Sleep

:::knocks on wood:::

Just thought I should get that out of the way early so I don't jinx anything by writing what I'm about to write. LOL!

Avi is a really good night-time sleeper. Her first two weeks she slept in 3-4hr chunks at night, rarely she would wake up after only 2 hrs from her last feeding. At about 2 weeks old it increased to 4-6hr stretches. And since she was 3 weeks old she's been sleeping 7-8hrs in a row at night, wakes up for a quick feeding, and then sleeps another 3hrs! We're starting to get a little routine down now, too. She typically cluster feeds in the evening, and then we give her a bath around 9pm, lotion, jammies and feed her again and then she's out by 10 or 10:30 until 5 or 6am!! I know this isn't typical for newborns, so I consider us very lucky! I also know she could mix it up on us at any point, so it might not last...

She's been kinda cranky the past few nights starting around 6pm, so tonight I decided to try putting her to bed earlier. I fed her at 7pm, bath at 7:30 followed by lotion and jammies and then fed her again and she zonked out and was in her swing by 8pm (she's been a swing sleeper since we brought her home...it's working for now so we're not messing with it for a couple more weeks!). I'm thinking she may have just been over-tired the past few nights (thus the fussy evenings) and needs the extra few hours of sleep, but I guess we'll see how tonight goes! She hasn't been sleeping/napping well during the day unless I'm out running errands. Driving puts her to sleep. :-)

All in all, we've been very lucky with her sleep patterns, and I've been getting about 8hrs a night...I sleep about 6hrs during her first stretch and then another couple hours when she goes back to sleep. And I haven't needed any naps during the day. I don't know what I'm going to do when I go back to work, though! I'll probably just be a zombie, lol! December 13th just needs to stay FAR far away...

Speaking of sleep, it's almost 9:30pm so I'd better go to bed in case she decides to wake up early because I put her to bed early.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Chunky Monkey!

At Mommy's group today (that's what I'm gonna call the breastfeeding support group from now on...) I weighed Monkey and she was 11 pounds exactly! That means she's gained 20 ounces in the past 14 days...holy cow! She's going to be at least 12 pounds by her 2 month appt...probably closer to 13 (her appt is on Nov. 17th). She has officially outgrown her newborn clothes, except for one outfit which is particularly large, lol. And most of the 0-3 month stuff fits perfectly now, although some is still huge on her. It's amazing how much clothing size differs based on brand. Newborn clothes typically fit through 8.5 pounds, but she was able to wear hers two pounds past that. And some stuff that's supposed to fit from 8 to 12 pounds is still HUGE on her, and she's 11 pounds! Weird. I am very happy we got 5 weeks worth of wear out of her newborn clothes, though! That's one thing I'll do differently next time is have a few more newborn outfits, because at the very beginning the 0-3 stuff was WAY too big and we didn't have much newborn stuff because we thought she was going to be too big! And technically, based on the tags, she WAS too big...but whatever! I have to say, the First Moments brand from Kohls is one of the biggest...also Circo brand from Target. Both run HUGE. Carters is pretty much right on, and Gerber runs about a whole size smaller than the tag claims. Ha, there's my 5 weeks worth of baby clothes experience, lol!

Okay, I'm seriously rambling. Sorry for being a bore! HAHA! :-P

Weight Chart for my own memory (haha!):

Birth 9/16: 8-14
Night of 9/17: 8-5
1st appt 9/20: 8-7
2wk appt 9/30: 9-0
Mom group 10/8: 9-12
Mom group 10/22: 11-0

Sorry, no pictures this time!

One Month Old!

Geez time sure is flying. How come it seemed sooooo sloooooow while I was pregnant, but now it's just zooming by in a blur?? So not inducive to savoring the tiny-baby stage!!

Anyway, here is our little Avi girl on 10/15/10...yes I know it's one day early, but I was in Colorado (another blog post...) and knew I wouldn't get a good opportunity on the 16th because we'd be in the car driving all day.

10/15/10

Her eyes look really blue in this picture. They were a REALLY deep/dark blue when she was born, and have been lightening up over the past month. They're still a medium-darkish blue, and oh so pretty!! Of course we're wondering if they'll stay blue...time will tell (and I'm okay with that time slowing down a bit!!!)! Daddy's eyes are brown (there is blue in his family though...), so who knows!

Oh, and on her REAL one-month birthday she started giving me the biggest purposeful smiles!! I was so excited!! She still isn't smiling a ton or consistantly, but a couple times a day she'll just give us the biggest grin! Melts my heart! Hopefully I'll catch one of her purposeful smiles on camera one of these days, but here are a few random smiles I did catch from her first month...

9/21--5 days old

9/27--Dream Smiles :-)
10/4--This one may have been intentional!
10/6--Half smirk/smile, too cute!!

Happy one month Baby Girl!! We love you SO much!

