The Bug

Anna (3 months, almost 4) and Mason (6 months)A few photos after we started feeling better today!



Took a little morning nap with mom and dad before we headed to the doctor's
My favorite one from today!

Well we got it. The Bug. The Flu Bug that is. What all started out to be what we thought was a reaction to regular formula for a couple of days turned out to the be the flu for both Anna and I. It all started Friday when we picked her up from day care and we were informed that she spit up half her 2nd bottle and refused her 3rd. I thought, ok, it's the formula and I rushed home to get the soy again. I fed her some of the bottle as she "gagged" on the last couple ounces. I set her in her swing to eat and out came about 2 bottles worth. Scary for me. Soon after I stripped her down and she was smiling from ear to ear. Saturday morning was good, Saturday afternoon she threw up about half as much as the night before. Then I fell victim to the flu and knew it wasn't the formula. Sunday we all lounged around the house all day not feeling too great, nothing came out of Anna and I. Monday I stayed home still not feeling well and not wanting to be the mom who brought the sickness in, kept Anna home too. She threw up again. Fine afterwards. At this point we called the nurse and said to give her Pedialyte. We took it as give her that with the formula. Tuesday Gary stayed home with Anna and she threw up again. Called the nurse again and found out we were supposed to just give her Pedialyte. Had a doctor's appointment scheduled for today. Which brings us to now. I stayed home today due to the horrible West Michigan weather (it dropped 30 degrees in under 12 hours - going from rain on my way home yesterday to 1-4 inches of snow today with high winds!). We got her to the doctor, said she looked good. She didn't have a fever, breathing sounded good and were instructed to continue her on Pedialyte for the rest of today and start back on formula tomorrow. Whew. What a long long weekend it's been learning how to care for a sick baby for the first time! Now I know and we'll be more calm and know just what to do. :)

With that said, Anna now weighs a whopping..... 9 pounds 15 ounces! We almost have a 10 pounder on our hands. :) Hehe. Still a peanut but getting cuter with her smiles, talking and still trying to giggle again. She loves to try and sit up when you have her a semi-upright position, loves to stand when you grab her fingers and she'll stay there for quite awhile! She's moving onto 3 month old clothes when she's almost 16 weeks old! Hehe. I guess it's nice to not have to guess what size she it, she's the one of few babys that are actually wearing her size.

I'm feeling better for the most part, a few side effects of the flu still working there way out. Gary came out of it unscathed - he filled the part of caring daddy and wonderful husband as usual. :) We're still in car limbo. Ugh. Patience is a virtue. We're shovling our way out of drifting snow and going to work each day.

For anyone who is interested in coming, Anna's baptism is on March 2 at our church, Fairhaven Ministries in Hudsonville, MI. It'll be at the 10:45 service and we'll have a lunch/cake and coffee thing afterwards at our house. More details to come. Let me know if you'd like to come and we'll see where you can fit in if you come for the whole weekend.

Enjoy the few pictures I took since we got sick.

Love,


Gary, Christie and Pookie

Drool Monster

Anna has now figured out how to saturate her clothes before we even start the day! She has taken on drooling as a favorite pastime. Along with that, she is growing out of newborn clothes. They are becoming too short in the torso and arms, so we're packing them up after she wears them one last time. Kind of sad as her "coming home" outfit is wrapping up it's life until the next girl. Oh well, on to the next batch of cute clothes!

Not only is she getting bigger, but she's getting smarter! No bias opinion there. :) If she's laying down and you hold on to her finger, she tries to pull herself up to sit. From there, she really enjoys standing up. She holds her weight for quite some time. She may be a walker before she crawls. Oh dear. :)

She's also finding her fingers, but more so her thumb in a desperate need to suck on something, anything! We also think she's going to start to teeth soon. Instead of wanting to suck on our fingers, she wants to clamp down on our fingers, not the numerous teething rings she has, but just our fingers. When we do have her standing, she's much more interested in pulling our fingers to her mouth than working on the whole balance thing.

She's grabbing on to her "friends" on her play mat and pulling them (or trying to) to her mouth.She's sometimes is able to get Lulu the Ladybug to sing her the ABC's - only if she flings her limbs around enough. She's smiling all the time, still trying to get out more giggles. No more since last week. She's kicking around a lot in her bath tub, but still enjoying it and doesn't mind water in her eyes. I just tell her to blink it out. :) She's really turning on her little personality everyday. It's so much fun to see her grow and do new things each day. We really love this whole parenting thing (ask us about that in a couple years, hehe).

Here's the Gary and Christie report: Jobs going well, getting busier for both of us. Gary's trip to Norfolk was good, learned a lot and is still learning. I'm getting a few side jobs here and there, so that's a little extra money brought in. We're still in car limbo. Gary's driving the dying Taurus while I drive Gary's parents Sable as we await the new Taurus and finding out tonight that the truck has some more issues (Gary's dad is driving that). Stupid cars. The snow continues to fall and Gary continously digs us out. I'm trying to work out and eat better so I can beat my dad in a bet we have. Watch out dad, I got my new DDR mats tonight! Hehe. Otherwise, we're doing well and looking forward to the 40 degree weather we're supposed to have next week.

This is what Tuesday morning brought.

Hope all is well with everyone!

Love,

Gary, Christie & the Banana

Out of the blue!

Last night I was holding Anna in my lap and I was just about to lift her up to talk to her a little and she started to giggle! Just a few little giggles, but it was so cool! I wish I could have recorded it for Gary. He's still out of town. She did one giggle a little bit later but as we have now conquered the talking, we're on to master the giggle. So fun.

