Stolen from Farrell, from Swistle.
Eggnog or hot chocolate? Hot chocolate preferred, but our local dairy's eggnog is really good.
Does Santa wrap the presents or leave them open under the tree? Hmm, we haven't decided yet.
Colored lights on a tree or white? Colored, but I like white ones too.
Do you hang mistletoe? No.
When do you put your decorations up? Generally mid December, but lights are earlier. Definitely AFTER Thanksgiving.
What is your favorite holiday dish? Au gratin potatoes. :P I haven't had them in years though, perhaps this is the year to recreate them at home.
Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Yes, one.
How do you decorate your Christmas tree? It's a hodge-podge.
Snow: love it or hate it? Love it, especially fresh. Don't like to commute in it, but don't mind driving in it generally. I don't like the end of it, when it's yellow/brown mush though.
Can you ice skate? Yep, though I'm not nearly as good as I used to be.
What is your favorite holiday dessert? Peanut butter cup bars. Not really a holiday dessert, but something we always (and only) ate at the holidays. I made homemade whoopie pies one year too...those were really good.
What is your favorite holiday tradition? Singing Christmas songs.
Candy canes: yum or yuck? Mostly yuck! I love candy, hate peppermint.
Favorite Christmas show? How the Grinch Stole Christmas; Elf; Home Alone.
I'm looking forward to starting new traditions this year with our new baby!
Monday, December 21, 2009
Friday, December 18, 2009
Merry Christmas
Thankful...I suppose it is more a Thanksgiving thought, but I was still so overwhelmed then from our first month home from the hospital with our little guy that I wasn't thinking very straight. As we rapidly approach our first Christmas with our little Daniel, I can't help but think how lucky we are. He came early and spent way too much time in the hospital, but is doing so well and growing like a champion. He's begun smiling and is just a joy. Even when screaming at 3am :-). I am so thankful that we are home with our wonderful little guy. I can't believe he's already almost 3 months old!
Nice
Nice
Naughty:-)
Happy mom and dad
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Help
With having a baby so early, and being in an evening MBA program I've had a very busy fall. Throughout the program I've had a great group of team members. Most of us our still together this quarter and they have been incredibly supportive as I try to complete my most challenging quarter yet.
One team member in particular had a baby a year before starting the program and a second daughter one year in so has been helpfuly not only with school, but with wonderful advice on having a baby and balancing school and baby. She lent me tons of baby stuff including the sling - perhaps the most useful item for a newborn ever. She also managed to find time in the middle of the quarter to make a beautiful personalized baby blanket for Daniel and another team member's daughter. I am constantly in awe at how well she balances school, being a mom, work and craftwork. I can only hope to be so successful, though I'm giving myself a year to adjust to being a mom and working again first.
Baking
One thing I would really like to do more of is bake. I would like to cook too so that we would eat better, but find baking more fun. Right now it's almost impossible to find time to make anything from scratch, especially anything the least bit complicated, but I saw a recipe the other day for crisp salted oatmeal white chocolate cookies and cannot wait to make it. I generally don't like the trend of salt on sweets and am not a huge fan of white chocolate, but these look wonderful. Since my husband will be home for the next three weeks, I should be able to steal enough time to make these:
http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/05/crispy-salted-oatmeal-white-chocolate-cookies/
http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/05/crispy-salted-oatmeal-white-chocolate-cookies/
Monday, November 30, 2009
Growth spurt
I believe we have successfully made it through our first growth spurt. Three solid days of nothing but eating and sleeping, albeit very fussy sleeping during the day. Poor baby seemed starving the entire time and nothing but more food would satisfy him. All of the Happiest Baby on the Block tricks kept failing, which was most unfortunate since he was eating so much he was spitting up constantly. He actually FEELS bigger today, which seems impossible, but who knows. I am so glad this happened over the long weekend so Mike was around to help because two to one still seemed like the balance was in the baby's favor.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
2 months!
Daniel is now just over two months old. At 2 months, he was 10lbs, 14.5oz and 22.5" long. He is well on the growth charts for his actual age and is in the 95% for length and 90th% for weight for being premature. He's doing a great job of catching up!
