Timing is everything

Why does Avery feel the need to fart when I have her up over my shoulder...and her butt is just inches from my nose?

Say Cheese!

And we have smiles!!! Franz got up early with Avery this morning (to let me sleep in a little!) and had her in her bouncy seat. When I came into the living room I smiled at her as I knelt down to give her a good morning kiss. She looked up at me and grinned, showing us her dimples :)

Of course I thought for a moment it had to be a gas smile, but a few seconds later she gave us another smile! At last! I know she's only 6 1/2 weeks old and you can't really expect much in return from her, but that first smile that shows you she recognizes you is just priceless.

I'll post a picture as soon as I have my camera handy when she decides to smile again :)

Update

It's been awhile since my last entry. We had a rough couple of days last week, she was in rare form and I thought I was going to pull all my hair out. Thank you everyone for your advice. I've been putting her to bed much earlier and it has helped so much. No more 5:00 meltdowns! Getting her to bed earlier also means Franz and I can have dinner together and spend some time talking about our day. Now if only we could do something about her 5am wake-up time...

Here are a couple new pictures. In the meantime, I'm going to come up with some other topics to write about besides Avery.

Ugh

Cranky baby= cranky mommy :(

We're going on day 2 of more miserableness...sigh....

Cabernet or Merlot?

Tonight I'm having wine with dinner. After the day I've had today with Avery, I am looking forward to enjoying a glass (or two or maybe three- just kidding).

I've read that colic peaks between weeks 6-8. Avery will be 6 weeks on Monday. If today is any indication of what the next 2 weeks are going to be like, I think I might as well just wave the white flag and surrender now- I give up!

Mom and dad left for their cruise today, so they won't be reading my blog until they get back. I figured a post about wine and drinking in jest would be okay. I'll deal with their comments later :)

Dinner is ready- it's too bad Franz and I can't eat at the same time anymore. He's putting Avery down for the night, he better hope there's still some wine left by the time it's his turn to eat!

What is it about...

5:00, whether it be am or pm. If it's 5:00am, she wakes herself up (which means one of us has to get up as well). If it's 5:00pm, she throws a huge fit and becomes this angry baby, scratching and clawing at my chest and pulling my hair in the process.

She's not hungry at 5am because we usually feed her sometime between 3-4. She just becomes restless and won't go back to sleep in her crib. One of us usually ends up on the sofa with her sleeping (let me rephrase that, lounging) on our chest. She then sleeps great for another hour or so until she gets hungry and decides she wants breakfast.

She'll be perfectly happy all through Ellen, until the very end. (I can hear some of you now, yes, I watch Ellen. There's only so much Baby Story and HGTV I can stand per day.) It never fails, as soon as it's 5pm she starts getting cranky and by 7pm she's having a full-blown tantrum.

Any ideas on how we can get her to sleep past 5am? If she eats between 3am-4am, she should be able to sleep until 7am-8am. This waking up BEFORE the sun rises is not cutting it.

Any ideas how to prevent the afternoon melt downs? Should I start her bath at 6pm instead of 7pm? If I put her to bed an hour earlier, does that mean she'll start waking up at 4am?

Too Funny!

Last night we gave Avery a bath and a bottle before putting her in her crib for the night. She was a little fussy and didn't fall asleep right away. We gave her her pacifier a couple of times and she would end up spitting it out after a few minutes. Finally we didn't hear any noises coming from her room, so I went to check to see if she really was out.

I peeked in from the door and noticed something didn't look quite right. The only light on in the room was her pink night light, so I had to get closer to her crib for a better look. When I looked down I realized she had spit her pacifier out once again- only this time it was upside down balanced perfectly on the bridge of her nose between her eyes! She had fallen asleep like this! I called Franz in so he could see why I was laughing. We both laughed until we had tears in our eyes! She just looked so funny, sleeping so peacefully with her pacifier perched on top of her face like that.

One More

Taken today :)

Just Wondering

Ahhhh, these were the good old days. I'm foggy on the details, Shana will have to confirm if I'm remembering correctly. But I believe this was taken at her "dress-up" themed birthday party. I'm sure there was cake and ice cream and of course presents to open. We all had so much fun at such a simple party. There were other fun simple parties, a roller skating party at the park, a bring your bike to the park party, pool parties when we got older, and sleepovers.

