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!

Sleeping Arrangements

For her first 10 weeks, Annie slept in a cosleeper in our bedroom. She was getting up to eat through the night and it was very convenient having her right next to me. Also I could roll over to make sure she was okay anytime I wanted. It was nice. But now that she's been sleeping through the night for over a week we decided that it's time to try out the crib. I put her in last night after her bedtime feeding and she did great, stayed there all night! I was nervous around 3 because I heard her on the monitor, she was awake and talking. I had been worried about that because up until now, the crib has meant playtime. Her mobile is attached and she watches it when I am showering or putting a load of laundry in. After about a half and hour she had fallen back asleep though, phew!

She's been all smiley and chatty each morning since she started sleeping so long, and she was the especially smiley this morning. I think it might be because she woke up and her beloved mobile was above her. She kept looking at me and then looking up at the mobile, chatting away. Very cute!

The other good news is she's a loud sleeper, she makes little noises when she breathes. So all I need to do is listen to her squeaking away through the monitor and I know she's okay! Cuts back on a lot of trips to her room to peek in. Although I did do that once anyway, of course. :)

"Mom, I woke up and my mobile was up there!"

We took a break from watching the Olympics and went to another ball game last night. We had a nice time, and we got to bed a lot earlier than we would have if we stayed home to watch Olympics. Man, they've been keeping us up late! Can't miss gymnastics though, I've been waiting 4 years for this!

Now explain to me why I still feel tired...

So Annie is a champion sleeper. I know I've talked about how she sleeps through everything while we're out and about, but I haven't really gone into how she sleeps at night. You'd think that she would be up all night since she sleeps so much during the day. That is not the case. She spoils me like crazy. We had a few rough nights here and there in the past 2 months, where she woke up to eat every hour or even every half and hour. But for the most part, she sleeps from 3 to 4 hours at a time. Lately though, (and I really hope I am not jinxing myself here by writing about it) she's been sleeping for much longer through the night. Mostly it's between 5 or 6 hours, but she's slept for 8 hours twice now, and last night she beat that record. She slept for ELEVEN hours. I could not believe it. She wakes up every once in a while when she sleeps like that, but she'll just squirm around a little bit and then sucks on her thumb to get herself back to sleep. It's awesome. I like to think she's rewarding me for making me wait so long for her to get here. It's the least she could do, really. ;0)

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. :)

Two Weeks Old: Things I Want to Remember

* How strong Annie was right from birth--she loves being held upwards rather than lying down, and from her first day she would lift her head off of our chests to look around. Such a strong neck already! We love it when she's alert and looking around, her head bobbing up and down, eyes crossing and uncrossing as she tries to focus on things. It's so fun watching her discover her new world.

* How sleepy she has been for her first couple of weeks: She sleeps a lot, waking only to be fed and have her diaper changed every couple of hours. She is happy sleeping anyhere; we pass her around from person to person and she sleeps right through it. Each day she has one awake period where she's up and ready for some action, so we carry her around so she can look at things, let her take a ride in her swing, or simply let her lay in her cradle, entertaining herself. She lies there and kicks her legs, gurgling away, happy as can be. We love to watch her looking around at everything.* How patient she is when we're dressing her. The gowns she wears at night are tricky to get her arms into, and she is so incredibly patient about it. She cries when we are changing her diaper, but once she has the clean diaper on she's happy as a clam, looking at the polka dots we have stuck to the wall behind the changing table, gurgling away as we struggle to get her wiggly arms into those skinny arm holes. Such a happy girl!

* Nursing her: I love the time we spend together when I'm feeding her. She looks around while she's eating, plays with her hands, stretches out her little monkey toes. The best is when she looks up at me and studies my face. She grabs onto me for dear life. She makes cute little squeaky noises the whole time. She needs to burp often, and sometimes she'll burp and will shove her fist into her mouth to let me know she's ready to go right back for more, but sometimes she'll drop her head forward and close her eyes, leaning into my chest, which means she just wants to sleep on me. I'm happy to let her.

* The teeny "o" shape her mouth makes when she's looking at me.

* How much she loves having water poured on her head.

* Her incredibly soft skin and silky hair. We can't keep our hands off her head!

* The way she looks up the entire time she's in the swing, like she's trying to figure out where the music is coming from.

* How much she loves riding in her sling. She scrunches herself up in there and falls asleep within seconds. We think it must remind her of being in the womb.

* How much she likes having her butt patted. It can calm her down within seconds!

* How excited Paul was for his first Father's Day. Such a proud Daddy!