41 posts tagged “sean”
Flora turned six months old yesterday! Watching a baby grow really lets a person see how quickly time can pass. September feels like a lifetime ago, yet the time has gone so quickly. I think Sean and I have adjusted to parenthood pretty well. We have our little routines and rituals and we all get along most of the time. I think we're a happy little family. We've been lucky that Flora has been an easy baby - no colic, naps well most of the time and gives us lots of smiles. The smiles make me think we're doing something right.
Speaking of smiles, she is starting to ham it up for the camera now, getting excited and smiling instead of just making WTF faces. I got a few great smiley pictures of her yesterday, where I normally only get one where she is in halfway between smiling and serious. It's not a toothy grin yet though - Flora doesn't have any teeth, but she is chewing, drooling and sucking on her hands all the time, so teeth are probably imminent. However, my mum tells me that I didn't have any teeth until I was over a year old, so Flora's teeth could take their time too. As long as I don't discover her tooth by receiving a bite on the boob, I'll be happy.
I'm still breastfeeding, but Flora started on cereal almost two weeks ago. She is slurping it up like a champ, and I plan to start introducing vegetables by the end of next week. I'm amazed - and proud - that breastfeeding went so well for us. She was exclusively breastfed until we started cereal. When I was pregnant, I had hoped to nurse for about six months. Now I plan to do it for as long as I am able and she is interested. I do go back to work in mid-June though, so that may put a kink in my supply. I don't want to pump at the office. I'm not embarrassed to do it, but I don't think I'll be able to take enough time to pump enough milk to make it worth my time. By that point (she'll be nine months old), she'll be eating lots of solids and if I can nurse in the morning and at night, I think we can make it work. If I have to supplement with formula during the day, that's what I'll do, but I do admit that I will be disappointed - I like her being an all-booby baby. It astounds me that I was able to provide her the nourishment and nutrition she needed to more than double her birth weight in under six months. Now, if she could only stop taking that nourishment and nutrition at 3AM, we'd be all set.
She's very observant and doesn't miss a trick. She's starting to get chatty - mostly "ba", vowel sounds and the occasional "mah, mah MAH!" when she is frustrated. She also continues to blow lots of raspberries and has varied up her technique to include raspberries that sound like either purring or farts. (My kid makes fart jokes already! Awesome!) She's not quite laughing yet, but she makes noises and smiles at laugh-inducing moments so I think she is really trying.
She's starting to stay awake when we go out in the stroller so it will be nice when I visit both my and Sean's offices. The last time I visited, she slept through the entire thing and no one saw her eyes. We're looking forward to visiting both places when it warms up a bit.
I may be a little biased, but Flora seems to be shaping up into a good kid. I think we're going to keep her.
I can hear her waking up from her morning nap so I will leave you with a video I made yesterday to commemorate her six-month half-birthday.
Written content? Who does *that* anymore. It's all about pictures of Flora now. It's just easier to show the pictures than talk about them.*
Here are some pictures from the last couple of weeks.
We've been out and about - the mall, the library and more recently, a playgroup at the community centre. Soon, we'll be trying the pool on for size. Whenever I put Flora in her snowsuit, I tend to start laughing. Not in a mean way of course, although running to get the camera probably does add insult to the injury of putting on a snowsuit. She's so puffy and marshmallow-like in it. I'm not sure if she realizes I'm laughing at her yet.
We wished Auntie Kyla a happy birthday.
We hung out with Thomas.
We took some family pictures.
We made some silly faces.
Auntie Kyla gave Flora a bath.
Flora tried on Grampy's hat and played with his duck decoy.
And...Flora sat up on her own for the first time! She lasted about 20 seconds before she tipped back over, but it's a start. Note the major WTF look on her face.
*Written content will hopefully return soon. And maybe it won't even *be* about the kid.
January has been a busy month. Here are some highlights.
We met our 8.5 month-old cousin, Aiden (my cousin's son). He is a sweet boy and looks a lot like my cousin did when she was young.
