1 Month

**I originally didn't post this because my 4 weeks post was on the same day, but I decided I wanted it up here for posterity's sake :) Just look at that tiny little baby! My how she has changed...**

Dear Annie,

Today you are one month old! Your dad and I have loved getting to know you over this past month - I'm sorry that sometimes we get frustrated with you - but sometimes you are just a silly thing that has all her needs met but still seems angry! It has taken us about this whole month to really start to feel like you are our daughter - it was a very surreal experience so far for both your dad and I to have a child. I do well with routines and predictability, and you definitely threw both of those things right out the window! Now after spending the last month with you, we both love you more than you will ever know, and we would do anything for you, including rock you to sleep for a millionth time that night, and feed you even though you JUST ATE!

We are starting to figure out what you like - you like to have your butt and back patted while you are held upright on my shoulder, you enjoy having lotion put on while we turn the hair dryer on warm to keep you toasty, you love being rocked in your Daddy's arms, mostly when he is standing up, you like REALLY loud music, and sometimes enjoy car rides, but other times you HATE them! You are a picky little bugger :) But then again, so are we, so you come by it honestly!

You are unequivocally the CUTEST little baby we've ever seen - you have the best expressions! Sometimes you look just plain crazy, but even then you are so cute! I love it when you purse your lips in a little bow shape when you are done eating, and when you stick your little tongue out! You are the MOST cute when you are sleeping - you just look so peaceful - although sometimes you keep a grimace on your face the entire time you're sleeping which is hilarious. Your little hands and feet are adorable - you kick them around when we are changing your diaper, and you love to grab onto my shirt really hard when you are eating - sometimes you accidentally stick your hands in your mouth instead of the nipple, and then you get angry :) I love when you hold my hand with your little smooth hand when you are eating. You are at your happiest right after you eat and that's when we like to mess around with you, trying to get you to "play" with your toys and have conversations with us :)

One thing your dad and I are hoping you grow out of is how loud you are when you sleep, and how fitful your sleep is! This is another thing you may have inherited from me - I'm a horrible sleeper and I hope you can be better than I am! I didn't become a horrible sleeper until adulthood though, so there may be hope for you yet! You grunt, squirm, squeak and sometimes make a cry when you sleep, so your dad and I lay tense, waiting for your next move :)

We are both so excited to see how you continue to grow and change, and to see the person that you will become! We love you, little Annie!

Love, Mom

4 Weeks

Hasn't quite mastered sitting yet :)

We made it 4 weeks! And since February is a 4 week month, Annie is one month old! It's kind of annoying to have a child born on the 31st of a month, because when are they a month older? I'm just going to go with the last day of every month, regardless of how long the month is :) I think I've said this before, but I really just don't understand people who get sad when time passes and the newborn phase is over... Ben and I can't WAIT until Annie can start recognizing us and smiling... and gaining the ability to entertain herself for a bit, hopefully!

She does definitely seem to be focusing more with her eyes on things, and a few times, she actually seemed to realize that I was shaking a toy in her face :) Her eyes are also looking more blue - I REALLY hope they stay that way! My eyes are hazel, which I like, but I LOVE Ben's blue eyes and I hope Annie has inherited them!

My first Mom and Baby class was on Monday - we made it there reasonably on time, and thankfully the hospital has valet due to all the construction in the area - makes it a lot easier! There were about 6 other women and babies there - Annie was the youngest, and the oldest was 8 weeks. We started off by just each telling our birth stories which was really interesting. There was another woman who's birth was REALLY similar to mine, down to the fact that she just wanted to take a nap after having the baby instead of holding her ;) Ha! It was really great to talk with women going through the exact same thing as me and to hear that we are all facing the same struggles and frustrations.

In Annie news this week, she has been fairly good - she gets in the habit of fighting sleep during the day (and sometimes at night too - VERY frustrating at 4am!) so we're trying to figure out her sleepy cues early. I have been trying to follow the E.A.S.Y. routine (Eat, Activity, Sleep, You) during the day, which actually seems to be working pretty well. There usually is a very limited amount of time (20-30 minutes max) where Annie is awake but not fussing, so I try to just walk her around and talk to her during that time. One of my very favorite things to do is have her up on my shoulder and just rub and kiss her little cute face :) Ben has a harder time with activity time - I think he just feels dumb talking to her, so he mostly just holds her and dances around with her (typically either to really loud music or West Wing) and they stare at each other during her awake times :) Whatever works! As soon as she starts fussing, yawning, or otherwise indicating that she's pissy, we swaddle her up and try to help her fall asleep, which eventually works. I feel a LITTLE bad keeping her swaddled so much, but hey, if she sleeps better with it on, who cares?? It's pretty hilarious to watch her try to sleep unswaddled - her little arms flail up every minute or so :)

