Tag Team Erwin Posting-14 weeks

How about that Ricker post? Well you all are lucky and get TWO posts today. It's like Christmas.

So this week does not only mark 14 weeks of life for Miss Annie, but today is her 100th day on this here planet! It's gone by so quickly, yet it seems like she's been here forever! We continue to have a unhealthy relationship with the swaddle. Just when I think we are ready to officially break-up, we have a bad sleeping spell and we come back to the swaddle, tail between our legs, ready to make a go of it again. I think adding to her mixed emotions about the swaddle is the fact that she has found her hands. And when I say found, I mean she's obsessed with them...

Thank God I don't have teeth or I couldn't fit near as much of my hand in my mouth.

And lest you think she only favors the right hand, here she is enjoying a sampling of the left. She's handbedextrous. See what I did there?

Rockin' some more monkey PJams, the motif of choice for Annie.

Rick is not afraid to pimp his daughter out in City Museum garb. This shirt says "Directress" on the back. Gotta let everyone know who's in charge.

I can't recall if I put up this picture before and am too lazy to look so I am putting it up again because it is so cute. And because it's not on the changing pad.

Annie preparing for a weekend outing. The shades are to hide from the PAPArazzi. Get it? Papa?I am just full of 'em today. Watch out Dan Hagemann.

Talking business with Monkey.

A sweet photo of mommy's strange neck rolls and disheveled Sunday morning hair.

Test shot during the announcement card photo shoot.

Soon we might just turn the changing pad into her crib. When you add in watching music videos, it really is her favorite place ever.

This baby is not starving.

She has been described by strangers (because everyone seems to feel compelled to comment on the size of your baby) as being healthy, robust, a "chunk", and yet some still call her tiny when they find out she is 3 months old. I find most of her bulk is in her face/cheeks. Wonder where she gets that from?

22 days old video.

I never thought that I would be that dad who had a picture of his kid as his computer screen saver. But I am. In fact I have a slide show as my background and pictures on my desk. If you ask me about my daughter I'll give you a list of 50 new things she can do, the sounds she makes, and show you 300 of the 500 photos of her I have on my phone. Annie has turned me into that dad. I like being that dad.

Since I am that dad, here is a time lapse video shot when Annie was 22 days old. The video was during her 2:30am feeding and took place over 45 minutes. When we disappear for a little bit, that's because she just went the bathroom on me. We use to dance to the Lullaby Renditions of the Cure to help get her back to sleep. She loves their songs Just Like Heaven and High.

Oh, and because I am that dad. I do get a little weepy eyed watching this video.

-Rick

3 Months!

Dear Annie,
You are three months old today! We have survived the first month of me being back at work and have settled in to a bit of a groove. You have won the heart of Nanny Jen and she is always telling me what a good baby you are. You continue to be an excellent sleeper and are going to bed now at around 7 and sleeping until around 7 in the morning! It's amazing and most people don't seem to believe me when I tell them. Daddy is still giving you your bottle at night and then I have been putting you to bed. We are still using the miracle blanket, which is probably not long for this world. But I feel like I keep saying that. Then it gets to be night time and I get greedy for sleep and think that tomorrow sounds like a good time to try swaddle-free sleep. I think you might be close to growing out of the blanket, so that will probably be the end of things. It's been a good run.

Your Daddy and I continue to be astonished by how much we love you and the changes you have brought to our life. We find ourselves laying on the ground next to you on your play mat watching you kick and smile for hours. You love listening to music and listening to your Daddy whistle. While we love that you sleep so much, it does make us a bit sad that we don't get to spend more time with you. I won't complain about too much sleep for you though. You have recently developed an affection for a lovey we have creatively named "bunny" or "bunzo". Bunny seems to really help you sleep, which is great. The less fortunate part of the bunny relationship is that you seem to only want to squish bunny into your face when you sleep, which scares us a bit. Not to worry, I have found a smaller, thinner replacement that should be here any day. Hopefully that will keep you sleeping AND breathing. Not too much to ask.

You are a big talker these days and love to "ooh" and "ahh" at us. You also have perfected a parrot-like squawk that is hilarious and seems to get louder by the day. We could listen to it forever. I love hearing your voice and imagining what it will sound like when you say your first words. Then I get sad thinking about that time getting here too quickly and try to be thankful and present during this current stage.

Here are some pictures from the past week:

We love you, baby girl. You are the best baby around!

Ego Boost

I gained approximately 40 pounds during my pregnancy. Of those 40, I have lost 25. I have been pretty happy with my progress, but I still haven't been able to fit into any of my pre-pregnancy jeans. For those of you who know me, you know that I take my jeans collection very seriously. I can wear jeans to work fairly frequently, so I justify spending ridiculous amounts on jeans using the logic that if I had to wear a suit to work, I would be spending just as much. Makes perfect sense to me. With fall fast approaching, I started to panic that my beloved jeans would have to sit out another season, which was unacceptable. In an effort to reunite with my denim, I stepped up the weight loss efforts by joining Weight Watchers online. So far I have lost 5.5 pounds in the last 3 weeks. Not too shabby. At this rate I should be fine for jeans weather in a month or so.