We met our new friend Thomas. Our good friends Jason and Amanda welcomed their son to the world on January 5th, four months and one day after Flora.
Flora's first Christmas went reasonably well. Sean brought Flora and I down to his mum's on the 17th to spend some pre-Christmas time with her and my parents. He had to go home on the 18th and finish his work week. The extra visiting time was great, but we were very happy to see Sean when he finally got back to his mum's on the 24th.
As usual, we split our Christmas celebration between Sean's mum's and my sister's place. Christmas Eve must have been hard on Flora because she spent most of the evening crying her little heart out. None of us could figure out what was bugging her, and it made me cry to see her in such distress. It was probably a combination of gas pains and too much stuff going on. Being passed around from person to person for comfort probably didn't help either. She finally fell asleep and we went back to Sean's mum's.
Christmas Day was much better. Her Christmas outfit from Grandma Janet was a big hit. Flora liked to chew on the fur trim and ended up getting some gravy on it when Daddy and Grampy Doug were sneaking gravy into her mouth (as sneaky as feeding her at the Christmas dinner table can get). I didn't think she should be having that gravy, but she seemed to like it, so I guess she'll like her condiments when the time comes! Grandma Faye gave her a Christmas outfit too. We didn't get it until Christmas Day, I wondered if I should be changing her outfit halfway through so that both outfits would be worn. We didn't end up doing that, but I did put the outfit on her on the 27th after we got home. Naturally, every time I tried to take a picture, she got cranky.
Despite everyone telling us that they weren't going to get Flora much for Christmas (since she's so little and won't remember it), she got spoiled with many gifts. I don't even want to list it out because it's a little embarrassing (and I don't want to unintentionally slight someone by forgetting something). Flora is lucky to have so many people who love her. Sean and I got spoiled too. My mom picked up a video camera for Sean and I, which was quite a surprise (she said she got a good deal when she went to the States on Black Friday). We're still getting the hang of it, but it's quite a neat little toy. It will be great to use to share video online of Flora doing interesting things.
We came home on Boxing Day, and after over a week away, I was glad to get home. Sean is off until January 2nd, and the three of us have just been hanging out and relaxing. It's been a great end to a very exciting year.
We smiled (a little bit) for the camera:
We saw a really big Christmas tree:
And we showed everyone how much we like to rock:
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The best costume of the night belong to a little girl who was in a beautiful dress, long blonde wig, tiara and zombie makeup. "I'm a dead princess", she told me when I complimented her costume. I told her that I was a dead beauty queen in high school. Great minds think alike.
We had about 185 kids in just under two hours (we shut the lights off around 8:30pm). It didn't feel like that many, but we had 210 pieces of candy (in three 70-count boxes), and we were careful to hand out only one piece to each kid (minus our neighbour's kids who got two each, and the kid who saw the extra piece that I dropped). We only had a few kids come without costumes. (How can their parents let them go like that?) Almost all the kids said thank you.
And now that this is over, the Christmas decorating frenzy will start...
When my sister saw them on my Flickr page (she checks it every day to see if I've posted new pictures of Flora), she told me that there was a similar picture of my dad and I. I can't remember if I've seen it (I'm sure I have), but she told me that she wanted to group the two pictures together in a frame. Obviously, she is the scrapbooker of the family. I then remembered that I saw a similar picture with Sean and his dad (his dad isn't sleeping, but the premise is right), so maybe she should group all three if we can find all the pictures.
I must have stumbled on some classic baby picture pose, if we all have a picture like this. I wonder if there is a book of classic baby picture ideas that you can apply to your baby.
This is Sean feeding Flora for the first time. This picture was taken last night. We bought a breast pump on Saturday, and I think I've mostly gotten the hang of using it. I've only spilled a couple of times and gotten breastmilk in the motor once.
Flora took the bottle without issue, which really surprised me. I've heard so many horror stories about babies refusing bottles when they are breastfed and having to try a zillion different bottle/nipple combinations to get the bottle near their little mouths.
