How we knew it was time to lower the crib...

Yikes.

Time to Lower the Crib!! from porkchop on Vimeo.

6 Months, Sympathy

Annie turned six months old this past Thursday, which is unbelievable to me. She is wearing outfits that looked huge to me when I first put them in her dresser. It's all going so fast, but it's so much fun. She is very chatty now, plays peekaboo, and prefers that we leave her toys in her bucket so she can pull them out herself. She can stand while holding onto something, she has such strong little legs. She has also been very mobile lately, rolling around like crazy (both ways now, thank goodness!) and getting up on her hands and knees and rocking back and forth. We're thinking it won't be long before she starts crawling, lord help us all! She's very much drawn to things she can't have (like all babies are): paper, diaper cream, my mom's VCR. This should be an interesting ride.


Moving from porkchop on Vimeo.

Yesterday she started veggies! We tried squash first, and she seemed like she liked it, gobbled it right up with only a few "what is this" faces. She gets excited when I come over with a bowl and spoon now, so that's a good sign. Hopefully she'll be a good eater!

Funny story: We were in Old Navy yesterday looking for pants, since she's outgrown her old ones. She woke up from her nap a bit cranky, so I decided to take her to the dressing room to feed her. We've never done that before, and she was all excited when she figured out what we were doing. She would eat for a few seconds, then pull off and look up at me with a huge smile. She was enjoying herself immensely, until a very unhappy toddler entered the dressing rooms. He was crying and crying, and as soon as she heard it she pulled off and looked up at me with huge eyes and a startled expression. I told her it was okay and she went back to eating for a few seconds. But then he kicked it up a notch, and I don't know if she felt sympathy for the kid or if she just didn't like the way his cries were echoing in there, but she pulled off and started screaming immediately. It was such a sad face, which of course was hilarious to me. Poor baby, here she is all freaked out and her mother is laughing at her. It was too funny though. I had to sing a few bars of rubber duckie to calm her down, and just kept singing a few lines each time she seemed like she was getting upset again. The kid and his mom left after a while, Annie finished eating, and she was much happier after that. Too funny though. I like to think I'm raising a compassionate child, more compassionate than her mother anyway. ;)

This one is also titled: Why Babies Don't Sleep With Blankets.


Annie vs. Furry Blanket from porkchop on Vimeo.

Thankful

The obligatory Thanksgiving Day "things I'm grateful for" post, inspired by my friend Sarah:

Knowing my grandma is always watching over us. Every once in a while I get a really strong feeling that she's near. It overwhelmed me at the ultrasound when we found out we were having a girl. I know she's been with us every step of the way, and will watch over her namesake for the rest of her life.

My hubby. He is loving, snuggly, goofy, caring, helpful, smart, handy, and a million other things I could go on and on about here. But above all, he is a wonderful father and husband who makes us laugh until our bellies hurt. Annie and I are lucky girls.

My family. Mom for her neverending dedication and love for her kids, grandbaby, and grandpuppies. Dad for his sense of humor and unconditional love for all of us. Jason for his sweetness and his ability to always say something thought-provoking. Megan for the goofy sense of humor she still hasn't lost and unending desire to stay close to her family. Kathryn for her hilariousness and her loyalty to her family. Kevin for his desire to be a good uncle and little brother, and his love of sharing with all of us. We are so lucky to have all of them.

Meg's fiance Tim. We already think of him as a brother-, son-in-law, and uncle to Annie, but we are so excited that they are making it official. They are perfect together. I'm so happy she found someone who is so good to her.

My in-laws. Man, did I luck out in this department. Paul's mom Sue is sweet, loving, and never judgmental. And I am so glad she found Harvey, a sweet man who takes care of her, and treats us as if we were his own kids.

My pups. My loving, snuggly, cute, totally obnoxious doggies. We can always count on them to be incredibly happy to see us when we walk through that door. They are the definition of unconditional love, for us, and for the new little sister we brought home this year. Home would feel absolutely empty without them.

A wonderful day care situation. I still wish I could be home with her all of the time, but we lucked out in the sense that Annie has time with her grandma, her mom and dad, and a wonderful couple who are always so happy to see her, and treat her as if she were one of their own. Which is encouraging, because their kids are polite, well behaved, and very sweet to Annie. We pretty much hit the day care jackpot.

