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Archive for April, 2010

Apparently babies have growth spurts. And from what I can tell, they happen at day 4-7, again at 3 weeks, and then again at 6 weeks, 3 months, 6 months and 9 months. Alice has hit a 3 week growth spurt… with a vengeance! No more of this casual eating every 3 hours. Every 1.5 – 2 hours, she is hungry. And when hungry, she REALLY lets us know! We are about 3 days into her feeding frenzy and apparently it can last from 2 – 7 days. I took this picture because it is such a delightful scene: formula that’s ready for her to drink.

Ahh.... a fridge ready for a hungry baby!

The opposite of this what seems like only a few hours later. OK, more than a few hours, but much less than a day! That’s when we don’t have formula ready to go for her, and it’s most likely going to be in the morning after exhausting every bottle we’ve made over night. So far it’s only happened once where we had to result to a bottle of ready-made we had left over from the hospital, but we needed it FAST!

There’s not too much to making formula, but it takes planning and time. You boil water, sterilize bottles and nipples, let the water cool, measure water & formula, mix, and refrigerate. But from when you first start to having a bottle ready, is probably about 2 hours…. you don’t want to burn yourself making the formula, and you definitely can’t feed boiling formula to Alice!

And from the fridge, it’s another few minutes in the bottle warmer. No biggie… just a few minutes, right? Unless you’ve got a screaming baby who’s just decided feeding time started 15 minutes ago and you’re late! Small price to pay, but worth documenting so when I look back at the sleep-starved first few weeks, I can remember all the formula I made, a couple times a day. And you can’t get ahead of yourself… it’s got a shelf life of 24 hours once you mix it. And once served to Alice, that specific bottle and its contents are good for only 2 hours, max. Just another one of those things you don’t see yourself doing until you’re doing it. I’m sure this is barely just the tip of the iceberg of things I never really anticipated doing….  🙂 It’s OK for all you parents to be snickering at me… you probably shared similar experiences one way or another!

My post wasn’t all about making formula all the time. I also wanted to post a few random pics taken over the past couple days. 2 are from a couple hours ago when the 3 of us had our first family outing… a BBQ on a beach hosted by some friends of ours: Thanks Jana & Tomas!

The other 2 are a shot of Kim holding Alice in our kitchen, and the other is Alice’s view above her crip with Winnie the Pooh decals and a mobile Aunty Laura made for her.

I was looking through all our photos from the past few weeks and thought it might be a good idea to post pics belonging to a similar theme. Today’s Theme: Friends of Alice! Thanks to everyone again for coming by for a visit at the hospital or home, and for your very thoughtful, generous gifts and kind words 🙂 Alice is so fortunate to be able to be brought up around so many great people! 🙂

Wow… Hard to believe that it’s been three weeks already since Alice was born. Admittedly, the first (almost) week flew by while we were in the hospital. It’s true what everyone says — one ought to enjoy her time in the hospital and treat it almost like a hotel stay, because life gets a bit wompus afterwards! Bringing Alice home was exciting, but a bit of a shock, even though we were expecting that shock. I promptly marched her upstairs to her nursery, swaddled her, and placed her lovingly in her crib to snooze while we unloaded bags and got ourselves settled… except that she didn’t snooze, of course. She screamed. And we (I?) kinda ran around like a headless chicken realizing that (unlike at the hospital) we didn’t have any formula ready, we didn’t know how exactly the cloth diapers worked, and — ack! — we were fully, completely, 100% in charge.

We’re a bit more sorted now. 🙂 We have the diapers all figured out and the formula-making under control (Rob has been AMAZING at keeping on top of this). We’re still 100% in charge, but as we’ve settled into a routine, it’s been getting easier. Mostly. I’m not going to lie — this post-partum stuff has been a bumpy ride. Given my history of bipolar disorder, I was at high-risk for post-partum depression, and I wish I could say that that ship set sail without me. Frustratingly, I had a ticket on the SS Tears Anger Misery. Not to worry — I’ve seen my doctor and asked for a full refund, which we’re working on. Administrative delays, of course. 😉 These things take time.

Generally, however, life is amazing. 🙂 Alice is the most beautiful thing in the world; you’re shocked, I know. I think she’s changing everyday. I know she has gas (baby toots are hilarious! Probably funnier for me than for her, but what can ya do). We took her first hand and foot prints today (thanks, Aunty Laura) and went on our first family walk with the stroller. (Alice loves it – falls asleep easily to the swaying – which is good because I find it has very sensitive steering and drove it over some pretty big rocks on someone’s lawn, hee hee!) We’ve been trying to take supreme care of her, of course, and she’s been accepting us with reasonably good humor. She didn’t LIKE getting shot in the face with formula, for example, but she dealt. She thinks I’m a moron for taking 45 minutes of her screaming to figure out she was cold, but she warmed up quickly enough. As I say – we try our best around here.

Alice and I are bracing ourselves for change, as Rob (World’s Best Husband and Father and General Godsend) is back on the hunt for work. It has been incredible having him at home with us for the first few weeks — I’m so very grateful that things worked out they way they did — and am now looking for and at the bright sides of having him back at bread-winning. It’ll be my turn soon enough, I suppose. Anybody looking for a professional speaker, speaking on mental health and addiction with a side of humor and personality? 😛

Thanks to everyone for their love over the last few weeks. We’re taking it in with open arms, and love you back. Lots. <3!

Since we just setup this site (thegirards.com), we might as well make use of it! And what better way than sharing a some new pictures? 🙂 Fresh out of the digital darkroom….

OK, to say this is Alice’s first photoshoot is a little misleading. For all of you who know know me even a little, you know I’m a shutter bug and have already taken hundreds of pics of Alice. However…. this evening I decided to put Alice under the lights for the first time. And interrogation? No…. just a “friendly” photoshoot! Using my new Alien Bees B400’s (lights) I recently picked up off eBay, I turned our living room into a photo studio. This certainly won’t be the last shoot of Alice, but it is the first.

Although I wasn’t able to create the images I had in my mind’s eye, these were a great start. But of course, in my mind’s eye… Alice was VERY cooperative. All in all, she was a real trooper and cooperated quite well, even if it took a milk coma to do it. How fitting!

Come back soon for more pics and blog entries about Alice. Enjoy!

Click on any of the pictures below for a larger view.

That’s all for now… see you soon!

And for those of you who are tech-savvy and use an RSS reader, feel free to subscribe to the site to have updates pushed your way.

This website is dedicated to keeping family and friends connected with us as Alice grows. We know that most of you live far away, so hopefully this little glimpse into Alice’s start in life with help you feel closer to her and us.

Kim & I will both try to post updates, but as we are still trying to get into a routine with Alice, I have no idea how often we’ll be making updates…. but we will sometimes, so check back from time to time. And for the tech-savvy readers that use an RSS reader, this site has a feed, so subscribe using the link at the bottom of the page!

These are some of the first pics of Alice, all taken in her 5 days of life, at the hospital. More to follow!