Grandparents Bellenger Visit, Starting to Reach for Toys!

Momma has not had as much free time as she thought in these last couple weeks before returning to work.  As such, the blog updates have suffered.  But something is better than nothing!

Gma & Gpa Bellenger visited our little family last weekend.  They arrived Friday early morning (1am) and I had slept through my alarm to pick them up - so it was a quick trip to SFO and they were such troopers!  At a more reasonable hour of the morning we all had a delicious egg, spinach and toast breakfast.  Mmmmm.... ten we decided to head to the Coast for clam chowder and a beer!  To Half Moon Bay we went!  At Pillar Point we happened upon a group of folks with very fancy video and photography equipment, including a guy with an 8-propeller drone carrying a luminix camera.  Clearly something big was happening so we stuck around.  As it turns out, this was the opening ceremony for the Mavericks big wave competition season.  A number of big name big wave surfers were there as well as the captain of the Oracle America's Cup boat that just won the title in SF Bay.   Very cool.  After gawking for an hour or so, we enjoyed our clam chowder and beer at the HMB Brewery - always a treat.  Then, we were headed home to chill and crash early.

Gorgeous Day

Do you see the drone?

Mom and Capt Spithill!

Saturday morning we finally managed to Skype with Sarah in Afghanistan!  Awesome!  She looks great!   Later, Kevin and I had our eyes checked while Mom and Dad babysat.  We all hit up Red Robin for a very late lunch and then were off to the Unhaunted House at Sulphur Creek Nature preserve with the Janeiro's/Browns where Kathy was dressed as Super Woman and we did the tour of creepy Halloween type animals.  Very cute setup!  Afterwards, Patti and Steve had us all over for a pizza and salad dinner - delicious!!!  We had to leave around 8:30 pm though because someone was a bit cranky and wouldn't fall asleep.  However, she did really well in the Baby Bjorn at Sulphur Creek.

Sunday we watched the 49ers for a little while, Mom and I attacked the pantry reorganization and moth killing project - success!!!  I think that day we also took Olivia's 3-month photos (a couple days late, but no biggie)  Evetually we hit up the Perry Farm pumpkin patch (Olivia's first pumpkin "patch") but unfortunately all the good pumpkins were gone.  We missed our chance!  But, it was a fun opportunity to use our fancy camera and perhaps I'll pick up a pumpkin tomorrow at the grocery.  Gotta have a pumpkin for Olivia's first Halloween!  We took a very short and windy walk at Coyote Hills and discovered that they no longer pump water into the marsh there - to be a seasonal estuary.  Sadness.

Olivia was a good girl for her grandparents.  She really started "talking" to people in the last week.  Although, today she pretty much slept all day.  The toy that mom brought from Walter is a HUGE hit!  She's finally reaching for toys.  I hope to dress Olivia up in her new dresses in the next week.  She's still doing pretty well at daycare. I've finally figured out how to do side-by-side nursing so when she awakes for the ~4 am feeding, I bring Olivia to bed with me and nurse her back to sleep.  We cuddle in bed in the morning until it's time to get up.  I treasure these mornings.  There's nowhere else I'd rather be.

Tomorrow is my last day to myself before returning to work Monday.  The task at hand is crown moulding installation.  The contractor arrives in the morning so tonight was spent moving furniture and getting ready to sleep in the guest room again.  I can't wait for this part of the projects to be over. Two days.  Although, we'll have to caulk the moulding too since she doesn't do that part. I'm hoping to have a little more time tomorrow while Trina's working to add photos to this post and upload to smugmug.  For now, I'm exhausted and little one will be wanting some food shortly, I'm sure.

The Planting Continues

Olivia slept a whopping 10 hours last night!  She certainly learned something at daycare yesterday.  I've just put her down for tonight and we'll find out if that was a fluke.  She was pretty well-behaved at daycare again today and was sleeping when I dropped by.  I had a nice chat with the caregivers and when Olivia woke up during my mid-day visit I changed her and had a few minutes of snuggle time.  I think she was pretty tired again tonight when she came home.  Olivia drank all 10 ozs that I sent in with her and next time we'll send a little more.

Snuggling before Daycare...  so comfy, hard to take her in.  But then she awoke and started fussing - whoops! time to go!

For my part, on this my second day with free hands for more than 45 minutes, I finished planting a bunch of things in the backyard and had my hair cut for the first time since before baby.  It's time to start looking professional (sigh).  Hair is a little shorter than I'd like, but it's all good.

Tonight I hope to get a few more little things done... laundry, some emails, and possibly even call LM tech support to finish activating my accounts.  Sure would be nice to have that compliance training over with.  It's stressing me out for some reason.

Tomorrow we have a walk with Shonna & Deanna and their little ones in the morning.  Otherwise, we'll be hanging around the house and paying bills, straightening up.  Fun stuff!

Done with dinner, time to keep doing things... this is the neurotic part of my personality that Kevin is so good a calming me out of, especially at night.

