4 Months

Dear Annie,

Today you are four months old! If I could, I would bottle you up to give to anyone having a bad day - you are such a joy to be around right now! You are a smiley, happy baby almost all of the time, and everyone comments on how adorable you are. Sue (your daycare provider) constantly talks about what an infectious smile you have, and it is so true!

This was the month you truly became a thumb sucker, and I think we have that to thank for much of your happiness - you turn to it when you are tired or overwhelmed, and it instantly calms you down. Your dad and I are eternally grateful for that :) Sometimes you miss your actual thumb, and get a few fingers, or your whole fist into your mouth, but it is rare that you aren't sucking or chewing on something right now!

It was almost as if the lights came on in your world over this past month - you really are looking around and actually NOTICING things now - you definitely recognize your dad and I, and smile at us when we come into view. Sometimes it takes you a bit to warm up to new people (or people who aren't new, but who you forgot about, like your grandparents, aunts and uncles) but usually you seem to like most everyone! Your favorite place to be is still on your back, especially if we are outside on a nice day - you love looking up at the trees and the clouds and just checking things out. This position also allows you to wiggle to your heart's content - you kick your legs, roll over to your sides, and shove your hands into your mouth. A lot of the time, you can stay content like that for almost an hour.

You have seemed to become even more independent this month too - now that you have your thumb, you certainly don't need or want your dad or I to even attempt to rock you to sleep! You wiggle around until we put you in your crib, stick your thumb in your mouth, and your other hand on the back of your head and lay that way until you fall asleep. We stopped swaddling you even at night a few nights ago, and the positions you get yourself in are pretty hilarious - your arms just sprawled across the crib, or up on your face. When you do stir awake, we'll hear some rustling and then slurps as you find your thumb again.

Your dad and I love to have little chats with you - you are making more and different noises, and recently you have discovered that you can put a little VOLUME behind those noises and have started screeching and yelling once and awhile - for now, it's still cute :) Just yesterday, we heard your first real laugh - you had been making little giggles for awhile, but yesterday you strung a few of them together and actually laughed out loud! It was such an amazing sound, I actually almost started crying :) Now you can be sure that we will be trying many ridiculous things to get you to laugh even more!

Annie, we love you more than words can say! Happy 4 month birthday!

Love, Mom

Better late than never...

Last weekend, I FINALLY purchased a photobook of our trip to Europe! As I have in the past, I used Shutterfly to make this book, and I'm SUPER happy with the results. I have made 4 photobooks with Shutterfly - for our trips to Playa del Carmen, Zihuatanejo, New York, and a girls weekend to LA. I know there aren't as many options for customizing as other places, like blurb, but it's easy, the quality is really good, and I ALWAYS get coupons for them, so it ends up being pretty affordable! I got free shipping, but the book was still in my hot little hands within a week. Nice!

If you may recall, this trip occurred over a YEAR ago - this is by far my longest delay yet! I think I have a pretty good excuse though :) I started making this last winter, before Annie was born, but the large price tag was a deterrent. My mom and dad gave me a gift card to Shutterfly for my birthday, and I worked to reduce the huge number of pages to something a tiny bit more reasonable :) I still ended up with 90 pages, but I think I had about 150 when I first made it!! This was no small feat, considering that I took 1,671 pictures (and that is even after I deleted all the duplicate/blurry/bad photos). Yes, I have a problem :) The larger problem might be that the number seems kind of small to me! Here are some photos of the finished product...

Happy Girl!

Annie is here to wish you all a happy hump day!

This face gets me every time :) I love it!!

16 Weeks

16 weeks! This little baby is growing up into a very fun and happy baby! We have been having so much fun with her this week - last Sunday, we took Annie on a number of outings after I wrote my post, and she did great - such a nice change! I know this might not last, but at this stage, Annie is an exceptionally easy baby - seriously it is CRAZY how much she has changed just in the past few weeks! Yesterday she probably cried a total of about 2 minutes, if that.