Fridays at home with Annie. I can't express how wonderful it is to have 3 days at home with Annie even though I work full time, and to know she has a full day at home with her Dad during the week. The long days are completely worth it.

A job I enjoy. After 7 years I am still loving what I'm doing. I'm challenged every day and I have the opportunity to work on several very different projects. It is flexible and relaxed, and I have very few complaints. It really is an ideal situation for me.

Wonderful coworkers/former coworkers. I have made so many good friends working at my company, friends who I've worked with, and friends who I've met through them. I know we'll have them for many, many years. They have done so much for me, more than they know.

My softball team. A great group of people. I love that we get to see each other every week for months out of the year and we never get sick of hanging out together. I love that we are all competitive, but in different ways. I love that we can pick on each other and laugh at each other without anyone having hurt feelings. I love that we all want each other to do well.

Kelly, Mike, Marce, Kelly, and Kris. Julie, Mike, and Tony. A great group of buddies. We love being with them, and try to see them as often as we can. They love Annie as if she were their niece. They make us laugh until our sides hurt. The best kind of friends.

Griffin and John. Annie is so lucky to have had built in friends when she came into this world. Or future boyfriends/husbands, depending on how you want to look at it. ;) And what an amazing gift to be asked to be someone's godparent. We are so honored.

And of course, I am so, so thankful for this incredible little girl:


She is healthy, happy, beautiful, amazing, and has shown us what true unconditional love feels like. Her smile melts my heart. I've never felt this kind of grateful in my life.

Photo Shoot Break

It's been way too long since I last posted! Update on the rolling: this week she made vast improvement rolling onto her back, so we're doing much better. In fact, she's really been getting around lately, between the rolling and the almost creeping. I think she'll be crawling before we know it! She is still waking up in the night, but only once, and that's because we're having trouble figuring out her eating schedule now that we've introduced cereal. I'm sure that will work itself out soon though. I'm not sweating it too much because she's been nursing for much shorter periods lately, so when we get up in the night she eats for about 10 minutes and goes right back to sleep. She's such a happy, easy going baby. I can't say it enough, I really lucked out.

Here is a video of Annie playing after her Christmas card photo shoot. The sound is really wonky, but I kept it because the faces she makes in this video are so entertaining. At about 1:55 you can see the "drop everything I'm doing to watch George walk by" face. We've been seeing that one a lot lately.

I suppose it goes without saying that it is extremely difficult to get a good picture of a 5-month-old and 2 dogs. Near impossible really. In the final one you can only see the back of George's head next to Annie & Gus in the chair, because George decided he was done sitting in front of them and needed to look out the window. It was the only one where Annie wasn't a blur of motion trying to grab at poor Gussy. Needless to say, we all needed a break after we were done. :)


Post Christmas Card Photo Shoot from porkchop on Vimeo.

5 Months

Annie turned 5 months old on election day. I have no words for how nerve-wracking and exciting that day was. We stayed up way too late to watch Obama's acceptance speech, which of course was totally worth it. So inspiring. We are feeling better about where this country is headed already. That night Annie woke up at 4 in the morning. She's been waking herself up in the night lately by rolling over onto her belly. She's having trouble figuring out how to roll back to her back, so she gets frustrated and lets out these little screams until you come in and roll her over. We don't know what to do about this. We bought her one of those things that keep them from rolling over in the crib, but she gets out of it. Sometimes she's okay with that, I come in in the morning and it's at the other end of the crib, and she's lying on her belly, snoozing. But most of the time she doesn't want to be on her belly so she lies there and screams until we come in to roll her over. So needless to say, we're putting her on the floor to practice her rolling as much as we can! It's almost funny how mad she gets when she can't get back over. She doesn't even try, she gets onto her belly and then gets really angry. And they say rolling from their front to their back is easier for babies. Hmph! In other news, she's started her cereal! We tried right after her 4-month checkup, but she didn't seem very interested and wasn't getting the hang of the spoon, so I decided to wait a few more weeks. We started last weekend and she's doing much better. She seems to really enjoy it, she grabs at my arms and sticks out her tongue for more. She's getting much better with the spoon too. Next month we can move onto fruits and veggies. Man though, is that going to be messy. The cereal is messy and sticky enough! Totally worth watching her face when she reaches for more though. She's definitely into this eating thing!

