Quarter Birthday

 Oh Blaire…our little chunky monkey! Or as Daddy first earned the nickname of “Tubs”, some are now calling you Tubs Jr.

Today my baby girl is 3 months old! 

Last night I weighed her in fear that I would forget to do it today…according to Baby Stats on Wii Fit Plus she now weighs 13 lbs 14 oz! We kissed 0-3 months clothes goodbye two weeks ago and she is fitting very nicely in 3-6 months, though if she grows much longer anytime soon she won’t be able to fit in the sleep n’ plays. We’re STILL in size 1 diapers, mostly because I’m trying to use up what I have left. As soon as they are gone, or if she starts having too many blowouts, I’ll move her into size 2. I think it helps that she carries most of her weight in her thighs and head…which could be why she still doesn’t have complete head control! LOL!

She has continued to sleep REALLY well, thank goodness! She normally sleeps from 8:30pm to 4:30am, give or take 30 minutes on each end. When she wakes up, she eats and goes back to sleep until around 7:30 or 8am, or earlier if we wake her up.

So what has Blaire been up to. 

She’s giving us some laughs here and there and can give some REALLY big smiles! 

She seems to have really good control of her head, though she can still be a little wobbly here and there…see note above ; ). 

She’ll tolerate a few minutes of tummy time, but sometimes just lays there in what looks likes defeat. 

She really, really loves her brother and his wild faces. He can always solicit big smiles out her.

She’ll follow us with her head and eyes across the room. 

 For the past week or two she’s started chewing on her hands and slobbering a little…maybe a precursor of teething and sleepless nights? 

She especially likes to chew on my shoulder and leave me a nice little slobber spot on my shirts. 

She’s started grabbing the rings on the toys hanging in front of her and holds on to them for a while.

So we're a quarter of the way to her first birthday...sigh!

January Recap

Wow wee! January was a hectic month!

I returned to work on the 6th, and I think now on February 2nd we now have a pretty good schedule down. Of course it’s the start of my busy time at work so my days fly by almost as fast as the evenings and weekends do. At work I have access to a lactation room, so it’s allowed me to continue “breastfeeding”. I’m still overproducing by A LOT! In fact, my weekly average is 85 ounces while Miss Blaire eats 30-35 a day! This weekend I reached the halfway point to my 6,000 oz freezer stash goal. If it keeps as it has been I should have no problem reaching that goal by the time Blaire is 6 months…then I can wean and have enough milk to get her to a year or very close to it.

Unfortunately, on January 13^th Nic’s paternal grandmother passed away, leaving him with one living grandparent. :'( After a week where we spent most of our time with the family, we laid her to rest on January 17^th. She was 83 years old and had Alzheimer’s for several years. I couldn’t help but be overcome by the amount of love and devotion Nic’s Grandpa has shown her through these past several years, even when this awful disease made her not act like herself. Most of their lives she took care of him, but gradually that transitioned to where he took care of her. Considering divorce has ran rampant in my family starting with my maternal grandparents, it’s nice to see a lifetime of love like that and it makes me want to make sure Nic and I achieve that level of lifetime love and devotion in our marriage. I’m so glad we were able to get the picture we did at Christmas, the last with the entire family!

Speaking of lifetime love…we made it one year closer to that goal on January 18^th when Nic and I celebrated our 11^th wedding anniversary! Given the recent events, all we managed to do was sneak away for a quiet dinner (sans kids) at Osaka.

Throw in a couple of birthday parties and we could pretty much kiss January 2014 goodbye...oh until Bryce came down with the flu...even after receiving the flu mist in November! So far no one else has gotten it in our household, and most importantly Blaire, though my Mom did end up with it after keeping him on the day he came down with it. 

Speaking of Blaire...I think I'll save those photos and details for my next post which will be her 3 month post! Eeek!

Christmas 2013 - Blaire's 1st!

