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.

Time goes by fast!

I've gotten bad about posting, I know... I really want to keep some sort of record of Baby Beaver's first months, but I just never think to post or know what to write. I need another weekly survey I guess! She is changing a lot, but not doing anything specific like intentionally smiling or rolling over or anything. She does make eye contact and just stare at our faces, or at other things like pictures on the wall or the octopus on her play mat. She stays awake a lot too! She does smile, and even laugh, but it's mostly in her sleep. She is still not on any sort of eating or sleeping schedule, besides a nap every morning which gives me time to do dishes, laundry, etc. I also feel very lucky that the sound of the shower and blow dryer seem to mesmerize her- so she calmly hangs out while I shower and do my hair, which is great. We've been trying to introduce a pacifier recently and it hasn't been successful yet, so I've got to get a few alternative options from the one we have so far. She has taken it for a few minutes at a time from Mr. Beaver, but spits it right out when I give it to her... so comfort sucking (technically "non-nutritive nursing" or something) has continued throughout the day and night. I'm trying to remember that this time is going to fly by and enjoy being able to comfort her and cuddle! She is very, very cuddly so it isn't too hard!!

Father-daughter pics

Baby Beaver's grandma e-mailed a picture of Mr. Beaver when he was a baby and there is a definite resemblance!!
(sadly Mr. Beaver's picture went through a hurricane so is a little worn-out...)
Today is day two of being on my own with the baby and so far it's going well... but I'm really hoping for a break in all of the rain we've been having so we can get out of the house for a walk or something!!
Time to go nurse... baby is about to cry! She's a hungry little girl... eating all the time and already over 8 lbs!!