However, thanks to some field work, I was forced to find some suitable pants to wear out in the field yesterday. As I refuse to purchase any more clothes, I squeezed myself into some of my "fat jeans". It was neither pretty nor comfortable, but it was just a day hanging out at a gas station, so what do I care? As long as they didn't bust at the seams I figured we were safe.....

....How to say this? There is a particular type of man that prefers his woman to be on the thick side. Preferrably thick on the back side. As someone that has retained the "baby got back" as my own personal anthem, I have encountered these men on a regular basis since, oh, the 8th grade. This situation was only exacerbated by my pregnancy weight. Awesome. While it's degrading and sometimes embarassing, I have always found it somewhat amusing and strangely reassuring that there are men out there that are in to that kind of thing. Of course, these are also usually the mental giants that will yell at a woman out their car window, but these are apparently my people, so I won't admonish their behavior too much.

You may wonder where I am going with all this? Well, I spent yesterday in my too-tight-jeans in Florissant, Missouri. Florissant is a municipality in the northern area of St. Louis. And apparently there is no shortage of "my people" in Florissant. By the amount of honking and yelling in my general direction, I am shocked there wasn't a car accident at this intersection. It was both hilarous and embarassing, but for a gal that just gave birth 3 months ago, I gotta say, I kind of loved it.

12 Weeks

12 weeks is not 3 months yet, just so you know. This seems to be a point of confusion with many of my family members (which may or may not include myself). This is also why the "9 months" of pregnancy is actually closer to 10 when you consider that it's 40 weeks. Not the point of the post though.

Annie is 12 weeks old as of yesterday. During our day home she perfected her ability to poop in her onesie, spit up on both herself, me, and her play mat, and smile the cutest smile imaginable. When she wasn't doing all this fun stuff, she was sleeping like a champ in her swing. I have committed the last 12 weeks to making sure she uses that swing, and it appears it is finally paying off. I also think we are on the back end of a growth spurt, so that might account for the extra z's that were caught yesterday. She is also getting a bit sick of the swaddle as evidenced by her straining and grunting at 2:00 this morning. There are only two things that can make her produce that sound, and the diaper was clear, so it had to be the swaddle. Once removed, she fell quickly back asleep. I fear our swaddling days are about to be behind us. Where has the time gone?

And speaking of flying time, today is the first day of school for Parker and Chloe. Parker will be starting 4th grade and Chloe will be in 2nd. This is an exceptionally important milestone for me (and isn't that what it's all about?) because I actually REMEMBER 4th grade. Hopefully Parker's teacher is a bit nicer than Mrs. Jumper. I can't get over how big they are getting and thinking that if the growth of my nieces went this fast, it will be no time before Annie's headed off to school. I can't even think about it. It seems like just yesterday Parker and Chloe looked like this:

And now they look like this:

Unbelievable.

Thankfully, I look exactly as I did when they were born.

So Long, Old Friend

High drama in Casa de Erwin on Saturday afternoon. As I was on my way home from my massage (such a life of leisure I lead) I was informed that we had an intruder. An intruder in the form of a baby mole. This little pest had invaded the residence of Mr. Steven the frog. And, what's worse, it would appear he had assaulted Steven has there were what appeared to be scratches on his face. Horror. I rushed home to inspect the scene and could find no sign of this mole in the window well, though I did see Steven. Thanks to all the leaves and such in the window well, there are plenty of places for Mr. Mole (I refuse to come up with a cute name for him) to burrow. Steven was on the move, which is very uncharacteristic of this fella. Steven's more of a "sit in one place for three months straight" kind of frog. He was clearly agitated, as was I.

After some furious internet searching, I learned that this was not likely a baby mole based on Rick's description, as it had hair. I guess moles can be pretty small. I am sure you are shocked to learn that I had never previously contemplated the size of a mole. Well, the animal form of a mole. I have contemplated the size of the mole on my right cheek, so that has to count for something. Though that contemplation did me no good in this scenario. I digress...

I was mid feeding session when Rick informed me that the mole had day lighted in the window. I am not proud to admit that I may or may not have rushed Annie through her lunch to get up and see the action. Sure enough, this little bugger was in there and chasing Steven around. Well, chasing as much as a blind rodent can chase. But Steven clearly did not want to be anywhere near this animal. Can't say I blame him.

The Mole is the black spot in this photo. He's fast and small and it's a dark space. This is the best I could do.

We watched Steven run from the mole for about an hour before we decided we had to do something. Steven had a terrorist in his midst. I figured it's more insulting to be terrorized in your own home (which, I should mention, is a crappy place for a frog) than to be relocated. Plus, I chickened out on trying to catch that mole and Steven seemed much easier to grab.

So I donned some leather gardening gloves, Rick removed the window screen, and we all pushed the thought of BOTH varmints escaping into our house to the back of our minds as I climbed up to access the window. Right when we removed the screen Steven came running towards me with a look of hope on his scraped up face. I promptly scooped him up (after screaming internally lest Rick think I am some sort of ninny) and threw him into a gift bag and carried him upstairs to the back yard for his release.

