My people.

Lately I've been feeling a bit lonely. I went to classes and talked to people that have babies etc and everyone always mentions how hard the first 6 weeks with a new baby are. Well honestly, those 6 weeks weren't that bad and (knock on wood for next time) I was so very lucky and didn't suffer from PPD or "baby blues" and I have an "easy baby" so during my days i get to coo and cuddle my sweet and beautiful baby. But what no one tells you is that after those first 6 weeks people kind of lose interest in you and the attention stops. I have spent most of my adult life gainfully employed and to be perfectly honest, much of my socialization came from the 40 hours a week that I spent at work. Now I'm at home all day and people have gone back to their lives and day in and day out I'm left alone with a baby who is on a pretty rigid schedule and my days can be pretty lonesome and monotonous.
Before Amelia was born I had gotten information for the "mommy & me" classes at Good Sam hospital where we had our birthing classes just in case i needed a support network if i had PPD. Since I never had to deal with the PPD (postpartum depression, for those not in the know) I had kind of forgotten about these classes... until yesterday. Another mom from our birthing classes sent me an email to catch up and after "talking" to each other via email it came out that she has been going to the Mommy & me classes on Tuesdays and asked if i wanted to meet up with her at the one this week so that we could catch up.
I went today and let me tell you, I love it! I wish that I had been doing this all along. It really isn't just to combat depression, it's mostly just nice to get to talk to other moms with babies in the same age group (0-3 months) that are going through the same things (turns out i am not the only mom without a single local friend who has kids). It was so refreshing and fun!
So i now have this weekly get together to look forward to as well as my NoPo group from meetup.com which is gaining steam.
Goodbye lonesomeness!

Growing too fast

Over the weekend my mom and I went on a shopping rampage and bought Amelia more clothes than you can shake a stick at. This means that when I got home and went to put away her new clothes I had run out of space and needed to do some reorganizing. I decided that I would take out her newborn sized clothes since she has long outgrown them and put them away for safekeeping...what I did not realize is how sad it would make me to look at the teensy tiny clothes that she was once swimming in and think that she would now rip them to shreds like the Incredible Hulk if we tried to get her into them. Seeing her day in and day out I don't realize how fast/much she is growing until physical evidence proves it to me, to pick at the scab a bit more I then went and watched the video of her 1st bath again and just marveled at how big she is compared to then and it's only been a couple of months!

We took a couple of videos over the weekend of the peanut but they are too big for the blogger website to upload so I have put them on youtube.com for you all.

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DSeWOr016NE0&h=cc721

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj6jsOZMgVs

Grandparents call me if you need help getting to these links

Getting ready for our first trip

In a month we are going to Missouri/Kansas to visit my family which will be the first time for both Amelia and Cheyenne and I'm getting pretty excited. Not to be in the unholy heat and humidity mind you, but excited to see family that I miss so much and to have them all get to meet Amelia and to see Cheyenne in a more relaxed atmosphere (the last time anyone in my family saw him was at our wedding).
My mom and I went out over the weekend and basically bought Amelia a whole new wardrobe and everything is so so cute. She'll easily be the best dressed baby in the Midwest...no surprise though.
In addition to the obvious excitement of getting to see family we also have a couple of special things going on: my cousin Brianna is getting married (yay!) and I'm pretty sure it's going to be sooo much fun (I'm happy that Cheyenne's first trip will include the Shalz clan in wedding celebration mode). Also, my cousin Brynn had her first baby, a little girl, born exactly 3 months to the day after Amelia so it's going to be so sweet seeing these two little cousins together.
I'm a little nervous about the plane ride there though, as everyone knows, I do not step onto a plane without heavy heavy doses of Xanex but this time i pretty much have to forgo that because of Amelia, so poor Cheyenne is going to have to take care of two babies on the flight! Eesh.

A rose by any other name...

I find myself in this scenario on a daily basis: we're in the store or somewhere in public with our daughter and someone will see her and coo and make googly eyes 'cause ya know, home-girl is gorgeous, and the stranger will ask her name....

Me: Amelia Grace
Stranger: Oh my! That's a beautiful name! I just love it! What do you call her for short?
Me: Um, Amelia.
Stranger: Oh, I guess there really isn't a nickname for it is there?
Me: Nope, kinda one of the selling points for us
Stranger: *blank stare*

Is it so hard to believe that a person can go by their given name without wanting/needing a cutesy shorter version? Cheyenne and I were both under the same belief that if you like the shorter nickname version of a name then THAT is the name you give the child, picking a longer name with the intention of never using it but instead using the nickname for it is a bit stupid. However, when you try and tell this to people they give you a look like you are some kind of communist. hurmph. For future reference to all strangers that ask the name of my child: my husband and I have a list of baby names for future children and none of them have a nickname..."sorry".

Tummy time on her 3 month "birthday"

Smooth sailin'.

It's been a while since my last long post, I was waiting for something "blog-worthy" to happen but it would seem (knock on wood) that things have settled into a smooth and easy routine and it's not terribly exciting (sorry guys). our days run about like this:

7:00am - Amelia wakes up & Cheyenne has "daddy time" with her. I'm pretty sure this consists of him teaching her future ways to torment me. But since I am usually a sleep-zombie at this time that is just a guess.

7:30am - She's handed off to me while Chey gets ready for work. She gets breakfast and we take the dog outside. then we settle in for for chatting before she take her first nap.

8:30ish - Nap. This is really the only time of day where I get "me time" or the chance to eat.