Fingernail Adventure

So I was trying to clip Anna's fingernails last night, all of them this time, not just the one or two as I had been doing, because she's brutal with those little razorblades for nails. I had her sittting on my lap facing out so I could hold her hands steady (or try to anyway). As I had my hand across the front of her, she started to vigorously suck on my arm! It was hilarious, that girl will suck on anything that's put by her mouth! After I detached my arm from her mouth, I clipped her nails the best I could without drawing blood. Hopefully that'll do for another week or so. :)

I thought that was funny. :)

Giggles and Smiles

Sleeping Beauty

Check out my spikey hair!

Posing for American Baby

Big Yawn!
Anna and her friend Lola (who gives us the abundance of clothes)

More than enough bottles to feed Anna for days

Cuddle time with Anna

Save me! I'm tipping over!

Too cute

Anna has found her voice! On Friday night is when she really started the constant babble. After she's been fed and her diaper is dry, she really gets into talking and smiling. She'll let out coo here and there, but the time to really get her going is when the belly is full.

Her tummy time is longer now, as she tolerates our love to see her bobble her head around and eventually roll over. She holds her head up really well and doesn't seem to mind it. She's not napping as much as she once was, but she'll let us know when she needs to be rocked or cuddled to fall asleep. I think she's getting heavier, she feels like she is. Pooping is going well. Our pooping aid, the prune juice, makes an appearance every once in awhile and cleans the system out. :) Her newborn clothes fit well now and some are getting small. Some of her 3 month clothes fit like her newborns fit when she was born. I have close to 3 full large bins full of clothes that don't fit her yet. If I had that many clothes..... that would be amazing. :)

Gary's taking his first business trip as an employee of Calvin. He flew out today to Norfolk, VA for a week long class learning more about the programming language he is working with. He's doing this trip on his own, but the one he goes on for a few days in March, he'll be going with the whole department. Alex has graciously obliged to stay with me this week and just keep Anna and I company.

You know how the last time I posted, our deer population decreased by 1? Well the following week, we decided to decrease the Taurus population by 1. My beloved Taurus, at 183,000 miles, decided to break down more than we wanted to pay for. So we're in car limbo, waiting for the new Taurus to get finalized which we were going to use to replace the truck, but now we're replacing it with the old Taurus. Sigh. Such is the life of cars.

Back to work I go tomorrow, carpooling Anna to and from daycare. So enjoy the pics.

Love,

Gary, Christie and Anna

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I know my viewers are probably anxiously awaiting a new post from me. Hehe. Well I finally found some time to write a little something. It's been a wonderful and busy Christmas and New Years, but we managed to come out alright on the other side.

We spent Christmas Eve with Gary's parents at their house. We had an amazing dinner, opened up lots of gifts (mostly for Anna of course), watched Polar Express on the big TV and ate too much junk. We had a lot of fun kicking off Anna's first Christmas. She got a big hairy scary doll (you'll know what I'm talking about in the picture), a snail where it's shell rolls out, lots of books, and the basic toys that we all had as a kid from Aunt Sheila.

Then Gary and I did Christmas with Anna at our house Christmas morning. She really doesn't have a clue what's going on yet and because we figured the grandmas and grandpas would spoil her with gifts, she got to go to Build a Bear with daddy (this will be a yearly daddy/daughter event) and got a turtle named Pooky complete with a Pistons jersey (don't worry, she will be introduced to the great Chicago teams). She also got an ornament from us. Then Santa brought her a pair of "vacation" sunglasses for whatever vacation we take this summer.

Then over New Years weekend, we headed to Chicago to celebrate Christmas with my side of the family. We did it up on Saturday complete with a chocolate fountain and guitar hero. We spent the day eating, opening presents, taking turns playing guitar hero, eating some more, breaking out some adult beverages and eating from the fountain the floweth chocolate. We had a lot of fun that day.

In the meantime, Anna has learned how to roll over from her tummy to her back multiple times in a row. She smiles all the time and has managed to find her voice from time to time, but not consistantly yet. She got her first shots just after Christmas and got through that with a couple doses of Tylenol. She's a whopping 8 pounds, 6 ounces and 22 inches long now. The doctor said she's doing great. She goes back in 2 months for her next round of shots. She still sleeps through the night (from about 10:30 to 6) and is on a pretty good daily schedule. She's still the hit of daycare, I have to pry her out of their arms sometimes! She flashes smiles to anyone who looks her way (this could be dangerous later). We're up to 5 ounces of formula at a feeding, so we're hoping to plump her up! We had photo shot with Auntie Jenn to use for Christmas gifts, too cute!

Here's a link to see more pictures of Anna (this thing just takes so long to upload photos and for as many I want to show). http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=24252&l=c6682&id=501622976 and http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=24259&l=58f1f&id=501622976

Just before we headed to Chicago for Christmas, Gary wanted to decrease the population of deer in Michigan by one. He nailed the deer on the drivers side and laid it out. He took Anna for her shots that day and when he hit the deer, she didn't even wake up! We thought the insurance company would total the truck, but they are able to fix it. We're replacing the truck with a 2005 Taurus and hopefully selling it to Gary's dad so we can keep it in the family to use as a hauling vehicle.

Work is going well for both of us. Gary's heading out to Virginia for a week to learn more about the programming language he's working with at work. So Alex is going to stay the week with me and Anna. I've been back for about a month now and we're starting to pick up again. I have my own office now and with that came a lovely raise.

We're excited for what 2008 brings for us and to see Anna grow! We're hoping to change priorites more on our family and our health, than other things that we did before Anna came around. I hope this is a good update and I should be able to keep up on the blog now that the holidays are over.

Love to all of you and hoping you had a great Christmas season!

Gary, Christie and Anna