Finally actually fell asleep in the moby :)


Annie's first trip to Sweeney's


Annie wearing the very first thing we bought for her after we had our ultrasound showing that she was a girl! I remember it feeling inconceivable that she'd be that big :)


Getting a lot better at holding her head up in her chair - her max time in this is still only about 10 minutes :)

Just so I don't forget, here are some things I love about Annie right now:
-The big smile she greets us with when we get her in the morning
-All the fun noises she makes
-How she has to brush her hand up against her face in order to find her thumb, and then the hand basically is palming her whole face
-The little coo she makes after a big sneeze
-How she raises her little eyebrows
-That her huge cheeks shake when we're burping her
-When she stops nursing to chat a bit
-How she seems to like to press her feet into each other
-The way her head smells after a bath

Just an example of all the noises she makes - including a little surprise she left in her diaper ;)

In the past few days, Annie has started cooing and chatting to herself in her crib in the mornings. Once after doing this, she fell back asleep for almost an hour, but the past 2 days, we've just gotten her and brought her up to our bed to hang out for a bit before we're ready to get up :) Well, I guess yesterday we waited for almost..... uh.... 40 minutes before actually getting her to see if she'd fall back asleep - ha, we're so mean :) After she starts cooing, she then wriggles around and gets herself out of her swaddle - today she almost had herself rolled all the way onto her stomach and seemed a tad bit upset about that, since she seems to have forgotten that she knows how to roll herself back over :)

Turned herself completely around and broke free! All before 7am!

She is also grabbing her feet a lot, and has started grabbing toys in her playmat, although I wouldn't say she is actually "playing" with them yet - she just happens to grab them and doesn't quite know she can let go :)

It's hard for us to really know how Annie is doing with naps at daycare - we get a report of how long she slept, and as I've mentioned, I didn't really believe she was sleeping that long. Well, yesterday for her first nap I just let her sit in her crib chatting to herself, and it took about 20 minutes but she did fall back asleep for almost an hour more! So there you have it. She did better with napping the rest of the day too, sleeping for an hour two more times. So maybe Sue ISN'T lying. We also haven't been swaddling her for naps at home for the past week - as soon as she finds her thumb she is pretty much out, and I think she's getting more used to sleeping without the swaddle. We haven't even needed to rock her at all, we can just put her in the crib, she might chat to herself for a few minutes, but she'll fall asleep on her own. I HOPE it stays this easy, but I know it probably won't ;) I guess we do help her along by turning on the white noise and keeping it pretty dark in there, which I think helps. She still startles herself, but I don't think she really wakes up. We haven't tried keeping her out of the swaddle at night yet... it's still working for us then, so we'll keep it up for now!

Ben's family came over yesterday for awhile, and Annie even was pretty okay being passed around for awhile!

I mentioned above how I love it when Annie stops nursing to chat. Well, this is a love/hate thing - it is super cute of course, but she seems to be getting a bit distracted by the world around her now, and after a few minutes is just completely uninterested in eating - she might be done by then, but I know she hasn't emptied me out - I try to get her to do that if possible, but it takes awhile of taking little breaks to let her look around and make noises!

I guess that about sums it up for this week! Pretty uneventful, but really fun :)

15 Weeks

It's starting to get to the point where I need to stop and think about how many weeks Annie is now... this is crazy, I have been living my life in weeks for SO long now (through pregnancy) that it feels kind of odd to just be again. Pretty nice! Annie is really so much fun now. Her crying is pretty limited to when she's hungry or tired, and she's very easy to calm down for the most part. She really is just an awesome baby all around now! It's hard to even remember what she used to be like, which I guess is how anyone can have more than one child ;)

Contorting herself to check out the action!


Chunky legs kicking at Dad

This week was kind of blah for me - sleeping (for me) is still not going great, so I was exhausted, and the weather was crappy. When the sun came out finally on Friday, it felt amazing and really rejuvenated me - I forget how much the weather can impact my mood! I think it also affected Annie too - she was kind of crankier in the evenings all week, but was much happier on Friday when we could be outside. She did AWESOME at daycare this week - SUCH a relief to go there and see her happy and smiling, and to see that Sue really does enjoy having her there. I was worried especially about her eating because she ate horribly all last weekend, but she even has been eating better than she did before now. I'm so glad she's settling in there, it's much easier to leave her knowing that she'll be okay and that she even enjoys herself there.

