23
I have been back at work so I have had no free time. This week is my last week and then I will start parental leave until January. Hooray!!! Yes, I was kind of crazy to be going back so soon, but we did survive. Dan did a great job of taking care of Evelyn while I was back. There were some difficult times when she refused to eat from a bottle, but she has become quite accepting of it now. I ended up working shorter days (6 hours including lunch) to make it a bit easier on Dan and Evelyn and that seemed to be just right.
Evelyn is about 16 pounds and very long (exact length to be discovered Monday when I take her in for vaccination #2). She smiles at everything and everyone, holds her head up when she is on her tummy and is starting to sleep a bit longer at night. Typically she falls asleep around 9 or 10 and wakes up 4-5 hours later to eat once during the night. Some nights she wakes up again around 3-5 AM, which is not cool with mommy. I will be working on getting her out of that habit. She had worked her way up to 9 hours a night at one point, but has since switched back to 4-5 hours maximum, so I know she is capable of it! Also a few times I have been able to put her in the crib and she would fall asleep on her own.
I have noticed that my blog seems to have a purple background behind the text on some PCs and will try to fix this in the near future. It looks fine on my Mac and my work PC, so it’s probably a stupid IE problem.
Anyway, we just returned from our trip to Alberta. We buried my Mother’s ashes in the family plot and then we visited my Aunt and Uncle, my Dad and Dan’s family. In a way the burial helped bring some closure to everything, but it also makes me think about things again and it brings out a lot of emotion. It feels very lonely to lose a mother, even though I have all my family and Dan’s family.
Evelyn spent a lot of time in the car seat during the trip and I had to use a pacifier to calm her down most of the time, but I think she started to get used to it by the end. We were able to meet up with some friends in Edmonton and Calgary as well, which was really great. Evelyn got to meet her cousin Zoe for the first time, but neither seemed all that interested in the other baby. The day before we left there was a baby shower for Evelyn and Zoe and we had a fun time making crepes in the morning and then having BBQ corn on the cob and BBQ perogies along with other goodies in the afternoon. We also had a chance to enjoy some very good steak from “The Butcher Shoppe” located in Airdrie. If you live anywhere near there, I highly recommend buying some meat from them. Just going into the store is enough to make you hungry. Anyway, check out the pictures here.
Every time I go back I am surprised how dry it is in Alberta. My sinuses were burning the whole time, I ended up getting rather sick and at one point I felt like my eyeballs were drying up. Evelyn was so thirsty that she started waking up every 2 hours to eat during the night. Now that we are back she has completely lost her ability to go to sleep easily and I have had to try so many things to convince her to sleep. I am trying to start a routine that involves a book (Pat the Bunny) and a song. However I finally pulled out the big guns tonight and gave her an unnecessary bath and had to give her the pacifier for about 20 minutes so she would fall asleep. It is getting better, though, as she was crying for hours on Sunday and Monday, which she never did before.
Dan’s Mom bought an Exersaucer for the babies to play in and Evelyn quite liked it, unlike the swing. She’s a hands-on, interactive baby who likes to stand and move, so it’s much more suited to her. We bought one tonight and she seemed to like it. I am hoping it will finally allow me to get a few things done around the apartment when I am on mat leave and Dan is at school. Like cooking. And laundry. And showering.