Being a preemie, he is still SLEEPY, but has started waking up more and more. He's been a really good sleeper at night, only waking twice most nights and sometimes only once.
To soothe Farrell though, our world is not all peaches and roses :-). Despite getting a decent amount of sleep, my brain is still complete mush. Luckily I don't have to go back to work for a few more months since I don't think I'd be worth very much just yet! It does make classes challenging, so I'm glad I only signed up for one. Hopefully I can manage two next quarter since classes will be nearly done by the time I go back to work. He also now refuses to be put down during the day, through naps and all. We did get a swing that he'll now nap in for 30 minutes usually, which is a lifesaver. More unfortunately, the last week has brought a new joy to our lives - baby spit up. For those of you who have babies, you of course know all about this, for those of you who don't - well, don't read further :-).
Baby spit-up is HOT and gross. The poor baby has entered this phase of what I can only assume is rapid growth, most likely due to seeing Logan at Thanksgiving, making the sit-up even worse. (Seeing Logan always seems to inspire him to eat, eat eat!) He has spent the past two days eating constantly and sleeping whenever he isn't eating. At least it hasn't seemed to change his nighttime routine yet. I think he's eating more than he can handle though since spitting up went from being an occasional thing, dribbling a little bit out perhaps once or twice a day, to being an every feeding event. Sometimes we get really lucky and he spits up, but remains frantic for food and cannot be distracted with any sort of pacifier. Then we get a second round of spit-up during the feeding. Let's just say we're doing a lot more laundry than we used to.
One thing that's very cute - he has started to treat his burp cloths as loveys. We haven't been able to get him interested in the actually lovey we got from Aunt Jen yet, though I'm sure that will come in time, but he holds on tight to his burp cloth after eating and will continue to hold it through his nap.
Being a preemie, he is still SLEEPY, but has started waking up more and more. He's been a really good sleeper at night, only waking twice most nights and sometimes only once.
To soothe Farrell though, our world is not all peaches and roses :-). Despite getting a decent amount of sleep, my brain is still complete mush. Luckily I don't have to go back to work for a few more months since I don't think I'd be worth very much just yet! It does make classes challenging, so I'm glad I only signed up for one. Hopefully I can manage two next quarter since classes will be nearly done by the time I go back to work. He also now refuses to be put down during the day, through naps and all. We did get a swing that he'll now nap in for 30 minutes usually, which is a lifesaver. More unfortunately, the last week has brought a new joy to our lives - baby spit up. For those of you who have babies, you of course know all about this, for those of you who don't - well, don't read further :-).
Baby spit-up is HOT and gross. The poor baby has entered this phase of what I can only assume is rapid growth, most likely due to seeing Logan at Thanksgiving, making the sit-up even worse. (Seeing Logan always seems to inspire him to eat, eat eat!) He has spent the past two days eating constantly and sleeping whenever he isn't eating. At least it hasn't seemed to change his nighttime routine yet. I think he's eating more than he can handle though since spitting up went from being an occasional thing, dribbling a little bit out perhaps once or twice a day, to being an every feeding event. Sometimes we get really lucky and he spits up, but remains frantic for food and cannot be distracted with any sort of pacifier. Then we get a second round of spit-up during the feeding. Let's just say we're doing a lot more laundry than we used to.
One thing that's very cute - he has started to treat his burp cloths as loveys. We haven't been able to get him interested in the actually lovey we got from Aunt Jen yet, though I'm sure that will come in time, but he holds on tight to his burp cloth after eating and will continue to hold it through his nap.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
The past few months
Where to start...
After a beautiful Seattle summer spent walking, hiking, gardening and generally just enjoying unusually high temperatures (the days where the temperature was over 100 degrees not included), we moved towards a warm, still dry September. We began harvesting lots of tomatos, zucchini, jalepenos (over 60!) and even a few small pumpkins. We also took a trip to the Oregon coast with friends where we walked on the beach, ate lots of candy and did not eat the hot dogs that were covered with sand. Note for future trips - beach fires are not good for cooking when the winds are strong. We bought Seahawks season tickets and tickets to go see Wicked which was in town for a few weeks.