Sometimes she's REALLY fighting sleep, which is super frustrating - she's fed, burped, changed, etc and just CAN'T pull it together enough to go to sleep! Then we try everything, but no one thing always works - once and awhile her swing will work, sometimes the bouncer, sometimes white noise... and that is when we definitely get super frustrated! Luckily, the more frustrated one of us gets, the more patient the other gets - this has always happened with Ben and I with everything, like when he gets super pissed off at traffic, I don't think it's a big deal at all, and vice versa. Good thing too, because then Annie can be switched to the least frustrated parent :)

Annie is probably the noisiest sleeper ever - she grunts and squeaks and makes one cry and then is still sleeping. It makes our sleep VERY poor - I put the down comforter over my whole face to try to drown her out! As soon as she gets on some sort of predictable schedule and wakes maybe 1x per night, she's going down in her own room and the monitor will be turned down VERY low! When she REALLY wakes up, you can definitely tell (because she's full on screaming), but the problem for us now is that her room is on the main level and we can't hear ANYTHING from upstairs. I'm not sure if you can purchase a baby monitor that only picks up screams but not all the other noises??? That would be excellent :) She has been sort of predictably sleeping from 8pm or so until midnight or 1am, which is pretty nice - that is usually her longest stretch of sleep, so thus we also go to bed at 8pm. I'm really wondering if that will change anytime soon... doubtful!! It's to the point where if it's 8pm and I'm not either feeding her or in bed, I'm pretty pissy myself :)

I'm still tracking every feeding and diaper with my Total Baby iPhone app - I probably don't need to anymore, but I like the sense of knowing exactly how long she ate for and how long ago and also what side I left off on. I don't ever let her go more than 3 hours during the day, and I'm not sure I'd always remember if I didn't track it! Who knows... maybe someday I'll stop being so anal, but not yet :)

I think Annie is starting to really smile - I've seen more and more faces that appear to be smiles, even when she is awake! She also has VERY impressive neck strength, which she shows off especially when she's pissed off :) I don't even feel like we have to do official tummy time, because she is held upright a lot and definitely lifts her head up really well! We took a few outings together this week other than Mom and Baby class - we went to the mall one morning - she slept the whole time (which was an hour- turns out the mall is pretty boring)! I thought that might be a good indication of what she'd do the next day, but oh no, of course not :) On Friday, we met my friend Kelley at the Egg & I so I could finally enjoy Eggs Benedict again - Annie was in a VERY angry mood that morning, but miraculously she pulled it together long enough for me to at least eat (we alternated holding her). I did have to kind of rush out before she full on freaked out, but oh well! The eggs were delicious and worth it for sure :)

Nice huge frown!


Trip to the great-Grandparents' place for a birthday dinner!

In regards to my own recovery, I feel pretty much back to normal now - my post partum check up isn't for 2 more weeks, so I guess I'll find out at that time. I still think my stitches and other things aren't totally healed, but they aren't bothering me, so whatever. I'm feeling more confident in my parenting skills too, and much less anxious. The pit that was in my stomach that I referenced in my 2 Weeks post is pretty much gone, thankfully!

Yesterday, I was away from Annie for about 4 hours when I went with my sister to look at wedding dresses (she found one! yay!), and I definitely missed her and felt really guilty being gone - I thought that wouldn't happen to me, but.... I guess it does! It didn't help when Ben sent me this pic of Annie wanting to eat :( (he had another bottle, but I was on my way home so he held her off for a few minutes - he thought the pic was hilarious, but it made me cry!!) I think I just might end up being a mess when I go back to work! We have family who are SO excited to babysit Annie, which is really nice, because a few hour break really does refresh both of us!

Beautiful Child!

Even though Annie is being quite the fuss bucket tonight, she still is just so cute! Kate came over on Monday and caught Annie is a nice moment of sleepiness. She's such a beautiful little baby, especially when all of her baby acne is photoshopped out ;)

I wasn't going to get birth announcements, but I decided I wanted one for myself, and when I got an email that there was a 20% off sale at Shutterfly, I figured it must be fate :) This was the perfect photo to use for them!

The Basement

My coworkers Janelle and Jen came over on Sunday, and brought a DELICIOUS breakfast for us! The pastries were from A Baker's Wife's Pastry Shop - yum. I really need to get over there sometime to sample whatever is fresh from the oven. Kate brought me a treat from there while we were in the hospital too - also awesome. So far, I am definitely impressed!

As you can see, Annie was pleased


Jen's daughter Brynn holding Annie :)

Anyway, after we ate and they all got a chance to hold Annie, the next item on the agenda was checking out the crazy murals in our basement - Janelle had seen them at the party we had last March, and when I told Jen about them, she was obsessed :) I really can't believe I've never taken photos of these before! Literally every inch of the walls in our basement are painted with totally random and mismatched murals... according to our old neighbor, the murals were painted by the previous owner's grandfather (the previous owner was about 80 or something when she moved) - this house has been in their family since 1930, so who knows when these were actually painted! We do at some point want to make our basement a little more useable, but it will be a sad day when we cover up the murals!

Yeah, that's a naked lady - mostly covered up by boxes right now, but she is completely nude!

3 Weeks

This week was so much better than last week! I think it was a combination of factors, but mostly because, as I mentioned in my last post, we had a busy week and I made sure to get out of the house every day for at least a little bit! I also think I am just more used to the fact that Annie might be fussy and I can just deal with it instead of letting it make ME upset. She usually can be pacified (not by a pacifier though!! We have tried SEVERAL times and she just won't have it) in some way, so that's good.

Annie had a weight check with the pediatrician on Thursday - she's up to 8lbs, 9oz, so she's gaining at the rate she's supposed to! She was really alert at the doctor's office, but not crying (rare) and he said that everything looks great, except she has a bit of a diaper rash, so we've been trying to air out her bum for awhile every day :) We don't go back until 2 months for her shots, which seems like a LONG time - luckily we have her frequent poops to reassure us that she's getting the milk she needs ;)

I already mentioned all of our visitors this week, but the big news since then is that Ben and I went on our first alone date last night! We also went to Becca and Joe's house on Friday to have sushi - they had fun with Annie that night, and then came over here to babysit last night while we went to Meritage - I had really missed going to nice restaurants and ordering wine while pregnant, so it was REALLY great to get to indulge again, even if it is just one glass at a time due to breastfeeding... Soon (hopefully) we'll have a review up on We Got Served - it's been far too long!

One way to calm a fussy baby!


First sushi in 10 months - from wasabi - it was DELICIOUS!

I mentioned before that it has started to sink in that Annie is my daughter now - well, that is just growing! I definitely did not have an immediate bond with her like some mothers do, but now it is coming as I get to know her more and more. I'm really looking forward to when she can actually recognize me and give me a lil smile - hopefully soon! She definitely still has her fussy times, so it will be great when we can TRY to entertain her better with toys and things. She actually does seem to kind of enjoy being rocked in the glider while I read her a book or sing her a song sometimes, so that is nice!

Breastfeeding is still going well - the past few feedings today, Annie has been fussing and de-latching herself, I'm not sure why, but she seemed to eventually figure things out. I have nursed her in bed at night, but I still prefer to just get up and sit in a chair. I haven't had to feed her in a public place yet, but I've gotten a lot more comfortable feeding in front of people either using a cover or not. Oh, also a major development this week is that Annie is now sleeping in her pack-n-play at night, NOT in her bouncer! She seems to be doing fine with it - one night she slept for 6 HOURS in a row - that was amazing. Now it probably won't happen again until she's 6 months old ;)

I know everyone says that maternity leave goes so fast, but it seems like I've been gone from work for an eternity already - I miss the daily adult interaction and I do miss my job too! I really am glad to have these 12 weeks with Annie, but I think I will also be just fine going back. Right now I am mostly looking forward to Ben being done with his job - his company is moving to Rhode Island, so his job will be over on April 2nd and then he is not starting his new job until May, so we will have the last 3 weeks of my maternity leave together! We are SO lucky to be able to do that - I'm really excited to have that time together as a family!

