First Father’s Day as a Dad

Just one short week ago I experienced my first father’s day as a Dad.  It was a wonderful day.  It started off with Alyssa cooking me a wonderful breakfast of Huevos Rancheros.  This is my favorite breakfast and I am always disappointed when I order it because it was never as good as the first one I had.  But the dish Alyssa made was even better.

As you can see Julia tried to help me eat it but just couldn’t quite figure out how to use the fork.

Alyssa also gave me a wonderful gift of 5 framed pictures of the three of us.  We plan to hang it right in that spot behind me.  It was a truly wonderful gift and while I didn’t quite cry I may have had a tear or two in my eye.  :)

After breakfast, Julia, Alyssa and I headed to the National Aquarium and US Botanical Gardens in Washington DC.  It was a beautiful day and the three of us had a wonderful time walking around.  Julia tried to escape into the plants at the Gardens but thankfully her legs aren’t long enough to get too far away.

Finally, on the way home we had to end the day with a mint chocolate chip milkshake from Baskin Robbins.  It was a wonderful first Father’s Day and I look forward to many more.

A New Ride

So as June 17th rapidly approached and the lease on my Lexus came to an end I needed to find a new car.  I was pretty sure I wanted a larger car and the Subaru Forester was the front runner.  But the more I looked at it the less I like it.  So I had to go back to the drawing board.  I started with who was having a good sale and it turns out Nissan was.  So one day after work I headed over there to drive the Altima.  Oh and also the Quest just to see what it drove like.  So Paul, the sales guy, and I headed out on a test drive of the Altima.  It was alright but nothing that blew me away.   We then drove the Quest, it was better than I expected and had a lot more room.  We even drove it to the house to show it to Alyssa.  As I pondered my decision Paul showed me a brand new dark red Altima that had just arrived.  It had every feature I could want it in a car.  So that made my decision much tougher.  After much debate though and a night where I took home the van to sleep on it.  I took another step in my journey as a parent and bought the Quest.  It was a great choice, the first weekend after I bought it Alyssa, Julia, and I packed it up and headed to Charlottesville.  I was amazing how much I could get packed into it and how comfortable it was to drive.

So now I truly feel like a parent driving around in a minivan.

And I know Julia and Alyssa will love it when we drive up to RI over the summer.

Freedom!!!

As many of you know Julia has been swaddled when she sleeps basically since Day 1.  She had a very strong startle reflex that caused her to flail her arms and basically slap herself awake whenever she tried to sleep.  So we swaddled.  At first we swaddled tightly with a regular muslin blanket and I have to say that Andrew was much better at this than I was.  I would cringe as he cinched the blankets around her but inevitably she would stop crying and calmly (relatively speaking) go to sleep.  Then as Julia became more active and stronger we had to up the ante in order to keep her swaddled.  Who knew what a market exists for different swaddle blankets promising to keep your little one wrapped tight?!?

We began using a SwaddleMe blanket which uses velcro to keep the flaps secure and tight.  Then, as Julia learned to wiggle her hands out of that, we used the SwaddleMe and a regular muslin swaddle blanket on top of it.  We drew the line at using a blanket that is basically a straight jacket for babies; especially since the one time we did use it, we picked up Julia to discover that her attempts to escape had ended in her arms at very strange angles that would have caused permanent damage if babies weren’t made of elastic. 

Well, our swaddling essentially ended last Friday night when Julia expertly escaped every attempt we made to keep her wrapped.  We would wrap her and within 30 seconds there would be a hand peeking out the top of the blanket, her little fingers making a beeline for her mouth and her eyes looking at us with an expression that clearly said, “I win.”  We tried again on Saturday and Sunday to get her swaddled believing that there was no way she would be able to sleep soundly without it.  Especially as we had both done a lot of reading of others’ horrifying experiences of trying to unswaddle their babies and ending up with many, many sleepless nights until success was achieved. 

But on Monday we decided to bite the bullet and attempt “free sleep” that night.  We reasoned that we were just putting off the inevitable and at least, if we had a week of not sleeping, we are going to Charlottesville to visit Andrew’s parents this weekend and could at least get a few hours of napping in while Julia visits with her grandparents.  So we began.  Monday morning the nap was a complete failure.  I tried for 2 hours to get her to sleep and it resulted in a total of five minutes of nap time.  Monday afternoon I had more success, it took a half hour to get her to sleep but she slept with all her limbs free for 45 minutes (a long nap for her!).  Then came Monday night; the initial getting to sleep process took about an hour and a half and then…. silence.  She slept.  We heard her wake up a couple of times and were on eggshells waiting for the crying to start.  Instead we heard slurping – she found those fingers!  She nursed at midnight, had a brief period of wakefulness at 2am when she was flailing around and couldn’t get her fingers into her mouth and needed to be soothed and then slept again until 5:30.  Last night was similar, two nursing session and a little bit of settling required but that’s not different, and in the case of many nights, better than her previous sleeping. 

So we are cautiously calling this a success!  And all the grandparents should be delighted that all of Julia’s fingers and toes will be on open display for all sleeping periods going forward!

