general life, life with baby

14 Weeks vs 3 Weeks

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22 Days Old (newborn size clothing)

14 Weeks Old (up to 6 month clothing)

What a difference! Jameson didn’t want to pose all curled up for this most recent shot. Even sleepy, he doesn’t fold up anymore. Still cute, but not quite as bendable anymore, haha.

I finally got my iMac figured out. I printed some photos at Sam’s to check the colors when printed, and everything is accurate but it’s a touch dark, so I will adjust my screen a bit more and it will be perfect! Whew, that was a pain in the neck. And I still need to go and transfer all my old photos.

This past weekend was pretty uneventful. Jameson continued to have a couple rough nights and I think we have finally determined why. I think he is starting teething! On Sunday, he refused to breastfeed, which is very unusual for him. Even when he’s not hungry he usually loves to nurse; we haven’t had problems since after his tongue tie was cut around 2 weeks. He only wanted to eat from the bottle. Later that night, we tricked him into latching on with the bottle and again with the pacifier. Finally he latched on himself at the late night/early morning feeding and has been good since then. But on Sunday evening I felt around his mouth and discovered a sharp little tooth under the gums! I read that teething is the most common cause of trouble with breastfeeding. At least things are back to normal, for now.

I bought him a Sophie the Giraffe, having heard lots of good things about it. Since Jameson still doesn’t grasp (regularly, anyway) more than his burpcloth or bib or mom’s hair and shirt, the giraffe should be fairly easy for him to hold onto to suck if he wants.

My co-worker’s son likes his a lot.

Recently I’ve been comparing Jameson with her son, who was born on the same day. My friend and I found out we were pregnant the same day, had the same due date, and ended up giving birth on the same day. Her son was 15 pounds even yesterday, and Jameson is only 11-1/2 pounds! She also talks about how close he is to rolling over, grasping things, and even almost sitting up himself when set there. I can’t help but compare a bit, since Jameson isn’t quite that advanced (even though I know Jameson is well within the milestone range and milestones can happen really early and really late, particularly things like crawling and walking). I’m sure Jameson will rollover in his own good time!

He’s a cutie pie!

This week, we are visiting our friends who had their baby a little over a month ago. We wanted to visit earlier but Jameson got his cold. I am excited to see another new baby 🙂

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general life, life with baby

We Don’t Need Mittens

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Recently, I had my first incident of unsolicited advice. People say they get it all the time out shopping, and maybe it’s because I don’t shop much but I haven’t really experienced any until now. Brian and I were going through the check out at Giant Eagle and the checkout lady said something along the lines of “he should have mittens to protect that little face”. Jameson had scratched himself again, but really, I haven’t used the mittens I bought him more than once. Brian said that Jameson pulls the mittens off. Okay hun, at least you’re making it sound like our little man is a genius!

We’re still recovering from our cold. On Saturday we visited the doctor because Jameson had a cough that was getting worse. Turns out it was just continued drainage and cold symptoms, and Jameson is feeling a lot better now. He weighed 11 pounds 5 ounces! Which is actually a little smaller than I thought he’d be.

I thought Jameson was home free, but we had a troubled night’s sleep last night. (For Brian and I anyway; Jameson took it all in stride) Jameson got up every couple hours last night, not crying for food but just fussing. I think he was waking up from his congestion and needed his pacifier back in to fall asleep. Regardless, he woke up in the morning extra cheerful! Today daycare is only going to let him take two hour naps also, in case he has been getting too much sleep there. I do have to keep reminding myself how lucky we are that he only gets up once at night, but tonight I will just be grateful as long as he returns to his usual once-a-night self.

This week has gone by pretty quickly, which is great. Regarding work, I have (hopefully) some good opportunities coming up, so we’ll see how things go the next couple weeks. The worse that can happen is that nothing changes, which all things considered wouldn’t be a horrible outcome.

At Brian’s work, things are going well. We are attending the Automotive News PACE Awards Dinner in Detroit in April, which will be fun. Even more fun is that it is a black tie event and so this weekend I will be out in search of my first nice dress since prom (wedding doesn’t count, those dresses are on a whole different level). I am very excited, both to shop for a nice dress and to have an evening out with Brian without Jameson, though I am sure I’ll be worried about him as well. Brian and I haven’t been out without Jameson much at all since his birth and it’s been dinners nearby. This is quite a ways away, but I’m sure things will be fine.

