Food!

Jillian is all about the rice cereal! She tried it for the first time last Saturday. She moved it around in her mouth and most of it came back out. Last night we offered some for the third time and she loved it! I mixed up one tablespoon of the cereal with 4 T water and she ate all of it. She kept her eye on the spoon and followed it with her mouth, leaning as far forward as she possibly could in her bubble chair. She had her hands a-flapping as well. It was fun to watch her be so excited about it. We took pictures and video but I need to get them onto a drive so I can upload them. Meanwhile, I'll post other recent photos. Jillian is doing very well, being her happy self most of the time. She has started going to sleep quickly for us again which is a relief.

Garrett used the chainsaw on Saturday to cut up trees that Neighbor Frank brought us in the fall. It took him a few hours and 2 blades on the saw. Garrett dropped off the blades for sharpening so he can finish the last two trees. Between the trees from Frank and the wood from the tree we had taken down last summer, we should have enough for burning this coming winter. Garrett has been working on his Stryker project that has a deadline of the March 31. Things are on track and hopefully continues. The project consists of a rig he designed and had made by the local machining company that simulates breaking the spindle within the wheel well and collecting the data. I'm sure there is a lot more to it than that and he can catch you up the next time you chat with him. He's almost done collecting the data and will work on analyzing and writing the final report.

I've been busy working on numerous projects at work. The 4 day weeks are working out very well. The 10 hour days are long and the evenings short but having Friday off is great! Tomorrow I plan to make the rounds to the grocery store and Target to find deals on food and household items. I have been looking for sales and collecting coupons to add to the sale items to get awesome prices. Starting today, Payless has the pasta we buy on sale for 0.49. I found coupons that are $1 off of 2 boxes. So, that means free pasta (and I'll make a few pennies also)!! I plan to "buy" 10-20 boxes depending on the stock. I want to leave some boxes for other people, even though I'd like to clean out the pasta shelf! I know we will eat it (whole wheat) and it is shelf stable for a good while. Anyway, I'm excited about finding great deals and hope to continue getting better at it.

This was a quick update and I hope to get those other photos/videos of Jillian eating posted soon. I hope everyone is doing well and gearing up for Spring!

Beginning

After the sawing

I saved the best for last....

Fridays Off!

This week I started working 10 hour days, Monday through Thursday. The days have been long but I'm looking forward to Fridays. I also spoke with my KCA (dog playgroup) boss (Layla) and this coming Saturday is my last day. I took Jillian in to meet Layla last week and talked to her about taking some time off and possibly returning if I can ever start working part time. She was very nice and understanding and said she would gladly welcome me back if/when the time comes. It is tearing at my heart to be away from Jillian so much. Hopefully the scheduling actions I've taken will help.

After getting her shots last Thursday Jillian ran a fever that night. It was up to 101.6 before I decided to give her a dose of Tylenol. She was really fussy and obviously uncomfortable. At 102 we call the doctor. Within 20 minutes her fever was done and she was comfortable enough to fall asleep. Friday morning she was fine, no fever. Then the daycare called at 11am saying it was back up to 101.5. The rule is if a fever reaches 102, the child must leave so I went over and gave her another dose of Tylenol. Again, it helped. Friday night she began running a fever again around 5:30. She was very fussy but the fever was only to 99.6 so I didn't give her any medicine. She fell asleep for the night and was fine on Saturday. She has been very fussy ever since Saturday. I went to visit her over my lunch today and the caregivers said she had not been fussy. She's also been very upset when we put her in her crib. Before this, we would lay her down and she'd fall asleep within 10-15 minutes. Perhaps she's starting to figure out that fussing/crying gets attention. I'm not sure how to handle this but I suppose we'll get it figured out just in time for her to start changing more.

We've been cycling through a number of children's CDs that Mary and David gave us on our car rides into town and home. She seems to really like Raffi. She stops pouting when I turn it on and likes it even more when I sing along. Therefore, I have memorized almost every song on the CD. My coworkers have had a chance to hear my awesome talent of singing children's songs. They really stick in your head!! The songs are so cheerful and upbeat that I can't help but get energized when they pop in my head!

I have started couponing. Not crazy (yet) but trying to print coupons off from online sites to help with our grocery costs. I found one yesterday for up to a 4lb bag of IAMS cat food for free after mail-in rebate. That's almost $7.50! I'm hoping that on my Fridays off I can have coupons printed and do grocery shopping with Jillian. Have to start her early on the bargains/sales! Speaking of groceries, I work directly across the road from Walmart, which I truly dislike to venture into, but I do. So, every week or two, I do our shopping over my lunch hour. I take an insulated bag to work with me that has ice packs and put the cold items I buy into the bag so I can leave them in the car rather than hauling them up to my break rooms' fridge. Ugh, not fun. While on maternity leave, I would get up with Garrett on a weekday morning and go to the store at 7am. That is a great time to go and not deal with cranky customers and/or employees.

The photo above is after we tried everything to help Jillian be happy. We put her in the Bob and strolled around the house until she fell asleep, about 45 minutes, but it was a quiet 45 minutes. She slept here for almost an hour.

I need to get back to work. but thought I'd chat here for a while. I hope you're having a great week. We miss you all.

~Chris

Shots=Boo

Hi there everyone. I'd like to start off differently, but I'll jump right to it. Jillian had her second set of shots today and she sure was upset. All I want to do is be at home snuggling with her. She cried and cried during and after the pokes. I held her for a bit in the exam room after the nurse left and she sadly continued to whimper. I have to say she is still so cute when she's upset but I prefer the happy, smiling Jillian. I took her back to the daycare where she was so sleepy and wanted to be held. Instead of taking her home, I reluctantly left her with Sarah (caregiver) who said she'd snuggle with her. Leaving her after shots was right up there with leaving her at daycare for the first time. I'm antsy to leave work and pick up my baby. I'm sure she'll be fine but as most of you know, it's a tough thing to see your little one so upset. The good news is she is up to 13 pounds, 7 ounces and almost 24 inches long, the average for both weight and height. The pediatrician suggested starting rice cereal so I'll have to look into the different brands, prices, etc and find what Jillian likes.

Garrett has been very busy with work as well as myself. He had to move his primary project to Purdue's campus, which involved moving lots of heavy metal and many parts. He has been working so hard and coming home worn out. Seeing his girls always cheers him up. I've been quite busy at work also with odds and ends for a variety of projects. Lots of R&D and validation work has to be completed before production for a study can begin. Our method development group has been too busy so some of their work has come to us. I'd like to get back to production work.

I will be starting a new schedule at work starting next week. After thinking of a solution to spend more time with Jillian, I came up with a plan that has been approved to work 4, 10 hour days, having Fridays off. They will be long days but it means I get an additional full day with my girl. We don't have much time in the evenings with her since we get home around 5-530pm and she goes to sleep around 8pm most of the time. The daycare said this is fine with them and that I could still take her in on Fridays. I won't be doing that since the whole point is to spend that time with her but it would be great if I need to schedule Jillian's and my own doctor's appointments. I can plan two or three on one Friday to get them done and I won't have to miss work. When I proposed this idea to the head of my Bio department, he offered me the opportunity to begin training on mass specs and other equipment to lead me into a promotion. I sure hope it works out. I am also going to speak with my other boss from the Klondike Canine Academy this afternoon to tell her that I would like to stop working there for a while. I continued on with the dog playgroups after maternity leave to see how it went but I feel I need to spend every minute I can with Jillian. Even seeing her everyday, I feel that I'm missing so much.

Jillian continues to sleep through the night. She is becoming so much fun. She has now started "talking" so loudly that it hurts our ears at times! Last night she was sitting in her bubble chair while Garrett and I ate dinner and I thought she was getting fussy but she was just holding onto her little rabbit talking up a storm while occasionally chewing on rabbit. Developmentally, she is doing everything she should be at 4 months (yep, already 4 months). She's such a happy girl most of the time. Below is a video I took last week. She's only reaching half of her vocal capacity.

Funny Girl

Jillian's cold is mostly gone now, with just a bit of a cough remaining. There has been no need for the saline wash in the past few days and she seems to feel better. She is becoming very aware of her surroundings and watches everything gone on around her. She really likes watching the dog and cats walk around and she has started petting them with our help. Ally was next to us on the couch one evening and Jillian was watching her. I leaned us over and put Jillian's hand on Ally and moved her hand across the fur. I let go and she kept her hand on the cat and then grabbed and pulled out some fur. Ally didn't even care! Poor kitty, I think she just wanted attention and it didn't matter how she got it! She's also becoming so aware of her surroundings that after nursing for a few minutes, she pulls off looks up at me and smiles really big, then latches back on. She takes a few gulps, looks up and smiles, and latches on again. It is really funny and adorable but a little irritating, so to speak. I looked up why she might be doing this and what I found is that she is most likely becoming more aware of her environment and getting distracted. Last night I gently held her head in place and she would stop nursing, look up at me, then continue again which worked nicely. I just laugh when she starts doing this because she just smiles sooo big. She is a funny baby.

Jillian has been starting to fuss in the evenings when she decides she wants to go to sleep for the night. It took a few nights to figure this out but now most nights, as soon as we lay her down in her crib she falls to sleep very quickly. Beforehand, I can tell she gets sleepy and lots of talking to her or walking around with her is more stimulation than she wants and she gets a look of being overwhelmed. I've heard that once you start to figure out your child, it seems they've changed again and you start all over. I'm starting to see that. She is growing so fast. Sunday we moved her up into a small 6 month piece of clothing and we're finishing up the bag of Newborn diapers, going to start her in size 1. But I don't want her to be in bigger diapers! Sheesh. Happy and sad at the same time. Gotta love my Jilly Bug.

The Sniffles

We made it through the past few days of bad weather and are back to work today. Tuesday it began to snow about 1:00pm and I was able to leave work by 2:00pm. Purdue cancelled classes and only required essential staff to report to work so Garrett had the day off. This worked out well because Jillian's daycare closed so she got to spend a good part of the day talking to daddy at home. After I got home it started sleeting heavily. My work, Purdue and Jillian's daycare were all closed again yesterday so we tried to catch up a bit on cleaning. We had a little snow come yesterday after the continued sleet but we didn't get near the amount of snow originally forecast. The county roads this morning had been plowed but were ice covered most of the way into town.

Jillian has had the sniffles for a couple weeks now. I thought her cold was gone but it returned. I called the pediatrician early last week asking how I could help her. We've been doing saline washes along with running a cool mist vaporizer in her room. I took her to the pediatrician on Monday because she'd seemed to be worse on Sunday and I wanted to make sure she didn't have an ear infection or getting pneumonia due to the rattling in her chest. He said she was fine and just had to work through it. The saline washes work really well with clearing out her nose, but oh my how she dislikes it. She has figured out when we're about to do it and gets fussy and cries while we do it, but as soon as we're done, she stops crying and seems happy again. She's back to sleeping most of the night again which makes mommy happy. The two girls that watch her at daycare said that she is a joy to care for even when she's feeling lousy and that that is saying something. I love my baby. She is just perfect.

Jillian is now grasping items very well and holding on to them for a period of time. The past few days when we've set her on her activity mat she bats at the dangling toys. She reaches up to her mouth all of the time and if her pacifier is there, she either holds on to it in her mouth or pulls it out and keeps a hold of it. If anything gets near her mouth, she leans forward to mouth it. She really likes daddy's shoulders and gets them nice and slobbery for him. Instead of sucking on her pacifier at one point yesterday, she was chewing on it. In addition to chewing on things constantly, she has been drooling A LOT. I'm convinced she is teething and we need to get more things for her to chew on. This chewing is getting uncomfortable for mommy, too.

She is now on 1/4 formula in her bottles we take to daycare. I think my body has adjusted and I'm almost making what she needs each day. We gave her a bottle a few nights ago because she hadn't eaten it at daycare and we didn't want it to be wasted. When it got to the last ounce, she started chewing on the nipple instead of eating. Here's our sign (she's teething)! I wasn't expecting the teething yet but I looked it up and it can certainly be happening this early. It's hard to believe she's coming up on four months young. Every time we lay her down to be changed, she starts smiling big. She does the same thing when she hasn't seen one of us for a while and we walk up and tell her "hi". She brings her hands up to her face and smiles and wiggles. I took her over to a friend's house last Sunday for a play date. Addison is one week older and I work with her mom (Melissa) at Klondike Canine Academy as playgroup monitors. Addison was one week late and Jillian one week early. Addison is a big girl and very sweet. She really liked looking at Jillian while Jillian wasn't quite into looking back at her as much. We spent over 3 hours visiting and had a great time. More play dates to come I hope.

I submitted my online application and had fingerprints taken last week for my handgun permit. I need to take the paperwork the police station gave down to the sheriff's department to complete the process and then they will send me the permit. I should have it by next week. The fingerprinting was neat with it being digital. They roll your fingers across a clear plastic platform and it shows up on the computer screen while your finger is rolled. I found it really cool but I'm kind of a dork sometimes.

