Thursday, May 21, 2009

Mommy's first night out without baby.

Tonight I went out to "Girl's Night Out" to celebrate one friend who graduates from Law School this weekend and another friend who graduates from the Masters Program this weekend! I left Madison with Jason as soon as he got home (about 6:30) and headed over for some happy hour drinks.

It was definitely strange being without her (I kept looking in the mirror into her empty car seat out of habit), but I had a really great time.

CONGRATULATIONS TIFFANY AND MOLLY!!! :)

Back at home things went really well for a while. Mads took the bottle great and got a whole feeding in. J did the whole bedtime routine with her (reading books, etc) and she was in great spirits. He even got her all swaddled without fuss, but as soon as he put her down in the crib she started crying... which turned to screaming. But never fear! The magic of the Beco came to the rescue and she calmed down and fell asleep. This is what I found when I came home:

From Madison Kate


I transferred her easily to the crib and she's now sound asleep.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Bottle Feeding Continued

We have bottle success! Madison now (fairly consistently) will take a bottle from Jason.

Success involves:
- A bottle of milk pumped within the last couple days and refrigerated.
- Playtex Drop-Ins bottles with the slow flow latex nipple.
- Me in a completely other room with doors closed between us.

The complication has been that I have high lipase levels. That causes the lipase to rapidly breakdown the fats in my milk and give it a "soapy" taste and smell. It's pretty gross and I don't blame Mads for turning her nose up at it. The lipase still does it's damage when the milk is frozen, so I will most likely need to throw out my entire freezer stash. **crying** Oh well... I know how to fix the problem (scald milk before freezing), so I'm working on building up a new stash. I even found out that I can scald the milk with a bottle warmer instead of having to use a pan on the stove!

Our plan is to give her the bottle once every other day to keep her used to it.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

4 Months

Here's a quick snapshot of Madison at 4 Months:

- 16 lbs 1 ounce. 27 inches tall.
- Size 2-3 diapers.
- 6 Month clothes (and some 9 Month).
- Maddie can stand very well with us only holding her hands for support.
- She has found her loud voice and loves to show it off... especially in the middle of a quiet playgroup or while Mommy is on the phone. She'll whine and yell for attention when she gets bored, too.
- Now drinking breast milk from a bottle on occasion.
- Mads kicks a lot. She kicks while she plays, in the bath, and even while falling asleep. In fact, we had to ditch the sleep sacks because her legs would get caught up when she would kick at bedtime and then "slip"/move when she fell asleep and she'd be startled awake.
- Likes to "babble" talk to us. I seriously enjoy our little conversations.

From Madison Kate


From Madison Kate

Friday, May 15, 2009

Grandparents!

My Dad's parents were here from Kansas for a few days this past weekend and it was soooo nice spending time with them!! I love and missed them very much and really wished they lived closer.

Of course, this was their first time meeting their Great Grandchild and they definitely fell in love with her. Madison adored the attention and began her new happy squeals while her Great Grandma was cooing over her. :)

I wanted to share some of the photos we took before a dinner I hosted Tuesday night.

4 Generations

From Madison Kate


All The Ladies

From Madison Kate


Baby, Parents, Uncle and Grandparents

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We miss them already, but we have plane tickets to visit them in Wichita in July!!

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Our TALL Girl

Today was M's 4 month well-baby visit. Her doctor said she looks great and is developing ahead of the curve. Here are this month's stats:

Weight: 16 lbs. 1 ounce. (94%) Last month she was in the 97%, so she's starting to slow up a little (which I suspected... She's definitely starting to thin out a bit.)

Height: 27 inches! (100%) She gained an inch and a half in just over ONE month. How is that possible?? I knew she put on some length, but wow... It's amazing what babies' bodies can do! (and the nurse measured twice.)

Head: 43 cm. (94%) She gained one cm and stayed in the same percentile.

She's going into the shot clinic at a different location tomorrow for her oral Rotavirus vax and one shot of Pentecel (combo vax.) She's had both with no reaction, so I'm expecting the same this time.

Madison's New Sounds

Within the last few days, Mads has discovered that she can SQUEAL. She is very very happy about being able to make this new noise and has been practicing often. Here's a video where we caught quite a bit of it! (Jason was putting her PJs on before bed.) It's pretty boring in the beginning, so you may want to skip forward to 1:15.

Introducing the Bottle

We tried today to have DH feed Mads her last feeding before bed. We had used my breast milk in a Born Free bottle. She completely refused it. There were a few things working against us. 1.) She was probably TOO hungry to try this new thing. 2.) I tasted the milk which had been in the freezer for about 3 months and it tasted significantly different from my fresh milk (TMI? Am I the only one that tastes it? lol.)

So we're going to try again in the morning with milk I pumped this evening and has just been in the fridge. Here's hoping! I'm aiming for a night out on my own next week to celebrate a couple of friends' graduations!!