Blaire's first Christmas has come and gone; and as surreal as it sounds, it was Bryce's FIFTH Christmas! Like Bryce's first Christmas, we can sort of consider Blaire's first Christmas a White Christmas. Though we had to drive a few hours to get there, but when we did get to Wichita to celebrate with my Mom's side of the family there were several inches of snow on the ground. 

Leading up to Christmas we did lots of wrapping of presents. This year Bryce was really big into helping with just about everything. Below is a picture of him trying to wrap one of Blaire's presents all by himself. Of course shortly thereafter he got bored and I had to finish the job. 

This year with the addition of Blaire, I ordered us all new custom stockings. I know I could have just ordered a new stocking for Blaire, but since I'm just a little OCD, I had to make sure they all kind of matched. Besides, I shouldn't have to order any more since we're not planning on adding any more to our family. 

Our Christmas festivities began the Sunday before Christmas with a trip down south with my Dad's side of the family. Our initial celebration was delayed a day due to an ice storm that hit. We made it safely down there and the kids enjoyed playing outside in the cold, cold temperatures!

Christmas Eve morning we made some cookies for Santa. Bryce was a really big helper...

Of course when it was time to decorate them he was already over the entire activity...so I handled that part.

Early, early Christmas morning Santa stopped by our house...

Bryce and his sleepyhead self evidently couldn't see the massive amount of toys Santa left, as he started crying and asking why Santa didn't come.

But he quickly wiped the sleep out of his eyes and saw many of the things he had on his list. Shortly thereafter, he exclaimed that "this is the best Christmas ever!" My heart melted!

Of course I planned out a cute outfit for Blaire to wear to our Christmas day activities.

Meeting and being adored by a Great-Grandma

Daddy and his favorite girl...even if she's in frilly clothes!

Of course that outfit didn't last, so our family picture didn't have her in a cute outfit. I did dress her back up in it at a later date so I could get a picture of she and Bryce together. See the bottom of this post.

And for our 4th consecutive day of Christmas celebrations we went to my Mom's house so the kids could open their present from her...she didn't want to haul everything to Wichita on Christmas day.

And for our Christmas outfit redo!

 He sure loves his sissy!! <3 font="">

Two months...already?!?

So today my baby girl is TWO months old! 

Obviously, I couldn't choose just one picture to share!

At two months, she's still in size 1 diapers, though barely! She's also fitting comfortably in 0-3 months clothes but some are starting to get small, especially the outfits with pants. Her two month doctor's checkup was on New Year's Eve, at which she was exactly 8 weeks old. She weighed 11 lbs 10 oz (78%). Her head circumference was 15 3/4" (84%) and her height was...wait for it...24 inches!!! Unbelievably, a child of mine in the <97 4="" believe="" birth.="" br="" but="" couldn="" for="" grown="" had="" height="" i="" in="" inches="" it="" length="" m="" nbsp="" she="" since="" stay="" still="" sure="" t="" that="" way="" won="">

Blaire is smiling a TON! She's cooing at us and we're just waiting for her first awake giggles. She does a lot of chuckling in her dreams, but so far we just get squeaks for laughs. She holds her head up well and keeps it pretty steady, but absolutely HATES tummy time! If you want to ruin her good mood fast, just initiate tummy time!

 

She's still sleeping really well. She typically wakes up around 3 or 4am after going down around 9 or 9:30pm. It's very likely that when she wakes up at 4am, I'll probably just get up for the day. I'm just going to try to move our bedtime up so that I'm not completely sleep depraved.

She's still getting 100% breast milk as I'm exclusively pumping. I have a MAJOR oversupply! In fact, being the spreadsheet enthusiast that I am I can tell you that my current weekly average production is 75 oz! AND since about week 3 I have been seeing an average increase of 5 oz nearly every week. I set a goal of only pumping until June 1st and at that point having enough frozen milk to get her on breast milk until her 1st birthday and I believe if my supply keeps like it has, that I will easily achieve this goal. Right now in the freezer I've got over 1,700 oz and my goal is 6,000. I'm nearly 1/3 of the way there and have been freezing between 40-50 ounces a day. 