It's a new day...

...and we're feeling so hopeful for our daughter's future!

Halloween

Annie went trick-or-treating at Grandma and Grandpa's and got her first sucker!

Lolllipop, lollipop from porkchop on Vimeo.

She pooped!

And it was everything you'd imagine a 7-day poop would be. ;)

Quirks

So Annie's feet get really cold at night. We put a sleeper with feet and warm fuzzy socks on her every night, and in the morning they are so cold they're white. The bottoms of her legs are always cold too. The rest of her is fine. It only happens at night, during the day they're fine. I didn't really think too much of it, until the day Paul was taking her out of her car seat and noticed that the lower part of her legs were blue. Huh. So we mentioned it to our pediatrician at her 4-month check-up. She was a little concerned, especially because for some reason at the appointment her feet were hot and bright purple/pink. I told her that was unusual, that we hadn't seen that before. She asked if Raynauds runs in our family and I told her I had never heard anything like that so I didn't think so. So she did lots of pulse-checking and poking around her legs and belly and decided that maybe it would be best to get an ultrasound to check things out, make sure nothing was getting cut off on the way down to her legs.

My mom came with me to the ultrasound on Tuesday. It took forever. They took a ton of pictures of her insides, all around her belly. The first technician asked me to tell her why my doctor wanted us there, because she said she was a bit confused by her notes. I explained what the problem was and told her she was wondering if her aorta is being cut off somewhere in her groin area. She responded, "but she hasn't felt any masses or anything?" I had been really good about not worrying up to that point, telling myself it was most likely nothing to worry about. But as soon as she said the word "masses" a million worries flooded to the front of my mind. "Great," I thought to myself. "Here we go."

The exam took forever. The first technician couldn't find one of her ovaries so she went to get someone to take another look. Annie was so patient through the first part, which took about 45 minutes, but she was getting really tired and hungry, plus we had to hold her arms and legs down because she kept grabbing the wand cord, so she screamed through the second half. Poor baby! We finally got out of there about two and a half hours after we got there. And then I waited for 2 days, the word "masses" floating around my brains the whole time.

I talked to the doctor last night, and she said the results looked good. They didn't really find anything. Phew! But she did say they said it was a "suboptimal view" since they couldn't see everything in her belly due to "bowel gas." Surprise, surprise. Especially since she hadn't pooped in a few days! So to be safe she called a pediatric cardiologist. He said she's most likely fine, since the pulse and oxygen counts were fine. But he wants us to schedule an appointment to come in, just to be safe. It will probably be a few months before we can get in, but I'm not going to worry until then. I think she probably just gets cold feet. I am glad that our doctor is so thorough though. Nice to know she doesn't just brush things off! I'm going to need to learn to be more like her though. As I learned from my "cyst that could have been a blood clot" incident back when I was pregnant, I really need to learn to pay more attention to these things and not just brush them off as nothing! You really never know.

So yeah, the poop thing. That was Tuesday, and now it's Friday, still no poop. It's been 7 days! It's normal for a breastfed baby to go a few days, even 5 or 6 in between poops (formula-fed babies poop once or twice a day!) But she usually poops every 2 or 3 days, so 7 was getting a little ridiculous. And I'll tell you what. Her gas stinks. It could knock you over at this point. Also: I'm a little afraid of what a 7-day poop is going to look like. The 2 or 3 day poops are pretty explosive.

Our doctor gave us a few options. Pear juice sounded the best to me. Unfortunately, I just tried giving it to her and she hates it! She kept making that baby "what the hell is this crap?" face and pushing it away. I tried telling her that this was her most pleasant option, but she didn't listen. So now we're going to try the baking soda bath. I hope that works, because otherwise we will need to "take her temperature." Which really isn't so bad, we have to do that every once in a while anyway, but doesn't pear juice sound so much better??

Tell this kid to poop already!

The Boxer

The Boxer from porkchop on Vimeo.

4 Month Outtakes

So we attempted to get Annie's 4-month picture for her monthly series last Sunday. It was too dark so we weren't successful (as evidenced by the following crappy pictures), but there were lots of fun developments during this photo shoot.