Also coming soon is Jameson’s baptism! I have an array of cute outfits, depending on the weather. I can’t believe that it was so nice last weekend that we were able to go on a nice walk on St. Patrick’s Day and now it’s about 18 degrees outside (and no, Jameson has a furry car seat liner and doesn’t need any mittens). At least I don’t have to worry about him growing out of anything. He seems to be growing longer instead of thicker, so the separates in 0-3 months continue to fit him fine. He did however have is very first 3-6 month sleep ‘n play on last night! I put him in the cute navy elephant PJ’s that I loved in the newborn size. I couldn’t help but buy it again. This weekend, I will take a photo of him in it so we can see how much he’s grown.

Speaking of photos: I have been having problems. We purchased a Mac computer for the first time (we were previously PC people). My photos looks very different on the Mac. The problem is that when edited on the Mac and looked at on the PC, they actually look bad. When edited on the PC, I already know they print fine and look great. I am not sure how to resolve this, since I already did the basic calibration on the Mac. I think I will do some experimentation this weekend. Hopefully I’ll post more photos soon if I can figure it out! I have some cute 3 month photos to share.

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diy, general life, life with baby

Last Day as a SAHM

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The acronym means Stay At Home Mom. Today is my last day of relative freedom (relative because of course there’s a little baby who needs me all the time :)) Today we are dropping Jameson off at daycare in the afternoon while Brian and I go up to Cleveland for lunch at Melt for a super unhealthy but tasty extravagant grilled cheese sandwhich. I’m pumped! Then after I will get my hair done and a manicure. So after they cut my hair they’ll straighten it, which will make getting ready for work pretty easy for a couple days til I wash it again.

Jameson had his first day of daycare yesterday, for a half day in the morning. We took some pictures of course, cause it was like the first day of school lol! Brian was all dressed up for work (he didn’t take off work yesterday, so it was a real trial run) and Jameson was spiffy in his favorite outfit, jeans and rock ‘n roll t-shirt. I’ll post the pics soon. It was a lot of work getting him ready, but some of that was because of me. I will have to get up a little earlier to make it in time for work. Also I was trying to get my pump ready to go, since I intended to pump in the car since I would be out all day til I picked up Jameson. I didn’t end up pumping, but getting all that ready was a pain.

The ladies at daycare said that he did great, that he a very easy going baby (which of course I already knew). I told them he does tend to get fussy in the afternoon, so we’ll see how he does today since he’s going to spend the afternoon there. He ate all his bottles and enjoyed watching all the activity. I know, because when I stopped in at 11, he barely noticed me, he was so intent on watching everything since it was all new. I think that’s the most activity he’s ever been around, and I think he’ll probably really enjoy it. There’s one other small baby there, and maybe one other that’s not too far off from his age. The other really small baby is 3 and a half months old but she only weighs 8 pounds! The ladies told me the the doctor has told her mother to add formula to her milk because she’s not gaining enough weight (they call that “failure to thrive”). And I thought Jameson was small for his age!

While Jameson was at daycare, I went shopping. I found the most ADORABLE outfit ever from Target. It’s a onesie, a jacket and pants all covered in elephants! The onesie says “mommy’s peanut” on it. I lovvve elephant outfits. I almost bought this outfit too, but I couldn’t spend all that money on him. I thought it would make a cute Easter outfit, but I think I have some other clothes that will fit. We still have almost two months before Easter and who knows what size he’ll actually be in! He’s still in 0-3 most of the time, but the sleep ‘n plays are starting to get too short on him, so we may have to move those up sooner rather than later.

I then went to Hobby Lobby where I found the coolest frames ever! For Christmas this past year, I made Brian a perpetual calendar with no days of the week. Anyway, I used a flip photo thing from Kohls as the base, but these are even better since they’ll hang. I bought all they had, which was just two, so maybe I’ll make one for myself too. I also bought a few frames to put on my desk at work. Then I went to the dentist, which was fine (still no cavities, yay!) but I found out I have the “remnants” of pregnancy gingivitis. Ew. So to clear it all up I need to be extra diligent about brushing and flossing.

I stopped to see Jameson then who pretty much ignored me and then went over to get a free shirt from Ann Taylor Loft. They sent me a “we miss you” coupon for free $20 with a $20 minimum purchase. So I bought a $20 shirt, which was free. Score! Then I stopped by Little Tikes with Jameson to show him off to friends and co-workers. They all think he looks like Brian 🙂 It was a very good day.

In other Jameson news, he hasn’t poo’d since Friday late afternoon/evening. He’s usually an every other day kind of guy, so I was getting concerned, but now I’ve read up on the inter web that sometimes they can go up to week without going. He’s very unlikely to be constipated since he’s exclusively breastfed. Thought last night we thought for sure he was going to go since he was fussing a bit, turns out he was just overtired!! I think maybe we’ll have to move up his bed time. Now that he’s getting used to this schedule of getting up earlier, he’s usually fussing by 8 o’clock. As much as I love him up til 9, it’s not a happy time for him if we’re forcing him to be up and he’s tired. So 8 may become the new bedtime. I’m going to wait til after DST starts though and see how he does, since for a little while 9 o’clock may feel like 8 to him. He’s still doing really well at only getting up once, and I’ve eliminated the extra feedings in the evening and he’s still sleeping well. He always gets a feeding right before bed, but no forcing extras in between. I think this is probably as good as it’ll get until he’s either on formula or starting solids.

