Mole Rat on the Move

The video above shows Ellie working on her neck and back muscles. She doesn't like tummy time much, I managed to catch about 30 seconds of 2 minutes of happy time. She much prefers to build her muscles by sitting assisted. And, her neck strength is pretty good as you can see. Last time we did tummy time, she wasn't nearly that far off the ground.

So last night, we moved Ellie into her room for the first time. As you can see by the picture below, she's quite tall and has been hitting the sides pretty frequently as she flails about with her legs and arms. I was kind of nervous about it, but figured that I should just do it before I had too much time to obsess. It went pretty well. She slept for about 7 hours and woke me about 4:30. Nursing in the glider is a little bit of an adjustment because of the arms, but we managed. Unfortunately, once I got her to sleep, I couldn't get back to sleep.

She's developed a couple of new behaviors lately and therefore has two new nicknames: Mole Rat and Drool Monkey. She's started taking her night feedings blind. She won't open her eyes, so sometimes she needs a little help finding the nipple. And, she's started drooling like a fountain. Not sure why, but the last couple of days it's gotten so bad that we dug out a bib to keep her onesies from getting soaked.

BIG Baby in the bassinet 

Sleeping in her crib

Spark Person

Today, we took a friend of P's to breakfast. It was pretty tasty at the time, but it's kind of tasting like ashes right now because today was the day my trainer told me I need to track my food. The breakfast was about 1300 calories, and therefore almost my daily allowance. I weigh basically what I weighed 4 weeks ago, despite all the exercise. So, I've signed up with Sparkpeople.com to track my diet and watch calories, fat, nutrients, etc and retrain myself how to eat. I kind of let my sweet tooth off the leash in the last trimester and after Ellie was born. I was losing weight too quickly because I was skipping meals. So, we began eating more brownies, cookies, and milkshakes. The trainer motivated me to go back to 3 meals a day, but P and I have been eating out at least a couple times a week and eating mostly pre-packaged foods. So, it looks like we'll need to trim back on deserts and eating out and I need to start cooking again.

12 Weeks

Ellie continues to grow and get stronger each day. She still likes sitting up and I can see her trying to raise her head in her bouncy and her car seat. She really doesn't like being horizontal unless she's very tired. I've gotten better at recognizing the signs and the timing, although I couldn't tell you what those are necessarily. I've been tracking her naptimes and can't seem to detect a pattern between a good night of sleep and a nap schedule. The one sure thing I've determined is that she shouldn't nap for more than 20-30 minutes after 6 or so. For the most part, she takes lots of little cat naps of about a half hour. It becomes a race to fit in a meal or some household chores while she does. Of course, sometimes, she naps on me. So, then I'm glad they're pretty short because as nice as it feels at first, after a while, you start to stiffen up or have an uncontrollable unreachable itch or something.

Dressed up for a visit from Great Aunt C

She's about to outgrow her bassinet. She's just so long.... I lugged her travel crib upstairs to see if we could swap it out and keep the sleeping arrangement for a while. But, they're almost exactly the same size. I could sub the full size play yard, but I think I might just have to bite the bullet and start using her crib. Course, that means I need to clean it out. Currently it is dog-proof storage. Her whole room is basically just storage. It's going to require a pretty major change in routine. Maybe I'll try to ease into it over the weekend.

Currently, we're auditioning disposable diapers. I tried the cloth diapers for a few days and decided they were too bulky for her tiny little butt for now. So, I'm going to reevaluate maybe when size 1's (which she's just jumped into) get tight. They were easy to use, but I'm dreading resizing them again. We've been using Pampers with no complaints other than the huge size difference between newborn and size 1. They have a nice faux fabric exterior, have two nice rows of elastic which has saved our bacon just about every time, and the tabs reattach anywhere on the diaper for tidy disposal. However, I wanted to look into diapers that were biodegradable. So, after reading reviews on Amazon, I ordered a case of Seventh Generation and a case of Nature Baby Care. Hands down, I love the Seventh Generation better. They share all my favorite features of Pampers and are a nice boring eggshell color that goes with everything. The Nature Baby Care ones had a nice grey heart design, but they are much stiffer and seem a little less secure around the legs, even though they have the two rows of elastic. One or two of her wet diapers almost seemed to seep through and make the ink bleed a little. And, the tabs only stick to the waist section of the diaper, so you can't wrap them up for disposal. At least not the same way.

In other news, I'm on week 4 of personal training. I just bought a few pair of real jeans last week. I've jumped three sizes since pre-pregnancy. It's pretty depressing how much 22 pounds changes how all your clothes fit. Next week I actually go to go get my hair done. I considered coloring it since the grays are coming in kind of kinky with a tendency to stick straight up. It's such a commitment and gets so expensive though. I've always abandoned it in the past, so I'm going to try holding off a little longer. Recovering from coloring always seems to last longer than the color itself. Also, P claims he likes my hair better au natural. I'm thinking I might try growing it out though. We'll see.