Two Months

Oliver turned two months on June 17th, so this post is coming a little late.  The pictures were taken (mostly) on time, on the 18th.

In his second month, Oliver really started becoming a little person.  He's no longer the squishy, sleepy newborn.  He smiles real, happy smiles.  He went from hating the changing table to loving it; he gives the best grins after getting his diaper changed.

He likes to stand on my lap.  He prefers facing out when being held, or at the very least being able to see over my shoulder.

He still hates tummy time.  The only acceptable (but perhaps still not truly enjoyable) tummy time is tummy-tummy time, where Steve or I lay down and put Oliver on his tummy on our tummy.  (The word "tummy" has now lost all meaning...)

He can see farther and enjoys looking at his mobile and, especially, the little birds that dangle over his bouncy chair.  In fact, turn the bouncer on vibrate, put on a little music, and you've probably got yourself a good 20 minutes to make and eat a sandwich for lunch.  Dinner is tougher; evenings are a little fussier for Oliver.  Sometimes the chair needs a little extra bounce courtesy of Dad.

I know I included his stats in a recent post, but Oliver is a good grower.  He was 13 pounds 0 ounces and 25 inches long at his eight week appointment, putting him very near to the top of the growth chart.  At ten weeks on Wednesday, I unofficially weighed him, and he came in at 14 pounds 3.5 ounces.  (I'm really going to miss having access to a baby scale at PEP meetings!)

He won't take a pacifier, but loves sucking on Mom's or Dad's finger.

He's a good sleeper at night.  He sleeps pretty reliably between five and seven hours in that first stretch, even going eight or more a few times!  Then he wakes up to eat, sleeps another three or four hours (depending on the first stretch), wakes up to eat again, and will go down for another hour or two before he's up for good. On the other side of the sleep coin, he doesn't take more than little catnaps throughout the day.  He wakes up happy and smiling almost every morning.  It's my favorite thing.

I'm very much enjoying spending my days with Oliver.  He's fun and surprising.  He really does change and grow from one day to the next.  He's a very cool little dude.

Chi-Town

Our first family vacation was a success!

Oliver, Steve and I traveled back "home" to Chicago to attend Grandpa Jim's memorial service.  We wrangled slightly more than a week, and used it to see as many friends as we could squeeze in.

First, the plane ride.  I had a very stressful 24 hours prior to each flight, because the seats I'd chosen when I bought the tickets somehow disappeared and we had "unassigned" seats... with zero seats together anywhere on the plane.  I just kept checking the website, and by some miracle, seats showed up together prior to our flights each time. (I secured our seats for the return flight about 30 minutes before leaving for the airport.)  Whew!  I know we'd have managed it, but it would have been really inconvenient to have separate seats, especially since nursing takes up more room than one seat has to offer.

On our flight out there, we even ended up with an extra seat in our row.  Which was bizarre, because they'd asked for two volunteers to take a bump due to an overbooked flight... and then our row mate was a no-show.  Well, better for us!

Oliver was a traveling CHAMP.

The people behind us commented that they hadn't known we had a baby with us, that's how amazingly good he was. 

[Let me also just take a moment to mention a few things that made our flight much easier.  Blow-up nursing pillow.  Best $20 I've spent.  It didn't take up much space, and it made the flight (and the week!) so much easier than it would have been without it.  Jeep carseat bag.  It was relatively inexpensive.  We took our stroller (which is the carseat and a caddy) to the gate, which was both nice and a pain.  We were those people in line at security, taking up the entire conveyor belt with our stuff, but it was nice not to have to carry Oliver through the airport with all the other stuff we were lugging.  And once we got to our gate, we gate-checked the stroller and seat.  I put the carseat in the bag to protect it (and thank goodness I did!), and was also able to pack a little cube of all of Oliver's clothes, my breast pump, and a package of diapers in the bag with it, which traveled for free.]

The memorial service Saturday was beautiful.  Highlights were: 1) A Masonic reading to start it off; 2) A funny memory shared by my uncle about the time my grandpa accidentally busted through the bathroom door while goofing around; 3) memories from all six grandchildren shared by a few of my cousins (I gathered the memories, put them together into something more or less coherent, and let three of my cousins do the reading, because there's no way I could have done it without crying); and 4) a bagpiper closing out the service with "Amazing Grace."  There were tears.  Lots of them.  But the service really represented who Grandpa was.

It was actually really nice to have so many friends and family all in one place.  Many of these people I rarely get to see.

Grandkids (plus partners)

Four Generations

About half the family was still around for Father's Day the next day, so the remaining cousins put on brunch.  We had Steve's chocolate chip/banana pancakes, bacon, scrambled eggs, fruit salad, and home fries.  Delish.

Steve got a really cool First Father's Day gift from Grandma P full of little baggies, each containing something to help him get through life.  Things like glitter to remind him what the world looks like through a child's eyes, a calendar because every moment is special, a battery to keep him going when he's running low, and marbles to replace the ones he loses along the way. 

Oliver and I also made him a DAD mug, complete with baby handprint, at the Paint Your Own Pottery place near us.  Oliver absolutely hated the handprinting, and it was quite a feat to get a clear print on a mug!  He'll probably have more fun with it in a couple of years...

