Hello Again

Yes.  It's been forever.  Not much to tell other than she's getting bigger and smarter every day.  While Via is physically on par with most kids, according to the pediatrician she's advanced in problem solving abilities.

2 cases in point;

When we were trying to get her to crawl (and before she learned how to roll over) Barbara placed her on the floor with a blanket underneath her.  At the end of the blanket she put a toy and tried to entice Via to crawl to it.  After a few moments of trying and going nowhere, Via grabbed the blanket and started pulling on it, dragging the toy closer and into her grasp!

On another occasion (after she had learned to roll over) we tried the same thing, only without a blanket this time.  Ha!  Parents got smart!  Problem is she got smarter too.  This time, she rolled onto her back and started kicking her legs against the floor, scooting on her butt and back.  Occasionally she would look over her shoulder to see how close she was to the toy before rolling back over and slobbering all over it.

Needless to say we're going to great lengths to hide cookie jars and other things she'll want to build contraptions to get to.

And the pictures:

Baby's Day At the Beach

It took a week or two, but we finally got the pics from the camera to the computer.  While we tried to keep her out of the sun as much as possible, we did take some time to throw Via in the ocean to see if she floats.  (just kidding, we dipped her to see if she would melt though).

Via's First Prom

Last Thursday my choir had their year-end party.  Every year we have a different theme (last year was the swinging 60's with jello mold salads which were as disturbing as they sound).  This year's theme was "The Prom".  I could work with that one. :p

Barbara was unable to attend due to a prior commitment to a new photography class she's taking, so my date was my little girl.  Barbara made sure she had a wonderful dress to go with my semi-tux get up (the shirt, tie and cumber bun from the outfit I wore a couple years ago to the James Bond New Year's Gala down in D.C.) and we were off to the ball.

Needless to say she was the hit of the party and it was determined very early on that we were walking out of there with some hardware.  So after some food, some dancing (which we got started, my little girl is a Party Starter!) and a nap, Via was crowned Prom Queen (along with the organist) and they had their King and Queen dance!  We took the crown home and will have it bronzed (ok maybe not).

Jibba Jabba

While Via is now teething (oh what fun), she is also now trying to have full blown conversations.  I'm not entirely sure just yet if she's having them with us or with herself, but she seems to be quite adamant about her points! :p

Sleep Glorious Sleep!

Ok.  Not so much for mom and dad, but Victoria is getting in a good amount of sleep time through the night now.  She's definitely a morning person too.  Very bubbly and happy at 6am in the morning.  Mom and Dad?  Not so much.

She's also starting to coo and grab at things.  This is definitely becoming more and more fun!

The Aftermath

All the planning and fussing to get the house ready for the Christening party and it last for 4 hours and now we get to clean up again!!  Yay!!

It was worth it though.  Lots of fun.  Lots of Chocolate! (with a capital C) and it was an awesome day.  75 degrees and sunny.  No wind (which was a change from the previous weekend when there were 50 mile-an-hour winds knocking branches off of trees) which was a good thing!

Victoria also seems to be back to normal.  She's not spitting up nearly as much and isn't as fussy as she's been the last few weeks with the illness.  I'm better too, but I've managed to get half of my coworkers sick as well.  Go me!  Tomorrow I will start planning on the downfall of the Chinese civilization.

And Pictures!  Because everyone loves them so....

Out of the Woods?

We may be through the worst of it with the sicknesses. As long as Bea doesn't get sick now we're golden! Via seems to be doing better and hopefully we can put her on a more formula-based diet as her poopy diapers have degenerated into a rather messy affair every time (icky).

The one plus is that she is 12 weeks today! And will be 3 months old on the 18th (at which time we will start counting her age by months rather than weeks which is another milestone!).

Christening on Sunday. Chocolate goodness here we come!

The Bug

Sorry it's been so long since my last post. Our house has been a den of festering sickness for almost a month now.

We had our 2 nieces over a while back and they brought with them some sort of Tanzanian Wasting Disease (at least that's what I like to call it). Barbara and I immediately got sick. Luckily it missed the baby because we eventually found out that we both had strep throat. Barbara lost her voice for 3 days and I was cowering in bed with a 102 temperature and chills.

We eventually got over that (or so I thought) when the baby started to get sick. Though I think some of that is my fault. I started to have a cough last Saturday, and by Sunday Via was coughing too. We thought it might just be allergies, but by Wednesday my cough wasn't gone and the baby stopped keeping food down.

And so we made our first trip to the emergency room! YAY!!!!.....not.

All in all it wasn't so bad (considering). We basically have to keep her on Pedialyte or half formula and pedialyte until she can go back to straight formula. We also have some antibiotics to give her for an ear infection. She's been such a little trooper. She was really in distress on Saturday night because her throat finally started to hurt from all the crying and coughing, but it looks like we're past the worst of it.

I would love to say that we both had a hand in getting Via through all this, but I have since developed a severe head cold (with the cough still present), so Bea had to take care of both of us for almost the entire weekend. She's awesome and a great, patient woman who deserved more for her mother's day than she got. I'll take suggestions on how to make it up to her. ;)

So, in closing, we may almost be out of the woods, and that's good because we have to get the house ready for the Christening party this weekend! Lots to do, so little time. You know. The usual.

Updates

1.) Baby is now able to hold her head up (somewhat. It's more like a drunk bobblehead, but she's giving it a good try!)

2.) Baby likes to be held UPRIGHT, not sideways. We figure this is due to her need to survey her kingdom, though it makes it interesting when trying to get her to sleep.

3.) Speaking of sleeping!.....yeah, not so much. Though last night was the first night we tried to have her sleep in her bassinet in our bedroom. It kind of worked, but I was so out of it, I have no idea how often Bea may have needed to get up and take care of her. I'm so glad we've had the schedule we've had where we do this in shifts. I don't think I would have been able to wake up and get back to sleep 6 or 7 times in a night every night for the last 2 months.

4.) Baby WORKS the camera!

4.) Baby also spits up on daddy 5 minutes before her first day at daycare (which forced daddy to change his shirt and miss out on what was apparently blue shirt Monday at work). She'll be fine as long as the place is noisy all day. She can't sleep in the quiet of night, but she can sleep though a Van Halen concert. Go figure.

1 Month Later

Sorry for the gap between posts. I should have put something up sooner, but brain needs sleepy in order to typee.

So Via is, in general, just about the easiest going baby I could have asked for. She has a very good ability to calm herself (momma said she was starving yesterday in the Dollar Store and was making this known, but then just quieted down as if she had made her point and knew it would be addressed soon. Very cool) She's sleeping well through the night for the most part. Formula is the rule now, and her stomach isn't the biggest fan of the normal stuff, so we switched to the soy formula yesterday and it seemed to work right away. She had a couple gassy moments, but we got through all that and slept for up to 2 1/2 hours at a time! WooHoo!!

She's already holding her head up some (not sure what the time frame for that is, but the sooner the better I say) and she will stare you directly in the eye. Very aware of what's going on it seems, even if she has no idea what it is she's looking at, or how to control her reactions to things yet. Can't wait to interact with her more when she actually can smile and coo without it being the result of a toot. :p

Anyway, I will be more diligent about making posts. We'll be having Easter and Christening stories to tell soon enough! By the way, the Christening will be May 16th at 1:30pm. That's the week /after/ Mother's Day for those who may be concerned about mixing parties.

Carrot Top!

It finally happened! Victoria is with us and we are complete. :) Mom has decided her nickname should be Gorgeous (or at least that's what I think, because she calls her that more than anything else. :P ) And Greg finally has a little sister (diaper changing lessons coming soon!).

Little Via made her entrance about how I thought she would. Fast and furious! 15 minutes after Barbara's water broke we were beholding an orange-haired smurf! Of course her skin turned the lovely pink, but Victoria's hair decided to stay red! Go figure. And my 89-year-old grandmother called it the day before. She's like a gypsy prophet or something. I laughed out loud when I saw her hair was red. We're kind of hoping it stays that way, but you never know with babies.

We came home Saturday afternoon and have been on baby-watch ever since. Daddy takes the first part of the night till about 2 or 3 am, then mommy takes over till dawn and beyond (she's a machine I tell ya!). We'll see how this works out going forward, but it helps alot that Via is a very agreeable little girl. Already she's looking about and focusing on people's faces, very alert and responsive. Mewls like a kitten though, which is cute, but she can bark a bit when she's hungry. :p

Anyway, here are some of the pics we took over the first few days. We're going to break out the video camera tonight and take some rolling footage so you can see some of the expressions she makes.

Crisis Averted!

So it's been a while since the last post. Some of that was due to not much happening, and then it was due to WAY TOO MUCH happening all at once. :)

At 36 weeks we went for our visit with the midwife. She couldn't tell where the baby was positioned, so we had a new ultrasound done (got some new pics, really cute, though one looks like she's giving us the finger and grinning). The baby was breach and we've been spending the last few weeks trying to get her out of the comfy position she seems to have been in for the last 2 months (she was basically sideways).

We went to the chiropractor and he suggested using the Webster technique to get the baby to "spin" as they call it. He tried this for a few sessions, but wasn't having much luck. He then referred us to a lady by the name of Jeannie Ohm, who apparently learned from Webster himself how to do this technique. This was Monday of last week. On Tuesday Barbara went back to the midwife to speak with the doctor who partners with her about the baby being in breach. Unbeknownst to us, this was a consultation for a C-Section for this morning! And I was at work during this! At one point the doctor asked if she had any questions and Barbara said "No. but my husband will." The doctor said that even if we could get the baby to turn, they would induce anyway, as the chances of the baby staying in position were slim.

So here we are, scrambling to get the baby to turn. Trying to run here there and everywhere to meet with specialists and what not (during a BLIZZARD!) We met up with Mrs. Ohm and she did her thing, told us to call out sick from the c-section and gave us some incense to burn near Barbara's pinky toes to help enhance baby's calm (or something like that). This only helped to make Bea sick (she's midly asthmatic so inhaling any kind of smoke makes breathing even more difficult, let alone having a baby up in her ribs.)

