It feels like it’s been forever since I’ve had a chance to sit down and write.  As it is, I am ignoring a pesky stack of belated grading, but I figure…it’s not going anywhere.

November was a busy but wonderful month.  I LOVE Thanksgiving!  We had three delicious dinners over the course of the week, and each was wonderful.  On the Saturday before, my whole family got together for our traditional feast.  Having everyone together is getting more and more difficult, so these times with the whole fam are precious!

We took our traditional Christmas picture, which is becoming more and more of a challenge: this year we had two additional family members to add to the mix.  My sister-in-law-to-be Katy is lovely and photogenic, so she didn’t add any complications, but Abby proved to be a tough subject to capture.  Finally!  I’m not the one messing up all the shots!  Getting the photo took the typical two separate attempts, and in keeping with precedent, the “winner” was taken in the front yard of my parents’ home.  So, after several false starts…

We ended up with all 9 of us looking fabulous!  Laura the Photographer has succeeded again!

Later on in the week, we took Abby on her longest road trip to date- four hours to East Texas to visit her great-great grandmother!  Our family matriarch is almost 97 years old, and she still lives at home in Emory, Texas, which provided the inspiration for Abby’s name.  Abby traveled beautifully in her car seat, and slept well in her pack-and-play on her first night away from home.

Speaking of sleeping, Abby is still pretty resistant to daytime sleep, although she’s improving somewhat.  She takes several short naps throughout the day- usually no more than an hour at a time.  I would love to see her consolidate these sleeps into a couple of really long nap times, but we’ll see.  I’m not really sure how to go about engineering that.  For now, I take what I can get, although my productivity is questionable (see previous post).  Her nighttime sleeping is about the same as it has been for a couple of months- she goes to be about 9 and sleeps until 6 or 7, with one feeding some time in the wee hours of the morning.  Abby is able to put herself to sleep easily at bedtime, and she goes immediately back to sleep after she eats, so I can’t complain one bit.

We’re still using FuzziBunz, and the hassle of laundry is really not a big deal.  I feel like I’m doing laundry around the clock as it is, so I don’t really notice one extra load per day of diapers.  I actually kind of like diaper loads because they’re easy to fold, unlike my normal loads of baby stuff!  Yes, they sometimes leak, but so do her Pampers.  My main complaint about the cloth diapers (and I’d love to hear input from you CD moms out there) is that Abby’s pants don’t fit over them.  So right now we only wear FB when we’re at home (or out for short trips) when I don’t usually deck her out in real “outfits” anyway.  But they are super cute, aren’t they?

Stephen was kind enough to give me an afternoon at the house by myself to decorate our house for Christmas.  Last year parts of the house were still under construction, so this year I enjoyed getting to deck ALL of our halls!  I love, love, love Christmas decorations, and it’s especially fun to be figuring out how to decorate a room for the first time.  All the possibilities!  I volunteered to host our small group’s Christmas party just to  make sure that I got all of my decorating done, which was a great incentive and deadline.  (The party was fun, too!)

We also enjoyed a fun Thanksgiving day with the Watson side of the family.  Abby is the youngest of six grandkids on that side, so Watson get-togethers are always loud and rowdy fun!  We also took a family picture, which was even more of a challenge with so many kiddos!  We took pictures at a nearby park, so the kids got to run around and let off steam between poses.  It worked!  We got a several great ones, thanks to my sister-in-law Sandy, who is our resident photo-genius.  Unfortunately, I do not have those pictures on my computer, so you can’t see them.  What you can enjoy is this picture of Stephen trying to teach Abby how to play dominoes.  You can see she shares my enthusiasm for 42.

Last weekend a couple of us girls from my small group got together to learn how to make bread.  So fun!  One of the ladies in our group is a terrific homemaker and she’s done lots of baking for her five kids, who are now mostly grown.  Another young mom and I enjoyed a few hours sitting in Carol’s kitchen, sipping on coffee and tea, tending our babies, and taking turns mixing ingredients and kneading dough!  The final result was a delicious loaf of whole-wheat bread.  I served my bread with some beef stew for dinner that night and patted myself on the back for days at the delicious accomplishment!

So Abby is taking after her mother in terms of her oral fixations.  I always swore I wouldn’t let my kids suck their thumbs, since it’s caused me so much difficulty (I have always believed that I started nail-biting as a substitute behavior).  BUT, self-soothing is such a wonderful thing, I’m letting it go.  After all, 27 years from now, Abby can always wear fake nails.

