Cutie Patootie

I'll have a proper Thanksgiving post soon, once Jon can upload some of the pictures from our lovely holiday.

But for today, a video of Evelyn loooooving her bath. She gets one every night and splash splash splashes around. She is so cute!

It's a love fest

I love my daughter so much. So so so so much. Even when she is being a fusser or not sleeping or spitting up on everything we own, she is still the most fabulous person I know. I'm so glad I've gotten to this point; I was worried I might not love her enough for some reason. When she was a newborn I thought, "this baby blob is supposed to be so great? I don't get it." I loved her, sure, but like you love your brother. They are family and great and all, but you aren't consumed by a intense feeling of loving them. But that initial blah-ness quickly moved to acceptance and then to all-out fabulous lovin this baby! I can't imagine how much fun it will be to watch her little brain grow, when she starts rolling over or walking or talking! Talking will be the best.

Here are a few reasons why Evelyn is the most fabulous person ever:

• She is adorable. Seriously the prettiest baby I have ever seen. Not that I'm biased or anything, but really--she is beautiful.
• She has the BEST smile! It starts on one side, then creeps up the other side. She has dimples and no teeth. I love it.
• She is very very talkative. Blah blahs, goo-ahs, acks, and screeches. She loves to just chat away. It is particularly funny when I try to catch the chatting on video. As soon as the camera or phone is in her eyeline, she stops, stares at it, and gets a very perplexed look on her face.
• When she is chatting, and I talk back at her, she tries to copy the shape of my mouth. Such a smartie!
• She has her daddy's toenails. Lovingly referred to as the "hawk toe," this probably won't be so great when she wants to wear sandals or get pedicures, but I love that she has this very specific trait from her dad. Genetics is so crazy.
• She thinks I am hilarious. She was laying on the ottoman last night while I was watching TV and a silly song came on during a commercial. I started singing and dancing over her head and she just smiled and smiled. It was great.
• She has the loudest, ahem, bowel movements. I was in a bra store a few weeks ago and she was sitting in her carseat halfway under the curtain in my teeny tiny dressing room. The fitting attendant was a few feet away doing something and Evelyn pooped and made the LOUDEST noises. The attendant wasn't sure what to say and kind of laughed and said "oh my." Suffice it to say, there is never any doubt when this baby needs a diaper change.
• She has an outty belly button and it is super cute.
• Her hair stands up on the top of her head in a faux-hawk kind of way.

I could probably list a hundred more little things I love about my daughter. But I have to get to work. Actually I have to go pump breastmilk in a tiny room on the other side of my office building. THEN I have to get to work.

She got her thumb!

Evelyn finally got her thumb! How exciting. Now maybe she'll sleep more at night instead of whacking herself in the face.

Apparently I was a big thumb sucker. Like mother like daugher...

Baby's first snow and a ride in the snugli

Pictures!

First we have Evelyn's first snow. It was just a dusting, but it counts, right? (She is getting so big!)


























And here we have a very sleepy baby enjoying a nice ride in the Snugli.

A slow, painful death

I am so tired I can hardly function. Since going back to work, Evelyn has decided to start waking up every 2 hours at night. Last week was pretty rough, but I was able to get a little rest over the weekend. Friday night she slept better, as if she knows I'm not going to work the next day. But Saturday night, ugh, she woke up every HOUR AND A HALF. That's more frequently than when she was newly born! I have absolutely no idea why this is happening. We aren't doing anything different during the day. Her bedtime routine is exactly the same. The only thing different is that Jon is watching her during the day when I'm at work and she's getting bottles of breastmilk instead of nursing. I am absolutely DYING from lack of sleep. This morning I woke up to go to work (after another waking-every-two-hours night) and I couldn't do it. I sat up in bed, felt physically nauseaus from fatigue, and just could not make myself get out of bed. So I'm working from home today, just so I could get that extra 45 minutes of sleep. I might take a nap over lunch, too.

So does anyone have any ideas why my sweet darling baby has become a nighttime devil child? I'm thinking it could be two things.

1: Maybe she is just adjusting to being away from me during the day. Even though she is eating plenty during the day, maybe she misses the nursing closeness thing, or something like that, and so she wakes up all night to get that from me. When she wakes at night she eats for like 5 minutes and falls asleep. When I get home from work I usually nurse her frequently to keep my milk supply up and also to give Evie that closeness. It doesn't seem to be working, however.

2: Evelyn has started trying to suck on her fingers. She is almost constantly trying to get her hands in her mouth during the day. She can't quite control her arms, though, so she can get the hand up to her mouth but she can't keep it there. She also can't un-curl her fingers very well, so she can't suck on just a finger or thumb, she is trying to suck on her entire fist. I think this might be a thing at night because every time I go in to her room at night she is trying to get her hand in her mouth. It isn't working, though, so she is getting frusterated. Maybe she is waking herself up? Maybe she is hitting herself in the face? She definitely knocks the pacifier out of her mouth, but that is only an issue when we first put her down since she doesn't use a pacifier the entire night.

I'm at a loss. I probably shouldn't nurse her every time she wakes at night. Sometimes I send Jon to just giver her a pacifier and rock her a little to go to sleep, but that is usually only once a night. I just don't know what to do. I really can't do this for much longer, though. I am so very very tired.

Watching the Weight

So I signed up with Weight Watchers again. Not so much because I want to lose tons of weight (at least that isn't my main goal right now), but more because I have completely lost sight of "healthy eating" in the nearly 12 months that I was pregnant and/or home with the baby. When I was newly pregnant I couldn't eat anything. Then I wanted to eat everything! Then I was so tired I would eat anything. I lost my pregnancy weight by my 6 week postpartum check-up and simply nursing Evelyn has gotten me 10 pounds below even that, but I'm still not eating right. It's easy stuff I can grab when the baby is napping or deciding to drive-thru fast food so I can eat in the car while the baby is asleep. Now I'm back to work and I don't have to plan my every eating move around Evie's sleep schedule, I need to pay more attention to the quality and quantity of the food I eat.

And someday, I am hopeful, I'll be able to cook dinners again. That will be good for the pockebook and the waistline.

Back in the saddle again

Yesterday was my first day back at the office. I have a million things to catch up on, but overall it was fine. The night before, however, I had a little breakdown. How can I leave my baby? She is so little! She needs her mother! I'll miss her! How can I only see her for 4 hours a day? She is too cute to leave. It's just not fair!!

I had a nice cry, so sad about what I had to do, but the next morning I was fine. Going to work is important. It pays the bills. It helps fulfill my adult self. It provides interaction with different people. Evelyn will be fine with her dad for a day, and with her grandmother or her aunt. She doesn't NEED me every moment of every day. She just needs someone who loves her, and she'll have that 24 hours a day.

While I'm sure about going back to work, I'm not so sure about breastfeeding and working full-time. After just two days I am so exhausted I don't know how long I can function. Getting up 2 or 3 times a night, then waking at 6:00am to nurse and get ready for work--it's nearly impossible. Pumping three times a day at the office is an inconvenience and slows productivity, but it is much more manageable. I keep telling myself "every day with breastmilk is better than one without," so I'm going to take this one day at a time. I also keep telling myself Evelyn won't wake up so much at night forever. Someday, at least I've heard, babies sleep through the night.

(Last night was particularly bad. Evie was up at 11:30pm, 2:00am, 4:30am...nightmare. We had been on a pretty good schedule of a very large feeding right before bed at 8:30pm, then waking at 1:30 or 2am and then not again until 6am. Sigh. I'm still giving her the big feed at 8pm so I'm not sure why she started waking up more. Maybe it was just two nights in a row of waking up 3 times and now she'll go back to twice a night! Fingers crossed!)

And for fun, here is a picture of Evelyn with her new favorite toy, Leggy the Octopus. It is actually a dog toy that Sophie didn't like. Shh...don't tell Evie!

