3 Months

Dear Annie,

Today you are 3 months old, a huge milestone that at the beginning felt like forever away to me! You are a completely different baby than you were 3 months ago, which is amazing to me. I can hardly even comprehend all of the changes that you have gone through in your short life! You are so filled with personality now – your smiles can light up a room, and fill my heart with complete joy. I love to hear you “talk” to me and your dad – you are definitely finding your voice now, and we can even have a bit of back and forth conversations about our days :)

In the past week, we all went through a huge change – we went from all being home and together pretty much all the time, to you going away to a strange place every day while Dad and I go to work. I think this will be a month of adjustment for all of us, as you learn to enjoy daycare, and as we get used to trusting someone else to watch over you while we aren’t around. Yesterday, I saw you smile at Sue, your daycare provider, and it made me so happy to see that you are okay while we are gone! We really have all been enjoying our evenings together this week, which I hope continues. You used to be pretty fussy in the evenings, but now you are happy to be with us and give us lots of smiles and giggles. I hope you know just how much your Dad and I love you, Annie - we can spend hours just watching you wiggle around, which we frequently do :) We all had so much fun in our 3 weeks together as a family this past month - your Dad and I will forever cherish that time we had with no responsibilities other than making sure you were happy!

You have grown like a weed in the past few weeks – you have these HUGE cheeks now that we LOVE to cover with kisses! This still seems to sometimes annoy you, but we don’t care – you are just too cute to resist! You have really started recognizing us this month too – you will smile when you see us, instead of just smiling at the wall (which sometimes you still smile at too, because apparently it is a very amazing wall!) You are also getting so strong – you love to stand, and when you are on the floor you are pretty close to rolling over by how much you wiggle around. I’m pretty sure you have no idea what you are doing, but the force of your movement is about to propel you over! Last night, you rolled from your tummy to your back – it was very clearly completely accidental, and you seemed a little stunned when it happened. I’m hoping your mobility holds off for a bit longer – we quite enjoy knowing that you will stay where we put you for now!

As the summer begins, we are looking forward to all of the adventures we will have together, even if a lot of those adventures will just be in our backyard! It is so much fun to watch you grow into a unique little person. We love you so much Annie!

Love, Mom

Hump Day

Phew, we're over the hump of our first week of work and daycare! The first day wasn't so bad - leaving was fine for me, since Ben does the dropoff. I thought it would be really hard, but it just... wasn't. I did really worry about Annie during the day, especially on Monday - I was mostly concerned about her sleeping, since she's gotten a lot better with the bottle. Annie has done okay each day - but it always seems like she's a bit traumatized when we get her, especially today. Sue said she had a "bad afternoon" and kind of joked about wanting to give her away. Har har har. Not funny. Only I can joke about that!! She has napped better each day though, but afternoons have been a little rough, which is pretty consistent with what she's like at home. She's eaten just fine too - her first 2 bottles she eats all (I've been doing 4oz each, and I'm going to up her first 2 to 5oz tomorrow to see if she takes that) and the 3rd she is more so-so with. Apparently today she was rooting around for the boob on Sue, so hopefully she figures out the difference soon! I think she'll adjust ok, I was fully expecting this week to be pretty rough for her! When we get home each day, she just CRASHES immediately, just for a catnap, but it's almost funny how exhausted she seems.

Before I left on Monday

The past 2 nights she's still slept great all night so hopefully that continues. I find myself listening to her noises more and watching the clock when I think she might be waking up to think of how the "schedule" might go then. I definitely need to get over that!! I've hit a wall of exhaustion each day at about 2pm, not due to Annie of course - just because I suck at sleeping :) Hopefully it gets better soon.

As I suspected it would, work feels like a break. I really am liking being back - it's nice to have something that I know how to do well, and that is predictable :) It's also quite quiet at work - not like Annie is ALWAYS crying, but I'm kind of always tensed for it, and I don't need to do that at work. It's very weird to not think about Annie all the time - I almost feel guilty when I realize I haven't really thought about her in a bit. As the day goes on, I definitely miss her and I'm always excited to see her at daycare. It now is clear that she does recognize us, because she'll calm down in our arms when we get her - I love that!

So far so good with pumping - I am pumping more than Annie is eating, and I've kept up my morning pump. I think I was the first one to reserve my floor's pumping room, so I got the prime times :) It takes me about 20 minutes from when I leave my desk to when I get back, which isn't bad. Hopefully my supply keeps up!

Anyway, I'm glad the transition back to work wasn't too bad yet - I just am hoping Annie at some point starts to enjoy daycare!