I’ve loved being back at work.  Sometimes I feel guilty for enjoying it so much, but so far I’ve felt like my work/home balance has worked out beautifully.  Abby has a team of very loving and attentive babysitters, and so I know that she is happy and well-tended while I’m away.  Teaching is a role that is familiar and comfortable, and it’s nice to get to wear that hat for a few hours every morning.  I know that maintaining balance will become more difficult as Abby gets bigger, but for now we’re in a good place.

Speaking of school, our faculty Christmas party was last weekend.  Stephen and I left Abby with his parents for the evening, and we had so much at one of our first nights away since Abby was born. We got all dressed up in our festive clothes and enjoyed hours lingering over delicious food and drinks with friends.

For those of you who are not so keen on the math, Abby is three and a half months old.  She seems so big, especially when I look back at pictures that are just weeks old!  She is getting more expressive and interactive every day, which I am loving.  She will play with toys in her bouncer and on her activity mat, and she is developing a strong grip.  She’s not rolling over yet, but she’s trying!  We’ll see the pediatrician again at the end of this month, and I’m going to ask him about a plan to start introducing some solid foods (I’m thinking of trying around month 5).  We’ve had no trouble with her feeding so far, but I’m looking forward to introducing her to some variety, mainly just to give me some flexibility when we’re on the go.

We have about a week and a half left of school, and we’re looking forward to some time off.  Stephen’s two jobs keep him very busy, and holidays are lovely times to enjoy hanging out at the house as a family.  I’m looking forward to leisurely mornings, tag-team housecleaning, holiday shopping, and, catching up with family and friends over peppermint Mochas at Starbucks.

I’m still getting used to accomplishing all of my daily chores in little 30-minute to 1-hour increments.  I’m not very good at it, which often leaves me frustrated at the end of the day.  Naptime (Or “me” time, as the Baby Whisperer calls it) goes something like this:

Swaddle Abby and put her in her crib.  Note the time on the clock to time her crying.

Decide to sweep up debris off of the kitchen floor.
Go to laundry room to get dustpan.
Notice that clothes are ready to be moved over.
Take clothes out of dryer and take them to the bedroom.  Shake out hanging clothes and lay flat beside “to-fold” pile.
Return to laundry room, move wet clothes into dryer.
Remember that Abby needs some clothes washed.
(Abby is sleeping soundly by now)
Sneak into her room to retrieve dirty laundry.
Notice folded clothes still in laundry basket.
Quickly put away folded clothes, use now-empty basket to transport dirty clothes to the washing machine.
Start a new load of clothes.
Pick up dustpan and go to sweep debris from kitchen floor.
Go ahead and sweep most obvious debris from living room also.
While sweeping near the front door, notice school bag.
Remember that I had planned to get some grading done during nap time.
Retrieve grading from school bag, set papers on the dining room table for next opportunity.
Papers remind me that I need to e-mail teaching partner about history project.
Go to computer.  Check e-mail and Facebook, read an article about healthcare bill.  (Forget to write the e-mail to Dave)
Walk back through kitchen on the way to get dustpan, see refrigerator and stop to take some chicken out of the freezer to thaw for dinner.
Hear baby crying.
Hurry to grab dustpan, sweep up final debris, empty dustpan into trashcan, put away in laundry room.  Notice that the laundry needs to be moved over again…

Will need to come back to that chore next time, because persistent squawking from the baby’s room tells me that Abby is up and ready to play!

As you know, I am not a “scrapper.”  I enjoy making digital scrapbooks: almost all of the fun, but cheaper and neater (FYI- I have made books through Picaboo, Snapfish, and Shutterfly; I can tell you pros and cons if you are interested).  I planned to do a digital book to document my pregnancy with Abby, and another book for her first year.  BUT, the one drawback to digital scrapping is that you can’t put actual “artifacts” into the books like you can with a traditional scrapbook, and I don’t have a scanner.

So, I ventured into the world of actual, pens-and-paper scrapbooking.  But I wanted to actually make this book, not just have pieces of it in a box in my craft closet.  So I chose to go simple.  I bought a spiral-bound notebook with blank pages and a pack of colored pens.  I stick pictures and souvenirs into the pages and hand-write the captions.  When I’m feeling artsy, I experiment with “fancy” lettering or hand-drawn borders.  Is it a work of art?  No.  Is it heart-felt and personal?  Yes.  And even better, it’s COMPLETELY current.  The first half of the book is my pregnancy journal, and the second is/will last me until Abby’s first birthday.

I would like to share some of my favorite pages with you.  Those of you who are scrapbooking purists can laugh and feel great about your own beautiful books.  Those of you who are less scrappy can be inspired that you, too, can do this.

Magazine letter cut-outs, stuck to the cover with mod-podge.

