A New Calling for Me

Recently, I jokingly mentioned to Yusaku that we should buy some electric hair clippers and we could save some money if I cut his hair for him. Much to my surprise, he was all for it. So, we went out and bought some clippers. Today, I decided to try my hand at being a hair stylist. My parents came over for a quick little visit this morning and when I told them I was going to cut Yusaku's hair today, my dad asked if I would shave his neck for him. I asked if he was really sure and he was. (I can't believe how much they trust me). I took my dad into the kitchen, got out the clippers, and turned them on. As soon as I did this, we both jumped about a mile, but after we recovered, I got to work. It turned out just fine. Here's a picture of me in my new line of work. :)

After I had practiced on my dad, Yusaku bravely sat in the bathtub and allowed me to take an electric clipper to his head.  It started out well. Yusaku instructed me on what size clipper to start with and I started around the base of his head and above his ears. I moved to a slightly bigger clipper and moved up his head. It was going smoothly. Then Yusaku took matters into his own hands - literally! He decided to try doing the top of his head himself. From here, things went down hill. There were a few places that needed to be evened out. Yusaku told me to put a size 2 on. I thought I did and took the clipper to his sideburn area. It turns out I had grabbed a 1 instead, which means that side got a lot shorter. Yusaku looked in the mirror and said "Lauren, that was a 1!" I proceeded to laugh so hard that I nearly peed in my pants. Yusaku wasn't mad. He was kind of laughing himself. After a little more shaving, he got things pretty evened out and now it looks fine.  Here are some pictures to prove it. Who wants a haircut next?

Growing Up

The title refers to Olivia, of course, but me as well (I will explain this in a little bit). Olivia will be 8 weeks old tomorrow, which is hard to believe! She seems to get bigger and cuter every day.  She's awake more these days and thankfully, is starting to enjoy sitting in her swing more. As much as I love holding her, not being able to put her down makes getting things done difficult. She will nap in the swing, but sometimes she will just lay there and stare up at the little mirror and look at herself contentedly. She also likes sitting in her bouncy seat for at least brief periods of time or laying on her new activity mat that arrived in the mail last week (see picture below). We even had a night recently where she slept four hours in a row, followed by four and half more, which, if you read my last post, you know is pretty exciting for me.

She's been smiling and cooing a lot lately too, which is so much fun. When she's cooing at me, I feel like we're having a conversation. I almost expect words to come out of her mouth. It's hard for me to imagine her really talking though. What will her first words be? What will her voice sound like? I've also been trying to imagine her with hair longer than what she currently has and I just can't picture it. Her hair seems like it's barely grown since she's been born and sometimes it looks like there's actually less hair than there was to begin with. I kind of like her hair just the way it is now though. It can stay like that forever for all I care! :)

Now for my "grown-up moment." My friend Katlyn, who I met a few years ago in grad school, has two kids of her own. Charlotte is four and Oliver just turned one about a week before Olivia was born. She had been talking to me for awhile (at least since I was pregnant) about joining the Mom's Group of Oakwood even though I don't technically live there anymore. I kept saying I would think about, but in the back of my mind, I was thinking to myself "I'm too young to be in a mom's group!" I'm not sure why I felt like this because I don't feel to young to be a mom. I guess I just still don't think of myself as a "grown up," despite the fact that there are plenty of reasons why I should. I've been married for four and a half years, have had my own house for the past four years, have been working in the "real world" (up until now), and gotten my Master's degree, so when am I going to really consider myself a "grown up?" (Perhaps when the receptionist at the dentist's office no longer asks whether my parents or I are going to take care of my bill, which just happened about 2 weeks ago...ha ha!)