How did this happen so quickly?!? Not only is she growing up way too fast, but I'm supposed to be returning to work tomorrow! I say "supposed to" because we have had some snow and ice that have left the roads a mess. So if schools are closed tomorrow, then it's very likely daycare will be closed also. I've been preparing myself mentally all week about returning...so far no tears have been shed but I might break if I don't go back to work tomorrow as planned. Darn my Type A personality!

So to keep me distracted...I'll be posting our Christmas post shortly!

 

Snow!

 Last week we were hit with a storm that brought significant snow to our area in Oklahoma. In fact I think it affected a lot of the country. (I'm really terrible due to the fact that I don't watch the news to really know the facts).

For us, we received the most significant amount of snow since February 2011, when Bryce was just over a year old, so this was the first opportunity that Bryce has had to really enjoy the snow. 

 Usually when it snows here, the temperatures are hovering just below the freezing mark so it's usually pretty wet snow. However, with this "storm" came extremely cold temperatures with lows in the single digits and highs in the teens, which made for a very dry snow that did not pack easily. Needless to say, "Build a snowman" remains on Bryce's bucket list. I'm sure we could have made a snowman by piling the snow up and packing it down, rather than rolling around a ball of snow. 

Bundled up and ready to go! Since it was so cold, it seemed to take longer to dress him than the time he would actually spend playing in the snow.

 

Catching snowflakes on his tongue.

One of many snow angels.

Who said he couldn't play on his playset...

...or the trampoline.

Snow angels are extra special while getting kisses from the dog...

...who also LOVED the snow! No kidding!

It didn't matter that we sold the 4-wheeler to get a golf cart...the golf cart did the job just fine!

I was definitely disappointed I didn't get to partake in the sledding activities since it was definitely not good conditions for having an infant outside, but I was able to sneak out and make yet another snow angel with Bryce.

Since it was so cold the snow stuck around for several days (which is not normal for Oklahoma), so Bryce got in many days of sledding.

In the end he was getting tired and decided it was easier just to lay down!

Maybe next time we'll have a Balaclava and goggles that are actually his size. 

And a video...

 

One month old...

...just a week and a half late. I just cannot seem to get it together. Thankfully, I still have over 2 weeks before I go back to work and hopefully can get some kind of routine down where we're not going to be constantly late to everything we go to! 

At least I caught a picture of Blaire (and Bryce) on her actual 1 month "birthday"!

What I didn't catch was her weight at exactly 1 month. Since we don't go back to her doctor until 2 months, I used the baby stats on the Wii Fit Plus game to get her weight like I did for Bryce. I'll share a picture of her Mii character later. 

According to it, at 5 weeks old (1 month 5 days) she weighed 10 lbs 1.6 oz. Which is a 3 lb weight gain from her birth weight for my 100% breast milk fed baby. I have to admit I'm pretty proud! Of course after I weighed her she filled her diaper and probably lost a half of a pound though. ; )

Blaire's first month consisted of her first sponge bath, like nearly all babies!  Brother is seen below trying to tell her to stop crying...if only it was that easy.

Then when her umbilical cord stump FINALLY fully fell off, (after 3 weeks!), she had her first real bath. Seems she like it a little better than the sponge baths.

Then we started getting awake smiles! This one in particular was a really BIG smile!

 

Just a little over 3 weeks old she grew out of newborn clothes and diapers. Depending on what time you consider the night ends, she will wake one to two times a night. If I was getting up to go to work, I would consider it waking just once per night. Her second waking is usually between 4:30 to 5:30, which would be about the time I'll be getting up to get ready for work. Otherwise she doesn't nap well during the day yet so she keeps me busy for now! 

Her second month of like started with a snowstorm coming in that evening. Though she was definitely too young to enjoy it, you can bet her brother did. Which leads me to the next post...