12 Weeks

Annie's 4th Trimester is officially over! NOW she is ready to enter the outside world :) Not quite sure if SHE got that memo yet, but oh well! Ben and I have been remarking every single day just how HUGE Annie seems! I swear, just in the past week or two, she has gotten WAY bigger. We weighed her yesterday, and she was 12lbs, which is just average, but she just seems to have grown a ton recently! Looking back at her 10 vs. 11 week pics, her head seems a lot bigger too :) We took a pic of her wearing the outfit she came home from the hospital in to compare - yup, she's WAY bigger now :)

Along with getting bigger, Annie seems to have figured out that she has a little bit of strength in that body of hers. All the sudden early this week she realized that while on her tummy, she can actually LIFT her head up and SEE things - amazing!! :) It was almost as if you could see the lightbulb go off in her head...... ooooooh, THIS is what they were trying to make me do all those times! She also loves to stand - every time we try to have her sit on our laps, she straightens out those little legs and forces herself in a standing position. She's getting more and more stable - less of a little bobble head :) One of her favorite things this week is getting her diaper changed - she gets SO excited and kicks her legs around like a maniac. We also have found that if you blow on her face, she does a quick inhale of breath, and makes a hilarious face - no matter how many times you do it in a row :) It's quite entertaining, to us at least :)

I know 3 or 4 months is supposedly when babies get way less fussy - Annie really still hasn't hit that yet. She certainly is WAY better than she used to be, but still has her fussy times, especially in the evening right before bedtime. She also has a habit sometimes of fighting naps, but sometimes I think that is more because we might have missed her "tired" cues and tried to put her down for a nap when she's overtired and thus cranky. She still can only handle about 1.5 hours of being awake, sometimes slightly more in the evening. Sometimes she doesn't actually yawn though, so it's hard to tell if she's actually tired. It's great when it's timed right, we can put her in her swing and she will just sit there and fall asleep without a peep, but if not, she REALLY gets pissed and needs some consoling before she'll take a nap. We TRY to explain to her that it's just a nap and she'll feel better later - she doesn't quite seem to get it yet though ;)

Annie slept great at night all week - for some reason, she rarely fights going to sleep at night and is able to be put in the crib awake and she'll just drift off. It's strange that daytime can't just be the same! Today she even slept from about 8:30pm til 7am, and wasn't even crying then - she was just wiggling and smiling in her crib - so cute :) Annie is such a wiggler in her sleep - frequently she will turn herself 180 degrees somehow, even though she is tightly swaddled. One night, we heard music over the monitor at about 5am - she had kicked her legs up and hit her rainforest soother and turned it on - ha! Luckily it didn't seem to wake her up.

Ben and I tried the moby and the Ergo again this week - Annie is at a weird stage with the ergo where she is slightly too small to be in it without the infant insert (she can't quite spread her legs around us yet, and her head control is still kind of iffy) but WAY too big to be in there comfortably with the insert. The moby she fits in well, but she can't seem to figure out that it's acceptable for her to fall asleep in there. I walked around with her in it for 30 minutes at home at around her nap time and she just looked around and got pissed until I took her out. I think she's fine in those if she's awake, but we want her to be able to fall asleep in there too so we could take her places! Maybe with some more practice... I get very jealous when I see people wearing babies out and about - I know Annie would NOT stand for that for longer than 20 minutes at this point!

So, the big news this week is that my maternity leave is over. As I have mentioned before, I am excited to go back to work, but I am DEFINITELY going to miss Annie a ton when I'm gone. We visited daycare on Wednesday for a few hours, and Annie did well - there are 8 other kids there, 4 who are in school. I'm glad she is the only infant, but I fear that the first week or two will be QUITE rough especially with napping. Sue, the daycare provider, has been doing this for at least 20 if not 30+ years, so obviously she knows what she's doing, but it's still hard to leave your baby and KNOW that there will be a ton of crying the first few days as she adjusts. I do hope that it trains her to be able to sleep better during the day! Sue is definitely a rule follower, and seems very well versed in handling new babies, so that makes it much easier. We'll see how it goes... This is so stupid, but one of the main things I'm "worried" about is that Annie's smell will change since she will be at daycare most of the time - I LOVE the way she smells right now and I wish I could bottle it up so I won't forget it!

