtime routine, though, I think of bath, massage, book, etc. We've tried this before, and both times it was very, very unsuccessful. The couple of times we started trying a bedtime routine at 8pm, and, no matter what we tried, Baby ended up going to sleep after 10 pm and after a stressful couple of hours for us. Since she has fallen asleep on her own relatively early the past couple of nights, however, we tried the whole bedtime routine again.

If you don't want the many details, here's the basic routine (and skip the next paragraph): 7pm-bath; 7:30 changing table time; 7:35 massage with lotion, pajamas, books; 7:40ish nurse to sleep.

At 7 pm tonight, we started our routine with a bath using some bedtime stuff in the water. We don't usually do baths- we typically grab baby at the end of our shower and bring her in for a quick shower of her own. This takes about 2 minutes and she doesn't mind it at all, so it's worked well for us. The past bedtime bath attempts were done in the kitchen sink and she screamed... this time we used the tub, and she LOVED it! I think she would've stayed in there for an hour or more if we'd let her. She played in the bath for about 30 minutes, splashing, kicking, and smiling a ton. After that we went in her room and cleaned her earrings, put on a fresh diaper, and played for a few minutes on the changing table- her favorite place in the world. Next was massage time in our bed, which was quick because she is really wiggly and refuses to stay on her back. After putting on pajamas, we read half of The Giving Tree before she got bored, her my colors/mis colores book (one of her favorites), and then Mr. B read Goodnight Moon while I nursed her lying down. She was done eating and fast asleep by 8!

I was very happy thinking we were successful, however when Mr. B moved baby to the pnp in our room where she sleeps, she woke up. After about 10 min trying to get her back to sleep, I nursed her again and put her in the pnp myself. 10 minutes after that she woke up again. This time it took about 15 minutes to get her back to sleep using patting and shushing, and she seems to be sleeping deeply now!

I think our routine was successful... we'll see how it works tomorrow. Today was a good nap day too, so I think that helped. Baby woke up for the day at around 7:30, napped from 11:30-1:30(!!!), and then napped again from 4:45-5:15. Two and a half hours of naps is a lot for her, so I am happy about that! I'm anxious to see how tonight goes, and how naps go tomorrow and whether or not she will do so well with the new routine tomorrow night!

4 Month 1 Week appointment!

Baby Beaver is getting so big! We had her 4 month appointment a little late due to our FL trip, so maybe she gained a little extra in that time ;) Her weight is now 15 lb 4 oz, and her length is 25.5 inches! Both put her between 75-90th percentile, with her length somewhere in the mid 80s and weight in the upper 70s- don't remember the exact values. She is getting so heavy, but I think my muscles are growing along with her, since I hold her so much every day. Nursing one-handed is difficult now though, so I'm not as able to multi-task. The shots went a little better this time- she calmed down pretty quickly after getting picked up and was fine once she started nursing, whereas last time she was still crying while she ate (so sad!). The doctor warned that there is usually more of a reaction to this set of vaccines, but she did not have any reaction at all!

I know I promised beach pictures, but I remembered that they are all on my mom's camera and I haven't gotten them from her yet, so all two readers who check here will have to wait! I am so mad at myself-I forgot my camera for our trip!! We left the house at 5 am and I am not a morning person, so I'm not really surprised, but I should've packed it the night before... luckily family members all took pictures for us, now we've just got to wait to get them. For now, here's a series of crawling-attempt pictures for you to enjoy!





Oh, and a picture of the pierced ears- still haven't gotten a great one.

And, to help me in my attempt at more frequent posts, I found a baby blog poll! I know it is not creative at all, but my main purpose here is documenting our baby's milestones and such, not trying to be entertaining :) So here's the first post!

Age: almost 19 weeks!

Stats: 15.25 lb, 25.5 in

Size: fitting pretty well in 3-6 mo clothing. Size 2 diapers fit her well, but she is actually still squeezing into the size 1-2 from Costco without too many leaks!

