8 Weeks Old: Things I Want to Remember

Our favorite things to do:

• Snuggle in our chair in the nursery, Gus & George keeping us company on the floor.
• Look at our books: The Monster at the End of This Book is our favorite (probably because Mommy makes a fool out of herself reading it)!
• Listen to music (and Mommy's obnoxious singing--I swear, she loves it!): The Lion King Broadway, Bert & Ernie's All Time Favorites, and the Classic Disney collection are our favorites. We also listen to Rockabye Baby: Coldplay every night before bed (thank you Kelly!!)
• Play with our toys: Froggie and her rattle phone are her favorites, and she loves her hippo playmat that Aunt Kelly & Uncle Mike brought her!
• Take walks. Puts her right to sleep. :)
• Talk to the polka dots on the wall. She mostly talks to the ones by her changing table (it's so funny how excited she gets sometimes!), but she also finds the ones behind the chair when I put her on my shoulder to burp her. She is absolutely enthralled with them.
• Lie in the crib watching the mobile. She likes to talk to the mobile too!
• Walk around in the Baby Bjorn while watching Daddy play softball.
• Watch Uncle Kevin bounce around like a crazy person. She can't take her eyes off him!
• Play with Daddy when he gets home. She can't get enough of Superbaby and knee bouncing!

Two Months In

Computer time has been hard to come by lately, hence the lack of posts. But here is the news:

The tree removal is coming along. A guy from ER came and chopped it down for 200 bucks, which was about 400 less than the 2 estimates we got from tree removal companies. We decided to clean it up ourselves since we have a lot of friends who offered to help and a bunch of people want the wood. People have been knocking on our door asking us if they can take some off our hands, it's pretty funny! On Monday night I dropped the baby off at my Mom's and our friend Mike came over for a few hours to help us start clearing the brush and chop the logs. Our neighbor from across the street came over to help us too. So nice! We are all very sad the tree is gone though, it really was so beautiful. Our neighbor said she kept her front curtains open all fall just to look at it. And our house looks completely different now, so bare and open! It looks really bare from our living room and bedroom windows too. Definitely a lot brighter in those rooms now though! And our other neighbor made a very good point: that's a hell of a lot less leaves we'll need to rake in the fall! We're figuring out what we're going to plant there now. Paul has a lot of really good ideas, so I'm sure we'll feel better about it soon!

In baby news, Annie is doing great, getting bigger by the day! She's so much fun now, chatting and looking around at everything. I'm working on establishing a bedtime this week, it's been going pretty well. Even if she wakes up after I put her down, she stays in bed and talks to herself until it's time for the next feeding. It's very cute listening to her on the monitor. Her new thing is playing with her hair while she's eating. Most of the time it's just one hand, but sometimes she gets both hands in there and starts tugging. It's really quite adorable. However, I did have a nightmare the other night where I walked into the room and she had fistfuls of hair, and was bald around the sides and back of her hair. The only hair she had left was a patch on the top. I was relieved that I was mostly worried about whether she hurt herself pulling it out than what she looked like. So I am not TOO vain about her beautiful hair. ;0)

She is doing great sleeping-wise. Every once in a while she goes through a growth spurt and I get no sleep at all, but that's really few and far between. Most of the time she sleeps for 3-5 hour stretches, and every once in a while it's even more. She actually slept for 8 hours one night last week. Amazing! She really does spoil me sometimes, and I absolutely appreciate it!

Yesterday we took a long walk down the canal and up through Pittsford. We stopped by the library (their library is beautiful) and signed up for a new library card. I haven't been to the library in years, and I've been thinking I really need to start. When I was little I loved going to the library with my mom and siblings, we loved picking out new books to read. I'm looking forward to doing that with Annie. For now, we checked out a few cds that I wanted for Annie (a Best of Grover album, and Sesame Street Platinum Hits), and borrowed A Mighty Wind for Paul and I to watch this weekend. I'm looking forward to taking advantage of all of that free entertainment!

I go back to work in less than a month, and I have really mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I'm eager to get into a routine and to get back to my job and friends because I really do enjoy it. On the other hand, I am dreading leaving my baby. I will really miss her, and I'm worried that she'll miss me too. Sigh. Maybe I'll win the lottery sometime before I go back. :)

The Maple Tree Incident

So we woke up at around 8 Sunday morning to a loud, strange sound outside our bedroom window. Paul went out and came back up and said, "Not good." Apparently our huge maple tree has been rotting from the inside for a while now and the weight of last night's rain was finally too much for it. It took down our neighbor's power lines and blocked off our street, but the fire department and RG&E cleaned it up pretty quickly. And luckily parking was on the other side of the street, so nothing else was damaged. We were so lucky that the branches over our house didn't fall too. Knock on wood, hopefully nothing else will fall before we can get the rest of it down! We're getting estimates to take the rest of it down. Very sad, it was a beautiful tree and all of the neighbors were always telling us to leave it alone because they loved it so much!