As I mentioned, Annie was HORRIBLE at eating last weekend - seriously every feeding she would be super fussy and cry, but be fine as soon as she stopped. She just didn't seem interested. It was SO frustrating for everyone involved!! I decided on Monday to take a break from breastfeeding and just pump - so really this was just 3 feedings since she takes 3 at daycare. She ate great all day up until the last feeding (which I kind of think is purely habit - I'm not sure she really actually eats much) and would not take the bottle, so I nursed her and it went really well thankfully. Through this little break, I realized that I actually DO really love breastfeeding. I could barely make it through the day on Monday, I missed Annie so much, and I think it was because I was missing that morning cuddle time we have when I feed her. Thankfully, things have been going MUCH better this week! I stopped recording each nursing session too - so that probably helps me to be less anal about how long she's feeding.

We had a lovely reunion with our Mom & Baby group pals yesterday - it was so fun to see how all the babies have grown in the past month! Annie is the youngest in the group, so I get to see what I'm in for in the coming weeks :) We went to Birchwood Cafe, and Annie just seemed kind of overwhelmed, but didn't have any freakouts - phew! We were even there for over an hour and she was fine the whole time. There were 7 moms and 7 babies there - we were a sight to behold :)

Annie is definitely a true thumb sucker now - she sometimes still has some issues finding it - she'll be crying a bit and if I just let her cry for about a minute, she kind of works her hand toward her face and realizes - HEY, THERE's that thumb that I like to suck! NICE! It's not 100% consistent yet, but I'm guessing it will be very soon! This is one reason I think it might almost be time to stop swaddling her. Clearly I do not want to mess with anything in terms of sleep since I enjoy the 10+ hours she sleeps at night, but a few times she has completely gotten out of it, which wakes her up, and she's just really not used to sleeping un-swaddled yet. I think if she did sleep un-swaddled (which she did for a few naps this weekend) she'd be able to suck her thumb to soothe herself back to sleep. I watched her take a nap unswaddled though.... and she's definitely still startling herself slightly awake, but then will suck her thumb back to sleep. It doesn't look like the most restful sleep to me, but who knows!

Naps are still 30 minutes on the dot when she's home! Unless Sue has some magical ability to get her to nap more than 30 minutes at daycare, I still suspect that she's just laying there silently for 30+ minutes after waking up before crying, not actually sleeping. That damn video monitor is a blessing and a curse - I love being able to see that she's ok, and just check on her if we hear random noises, but it's also annoying to KNOW that she's awake when she should be sleeping. She's still pretty content so I guess she just doesn't need longer naps at this point.

It got a lot harder to go to work this week. The first week back was like a fun break, and it was all new, but now the reality of only seeing Annie for like 3 hours a day is sinking in. It's great that she's happy at daycare, but it's also hard because she's usually fussiest in the evenings so I know that I'm missing her best hours. This is just the way it's going to be though, so we'll all get used to it, but it definitely makes me savor the weekends and mornings/evenings with Annie!

Trip to the Farmer's Market this morning!

We have officially retired the swing for now, and it's so nice to have that space in our living room back! I'm wondering if Annie will EVER care about toys or anything. She has been grabbing and touching things more, but doesn't seem to care to actually "play" with them. She's just as happy without any toys around her as she is in her playmat, although she sure does still like the mirror on there :) Right now it's pretty nice to not have to think about bringing anything to "entertain" her with - she's plenty entertained with her thumb or just looking around.

OMG, you're letting go??


OK, then I'll just hang out here

14 Weeks

Thank you all so much for your comments on my last post - you all had some great suggestions. My sleep problems haven't magically gone away yet, unfortunately, but it does seem to be getting slightly better as I try some of those suggestions!

Happy Mother's Day to all the mamas out there! Annie's present to me was sleeping in until 7am, which was awesome :) She also gave me 2 cards - one that she "made" at daycare, and one that I suspect Ben helped her write. Both were adorable :) Ben made me a delicious breakfast of Eggs Benedict (using this recipe) and it was amazing! I LOVE eggs benedict, and I missed it a lot while pregnant, so it was a perfect Mother's Day treat! The rest of the day will be spent with our families - it'll be busy, but I'm glad we get to see everyone so often!

Over the past week, I've been reading a ton of articles on Janet Lansbury's site - they are fascinating! I've particularly enjoyed this one which focuses on letting babies and children achieve physical milestones when THEY are ready, and not always trying to force them into that next step. I also really liked this one about not interrupting babies even though WE might think they are bored :) Both really hit hard for me, because I DO try to keep Annie occupied a lot more than she probably needs and wants - I have to realize that when she is just laying on the floor, there are tons of things for her to do, even though it might seem "boring" to me. And the one about development - well, it is really hard NOT to be obsessed with being "behind" when getting weekly emails from babycenter that say that "this week, your child is doing X" when really, there are months long ranges for what is normal! I'm trying to stop obsessing about what is "right" and "normal" and let Annie be a little more. As many might suspect, this is quite difficult for me :)

Annie with Mia and Madeline


On the floor on the porch one evening

One thing the 2nd article talked about is babies watching TV. The American Academy of Pediatrics is pretty strong in their recommendation to not watch any TV until age 2. One night when Annie was pretty cranky, I wanted to see if she even would like TV - so we watched a few Baby Einstein youtube videos, and yes, she was mesmerized. I really don't think a few minutes of TV here and there is THAT bad, but I'm definitely going to try to avoid her actually watching anything for awhile. We really don't watch TV while she's awake ever - I used to watch it sometimes while feeding her, but haven't for awhile. It is crazy how entranced she was though, when nothing else was really making her happy! Now I just have to pretend I don't even know that so I'm not tempted to do it again :)

Annie has been greeting us with big smiles in the morning - I love it :)

I also have a hard time not obsessing about Annie's sleep - she has been still sleeping awesome at night, but I swear to god there is some switch that goes off in her brain after 30 minutes of a nap and she's just done. She doesn't necessarily cry, she is just awake (but yet will still yawn). It doesn't matter if we put her in her crib awake or rock her to sleep, after 30 minutes she wakes up won't fall back asleep, even after trying to rock her back to sleep. We're trying to just leave her in there until it's been at least an hour to see if she'll go back to sleep. So far, nope :) At daycare, her sheets say she sleeps for 1-1.5 hrs, but honestly I doubt that - we have the video monitor so I can see that she's awake, but she isn't making noise, so I suspect that she's doing the same thing at daycare. Also, apparently Sue has the other little kids (4 of them) lay down to show Annie that it is naptime, and then she goes to sleep with minimal protest - ha! I tried laying down with her and closing my eyes when we were at Jake and Allison's on Friday and she was fussing while Ben was trying to rock her to sleep, and it worked - but who knows if she was just exhausted by that point anyway :) Anyway, the whole 30 minute nap thing is frustrating because I've read several places that any nap under 45 minutes basically "doesn't count" - but there really are no solid tips for magically getting babies to sleep longer than that. Oh well - she still seems pretty happy throughout the day, so I guess I'll just have to let it go :)

Annie meeting Lola and Bella - seems a little frightened!

Annie still sucks at eating - she just doesn't seem to care about it. My sister watched her yesterday while we went to a Twins game (we weren't going to have a repeat of last time!) and we were gone for 4 hours, and she just wouldn't eat period (well, about 1oz kind of dribbled into her mouth), even though it had been 5 hours since she ate. She has her first two bottles at daycare just fine, but the 3rd one half the time she refuses to have too. I just don't get her. I guess I have to remember that adults have different appetites on different days too, but most babies seem to love to eat all the time. Not her! She still seems to be getting bigger and gaining weight, so whatever. Hopefully this isn't a precursor to her being a picky eater...

Not too much new developments this week - Annie did roll over again from tummy to back 3 times in a row on Monday, but hasn't repeated it since then, and every time we put her on her tummy she spits up :) She doesn't seem pissed about it necessarily, she just always spits up. The spit up has definitely been increasing this week too, which is gross - she used to almost NEVER spit up, but this weekend it's seemed to happen after almost every feeding. She also still has absolutely no interest in toys or grabbing anything other than her shirt. Sometimes she kind of seems to grab the toys on her playmat, but not consistently yet. All in due time :) Mostly she just seems to LOVE staring at herself in the mirror on there - that keeps her occupied for a good long time!

Sleep

A failed attempt yesterday afternoon after daycare to get Annie to nap - she managed to bust out of her swaddle with her vigorous kicking, and as you can see, had NO INTEREST in sleeping at that time :)

Is it weird to be jealous of your baby's ability to sleep? While Annie does kind of suck at naps, she's a great sleeper at night. Me, however? Not so much. It's starting to get pretty debilitating, and it's a vicious cycle of not sleeping, and then becoming obsessed with sleep, and thus not being able to fall asleep because of the obsession. Since I came back to work, it has just gotten worse, in part I think because I KNOW I do have to function the next day, and be out the door by a certain time.

The past few nights I have been trying a few different things to see if it helps me to actually stay asleep - reading before bed, going to bed at a consistent time (9:30pm). I think I am able to fall asleep okay, but then I wake up at like 3am and I'm not sure why, and then can't seem to fall back asleep soundly after that. I initially thought it was because Annie would make some noises at that time and I'd lay there thinking she was going to wake up and not be able to fall back asleep because of my fretting. However, that really must not be the case, because Ben actually slept on the couch 2 nights this week so I wouldn't even need to think about Annie waking up (yeah, I know he's awesome - and ps, she still didn't wake up then either) and I STILL WOKE UP and couldn't fall back asleep. I can't even tell you how infuriating that was. I tried drinking some sleepytime tea those nights, and really the only result of that was having to pee at 4am (maybe part of why I woke up?). Last night, Ben was back in the bed and I wore earplugs - so I can't blame Annie's noises on waking up - but guess what, I still didn't really sleep, just tossed and turned, and my ears hurt from the earplugs (perhaps I shove them in too far). I'm not even worrying about anything specific, my mind is just racing sometimes. I try to count things, take deep breaths, blah blah. It just doesn't seem to work. There are a few random nights here and there (not since before my 3rd trimester of pregnancy) that I feel like I've gotten a good solid night of sleep, but I don't really know why they happen and what I can do to make that happen every night. I am insanely jealous of people that go to sleep and then the first time they wake up is when the alarm goes off. I don't know that I can remember that ever happening for me.

I wish there was a way to sleep train myself! I've read a few books on sleep for babies, and I'm sure there are books for adults too, but all these helpful "tips" seem to really do nothing for me. Perhaps I'm not giving them much of a chance. Anyway, the reason I wrote this all out is to just get it out of my head, but really I do want advice - I KNOW a lot of people read this blog, so if this situation sounds at all familiar to you and you have anything that might work... please comment... I just want to sleep. I think just one night of good sleep would be so restorative to me and might help me to get back on track, but I'm not sure how to get that one good night!

13 Weeks

Time just keeps marching on, and Annie is 13 weeks old today! At first, I thought I'd stop writing these weekly updates after I went back to work, but I still enjoy doing it, so I'm keeping it up until it becomes a burden :) They will probably be considerably shorter now that I don't see Annie for a large portion of the week though - which I'm sure you all will be pleased about :)

