Still Miss Marvelous

Annie will always be Marvelous, even after she grows out of her famous Miss Marvelous onesie:
It still fits for now. :) Miss Marvelous had a marvelous diaper this morning!

Today I'm trying her out in a Baby Bjorn baby carrier that I got as a hand-me-down from a friend of a friend. It's actually quite nice. (For those of you not familiar with these things, it looks a little like a back pack that you wear on your front. There are straps for your arms, and then a pouch in the front, where the baby sits. Infants sit in it facing you. Later, around 3 months, once they're better about holding up their heads, you can face them out. It's a convenient way to carry around your baby and still have your hands free).

I have been using a sling, which used to work like magic in settling Annie down. But she no longer likes going in the sling because she can't look around in it. I believe there are other positions to use the sling for, but I haven't looked into that too much yet. The Baby Bjorn has Annie upright, instead of in more of a fetal position.

It looks like the Baby Bjorn might be a success. She was sort of fussing around in it for a while, but now she's asleep. I love the smell of baby ....

Today we're meeting Jim for lunch at Mary Chung's in Cambridge. We're getting to be experts at bringing Annie into restaurants. :)

10 Pounds

I'm happy to report that Annie had her weekly weigh-in and she now weighs 10 pounds, 6 ounces! Pretty cool. She is finally starting to outgrow the "Newborn" -sized clothes, and she fits well in the size 1 diapers. At this rate, we'll need to be buying the size 2 diapers in a couple of weeks! I look at the photos of her when she was born and realize how much she's grown. She has almost doubled her birth weight now.

We have our 2-month check-up at the pediatrician on Friday, when we'll find out her official weight (without the diaper and onesie). But it probably won't be that different. Annie gets her first set of shots on Friday too, poor baby. I believe she'll be getting 3 shots and one oral vaccination. The doctor said we could give her a dose of Children's Tylenol about an hour before the appointment, which will make her a little more comfortable. 4 vaccinations on one day seem like a lot, even for an adult. But I guess it's pretty standard. And on the positive side, it means she's a little more protected in case she comes in contact with someone who has not been vaccinated.

2 month birthday

Our nearly-10-pound Annika turned two months today! To celebrate, we went for a walk in the Public Garden in Boston. She mostly slept in the stroller:
And we saw these cool alliums (which are ornamental onions):
Then we came home and Annika had a bath. Now we are praying that she'll go to sleep.

Weekend highlights

Some highlights of the weekend:

1) We took Zeus to the vet yesterday because she has an eye infection. We had a new vet who apparently had drawn in her eyebrows with a brown magic marker. Very bizarre. This vet was Dr. Doom. She found about 5 other things "wrong" with Zeus, aside from the eye infection. For example, about 7 years ago, Zeus lost one of her front teeth. We have brought her into the vet many, many times since then, and the doctor has always said that it was not a problem. Dr. Doom freaked out, saying that Zeus must be in horrible pain because of it, and said that part of the tooth root was still there. She said that many of Zeus' teeth were infected and needed to come out. (I'm sure she could sell us special cat food for Zeus to eat after she lost her teeth). She thought she felt some unspecified hardness in Zeus' intestine, which she said could be irritable intestine syndrome (or something like that), and wanted to know if Zeus had any arthritis. Of course, there were "treatments" she could provide for each of Zeus' ailments. At a cost, of course. (Cha-ching!)

I felt like I was at the place we go for oil changes, where the "mechanics" give you a list of things that are wrong with your car, knowing full well that you know nothing about cars. For example, one mechanic said that our power steering fluid was red and that this was a bad thing. I read on-line later that power steering fluid is supposed to be red. I felt like this vet was doing the same thing. Trying to get me to freak out so that I would give her my wallet, without knowing what was actually going on.

$260 later, I had 3 medicines to give Zeus for her eye and I also purchased some flea medicine. (The flea medicine was about $40 more than I can get it on-line). We have to go back in a week for a recheck (probably so Dr. Doom can look for some other things that are wrong with our poor cat). I think Jim is going to go because he wants to see the vet's eyebrows. :) I think we need to find a new vet.

2) Apparently New Kids on the Block are still touring and are doing a show in Buffalo in the next couple of days. What? They were bad 20 years ago - how do they get to do a reunion tour too? And why are people so excited about this? I think that maybe people want to relive their junior high school days. I guess these are the same people that actually enjoyed junior high school.

3) We went to our friend's house for a little BBQ last night, to celebrate Flag Day and our friend's new job. We grilled pizza - yeah, out on the grill. It was really good. First you grill one side of the dough, then you put the toppings on that side and grill the other side.