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Mother's Day

My 1st Mother's Day was wonderful! It's strange to think that one year ago we used this holiday to announce our pregnancy to our family members and now here we are with a beautiful almost-4-month-old celebrating my mommyhood!

Jason took care of Bunny (have I mentioned that we call her Bunny?) and cooked me breakfast in the morning. He doesn't cook much, but he can sure cook a yummy breakfast!! Then he loaded up the car with us and some beach gear and we headed to Capitola for Madison's first day at the beach! The weather was PERFECT and we had a really great time.

From Madison Kate


And this was under the umbrella!! My baby is not the biggest fan of sunlight.

From Madison Kate


From Madison Kate


From Madison Kate


From Madison Kate


From Madison Kate


While we were there, J gave me a Mother's Day gift and two cards! :) Here's my beautiful new necklace.

From Madison Kate


After some time playing on the beach we headed into downtown to grab food and ice cream, of course!

From Madison Kate


My Grandparents were in town (YAY!!!!), so we had a big family dinner at my parent's house.

Here's Maddie and her Great Grandpa!

From Madison Kate


Oops... Baby wedgie!

From Madison Kate


Fun with friends and Great Grandma!

From Madison Kate


I got some really lovely gifts and cards from my family and felt so lucky to be able to celebrate my mother AND grandmother that day. I love my mom so much and now have a more profound respect and appreciation of her now that I am a mother myself.

Happy Mother's Day to all of my amazing mommy friends!

Monday, May 04, 2009

Daddy Drama

About a week ago, Madison started this new thing where she wouldn't be soothed by the hubs if I wasn't around (no matter what he tried). She would cry so hard that she'd gag and stop breathing temporarily! I talked to friends/family and found out this is very common - especially at this age. Most of the advice we received was for J to stick with it and hold strong through her crying.

Talk about easier said than done!! Jase decided to have an afternoon of time with just the two of them and see what happened. I fed her and then handed her over. It didn't take long before she was bawling and J and I experienced our hardest moments of parenting thus far. He stayed calm, cool, and collected to try to calm her down and I nailed myself in the living room (crying) while they worked it out. I probably should have left the house, but couldn't bring myself to walk out the door. I didn't look at the clock, but this must have lasted for over an hour. She eventually calmed down and I went in to feed her.

Long story sort of shorter... Jason persisted the next couple of days by wearing her for naps and being the one to soothe her if she needed it... AND... Things are SO much better now!! She's easily soothed by him during the day and will take a nap in the Beco on his chest no problem. We had been having our biggest issue with Jase trying to put her down to sleep for the night and even that is drastically better. We're phasing me out and tonight all I did was make an appearance twice and she went to sleep like a champ with J doing everything! I'm sure this method of "sticking with it" doesn't always work, so I'm very thankful that it did work for us. I hope it continues this way, too, but we'll see.

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A couple of new "moves":

- She has been doing baby crunches lately. She really wants to sit up when you lay her down, so she keeps the top of her torso and her head lifted. She does the same thing leaning up/forward in the car seat. I think she can hold it longer than I can!

- She's feeling everything! M is all about textures right now. Her little fingers are gently feeling and stroking toys / blankets / clothes / faces / our hands / her own hand / etc non-stop. I have to admit that I love it. Her hands are so soft and I feel so connected to her when she's feeling me while I snuggle her or during a feeding.

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Okay, one last thing. I went into the office today to get some work done and have lunch with Jason. Mads was getting sleepy so her Grandma offered to wear her while I worked. How cute is this? She was out like a light.

From Madison Kate

Friday, May 01, 2009

Monterey Bay Aquarium

Jase and I absolutely adore the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We are so lucky to live so near a world-class aquarium and are completely fascinated by creatures of the sea (did I mention we're both scuba divers and I used to want to be a marine biologist?)

So, naturally, we were thrilled to take Mads to MBAQ for the first time! J had the day off of work on Wednesday and we headed down after my mom's group was finished.

Maddie was asleep when we first arrived, but as soon as she woke up she was really into it!! She looked excitedly from exhibit to exhibit and tracked the fish/animals as they moved. I think she'll be a fishy girl like her mama!

Here are a few photos from the day:

A photo-op in the new seahorse exhibit. I highly recommend checking it out! I <3 seahorses and they did a great job.

From Madison Kate


Can you see the seahorse?

From Madison Kate


Maddie sees her first shark!

From Madison Kate


The great thing about going on a Wednesday is that there was hardly anyone there. We were able to let her lay down in the lower level of the Outer Bay exhibit to watch. What do you think? She's pretty into it, right?



Daddy is showing her the ways of the fishy world.

From Madison Kate


We had to stop to look for sea otters. (There weren't any in the kelp beds that day.)

From Madison Kate


From Madison Kate


From Madison Kate


From Madison Kate