Dear Edie,

Today you are three months old. I cannot believe it. I mean, I can. But I can't. I saw a baby that was 4 days old recently and couldn't fathom how small he was; I just kept thinking, "Edie used to be that little!" which reminded me of the time I was rocking you in your nursery the first week of your life and cried thinking that you'd never be this small again. How right I was. I believe you are easily weighing in over 12 pounds these days and you are officially too long for your mini crib that we keep in our room. I can tell already that you're going to tower over me one day.

This has been a tremendous month for you developmentally and you topped it off by rolling over for the first time today. I set you down on your quilt for some tummy time this morning and you immediately arched your back, rocked back and forth a few times and promptly rolled right onto your back in one swift movement, then rocked right back onto your belly. I squealed in an embarrassing manner and you grinned at me with drool running down your chin. You're also spending a lot of time smiling and making funny noises, and while you started laughing this month, the laughs are still rare enough that we covet each one.
You love looking at yourself in the mirror and often give yourself a coy smile as if flirting with the other baby in the mirror. And while looking in the mirror is entertaining, far and away your favorite activity is standing with a capital S. You must spend at least 3 hours per day just being held under your armpits to stand and if we had the endurance for more, I doubt you'd say no. As much as you love standing, you hate riding in the car twice as much. Or maybe three times as much. We still get out of the house you and me, but the ride home is rarely fun for either of us. The only other activity you dislike is falling asleep. I can always tell when you're tired because you get red and cranky around the eyes and squawk like a chicken. Once you finally stop fighting the sleep and nod off, you're a good sleeper at night, although you recently went from spoiling me with 7-9 hour sleeps to a shorter, 6-7 hour schedule, at which point you eat and then conk back out for a 3 hour morning snooze.

This month you've taken two trips, one weekend in Bellingham with my parents and this most recent weekend on Orcas with your other Grandparents. Both trips were spent being doted on and entertained by immediate and extended family and aside from a little car-screaming, both trips were fantastic.
I take a bath with you every other night after dinner and your Dad has taken to calling it, "Ladies Bath Night". We linger in the tub for up to 20 minutes, floating around and blowing drool bubbles (you, not me) and then sometimes follow it up with a family dance party in your nursery. The other night during a dance party to LCD Sound System, you laughed over and over at my terrible dance moves.

There's so much more to tell you about yourself, but time is tight and you've just fallen asleep without a fight so I should probably head to bed myself. I hope you read this one day and realize how very much your Dad and I love you. Sometimes I get a swell in my chest just looking at the back of your head while you sit in my lap; your tiny shoulders that are half your Dad and half me, your head swiveling side to side on your strong little neck and the bulge of chub folding over the top of your pants. I even love your mullet. Which, by the way, we trimmed last week. You can thank me later.

xoxo,
Mom

Thanksgiving

This year we are thankful for The Little Beast:
We're taking her in the death-mobile (aka the car) and heading up to Orcas for the holiday tomorrow morning. So many firsts - First Turkey Day, first ferry boat ride, first vacation, first time to the beach... the list goes on. So excited!

Hope you all are celebrating in style and having a fabulous weekend. Trip photos to come upon our return.

Driving Miss Edie

Driving with Edie by myself is as close to a personal hell as it comes for me. She HATES the car SO MUCH. If she's not sleeping, she's screaming like she's being murdered in the backseat. I've tried singing to her, talking to her (in case it was the singing that was offending her), a pacifier, white noise, pumping the breaks, dangling toys from the top of her seat, and jiggling the car seat while driving. Recently my mother and I picked out a car mirror thing online and it arrived last week. It's intended to hang in front of her when seated in the car and it has a mirror and lights and the lights flash around while playing music and saying the colors of the lights in English, Spanish and French so as to distract her from her rage. It even has a timer so that you can have it play the whole drive. Result? I get to hear twinkle twinkle little star AND screaming. The whole way home. Thoughts I had on my way home from our outing today (warning: bad words have NOT been edited out):

Why is this guy in his stupid Prius driving SO FUCKING SLOW???!!!! I hate you Prius driver!!!!!!!

Please don't stop for that guy to cross the street with his dog!!! FOR FUCKS SAKE CAN'T YOU TELL I HAVE A SCREAMING BABY IN THE BACKSEAT???