By Saturday night we'd had enough. Between her laying upside down on ironing boards and half burning her toes with the incense to freezing her out with frozen bags of vegetables and taking weird homeopathic drugs, we said enough. We put it in the Lord's hands and said if it's going to happen, it's going to happen, but either way, this baby is coming on Monday!

So we spent part of yesterday cleaning the house, and then Bea and her friend Nell went out for mani/pedi/facial/shopping extraveganza! I bought a new TV (hey, we all cope in different ways). We went to bed and woke up at 4:00am to be at the hospital by 5:30 to prep for the procedure.

Long story short; it took them 4 tried to get the IV in her arm (ended up putting it in her hand and making her even more miserable), sat us down, and we waited till 7:30 when the doc and midwife showed. They gave us a courtesy ultrasound just to make sure where baby was at and.....Lo and behold, her head was in position! I have no idea what all the other bulges are in Barbara's stomach, but the one that matters is where it needs to be! Hallejujah!

The midwife did a quick check and said we are going home, as there is almost no dialation and Barbara's body isn't ready to deliver yet (though the monitor showed small contractions every 3 minutes or so).

Final analysis, we go back Wednesday night at 7:30pm (thank God. I'm dragging here at work after the early morning roll call) and they will give her a "ripener" to help the process along and possibly induce if need be. We are both just happy and relieved that we've averted any kind of sugery, and thank the Lord and all of our friends for any prayers or thoughts toward the health of our baby and mom. As it is right now, we'll hopefully have an update some time Thursday morning! :)

P.S. I'm also kind of glad it didn't happen today, since we're both sick! I don't get sick but once every 2 years or so, but feeling this crappy on the day my daughter is born would have sucked! So go Victoria! Make daddy happy! :p

This Ugly Yet Beautiful World

Went to "Birthing Class" this weekend. Thank God they didn't show the Miracle of Life video. Once in high school was enough for a lifetime. But they did show a DVD that followed a whole slew of couples on their way in and out of labor. Very interesting. I mean, these ladies were at the house, and the cameras were there with them. Then went to the hospital and it seemed like every one of these ladies had some different situation that played into the storyline (natural birth, needs epidural, need analgesic, needs c-section, etc.) And in the end, they all had the baby on camera. So yes, they're purple. Yes, they're gooey. And yes, I had to cover my face half the time because I was almost crying. Don't ask me why, but I got all choked up. Not because it was disgusting either. Barbara said she was getting choked up too, but I couldn't tell because I was trying to make sure the other men in the room didn't notice me near bawling.

Was a long day, but in the end it was pretty worth it. You can never remember /everything/ you need to remember, but it helps to get a lot of this information repeated over and over in hopes that some of it sinks in.

We also ran into a guy who went to high school with Barbara, so that was cool. We ate lunch with them and it was nice to have someone else to talk to for a bit that day. Not that we don't like each other's company, but we can only go on about how much her back hurts and how little I can do to make it feel better before we both go crazy! :p

So here we are, week 35! Installed the car seat base yesterday. I used the LATCH system, and I feel smart! We've switched cars. I now have the Rav4 and she's got the Alero. Makes for an easier ride when you don't need a booster step to get in an out of the car.

We have cleared a space on the dining room table to "Pack the bags". A week late, but as long as Via plays nice and stays inside mommy we should be fine.

Happy New Year!

So here we are! A new year. New decade. New New New.

And today marks week 33!! Anywhere between 1 and 2 months (hopefully the latter) before little Victoria Hong Kong Fuey's her way out of momma and takes over the world!

Speaking of mom, Barbara is doing about as well as can be expected. She's a little under the weather today, but she is fighting vehemently with lots of vitamin water and nasty tasting (yet power-packed) vitamin pills!

We also got some great exercise in this weekend when we went to Washington D.C. As part of our X-mas present to Greg we went down and spent Friday and Saturday in freezing temps (damn it was cold!!) running around the Smithsonian and other museums. I must say, while the D.C. metro is well put together, every single station looks almost exactly the same. We never came out on the side we thought we would come out on, and I generally picked the wrong side of the platform to stand on (we should have just started going against whatever direction I thought we should go, our success rate would have been higher).

Bea got her workout by having to climb and descend escalators that weren't working. That was fun. Those buggers are steep! And her knee was not happy with the situation, but she plugged on.

All in all, a very fun weekend though. Lots of free museums (rah!) a great hotel at a cheap price (St. Greggory, double rah!), and we even packed a cooler bag the first day and ate lunch at a bus stop before going into the museums, so it was a cheap date! (rah! rah! rah!). I think people were secretly envious that they didn't think of that one.

And so, on to the baby prep! Reading Hypnobirthing in full now (we have two copies so we can read it together), getting the birthing plan together, and making final arrangements for the big day! Can't wait!