I keep checking the weather forecast to see if it will get above 40 here - nothing close to that coming up, unfortunately! It seemed relatively nice yesterday, so we did take a short walk to a local coffee shop - Annie wasn't extremely happy, so we didn't stay there, but at least we got out for a bit! Maybe she didn't like her flower snow suit thing :) There are still sheets of ice on the sidewalks though, so the stroller is a no go - we used the Ergo. I think we'll probably at least need to wait until the ice melts for more outdoor walks though - it's just too dangerous and slippery - I think I'll try the mall this week!

Busy Week!

Annie and I have had quite the busy week! It went a lot faster that way :) Ben worked from home a day and a half this week because we had a security system installed, so one of the days we decided to brave taking Annie out to Blue Door Pub, and met Grandpa Greg there - she was again screaming on the way there, and somehow in the 5 minute drive wet her diaper, but miraculously after a backseat diaper change and getting her out of the carseat, she calmed down! She seemed pretty close to crying, but Ben got her to fall asleep - phew!

We also had several visitors this week - I'm glad people are still wanting to come over to see Annie, because I definitely would get bored if they didn't!

Visiting the Grandparents!

Yesterday, Annie was awake seriously ALL day - just wanting to be held and being kind of fussy but not too bad as long as she was stimulated in some way (Ben took her for a walk in the Ergo on the treadmill even - she seemed to like that for a little bit at least!). She took her bottle just fine, but still seemed hungry - it's really hard to know how much to give a breastfed baby - we started with 2oz but maybe will need to give her a bit more next time. When I got home from my 3 hours away from the house (glorious, but I did miss my baby and was nervous that she wouldn't take her bottle!), she was definitely ready to eat again and had no trouble transitioning back to the boob ;) Good for her! We were quite nervous about how the night would go since she was being so fussy, but she actually only woke up once between 9pm and 6:30am - wow. I'm not banking on that happening again, but it was pretty awesome!

After reading Annie "Green Eggs and Ham" (wow, that book is long and kind of annoying) - she seemed happy then at least!


Since she was awake and fussy anyway, we gave her another bath - different cute towel this time (thanks Mindy!!)

So after wearing herself out yesterday, she's been conked out all day today - she was awake for awhile in the morning, and then at about 10am we left to make the trek down to Apple Valley to visit the grandparents since my mom was off work today - Annie didn't seem to enjoy being put in her carseat at first, but as soon as I picked it up and put it in the car, she quieted down, and then slept the entire ride down and for the majority of the several hours we were at my parents house!

Pretty skeptical of the outfit and huge shoes (I added pants later since she seemed chilly)


Grandpa sure was glad to see Annie!


And so was Grandma!


Annie sat by Grandpa in her carseat while he watched All My Children - Maggie was jealous


Didn't even wake up for a diaper change - SO tired!

2 Weeks

Happy Valentine's Day from Annie!

Well, we made it 2 weeks - each day feels like an accomplishment at this point! This has definitely been a week of ups and downs for me, that's for sure. It seems like most people I have talked to about having babies talk about having a newborn as this magical wonderful experience that is just amazing at all points, and that their babies fed like clockwork every 3 hours on the dot and slept in between, so they could go out and do whatever between those times - and that certainly has NOT been my experience! Through no fault of Annie's - she is really a good baby - she has her fussy moments (sometimes more than moments) that's for sure, but she sleeps really well (most of the time), she's a good eater, and she seems to be growing! It really just has been a rough adjustment for ME - I crave routines and predictability, and obviously that goes right out the window with a newborn. Now at the end of this week, I finally am feeling like I'm starting to get to know this new little person just a little bit - like I said in my 1 week post, it hadn't sunk in that this is my daughter, but now it is finally starting to seem real.

At the beginning of this week, there were points where I felt like I had a pit in my stomach all the time - just waiting for Annie to start crying again, and then even when she didn't cry for hours, I would still be anxious. That anxiety has slowly started to go away, and I think what really helped for me was to GET OUT OF THE HOUSE - I was starting to feel totally trapped in here. That is one of the worst parts of having a baby in the Minnesota winter - you can't even take a walk outside, so any outing you take has to involve the car and finding somewhere inside where I can nurse AND where if she cries it will be ok. For us, that has just been other people's houses. This Wednesday was my first time out of the house (other than to the pediatrician), we went to Becky and Rett's house, and really it was amazing how much better I felt after just having some interaction with other people and realizing that I won't be in this house forever :) We also went to Nate and Molly's on Friday (yeah, that's only about 10 feet away, but at least we weren't in our house!).

At Becky and Rett's house with my first glass of wine


At Nate and Molly's, drinking my first tiny Miller Lite post-pregnancy

During the mornings, Annie is pretty fussy - she has been sleeping fairly well at night and then when she wakes up she wants to eat A LOT, and she just is fussy for no reason. Becca came by on Thursday and I practically shoved Annie at her :) Even since then, I have gotten better at knowing how to soothe her without just resorting to feeding her every hour - Ben is REALLY good at soothing her, since he has no option to feed her :) Sometimes I feel bad, because I don't really always want to be holding her... I'm nursing her 5+ hours a day, so I obviously have lots of time with her, but when she's done, I am JUST fine handing her over to someone else. I like having little conversations with her in her rare alert but not crying moments, but those don't happen too often yet. I know I am SO lucky that so far, breastfeeding is going really well - I'm not really sore anymore at all, and Annie is getting a lot better at latching (she still takes a few tries sometimes though) and I also seem to be providing enough milk to her judging by her "output" :) So, when I do fall asleep, I DREAM about breastfeeding - I dream that I have just fed Annie, or that my teddy bear IS Annie, and she is currently eating while I'm sleeping. It's kind of freaky :) I guess it just goes to show what is consuming most of my thoughts these days!

Yet again, I'll give another shout out to the iPhone - I would seriously go crazy without it - nursing can be really isolating and boring. I have to sit in one place, lots of times I can't really reach anything (I love it when she's nursing on my right side when I'm on the couch because then I can at least reach my water on the end table :), and when I'm alone I'm just sitting there..... hum de dum. So what I most often do is go through my Google Reader on my iPhone - I save all my blogs for nighttime feedings now, so I can stay awake. I suppose at some point, I'll be able to just nurse Annie in bed, but right now I still need to be sitting up. During the day when I'm alone, I have a TV show (currently The OC) in the DVD player that I can stop and start when she's feeding, or I'll call my mom. As most people know, I love being with people, and I love communicating with people too - emailing, talking on the phone, etc - so sitting at home alone all day with a tiny baby just gets kind of.... boring. I signed up for a Mom & Baby class at the hospital I delivered at - it starts on the 22nd, and I made sure to have activities planned for myself every day this week too - I think that will help make this time better for me AND Annie!

I had my first solo outing yesterday - Annie and I went to Kate's birthday brunch - it was good to bring her to a group gathering, but she was definitely not too happy there! She was okay for about 30-45 minutes, and then wanted to eat, and then just started SCREAMING bloody murder after that - so we had to go! I was out of the house for about 2 hours though, so that was good - AND I got to have a homemade bagel and a few bites of a homemade croissant - so the screaming was worth it :) About 5 minutes into the ride home, Annie was sleeping, and then we got her to sleep when we got home, so perhaps she was just overstimulated - who knows! Or she just REALLY wanted to scream :) It seems that morning outings are not in the cards for me at the moment - I'm sure her "schedule" will change by tomorrow though! Later today I will be leaving the house for a few hours, just to run some errands, while Ben attempts to give Annie her first bottle (at the recommendation of the pediatrician - we're supposed to start now and give her a bottle every few days so she knows that is an okay way to eat too) - I'm sure that will feel weird and great at the same time!

My personal recovery is going well - I'm going to stop taking photos now, because I'm pretty sure this is just the way my body will be - it looks like it did pre-pregnancy, except for the linea negra and my belly button is slightly looser than it used to be (if that makes sense). I'm really lucky to have bounced back so quickly - I did nothing to make that happen, I guess I just have good genes - thanks mom!! :) The one thing that DOESN'T fit is still my wedding rings - which is pretty annoying! I hope I don't have to get them re-sized...

I know this post might sound like a downer and it got to be really long - but really things are going very well for us - Annie makes us laugh every day with her little faces and her antics!

Bath time!!

Annie's umbilical cord stump fell off 2 nights ago, so yesterday we did her first bath!! I think the stump isn't ALL the way off, so maybe we should have waited, but oh well, life goes on. She didn't seem to hate it TOO much - of course, there was crying, but that's to be expected!

She was so clean and soft after - it was great! And maybe because she was so tired out from that, she slept from 8pm-6am only waking up twice to eat (well, we woke her up actually, but whatever) - now that would be a schedule I could live with, if only it would remain predictable :)

No idea what's in store for her


Yikes!!


WHAT did you just do to me?!?!


Daddy making it all better!


Annie's "crazy face" - we never know what's coming when she gives us this look!