It was the first time she's noticed Puppy sitting next to her.

It was the first time she decided to lean over to try to grab Puppy.
It was the first time she didn't fall forward onto her face when she tried to sit without leaning back on the chair. She sat like that for a while too, just looking around!
It seems way too early for her to be sitting on her own, but I think she's definitely moving in that direction!


In other news, she's in the 75th percentile for weight, 95th for length. She is wearing sizes 6 months and 9 months because her legs are so long. She wears 12 month socks! I think Paul just might get his volleyball player!

5 Years

Last Saturday, September 27th, was our 5th wedding anniversary. We decided to take an impromptu trip up to Niagara Falls to celebrate. The plan was to go to Niagara-on-the-Lake, check out the falls, and take Annie swimming in the hotel pool. We had to keep her out of the sun all summer because she's too young to wear sunscreen, and I couldn't wait to take her for her first swim. I took 488 pictures over the weekend! I whittled it down to 88 good ones though. Man, I love digital cameras. :) On our way up to find Niagara-on-the-Lake, we saw a sign for the butterfly conservatory and decided to check it out. I'm glad we did, we really enjoyed ourselves. Plus, it was fitting that we visit there: we released butterflies at our wedding as a tribute to my grandmother (the one Annie is named for). She loved butterflies. The butterfly house was huge and had a million butterflies (I don't really know how many they have, it just seemed like a whole lot), and the Niagara botanical gardens surrounded the house. Gorgeous. We saw lots of flowers and trees that we want for our yard. Annie was enthralled with the butterflies when we first walked in. So cute!

Butterfly Conservatory from porkchop on Vimeo.

On our way out of the conservatory, I got a phone call from my sister Megan. I didn't answer right away because we were packing up the car, so when we got in the car to start driving to the falls, I listened to her message. She said to call her back when I got a chance, she had exciting news. I said, "She is so engaged." Paul got all excited. I haven't been wondering when they were going to get engaged or anything, so I don't know why I thought that right away. She and Tim have been together for 7 years and there was no doubt in my mind that they would be married someday. He is wonderful to her, and they are perfect for each other. They are both in grad school, and have a lot going on, so it made sense for them to wait a few years before getting married. But as soon as I heard that message I was so excited. I'm glad I turned out to be right, I might have been disappointed! ;) Paul was like, "call her back, call her back!!" Sure enough, Tim proposed that morning at a cider mill near their apartment in Michigan. Yay!! And too cool that they got engaged on our 5-year anniversary. Tim had no idea, but was pretty pleased with himself when Meg told him. How perfect is that?? So now we're all thrilled and excited for their wedding, which should be the summer after next. Can't wait! So after that excitement, we checked into our hotel right around the corner from Clifton Hill, and took a walk down to the falls. It was getting dark, the falls were beautiful. After our walk, we stopped by the restaurant that shares a parking lot with our hotel. We ate on the patio because it was beautiful out. I had spinach gnocchi and Paul had some sort of meat (I'm pretty sure it was steak). :) Their bread was fabulous. The staff was really nice and loved Annie. We got free dessert to go because they screwed up our ticket in the kitchen so it took a while for our food to arrive. Which figured because Annie was happy for the amount of time it would have taken us to get our dinner if they had brought it out on time. She got cranky when we were waiting and I had to hold her while I was eating. Which is what we end up doing at home a lot of the time anyway! She has a knack for getting fussy right when we want to eat. She's such a good baby otherwise though, I really can't complain about that one thing!

Since dinner was so late, we only had about 20 minutes in the pool before it closed. Which turned out to be just the right amount of time. The pool was a bit cold, and I didn't feed her before going for fear that she would puke in the pool. ;) So she seemed to not mind it for a few minutes, and then let out a little scream, probably because it was cold. It was pretty cute anyway.