Monday was Steve's 30th birthday, and Oliver was two months old.  We went to Navy Pier to celebrate.  After a ridiculously long journey to get there--two and a half hours when it should have taken just over one--we had a great time.  Oliver quintupled his "modes of transportation used" with plane, train, boat (water taxi), trolley, and ferris wheel.

First train ride

At Navy Pier

On the ferris wheel

The Pier

With the city as a backdrop

We walked the entire Pier, had lunch, enjoyed a park across the street, and then walked over to Millennium Park to see the Cloud Gate.

The Bean

We joined the family for dinner at my favorite restaurant, Wildfire, for dinner.

The rest of the week was a whirlwind of visiting friends.  We saw M and her 9-month-old, J and her two- and four-year-olds, E and her two-year-old twins, S and her two- and four-year-olds, another friend M, another friend M (yes, they all actually have the same name) and her seven-month-old, and A.

We also visited Grandpa at his office!  One of the women I worked with waaaaaay back at my first summer job had sent us some branded baby gear, so Oliver was all decked out for the visit.

Hard to tell, but Oliver's outfit has the Civiltech logo

In front of visuals of the Big Project they're working on

After a series of three-day trips over the last few years (and one longer one for our wedding in 2011, which was filled with wedding stuff), it was really nice to have a week to fit in a lot of the things and people we aren't able to on a long weekend.  We didn't see everyone I wanted to, but it was a good trip.  We got to spend lots of quality time with Great-Grandma Peggy and learned several cute songs to sing with Oliver.

All in all, an excellent trip!

Eight Weeks of BUSY

Ohmigosh, Oliver is eight weeks old.  And I haven't done birth announcements!  I've been meaning to... for eight weeks.  Oy.

(Up front: none of these pictures are from today, or even yesterday.  They're probably all a week or so old.)

How is it that I'm home all day, almost every day, and I haven't found time to do things like birth announcements?  Ridiculous.  So today, in between last-minute errands and at least three loads of laundry and packing for our trip and nursing the baby... I see how this happened.

[Oliver woke up before I posted this this morning.  (One more thing I didn't do... hit post.)  Now I have done three loads of laundry, ran errands, packing is almost finished, and I worked on birth announcements!  Productivity!]

Oliver had his two-month check-up yesterday.  (A little early, because he'll be out of town when he's actually two months old.)  He handled his shots like a champ.

Well, not at first.  At first, he was happy and laughing and smiling at himself in the mirror and kicking around and having a grand old time, and then he got poked.  While he was still in shock from that, he got poked again.  And that's when he screwed his eyes shut and opened his mouth wide (and the doctor took the opportunity to squirt in the oral vaccinations) and his whole head turned red and he cried a silent cry--the most heart-wrenching kind!--before he got in another lungful of air and let out a wail I'm sure the entire waiting room heard.

I got him dressed while he whimpered, and I hugged him and kissed him and rocked him, and he fell asleep before we were finished scheduling our next appointment.  And that's when he started handling his shots like a champ.

He spent the afternoon sleeping and nursing.  He did not get a fever.  (Maybe he will still?)  He was a little fussy mid-evening, but a good long suck on Steve's finger cured that.  He seemed to enjoy his bath, almost for the first time, and then he went to bed and slept for seven hours, and then three more, and then two more.

So.  Shots?  No big deal.  (Fingers crossed for the future.)

Also?  We've known it since the first ultrasound, but this little dude isn't so little.  At 13 pounds even (90th percentile) and 25 inches (97th percentile), he's measuring about average for a four-month-old (according to the doctor's fancy iPad chart).  Ha!  And they were worried he wasn't gaining weight at the beginning.

Eight weeks old.  I can't believe it!

Recipe Book: Lactation Cookies

I remember hearing about lactation cookies before I was pregnant, and then someone mentioned them at my PEP meeting a few weeks ago.  I was on a mission!  I tried three different recipes before I found one I liked... and then I tweaked it a little.

One just happened to come out heart-shaped!

Chocolate Chip-Coconut-Oatmeal Lactation Cookies

• 2 tablespoons flaxseed meal
• 4 tablespoons water
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 4 tablespoons brewers yeast
• 1 cup coconut oil (or butter or margarine)
• 1 ¼ cups packed brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 3 cups oats
• ¾ cup chocolate chips
• ¾ cup unsweetened coconut flakes

Preheat oven to 350°

Mix flaxseed meal and water, set aside.

Combine flour, salt, baking soda, and brewers yeast; set aside.

Cream coconut oil and sugar.  Add eggs one at a time, mix well. Add flaxseed meal and vanilla. Gradually mix in flour mixture.  Stir in oats, chocolate chips, and coconut flakes.

Bake 9-11 minutes.


I had some in a container on the counter when friends came over for a barbeque a few weekends ago.  I was amused that the women were absolutely disgusted by the idea of lactation cookies (I think they originally may have thought the cookies had breastmilk in them, and couldn't get past the idea?), but the guys tried and enjoyed them.

And I think they're delicious.  Steve agrees.  I can't really say how much they increase my milk supply, but I like to think they're doing their thing.  Deliciously.