A very busy day

Today, our little miss has had a few firsts!  This morning during playtime, she was able to roll over from her back to front for the first time, without the assistance of a pillow (she rolled over the first time she did tummy time because I propped her up on a pillow that propelled her over when she dropped her big ol' head). I missed the very first one because a basket of clean laundry was obstructing my view, but Jeremy was right by her side.

Later this afternoon, she had her first jump in the Jumparoo from Aunt Katie and Uncle Sahil.  Jeremy had the smart idea to fold a blanket or two under her feet so that she had something to push against, and she was able to jump a little!  Her eyes got very big after the first jump as if to say, "what the heck was that?!"  She enjoyed looking at all the toys and was able to move one of them pretty consistently.  We were able to get this on video, and it's quite fun to watch, but then I'm a little biased!

The last first that she had today was making the "milk" sign.  The other night we think she was experimenting with copying Jeremy when he made the "daddy" sign, but today she did the "milk" sign while tongue thrusting, which we already know is a hunger sign.  She did it constantly until we fed her.  Now, to be fair, the sign is just opening and closing her hand, which is incredibly common for little ones to do, but I like to think that she is on the way to learning it!

And as a bonus, I got a video of her staring intently into the camera.  It was meant to be a recording of a particularly chatty baby, but she just started noticing the camera, and is fascinated by it.  Consequently, it's a little boring for everyone but the most dedicated Willa fans, but I post it here for them :-).

Heads up!

Willa is enjoying tummy time more lately!

Our little lady is getting very good at holding up her head, although she is still working on moving it side to side while it's up.  Yesterday was her longest time keeping it up without being grouchy, which lasted for about five minutes. Mom got lots of good pictures, but this one was the best.  For the first time I'm acutely aware of just how big she is getting!  No scooting yet, but she is working on rolling, can't wait for that :-).  Big girl!

Update on being a working mom

So far I have been back to work for three weeks.  This week was the first week I worked all five days, since the first two were interrupted by bad weather, and I took last Friday off to travel to Atlanta.  Thus, I held off on writing about my experiences until the end of a full week, which is today.  So, how has the transition been?

Pretty well, for not having to work my full schedule yet.  I'm not sure if I blogged extensively about how I planned to transition into maternity leave, so I'll nutshell it here.  Before my pregnancy I would aim for a caseload of about 25 clients at any given time.  In the two months before my due date I stopped taking new clients, which would normally fill gaps left by clients that "graduated" or disappeared.  That means that at the time that my maternity leave was to start, I only had about 14 clients to help make the transition.  Of these, six were willing to wait for me to come back without being seen, three needed to be completely transferred to new therapists (due to my planned schedule when I returned excluding day time appointments), and the rest started to see a new therapist with the knowledge that they could either stick with that new therapist or transition back to me when I returned at the beginning of March.  I worked with the new therapists to catch them up on the details and lay out what I hoped would be accomplished while I was away.  Even though my leave started a week earlier than I planned, I had done enough planning that everything ended smoothly, and thanks to the fact that I left a full phone list for my supervisor, they were all informed that I would be missing my last week of appointments and knew who to contact for their next one.

For the seven weeks that I was away, I did zero work.  None.  I don't think I even checked my work email until the third week when my parents were here, and then all I did was email a document to my boss.  Clients were very understanding and no one called me, which I appreciated.  I also followed the directions from the breastfeeding classes and started pumping and freezing milk starting at 4 weeks.  In the end I was able to bank about a bottle a day during my leave, and have only had to use two or three since then, since my daily pumping can keep up with her bottle needs for the most part.  Since I'm only going to be gone from 2:30 until 7:30 on my busiest days, she only needs two bottles unless she is clusterfeeding (hence the three I have used).  I know I will need to start using the frozen milk more and freezing the ones I pump now since the frozen stuff is only good for three months or so, but for now I'm not too worried about it.

The week before I came back I did some preparation in the form of meeting and training the babysitter one day, and then leaving Willa with her for a quick trial while I went into the office to schedule all of my appointments.  Luckily, most of my clients had a regular spot during the week so it wasn't too challenging.  I just called to let them all know that I was back and that their old spot still worked for me.  I then updated my available time slots for the intake coordinators so that I could get to work filling all my empty appointments. I decided to only work from 3-7, which are my busiest hours given the fact that they are after school/work.  This meant that I gave up all three adult clients that I worked with, but I was glad to do it to have guaranteed day time with Willa. 