Summer Trips

Annie went on her first trip to the zoo today! Well, it was mostly a trip for her aunts and uncle and I. We hadn't been in a long time, and Meg was home from Michigan, so we thought it was a good time to go. Beautiful weather too--sunny and not too humid. Annie wasn't too impressed with the zoo, she slept through most of it, surprise, surprise. We had a good time though!This week we also went to Utica to visit Uncle Pete, my late grandma's brother. Uncle Pete is wonderful--he's always been so good to my mother and us kids. He lives 3 hours away, but we visit with him as much as we can, and he's always been really close to all of us. He's also really goofy--always joking around and just a generally funny guy. So my mom, sisters, and brother drove up there on Wednesday. We went out to lunch and then out to buy Annie a teddy bear. He really enjoyed seeing her, he kept talking about how he remembered when we were that small. He also thinks she looks a bit like my grandma, and was talking about how cute she was when she was a baby (he was 4 years older than her). He really wished my grandma could be here to see her. We all really wish that. She would have been absolutely thrilled with her. I know she's watching over her though!On a happy note: Wednesday was also the start of Super Baby. Annie was a bit cranky so Paul started flying her through the air. She would cry every time he stopped, so he had to keep it up for a half an hour, she absolutely loved it. She loves being Super Baby, I think Paul might be stuck with his arms up in the air for a while!

Sleepy Monkey Girl

Annie is getting bigger, and every day it seems like she learns something new. This week she's been smiling more and cooing a lot, and has started following people and toys when they move back and forth. Last night Paul had her on the changing table and she was gripping onto both of his index fingers and trying to pull herself up. She also likes to be held standing up on your lap and then straightens out her legs so she's standing. She's such a strong girl! Long too. We have been amazed at how long her arms, legs, and toes are looking lately, she's a little monkey girl. Paul went off of his "she's going to be a softball player" kick and is started talking volleyball again. Then he started talking about playing both. Lord help us. ;0)We had her one month checkup on Saturday morning. She's doing really well. She is up to 10 lbs, 11 oz, and 23 and a half inches. Everything looks great developmentally. Sad news for me though: I have to give up all dairy for the next two weeks. She's had a few episodes of projectile vomiting over the past few weeks, and since it happens at the end of the day each time, and since so much comes out, the doctor thinks it might have something to do with my diet. She said when she was breastfeeding she had the same experience and it worked for them. I really, really hope that it's not a dairy thing, that's the staple of my diet. I don't know what I'd do without milk and cheese. At the same time, it would be a relatively simple solution. If she has another episode she wants to take some x-rays to make sure there is nothing going on in her stomach that's causing it. So we're really hoping that it just goes away! Poor baby. Fourth of July weekend was great. The weather was absolutely beautiful, and we took advantage of it. Paul was home Friday and Saturday, so we had some nice family time. Friday we had my sister Kathryn and a few friends over for a small cookout and campfire. Paul was disappointed we can't go to the fireworks for a few years because of little ears, but we heard all of the shows while we were sitting around the campfire, so that was kind of fun. Saturday we had her doctor's appointment at 9, and then went to the public market and grocery shopping afterwards. That afternoon both sets of grandparents, Uncle Kevin, and Aunt Kathryn came by for another cookout. Everyone really enjoyed visiting with Annie, and she was very happy snuggling up and sleeping on everyone. Sunday Paul conquered his fear of heights and cleaned out the gutters while Annie and I supervised. Well, I supervised and held the ladder, Annie slept the day away on my lap and in her rocker. She's sleepy again today--I've got her strapped on in the Baby Bjorn as I'm typing this. These things are great, I have two hands again!

Oh, other news: Annie is wearing a 3 month sized outfit today and it is not huge on her like it was before, so her wardrobe is going to be that much bigger now. She still fits into most of her 0-3 outfits too, I only had to put away a few things so far. Out of all of the different sized clothing we got, 3-6 months was the most popular size. I'm really excited to dig into those! I'm sure there will be more photo sessions now too. ;0)

4 Weeks

Annie will be a month old this week, I can't believe it! This is going way too fast. It's really hard to believe I only have 2 months left at home with her, I'm trying not to think about that too much!

We've had a great few weeks--still going out and about a lot. She's been in to my office to meet my coworkers and today I took her to meet my mom's nursing home to meet her coworkers and some of her patients. Both visits were so much fun, everyone was very excited to meet her. My mom's patients were so cute, they were so happy to see a baby.

Besides our trip to the baseball game, Paul and I have taken her shopping at the outlet mall, to Greece so Annie could meet her great grandma and great uncle, to a festival named Taste of Rochester (where you sample foods from different restaurants from around the area, such a good idea!), to the lake for Abbotts (in the rain), and out to Geneva to visit some of Paul's family and for a party at our friend Tony's. Today after the trip to mom's nursing home, Aunt Kathryn, Uncle Kevin, Annie and I went out to Old Navy and then to get ice cream. Last week Kevin and I went to Powers with her to visit the animals and get cookies. Kevin is very cute with her, he pushes her stroller back and forth to rock her when she gets fussy, and keeps an eye on her in the back seat of the car. Every Thursday we go watch Paul's men's league games, and every Friday we go to our coed games. She's at a great age still, it's easy to travel around with her because she sleeps through everything. So we're just working on getting her used to going out and about, and we're having a nice summer so far! In other news, we saw our first few smiles! I thought she might have smiled a few days ago when I had her on the changing table and she was doing her usual staring at the polka-dot decals Paul put on the wall (she loves those things)! Then Paul was changing her and doing his usual goofy voices for her, and she gave him a nice big smile. She did the same for me the next day. So cute!! The other day I was changing her and talking to her and she looked right at me and started cooing at me. She had such a look of concentration, she was trying so hard to talk to me! I loved it, and now make a fool of myself every day trying to get her to do it again. ;0)
Lately she wants to be held when she's sleeping, which makes it harder to get things done around the house (like eat lunch and do the laundry), but is so worth it. I will hold her as much as I possibly can, because I know how fast this is going by, and I need to enjoy it while it's here! It's amazing how different she is every day. I'm trying so hard to file it away so I can remember it all!