Annie got her first bath where we didn't use the little infant hammock in the tub


Annie insists on standing up even in the bath :)

I have everything pretty much ready for work - I ordered a hands free pumping bra, got an extra set of pump parts, got my hair cut, washed all my work pants.... fun :) I really hope pumping goes okay at work - luckily my work is very supportive of it, and with the hands free bra, I can even still work while I'm pumping since I have a laptop. Right now, I pump every day after the first feed of the morning since I am SO full - I plan to continue to do this before I leave every day, which will be kind of annoying, but right now I get enough for almost 2 bottles from this pumping session so it'll be good to have that for the freezer stash. I would estimate that I have about 200oz of breastmilk in the freezer right now - I'm going to rotate that in so that the older stuff gets used.

Sucking on BOTH fists - how fun!

Breastfeeding has been kind of annoying this week at times - especially in the evenings, Annie does not seem to want to eat very well, she just starts screaming sometimes. Once and awhile, gas drops will help, or just burping her, but other times it's completely unexplainable because she eats fine the rest of the day. I REALLY hope that ends sometime because that will be the only time we have together and I'd rather not spend it trying to force her to eat! You'd think maybe she's just not hungry, but often times after a break she will eat for quite awhile, so who knows. It's baffling, that's for sure! I do feel that breastfeeding has gotten easier somewhat, but I don't like that I still have to wear a bra at night still, because at times in the morning there is some leakage. I hope that resolves itself someday.

Still hasn't quite figured out how to keep her head up when sitting :)

Annie seems to be a real fun baby now - in the first few weeks, I felt like this whole parenthood thing would never be enjoyable and Annie would stay a tiny fussy infant forever. It seems so much easier and more manageable now, probably due in large part to the fact that Ben and I were both home the past 3 weeks. I'm so glad we had this time together NOW, when Annie was getting fun and interacting more! Alas, now the fun is over and we must get back to reality...

Outings

We really are living it up on our last week at home as a family! The weather has again stayed awesome, so we've been trying to spend as much time outdoors as possible! We seem to have found a pretty good recipe for a successful outing - if I feed Annie right when we get somewhere, we then have a good 20-30 minutes while she's eating where she's content, and then about 45 minutes of awake and happy time before she starts to want to go to sleep again and thus gets fussy. It worked quite well this week! Luckily I now am pretty comfortable nursing in public with my cover :)

On Monday, Molly IMed me and asked if we'd be up for going out for lunch and for a walk - why, of course! Molly doesn't work Mondays, and Nate took the day off, so we all decided to go to Sea Salt Eatery and Minnehaha Park - we've been there before, and love it! Annie and Mia seemed to enjoy it as well, they were even featured on Kare 11 :) (too bad the person mispronounced Mia's name - it's Mee-a) Annie and Ben were shown as a preview, so unfortunately they aren't in the online version.

Annie's first meal at Sea Salt :)


Jana from Kare 11


Family at Sea Salt


Annie and Mia


Wee!!!


Family portrait in the park!


This bridge looked interesting, but it leads nowhere worth walking and is hard to get back to the other side, so don't take it if you are in this park :)


Annie fell asleep like this again - love it :)


Extremely safe


Yikes!

Tuesday, we went to the good Egg & I in uptown, where the waitresses LOVED Annie :) She had a MUCH better time than she did on her first trip to the Egg & I in St. Paul - phew! After we ate, we took a walk around Lake of the Isles - it was seriously SO gorgeous outside, perfect temp and barely any wind. Annie was a bit fussy in the stroller, but after about 10 minutes of being held, she passed out and was fine for the rest of the walk.

Good thing I brought the changing pad! She wasn't feeling being held :)

Completely covered up, because the LAST thing we want is a sunburned baby!

On Thursday, we took Annie back to Blue Door Pub for lunch with Uncle Steve and Grandpa Greg. She was a model baby, which is always fun :) She was a bit fussy while eating, but then was content to be held or lay on the booth bench and then just fell asleep in Ben's arms with no protest - very strange for her :)

It has been an awesome last week of being at home! Sad that our "vacation" is almost over...

Freezer Meals Recap

As my maternity leave comes to an end, I finally remembered that in my freezer meals post, I promised a review of each meal! So, here it is :)

We barely touched our freezer meals for the first month or so after Annie was born because SO many people came over and brought us food. Ben also has this weird thing where he wants to hoard things and save them for a "better" time (which was... when?? not sure) so we actually cooked if we didn't have food brought to us.

Still, I am very glad we took the time to make these meals - we still have quite a few left, which will be even nicer when we are both back at work. Some of the meals (noted below) do require a little more advance preparation if you don't want them to be in the oven for like 2 hours - they bake a lot better if you have thawed them in the fridge overnight.