More to come later. Hope everyone is well. Stay toasty!

Jilly Boo

Tummy Time!

The Bubble Chair

Bobbing Along

The Swing of Things

It has yet to get easier to drop Jillian off each morning at daycare. I realize this is only the second week but I find myself not wanting to let her go. Miss Sarah, one of her caregivers, stands next to me after I pull Jillian out of her car seat and I reluctantly hand her over. Once I do let go of her, I tell her to be a good girl and I just have to touch her little hand. Every night last week I cried at the thought of having to drop her off again the next morning. I have held back the tears this week, so perhaps it's not that it's getting "easier," rather it is just something we have to do. She's such a perfect little baby.

Jillian continues to grow and change so quickly. She follows us with her eyes when we walk across the room. She watches Huntley and the cats when they catch her attention. She has started grasping her toys when she feels them brush on her hand. Garrett was offering her her pacifier a few nights ago and she leaned forward with her mouth open to latch on to it. She smiles more and more and has great conversations with us, especially Garrett. When she hears either of our voices she turns for us. She was dozing yesterday afternoon when I walked into her room at daycare and said hi to the caregiver. She opened her eyes and looked around for me. She has been doing really well with her rolling over from her belly to her back with little effort. Yesterday Sarah said she was cooing a bunch. She has been doing very well at daycare with taking bottles and not being too fussy. That makes us happy that she seems happy there. Perhaps that explains why she cries almost the entire way home each evening. Well, not sure if that's the reason, but I like to think that she has a good time.

Last weekend we started supplementing her with formula. I had stocked some milk in the freezer before going back to work but she was going through it really fast. Perhaps the stress of everything kept me from producing as much milk the week before going back to work so I decided to try the formula over the weekend. I gave her half breast milk, half formula in a bottle a few times and she has had no problems with it. She continues to have the combination at daycare this week. I'm bothered about supplementing but I tried to increase my supply with little luck. I called a lactation consultant and they presented the option of trying herbs. Supposedly there are a couple that help increase supply but there has been little research on their overall effect so I'm hesitant to try them. This week I'm almost keeping up with her so we'll see how it goes. As long as I can provide some, that's better than none.

Every time for the past few weeks that she's had a bm, she has overfilled her diaper! Then she urinates but there's no more room for it to absorb. Needless to say that she's been getting frequent baths and we've been doing more loads of laundry. She has a Bumbo chair that is supposed to help her gain strength in her neck and back. You can look it up to get a better idea of what it looks like and she enjoys sitting in it. We have renamed it the Bubble chair because every time we put her in it, she passes gas. I'm not sure if it's just the position that helps the bubbles come out or if she relaxes in it, either way, it works! And the best part is that she's happy and isn't crying her eyes out with the gas. It doesn't work if she has colic before we put her in it because she's too unhappy to be set in the chair. Her colic doesn't come as often anymore and doesn't last as long as a month ago, thank goodness.

Jillian had her first cold last week but quickly recovered. We set up a cool mist vaporizer in her bedroom at night and that seemed to improve her stuffiness. She was so congested in her nasal passages she was having a difficult time eating and it was making her frustrated, understandably so. She continues to sleep most of the night. This week she has been waking around 4:30am to eat, then quickly goes back to sleep until we're ready to leave the house for the day. That's enough time for me to get back in bed for another 30 minutes but then I really don't want to get back up. Since Monday night I've had a dry scratchy throat so it's been hard to fall asleep. Last night I got about 4 hours by the time I was able to fall asleep with help from a throat spray. I was thinking this morning that from now on I should just stay up and get on our elliptical so I don't have to fit in exercise in the evenings. Until Spring, then we'll be taking more walks. We've been going out on the calm days when there's little wind. At least the cold temperatures are bearable then. I'm ready for Spring. Ready for green grass, tall corn and soybean fields surrounding our house and flowers and the garden. Not sure what we'll plant this year in the garden but it would be fun grow something. Perhaps I'll use our entire garden spot and plant a gigantic plot of flowers. Yeah, that's what I'll do. Well, we'll see. It would be fun to plant at least pumpkins again.

My work has been going well. I got back into the swing pretty quickly. The work right now is steady but not crazy busy. Garrett continues to be busy with his job. Everything else seems fine and we're enjoying every minute with our little girl. She's the best gift and we feel so fortunate to have a healthy and happy baby.