Tuesday, August 9, 2011

General Updates (because I can't think of a more clever title)

I realized I haven't actually done a post for about a month now, so I figured I'd take advantage of Nettie's vaccine induced exhaustion and write a quick little update for those of you that read this.

I'll start with Nettie since she's the cutest and most interesting of our little Smith clan.  She's 9 weeks old now, which is kind of insane when I stop to think about it.  At the risk of sounding cliche, it feels like we've already had her.  But what a little blessing she is!  She's started "talking" to me sometimes when I talk to her, and she's also smiling on a more consistent basis; though, if she doesn't feel like it, she won't, no matter how long I make ridiculous faces at her.  She also can hold her head up pretty good... well, pretty good in comparison to not at all.  There's still a fair amount of bobble-headedness going on, but she likes to be held up right so she can look around at stuff.

The stats from her appointment yesterday are:
Height: 22"
Weight: Right under 12lbs
Head Circumference: Hmm... I don't actually remember.  We think her head looks huge, but apparently it's right in the same percentile as her height and weight.

And speaking of percentiles, she's basically between the 50th and 75th percentile on everything.  A fairly average baby I guess.  She got three shots and one oral vaccine at the appointment.  Needless to say, she did not like getting jabbed in her thighs, and I don't blame her.  The cute little tears were streaming down her face even before I had a chance to pick her up.  And when Tucker and I took off the bandaids at home later, the painful scream and tears started again, which made me cry (something that I've never done in relation to her).  I just felt so bad that I couldn't make her feel better.  But for the most part, she slept all day yesterday and is now asleep (with a small fever) again this morning.  Poor baby :(  I just kept telling her it was for her own good; hopefully she understands.

I've been cleared to start exercising, which I am itching to start doing.  Why haven't I started already?  Last week was crazy busy, and so far this week, I've felt too bad leaving Nettie alone cause she's feeling pretty crummy from her shots.  Hopefully tomorrow she'll be doing well enough that I can head down to the gym and sign up, cause let's face it, I look pretty gross.  Haven't exactly been the most disciplined person when it comes to eating or exercising since we got married, and it definitely shows.  I want to try to get back to what I weighed in high school... or at least my first year of college.

Also, I started taking birth control pills about a month ago (because that's when I was told to start taking them back while we were still in the hospital), and since that first week, my milk production has gone down.  So far down that we have had to feed Nettie a bottle of formula a couple times a day because I simply don't have anything to give her.  While I'm not opposed to formula, it's kind of frustrating that I'm not able to satisfy my baby's hunger.  I asked her pediatrician about it yesterday, and she said that my pills probably have the wrong mix of hormones in them for a nursing mother.  More than likely I'm going to stop taking them and opt for a more... uh... direct form of birth control and see if that helps with milk production.

Tucker has pretty much finished up his lit review (which is basically 30ish pages of him summarizing stuff that other people have written about similar stuff that he did his research on) and should be starting his thesis soon.  He also needs to get his resume updated so he can start sending it out to companies.  Kind of crazy to think that we're less than five months (potentially) away from having a real job.  Dr. Drake keeps telling Tucker that he should take a job with Glambia, a company in Twin Falls, Idaho........................................................................................ yeah.  Not exactly thrilled with the location, but apparently she thinks they would be a great company to work for and thinks that Tucker would fit into the lab there really well.  Also, the guy that runs the lab is a Bishop, and I'm sure many of the other workers there are Mormon as well, so maybe she just thinks that we need to be surrounded by Mormons, haha, I don't know.  We're not ruling it out as a possibility, but we'd really like to stay on the east coast (could always go work for Campbell's soup in Camden(?), New Jersey: worst city in America 2008!)

I can't think of anything else off the top of my head that I'd need to include in this.  It's probably already way longer than most of you will want to read.  My bad.  Oh!  At the beginning of next month I'm going to be flying out to Phoenix for a week long visit which I'm pretty excited about.  Flying with Nettie will be a bit interesting I'm sure, but we'll survive.  Lots of people do it.

And to Lindsey: One way or another I'll be in Phoenix for Christmas this year.  You can count on it.

2 Monday Pictures

August 1, 2011
Nettie got to borrow this new awesome swing from Aunt Katie.  It's pretty much our favorite thing now.


August 8, 2011
The aftermath of the two-month check up.  Shots are hard :(

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Monday Picture

Ok, so this week's picture isn't technically from yesterday (even though I did take some last night), it's from this morning.  I couldn't help but pick this picture, though.  She's so dang cute in it!

July 25, 2011

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Monday Picture(s)

I didn't post a picture last week, but I did take one.  I just never really think about getting onto my blog to do that kind of thing.  But I did think about it this morning, so voila! 

July 11, 2011
Tucker was at a conference the first half of this week so Mommy decided she would sleep in the bed (I've slept on the couch in the front room with Nettie since she was born), and so when I fed Nettie and got up, she stayed asleep and it was super cute.


July 18, 2011
First trip to Walmart = Success!  Also, first ride in our jogging stroller.  She did pretty good.  I think she's a bit on the small side for it still (it's not recommended for use until they're 6 months old... yeeeeaah.), but it was fun to push her around and have everybody smile at her.  And not gonna lie, like 6 people either talked to me and Tucker or made a comment in passing to me about her as we were walking through the store.  Even the general public thinks Nettie is adorable!  Who can blame them though?

Thursday, July 7, 2011

:)

She smiled for reals this morning.  Adorable.  No pictures yet.  Working on it though.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Happy 1 month birthday!

Nettie's a month old today.  Crazy.  That went way too fast.  Or maybe it just seems that way because my days and nights sort of blended together for awhile. 



Anyways, went to the doctor this afternoon (and left right before it started to downpour, thank goodness) and she's doing really well.  Gained a full pound since her last appointment (which was 2 weeks ago) and now weighs in at 9lbs 12oz.  Little chunker.  Although... she still doesn't look all that chubby.  Getting there, just not there yet.  She's also now 21inches long (a gain of 3/4").  Percentile-wise she's right about 50% with everything.  Average baby, yay!

She hasn't quite started smiling yet.  I think she's really close though.  Every now and then she'll get this cute look on her face that's like right on the verge of a smile.  I'm sure when she does smile it'll be adorable though.

Also, Katie let me borrow her Moby wrap this past weekend cause I couldn't figure out my sling.  Holy crap, love this thing!  Used it for the first time a couple days ago and as soon as I had it tied on Nettie was zonked out.  Even as we speak, she's strapped to my chest (sleeping).  Awesome!  I have hands to do things with again.... well.... at least when I'm holding her, that is.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Nettie's Blessing

In church this past Sunday we did Nettie's baby blessing.  It was a super special experience (made better by the fact that she decided to sleep through sacrament meeting) and all the guys in Tucker's family excluding Sam were in the circle, and my parents made the trip back out here so that my dad would be able to participate as well.  Katie (my sister-in-law extraordinaire) was much more clever than me and wrote down the blessing as Tucker was giving it.  I would never have thought to do that, but I'm really glad that she did because this will be something sweet to show Nettie later on in life.

I didn't think to get a group picture of everyone while we were at the church building (mostly because I think everyone was hungry and wanted to get out of there to eat lunch), but we did get some group shots later at Shad and Katie's house, so hopefully Barbi will upload those soon so that I can post them.  I did take some pictures of Nettie in her dress though.  She's swimming in it, but it's really cool cause it was the dress that I was blessed in.  Yeah, that's right; retro.... or vintage.  One or the other.