The one thing I didn't photograph after thawing was my FAVORITE thing from the freezer - the muffins! Pretty much my favorite part of each day was when Annie took her first nap of the day and I could enjoy a cup of coffee and 2 muffins. Yup, 2 - because 1 just wasn't enough :) I usually microwaved them wrapped in a paper towel for 1 minute and 15 seconds and they were perfect, but it depended on the kind of muffin. All of them reheated very well - I'd for sure recommend these almost over anything else if you like something sweet for breakfast!

Chicken Enchiladas

The chicken enchiladas tasted exactly the same as if they were made fresh. They were definitely better when allowed to thaw completely before baking, because then they didn't have a cooler spot in the very center. When made fresh, they take about 20 minutes to bake, but from the fridge it was more like 40.

Chicken Rice Wraps

These were a perfect quick lunch or dinner - I wrapped in a paper towel, microwaved on 50% power for 2 mins, and then on normal power for 2 mins and they were perfect. A few times I grabbed one before I had to be at Mom & Baby class because I could eat it in the car. Definitely a great thing to have on hand, and I plan to take what's left to work for lunches!

Pulled Pork

We used the pulled pork to make pork fried rice, which is probably a little more involved than necessary. Ben had some pieces plain, and said that it still tasted amazing. I loved the fried rice too - we loosely used this recipe. We also used some to make burritos with brown rice, pork, cheese, lettuce and sour cream but I forgot to take a photo. This is a very versatile thing to have in the freezer - you can also just heat it up with some BBQ sauce and have sandwiches, or make tacos.

Chicken Black Bean Chili

I love this chili, and thought it tasted just as good from the freezer as it does fresh. I reheated it on the stovetop, and we had it with some pasta and shredded cheese. I had heard some stories of breastfeeding mamas having chili and then having their babies be super fussy, but I didn't notice any additional fussiness from Annie - just her normal amount :)

Chicken Spaghetti

This is always a hit, and I knew it would be good from the freezer because we've already had it. So yup, still good :)

Breakfast Burritos

These were okay, I heated them up the same way I did the chicken rice wraps. I think I just got so into my muffins for breakfast that I didn't want these as much. We have a ton left, and I'll probably bring them to work for lunches as well.

Baked Ziti

This was DELICIOUS - we both loved it! Allison made us some ziti and we had it fresh, and I did think that might have been slightly better, only because this really does take FOREVER to thaw - I'd even say it'd probably need 2 days in the fridge to fully thaw. We took it out 24 hours before baking, and the middle was still frozen. Still delicious, just a little cool in the center :)

Trip to the Cabin

Ben and I knew we wanted Annie's first "vacation" to be up at my parent's cabin - it was kind of a test run of a vacation, since the "cabin" is more of a very nice house, and we could bring all the stuff Annie uses very easily. We definitely brought more than we NEEDED to, but hey, it was easy enough for my dad to stop by our house with the truck to get stuff that wouldn't fit in our car - so we brought Annie's swing for her to nap in, her playmat, the stroller, and pack n play.

We all had a great time! We left right after Annie's bedtime on Wednesday night, and as I mentioned in my last post, she slept the whole way up. We came back on Sunday right after Annie ate at about 3pm - she slept most of the way, with about 15 minutes of off and on crying... it was pretty hot in the car though, so that might have been why. My mom and dad were up there the whole time we were, and Liz came up Sat and Sun. The weather was AMAZING for April - highs in the 60s and sunny - it was a bit windy a few of the days, but not too bad.

There weren't too many crazy activities - the most excitement we had was my mom and I driving to Baxter to get pedicures :) Most of the time was spent on the deck or just lounging around - a great way to spend a few days! Now, on to the photos...

Annie enjoyed a few fires - apparently my sister and I used to sit like that with my dad, so he tried it out with Annie - she seemed to like it :)


Grandma and Annie out on the deck


We created a nice shady spot for Annie in her playmat :)


Out by the grill with her new hoodie


How Annie spent the majority of her time :)




Enjoying bloody Mary's (compliments of Nate!)


Playing with Grandpa


Family portrait


peeking!


Maggie gets in on the action


Annie looks comPLETEly bored in this one :)


We took a walk, and this is how Annie fell asleep :)


Annie and Grandma


On Saturday night, the guys came and put the dock in! My dad and John had to observe.


The view when Annie woke up on Sunday morning


My mom and dad were always very concerned that Annie was too cold, so they made sure she had on her hoodie :)


Sunday was gorgeous - about 70 and barely a breeze


My favorite spot at the cabin




View of the cabin from the lake


Annie enjoyed this spot too :)