Annie is doing quite well this week - she really is getting less fussy overall, which is awesome. She also seems to be able to tolerate being awake for a little bit longer before having a meltdown which is also nice. One thing that is very frustrating is that Annie seems to be becoming a catnapper. I need to talk to Sue about how she naps at daycare - we get her little daily schedules, which say she "naps" for about an hour each time she goes down, but I want to know if she is actually sleeping for that whole time or what, and if so, how the heck does she get her to do that?! Sometimes if she's in the swing, she'll eventually fall back asleep after waking up, but not always. I know some babies are just more catnappers than others, and I don't think there is much you can do about that unfortunately! If anyone has any tips to lengthen naps, I'd love to hear them :)

She certainly still has her moments, though - like when we just went to brunch with Becky, Adelaide and Mindy at Red Stag and she screamed when I attempted to give her a bottle. Apparently she just wasn't hungry right that second!! She did fine for most of the time we were there though, she just is quite vocal when she isn't getting what she wants I guess :) I wonder where she could get THAT from!

Yesterday, we had a nice successful outing to the Minneapolis Farmer's Market - I had Annie in the moby, and she didn't make a peep the entire time - not even on the way there in the carseat, and was fine when we stopped at Whole Foods on the way home too - crazy! I'm not quite sure Annie technically has enough head control to be in this moby position, but she seemed to like it better than facing in, so whatever works! The photo below clearly shows I need to work on my wrapping technique, but I promise she was pretty secure in there :) The farmer we bought meat from thought Annie's name was Danny, and kept referring to her as "he" or "him" - I guess those are the hazards of dressing your baby in yellow :)

Annie had some time with her Grandma and Grandpa R. last night while we went out to sushi with Kyle and Kate - she did ok, but wouldn't consent to going to bed for them! Oh well, I fed her when I got home and then she went to sleep pretty quickly. I guess we don't realize it, but apparently there are certain things we do that might help her to go to sleep easily for us, like kind of forcing her to stay awake a bit longer than she might prefer before eating one last time... she was a bit off on her normal routine yesterday anyway, so that could have been why too! Whatever - they still had fun with each other I'm sure :)

The night sleep schedule hasn't seemed to have been disrupted by daycare at all, which is a huge relief. Annie still consistently wakes up at 5:30 or 6 - one day I had to wake her up at 6:30, but that is pretty rare. She's starting to really break out of the swaddle, even the miracle blanket, which is pretty much a total straightjacket :) Yesterday morning, she was COMPLETELY out of it, and sucking furiously on her hands. That would be great if that would put her back to sleep, but it doesn't quite seem to work for her yet!

She's rolling around more and more - as I mentioned in my 3 month letter, she's really close to rolling from back to tummy, and has rolled once from tummy to back (accidental) - this seems to help her free herself from the swaddle at night. I know we will have to stop using it soon, but I'd like to hold off on that as long as possible, because it definitely helps her sleep much longer at this point!

starting to roll!


not quite sure how she got there...

Annie has most assuredly found her hands now and can get them to her mouth without fail. A few days this week when I pick her up from daycare, she has been furiously sucking her thumb, but other times it is her whole fist or a few fingers. We'll see how long it takes her to consistently suck that thumb, just like her mommy :) It seems to make her quite happy, so we're excited about this development, since she still hates pacifiers!

Yes, I have a mascara smudge on my nose, and I'm too lazy to photoshop it out :) Leah was kind enough to point it out when I saw her at work, thankfully!

The noises that come out of Annie's mouth have just increased this week! She is much more responsive, and will mimic sounds we make, which is really fun and cute :) She also is getting so smiley! She still prefers to be on her back on the floor more than being held, and I am kind of doubting that will ever change! I love cuddling with her, which she sometimes is okay with, but not often. Breastfeeding still is one of the only cuddle times we have, but often times it is still a frustrating process - Annie just isn't a very good eater no matter what - she is extremely fussy at the boob, especially if it is my left boob which she really seems to hate for some reason :) I know from pumping that it does produce pretty significantly more than the right boob, but the letdown doesn't seem to be too fast so I'm not quite sure what her problem is! Whatever, as long as she seems happy, I don't really care, but it is sad that breastfeeding still hasn't evolved into a pleasant experience for both of us... I still hold out hope that it might! She seemed to do better on the days that I was at work, but yesterday each feeding was a battle.