Three weeks in I already have almost every hour in there filled.  When we were looking into childcare options I was scared we wouldn't be able to find something that would be inexpensive enough to validate me going back to work while still being reliable and trustworthy, but luckily we live in a college town and we found a wonderful college student willing to work for roughly 1/3 of what I make an hour, and is flexible enough not to come if I have a cancellation.  Since Jeremy gets home from work at 5:30, she works a maximum of three hours a day.  This is not only more cost effective, but eliminated any remote chance of worrying that someone else was raising my child (by the way, I know that full time working moms are raising their kids, but I also know that me being me, I would find any absurd excuse to make myself feel guilty when I would miss her during the day).

In these past three weeks, I have really enjoyed being back.  I am good friends with most of my coworkers and have loved being able to catch up with them, and to see them on a daily basis.  My clients have all been very sweet, and other than one, no major changes happened while I was away.  It felt very much like I had been gone for only a couple of weeks, and we just picked up where we left off.  The babysitter has been sweet and Willa really seems to like her (she is the first non-family member to get a smile), so I don't worry about her while I'm gone.  She has taken to bottles very well, and I have been able to find time between clients to pump the times that I am gone long enough to do so.

The one bump came when Willa was sniffly a couple of days ago and all she wanted was to sleep on me.  Truly, I would shift positions or begin to put her down, and she would start to cry until I resettled her on my chest.  She just wanted her Mama, and I had to leave for work.  Cue the sadness.  But, she did well with Lindsey and was sleeping on Jeremy when I got home, so I won't feel too guilty about it.  I just know that down the line when its more serious, or she can use her words to ask for me, there may be tears all around.

So, that's my long-winded response to, "how's being a working mom going?"

What's in a name

I have been meaning to write a post about the names we chose for our baby, since people often ask, and it's not too complicated of a story.

The name "Willa" has been in my heart since 2004, when I first started participating in the Salvation Army Angel program at Christmas, wherein you select a paper ornament with a less fortunate child's name and information and buy gifts for them.  I chose the one I did that year because her name was "Willa."  I had never heard that name before, and liked that it was short and sweet.  I have always liked short girls' names that end in "a," and added it to my list of future children's names, along with Emma and  Olivia.  Cut to ten years later, and Emma and Olivia are both in the top five of popular girls' names.  Witnessing the flood of "Jennifer"s and "Ashley"s in my childhood having to come up with creative alternatives or forever use their last initial, I decided I didn't want that for my daughter and crossed the latter two off the list.  But Willa was still cute and relatively unknown.  I also never had a client with that name, nor had I seen it used for a fictional character that was so well known that it would forever be tied to the name (try naming your kid "Penny" without picturing the woman from Big Bang Theory, or "Elaine" without harking back to the 90s).  Luckily, Jeremy liked it.  So, Willa it was!

As for her middle name, we knew we wanted to honor family somehow.  The three names we were considering were "Eve," like me and my mom, "Lois," to honor my paternal grandmother, and "Katherine," to honor Jeremy's sister, as he always wanted to do.  I flipped back and forth a lot, since I always wanted my daughter to have "Eve" as her middle name, but both Jeremy and I agreed that it didn't go with "Willa" very well.  Neither did "Lois," on account of all the "ehl" sounds.  Katherine also didn't seem to work super well, since "Willa Katherine" sounds like we are naming her after the author Willa Cather, and while I like her work, I didn't want people to think I liked it THAT much.  So, in a flash of inspiration early on, I thought it would be great to shorten it to "Kate."  Jeremy liked it because he is the only one that really calls his sister "Kate," and I liked it both for that reason, and because her intials would be "WKF," like mine are "GKF."  She wouldn't be a "Klein," but she would have that small detail.  Sold!

We didn't tell people what it was, or even fill it out on the application for a birth certificate before she was born, just in case something changed in the last minute, like if someone else used the name or we got sick of it.  But neither of those things happened, so it stuck.

I think it fits her quite well, if I do say so myself :-).

Making friends

Willa has had a busy week!  Last week our regular babysitter was on Spring Break, leaving us without childcare for five whole days.  Yikes!  Thankfully, my friend, Sandi, was willing to pack up her eight month old son, drive three hours, and work from my house for two of those so that I didn't have to skip work Monday and Tuesday.  What a blessing it is to have such friends in my life :-).  Because of this, Willa got to meet her new friend, Ethan.

