6 weeks

Olive is 6 weeks old today. I am 1,504 weeks old, in case anyone was wondering. Sunday was Easter. Mark and I took Olive to Big Canoe for the weekend. It was nice to get out of the city, and it helped make Easter feel special. Olive got her first Easter basket. It was filled with Mark and my favorite candies.

Olive had her one month check up today. She weighs 12 lbs 1.5oz which puts her in the 95-98 percentile. She's 23 and 1/2 in. which puts her above the 98th percentile. So she is still a big and long girl, although we could tell that from looking at her and holding her. The doctor said she looks great and is growing well. The doctor was also impressed with all of Olive's "talking" she makes lots of baby cooing noises and grunts.

Olive and her buddy Captain Calamari, that was the name on the label; we will clearly teach her when she gets older that calamari is squid not octopus.

Easter Girl

Progress

We've been making progress on the sleeping front.  For the last 3 nights she goes to sleep with me at 11pm and sleeps until 4am.  Then she goes back to sleep at 5am and sleeps anywhere from 7-9am.  Getting those 5 straight hours of sleep for three nights in a row have been fantastic.  Now here's the catch:  I've been sleeping on the couch with her every night.  It is nice because we actually get to lay down to sleep rather than me having to be at a 45 degree angle, but I miss sleeping in a bed, and I miss Mark.  This weekend we are going to try transitioning into bed.  I've decided I'm going to wait until school is out to even attempt to have her sleep in her own bed at night.  Still working on it during the day without much success.  She also currently takes a 3-4 hour nap in the morning, but then from about 3- 9 she takes these little cat naps and wants to nurse every hour.  This is  of course the point in the day that Mark gets home, and I just want a break.  She does have random happy moments during that time period as well, but there doesn't tend to be a lot of downtime for me during that period.  It's a very unpredictable time. 

*** A miracle just occurred!!!  I had gotten Olive to fall asleep and put her in her swing to sleep so I could get some things done.  After about 15 minutes she had her eyes open, I decided to blog until she started crying, and somehow she actually fell back to sleep.   No breastfeeding, no incessant walking, rocking, and shushing; she fell back to sleep on her own!  Okay, she is swaddled, and the swing is rocking her; but still no adult intervention and she fell back to sleep.

Another milestone we reached this week was when I actually managed to get a picture of her smiling.  She's been smiling for awhile now, but anytime I tried to get a picture of her she would stop.  Now she has more and more smiley times so I finally managed to capture it.  Almost every day she is extremely happy after her morning nap.  I get at least an hour with her where she smiles and coos the whole time.  I love it.

While the sleeping seems to have progressed a lot, the pumping is coming a bit slower.  It's just hard to find the time.  I only manage to pump 1-2 times a day.  Hopefully having Mark here this weekend will let me pump more often.

And now for the good stuff, updated Olive pics:

Smiling for the iphone

Gator Girl

napping with Daddy

After bathtime

Pretty Girl

Mischevious

hanging with Zinny

Stick em up

Silly hair

 

Now let's try...

I'm feeling more pressure to get some things figured out with little Olive. I have to go back to work May 2. Luckily it is just for three weeks before summer is here, but I still feel the pressure and need to have certain things in place. 1. I've started pumping to stockpile a milk supply for Olive's caregivers while I am at work. I want there to be plenty of milk around in hopes things will be less stressful for her with me gone if she may eat and snack at her leisure. Also, I wouldn't mind if she started taking the occasional bottle with Mark in the afternoons or on the weekend so I can have more time to get things done, or even run to the store without thinking there could be a hysterical baby waiting for me when I get home. 2. Sleeping. Ah yes that cursed word when it comes to a newborn. I realize at 5 weeks she is too young to expect much in the sleeping department, but last night she decided to have another one of her marathon-I'm-going-to-be-awake-from-2-until-4-am nights. If she wants to wake up every two hours fine, but I don't know how I will possibly be able to teach if I am awake 2-4 with her. So today began keeping her awake as much as possible, and not letting her take any of her 4 hour naps which I relish (because I take them with her). Ironically in order to insure she takes short naps I just put her to sleep in her bassinet, where she sleeps for 30min tops.
The problem is that these two goals conflict with each other. If she is aWake a lot during the day, then she wants to be held and interacted with which leaves me little time to pump. Hopefully we will get it all figured out soon.

5 weeks old tomorrow

Not to be redundant, but Olive will be five weeks old tomorrow.  In someways that feels like a short time, and in others it feels like a significant amount of time.  As I have stated before on here she has changed.  She spends more time happily awake and alert.  All four of her grandparents can confirm this as she has been doing a lot of skyping, and ichatting lately.  She also spends time unhappily awake and alert, where she cries and screams, but that usually has more to do with me trying to convince her that she can fall asleep if I just rock her in my arms rather than walk around with her.  Since we've been home from the hospital I think I have done about a million laps around our apartment walking her to sleep.