Of course that light is turning red, EVERY light is turning red because the whole universe is against me and Edie and wants it to take us five trillion hours to get home from Ballard!!!!!

I wonder if we have any eggnog ice cream left in the freezer? If so, I'm going to scoo- OH MY GOD YOU'RE NOT DYING BACK THERE PLEASE STOP CRYING!!!!

Warning: Massive Quantities of Photos

Hammin it up for the camera:

I can't stop laughing at this photo we took tonight while undressing Edie:Grandpa John:

Looking a wee uncertain:

Aunt Katherine came for a visit this last weekend! She spent many hours swinging Edie around and brainwashing her so as to be the favorite aunt.
We also squeezed in a dinner out sans Edie:
Playing coy in the bed:


Conked out on the yoga ball:
Hand snacking:
Finally enjoying herself a bit in her rocking chair:


This was taken a week or two ago, and it's crazy to me how much older she looks this week in comparison!

Standing Practice

Edie's new favorite activity is to practice standing with Jeff. They do this in the bathroom so that she can watch herself stand in the vanity mirror (because her second favorite new activity is to stare at herself in the mirror). They both take practice very seriously. I'll often walk by the bathroom and hear Jeff say, "Aaaand rest..... okay UP!" It's like they're training for the Olympic trials. She won't stop her practice session long enough for me to brush my teeth at the sink, so Jeff just moves her to the side and they watch me brush my teeth (both from a standing position of course). Turns out Edie thinks me spitting out my toothpaste and water after brushing is hilarious. She hadn't laughed for a few days so I was disappointed. But tonight she laughed when I spat into the sink, so I did it again. She laughed so hard it was perhaps the funniest thing ever. We repeated this activity with her giggling every time until she finally lost interest, but boy did those giggles more than make up for the fact that she screamed all the way to our last meeting at First Weeks this morning.

Next week we don't have a meeting for the holidays and when we come back we'll be graduating to the grade up called "Next Months" for 3-6 month old babies. Very exciting! Unfortunately, I don't walk around with the Flip video camera strapped to my hand so I couldn't catch the giggle-fest tonight; instead I offer you this pants-less video of standing practice from last week. Note the adorable birth mark on her right thigh. And the fact that she's wearing socks. But no pants.

Tastiest Hands Ever

Please watch this video with the sound on. It's really not the same without it.

I think Edie just figured out we have a cat

Video evidence of the discovery:

A Boring Update

Way to reel you in with a post title, right?

1. Edie laughed again yesterday at First Weeks and boy does it make my day. I can literally coast on one laugh for an entire afternoon it's so cool. Some of us were hanging out after class feeding or changing our kids and while I was changing Edie on the floor she started laughing at me. It was particularly cool to have witnesses to the event. Then she gave me a tiny little giggle this afternoon. I can't wait until it becomes more frequent.

2. Edie is the captain of the drool team. She also has a subtle rash on her cheeks and neck/chest area. I took her to the pediatrician yesterday for him to look at the rash and he looked at it and asked, "Has she started drooling?" and I looked at him weird because DUDE does she drool. She went from no drool whatsoever to soaking the front of her onesie in a 30 minute period in the last week or so. Apparently the drool is drying out her skin a little and giving her a minor rash. While this is slightly shameful at least it's not worrying...

3. Some of my favorite Moms from First Weeks and I have decided to start a casual Mom's group of our own. I'm hosting the first get together this Monday. My friend Deb has a daughter Alison that's a week older than Edie and yesterday we had them sit across from each other on the floor and they really noticed the other for the first time. One would smile at the other and that would make the other smile back and so on. It was hilarious. It should be fun to have them over on Monday and do more of that. Plus, it means I won't have to take Edie in the torture mobile - aka the car.

4. I think I hate PEPS. I'm so BORED by the meetings, but I keep going because I keep hoping it'll get better. I hate how formal the meetings are and how weird the leader gets about getting "off topic" and I hate how everyone in my group is a size 0 after having a baby and I hate how we have to sing and I hate that the Moms have pretentious names and live in fancy beautiful houses even though they're 27 and I hate that none of them have to go back to work except me and wow am I rude. The thing is, they all seem like VERY nice women and I have nothing against them personally. I just think they aren't "my people". I like the sarcastic, funny Moms I've met in First Weeks so much more. In First Weeks we complain about losing the baby weight and how our kids won't take naps, but at PEPS they say things like "My baby always falls asleep on her own after I put her in her crib." and "Babies should never be awake for more than 2 hours consecutively." and then I think to myself, "Really? Last I checked my baby wasn't a robot and I couldn't program her to fall asleep on cue and nap at regularly scheduled intervals." I always leave wondering if they're telling the truth or if Edie is the most high maintenance baby of all time for needing to be lulled to sleep before being put to bed for the night.

