I've been looking at the computer this week each day feeling guilty about our lack of posting. Not only are we away from family and friends with a rapidly changing baby, but this is also the only "baby book" that we have. Will Nora think that we didn't pay any attention to her from weeks 5-14?
I suppose we have plenty of excuses, but I still feel bad and also overwhelmed with the idea of trying to chronicle all that has happened since we left for the lake on July 1. So, I'm going to start fresh and catch up as I can.
Nora is 3 months old now and a fantastic baby. She continues to have a nice even temperament and each day gets more and more entertaining. About 2 weeks ago, she discovered that she could blow raspberries and spit. Now she spends so much time blowing bubbles and spitting that her shirt is usually wet from her neck down to her belly button. She doesn't seem to mind and gets so much joy from it. She also discovered her feet 2 days ago. She's now working on trying to grab them (those legs have a mind of their own) and get them into her mouth.
Right before we left Portland last week, she had an evening when she rolled over about 5 times in a row. Mom was there, so I know that I wasn't making it up. However, since then she hasn't come close. It's like the idea hasn't crossed her mind again. She is getting really strong with tummy time and tolerates it way better then Erin ever did. She actually seems so strong all over- she never wants to sit these days and is much happier standing. To get her to sit on your lap, you have to bend her in half, which she actively resists. Silly baby.
She continues to coo a lot and is very smiley and we've even heard her laugh out loud a few times. Erin is very good at getting her to smile and Nora loves to watch her big sister flit around the room. What great entertainment. Generally our only issue with Erin and Nora is that Erin loves Nora TOO much and wants to always be right there in her face kissing and hugging. I suppose there are worse problems to have.
Although Nora is a very easy going baby, she is not quite the sleeper that Erin was at this age. I suppose that I can't complain too much, but Erin ruined my expectations! Nora is now up 2-3 times at night. And this week, I finally convinced her to go to bed before 9! She's now been asleep by 8:00 for the last 3 nights and getting up around 8am. Not too bad. Nora does have Erin beat in the nap department though. If we are home all day without big disturbances, Nora takes a 2-3 hour morning nap and a 1-2 hour afternoon nap and then a variable late afternoon snooze. Erin was way older before she got on any kind of nap schedule, so this is great. If I'm lucky, I get the afternoon naps for Erin and Nora all lined up and get an hour or two to myself in the afternoon which is amazing.
Nora is still a great nurser and has no trouble taking a bottle. She's quite a chunk and is working on multiple forearm rolls and a forth chin. I'm not sure if it's because she's eating more volume lately, but Nora has become a champion at covering everyone and everything in spit up. My shirts are all covered in spit up by the end of the day and I've experienced the horrid spit up down the cleavage a few too many times to count. Ugh. I'm just holding my breath that she starts to outgrow this soon. We started Erin on rice cereal at about 4.5 months mostly out of curiosity, but I think that we'll hold off for Nora. No reason to make even more of a mess.
We're still not sure who Nora looks like, but seems to be keeping her own look. I went back and looked at pictures from her first month and she looks just the same, only bigger. She is getting more hair and sometimes it looks a little reddish. Her eyes are still very blue and she may actually keep them so we'll have a blue eyed and a brown eyed girl. Where's my green eyed baby?
Erin is doing well too, just not changing as quickly. She's still full of questions and non-stop chatter during the days (and nights too). Overall she's doing well adjusting to life in Seattle, but I think that she's a little bored and eager to have more kids to play with. Since we've bounced back and forth between MN, Portland and Seattle this summer, we haven't met as many kids here as we'd like to and so it's a lot of Mommy and Erin time and man is Mommy boring. We are planning to have her in a community preschool 2 days a week and also sign her up for a few classes to keep her busy.
As I mentioned, Erin is a great big sister and her only downfall is over
exuberance over Nora. It's been hard to keep her as gentle as needed with both Nora and Duncan when they are both just so exciting! Erin seems to love her role as the big sister and a few weeks ago asked that we refer to her as "the big sis." She also loves to talk about herself as "the big girl," and will ask, "what is the big girl doing now,'" and "what is the little girl doing now?" Erin also nicknamed Nora "the squawker" when I told her that Nora was just squawking as she cried in her car seat.