Our last picture taken before we found out I was pregnant. (Last year’s Christmas card)

I printed out some of my favorite waiting-for-baby blogs.

Pics of my favorite maternity clothes.  I hope that this page will be hilarious to look back on one day.

Ultrasound pictures.

(Speaks for itself)

Begin Abby pages.

Lots of special pictures from her first days at home.

Now I do one or two pages per month.  I’ve started ordering wallet-sized prints so that I can fit more photos on each page.  I caption the pictures and also tell any milestones or funny stories from each month.  The pages are very crowded, but they’re full of stuff I want to remember.

Voila!  The latest month!

We spent  a lovely evening with some of our old friends from Waco.  Jill throws a mean Halloween party, so it was quite fortunate for everyone when her little girl was born on October 30!  So here we are at Sophie’s First Birthday Costume Party.

Stephen doesn’t love costumes, but he agreed to be a good sport if I kept it simple.  Drawing inspiration from a theme party Laurashmaura threw a while back, we all came as crayons.  Stephen didn’t want a pointy hat (and I didn’t have black tissue paper anyway), so he is “used.”

Abby did not seem to mind her hat, believe it or not.  She actually wore it happily for a while.

We were part of a life group in Waco for four years.  When we started, we were all young marrieds with no kids.  Look at us now!

And a little more fall cuteness:

(You can tell she’s getting tired of the photo shoot.)

Big girl in her Bumbo seat.

You can admire her lovely orange FuzziBunz from this angle.  No, I don’t make her wear pants around the house.  What can I say…she does not get that from me.

All that sitting up got tiring.

For those of you who have only seen Abby when she’s sleeping…here is proof that she does in fact have eyeballs.  And they’re blue, for now!

This is her polite smile.

And here she’s really cracking up.  It’s too bad you can’t hear the accompanying sounds…it’s super cute!

Here’s Abby snoozing in the chair that makes me covet her life– a thick, ultra-silky blanket nest in a bouncing chair.  I would totally buy this in an adult size if I could.  Of course, the adult version wouldn’t need the spit rag standing by.

A family self-portrait.

Abby is seven weeks old this Thursday!  For those of you who are interested, here are some of our highlights from the past few weeks:

Week 6 was a big one for us– Abby has slept through the night several times now (that means 7 or so hours)!  Sometimes she will wake up once, rarely twice.  Hooray!  Her first night’s sleep followed her worst night’s sleep (4 hours, beginning at 3 AM), so we were especially grateful!  Her sleeping/eating schedule during the day is not super set-in-stone, but I think we’re getting there.

The other big development is that our little nonresponsive alien child seems to have turned into a little person–she makes lots of little happy sounds, and we are absolutely sure that we have identified a social smile!  She is getting much more alert and interactive by the day.  It’s super rewarding to get some positive feedback from our little girl.  We must be doing something right–phew!

This is not the smile, but it’s a cute face.  Stephen took this while Abby was helping him fold clothes:

On Abby’s other end, we’ve started transitioning into her FuzziBunz cloth diapers.  She wears them about 50% of the time.  Somtimes we go through our stash quickly and have to switch back over to her Pampers, and sometimes I just don’t feel like messing with the cloth, especially if we’re going to be out of the house.  Also, they are much poofier than her disposable diapers, and our little chubbo doesn’t have that much extra room in some of her clothes.  But the FB are super cute and, I think, more comfortable, and I love how they slow our progress through an expensive box of diapers.  We’ll probably try to transition into using them more and more as I get the hang of it.

Speaking of chub, Abby is packing on the pounds.  According to my last unofficial weigh-in (on my parents’ bathroom scale), she’s running about 12 pounds.  And that was at least a week and a half ago!  Some of her 0-3 month clothes are actually tight on her!  Tell me that Old Navy outfits run small… But her poundage has given her those super cute marshmallow cheeks, so I’m thrilled so far.

I headed back to work last Wednesday, and I have to say, I’m loving my schedule.  I really enjoy being back in the classroom, and I love my students and my co-workers.  My work days are short enough that I can enjoy time on the job and still feel like I’m giving Abby good quality time.  So far, so good!  Plus, it’s so fun to get to put on my dress clothes again!  Jeans and t-shirts are nice, but occasionally it’s fun to get put together.

The one sacrifice that I’ve made in my transition back to being a “working mom” is my hair–yesterday I got it cut dramatically!  It was taking too long to fix at night.  When the choice is sleep or blow drying, well, you can imagine how easy of a decision it was.  I like it pinned back  in a half-pony, so it looks like this:

And yes, Abby is making a goofy face.  We were trying to capture her smile, to no avail.