5. I think tomorrow night I might try putting Edie to sleep in her own room for the night for the first time. I think she's ready, but embarrassingly, I love waking up and just looking over to see her sleeping face any time I want and I've put off moving her into her own room for this reason. That and it's super easy to feed her in the night when she's right next to me... but now that she only needs one early morning feeding, I think it's time for her big girl crib. Wish me luck...

Worth the trip

Well, Bellingham was great fun, but I'll admit that about midway through the drive up there on Friday I had my doubts. Edie still hates the car and her car seat most of the time, so I left Seattle when she fell asleep, hoping that she'd sleep the whole way. Sadly, she woke up about 45 minutes into the drive and was fuming pissed to wake up in the car seat. I exited the freeway no fewer than 4 times to calm her and start over, but finally had to just let her cry it out or I never would have made it to Bellingham. She screamed bloody murder for at least 10 minutes before exhausting herself, and I felt like a terrible Mom for each and every one of those minutes. But once we got to Bellingham, my parents smothered her with attention and I barely had to lift a finger the entire weekend. She slept well in the Pack n' Play they had in the spare room and loved the change of scenery. She also got visits from her Aunt Kathleen and Uncle Javi, Grandma Culver, surrogate Aunt (and champion yoga ball bopper) Kristin, and her great Aunt and Uncle. I have some pictures and an adorable video or two from the weekend that I hope to post here as soon as I have a bit more time.

"I miss Grandma and Grandpa!!"

Giggle Monster

I have much to report but no time to download pictures so the Bellingham update will just have to wait a bit longer. In short - we had a fabulous weekend.

The real reason I'm posting is to quickly report something very exciting - Edie LAUGHED for the first time today! She's been making funny noises while smiling for a while now, but nothing that would count as real laughter. But tonight, while we were hoisting her into the Ergo to walk up to the video store, she looked up at Jeff and me and laughed a real adult-like giggle. Then she did it again! It was SO COOL. Our little dictator is growing up.

Bellingham

Edie and I trekked up to Bellingham today and are visiting the Grandparents this weekend while Jeff works on work (That's right! Jeff's new business venture is taking flight and he has his first big paying project for a client due next week) and finishing up the drawers for our living room. Expect posts upon our return.

2 Month Check Up

Everything went surprisingly well at Edie's 2 month check up yesterday. She weighed in a little lower than I expected, but still roughly in the 75th percentile at 10 pounds 11 ounces. They make you strip your baby down before plopping her on the scale and the second I pulled her diaper off, she peed all over, so I'm pretty sure she would have weighed 2 ounces more if she'd just held her pee until I'd put a new diaper on her! She's grown an inch this month and measured 23 and a half inches - still in the 95th percentile range. Who knew I'd give birth to such a long, tall sally? Her head also gained a whopping inch and her giant noggin is in the 90-95th percentile. No wonder it took her a while to hold it up - that thing is heavy. Her thrush is finally gone after two different med rounds. In the end, *I* even ended up getting thrush in *my* mouth. Being a genius, I think I "rinsed" Edie's pacifier off with my own mouth when in a rush so I ended up getting medicated as well. At first, they prescribed me meds that would require me to stop breastfeeding, but after researching a little further, they realized that they could just prescribe me the same thing that Edie had taken (but in an adult dose) since she'd already taken it once and keep breastfeeding.

As for the vaccinations, the nurse was super speedy and although Edie screamed bloody murder when being poked, Jeff snatched her up immediately afterwards and she calmed right down. Then she conked out in the car ride home and aside from a touch of the evening fussies, she mostly just slept all night. Aside from the bandaids on her thighs, she seems herself today.

Wish us Luck

Today is Edie's 2 month check-up. This means vaccinations. I'm scared. Send us positive thoughts at 2:30 that she forgives me for letting the scary nurse poke her in the legs.

Backyard Photoshoots