Erin has more interest lately about taking care of her baby dolls. When I asked her the other day what she was going ask for from Santa this year, she told me she wanted a pump (a real one, not a pretend one Mommy!) so she could feed her babies. Today she was pretending to pump for her babies, but told me "my pumpers don't work today... maybe tomorrow."
We have an elementary school 2 blocks from our house and it has a great play structure. Erin has gotten more and more adventurous playing there almost daily. It amazes me to see her climbing around like a monkey and flip over the bars by herself. She is also working on riding a scooter and a bike with training wheels. We've got a ways to go, but she is certainly making huge progress this summer.
Our house in Seattle is working out great. It's a great central location that is close to lots of stuff. We've been walking to the library, the wading pool, the zoo, the farmers market and the grocery store. I've been getting spoiled with the great weather here this month and it's going to be hard to give it up when the summer ends soon. But, I'm hoping that we can still get our rain gear out and continue to enjoy the neighborhood when the weather turns.
Matt has been working a lot and usually is leaving the house by 6:30am, but luckily he's been able to make it home for dinner most nights and has always been able to be home to get the girls to bed. I'm still not sure how he's able to survive on minimal sleep, but he keeps ticking day after day. He's been biking to work and it's been great to incorporate his exercise into the daily routine (something I need to do ASAP). So far fellowship feels (to me) a like residency- like we're doing the same thing just in a different location.
I guess that while there are some fantastic things about Seattle, it still doesn't feel like home and it's hard to imagine it feeling like home. I miss Minneapolis and I miss Portland. The first few days here were some of my worst and it felt hopeless trying to figure out how I was going to make it another 3 years here. The hopeless feeling is gone, but it is still very lonely here. I think part of it is the shock of being home full time with the kids, but a lot of it is that we still don't know many people here and we're not hooked into the community yet. Making new friends has never been a strength and now I'm trying to do it as a (mostly) stay at home mom. Not going so well so far.
Just to add some more to the mix, I'm starting my new job soon. My official first day is September 1, but I won't actually work my first solo shift until September 11. I'm still slogging through paperwork and hoops to jump through. Turns out that being affiliated with the
UW,
CUMG, Seattle Children's, Providence and Evergreen is more than a little complicated.
I did my first orientation at Providence last Monday. I guess that it went well, but man this is going to be tough. It occurred to me how challenging this is going to be to relearn medicine, practice solo and try to be efficient while learning a whole new system. On top of that, things are done a little different out here and so I'm going to have to spend a bunch of time trying to sort out the way I've learned things vs how things are done here... like the evidence behind giving everyone 1/4 NS!
We're also trying to figure out how to make child care work. Mostly I'll be working ~4 24 hour shifts/month. We're going to have
Gramma Beth come up for most of them, but still need to work out a back up plan. Yet another thing for the "to do" list.
The back drop of this whole summer has been Papa Joe. I'm not sure that I've ever mentioned on here before, but Dad has early onset Alzheimer's. He was diagnosed 3 and a half years ago, just before his 60
th birthday and has had a very rapid decline. Just after I came up to Seattle for the first time this summer, he got sick and stopped walking and started needing even more personal care. It became obvious that he was no longer safe at home and we (Jeannette and the kids) couldn't continue the round the clock schedule that we were working through, so we needed to move him to a care home. He went in and out of the hospital a few times and is now settling into his adult care home, which is great. However, he rarely knows who I am anymore and we all know that the next crisis is coming soon... It's funny that these weeks can all be distilled down to a few sentences, but it's been a stressful, miserable and heart-wrenching time.
Ok, I've rambled on for long enough. More to come soon.
Naked water play.
Sleeping in the front pack.
Erin playing dinosaur at Gramma Beth's. She was dinosaur Bobo and Nora was dinosaur Lesper.
Erin at the wadding pool at Green Lake.
Nora trying to roll.
Naked water play.
Sleeping in the front pack.
Erin playing dinosaur at Gramma Beth's. She was dinosaur Bobo and Nora was dinosaur Lesper.
Erin at the wadding pool at Green Lake.
Nora trying to roll.