My first camera was pink and had a picture of Mickey Mouse on it.  It was the kind where you  had to buy an expensive attachment if you wanted to have a flash, and it was only good for ten flashes or so.  Plus, you had to pay to get film developed, so I remember my mom instructing me on making every shot count.

Fast forward about fifteen years, and picture rationing has gone the way of walking across the room to change the TV channel.  Now that everyone and their brother carries a digital camera around in their back pocket, picture overload is a much more common dilemma.

In the spring I worked on a scrapbook of our family trip to Germany.  Of the ten people in our group, at least five had a camera with them at any given monument.  Each cameraperson took a few shots of everything to try to get the best angle.  Click, click, click…that was blurry…a guy walked in front of my shot…now one with all of the siblings…now one with Mom and Dad in it…now one with just Alan and Katy…oh, hold up your ring and let me make sure it’s in the picture…well, you get the idea.

By the time we got home, we had literally hundreds, maybe a thousand pictures of our ten days overseas.  It took forever to sort through them all, distinguish the poor from the good from the better, and select just a lucky few to represent our trip.

Fast forward a few months, and picture these diligent documentarians in the presence of their first daughter/nice/granddaughter.  Oh, my!  Everything Abby did was new, or cute, or hard to capture on camera, so from her first weeks at home we ended up with–again–hundreds of precious images!  There were so many, it was  hard to really even enjoy them all.  Rationally, I know there’s really only so many pictures we need of those first yawns and snuggles with our various family members.  But how is a loving mom to cull the photos?

Even the pictures that are blurry or poorly lit can be hard to delete.  These photos represent moments of Abby’s life that we’ll never get back again!  Even if she’s making a weird face–not the one we meant to catch–it’s hard to get rid of it.  (Of course, if I am in the picture making a weird face, or looking excessively bloated, the choice was much easier.)

Anyway, the Germany scrapbook eventually came together, and just a few days ago, I got the bulging photo folders in My Pictures pared down to a representative hundred or so.  But it wasn’t without a few regretful scrolls through the recycle bin!

I started by making five or six sub-folders, so that I could divide the pictures up and look at a manageable number at a time.  Then I arranged “like” pictures side-by-side: all six images of Stephen dressing Abby in her coming home outfit.  Of those, I picked one that was the best.  Or sometimes I’d decide I really didn’t need a picture of Stephen dressing Abby in her coming home outfit at all, and all six would be deleted.  Hitting the delete button took some determination, but I feel a great sense of accomplishment now that it’s done.

Now I have a few great pictures that are easy to enjoy and share, and I have plenty of space on my hard drive for all of the cute faces and occasions that are coming up just around the corner!

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Follow up-  My mom and I were discussing this overwhelming problem the other day, and we decided that one good technique is to sort through pictures long after they were taken, so that you are not as emotionally tied to each one.  In hindsight, many lovely medieval buildings actually look basically the same.  It’s easier to get rid of the three or four versions of “Alan holds Abby at the hospital” when we’ve since taken several other lovely pictures of Abby with her dear uncle.  Just a little tip in case anyone else struggles with the same issue!  Meanwhile, I’m trying to break the habit of snapping three pictures of every sweet scene I’m trying to capture.

Advice for mothers of newborns tends to fall on one of two extremes:
1) You can’t spoil a newborn; do whatever it seems like she wants for a couple of months and worry about setting up routines when she’s a little older.
2)  Routines bring order and peace to your life and your baby’s life; unless you plan to cater to your baby/toddler/child/teenager’s needs for her whole life you need to start establishing boundaries and expectations right away.

My guess is that, as with most issues, the wisest choice is somewhere between the two extremes.  But, as with most searches for perfect moderation, I struggle with what that looks like.

Before Abby was born, I read Preparation for Parenting, which is the original “Christian” version of Baby Wise.  I love sleeping through the night, and I love routines and schedules, so the uber-order of this approach appealed to me.  But as a brand-newborn, Abby slept all the time.  She fell asleep while she was eating and would rarely wake up until it was time to eat again.  I couldn’t figure out how to force her to enjoy 15 minutes of independent wake time after eating, so I decided to let her do her own thing and sleep whenever she wanted to.  Her eating was always at least two hours apart, so I patted myself on the back for not letting her develop a “snacking” habit and figured that was good enough for now.