In case you are wondering, Rick was taking on his usual role of director of operations here. He made sure my perch was stable and provided the gloves and pink gift bag for the extraction. Since he deals with the squirrels, I felt it was only fair. Plus, I felt Steven would have wanted it this way.

We released him into the nicest part of the back yard. Of course, it's the sunniest and driest, where he will probably shrivel up and perish, but at least it won't be at the webbed hands of a blind intruder.

Steven hopped away and never looked back. Anyone want a pet mole?

Lots of Announcing

I mentioned in the last post that we have finally ordered our birth announcements. What I failed to mention is that these are our second birth announcements. We had a first round of poster-sized birth announcement made to match all the concert posters in our house.

The immediate family birth announcement.

I know we thought the idea was cool, but we were excited to see that the guy that made the poster, Darin with State of Shock Studios, also thought it was fun and talked about it on his blog. You can read about it here. Annie is taking over the internet one blog at a time. I anticipate world domination by age 3. Be ready.

Tuesday is the New Monday

You may notice a trend here. A trend of tardy posting...or a general lack of posting. I find that Monday was not a wise choice for my update day as I have been working from home with Annie on Mondays. As you can imagine, trying to care for an infant and get in 8 billable hours doesn't leave much time for blogging. So prepare yourself for updates to be more around the Tuesday-ish timeframe.

Annie is now 11 weeks old and had her 2 month checkup yesterday. Yes, we are a little behind on the checkups but that was due to a series of checkups early on. It's not our fault. Promise. Dr. Eaton continue to sing the praises of our "perfect" daughter. Yes, he said perfect. It's a medical assessment from a professional. And this official diagnosis was even after I finished asking him my extensive list of questions, which I am sure may have colored his opinion of this perfect baby's parents. No matter. Here are her two month stats:

Weight: 11 lbs 12 oz (41st percentile)

Head: 15.5 in (62nd percentile)

Length: 23 1/4 in (58th percentile)

Annie continues to sleep through the night and is averaging 10-11 hours, which is a miracle. She is still 100% breast milk, which is becoming more and more of a labor of love as we don't have a place to pump in my office so I have to pump in my car. Needless to say, I am REALLY looking forward to the break in the heat. Here are some photos from the past week:

Some people look for pictures of Big Foot or the Loch Ness Monster. I have been searching for the elusive shot of the infant neck. This is as close as I have come.

"You have a lovely chin." "No YOU have a lovely chin!"

She's cool when it's hot.

Being that cute can get a gal worked up, which requires the binkie to be deployed.

There are about 1000 more where those came from. One of which is the actual birth announcement photo. GB, I appreciate you holding back from hounding me about this. Your restraint has been impressive. We anticipate having those out in the next 3-6 months. We figure if we wait long enough, people might think this is a whole new baby and send another gift.

10 Weeks +1 day

Apologies, loyal blog followers. I am a day late in posting about Annie's developments. Please call off the lynch mob. To say it's been crazy over here is possibly the world's greatest understatement. I will try to catch up on what's gone on in the last week:

Uncle Happy is on the move again. You will recall that he recently moved to Austin from Nashville. Well, our boy has decided to flee the sweltering heat of the Austin summers for the cooler climes of Sweet San Fran! He completed his road trip out west last week, and because St. Louis is on the way from Austin to California (at least it is the way we drive), he stopped in for some Annie love before he headed for the left coast. Here he is seen demonstrating his patent Uncle Happy "hum hold" which always puts the ladies of all ages at ease. Sometimes this is followed by the "sleeper hold", which varies in technique and is ill-advised on first dates.

Chatting it up about what appears to be the tragic loss of Patrick's left index finger.

"um..helloooo. I am right here. Talk to me, Haps!" He learned that she likes to have Beastie Boy lyrics "sung" to her, which is amusing to listen to. It was great to see Happy and know he will have more great adventures out in SF and are super-excited to have a place to stay out in California. Anyone know how handle a jet-lagged infant?

And just when you thought she couldn't get any cuter, she is smiling up a storm these days and "talking" and cooing almost all the time. She falls asleep in her crib and coos herself to sleep. It really is the best thing ever.

In the event you were not aware of it, technology has declared a war on books. The most recent victim is Borders. Rick and I stopped by this weekend in our one trip out of the house to see if there were any good deals. I decided to snap a picture of Annie to show her that she had, at some point in her life, been inside this thing called a "book store" and that they always weren't on tablets.

Annie has managed to find her hands and is now spending much of her time seeing how much she can jam into her mouth. This has also increased the volume of slobber generated. My nickname for her has become "moo-moo", which is derived from her original name of "smoosh face" (we all remember the picture, no need to repost). Annie continues to charm her "Annie Nanny", Jen, who has turned out to be a god-send. She is still sleeping 8-9 hours at a time, which is AMAZING and has earned me the hatred of sleep deprived parents everywhere. The worst story I have heard was of client of mine's son that didn't sleep for over 90 minutes at a time until he was 2 years old. I really heard about it from him...and his child is 17 now. I guess it takes a while to get over sleep depravation....not that I would know.