I love seeing her grow and develop.  As she matures she becomes more aware of the world around her, and more independent which means I get more moments like this, where I can type without a baby in my arms.  But at the same time I love that she is a tiny baby (okay she was never exactly "tiny") and as much as I want her to sleep in her own bed, I can't help but think I will miss her when she finally does.  Jen was over on Friday night and commented on how much bigger Olive seems to be.  It made me feel happy and sad at the same time.  I want Olive to grow and develop, but I also want her to stay my baby for as long as possible.

Smiling in her sleep.  And before anyone freaks out that I have her sleeping on her stomach, I had just laid her on our bed while I got dressed, I figured as long as I was watching her, she couldn't suffocate or anything else.

     

Defying Gravity

If this blog still exists in some form in 12 or so years this is the first entry I can see Olive finding to be truly embarrassing. I want to talk about her poop and gas. According to the books I've read, one way to know if your baby is healthy and getting enough to eat is if they have at least two quarter sized poops a day. I don't have to worry about this because Olive poops 6-8 times a day. And it's not just that she poops a lot, it's the noise that goes along with her poops. She is so loud you can hear her from across the room. The other day she was in the bedroom with Mark and I was in the bathroom with the door closed, and I could hear her poop. Along with the sound comes the velocity. I am waiting for the day when she is getting her diaper changed and she decides to poop, because I am pretty sure it is going to shoot across the room. Based on the sound, and how it feels through her diaper; if there weren't a barrier stopping it, she would be a projectile pooper. She also has force and sound behind her toots as well. When she passes gas it sounds like an adult. It is hilarious and cracks us up every time.

Here comes the part where she defies the laws of physics, twice this week when I was holding Olive in an upright position she pooped and it somehow ended up going up the back of her diaper and coming out the top. This physically doesn't make sense to me. If she is upright, how does the poop climb up her back?

On a side note When Mark was holding her today she pooped and it shot out the leg of her diaper, and all over his shorts. I was in the bedroom on the phone at the time, and all I could hear was Mark saying several times, "Oh my god," with increasing urgency in his voice.  At first I thought Tiger must have either done something really good, or really bad, (Mark was watching the Masters at the time) then I thought maybe he dropped the baby. Nope, he came in the bedroom with poop running down his shorts.  The funny thing was the poop was just on a small portion of Olive's leg hole of her onesie.  She barely even had any on her leg.

Anyone who knows Mark knows he loves to watch Maury. He only watches the "Baby Daddy" episodes, and typically roots for the men not to be the father. Anyone who has seen one of these episodes also knows that often times the women make claims that the man must be the father based on some physical feature she believes the baby and "father" have in common.  Sometimes these characteristics are more legitimate than other times; they have the same eyes vs. they have the same cough, or the same big toe.  Mark and I have always joked about going on Maury, I told him if we go I am going to claim that Olive must be his since they have the same digestive tract.  She poops and farts just as much as he does, and with the same loudness as well.

Alright enough poop talk.  Here is a list of the things I am loving about Olive right now.  I love every moment with her, but these are the moments that stand out just a little more than the others.

• When she smiles in her sleep.
• When her hair looks extra crazy after she sleeps on it funny.
• The face she makes when she is trying to poop.
• When she looks up and realizes it is either Mark or me, and she smiles.
• Her cooing noises
• Her pooping noises
• When she sleeps with her head on my chest.

Getting some love from Mommy

Talking to Daddy

She finds her Daddy fascinating.

Saying goodbye to Aunt Stacy.

Happy girl.

Dreaming of IU's basketball future, and hoping it will be better than the recent past.

happy

First time with my headband.

My first doll from Nadia at Daddy's work.

I make this face a lot, but I am getting better.

Laying on my beautifully monogrammed blanket.

3 weeks

Olive is three weeks old today. It's pretty phenomenal how much she seems to be changing and growing all the time. A couple of days ago I was holding her in my lap so she was facing me, and she suddenly looked at me and really and truly focused on me for the first time. I know that she can distinguish me from other people because hey. I'm the one with the milk. But until that point her recognition has always been more physical, she knows my smell, my touch, my sounds, this was the first time she really focused on me with her eyes.

Other ways she is developing include spending more time awake. I should say more calm time awake. These are times where someone is holding her, and she just looks around and is content. She loves to be held, all the time; even when she is sleeping. Which can be difficult, I hadn't planned on her sleeping in bed with us; but then I think soon enough she will be in a crib in another roomand I will miss having her sleep on me all the time so I try to enjoy it. I spend lots of my time with her trying to cherish every moment, because I know she will change, and develop so quickly. I don't want to miss anything.