4) Annika was up from 2:30 to about 5:30 this morning. And Jim only got her to sleep at 5:30 with the help of a pacifier. (Not a good habit to get into, but we were desperate). We feel like we're going to die.

5) While I was at the vet, Jim painted the wall that we had fixed after the sewage pipe cracked. He also put some finishing touches on the window that he replaced 2 weekends ago. It feels good to get some of those loose ends finished in the house.

6) Today it's raining but may clear up later. I think we're going to try to rest today. Annika is sleeping great right now!

Annie and her peeps

Annie says: "I've got people."

New moms' outing

Yesterday, I got together with some other women from my new moms' group. We met for lunch at a restaurant called Sel de la Terre. According to their website, they're a French restaurant. Who knew. :) I thought "Sel de la Terre" was Italian. That shows how much I know. At least I got the part about it being a Latin-based language. I had a goat cheese salad that was really tasty. They had really delicious french fries too. I guess the French know how to make their fries, right? :) (ha!)

It was remarkable how baby-friendly and customer-oriented in general the restaurant was. When we called to make a reservation, they asked us if anyone had a food allergy so they could be ready for us. I've never had a restaurant ask that. Kind of amazing. Once we got there, they had set aside a table in kind of an isolated part of the restaurant so that we would have plenty of room for the babies, strollers, and other gear, and so we wouldn't be disruptive to anyone. In their restroom, they had the nicest changing table I've seen in a public place. The manager even came over a couple of times to check on us. I was very impressed.

After lunch, we walked around The Natick Collection. What, you might ask, is The Natick Collection? It's a mall. But, because it's so upscale, they decided to call it a Collection instead. It certainly is a nice mall. It's very new. The stores are upscale (Louis Vuitton, Neiman Marcus, Lacoste, and some stores I had never heard of but looked very expensive). They had interesting decorations in the seatings areas in the middle of the walkway. They looked like birch trees, except that only the trunks were there. The tops of the trees were all cut off in different angles.

This mall had the best public restrooms I've ever seen. They had separate changing rooms for babies. Yes, more than one. You walk in, lock the door, and there's a whole counter where you can change your baby. Then, when you're done changing the diaper, they had this room with couches to sit, rest, feed the baby, read the newspaper, whatever you want. It's a living room inside the restroom.

You know your life has changed when you're excited about the restrooms. Or when you meet up with a group of new friends and hang out in the restroom for a large portion of your time together, feeding, changing, burping, and soothing your babies.

Annie did really well. I tried out the ready-made bottles of formula, which rock. They are about 100 times easier than making up formula in a bottle from the powder, refrigerating it, carrying it in your diaper bag hoping it doesn't spill, and then trying to figure out how to warm it up to room temperature while your baby is hungry and fussing. Of course, you pay for that convenience, but I really think it's worth the money for outings. It's going to rock when we drive into Buffalo next. No more running the bottle under lukewarm water or the hand drier at the rest stop!

Later that night, after we had gotten home and had dinner, Annie had a bath. Here's a photo of her with Jim after her bath:
This may be my favorite photo of her so far. There she is, bundled up, very calmly looking at Jim, who looks exhausted but happy. :)

Progress

For the last 4 weeks, I've been attending a new moms' class at a local maternity/kids store called Isis Maternity. The class meets once a week for 6 weeks and is a way to get connected to other moms with babies around the same age as Annie. During the class meeting, a moderator talks about various relevant topics about new babies and there's a lot of encouragement for the moms to meet outside of class.

It has been a wonderful thing for me. First, it provides structure to my Tuesdays. I need structure. It also gives me a little push to get out and meet people, which I'm not always very good at. It also provides pretty useful information about babies and even better, makes you see that just about everything your baby is doing is totally normal! And lastly, Isis has a scale. So I can weigh Annie every week and see how she's doing.

It might sound sort of sad to think that weighing Annie is a highlight of my week. But it really is. If she's gaining weight, it means she's thriving and that we're doing OK in the feeding department. It also means that it's OK for us to let her sleep longer, and that she will sleep longer, since her belly can hold more food.

For the last three weeks, we've had this pattern:
May 26: 8 lbs, 11 ounces. (This was the most exciting weighing event - she weighed more than a pound since her last pediatrician visit, less than 2 weeks before!)
June 2: 9 lbs, 2 ounces
And, drum roll, yesterday: 9 lbs, 12 ounces!!

Now, granted, she's always wearing her diaper and a onesie when she's weighed. So subtract a couple of ounces. It still means she's doing great.

And, as an added reward, we got 6 hours of this for two nights straight:
(That's the frog prince on the left, keeping Annie company as she sleeps). Not bad, eh?

So there is good progress. I'm finding maternity leave a lot more manageable (still have to work at it everyday) and Annie is healthy.