Spring has Sprung

Today, while Jeff was on shift, Reilly Elle and I went outside in the warm afternoon air. Elle laid on her blanket under the tree and Reilly tried 27 different ways to sneak up on Elle and kiss her cheeks.



Elle really liked looking up at the sky and her eyes looked so pretty and blue, I tried to get a good shot.



Here is to more sunny days!

A baby boy suit

Jeff bought Elle a suit today. It is definitely a little boy suit but she rocks it of course because she is the cutest snuggle bean in town.

Insomnia

Elle has me on her schedule. She usually falls asleep about 1am but she went to bed early tonight but I am still up just watching her sweet, little mouth form whistle lips. I wonder what she is dreaming about. Elle has started smiling this week and it is the best thing ever to see her do it.

In a few minutes, my extreme exhaustion will hit but for now and I savoring the sound of her delicate, infant breaths. There is no better sound.

Common Sense, Persistence and Perspective

Elle will be 6 weeks old in two days. I cannot believe how quickly time has gone. My mother told me when she was born that the days would go slow and the weeks would go fast. She was very right. Sometimes the days seems to stretch on and on but then before you know it, she is another week older. The past six weeks have been a mix of bliss, fatigue and frustration. Everything about infants is trial and error. There are three things I have learned slowly over the past six weeks that has saved my sanity.

1. Common Sense. There are thousands of parenting books out there. I was very careful to not read too many of these books because of the conflicting information. It seems that someone has a baby, learns how to sooth it and writes a book divulging the "secrets" of successful parenting. When you are having trouble with latching, boobs that don't seem to produce enough milk or a fussy baby, every book will have a different solution thus throwing the new mother into a confusing tailspin when suddenly you are trying 100 different things driving yourself and your baby crazy. During the early weeks when I was in the throws of one of Elle's fussy periods, my common sense when right out the window. I would get online to research a solution, find 10 and try them all. We would get no where since I would try something for 2 minutes and if it did not work, I would try something new- transitioning Elle to tons of positions, shushing in her ear, rocking her, putting the paci in, taking the paci out, swaddling and unswaddling her. Had I used my common sense, I would have realized I was making everything worse and confusing Elle. Now when something pops up, I step back and take a breath. Once my head is clear I remember that I am a smart girl and I can solve this- and I usually do.

2. Persistence. I mentioned this in the previous section but persistence goes a long way with an infant. Elle loves to suck on things and her paci usually soothes her but sometimes, she will spit it back out and begin to fuss. I know nothing else is wrong (thank you common sense) since Elle is fed, clean, burped and warm but she is tired and it is my job to help her get to sleep. So when she spits the paci out, mom is there to pop it back in. Sometimes that can take 40 minutes of paci popping and rocking, but success is when Elle is finally asleep. So true the saying, if at first you don't succeed try, try again little mama.

3. Perspective. Having an infant is exhausting. I used to get frustrated with Elle when she would wake up for the 6th time at 3am. Of course I would get frustrated, I was so tired! A little perspective goes a long way when I felt like I was going to hit the wall. My perspective came after reading a wonderfully written birth story about a baby born with Down Syndrome. How lucky am I to have a healthy, happy baby? What a disservice I am doing to that mother, not to mention the millions of mothers who long for children they are unable to conceive, if I take my frustrations out on Elle? Because they are MY frustrations. Elle cannot deceive me. All she knows is that something is wrong and she cannot sleep. The only way she knows how to deal with it is to cry. By having this baby, I agreed to the terms and so now after a lot of learning, I am happily doing the work. It is not easy but it is all so worth it.

I love you baby Elle.

One Month Old Baby Product Rave

Our little bean is growing up so fast! I cannot believe that we are already hitting that one month mark. The first few weeks, all Elle wanted to do was sleep. We had to wake her up to eat and change her diaper. On the third week, Elle decided that she would sleep all day and be up all.night.long! We would try to keep her up more during the day but there was simply no waking the little one. Finally, with the purchase of a few choice items, we were able to get her to sleep for 5 hour stretches at night.

The first of these wonderful products is the Wubanub- a simple invention of a paci attached to a stuffed animal (picture beanie baby). One thing we quickly learned out Elle is the girl loves to suck. Before we introduced the paci, she would be endlessly sucking on, well, me since I am breastfeeding her. We introduced a basic paci but the dang thing would fall out of Elle's mouth, jerking her awake, thus jerking me awake. The pattern became fall asleep, paci falls out, baby yells out in frustration, mom wakes up, reinserts the paci, rinse and repeat. No one was really sleeping. The small animal attached to the paci allows the paci to say in her mouth (most of the time the animal, who happens to be a frog, is laying on Elle's chest, staring at her while sucks).