Tummy Time

I started doing tummy time with Avi when she was about three weeks old. I don't know why I waited, one day it just occurred to me that I should throw a blanket on the floor and play with her instead of holding her constantly, hehe. Plus, the first 2-3 weeks of life pretty much entailed sleep, wake up for diaper change, eat, spit up and eat some more (lol), back to sleep, repeat. I started to notice longer alert and awake periods at about 3 weeks. So anyway, I pulled out a blanket and onto her tummy she went. I started snapping pictures, and this is what happened...

"Oh look! Fuzz!"

"I wonder what it tastes like?"

:::nom nom nom:::

"Ewww."

So tummy time lasted all of about five minutes before I had to rescue the apparently starving baby and feed her. :-P Here's another picture of her later that morning:

10/6/10--20 days old

Remember how I said she sleeps, eats, spits up and eats some more? Yeah, I wasn't kidding...she's quite the spitter!! Thus the clothing change. Sometimes several times a day...good thing we have lots of outfits!! But we did get smart and started putting bibs on her most of the time. And we always have a burp cloth (or two or ten) nearby. She rarely burps for us, but she sure does spit!! She's gaining weight really well despite the spitting issue, though. At her two-week check up on Sept 30th she weighed exactly 9 pounds...although I don't know how accurate it was because it wasn't a digital scale, it was one of those kinds where you have to slide the little piece until the bar levels out...and then on Oct 8th at our Breastfeeding Support Group she was 9-12!! That was almost two weeks ago (already!) and I will be weighing her again on the 22nd. I have a feeling she's over 11 pounds now...we shall see!

Her Name

The most common response we get when we tell people our daughter's name is "where did you find that?" No, we did not make it up. Yes, it is a real name. :-) And I found it online doing random searches for baby names. I don't even remember what specifically I was googling at the time, but I came upon this article and was skimming the names and meanings. When I saw the Irish name Aibhlinn meant "longed for child", I immediately did some more research as I had NO idea how to pronounce it, nor did I like the spelling...but the meaning had instantly attracted me. I discovered that it is pronounced "Ave-leen" or "Av-el-een". I also found many ways to spell it, some starting with 'E' and others with 'A', and some of the endings including 'leen', 'line', or 'lyn'. Our favorite "American" spelling of this name was Aveline.

At first I almost didn't even mention the name to Scott as I was SURE he wouldn't like it. He hadn't liked any of the other "different" names I had suggested. And we were likely just going to go with Hannah or Rebekah as we had always planned (even before we were expecting). But to my suprise he didn't shoot it down, and said he actually thought it was pretty. The more we thought about it, the more we fell in love. We liked both Hannah and Rebekah, but had no special connection to their meanings. Aveline was both beautiful and meant something special to us, AND it was unique but not made-up. Our little girl was most definitely a "longed for child", and with our history we couldn't think of anything more appropriate. We loved it!

We also decided to give her two middle names because Scott has two middle names. After throwing around many many options we finally settled on Brianna Renee. Brianna is a combination of both Brenda and Dianna (Scott's mom and my mom respectively), and Renee is my birthmom Heather's middle name. So not only did we like how it flowed, but we would be honoring all three grandmas. WINNER! :-D

And that is how she became Aveline Brianna Renee. A mouthful? Yes. Full of meaning? Absolutely. I hope someday she will love and appreciate it as much as we do.

Aveline surrounded by her grandmas :-)

(Brenda, Dianna and Heather)

Happy Birthday!

Today was Scott's 25th birthday (Woohoo for lower car insurance rates!!), and we decided to be brave and venture out to Red Lobster with our little Monkey. She did fabulous and slept in her carseat the whole time! And I learned something new, apparently restaurants have these cool infant seat holder things so that the carseat can be at table level without having to move the kiddo. Nice! Scott wouldn't let me tell the waiter it was his birthday, so no free desert for him. Personally, I would have risked being sung to if it meant free desert...but that's just me. :-P After dinner we went to Half Price Books and Game Stop so Scott could shop...that was his birthday present this year. Those stores are to him like clothing stores are to me, and I quite frequently just ask for a spending allowance to buy more clothes for my birthday in lieu of actual gifts...shopping IS my gift! So we did the same thing for him this year. We were both happy: he got to go to two of his favorite stores and buy stuff, and I didn't have to tote a 2 week old around by myself trying to find a birthday gift for Daddy beforehand! Win-win!

Happy birthday to my dear husband!! I am thankful for the seven (and a half--I was in Turkey that first year, so does it count??) birthdays I've had the opportunity to celebrate with you and hope we have many many more together (like, at LEAST fifty more, okay?)!!!

EDIT: We also had a mini celebration at home on the 3rd, but since I wasn't feeling well our mothers stepped in and made dinner and my dad made a cake...okay, Bashas made a cake, my dad went and got it. :-P I had fully intended on making one myself, but I just HAD to come down with a stupid fever that day (another story). Anywho, Sloppy Joes and chocolate cake were enjoyed by all. :-) Even Monkey joined us at the table in her little rocking chair (on top of the coffee table, lol)!


I felt bad for not doing more, but Scott reassured me he had a good birthday anyway. I guess there was only so much I could do with a 2 week old. Perhaps I can make up for it next year. :-)