Back to work

I return to work on Tuesday after 10 weeks of maternity leave. I originally planned to take only 8 weeks, but after the c-section I decided to take a little longer since I'd have a longer recovery. I'm so glad I made that decision. The first eight weeks of tending to Evelyn were, well, thankless. The last two weeks, though, have been so much better. She's happier, she's smiling, she's interactive, she laughs at me. The first eight weeks were so much harder because I was just taking care of this baby blob that I was supposed to love sooo much, but really just found confusing and difficult. But now she is a real little person! She is fabulous and beautiful and funny. I am glad I got to see that transformation before going back to the office.

In other news, Jon is nursing a pretty nasty head cold. I'm trying hard to keep that cold out of my body and out of Evie's. She already gets stuffed up most days and has a hard time breathing through her nose even without being sick. A cold would be awful. Bleh. So Jon is drinking OJ like it is his lifeline, sleeping a lot and using tons of hand sanitizer. :)

We are all doing well. The dogs are good, although they are getting fewer walks than before. Evelyn was crying this morning and Jon and I slept through it for a bit. When Jon finally got up to get her, Sophie was sitting in her room, keeping an eye on things. Sophie often goes to Evelyn when she is crying. I think she is annoyed by the noise but Jon thinks she is being protective. I suppose we can't know what the dog is thinking, but it is cute nonetheless.

Looky looky!

I just finished a Christmas stocking for Evelyn. How crafty am I? I'm still working on Jon's scarf, but it was nice to take a break and try something new. This was the first sock I've knitted, the first time I've done a two-color cast-on, first time I've done a latvian plait, etc. Lots of new stuff! I think it turned out pretty nicely. Especially for baby's first Christmas!

Elections and immunizations

It's probably not surprising to anyone that reads this blog that I am an Obama supporter. Given that, last night was so exciting. Even if McCain had won, I would have been excited for a changing of the guard. But since Obama won, I'm super excited. I'm excited for the changes he can make, the direction we can head as a country, how we can put the Bush administration in the past and move on. I'm excited for our place in the world. Barack Obama is young and relatively untested, but I believe he has an intellectual curiosity we've been missing in the White House. Of course, there are a million things that can go wrong, but today I am optimistic.

And now away from politics.

Yesterday Evelyn had her first round of vaccinations. Poor little baby. She got FOUR shots and an oral vaccine. I've never heard such a sad, angry, painful cry come out of her little body. She cried for about 5 or 10 minutes, and then slept for 12 hours. She only woke a few times for a diaper change and a little food. She also slept normally last night, which was awesome given her entire day of sleeping. This morning she seems to be back to her normal self. It was hard for me to see her getting impaled with needles, but I had to keep reminding myself "it's better than polio...it's better than polio..."

Evie now weighs 11 pounds 5 ounces (up an entire POUND in two weeks), the 60th percentile. Her head circumfrence is in the 55th percentile and her height is in the 50th percentile. So she's pretty much average average average. Except for her winning smile and extraordinary intellect, of course. :)

Sleepy sleepiness

Today I feel very well rested. Probably because we went to bed last night at 7:30pm, and I was asleep by 8:30. Jon also fed Evie a bottle for one of her middle-of-the-night feedings so I got even more sleep! Getting up at 6:30am isn't so bad when you've been in bed for 10 hours. Yay!

I'm going back to work in eight days. I feel pretty good about going back, nervous about the piles of work I have to do and nervous about leaving Evie for 8 hours a day, but still feeling good. I tried on my pre-pregnancy work clothes and everything pretty much fits. My hips are a bit wider than before so one pair of pants is right out and another is questionable, but that's not too bad. Tops are a different issue, but one that will resolve itself when I go shopping later this week.

Evelyn is getting her first round of vaccinations tomorrow. Jon is coming to the pediatrician with me this time since I'm not so sure I can handle the shots all by myself. My little baby! :(

And one final note. I've tried REALLY HARD to keep politics out of this family blog. But tomorrow is election day and I hope everyone, regardless of party or which candidates you like, will vote tomorrow. Vote vote vote. I sent my mail-in ballot last weekend so I'm done. Jon and I are planning a little election night celebrating. We're going to order in Chinese food and watch the election results. Hooray!