It seems like these days, parents feel the need to go overboard on parties for their kids. I want Avery to have simple parties like we did and be just as excited about them as we were. Do you think this is possible? Or will she think we're lame parents for not throwing her elaborate and expensive parties? For the record, I'm okay with her thinking we're lame :)

And I know you all want to know who's who in the picture above, so from the left: me, Sarah, Shana, Kim (my sister) and Kathleen.

My Big Find

Now that we're parents, Franz and I have such an exciting social life. Today we went to Lowe's to buy a new toilet seat :) How pathetic are we?!?!

Anyways, on our way to the toilet seat aisle, I saw these woven seagrass baskets:

Now check out the price! I totally scored :) And Franz is happy with his new toilet seat too :)

Video for Kim and Chad

Kim and Chad,

We took this little video clip the first weekend we brought Avery home from the hospital. So, it's a few weeks old, but at least you can "see" her until your next visit to California. And I have no idea as to how to turn the image so you don't have to tilt your head to watch- sorry!

Am I a bad mom?

Yes, those are socks on her hands. When she's especially colicky and all she wants to do is claw and scratch at me, the 'gloves' go on. I justify it by telling myself it's to keep her from scratching her face. You gotta do what you gotta do I suppose.

A funny coincidence?

See, I told you she likes to pose with her right hand up!

From the very beginning- here she is just a few minutes after she was born:

Talk to the hand mom, I'm trying to sleep :)

At 5 days old:

7 days old:

12 days old- first real bath:

17 days old:

Yes, we're still alive!

Well, I know it's been awhile since I last updated my blog. We've been a little busy around here- to say the least. Avery will be 3 weeks old tomorrow, and Franz and I feel like we've aged 10 years in that time! Keeping up with a newborn is hard work.

At her 2 week doctors appointment, she had gained a little over a pound, and grew 3/4 of an inch. Not bad :)

Over the past couple of weeks, we've noticed that she has times where she's just miserable. Her tummy is bloated, she has lots of gas, and as a result she just hurts. In the meantime, she cries- some days it seems like all day, and then other days she's the sweet happy baby we brought home from the hospital. We think she's colicky, and we're hoping and praying it doesn't get worse. We've tried so many things to make her more comfortable- gas drops, gripe water, different bottles, different formulas, snuggling, swaddling, swaying, shhhshing, rocking, bouncing, swinging, and the list goes on and on. The doctor assures us colic usually goes away between 3-4 months. Of course that sounds like an eternity to me, so I'm just trying to take it one day at a time.

We're thankful that she seems to know the difference between night and day! She generally will sleep about 3 hours before she wakes and is hungry again. We feed her and change her at least 8 times a day- which is down from the 12 times a day we started out with! She is a smart girl already. She knows when I'm about to burp her, and this makes her mad because she wants to keep eating. So just as I'm about to sit her up on my lap, she pushes her head back and will make her entire body completely stiff- which makes it impossible for me to burp her in that position. So up over the shoulder she goes!

She loves her baths- she just lays there and looks so relaxed. She doesn't seem to mind the water, which is really great because I would love for her to enjoy swimming lessons when she's older. She loves going for rides in the car, she passes out almost instantly. If she's having a particularly rough morning, I will put her in the car and just drive around town to calm her down. Ultimately this leads me to the drive thru at Taco Bell, but I figure I need a treat after listening to her crying all morning :)

Franz and I enjoyed taking her with us out and about yesterday. We ran an errand and then stopped at Chipotle for lunch. She slept the whole time :) Today we went to the beach. She loves snuggling against one of us when she's in her Baby Bjorn. She will stay very content for quite awhile that way. She loves being held- all the time :)

So that's it for the update for now. We're hanging in there. We hope in the next few weeks she will be able to eat a little more each time so she can sleep longer. It would be great to only have to get up once during the night! I'll leave you with some new pictures:

The 'other woman' in his life :)

She poses like this all the time for the camera!

Taking a nap with dad :)

First trip to the beach!