Nighty-Night!

First Day at Daycare and Mommy's New Toy

Not so sure about the first day of school

This morning we were up at 5:30 for a feeding so we could drop Kevin off at SFO for a work trip at 6:45am.  On the drive home, Olivia and I discussed the traffic congestion caused by yet another BART strike and shook our heads.  Then it was time for another quick feeding at home and off to daycare! 

Olivia was asleep when I left her there at 9am, then asleep when I stopped by around 11am to check in and drop off our check.  She had consumed one bottle in the interim, cracked her eyes awake while I was there, then dozed again.  So cute!  The caregiver talked me through things and was very reassuring.  I like her.  Jury is out on the Assistant Director, but really like the Director of the center - she's been there for 25 years.  They're feeding Olivia every two hours and another little girl started today too - also 3 months old.  So cute!  I picked Olivia up around 4:45pm after lunch with Suzanne and a secret errand.  She was sleeping.  Olivia didn't consume too much milk during the day, but we'll keep balancing things as we move along.

All settled in!

For my part, I attempted to do my training for LM in the morning but my account is still disabled.  So I managed to do just a few things at my desk before having to pump and go see how little girl was doing.  Lunch with Suzanne in Palo Alto was lovely.  I enjoyed being able to give the conversation my full attention and not worrying that Little Lady would start crying unexpectedly. 

After our lunch, I headed to California St. to one of the three Bay Area camera stores - it was surprisingly crowded for a Monday early-afternoon!  After over an hour of discussion with one of their most knowledgeable guys, I came home with the Canon 70D and an additional lens.  I love the extra control, and that it has enough intelligence to balance the light for me.  LOVE it!  No need for flash anymore really.  I can't wait to play with it when my parents are here this weekend.  Now I really need to figure out storage space for photos!

I managed to get Olivia to sleep by 8:40 pm.  I think she really learned stuff today given how tired she was this evening and how fast she went to sleep.  And I even managed to dye my hair this evening as part of my project to become work-ready.  I dread the day when I have to wear something other than sweatpants (aka something stretchy in the hip area).

Ok, I'm tired.  Time to finish my evening glass of wine and hit the sack.  Tomorrow's agenda includes daycare 2.0, finishing planting in the backyard (7 more holes to dig), a haircut, and various sundry chores around the house.  Good times :).

Night Night!

Big Day Tomorrow!

Olivia starts daycare tomorrow!  I'm both excited and sad about this fact.  While I'll enjoy the time to finish planting my plants in the backyard and to do some training for work, I'm going to miss my little girl.  I can definitely see why women end up quitting and staying home to raise their little ones.  But in this day and age and in our situation that really isn't an option.  Besides, I think I'd go crazy eventually.  The prospect of doing compliance training for work because I'm overdue just seems silly to me.  But hey, they're letting me work part time through the rest of this year, so that's a good thing. :)

Kevin leaves on travel tomorrow morning as well.  So I'll have the house to myself for Monday and Tuesday.  That will be strange.  I hope to get a lot accomplished, but who knows how it'll all shake out.

Looking forward to the Bellenger grandparents' visit next weekend.  The house has improved since their last visit, and Kevin installed the front door handle today so there's no longer a big hole there.  Thank goodness!  We also have floors installed and a blue front door.  We still need to hang the real doors to Olivia's room and the guest room.  I plan to work on the caulking and painting a little while Kevin is out of town.  Perhaps then we'll be ready to put up the doors when he gets home.

Okay, time for bed.  Getting late.  Not sure why my laptop keyboard doesn't stay lighted like it's supposed to.  Grrr. 

New Blog for a New(ish) Baby :)

Since Olivia has joined us in the Big World, we're no longer counting down and it's time for a new blog!  The little girl is doing well, has broken 10 lbs and is smiling daily.  She's holding her head up when on your shoulder, is looking at books now, and is just all around a cutie.  So far her nicknames are Sweet Pea and Nugget. 

Mom and Dad are doing pretty well.  Mom crashed at night, this is the latest she's been up in quite awhile. 

The house projects have resumed.  We settled on crown moulding today and have a contractor ready to go.  Kevin and Steven planted two beautiful Autumn Blaze maple trees along the boulevard and figured out how to install the ledgestone panels on the front columns today.  Pretty good progress, I'd say.  Olivia and I went on a walk with a friend and socialized.  Good times all around. 

Now I'm spending a little quality time with Trixie on the couch.  Ever since I bought a new duvet cover, the dogs have been banished from the bed.  It was tough at first, but we appreciate being able to move around without a dog keeping you in one position all night.

OK, very sleepy.  Will do a longer update touching on the MeetUps, new mom group, new computer and going back to work stuff another day.  The big accomplishment now is that I'm finally using my new computer and am slowly learning this Windows 8 platform.  Perhaps an hour's worth of tutorials would help.  But I find that it's running slower than expected on this lickety split hardware... and has crashed already.