10:30ish - Amelia's brunch and more playtime and a walk when the weather doesn't hate me.

2:00ish - Amelia's lunch and 2nd nap, 10th nap for the dog and cat, I clean the house.

4:00ish - Amelia's 2nd lunch/1st dinner...and yes, Oprah (I'm not proud of this).

5:00pm - reading either in the nursery (if it's yucky outside) or in the yard with Josie (if it's nice outside)

6:00ish - Cheyenne gets home. Go to the grocery store, make dinner when we get home.

7:00ish - Dinner

7:45pm - Amelia gets a bath and/or massage

8:00pm - Reading in the nursery (always the Velveteen Rabbit & Goodnight Moon - because they are my 2 favorite books of all time)

8:30pm - Amelia goes to bed

8:31pm - 11:00ish - The hours in the day where i get to talk to another grown-up.

2:30am - Feed Amelia

4:30am - Feed Amelia

7:00am - the day starts all over...

The weather is finally starting to be spring-like so on Tuesdays I hope to add a Mommy & Me class into the mix for some variation.

Big Blue Eyes

Almost 3 months old.

Amelia is 11.5 weeks old now and is looking more and more like her own little person.

Happy Birthday to Me!!!

Last night I got my best birthday gift yet...Amelia woke up just one time all night long (at 2:00am)!!! She went to bed at 8:30pm and woke up at 7:00am with just the one time to eat in the night! Yay!!!

Success!

Our "sleeping training" is finished and we all survived! It only took a couple of days and I was able to do it without using the "cry it out" method that I was set against. She now goes to sleep (in her crib) at 8:30pm and gets up between 12:00am-2:00am to feed, 4:30am to feed, and is up at 7:15am. This is a million times better then going to bed at midnight and then waking up every 2 hours until 8:00am. She's also much less cranky at night now...we had assumed that it was gas but we now think that she was just over-stimulated and tired.

Spring Fling Part 2

Spring Fling Part 1

Cheyenne spent quite a while in our backyard doing some work today. The flowers and shrubs are ablaze with color and I thought I would share some photos of our lovely backyard (the front is being worked on next week)

Rock-a-bye Baby...Now Pass the Xanex!

Amelia is 10 weeks old and totally healthy (yay) but she still wakes up every 2 hours at night to eat or be rocked. This isn't great for her (at this age she can and should be having longer - up to 5 hours - periods of sleep) and it certainly isn't great for Cheyenne and I who, at this point, have each forgotten what it was like to 1. get sleep 2. sleep next to each other (being big supporters of co-sleeping it's what we have done since the night she was born). With the pediatrician (who, for the record does favor co-sleeping - it was one of my requirements when interviewing pediatricians) not only supporting a move to the crib but in fact encouraging it for all three of us (none of my other plans went exactly as they were supposed to so why should this be any different - oh the joys of being a parent) to get the sleep that we need.
After spending hour upon hour upon hour reading up on and studying the various "sleep training" techniques (Ferber, Sears, Mindell, Pantley, Weissbluth, & Waldburger) no joke, i know them all (because i think you should be as informed as possible when you make decisions) and i had created my own bastardized version that combines bits from all of them. Basically i came up with something much much kinder than the Ferber "cry it out" method but more firm than Pantley's "no cry sleep solution" and decided that since there would be a (small) amount of crying involved and would take more than the 48 hour weekend it would be best to implement my "program" on Wednesday when Cheyenne would be in Philadelphia on business (he gets back at midnight on Friday) so that by the time he gets home (which coincides with the weekend) the hardest nights would have been over with (in theory) so that he wouldn't have to go into work a total zombie.
It's been....hard. Of course that's putting it mildly. This child is loved to the point of distraction and always treated with kid gloves. The first night (last night) was very rough, I'll admit, i sat on the floor next to her crib quietly (didn't want to disturb her) sobbing for the allotted time (2-5 minutes). I went through her whole "bedtime ritual" (as all of the books insisted i have and strictly stick to) and laid her in bed at 8:30. After a while she started to soothe herself to sleep before the allotted time had come (2-5 minutes). You would think that this would have had me ecstatic, however, i cried even harder being convinced that I had let my baby down and she had given up on the idea of Mommy coming to rescue her - not exactly the message that i want my children to have. By midnight she was calm enough and had been asleep for long enough stretches (she's still young enough that she is being fed every 3 hours) that a very frazzled Josie and i were able to drag ourselves to bed where I lay convinced that she wasn't crying because she was dead of SIDs and i would have to throw myself off of the St Johns bridge so i actually ended up laying on the floor next to her bed so that i could hear her breathe without waking her up or letting her know that i was there.
Tonight has gone more smoothly. She was put into her crib an hour and a half ago and only had to be soothed by me once. My goals for tonight are to be able to 1. not cry (too hard) 2. convince the dog that the world is not going to end because of Amelia's unhappiness. 3. convince myself that the world is not going to end because of Amelia's unhappiness 4. not be so paranoid and maybe (just maybe) sleep in my bed 5. remember that tomorrow night will be easier than tonight (just as tonight was easier than last night) and that before i know it she'll be grown up and/or old enough to be able to peak her head over her mattress and say "mom, I'm OK, stop sleeping on the floor next to my bed listening to me breathe".

More Photos

10 Weeks Old!

Happy Girl

In order to best hear the sound on this video you will first need to scroll to the bottom of this page and mute or pause the music that is playing. Once that is done come back to this and hit the "play" button to hear Amelia "talking".

Easter 2010