Another product we purchased is a very tight sleep sack call the Woombie. This sack allows Elle to move her arms and legs but she cannot clock herself in the eye and wake herself up with her crazy arm. Elle uses this as a last resort since she also does well with the Escape Proof Swaddle- yes I found that on youtube.

The final purchase was the Sleep Sheep. This stuffed sheep produces wonderful white noise that lulls Elle to sleep every time. The sheep offers whale sounds (which are quite high-pitched and alarming in my opinion), heart beat (again a little creepy to wake up to the sound of a heart beat blaring in the bedroom), the rain sound and the wave sound. Elle prefers the later two. Actually I do not know which one she prefers but her Dad and I prefer not to feel like we are living in a womb or 1000 leagues under the sea.

Baby Elle is Born!

On Friday January 1st, I went to bed feeling a bit crampy. I was camped out on the couch since my huge, pregnant belly prevented me from sleeping in the bed for the past week or so. At 3am, I woke to reposition myself and heard a "pop". I thought that was odd and so I hoisted myself off the couch. My water broke everywhere! I was quite suprised since I was only 37 weeks and 6 days pregnant. I hobbeled down the hall, water still gushing and yelled for Jeff. Jeff leaped up from his sleeping position and sprinted towards me across our king size bed at a about 100 miles an hour- I thought he was going to mow me down! In his sleepy state, he thought I had said the water main of our house was broken and was expecting to find a flooded kitchen. Always thinking about our hardwood floors that one is.

Jeff and I were not ready for my water to break. I had not packed a bag or brought my birth plan home from work where I had been finalizing it. We called the ob office who put a call through to the on-call ob since ours was out of town. I explained to her that my water broke and I was having regular contractions. She advised we head in. So we bumbled around in the hallway, trying to pack a bag, figure out what to do with dog, call the family...all the while my contractions were getting pretty strong.

We finally arrived at the hospital at 4am. I was really feeling the contractions and the nurses asked me if I was going to want pain medicine. I told her we had planned on doing this naturally and she advised me to play things by ear. She checked my progress and I was already 5 centimeters and we were both surprised by that. She started rushing around a bit and called the ob to start heading in (the ob was still at home in bed, convinced my labor would take hours to progress like most first time mothers). Jeff and I never took a child birthing class so I had to make up my own ways of dealing with the pain by breathing wildly and flailing around my arms like a chicken- not very effective -, but to my credit the contractions were coming hard and fast.

When the nurse checked me again at 5:15am, I was already 9 centimeters. Nurses began rushing in and out, Jeff was trying to call my family and I felt the urge to push. The ob, who arrived at about 5:14am, got her scrubs on and I signed some paperwork (always relaxing to sign forms while in active labor) and the nurse told me I could push if I wanted to. I bore down with a few contractions which felt so much better. The ob then positioned herself and told me to push with all my might with the next contraction. So the contraction came and I pushed as hard as I could. Two more pushes and Elle arrived. They placed her on my stomach and Jeff cut the cord. My family arrived 20 minutes later and everyone, from the ob to nurses, were all very surprised at the speed of my labor.

Elle was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. She came out with her arm next to her head, which caused me to tear a bit. Unfortunately, the numbing medicine did not work and I felt most of that pain while getting the tear fixed. I was happy when I was finally stitched up and could relax and focus on Elle. She is just the prettiest baby and I am so in love. I was very lucky to have had such a fast labor but also feel very proud of myself that I accomplished childbirth med-free.

We have been home for the past 5 days and she is doing well. She is getting on a bit of a schedule and becoming more alert. She is the center of our universe, rightly so.

Our House

When we first saw this house, it was not very cute. The former owners had almost no decorative style but we were able to see the potential. When Jeff and I got the keys after closing, we starting demolishing the ugly fireplace that same day. We had a lot on our to do list. We wanted to replace the kitchen floors, add a dining room, paint the outside, fix the deck, re-do both bathrooms, insulate the attic, paint the kitchen cabinets, the list went on and on.

Our first project was the guest bath. We did a basic cosmetic update (shower and sink were in good shape) which included painting and Jeff put up some bead board.

Our next thing was new furniture and paint job for the master bedroom- done :)

Then we needed to start the dreaded remodel. It actually it took us a really long time to get the nerve up to do the remodel. We knew it would expensive and scary. Finally the pregnancy kicked things into gear. We started the remodel in August 2009 and finished in September 2009. The remodel included a new dining room, pantry and new hardwood floors.

Then the next step was the nursery...this one is still in progress.

Left on the list will be to re-do the master bath and then we will be satisfied. We plan to buy land and build our own house in the next 3-5 years so then of course we will have a much longer to do list but at least this house will be a great buy for the next potential owners.