The next day I tried the hotel breakfast and decided it was gross, so we found a breakfast buffet at a restaurant on Lundy's Lane and pigged out. Yum. We walked down to the falls in a drizzling rain, but it cleared up and the sun came out a while later. It turned into a beautiful weekend, which was great because they said it was supposed to rain all weekend. We never did end up going to Niagara-on-the-Lake, we spent too much time walking along the falls. We wanted to go down to the barge stuck at the top of the falls to read the plaque about it because Paul had never seen it, and all I could remember was that two guys were stuck there overnight. I told him I thought it happened in the 30's, but he couldn't believe that it would be stuck there that long. Turns out it happened in 1918! They saved themselves by opening the bottom doors which wedged into the rocks. It's amazing that they survived. Plus they probably had no idea how close they were since it was dark. Terrifying!Anyway, it was a really long walk, but we enjoyed it. I fed Annie in the little park by the barge and Paul took a little nap on our blanket. On our walk back the sun came out full force and we saw rainbows over the falls. Overall, a wonderful way to celebrate 5 years of marriage, and the next phase of our marriage as parents. Yesterday a woman at the outlet mall was telling me how cute Annie is, and then said, "you are so lucky." She was so right.

Sunday Date

Annie is still surprising us every day with what she's learning to do! She rolled over a bunch of times at Wendy's house this week, both front to back and back to front. She's still playing with her feet a lot, and is now putting them in her mouth, which is pretty hilarious. She started blowing raspberries last Sunday night, and will mimic me when I do it for her. Too funny! This video is so dark, you'll probably just have to take my word for it that she's doing it. I promise I'm shopping for a video camera!


Raspberries from porkchop on Vimeo.

Last Sunday was an exciting day. It was my Mom's birthday, so we went over to their house for a birthday breakfast (pancakes with strawberries & whipped cream, eggs, bacon, and cinnamon crumb cake, yum). After that Paul and I went to Buffalo for our first NFL game! They raffle off tickets at work and I have been trying to win them for years now. I finally won and was super excited. Until I remembered it was my mom's birthday. Darn it! She was great about it, of course, telling us we should go and that she'd watch Annie for us. She's the best. :) This is what Annie was doing when we left. She was all partied out:

The game was awesome. There were sooo many people there and it was so loud and exciting. Our seats were great, section 104, 22 rows up from the field. It drizzled off and on all day, but we didn't really get wet. The game itself was really exciting--they were losing for pretty much the whole game, but rallied in the 4th quarter to win the game with a field goal in the final 3 seconds. Awesome. Also, a relief, because I was getting a little nervous about how that crazy crowd would be if they lost! Traffic was horrendous on the way home, so we decided to go eat to wait it out a little. It didn't really help (traffic was still bad getting on the thruway), but dinner was delicious! We found an Olive Garden and pigged out. Yum. Overall, a great day. We missed Annie a lot, but it was nice to get out just the two of us again!

Playtime

Lots of fun developments in Annie's world this past week or so. She has really started playing on her own: holding onto her feet and rolling from side to side, screaming at her mobile every time one of the animals goes by, picking up toys and putting them in her mouth. It's so much fun watching her play and seeing all of the huge smiles! The other day when I was changing her diaper she looked up at me and started making little clucking noises with her tongue. I did it back to her a few times and she gave me a huge smile and kept clucking away. Last night I asked Mom if Annie ever clucks at her. She said, "No, but I cluck for her all the time." Apparently, she likes it when Grandma does that, because she's been trying to get me to do it for her every time I change her diaper now!Here are a couple of videos of Annie screaming at her mobile and playing with her toys. They're really dark because our camera is not so great inside, but you get the idea anyway!

Screaming from porkchop on Vimeo.

Playtime from porkchop on Vimeo.

My Sleepy Family

This was the scene at 11:30 am Sunday morning:(Paul was in the exact same position in our bed, but you'll have to take my word for it because I didn't have the nerve to take a picture of him sleeping. The flash might have woken him up and he's a grump in the morning!)

We all went to bed around midnight last night (Annie slept from 9-11:30, woke up to eat, and fell back asleep around 11:45). I woke up at 10 this morning and immediately turned the monitor volume up all the way to make sure she was still breathing in there. I took the dogs out, ate breakfast, did a load of laundry, cleaned the bathroom from top to bottom, and they were both still snoozing. I came in to check on her and promptly knocked into the exersaucer when I went to open the window. That was enough to finally wake her up. Man this kid can sleep. She definitely got that from her dad!

where I get on my high horse and then get back off...

It's Friday again, hooray! A rainy day too, my favorite. I just finished another book, Annie is napping on my lap, and I am looking forward to another 3 whole days at home with her.