The plan is right now to start weaning him to formula (which, knowing him, the easy going and easy bottle feeding baby that he is, he won’t even notice), sometime in his 6th month. Brian is going to San Diego for a conference around our anniversary, so there’s talk of me going for a couple days too, and it would be great to be done breastfeeding by then. I already feel guilty about, lol. It may be a little rough, we’ll see how things go. Plus I do really like losing the weight so easy! I broke into the 130’s for the first time in a couple years earlier this week. Another week or so and I should be a solid 139, which would feel really great.

Picture time! Last week I took some fun photos of Jameson and Sasha. She is really good with him. We spent some time on the floor on Sunday together, me in between Sasha and Jameson. I think she would lick him all over like a newborn puppy if we let her, haha. We’re still super careful since she doesn’t know her own strength, even around us, but she’s doing really good. I posted one of the photos up on “Baby’s First Year” a website part of Babble.com as part of their babies best friends contest. Voting starts on March 16th, so I’ll be posting a link to vote then!

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general life, life with baby

Visit from Grandma!

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Last week Brian was away for work in Mexico City, so Grandma came up for a visit! Which was a good thing, since Jameson was extra grumpy last week. We spent most of the week speculating as to why he was so cranky but of course no one can ask a baby so we’ll never know. We figured it was a) gas; b) his cold that still lingers; c) lack of sleep from said cold; d) uncomfortable bassinet being elevated; e) need to poo… haha

In any case, Grandma didn’t get to experience a super happy Jameson, though we did have some better days than others. Jameson talked to her about life, I think we learned a lot haha.

She left Thursday afternoon after Jameson’s 7 week photo shoot and sure enough, Friday he was a very happy baby! His photo shoot this week was in a dresser drawer, idea courtesy of Brian’s dad again. I’m waiting for him to tell me what this week’s idea should be! Jameson is getting big, there’s only so long that I will be able to put him in cute little places!

Grandma brought up some pictures of me as a baby, and we came to the conclusion that Jameson doesn’t look anything like me! Though I suppose that could change as he gets older. I was a pretty fat baby! I am waiting from Jameson to balloon out too. She also brought up a video of me from 4-1/2 months old to about 4 years. It was interesting and funny! At 4-1/2 months I knew my name and was rolling over. It’s hard to imagine right now. Jameson is not yet 2 months and he certainly doesn’t know his name yet. He is finally enjoying the activity mat a lot more, though he still doesn’t like tummy time on it. At this very moment I am letting him nap on his stomach on the mat with me watching so he can get more used to being on his belly.

We had a nice dinner with Brian’s parents and sister on Tuesday night which was great. We didn’t really have to make dinner at all during the week! It was great to have company all day long, especially since I wouldn’t have gone out during the early part of the week because of the ice storm. Poor Sasha had a lot of trouble making her way through the snow to go to the bathroom! We’ve had snow on the ground for a long time now, all I can hope is that it will be gone before I have to go back to work.

On Friday Jameson and I visited work. I was out the longest I’ve ever been with him. I even prepared and fed him a bottle, the first time I had done so. I was worried he wouldn’t take it, but he didn’t seem to care! We went to Parasson’s, which is great because it’s family friendly and usually not busy (good for me, probably not so great for them haha). I went to lunch with two friends from work, and then headed back to the office to show him off! Since he had just had a bottle he was very content and slept the whole time. I had heard that the week prior, my other co-worker (who had her baby the same day as Jameson) brought Carson in and he was a little fussy, and with Jameson being cranky all week I wanted a nice easy going baby so made sure to feed him. It was great, everyone loved him! I was out on Friday for about 4 hours with a perfect angel, it was so nice.

Friday night, Brian’s parents came over and ordered pizza, so it was nice to have company again for almost all the nights that Brian was gone. He had a pretty awful day of traveling on Friday, with a canceled flight and then a delayed flight to a different airport. He finally got in around 2 am, which was actually good timing because Jameson had just finished eating and we were both up! We had a nice family greeting before crashing back to sleep. We spent this weekend lounging around and watching Spartacus: Blood and Sand on Netflix, which we’re enjoying a lot.