We had plans for pretty much every weekend from Labor Day until Halloween (my due date) - those plans changed quickly on September 21. On September 21st, despite no signs of premature labor, my water broke. I was 6 weeks early. We went to the hospital where they tried to put me on bed rest, in the hopes that Green Bean could have a few more weeks to grow, but he was having none of it. Around 6:30pm, the OB decided labor wasn't going to wait and by 3 am on September 22, Daniel was born.
At 5lbs, 6oz and 18.5" long, he was considered a "big" preemie. Unfortunately since we hadn't had any indication he was going to come early, I hadn't received any steroid shots to help his lung development. He was sent to the NICU immediately and was on respiratory assistance (CPAP) for three days. On the fourth day, he was moved from the NICU to the Special Care Unit as he was considered healthy and just needed extra care to grow a bit more before leaving the hospital. He then ended up needing some time in the baby tanning bed (i.e. phototherapy for jaundice) and time to get better at eating full feeds and outgrow his apnea of prematurity. We think he liked to set his monitors off for extra attention as he would have the occasional bradycardia and/or desat incident every so often.
Despite the bradycardia, Daniel was considered a feeder/grower. He wasn't so sure about the feeding part. When the doctor moved him from a set feeding schedule to on demand feeding, the nurse updated his care board to say "I eat on demand." Since he immediately began to refuse food, we joked that he "Demanded not to eat." After a few days he started eating well again and grow he did. At one month he was 7lbs, 13oz and 21" long. We left the hospital shortly after that and he really took off. At his due date, he had made it all the way up to 9lbs!
Daniel has been at home for just over 3 weeks now and we're enjoying him tremendously. He's starting to smile occasionally and rolled from tummy to back for the first time two weeks after his due date. We have been very fortunate to have been able to welcome many visitors in the past few weeks. Kim's mom, came out the day after Daniel came home and spent a week visiting and helping. Mike's parents came out the following weekend and spent five days in Seattle. We were even able to get up to Whitbey Island during their stay to visit Mike's great Aunt and Uncle. Kim's dad came the following weekend and spent five days here as well. Hopefully Kim's stepmother will be able to join him on the next visit.
After a beautiful Seattle summer spent walking, hiking, gardening and generally just enjoying unusually high temperatures (the days where the temperature was over 100 degrees not included), we moved towards a warm, still dry September. We began harvesting lots of tomatos, zucchini, jalepenos (over 60!) and even a few small pumpkins. We also took a trip to the Oregon coast with friends where we walked on the beach, ate lots of candy and did not eat the hot dogs that were covered with sand. Note for future trips - beach fires are not good for cooking when the winds are strong. We bought Seahawks season tickets and tickets to go see Wicked which was in town for a few weeks.
We had plans for pretty much every weekend from Labor Day until Halloween (my due date) - those plans changed quickly on September 21. On September 21st, despite no signs of premature labor, my water broke. I was 6 weeks early. We went to the hospital where they tried to put me on bed rest, in the hopes that Green Bean could have a few more weeks to grow, but he was having none of it. Around 6:30pm, the OB decided labor wasn't going to wait and by 3 am on September 22, Daniel was born.
At 5lbs, 6oz and 18.5" long, he was considered a "big" preemie. Unfortunately since we hadn't had any indication he was going to come early, I hadn't received any steroid shots to help his lung development. He was sent to the NICU immediately and was on respiratory assistance (CPAP) for three days. On the fourth day, he was moved from the NICU to the Special Care Unit as he was considered healthy and just needed extra care to grow a bit more before leaving the hospital. He then ended up needing some time in the baby tanning bed (i.e. phototherapy for jaundice) and time to get better at eating full feeds and outgrow his apnea of prematurity. We think he liked to set his monitors off for extra attention as he would have the occasional bradycardia and/or desat incident every so often.
Despite the bradycardia, Daniel was considered a feeder/grower. He wasn't so sure about the feeding part. When the doctor moved him from a set feeding schedule to on demand feeding, the nurse updated his care board to say "I eat on demand." Since he immediately began to refuse food, we joked that he "Demanded not to eat." After a few days he started eating well again and grow he did. At one month he was 7lbs, 13oz and 21" long. We left the hospital shortly after that and he really took off. At his due date, he had made it all the way up to 9lbs!