Well, I finally decided to take the plunge and join the group. I figured it would be nice to meet other moms and make some new friends and eventually, it would be a way for Olivia to make some friends. Every Thursday of each month there is some sort of special event. One week, they have book club; another week, they have Mom's Night Out where you go to a restaurant; another week is cooking club, where everyone brings food or wine and you just hang out at someone's house and another week, there is a meeting. This past Thursday was cooking club so I decided to go along with Katlyn. Each month there is a different "theme." This month the theme was cheese, so I decided to make broccoli cheese casserole - one of my Thanksgiving favorites. The event was very nice, everyone was very friendly, and there was lots of good food.  At the end of the night, everyone votes - just for fun - on their two favorite dishes and whoever takes first place gets their picture and recipe in the monthly newsletter. Well, call it beginner's luck, but guess who took second place???? Yours truly! Ha ha! I was pretty surprised and found it kind of funny - I guess I'm just a little Suzy Homemaker, who knew? I'm looking forward to going to book club next month for the first time and the cookie exchange before Christmas.

I will keep you posted on my future "grown up moments."  In the meantime, however, here are some cute pictures of my parents and Olivia from last weekend when were celebrating my Dad's birthday.

Sleep

Sleep is something I have a whole new appreciation of.  The definition of a "good night of sleep" has taken on a whole new meaning for me. The one question everyone who knows that I have a new baby asks me is "How is she sleeping?" or "Are you getting much sleep?" or my favorite "Is she sleeping through the night yet?" I would like to respond by simply laughing in their face, but that would be rude, so I don't. The answer is she usually sleeps about three hours at a time in between feedings and I consider that good (for now).

Sometimes, I will get lucky like last night and actually get about four hours of rest before she needs to eat again (which I hope will start happening more frequently) or sometimes, it's only an hour and a half in between. It's hard to imagine a time when I will actually sleep for five, six, seven, or even, God-forbid, EIGHT hours at a time. I'm not sure I would know what to do with myself. 

All this lack of sleep is well worth it though because Olivia won't be this small forever and our middle-of-the-night feedings, despite how exhausted I feel, are special because it's a quiet, peaceful bonding time for us. I love the look on her face in that moment when she goes from crying to realizing that she's about to get some delicious milk! Her eyes get really wide and her lips curl into a little smile and she makes a noise almost like laughing and then, it's quiet except for the sound of her gulping and her eyelids get heavy and close and I feel like sleeping isn't that important after all.

Here are some pictures of our little cutie from yesterday:

caterpillars, spit up, and Japan

In my last post, I mentioned that Olivia likes to look at things dangling in front of her and is now smiling, although capturing the smile on camera is nearly impossible. By the time I get the camera out, she is making some other weird face. Well, here is a picture that shows her doing both (kind of). We got the stuffed "hungry little caterpillar" as a gift and once we discovered how much she liked looking at it, we attached to the mobile on her swing.

In other news, Olivia is getting heavier by the day. I weighed her myself the other day (you know - hopped on the scale, weighed myself, hopped back on with her) and according to that, she weighs 10.4 lbs. By now, she probably weighs even more. And, despite the fact that she likely has reflux according to her doctor (her fussiness, gassiness, little cough, hoarse cry, etc. is what led to that conclusion), she really hasn't been a very "spitty-uppy" baby...until now that is. I just experienced projectile spit up for the first time...gross!  All over my arm. I'm hoping this doesn't become a habit.

She has been doing pretty well at night now for a few weeks. Even though she wakes up to eat about every 2.5 to 3 hours, she goes back down pretty easily afterward. The daytime, however, is a different story. It seemed like she hardly napped at all yesterday, maybe half an hour here or there at the most. Even then, she only wanted to nap while one of us held her. She alternated between being happy and crying about every 10 minutes. It was an exhausting day. Today is going better so far. There seems to be a pattern of good day, bad day, good day, bad day.