Sleep: I'm actually a little concerned about this... she usually only gets 10-11 hours TOTAL sleep, with a day or two a week to make up for it with about 13 hours of sleep. Our daycare mentioned that she doesn't sleep much at all compared to other babies... not sure if they were expressing concern or complaining? ;) Nighttime isn't too bad- some nights she only wakes once to eat and other nights twice, but she always goes back to sleep. We've had about 6 nights total of sleeping through the night, but that is out of the ordinary, and I never expect it!

Eat: Still has only eats breastmilk, eating about 8 times a day. We still only use bottles at daycare, although I did let her try out the sippy cup today for the first time for fun. I don't think she actually drank anything... (see below for pics)

Getting Around: See crawling attempt above! She is trying so hard... when she is determined, she moves pretty well! It's more of an army crawl than real crawling though, except that she pushes her head/upper body along with her legs rather than pulling on her forearms.

New People: Baby B finally met her Grandfather (my dad), and met her Aunt and Uncle on Mr. Beaver's side while we were in FL. She also got to meet great Aunts and Uncles, cousins/second cousins, a lot of friends who are like family, and her future best friend :)

Best moment this week: hmmm... in the past few weeks, I'd say meeting her grandpa, and she definitely enjoyed the beach.

Worst moment this week: The dirty diaper on the plane, her fussing on the plane, and her shots...

What I miss: Having a nice cold beer at a bbq or a frozen margarita or rum runner on the beach... it's not so bad, but I do enjoy those drinks so much! I know I could pump, but I'm lazy, and it seems like whenever I do try to be prepared with a bottle she doesn't want it, or won't calm down until I nurse her, so it's just not worth trying.

What I am looking forward to: When she does crawl, I can't wait to see how happy she is! I am already so proud of how determined and persistent she seems to be. I am also excited for her to meet her uncle and lots of other family at a wedding in a few weeks.

Weekly Wisdom: Sit in the aisle seat when you fly with a baby!

Milestones: Baby B laughs much easier now- I think everyone we have visited has gotten to hear/see it! It is crazy how much I love her laugh. And as a bonus, watching a video of it while I pump on daycare days hastens the (milk) let-down!

Busy busy busy :)

We've had a very busy few weeks, and I kinda forgot all about writing here... oops!

A lot of firsts have happened in the past few weeks- first day at daycare, first plane ride and trip to FL, first time at the beach, and first time meeting a lot of family and friends!

Daycare is going really well. I think that only going Tues. and Thurs. is the reason I feel this way- I miss my baby sooo much during the day, but I get to spend the morning with her and then pick her up at 4:30 (or earlier if I choose), and the days actually fly by! I think it would be a lot harder if I went more than one day in a row, but our current schedule is great for me. I love to look at her little report card each day too and see all of the fun things she does. It seems like she is very busy there, which makes me happy. Also, she has had no trouble at all taking a bottle! I'm still trying to figure out how much milk to send, because she eats it all when I increase a half-ounce each day, and then will have a day where she hardly eats at all. They say they don't even know when to feed her, because she doesn't cry or anything, so I think they just give her a bottle every three hours. She still hasn't cried there, which elicits have mixed feelings. Happy that she is having a fun time and isn't stressed or anything, and sad that she doesn't miss me!

Visiting Florida was exhausting, but very fun. Our flight down had a 1 hour scheduled layover that turned into almost three hours, and then we were on the plane an extra hour waiting to get off the first flight and waiting to take off on the second one, so toward the end baby was getting a little fussy, but overall it was not all that stressful! I was sad we got in several hours late and had less time with Nana, but it wasn't terrible. Even though it was hard waking up at 4:30am to get out of the house by 5:15, traveling in the morning was definitely the way to go. Our flight home was direct, but was much harder because baby was so tired and got bored quickly. In the morning, she doesn't mind hanging out on our laps and standing on us while talking and playing. At night, she wants to be on the floor practicing crawling, or she wants to be held while we walk around bouncing her. There is not much room for either of these on a plane! What also made the trip a little more stressful was a poop-splosion (very messy, leaky diaper) on the plane. Luckily they do have an adequate changing table in that tiny bathroom, but it was still a lot of work cleaning up the mess. Plus, there are just the two or three bathrooms on a plane, only one in front that has the changing table. I felt guilty taking so much time in there while other people were probably waiting! On a related note- those little "barf-bags," as we've always called them, are great for containing wet, dirty clothes.