Last weekend was fun: fall ball started so Annie and I went to keep score Friday night, and then out to Tully's afterwards. Saturday after Paul got home from work we drove down to Ithaca for the afternoon. It threatened rain all day but we stayed dry. We hung out on the Commons mostly. We bought a bunch of stuff for Annie: some books at a used book store, and a ton of fall clothes at the thrift store. I've been really into buying used lately. It makes sense, especially for kids clothes. Kids outgrow their stuff so fast, it's always hardly ever worn. You find so much that looks new or barely worn. And since I got pregnant and had friends offering me things all over the place, I've really been thinking lately about how important it is to reuse and recycling clothes and books and toys. I mean, how can you not? "Go green" is everywhere these days! That's not to say that we won't be buying new clothes from now on. In fact, we stopped at Carter's at the outlet mall on the way home to pick up some more fall clothes. We're just going to try to be a little more conscious of recycling and contributing to stores run by Goodwill and Salvation Army. It's driving me crazy to see all of the stuff people are just throwing away on "big garbage day" in our town. Donate it, or give it to someone, it's so easy to do!! I hate to think about that baby stuff winding up in a landfill when it could go to someone who can use it. Arg.

Anyhoo, I got sidetracked on my high horse, what was that all about? I'll go back to talking about my weekend, journal style. It's boring, but it's safe. What I started saying was, Ithaca was fun, the people watching there is always excellent. We fed Annie a bottle on one of the cement walls in the Commons, and watched the crowds go by. I finally found an Ugly Doll for Annie, I had been looking for one forever. Had some fabulous pizza (white pizza with ricotta, yum) from a local pizza shop. She had a nice nap while we walked around. Saw these two playing the guitar, singing, and dancing:

They were both so happy, having so much fun. It made our day.

On Sunday Paul played in a golf tournament with his friend Tony, so Annie and I had a Mommy/daughter day. We stopped over to see Grandma & Grandpa for a little bit, then went shopping at the grocery store and Target. Afterwards we came home to play, snuggle, and pack Annie's bag for day care. Annie's first week at day care went great! She was there on Monday and Tuesday. Wendy is wonderful. She's so happy to have Annie, and is so great about filling us in on her day. Annie gets so smiley when she sees her and the other kids, it's so cute. She's always loved watching her Uncle Kevin hop around all over the place, so having other kids to watch is right up her alley. Wendy said she had a great time sitting in her bumbo watching everything. She didn't nap as much as usual, too much excitement! She was so tired each night. It made me happy to think about her having fun over there. She ate a ton of food this week too!! Definitely must have been having another growth spurt. Some of the clothes she is wearing are sized 6 and 9 months! She is outgrowing things so fast. My peanut is not going to be my peanut for much longer I'm afraid!

Wednesday Annie had her first full day home with her Daddy. They went out to see Annie's Grandma Sue. She recently had knee surgery, so she was itching to get out of her apartment. They went down to the lake and had some KFC for lunch. Paul and Annie picked me up after work and we drove over to Moe's for a burrito and then out for ice cream afterwards. We stopped at the library on the way home to pick up some books and dvds. They had a full day! Yesterday she was back at Grandma's. They had a lovely day, visiting Aunt Kathryn in Brockport and Mom's friends at work. Mom was happy to have some Annie time. :)

I am feeling really happy about her day care situation. She's getting lots of Grandma time in, time with other kids and Wendy, and time with her Mom and Dad. Of course I'd love it if I could be home with her all of the time, but I am feeling good about how it's working out. This will be good.

Roll Over, Roll Over

She rolled over last night! Lately she's been rolling onto her side from her back but doesn't make it all the way over. She couldn't figure out how to get her arm out of the way. But we were both playing with her last night in the living room and Paul got up to go out to the kitchen for something (food, most likely). I put her on her tummy for some tummy time and she straightened out her arm and used her other arm to push herself all the way over! Poor Paul missed it, and she didn't do it again. We are very excited, but also feeling like this is going way too fast! Also, we need to start baby proofing, NOW.

One of her attempts:

New Things

New things Annie has done in the past 48 hours:

• Talking a lot more than usual, and with several different people
• Put her pacifier in her mouth
• Consciously held onto toys
• Mouthing toys
• Held her feet
• Scooching (that's my word for folding up her legs to scoot herself around. Yesterday she scooched off the playmat, today I found her sideways in her crib. She's been doing it for a few weeks in her crib, but she does it every time we put her down now.)