Ethan was excited, Willa was skeptical

She really wasn't at an age to play yet, but she was very good about not screaming when he grabbed her face or hands.  I was impressed that Sandi was able to handle both kids at once, I definitely struggled!  It let me know that another child is a long, looooong way away!

Willa also got to meet her Uncle Sahil and cousin Lark on her first long car trip.  From Greensboro to Atlanta is about five and a half hours, and we were hopeful that it would be successful after my trip to Raleigh and back (she slept for about that much time during the day with only one feeding, three hours in).  We figured we would feed her during our stop to gas up, and leave Roxy with helpful friends to have a few less moving pieces.  Luckily, she is at an age that the plan worked!  We only took about 20 minutes longer than usual, both thanks to her cooperation and lack of traffic.  She fed well in the car, burped quickly, then fell asleep again once the car was moving.  I was one proud mama :-).

Lark was initially shy to meet her cousin, probably overwhelmed by the moment, and the focus on her face to catch her reaction.  Given some space and time to process, she seemed curious and sweet.  I took this video to commemorate the moment.  It's a little awkward, and you can hear Katie/Jeremy's conversation in the next room, but it marks the first time these two cousins played together, so I love it!

The next morning we took some pictures when both kids were in pleasant, cooperative moods.  I think this one is my favorite, and we'll have to frame it!

They seem to get along famously already!

I think Willa is lucky to have such great people in her life to grow up with.  She stayed pretty laid back in a new environment, other than some more frequent fussiness.  Katie and Sahil took over for a night so that we could go out for a date, and we saw the first movie in a theater since Willa was born.  I was so glad that she did well, but definitely not surprised, as Sahil said, they'd done this before!

I'm excited to watch the years play out and see these little ones learn and discover the world together.  Willa loves her friends!

Two month state of the baby address

My baby is 2 months old!!  Holy smokes!  

After two months together, we have definitely established a routine.  She is still an excellent eater and routinely takes a bottle from both her dad and the babysitter without a problem.  She sleeps fairly well too, reverting to waking up every three hours over night about four times a week.  But then there are the nights like last night when she finished a feeding at 10:30, fell asleep around 11:30, and slept until I had to wake her up at ten to six (I couldn't wait any longer, yowch!).  Makes me wonder if she could be sleeping through the night if I could make it that long, so I'm hoping that my body catches on that more sleep is a possibility if it just chills out on the overnight milk production a little.

We have also started taking her out and about more, and as it turns out, she actually does better in public than she does at home.  She is able to sleep in the Moby wrap very well, and it has enabled us to go to the grocery store and clothing shopping without incident.  She also sleeps very well in her car seat when we go to restaurants (we've been twice so far, and both were perfect trips!) and is willing to be held by any one at parties.  I know that this will change once she gets older and stranger danger kicks in, but for now I'm enjoying how wonderfully behaved she is.

She has officially grown out of newborn clothes and is completely in the 0-3 month size.  For this reason she feels big to me, but then I get to hold Sandi's son, Ethan, who is 8 months now, and realize just how teeny she still is.  No matter what size she gets to be though, I know that she will always be my sweet little one, as long as I can still snuggle her!

Conversations with Willa

First, apologies for the sporadic posts.  One of my goals is to become more regular with updates here, since this is the best way for me to keep track of Willa's first months.  If only I were better with writing pages from my phone!  Alas I have to wait for the rare instances when I can settle down with the computer while she is napping and I don't have more pressing housework to accomplish.  Hopefully now that I'm back at work (where I did the majority of my blog posts between clients) I can be more productive.

That being said, the headline of the month has been that Willa has grown so much!  We had our first smiles a couple of weeks ago.  They started as quick little half smiles that we weren't sure were meant for us and not a gassy tummy.

She's so cute here that I'm going to count it as a first smile, even though its doubtful!

 One magical morning Jeremy rolled over to say "good morning" while she was still swaddled in her cosleeper, and she lit up!  I missed photographing that one, but luckily it became fairly routine and I caught a picture of it the next morning.

 Very grainy due to the low light, but precious!

Fast forward only a couple of weeks, and now she has little "conversations" with us, uttering little syllables and waiting for us to respond.  It is the best!! For the first time I feel like we are interacting in verbal ways, and I especially try to engage her when she says "mamamamamam."  C'mon first word!

I was quick enough to catch one of these on video the other day, so I'll post it here for your consideration of the brilliance of our conversations, enjoy!!