Work and Day Care

So I am back at work and things seem to be going alright. Piper is in her second week at day care. By day care, I mean I drop her off at someones house two days a week. She seems to be enjoying her days as her nanny hasn't seen her cry yet, except for when I pick her up. :( The last two days I have gone to get her, when I pick her up and take her from Jaime, she has cried. Kind of depressing.

She is all smiles and giggles with me in the morning though and the last two nights she has slept for almost 12 hours each night. I am not sure what she is doing, but we did switch to putting her in a gown and swaddling and I think with the gown around her feet she can get out of the swaddle as easily. Both nights she has gotten her arms out, but the rest of the swaddle stays around her. She doesn't nap much during the day and we are usually lucky now if she takes one good 2 hour nap. Usually it is a lot of cat napping 30min here and there. But I can't complain because she is great at night. Usually we have just one middle of the night feeding halfway through, so it isn't bad now.

We finally got the baby jogger rigged up with the car seat adapter and I tried it out yesterday morning for the first time. I went to take pictures only to find that the camera battery was dead. She seemed to enjoy the wind blowing across her and the steady running and took a little nap during the run. I managed to run most of the time, walking up a few of the bigger hills in the neighborhood. Just have to get use to pushing an extra 50lbs for now until she can ride in it without the car seat.

Spaghetti Squash

We received a spaghetti squash in our CSA last week. We have both never had one before so I went searching for a recipe to make.

Here is what I ended up making: Recipie

I swapped out the olives for zucchini since EZ doesn't like olives and we got zucchini in the csa too. And it was sooo good! Really easy to make too! I did cook the squash longer and cooked it in a baking dish cut in half with a little water in the dish and it turned out great.

Spaghetti squash is an interesting veggie...it totally seems like a cross between spaghetti and has a hint of squash flavor. We both really enjoyed it and would highly recommend it!

Look what I can do!

Piper is becoming smarter by the minute...only if we get her to hold on though!

Piper Update

Here are some recent photos of our dear daughter:

We put on our Arkansas onesie for the game opener last weekend...its a little big but that just means it should last the season:



But we fell asleep before the game even began:



Tummy time is getting better:





I enjoy sitting up:




Napping away:



We start our nights swaddled tight and having our head face the near side of the crib, and usually wake up completely unswaddled and turned around 180 degrees:

Liquid Gold

I started back at work last week and so I have had to start pumping at work now. I have only been at work 3 days and of those 3 days, 2 of them have been mini fiascoes! Last Thursday I was pumping and in the process of switching one container to another spillage...5 oz of liquid gold onto the floor of my office. Yeah. Then yesterday I was trying out these pump and save bags where you pump right into a bag you put into the freezer. Well the bag wasn't quite open enough and as the milk was going in it could and built up back into the pumping tubes and started cycling through the tubing. Good job LZ!

Then this morning I head out to the deep freezer to transfer said bag I used yesterday at work plus the bags I had in the freezer in the kitchen and I open up the freezer and it smells rancid. What in the world...somehow it lost power and all my breastmilk I had been pumping for the past 2 months is spoiled. It is everywhere. This stuff is liquid gold and the fact that I had made it this far after my "I hate breastfeeding" post is a miracle. I am completely bummed that I lost almost 200 oz of it. I want to stop breastfeeding as soon as possible (yes I am one of those) and my stash was my crutch to be able to continue longer as I kept going. Wonderful!

I called EZ who was really apologetic...all that work for nothing, he said he would look into an alarm for the deep freezer so it won't happen again.

Time to go eat some ice cream or something (yes it is the middle of the day) to lift my spirits! :)

Poop

According to EZ, our daughter doesn't poop.

So APZ has some erratic pooping schedules as babies do, but we had gotten on a pretty regular every other day poop deal. I went back to work this past week and EZ stayed home with our darling angel and of course her pooping schedule was MWF not the TTh he was home. Well he had a three day weekend and so our scheduled day was Sunday for our next adventure and what do we have...no poop. And what about Monday, nope, still nothing. Now we are going on 4 days and what person would be comfortable after 4 days of not pooping...so little miss APZ has been a bit fussy. So fussy I was up with her at 4 this morning and we were up and down from 4 on.

So at 7:15 I sit down to feed her again before I need to go to work and EZ heads off to work. Literally the minute he walked out the door after saying goodbye, bam! Oh my sweet daughter, your dad is missing out here! One of these days you need to grace him with the biggest present possible as you have done for me so many times!

OBX

We headed to the Outerbanks for a quick weekend trip to meet EZ's brother and their family there. They had rented a house in Salvo for the week and graciously let us come and stay with them for a couple days. We could have forgoed the trip and they could have driven out to see us on their way back to NY but we took them up on the chance to get away for the weekend.

This was our first trip with APZ, and geez, we need a lot more crap to bring her along. Not just the packnplay but all the other essentials-diapers and wipes and pump stuff and clothes for every occasion, the stroller, borrowed a pop up tent for the beach for her, just about everything under the sun.

We had a great plan. She has started somewhat of a pattern at night waking up for a middle of the night feed, anywhere from 1-3 and then again around 5am. Our plan was to be packed and then when she got up at 5, feed her and head out. We went to bed at our usual 9pm at night and then the unimaginable happened. By 5am she hadn't woken up at all. What do we do?? It has been 8 hours already...so we got up and ate breakfast and packed the car. Still she slept. At 6am, I woke her up and changed her and started to feed her but she was pretty much dead asleep. It took 30 min to feed her when it normally takes about 15. In the car, more sleeping. Woke up briefly to eat and then back to sleep.

We made it to the OBX and hung out for a little and she was actually awake for a couple hours and then fell back asleep. After another feeding, she fell back asleep at 3:30 that afternoon. And she slept, and slept, and slept...until 11:00pm. I kept asking EZ if we should wake her...is something wrong, but he said, she obviously needs sleep, so we let her sleep. She went back to bed too and slept until the morning. In a period of 36 hours, we probably had only 4-5 waking hours. It was truly bizarre and what I am attributing to a growth spurt (she had been feeding a lot preceding this). Now we are back on our being awake all morning and sleeping in the afternoon for our nap.

It was our first trip to the OBX and it was beautiful weather and EZ had fun in the ocean while I hung out with Piper under the tent. Here are a few pictures from the trip:

Our 3 nieces with Piper:



At the lighthouse:


And a couple photos of her many faces: