Neglectful Me

I'm neglecting this blog!  I feel guilty!  But I need to figure out whether it's sustainable for me to continue posting once I return to work in just 2.5 short weeks!  Certainly there are things I have to stay still!  The questions is will I say them here? 

Maternity leave has been WONDERFUL!  It has been the most precious time of my life.  I will always cherish the time I was able to spend with our daughter when she was so tiny!  A big thank you to Matt for working extra hard to allow me extra time at home.  It's his turn now!  I can't wait to hear about his adventures with Olive over the course of the next 1.5 months. 

Someone's a show off!

Olive decided she would roll over for the first time on her 3 month birthday!!

The ever-evolving life of Olive

Olive's most recent growth spurt has ended!  She's now in the 75th percentile for weight!  :)  Last Thursday she weighed in at 11.5 pounds.  She's almost doubled her birth weight.  Amazing!  She's completely average (50th percentile) in all other arenas including head circumfrence and height. 

Olive is also sleeping like a champ (for now).  Last night I experienced 8.5 blissful hours of uninterrupted sleep.  The strange thing about getting good sleep is that I feel exhausted in the morning.  I think I had trained my body to get by on a lot less.  I've learned in my parenting group that sleep often falls apart around 12 weeks.  That gives me up to another 1.5 weeks to pretend these sleep filled nights will never end.  :) 

Matt's parents have been here since last Thursday.  It's been wonderful seeing them with Olive.  Deborah has been dominating Dan for Olive time.  :)  They're still deciding what they want to be called.  Last night it was suggested (by me) that Deb go by GaGa.  GaGa Garson has a nice ring to it.  Not to be outdone, Dan began considering the name Ziggy, which is sort of similar to the Yiddish word for grandfather, Zeidy.  The jury is still out on that one! 

The Evening Fussies

Olive has a terrible case of the evening fussies.  Terrible.  On Tuesday night, she fussed from 7pm-midnight.  Had you passed by our house at around 11pm, you would have seen us out in the rain in our PJs and mouth guards walking Olive around in her stroller.  We took the bumpiest route possible down several cobble stone streets and after 15 minutes or so she was out.  We brought her upstairs in the Bugaboo bassinet and sat her next to the bed.  SWEET VICTORY! 

...

Not so fast, Mom&Dad.  I have other plans. 

...

She was awake again within 10 minutes.  What finally put her to sleep you ask?  Gripe water.  Just that little taste of sugar.  Really?  That's all we needed to do?  After 5 hours of trying every other tool in our toolbox? 

I don't even remember what happened Wednesday night. 

Thursday night she decided she hates being in a carrier, unless Mom's arms count as a carrier. Good thing we own three carriers!? 

Tonight we decided to try to break the cycle of fussies early in the evening with a ride in the car.  We drove down to Leschi.  It was a beautiful evening.  Lots of boats on Lake Washington and plenty of people out enjoying the last rays of sun.  Oh, to be human.  She was asleep about 10 minutes in. We continued to drive for another 10, y'know, to really seal the deal. 

She was too precious when we carried her up in her car seat.  It was almost like the last few days never happened.  And then... THEN: 

And so you may be wondering how this night will end.  I can't tell you.  It's only 8pm, afterall. However, this is our current state of affairs:

Winter weather in Summer!

Olive is already a Seattle baby.  She's either bundled up:

Or wearing practically nothing at all:

It seems like there's barely been anything between those two extremes this summer! 

Somebody's smiling!

Exactly 1 week ago, I came downstairs to greet our little girl and she smiled at me for the very first time.  It melted my heart.  Since then, the smiles have been few and far between.  There was this attempt to capture a smile, which resulted in 2 yawns, a sneeze, and case of the hiccups:

Later in the week, I managed to capture this brief smile followed quickly by a little girl bored with the sound of her mom's annoying voice (smile happens about around the 40 second mark):

But this morning was a totally different story!  Olive was a smile machine!  She smiled at me, she smiled at her Dad, she smiled at the little woodland creatures hanging from her bouncy chair, she smiled at the air.  The bummer for you is that you'll have to trust me on this one since I decided to live in the moment and not take any photos. 

Bath time!

Olive loves bath time!  We've only been giving her a submersion bath about once a week but we might have to start doing it more often because she loves it!  Unfortunately, Olive has a bad case of infant acne right now.  I've been obsessively smearing her face with breast milk.  Did you know breastmilk is like the ultimate panacea?  Acne?  Check.  Eye infection?  Check.  Stuffy nose?  Check!  Matt and I keep laughing about how it's slightly cruel that we're rubbing her food all over her face! 

Growing and Changing

Olive is changing every single day.  She already looks so different than she did just last week!  She's making much better eye contact and sometimes I think she's getting ready to smile at me (so far, no cigar though).  These little changes are so rewarding! 

Garsons Love to Sleep

Remember how we were going to have a big baby?

At about 33 weeks, we were told that we were going to have a baby in the 95th percentile for weight!  I was pretty upset by this possibility.  I wasn't sure how I was supposed to get a 9+ pound baby out of me.  As it turned out, the ultrasound was WAY wrong ... as we knew it could be.  So, you may be wondering (as was I) how I was measuring big for the majority of my pregnancy and then gave birth to a sub-6 pound baby.  Here's the story.

As you may recall, my OB broke my water on the day before Olive entered the world.  The procedure was uncomfortable but not painful.  The worst part was that it took longer than it should have.  Typically it's a couple minute procedure.  For some reason, Dr. Kimelman had a hard time breaking my water and it took probably a good 5-6 minutes.  They use what looks like a knitting needle with a little hook on the end.  Kinda scary watching that thing go inside!  Anyway, when my water finally broke, I felt the release and the warmth of it running out of my body.  IMMEDIATELY it became very apparent that I was not having a big baby!  In an instant, the size of my stomach decreased significantly.  I probably lost 30-40% of my fundal height.  Everyone was impressed with how much fluid I had.  The belts I was wearing around my stomach to monitor Olive and my contractions had to be resized, there was so much slack. 

Pretty funny how things turned out!