It sure is fun watching her discover how to do all of these things!

4 Days On, 4 Days Off

Going back to work didn't go too bad. I missed her like crazy, of course, and the guilt is awful. It will take a while to try to get over that. But I didn't even cry, which was amazing because I cried quite a few times during my last week at home just thinking about leaving her. She was in a good mood the first day though, and my Mom said she was really good all day, slept a lot and was happy when she was awake. That's how it's gone for the past few weeks. She only had one fussy day, and my mom is really enjoying spending the time with her. Such a relief. I know it would have been 10 times harder if she was crying when I dropped her off or called home to see how it was going. When I got to work that first day I immediately plastered my wall with pictures. I don't even care that I'm crazy picture lady, it helps!

Working 10 hour days isn't too bad. This is our really busy time of the year, so it helps the time pass quickly. I'm dreading December and January though, those are our slow times. The Fridays off are so worth it. I love having 3 whole days home with her. The first two weeks Annie was with her Grandma. Next week she starts going to Paul's former coworker Wendy's house one or two days a week since my mom works part-time. Paul brought Annie in to see her on Wednesday and said Annie was really smiley for her. So hopefully she'll be nice happy girl for Wendy like she is for my mom! She's an easy-going baby, so I'm confident it will go well.

Last weekend was Labor Day weekend so I had 4 days home. I planned that well! We had really beautiful weather all weekend, so we took advantage of it. Friday morning Annie and I took a really long walk, and then hung out at home for a little bit before going shopping at the mall for some fall clothes for Annie. She needed pants and socks sized 6 months because she's growing like crazy! She's just really long. 6 month socks are baggy on her because she doesn't have those chubby 6-month-old feet yet, but because her feet are so long they fit perfectly from toe to heel. I hope she stays long, I really am hoping she didn't inherit my height (or lack thereof).

Friday night we went to a baseball game. Melky Cabrera (a former Yankee) was in town playing on the Yankees farm team. He didn't do so well, but the home team won and we had a good time. Annie was fussy towards the end so she and I went down and walked around the picnic tables. She had many, many admirers down there, and she fell asleep on my shoulder after about 10 minutes or so. It's exhausting being cute, apparently.

Saturday night we went over to play Wiii with our friends Kris & Kelly. We had a really fun time eating junk and playing Wii sports games. That boxing game is quite the workout! I also discovered that I royally suck at Guitar Hero. Like, really bad. It's pretty hopeless. I had fun anyway, and they all had fun laughing at me. :) Annie had a good time watching and playing with her toys. Kris gave her a pink stuffed dolphin that he had, and she is mesmerized by it. It's very cute! Sunday was State Fair day! It was so nice out, but it was super crowded at the fair. We hid out at the draft competitions for a while and then ventured out into the crowd. (And what a crowd it was. People watching at the fair is...um...interesting, to say the least!) Annie slept for most of the day. When she woke up she was happy walking around for a few hours. We went back to the horse building to watch another competition while we fed her a bottle. I brought pumped milk and a thermos full of hot water to heat up the bottle, and it worked out perfectly. A relief since it would have been nearly impossible to find a spot to nurse her discreetly in that crowd! Rascal Flatts and Taylor Swift were playing that night, so when people started heading to the concert, it cleared out considerably. We had a lot of fun visiting all of the animals (the bunnies, guinea pigs, and goats are my favorites, Paul loves the pigs) and walking around the buildings. We got our milk from the dairy bar (only 2 little cups for me, since I still have to lay off too much dairy!) and headed home around 9:30. It was a fun day, we love the fair.

Monday we headed to the beach for a picnic lunch. Annie and Paul snoozed the day away while I read a magazine. When she woke up we took her to the water to dip her toes in. She looked really confused and concerned, but overall she seemed like she didn't hate it. I'm excited for next year when she'll be old enough to wear sunscreen so we can take her all the way in!So that was our first week with Mommy back at work. Not too bad, and a great weekend to cap it off!

Watching Mommy Sing

"Annie, over here!
Rubber duckie, you're the one..."