Embracing the Camera

Embrace the Camera is this great idea Emily Anderson from the Anderson Crew came up with. You just take a picture of yourself and the people you love every week. I meant to do this every week since some time in March and forgot. Not this week. I took a picture with Norie on Tuesday and actually remembered to post it.

I was obviously exhausted, but I sure look happy.

My new favorite Youtube video

One of my favorite bloggers included this video in her post today. I watched it twice. In a row.

Hilarious.

I really should be more productive

But it's so hard when someone do cute wants to nap on your chest.

My life is a total cluster feed.

Little Miss is growing like a weed. An adorable, loveable, cuddly weed, but a weed nonetheless. I think she's in the middle of a growth spurt because she's eating even more than usual.

When we first got home the hospital she consistently nursed for about 40 minutes of every hour between 10pm and 2am.

Yes, I'm serious. We're talking I would feed her, burp her, change her and then she'd sleep for ten, maybe fifteen minutes before she'd wake up a want to eat again. She didn't do this in the middle of a day. Only when I wanted to fall into bed.

If you've never had a newborn keep in mind that average is nursing about 20 minutes a side every 2 hours. That's from the beginning of the nursing, not the end. You might luck out and get a whole hour and twenty minutes or so between feedings. 

The first couple of nights I was still caught up in the bliss of new motherhood and felt like I could do anything as long as she was in my arms so it wasn't a hige issue. I got over that about the same time I realized I'd gotten 9 hours of sleep in the 3 days since she was born. 

At her one week appointment I asked the pediatrician if her rapid fire feeding desires were typical. Turns out it is. At least its typical enough that there is a term for it, cluster feeding. Her advice was to make sure she eats every two hours or so during the day and hope that reduced her need to feed so much at night, As of 10:46 this morning I was feeding her for the third time since 8:30 am.

My life is a total cluster feed.

I did it! And other interesting yet somewhat random facts of yesterday

I jogged/walk 2.5 whole miles yesterday. I figured I could, but I wasn't really sure about just how difficult it would be. I stayed pretty active during my pregnancy, but I certainly didn't run or jog or even think about it beyond staring wistfully at joggers as I waddled about campus. Yes, I'm a little sore.  Luckily, I just need to put in 30 minutes on the elliptical today which should be a lot easier.

Yesterday was Norie's first day of working on furniture with me and Grandma. 

She mostly just supervised. I was impressed with her dedication to the cause. She didn't even get very upset when I used the power sander. Apparently all the time I spent using power tools while I was pregnant paid off.

And perhaps the most exciting news of the day - Kleio seems to be warming up to Norie. That's really good since I'm pretty sure she spent the first couple of weeks hoping one of the people who came by to visit would take Norie home with them. She even joined Norie for some tummy time. 

I also attempted to actually take those photos with my real camera yesterday. That didn't quite happen, but maybe today. Not sure though. I have big plans to finish the Thank Yous from the baby shower AND construct an awesome medal display for the tasting room.

10k Training: Day 1

My husband works for a brewery (sure does) and that brewery cosponsors a 10k road race every year on the first weekend in August. Why they chose August and not some cooler month like April or October I'm not really sure, but it's tradition now so I don't see it changing anytime in the near future.

It's called the Brew 2 Shoe because you run from the brewery to the Manhattan Running Company. Every year they donate the proceeds to a different cause and I'm told it's generally a good time. I've been wanting to train for and run this race for at least the last couple of years, but so far I haven't even attended as a spectator. I meant to way back when I was training for that family half marathon (that no one ended up running) back in 2010 and again last year. I've just never quite been able to get myself to train in the heat of summer.

I've decided this summer will be different. I'm on maternity leave for basically the first half of my training program which hopefully will mean I have some time to run (feel free to laugh out loud at this idea). At the very least I'm determined to try. I don't have super high expectations. I haven't gone for a single run since I got pregnant last August so I'm probably more out of shape than I have ever been in my entire adult life. My goal is to finish. I don't even care if I can run the whole thing. I mean I would like to be able to job the whole thing, but I'm not proud at this point. Finishing is good enough for me.

I start the Hal Higdon Novice 10k training program today so wish me luck.

Oh, and if anyone lives in the area and wants to train with me let me know. :)

...and I'm back.

We've had some major developments since my last post. Turns out the "until they would induce me" part of my pie chart was totally unnecessary. I gave birth almost 14 whole days ago (after a full day of completely unmedicated labor - yes, I am a champion). 

How do they decide how long labor lasts anyway? Should I count from when I first knew I was having regular contractions? When they got bad enough that I stopped trying to do laundry and clean the house before people came? Is there some duration and frequency that officially marks the beginning? I feel like I should know these things, but I don't and saying I was in labor for 16 hours sounds like a really long time.

Anyway, at the end of all that I had a gorgeous new baby

a completely unnecessary IV thing,a self inflicted scratch on my forehead and perhaps a tiny bit of PTSD.  That night I told Austin that if we were going to do this again we were adopting. The smile in the picture is a little bit joy of new motherhood and a whole lot of super happy she we outside of my body. I got over it by day two.

Two weeks later she's filled out and looks way cuter. At least I think she does. And her shirt says so. That means it must be true.

Now that we've normalized a bit I think I'll be back to posting starting with all the awesome nursery projects I worked on before her birth, but never got around to documenting. I'm planning on taking a metric crap ton of pictures today and posting about them over the next couple of weeks.

I'll probably post some entertaining stories about new motherhood too. I'm convinced Norie was having contraction nightmares the day after she was born. She must take after me. I'm pretty sure I did too.