Our active child

Julia has had a busy week.  The biggest news is that she rolled from her tummy to her back for the first time this weekend!  It was very exciting for all of us.  She hasn’t been practicing that too much though because she is too excited about standing up. She has been doing this for the last week or so.  Before that when you took her hands when she was laying down she would pull herself to sitting but about a week ago she discovered that if she straightened her legs she could stand instead.  Like this:

So now that is all she wants to do!  Including at bath time.  This along with her fascination with looking at herself in the mirror has made things a little more complicated for her Dad (the official bather).  But they both seem to have a lot of fun during this part of their nightly routine.

On Friday, since she was enjoying standing so much (and because my arms got a little tired), I decided to put together her exersaucer for her to play in.  That was a big hit!

It is really amazing how Julia has developed in the past couple of weeks.  She was already very interested in the world around her but now she is starting to interact with it and it’s incredibly fun to watch!

First Mother’s Day and our RI Adventure

It has been a very exciting week for us.  Julia had her first plane ride, her first visit to Rhode Island, met lots more family (including her grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncle, and cousin), saw the ocean for the first time, and is in the full swing of teething!  I celebrated my first Mother’s Day and was thrilled to be able to spend it with my own stepmom and mom as well as my daughter.

Andrew’s gift to me for Mother’s Day was a book he made chronicling my journey to becoming a mom.  It was incredibly thoughtful and he accomplished his goal of making me cry.  I think it took me a good five minutes before I could even read the first page!

Our trip to Rhode Island was wonderful.  It was very nice to see family and have additional sets of hands to help with Julia! She loved spending time with everyone and taking in all the new sights and sounds.  She is incredibly alert and aware and really did not want to close her eyes the entire time we were there.  She especially liked watching her cousin Alex.  I’m sure she’s eagerly anticipating the day she can run around and explore to her heart’s desire.  Given her spirited attempts to roll over and sit up and her penchant to always be on the move I’d say that day is not too far away!

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the week.

Four generations with the middle name “amy”

 

The twins and the “birthday twin” cousins

Hanging out with Auntie Kate

Playing with cousin Alex

 

The adorable Alex and her “beautiful flowers”

 

Eating lunch at the beach with Gramma Les

Saying goodbye to Grandma Laurie at the airport

Julia’s Favorites and Yoga, again

So if Julia could talk I think she would tell me that she’s really trying to appreciate yoga but that it doesn’t quite suit her style right now.  She’s not really one for relaxing and meditating… or for staying in one spot for more than about 5 seconds if she’s awake (and sometimes when she’s asleep as well)!  However, she was incredibly good during class today and I was able to do most of the poses.  It was great as I got quite a workout since I was holding her the entire time.  She makes a very cute free weight! :)

But as good as she was I think there are a variety of activities that she enjoys much more.  Such as:

Bathtime:

Practicing rolling over:

Practicing crawling:

Making faces at Mom:

Just being silly:

Playing with the baby in the mirror:

and the best, sleeping with a full tummy!

The First Daddy-Daughter Day

Yesterday was my first daddy-daughter day with Julia.  What is daddy-daughter day?  Well as you might expect it is a day that Julia and I get to spend together without Alyssa (aka Mom).

So I have to admit that I was a little nervous about my first daddy-daughter day.  Why you ask?  Well mainly it was the feedings, so far Julia has not been happy taking a bottle.  There tends to be a lot of crying and screaming, some of it even from Julia.  I was also a little nervous because she and I haven’t spent that much time alone together.

Alyssa headed out for her day around 9:30 officially starting daddy-daughter day.  When Alyssa left Julia was taking her morning nap.  Julia slept as peacefully as she ever does until about 10:30am.  Then the moment of truth, would she take a bottle?  I had it already to go and to my great surprise she gulped it right down!  There was very little fussing and no crying.  After that we played for a while doing some tummy time and other games on her blanket.  Then it was off on our adventure.

First we went to target to pick up a fan for her room.  She picked out a small black fan that would really help make her room more comfortable.  Once we had that we headed out to lunch.  She decided that she really wanted a good Rueben.  So we headed to Pat Troy's in Old Town.  It was such a nice day we sat outside and enjoyed our sandwich.

From there we headed down to water to find a quite spot for Julia’s mid-afternoon snack.  We found a great little spot right by the water where we could watch the boats pass.  We stayed there for quite a while and even got to see one boat tow in another boat that had run out of gas.  All in all it was a very exciting day.  By this point it was starting to get late around 3pm so we decided it was time to head home.

At home Julia decided she was ready for her big meal of the day and ate about 4.5 oz of milk from the bottle!  This was on top of the 1.5 oz she ate an hour before watching the boats.  I had no idea she ate so much.  Once she finished this we played a little more followed by a short nap until Mom came home around 5pm.

All in all it was a very fun day so much so that we have decided to do it at least once a month.  It was very rewarding for Julia and I.  Oh and Alyssa and fun out doing her own thing for the day too.