Brian said he didn’t notice much of a difference in Jameson except maybe that he smiles a lot more consistently now. Which is true; I can capture a lot more smiles on camera now! I think, especially after watching the video’s my mom brought up, that I was to get some video of Jameson this week.

So the other big things that happened this week is that I finally packed away his newborn 5-8 lb clothes which he hasn’t been wearing for about two weeks now, so it was overdue. It was a little sad… there was some outfits I really loved and they seemed so small 🙁 Also we are putting him in regular 1’s instead of newborn diapers now because they can capture all of his poo explosions since he still only goes once every other day. And we are also putting him in his crib! Saturday night, 2/5-2/6 was his very first night and he did okay. He is still recovering from a cold so the sleeping schedule was still smaller chunks of eating every 3 hours, sleeping about 2 hours at a time. Last night though he slept a nice 4 hours straight, which was fantastic! I actually do miss him in our room though, he seems so far away. He made some weird squeaks last night over the monitor that I had to go check on him. Which is totally normal things he was doing before I’m sure, but I can’t just peer over the side of his bassinet anymore. While Jameson seems to be getting so big, he has a friend now not too much younger than him!

JP and Lisa had their baby on 2/3, it was a baby boy who they named Jonathan Valentine (Valentine being a family name). He was born premature a little bit at 36 weeks, so after some help regulating breathing and feeding, he’ll be able to go home later this week sometime. Lisa had what sounds like a pretty hard labor (and I thought mine was bad, but that’s just because it went on for so long). She had to go off the epidural because it was slowing labor, which I can’t even imagine. She is much tougher than I would’ve been I’m sure! But happily she was able to deliver and is doing good, though I am sure they are shaken up by the traumatizing birth with baby being whisked away to help him. I am so excited to see them, because Jameson has a new friend and also because I am dying to see how big he looks compared to their little one, who was born 5 lb 9 oz!! Not too long ago Jameson was wee little like that, and I am curious as to how much he has really grown. Oh, and I am super pumped to buy a couple newborn outfits.

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Jameson turns 3 weeks old

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This week was Brian’s first week back and my first one alone most of the time with Jameson. We have a good routine going, though it is a little lonely. Next week I will take him with me alone on an errand or two, which should be fun. I wasn’t quite ready for that this week! We have sent Brian pictures every day of our activities (mostly of Jameson sleeping haha). I’m sure Brian misses us, but he keeps busy at work which makes the days go by faster for him. He was awesome enough to cook for us this week, but I think next week I will try my hand at a meal or two. I don’t usually do the cooking, though I have on occasion in the past, it only makes sense if I am home. Though I find myself exhausted much of the time just by sitting nursing and picking up dropped pacifiers.

I do manage to find some time to take and edit photos, though it’s a bit of a struggle! I dressed him in his cute cable knit sweater for his 3 week photo shoot– he was pretty good up til the end when he needed a pacifier. Later on that day he had an explosive poo! Luckily I was already in the process of taking off the nice outfit to change him when it happened! It seems to have ruined the onesies under it though, poo went all up his back! Jameson didn’t mind at all until I started wiping him down haha.

The time definitely feels like it’s flying. Next week, I will have been off work for a month… only 2 more months until I have to return. I don’t want to begin the countdown, but this week I felt like I was starting to. For starters, I began pumping this week every morning to start freezing mommy milk. The pumping is going fine, I feel like it’s gotten easier over the past couple days, though I am sure it will be more difficult once baby is not around and I am pumping at work. I also called the childcare, to let them know when Jameson would be starting. I will transition him into daycare the week of March 7. It does not seem so far away already.. though a part of me will be glad to see people again.

One of my co-workers who I have known since starting has left the company. I am sad to see her go, and it will be weird going back and not having her around! I was a little disappointed that I missed out on her going away get-together, but we will have to make time to see her before I return to work.

Jameson had his very first bottle this week. I had prepared us for having difficulties, based on the book I’ve been reading called Baby Bites. It has all sorts of tricks for getting baby to take a bottle, but we didn’t need any of them, Jameson liked dad giving him milk from the bottle just as much as he likes mom. I may have gotten a little jealous!

Jameson is usually only getting up once a night now, sleeping for 4-5 hour stretches, which is great for me! Brian was kind enough to let me sleep through the night last night and gave Jameson a bottle. He’s pretty good at going right back to sleep at night too, which is great, though nursing takes a long time when he’s sleepy. I’m starting to think he just likes to “comfort nurse” some when he’s already done too, though I only mind that when I am ready to climb back in bed!

Tomorrow we will be bringing a bottle with us to a nursing home, it will be nice and convenient to not be constrained by his feeding times while we’re in Pennsylvania visiting his great-grandfather. We will have 4 generations of Thomas’s in the room for Brian’s grandfather’s birthday!

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