Daniel has been at home for just over 3 weeks now and we're enjoying him tremendously. He's starting to smile occasionally and rolled from tummy to back for the first time two weeks after his due date. We have been very fortunate to have been able to welcome many visitors in the past few weeks. Kim's mom, came out the day after Daniel came home and spent a week visiting and helping. Mike's parents came out the following weekend and spent five days in Seattle. We were even able to get up to Whitbey Island during their stay to visit Mike's great Aunt and Uncle. Kim's dad came the following weekend and spent five days here as well. Hopefully Kim's stepmother will be able to join him on the next visit.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Long time
Long time no posts...nothing exciting has really been happening until recently.
We found out in early June that Green Bean is a boy. He wasn't very cooperative for the full ultrasound, but we were at least able to get a good picture to confirm boy/girl. We weren't hoping for either in particular, but were very interested in finding out. We also went to a family reunion for my Grandpa's 90th birthday, so got to share pictures with my family. I also got to find out that heat, pregnancy and me do not mix well at all :).
Since then Green Bean has become increasingly active and kicks me regularly. Since I have had very few symptoms, this has been a welcome change. I'm sure it will be less welcome when Green Bean weighs 7 to 8 pounds instead of around 1, but for now, it's nice having confirmation a few times a day that everything seems to be going well.
We found out in early June that Green Bean is a boy. He wasn't very cooperative for the full ultrasound, but we were at least able to get a good picture to confirm boy/girl. We weren't hoping for either in particular, but were very interested in finding out. We also went to a family reunion for my Grandpa's 90th birthday, so got to share pictures with my family. I also got to find out that heat, pregnancy and me do not mix well at all :).
Since then Green Bean has become increasingly active and kicks me regularly. Since I have had very few symptoms, this has been a welcome change. I'm sure it will be less welcome when Green Bean weighs 7 to 8 pounds instead of around 1, but for now, it's nice having confirmation a few times a day that everything seems to be going well.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Raining babies
It seems like this is the year of the baby. I have several friends who all had babies last year and this year, all of my friends out here are now pregnant or trying. We can make up our own Green Lake mob :-).
17 weeks
Now I'm 17 weeks along. The extreme tiredness has passed and I'm feeling good. Trying to get lots of exercise now while I can. I had a check up this week and Green Bean seems to be growing fine...its heartbeat is strong. We're going in for the big ultrasound (where we find out what it is) on June 9th. Any guesses?
We're also going to tour a daycare later June 9th - not for right away, but a center that won't take them until the babies are one. Seems crazy, but it's right near our home so hopefully that's where Green Bean will go once it's old enough. In the mean time we're hoping to get it into a place close to work.
We're also going to tour a daycare later June 9th - not for right away, but a center that won't take them until the babies are one. Seems crazy, but it's right near our home so hopefully that's where Green Bean will go once it's old enough. In the mean time we're hoping to get it into a place close to work.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Green bean growing
We're starting this blog as a way to keep family and friends up to date on what's going on with us since many are a bit further away than is always convenient.
To start off the news, I'm pregnant and due right around Halloween. To answer the inevitable questions:
So far I've been feeling pretty good...a little tired early on but mostly normal now. No, no morning sickness. No, we don't know what it is yet (we'll find out in just over a month). No, we're not hoping for a girl or a boy, we'll be happy either way. Yes, we're very excited!
Green bean was named by a friend of ours who declared months before we got pregnant that our baby would be called "green bean". And so it will, at least until we give it it's full name.
To start off the news, I'm pregnant and due right around Halloween. To answer the inevitable questions:
So far I've been feeling pretty good...a little tired early on but mostly normal now. No, no morning sickness. No, we don't know what it is yet (we'll find out in just over a month). No, we're not hoping for a girl or a boy, we'll be happy either way. Yes, we're very excited!
Green bean was named by a friend of ours who declared months before we got pregnant that our baby would be called "green bean". And so it will, at least until we give it it's full name.
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