one day shy of three months old!

Well it's been a while, and let me tell you why.  Right now I am typing standing up with Ginny wrapped on my chest rocking back and forth to keep her asleep, I've mostly finished my school work and the laundry is still in the dryer.  It's a busy household right now!  We're in the midst of packing, slowly but surely, and in just three short weeks we will officially be Californians.  But enough of my chatter, let's get to the good stuff.  Ginny is almost three months old now, and growing like a weed.  She's in the 80% percentile for height and is practically out of her 3-6 month clothes already!  It's hard for us to tell, but once in a while, like when we put on a hat that is too small but was falling down over her eyes just a few weeks ago, it really sinks in how big she's getting.  So here are some pictures of Ginny, cause I know that's what everyone wants to see :-)  No time to caption them right now, but I'll try to come back to it later tonight.  For now, just think of this as the many faces of Ginny-Bean:

In case anyone was wondering if we survived the Chicago Blizzard 2011, here are some pictures from our windows... 

 This was taken three days later, it took them almost five days to plow our street!

Here's the lake shore about a week and a half after the blizzard ( the infamous Lake Shore Drive is to the left of this path).  Pretty much all the snow is gone!

To part here's some pics of Isis, who doesn't understand that she's not the baby :-)



7 weeks video!!

Ginny-Bean is getting so good at smiling!  Here is a video for your enjoyment, please ignore my babbling but Ginny seems to love it.

I had my postpartum check-up and unfortunately I'm not quite healed yet.  I'm on some meds and doing physical therapy to correct the problems, so hopefully will be back to "normal" soon.

On a much happier note, Ginny "slept through the night" last night!!  I use quotations because the medical definition of sleeping through the night is only 5 hours, which is what she did.  However, she didn't actually fall asleep until 1am.  No rest for the wicked!

6 Weeks Old

Wow, I can't believe she's six weeks today.  Time seems to be going pretty darn fast, so fast in fact that I'm back to school, my maternity leave is a week away from being over and Henry is heading back to work too.  We had an awesome six weeks to get settled and get to know our new little girl.  Right now she's sleeping (finally!) with her dad while I attempt to get some work done.  So this will have to be a quick post.  Here's the rundown of Ginny's first six weeks, with pictures of course!

Ginny's hospital footprints.  She has monster feet -- not surprising since her Mom and Dad also have monster feet.  She never had a prayer of fitting into size sevens.

Our first few days home from the hospital.  Actually this was taken the day of Ginny's first pediatrician appointment.  My mom was staying with us for a week to help out.  Even just an extra set of hands to hold her while we acclimated to being home was fantastic.  At her first pediatrician's appointment she was down 10% of her body weight which had the doctor worried.  We had to come back two days later for a weight check and were told if she kept losing weight we would have to supplement with formula.  Up until this point I had been exclusively breastfeeding and was determined to keep at it.  It definitely wasn't easy in the early days, quite a learning process for something that supposed to be so natural.  But finally there was success!  At the weight check she had gained 5 ounces!  By her two week check-up she was back to her birth weight.  By her one month she weighed 9 pounds 3 ounces.  Obviously we're both doing great with feeding!

Our beautiful baby!  We love these socks, a present from my Uncle Rob and Aunt Terri.  They are so soft and they actually stay on!  For the first few weeks -- much to everyone's shock -- we didn't dress her at all but kept her skin to skin with a blanket.  This just made it easier on everyone since she spent most of her time eating and pooping.  Those of you who know may be asking why she is wearing a disposable diaper in this picture.  Yes we are still cloth diapering but for now we do use the disposables at night (when most of her leaks and blowouts occur) and obviously when all the cloth diapers are in the laundry.  For those of you considering cloth diapers, we think they're awesome.  Super soft, no diaper rash, seriously easier to get on, and if you don't mind doing a load of laundry every few days, massively easy to manage.  Right now we're doing a little more laundry than we planned because she's still a little small for the adjustable one-size diapers so we're having to use specialty newborn ones.  I'll take a picture of her in them because aside from being green and better for Ginny, they are also ridiculously cute :-)

Christmas Eve!  We went out and looked at the lights around Chicago.  One of our first outings.  This outfit is so adorable, but the ball on the end of the hat looks a lot like our cats' wool ball toys and so it kept mysteriously disappearing and ending up in a cat bed...

Christmas morning.  I love my little family.

Ginny's now starting to make faces at us!  We have yet to catch a smile on camera but have resolved to try and take a video next time she has a smiling episode.  It's awesome to have her interacting more.  Makes getting no sleep just a tiny bit easier to deal with.  A tiny bit.

Go Huskies!!!!  Of course Henry is already scouting some all girl colleges for her.  But until then there's no question about who she's rooting for!

This was taken at the pediatricians.  We had to take her in unexpectedly because what we originally though was a growth spurt turned out to be infant reflux.  Poor Ginny was absolutely miserable - fussy, not sleeping, nursing round the clock, spitting up, and screaming and coughing whenever we put her down.  Truly we were all miserable.  I'm currently cutting out dairy to see if that helps her, a real feat for me as I'm a huge cheese and dairy fiend.  But I will do anything to help her tummy.  The doctor put her on some reflux medication and she's doing so much better.  However, now that she's finally feeling good it looks like she actually is going through her six week growth spurt...right now.  Fun stuff for Mom and Dad! 

We haven't forgotten about our originally babies though!  The cats are doing really well with the new attention hog.  Better than expected.  Dante generally waits for Ginny to vacate Henry's lap before leaping to occupy it, but he's back to sleeping on my feet even when I'm nursing so we figure he's acclimated pretty well.  Isis has become Ginny's protector cat.  The few times she's been crying in another room, Isis checks her out then runs to find me, sitting and staring at me until I go to Ginny, at which point she follows me just to make sure everything's okay.  Isis also has no problem climbing into a lap that is still being occupied by Ginny.  She's also fascinated by Ginny's toys, sitting in Ginny's Bumbo and attempting to sleep in her swing.  Clearly from this picture she figures if she can fit herself into the Ergo, perhaps she'll be carried around the house all day too.

I'd better get back to work, I've managed to pawn Ginny off on Henry in between feedings all afternoon while they watch the playoffs.  But now we're in the fourth quarter and I've got no work done.  Oh well, I've found that new babies are just as good an excuse as pregnancy for not working ;-)  Plus Ginny's just peed through her third outfit of the day...time to go!