Well, last week Abby went through several days in a row of being irritable and fussy almost all day.  I decided that her problem is that she has not learned how to sleep on her own; she needed feeding or rocking to fall asleep, and she only slept soundly when I was holding her.  In desperation, I turned back to Preparation for Parenting.  But it was a little too severe for me this time around.  I did not appreciate the not-so-veiled insinuation that I was denying my child God’s best every time I rocked her to sleep.  So I purchased, and read, Secrets of the Baby Whisperer, which gave me similar advice about scheduling and routines, except with more warm fuzzy feelings.

So I am back to square one–I think it would be a great thing if I could get Abby on a more predictable schedule of eating, wake time, and sleeping during the day.  But how do I enforce that?  When Abby falls alseep eating, it’s hard to make her wake up.  If I do succeed, she doesn’t sleep well again until after the next feeding.  And how do I teach her to fall alseep on her own except for sticking her in her crib and letting her scream?  None of my books (and certainly not my feelings, for as much as those are worth) recommend the “cry it out” method, but I haven’t found very good tips for what to do instead.

So in the meantime I’m still letting Abby fall asleep however the heck she wants to, and we enjoy wake time whenever she feels like opening her eyes (which is getting more frequent!).  But, as the Baby Whisperer points out, bouncing a twenty-pound baby around the house to get her to sleep will not be nearly as fun as bouncing little newborn Abby, and I’m worried about sending a high-maintenance baby to her babysitters when I go back to work in a few weeks.  So I’m trying to think about transitioning her into more of a schedule.  Any tips from you veteran moms?

Abby is almost a month old, and since last Thursday, she’s been in a high-maintenance phase (I’m getting a rare extended-nap break…but more on this in a post to come).  Now more than ever, I’m having to make the most of every golden moment when she is not demanding my attention, which means that my to-do list for each day has to be painfully basic.  It’s allowed me to see where my true priorities lie!  I’ve been a little surprised at what routines I have been able to give up, and what I always have to make time for.

Essentials:

-Put on deodorant
-Brush teeth (I actually forgot this one day, and when I realized it I was mortified…it made me feel like I was de-evolving into a cave woman.)
-Fix hair (It’s been in the same easy style for a month now, but it’s always pulled up.)
-Put on  makeup (Again, my routine is simple, but I don’t ever skip it.)
-Change out of pajamas.  Lately, now that I can fit back into most of my old clothes, I’ve tried to wear real outfits, not just stretch pants and t-shirts.
-Open blinds in the living room
-Read.  It’s one of the few things I can do while feeding or rocking the baby, and I’ve been blazing through some of my old favorites.
-Check e-mail.
-Make bed.
-Keep house generally picked up- dirty dishes put away, baby clutter kept to a minimum.
-Feed dogs and let them outside.

And, the sometimes-surprising Non-Essentials:

-Fold laundry immediately.
-Put away folded laundry immediately.
-Sweeping and mopping floor.
-Put on jewelry
-Check e-mail more than twice a day.
-Respond to e-mail
-Answer ringing telephone
-Exercise
-Modesty (Okay, I haven’t done anything obscene.  But pre-Abby, I was modest to the point of prudery…now I just don’t care as much, especially in my own house!)
-Grocery shopping
-Turning lights on (I think it’s gloomy to keep the lights off, but if a dim room keeps the baby asleep, I’m not going to rock the boat.)
-Blogging and reading blogs

I will say, I managed to accomplish a wonderful non-essential yesterday: I put up some fall decorations!  It took me two days instead of an hour, but I got a wreath on the door and some pumpkins scattered around the house.  It makes me feel like a  homemaker again, and it reminds me that we’ve entered my favorite season of the year.

Going out of the house is a lot more complicated with Abigail in tow, but mustering up the nerve to take a few excursions has been a huge part of my return to “normal” life.

On the recommendation of our pediatrician, we’re still avoiding large crowds of friends and family, which means that we haven’t gone to church or taken visits to my or Stephen’s school.  But we got an “all clear” for being out in the world in general, so I’ve been taking advantage of my freedom!

We’ve gotten pretty comfortable taking Abby around town for short trips (so far always tightly scheduled between feedings); she’s shopped at Wal-Mart, Target, and Academy, and she’s watched me enjoy a few meals out at local restaurants, including one fun afternoon when we met my dad for lunch on his break.

Last week Abby and I traveled with my mom to go shopping in Austin, and we had a great time!  We browsed in the Domain shopping center, and walked through IKEA on the way back home.  Abby was a very good girl and even let us enjoy a sit-down lunch on the patio of a nice restaurant.

So far I’ve never been brave enough venture out for a big trip all by myself, but my nerve is up the next time I have a compelling reason to go out.  Also, we’ve introduced Abby to bottles, which she takes very readily, so that gives me even more flexibility to be out in the open with her for longer stretches of time.