Traveling with a baby was not so bad and it was really great to visit with friends and family and be back "home" for a while, even though it made me pretty homesick for the beach and water (rivers and lakes just aren't the same). I don't know that I would ever get to spend time with my baby if we did live there, though, so that makes me a little happy to be far away ;). Everyone down there LOVED meeting her or seeing her again, and she was passed around quite a bit, despite my protests when I could tell she was getting sick of it. She did amazingly well handling all of the activity and attention, and everyone is convinced she is the perfect baby- which, of course, won't get any arguments from me.

I'm feeling guilty using my limited work time to blog, so I'll save pictures for the next update. Probably will be soon because we've got our 4-month appointment tomorrow (a little late-oops!). I'm anxious to see the official weight and length measurements and see how much our baby has grown in the past 2 months! Hopefully the shots are as quick and painless as possible and baby doesn't have sore legs like last time. Then we're back to normal life for a month before our next trip (family wedding) and first football game (go 'Canes!)!
Stay tuned for cute beach pictures!

15 weeks!

the time is just flying by... our baby girl has gotten so big already and is such a little person- she has so much personality already!! Her weight gain seems to be slowing down a little bit. She hit 14 lbs almost a month ago, and is still just under 14.5 lbs. We tried measuring her length and got 25 in, but she is always wiggling and rolling, it was pretty hard to be accurate.

Speaking of rolling- she has become quite the expert roller from her back to belly- she flips within a few seconds of being put down! She has rolled from her belly to her back about 10 times total, a couple times accidental, but I think the motivation is just not there because she always wants to be on her tummy. this results in a big laundry problem, because she tends to spit up on her belly, a lot. Especially now that she is determined to become mobile- she scrunches her legs in with her butt way up in the air, and then wiggles around as her body flattens out, inch-worm style. It seems like a lot of work for the inch or so she moves, but I'm sure all the practice is getting her ready for crawling sometime in the future! The straining of belly muscles and the scrunching do not help the excessive spit-up issue, but we're getting used to it :)

We are still getting lots of smiles and more laughs each day, which is so much fun! Sleep is still not so fun, but I'm hoping it gets better as we get into a more regular schedule. We did have four wonderful nights with no feedings/wakings or anything, but then we dropped back to two feedings a night :(. We seem to have worked back to one- fingers crossed that it stays that way or gets better! Naps happen every now and then, but don't usually last long. Our baby just doesn't seem to need much sleep! So that is my excuse for not writing here as much as I would like :) We start part-time daycare this week (HUGE sad face :( ), so maybe I'll update this more often if I need a break from working. Wish me luck- I'm thinking it is going to be a difficult week!!

One of my favorite photos, taken by our friend H3B (http://babyh3b.blogspot.com/)

12 weeks!

Our baby girl is 12 weeks old on Sunday... time is going by so fast! The past few weeks have been so busy, I haven't had a chance to get on here and post updates. Since the last post, we've had a few play-dates and the typical baby activities. Then a week after my last post, Mr. Beaver celebrated his first father's day, and baby Beaver was baptized! She got to meet one of her aunts and one of her uncles, and her great-grandfather. It was a really great week, with picnics and visits to the park, her first trip to the zoo, and first dinner out at a restaurant! The next week was a hard one- I had to take a week long workshop for four hours a day, so baby Beaver was with her Nana during that time (besides a quick visit to nurse in the middle of the class). She had a great time, but I was pretty stressed and did not enjoy that time at all! This week baby Beaver had her first trip out of town, to Washington DC. It was also her first professional conference :) She got to meet a ton of pretty smart people, and had many more admirers during a poster session than my poster got. She even sat in on a presentation by the U.S. secretary of education and behaved very well. While in town, she also got to meet her Aunty Nicole, which was very exciting!

During the past few weeks she has kept up on her smiling, making her very popular everywhere we go. She has also had a few laughs, which are so incredibly cute!! She had one huge milestone- her Nana watched her roll over from her back to her belly!! We had noticed her ending up on her belly after a nap (when she had been placed on her back) but nobody had actually seen it happen. I've seen her struggling, but still haven't witnessed it myself. She is holding her head up higher and longer every day, and making so many adorable cooing sounds, as well as a variety of other different vocalizations. Her cranky time at night has seemed to disappear, and she is starting to go much longer between feedings all of a sudden. It is so strange to feel like she is all of a sudden growing up so much!

2 months!!

Our baby girl turned two months old Friday!! I can't believe how fast the time has gone by, and how big she has grown! She is between 75-90th percentile for weight and 75th percentile for length, so it's not just our imagination when we say she has grown so big already.

This week we visited friends a couple of days, went to our baptism class, and had the dreaded two-month checkup (shots!). Baby B did well for most of it, besides an explosive diaper while eating during a quiet moment in the baptism class... which ended up leaking out onto my dress. It wasn't the first time this happened and won't be the last I'm sure- it's crazy that I don't think it's that big of a deal! If someone told me that I would feel that way a year ago, I'm not sure I'd believe it :)

The two-month shots were not horrible... I think it's true that it is worse on the mom than baby. She did cry- after turning a dark, deep red color and looking at me like she couldn't believe I let that happen to her :( Luckily I was able to nurse her immediately after, and she calmed down within a couple of minutes. After a few hours of sleep she did wake up very sore, and screamed even louder and a lot longer than when she actually got the shots, but tylenol helped and she was back to her normal, cheerful self by the morning!
We got her a new chair for doing so well :)

8 weeks old!

This week was relatively uneventful after the end of the holiday weekend, but one exciting thing Baby B did was meeting her future friend, born last weekend! It is hard to believe that she was smaller than this baby only 7 weeks ago!!
Tonight we took baby B to another party, this time earlier in the day, and she did much better than our last attempt. Everyoone loved her, and I think she had a great time!

Tomorrow we have baptism class and then baby B has plans to meet another little friend, this one about a year and a half older than her. It will be a fun weekend, but not so fun of a week with the 2 month check-up and accompanying vaccinations coming up on Tuesday... hopefully she won't even be phased by the shots, but I've heard some pretty bad stories. On the bright side, we are looking forward to seeing how much she has grown!! I really will not be surprised if she is over 12 lbs, but her weight gain did seem to plateau this week at 11.6 lbs. I've started packing up newborn clothes and even some of the smaller 0-3 month onesies, so no matter what her weight gain, there is no denying she has grown like crazy! Of course the picture above makes that pretty clear, too :)

Where did May go?!

Riley's first party... she didn't do too well there, so we got a picture at home after she stopped crying :)


I can't believe May is already over, and I can't believe my baby girl is already 7 weeks old!! I realized how much time has gone by when my friend gave birth to her baby girl Sunday... it didn't seem like that long ago when she found out she was pregnant, and I was only 7 weeks along. Now I've got a 7-week old beautiful baby girl, who is smiling and even cooing every now and then.

She is amazing at working her muscles during tummytime and has great neck strength already. She can swat at tings with her little hands and follow things with her eyes, and her stare is pretty intense when something interests her! We can't believe how fast she is changing and how much her little personality has already developed. She is growing way too fast for me- we expect her to tip the scale at 12 lbs by the end of the week!!

I really need to get my act together with posting here to keep track of everything we do and all of Baby Beaver's changes. I know she will grow so fast and these memories will fade, and I really want to be able to come back and read about these early weeks and all of her firsts! So from now on, I'm going to try to get back to posting at least every Saturday, even if it's just a quick recap of what we did that week.