Now, for the biggest news...we are going to Japan in January!  As exciting as that it is, I am a nervous wreck - thinking about every little thing that worries me from the flight there to the logistics of trying to feed her, change her, and get around with her in a country half-way across the world where I don't speak the language! I am still trying to come to terms with this news and tell myself it will be okay. We haven't been to Japan since 2003. We haven't seen Yusaku's grandmothers, aunts, uncles, or cousins since our wedding and not all of them could make it to that. It will be good for them to meet Olivia, especially Yusaku's aging grandmothers, because who knows the next time we'll make it back? So, it's a good thing, right? That's what I'm trying to tell myself.

I've decided that I'll need to get back to using the Rosetta Stone program I started over the Summer to try to learn Japanese. Since I'm not going back to work, I guess it will be good to have something intellectual to do..some goal to work on. It will be tricky finding the time to work on it in between feeding and holding Olivia and doing chores around here, but I'll make do. I'm not going to hold my breath, but I'd really like to be able to communicate with Yusaku's family, even if it's just a few words, when we go.We shall see! :)

Since Japan is on my mind, I thought I'd look back at some pictures from our last trip. Since it was seven years ago and back in the dark ages before I had a digital camera, I only have a few pictures to choose from that I had scanned from my hard copies to show my students.  Here are two. The first is Yusaku and I with our artwork, the old couple who owned the place, and Yusaku's family friend, Mrs. Araki. The other is us in a rickshaw with Yusaku's aunt and his great uncle (both from his mom's side). We should hopefully be seeing all of them when we go back.

5.5 weeks! It's a long post...you've been warned!

It's only been a little over two weeks since my last post so I'm not too far off my goal! :)  Life with a baby is just so busy and napping when she naps (or attempting some sort of productivity around here) takes priority over blogging. Yesterday, I felt like I hardly accomplished anything more than feeding and snuggling with Olivia, but that's all that's really important anyway, right? 

I seem to be compensating for that today. After a long night of frequent feedings, Yusaku took Olivia from 8-10 this morning so that I could get in a little sleep. Yusaku working from home has been wonderful. I can't imagine trying to get through all day every day by myself, although I know most new moms have to. I'm sure I could manage if I had to, but it would be so  much harder.

Thanks to that extra sleep, I have a lot more energy today. I've done laundry and dishes, gone grocery shopping, and pumped so far. I also managed a walk with my friend Katlyn and still have enough energy left to update the blog. It might not sound like a lot, but this is a productive day for me.

This will probably be a lengthy post as there is a lot to talk about since the last time I wrote anything. The question is - where to start? Well, Olivia is a very popular lady and has had many visitors since she was born, most recently her Aunt Sarah, but I will get to that in a minute. Here are some pictures of her other visitors, starting with Kelly and Ella in the hospital (sorry, not the best picture), followed by Erin, my friend Katlyn, and my friend Tiffany whose husband Travis also came but who I apparently forgot to take a picture of (sorry!). 

 

Leslee and Jon were actually our first visitors at the hospital, but being a little out of it still, I also forgot to get a picture of them. Luckily, they just came over to our house on Saturday and I got some pictures this time (no Jon though, sorry!). I can't wait until Olivia is a little older and she and Quinn can actually play with each other. I know they're going to be great friends! :)

  

 

Now for some pictures from Aunt Sarah's visit, although she took about a hundred more pictures than I did. She just couldn't get enough of her new niece! She was only home for a long weekend, but we squeezed in a lot of visiting. On her last day, we had a picnic lunch at Hills and Dales park and took a nice walk in the woods on a beautiful fall day.

 

On a separate topic, Olivia's favorite things lately seem to be taking baths, snuggling with us, smiling, and looking at little stuffed toys dangling in front of her face (she can track things with her eyes now!). Here are some pictures of her doing at least two of those things.  Notice my snuggling with her led to me sleeping (I'm a little deprived, what can I say?).  Also funny is the fact that she's wearing the same outfit in both pictures but they were taken on different days.

I could keep going, but I'm about of time for today, so I will leave you with these pictures from last weekend's trip to the pumpkin farm to celebrate Olivia's first Halloween. Hopefully, it won't be so long until I post again.