Let's hope this lasts - I plan to pump a bunch and have a stockpile on hand in the freezer. That way, I can leave the house on my own for longer than a couple of hours once in a while. I don't envision Sean taking over the night feedings any time soon - he rarely wakes up when the baby cries at night. However, if I ask him to help out at night (which I try not to do too often), he usually does without issue. I usually ask for help with the early morning feed - he changes her and brings her to me so I can feed her in bed. It's a nice family moment since all three of us are mostly asleep until it's time for Sean to get ready for work.
These pictures are from some tomfoolery Flora and I got into today. I swear, when her eyes get all googly, I think she is half-Muppet.
Where did the time go? I can't believe it's October already. Flora is one month old today. We went to her one month doctor's appointment yesterday and she is doing very well. She is now just over nine pounds, so she gained nearly three pounds in a month. The sleepers that were too big when we came home from the hospital are fitting much better now. As Grandma Faye (my mum) says "she's perfect!"
Sean went back to work almost two weeks ago. His first day back at work was the first day I had spent alone with Flora since she was born. I was anxious about being able to handle it, but we're doing okay and sort of settled into a routine. I've managed to get dressed and fit in a few chores every day before Sean comes home so I figure we're doing okay.
Flora is starting to have wakeful times during the day now, so it is nice to see her eyes. She is constantly looking all around the room, taking everything in. I wish I knew what was so interesting about what she sees. Despite all the time she spends awake, I still seem to take most of my pictures when she is sleeping. I guess that's because it's hard to take a picture of a baby while you are holding her. I need to get after Sean to take some pictures of her with me, or at least when she's not crying. (Sean seems to catch a lot of pictures of her when she's crying for some reason.)
Speaking of crying, she's not a major crier yet. She lets us know if something is on her mind, but usually calms down once we figure it out. She has trouble getting burps out sometimes so that's something we're working on. Between the farting, the grunting and the noise of a diaper being filled, I had no idea that newborn babies were so noisy. I expected crying, but not bum noises I can hear from another room! (She is going to kill me when she is a teenager and she finds these archives on the web.)
My mom came to visit earlier this week and the three of us went on Flora's first outing that wasn't a doctor's appointment or a walk around the block. We just went to the mall to pick up a parcel for Sean and get some groceries, but it felt good to finally leave the house for more than a few minutes. The stroller steers well, and fits in the trunk (barely - we have a small car). Flora had many admirers and was very well behaved - there was some crying occasionally but she calmed herself down and went back to sleep. Breastfeeding in public was not attempted - more because she didn't need it rather than due to any embarrassment on my part.
Sean and I took Flora on her second outing after her doctor's appointment. We went to Costco, and she slept through most of that expedition. She had a few admirers there as well. One set of ladies fawned over her a couple of times throughout the store. It made me giggle and feel more than a little proud. Fortunately no one tried to touch her, considering that cold and flu season is starting. We don't start our immunizations until next month, and I don't feel ready to deal with a sick baby yet.
Here are some more pictures from the last couple of weeks.
Flora is 16 days old today. Soon we'll be counting her age in months instead of days and weeks. It seemed like September was going to take forever to come and now it's almost gone. I can't believe how much she has changed already. My mom came to visit last Sunday and she said that Flora had grown already and soon Grandma would hardly recognize her (she said this in baby talk to Flora, who just kept on sleeping).
We're getting the hang of the breastfeeding thing. We went to the breastfeeding clinic last Monday and Flora is gaining weight and latching well according to the lactation consultant, so hooray for that. She doesn't really have a sleep routine yet - some nights, she wants to stay up after feedings, other nights, she'll go right back to sleep. She is starting to be a little more awake during the day, and it's nice to see her eyes. I love watching her make faces at whatever she is looking at or thinking about. I've seen her smile, but they're small smiles so they're probably gas. I'd smile too after passing some of the eruptions that I've heard come out of her!
And on that note, here are some pictures from the last few days:
