Heart and Mind

Yesterday we had a combined Priesthood and Relief Society meeting at church with the bishop teaching. Adam took Katrina out when she cried, so I actually got to stay and listen to the entire lesson. The bishop began by quoting 1 Chronicles 28:9, which tells Solomon to serve the Lord with a perfect heart and a willing mind. The bishop then drew a diagram on the board, which I tried to replicate here but blogger won't accept my table from Word. Anyway, the diagram was a simple four-celled table. He labelled the top left cell Heart and the bottom left cell Mind. We then discussed how sometimes in the church, we can focus too much on one or the other. For example, someone with too much Heart probably only focuses on the feelings and emotions of their testimony, but is easily swayed when someone brings up supposed logical problems in the doctrine of the gospel. I think a lot of new members fall prey to this. Or someone who thinks you have to cry to be feeling the spirit would be in this corner. Someone who bases their testimony entirely on Mind probably is very intellectually invested in their testimony and always searches for logical reasons to believe the gospel, but perhaps they lack a little faith. I also see people in this quadrant as those who study the scriptures and the life of Christ all the time but fail to actually live their teachings: serve others, etc.

People in the lower left quadrant are best described by Revelation 3:16, as lukewarm. I think a lot of youth can be described by this quadrant--they don't really care much about feelings or reason. Or people who go to church every week and listen to everyone else's testimonies, but fail to truly develop their own. I'm scared to think that I could become lazy and fall into this sort of worship.

The top right quadrant is obviously our goal--a marriage between heart and mind. The bishop drew a diagonal arrow from the bottom left to the top right. Our goal is to reach that top right corner. A brother also suggested that we write "Holy Spirit" alongside the arrow, because the only way that we can advance along the line is with the Spirit.

I don't know why, but this lesson really struck me. Maybe because it was the first full block of church that I've been able to sit through in a while without the distraction of the baby. It made me really ponder where I am, and how easy it is to be overly rational about the gospel or to be even lukewarm. Being overly emotional probably isn't my weakness. :] But then again, we mentioned that people who become offended and leave the church could fall into that group, and though I'd like to think that would never happen to me, it's something we should all guard against. Anyway, I really enjoyed the lesson.

Adam and I got new callings! We won't be sustained and set apart until next week, so I'll keep it to ourselves until then. But suffice it to say, we were right on in our guesses. I'm quite happy with my calling, while Adam is happy/scared to death about his.

Congratulations to Elise, my roommate from freshman year! She just had her second baby, a little girl. Another roommate of ours just had her baby girl as well a few weeks ago. We've already decided that they all will have to go to BYU together as roommates and continue the tradition. :]

And because I can't post without including pictures, here you go:

A couple of videos

So I love taking pictures and videos of Katrina. Our graduation gift from Adam's parents was a Flip camcorder, which is wonderful because it is so small and easy to use. I'm always trying to catch her cute noises and smiles these days so my family especially can see them. Here are a couple of videos that I took today. The first is of her in her bassinet. I put her down for a nap and she often makes lots of cute noises to herself. Unfortunately this time her noises were a precursor to cries, but that's not always the case! The second video is just one of her during tummy time. I was trying to show how high she can hold her head, though she had just had some tummy time and so didn't raise it up as much as she is able. But she's pretty cute in this and even "talks" a little bit, so I'm putting it up.

Tall baby

We just measured Katrina (using a kitchen scale and my sewing tape measure) and came up with the measurements:
11 lbs (176 oz, since that's what the scale is in)
24 in. length
15.5 in. head circumference

I checked online for information about growth charts, and since she's 10 weeks I compared her to other 2 1/2 month olds. According to that, she is in the 50th percentile for both weight and head circumference, but the 90th for length! Does that mean she'll actually be tall? Just kidding, I doubt she'll be very tall. But this is still fun. We measured her length just a couple of weeks ago and she was at around 22 inches. So we think that the reason she's been a bit fussy lately is because she's growing so much. Today I also couldn't get her to sleep for a nap, so she cried tons. No fun. She's finally sleeping now. I feel like the only way I can get her to sleep during the day is to feed her until she's stuffed. At least she sleeps well at night. We get 5-6 hours of uninterrupted sleep every night, and that's even with us going to bed at midnight!

Anyway, I just like to talk about my wonderful daughter. On Sunday Adam and I will get callings and then I'll have something else to worry about. I can't wait! I'm a little bored at times.

Lost in Philly

Well, Natasha just left to go back to Utah. It was great having her here. Adam and I may not make it back to Utah for Christmas, so it's especially nice to spend time with family. Plus, Katrina loved Natasha and vice versa, so everyone was happy! Katrina was rather fussy this week, though she also started making a lot more sounds and smiles more. Sometimes she would stare at us and look back and forth as though trying to figure something out. I guess Natasha and I have quite the resemblance, which I didn't really realize before.

Driving stresses me out, especially with these narrow lanes and tons of highways and people darting in and out of lanes. This past week, I got a lot more comfortable getting around. Today though, when I left the airport, I realized that I had gone south instead of north! So I ended up on a long, convoluted route that eventually got me back on I-95 north. Then I almost got in a really bad accident because of the car in front of me stopping and swerving, and someone hit the brakes so hard they squealed. It might've been me, I'm not sure. Then all of a sudden I was crossing a bridge I had never crossed and I was in Philadelphia and there were signs for bridges going into New Jersey... Oh and the trailer in front of me lost a tire or something and was spraying me with debris. I got off and parked and called Adam, but he couldn't really help. The whole time the baby was making noises and I knew if she woke up she'd be screaming and hungry. I had gotten off at a place without an onramp, but luckily when I got back on the road there were signs to get back to the freeway a different way. Because, you see, I was right the first way I went. I was supposed to go south.

Eventually I got home. And then Adam called and wanted me to pick him up. Ahhh! I have to go back on those roads as soon as I finish nursing the baby. At least I know that I can handle these roads now, but the stress was pretty awful. I don't need to exercise for a few days because my heart was racing so fast for so long!

Hard Night

It's so easy to get complacent. Katrina's been sleeping really well, sometimes all through the night (10-6 or so). But yesterday her whole day was thrown off a little by the trip to the zoo. The heat put her to sleep and made it hard for her to wake up. I ended up getting her to bed at 9:30 or so, but then she woke up at 2 and 6 and 8, approximately. Each time she ate and went back to sleep, but she needed me to keep putting her pacifier back in until she was asleep. And then she would wake up an hour later and I would have to put it in again. After I fed her at six she stayed awake for another hour or so just playing around in her bassinet. She was making the cutest noises, so that was pretty distracting, but I was also afraid she would start crying any minute when she got tired, so I couldn't go back to sleep. Then I did and she woke up. :[ I could have handled it all better if Adam had helped, but he was enduring a really really bad night himself. He had some sort of stomach bug and threw up repeatedly. He needed sleep but couldn't because his intenstines were in such turmoil. So I tried to take care of him too. I was so exhausted! Luckily Natasha is here to help, otherwise I would not have made it to church.

Oh, and the other thing is that Katrina is having feeding problems in the last couple of days. She'll eat for several minutes and then start crying. Pretty quickly she's screaming bloody murder and I'll either force her to latch back on, try the other side, or just pick her up and walk around. Today at church she had two of these episodes and the only way she would quiet down was to take a walk outside. That was hard on me because usually when she screams like that, the only thing that makes her feel better is to eat. But this time, the eating was apparently the problem. When we got home from church and she started up again, I gave her a bottle of milk I had pumped earlier. She gulped that straight down and then nursed for another 35 minutes, then slept. I think she's exhausted, has gas or something, and was hungry. Or she may have reflux, because she spits up a lot. Unfortunately insurance doesn't kick in until July. If she keeps having feeding problems, then I'll worry more. Right now it's just a problem because I'm tired.

At least she sometimes sleeps through the night! Even if I go to bed at midnight, waking up at 6:30 for her first feeding is so much more refreshing than a night like last, where I probably got just as much sleep, but just spread out more. I really think she is a wonderful baby most of the time--smiley, cooing, sleeping well, rolling over. Nights like last night are now the exception, not the norm.

Zoo trip

Right now we're watching the movie Dune. It's not really holding my interest too well. It's a bit weird for me. One time when I was a kid, I remember Josh or Robbie cutting a banana so that when someone unpealed it, the banana was cut into three pieces like the worms in Dune. I'm not sure how accurate that memory is, but it was funny.

Today we went to the Philadelphia Zoo. The last time I went to a zoo was in Russia. That was a fun zoo, but it wasn't quite the same quality as the one we went to today. We spent about four hours there. It was pretty hot, but there was enough shade that we did fine. I, however, somehow managed to trip and fall while we were walking from our car to the zoo. I'm not sure if I tripped or stepped wrong or what, but I twisted my ankle and went flying forward! I couldn't stop myself, even after I hit the ground, so I kind of bounced forward several feet even after impact. Man, it hurt! I scraped up my knees a little and one of my hands a bit. The other hand got the worst of it. I was bleeding in several places and couldn't really feel my thumb. Natasha and Adam helped me clean myself up with baby wipes, but I was in so much pain that I was rather out of it. My hand still stings pretty badly. Luckily, my ankle wasn't hurt too badly. I was able to walk off most of the pain. That's also lucky, since last time I twisted that ankle, at about 37 weeks pregnant, I had to wrap it and couldn't really walk on it for a couple of days. Today though, it wasn't that bad.

Yesterday Natasha and I visited an investigator from her mission. She absolutely loved Katrina. She even took Katrina for a ride on her motorized seat. I was a little anxious, but she was holding on to the baby just fine, so I felt better. Once I get Natasha's pictures, I'll post the picture.

Natasha is in town

Hey everyone. I just realized I haven't written since Sunday, which is a lot more of a break than I typically take. Natasha, my sister, came to visit on Tuesday. She'll be here until next Tuesday. It's been lots of fun! Well, it's been fun for me, and I hope for her too. I'm pretty much a homebody and having the baby around makes things difficult, so we stay home most of the time. But today we went to Valley Forge and enjoyed a picnic, then drove to one of the houses she lived in on her mission. She served in this area around twelve years ago. Tomorrow we're visiting one of her investigators. She's excited to go to church on Sunday and see if she can remember anyone.

Well, I'm ready for bed. Here's a cute picture:

Good Picker

Happy Father's Day to everyone. I just talked to my dad and I'm super grateful for him. He's always been awesome, a wonderful example of what a righteous priesthood-holder should be like.

Plus, today is Adam's first Father's Day. I was super excited because I get really into buying people the "perfect" gift. I'm just like a little kid when it comes to gifts: I love getting them and hate having to wait to open them. But I also love giving them and hate having to wait until the event to give it. This whole week I was dying to tell Adam what I got him. He told me last week that his boss said he should bring in some family pictures. I immediately decided that would be a great father's day gift. Well, actually, I thought seriously about getting him the cufflink box that he wants, but I decided sentimentality was more important. I have a favorite site when it comes to picture frames: umbra.com. They have such fun options for framing multiple photos. I've actually never bought anything from them until now, but when I was looking into ways to display our wedding photos, I really liked that site. I also considered the frames on this site, but the quality of the site made me doubt the quality of their products. I went with this rotating frame from umbra. I had lots of fun picking the perfect pictures. I ended up having to buy photo paper and color ink too, so the gift was far more expensive than I first planned, but I'm glad I got it. Adam liked it, so that's what's important!

I also decided to make breakfast in bed for Adam. I've never done that before. It was a bit tricky because Katrina was trying to wake up but kept falling back asleep, so I had to gamble whether to get up and make breakfast before Adam got up and risk her waking up screaming, or feed her and risk her not falling back asleep. Finally I just got up and made breakfast and asked Adam to be on pacifier duty since Katrina needed it to stay asleep by this point. By the time I came back with breakfast they were both wide awake (she was mesmerized by her bassinet mobile) but he was just as happy, even though he had figured it out.

Adam's mom and sister decided to do a 50's style Father's Day, where "the men were men and women obeyed them." It was all in jest, but we wore pearls and acted extra helpful to the men, basically. We also shared Father's Day trivia and stories and jokes. It was a fun evening.

Here's a cute picture of Katrina, followed by a picture of me at 6 months. There's a resemblance!

Oh, and the title of the post comes from a blog entry I read, in which the four-year-old girl tells her mom she's a"good picker" for choosing her husband. I think that I'm definitely a good picker. Adam's a wonderful husband and father!

PA residents

Adam and I went to the DMV today and got our new Drivers Licenses. It was actually a much more painless time than previous DMV experiences. And now we are Pennsylvania residents. Kind of fun!

Oh, and Katrina continues to roll from her tummy to her back, though she's now rolling both directions. It's a source of endless fun.

Rolling Over!

Katrina rolled over several times today! I'm so proud! The first time it happened was on her changing pad when I gave her tummy time, but that's a rounded surface so I figured that was why, especially when she wouldn't do it again on the floor afterward. She's actually rolled over a couple times before, when she was only a couple of weeks old, but that was on slanted surfaces like the couch, and her feet used the side of the couch I think. But today, when Adam came home, I decided to try again. And it worked! This video is after that, when I called Adam over. Then she repeated it several times! Every time I put her on her stomach she either quickly or in a few moments rolled over again. Mostly it's because her right arm is so strong and she props herself up with it more than the left. But for whatever reason, I think it's great!

Some quick thoughts

So I post fairly often, but I just had a few thoughts I wanted to share.

I was reading blog posts on babycenter.com today and read a post about balance. Everyone concurred that it's pretty much impossible to find balance in your life. I read all the comments and thought about my life right now. Every day is the same. I have no deadlines, assignments, projects. School is over either for good or indefinitely. My whole identity has changed from student to mom. Because Katrina sleeps so much I can still stay up late and sleep in (interspersed with feedings) like I did as a student. Each day I can sit in front of the tv all day if I want and no one cares. Except me. And maybe Adam. Any plans for the day are completely self-imposed. I don't even have a calling yet, so I don't have to plan a lesson for Sunday or anything. And with such a small baby I don't feel obligated to go to Enrichment or Luncheon group or anything yet because I don't feel comfortable nursing anywhere other than at home or if I have to, at church and at my in-laws.

I'm sure the difference between me and these other women is that they have multiple children, jobs, or at least older children who cause more stress. Right now I can actually exercise, shower, do chores, clean, and cook dinner all in one day, as well as take care of the baby. Plus read scriptures, FHE, and all of that too. Basically, my life is great right now. I count myself very blessed. I'm not sure how long this phase will last. Surely it's not going to be this easy for very long. Soon Katrina will stop sleeping all day, I'll get a calling for church, I'll want to actually go to Enrichment and stuff, and my balanced life will be harder and harder to maintain. But for right now, I'm happy. Not perfectly happy (losing 6 lbs of pregnancy weight and about 30 pounds of pre-pregnancy weight would go a long way towards that), but happy. :]

Happier Video

Here's a happier video than before. It showcases Katrina's growing neck strength. She's a cutie, isn't she?

I feel like I both wasted lots of time today and accomplished a lot too. It's funny how some days can be like that. I accomplished everything on my list and cooked dinner too, but I also feel like I watched too much t.v. But at least I was productive, right? Katrina treated us to eight hours of sleeping last night (her, not us). She went to sleep at 10:30, we went to bed at midnight, and she woke up at 6:30! Now if we had gone to bed when she did, that would have been 8 hours of sleep for us as well! As it was, I went back to sleep and slept for another 2 1/2 hours. I felt lazy not getting up until almost 10, but then again, I went to bed feeling like I was coming down with a cold, and woke up with it gone, so I don't feel bad. And it doesn't really matter if I sleep in most days since I don't need the car very often and Adam can drive to work.

Decorating

I watch a lot of HGTV when I nurse these days. That's the channel that has Househunters and Design on a Dime and a bunch of shows about design. So today I picked up my tack hammer and all of my pictures and set out to make our apartment shine. The thing is, all of our pictures and things to hang up are 8.5" x 11" or smaller, and we have huge open walls. So I just used all of the short walls to hang up our pictures. I have a bunch of souvenirs that I bought in Russia that I can finally hang up instead of just group together on a bookshelf. Wymount only let us use four nail holes per room, so I never hung them up. It was fun figuring out places for everything. The challenge will be to fill our large walls. Should we save up for some large artwork? That will take awhile, since there are so many other things we'd rather save for first. So what should we put there? I'd like to install some short decorative shelves, but we need to keep our holes small enough that we can patch them up easily when we leave.

It is so hot here! Yesterday I drove Adam to work and used the car to go on errands. Today I let him drive because I knew there was no way I was going to go out again in that heat. And I just went to KMart and the ACME that are right across the street from our apartment complex! Walks with the baby are just plain out of the question. It's supposed to let off a little tomorrow, but it doesn't bode well for the summer. It's a good thing I'm such a homebody, or I might go stir crazy.

I'm going to try something that I've always wanted to do but never actually done: plan dinner menus for the week and then shop according to that. I made a list yesterday of six meals before going shopping and this week I'm going to choose each day from that list. Yesterday I chose to make chicken curry salad. It would have worked if I had had curry, but apparently I never bought it in Utah. So we mixed pepper and poultry seasoning. Ick. It was passable. Then today, Adam's boss treated us to a Japanese restaurant. It was nice, but not my favorite Japanese cousine experience. The textures of the food really bothered me. And the baby started crying near the end and we had to take turns eating and rocking her. But Adam got his sushi, which he loves, and I got out of the house, which is good for me.

Katrina continues to be sleeping better at night. We can even put her to bed most nights while she's still awake and she'll fall asleep by herself. Last night and tonight she cried first, but we left her there and she stopped soon. I'm not big on the "cry-it-out" methods of sleep training, but now that her cries have evolved into degrees of distress, I'm fine with a certain level of tears, if they don't get worse. They're more of whimpers interspersed with cries. Her general range of noises has increased dramatically over this last week, and her head strength has gotten even better. I count myself lucky, since I'm bad at giving her tummy time. Today I flipped her over on her changing pad and watched as she pushed herself up off of it with one arm and looked up and all around. I love these milestones! And I love that Adam loves them too. I showed him the same thing later on and he got just as excited as me. Even though he's gone all day and works nine hours with no lunch (traders can't really take breaks--the New York Stock Exchange doesn't take lunch and neither do they), he is super involved when he gets home. He's supposed to be studying a lot for his next licensing exam, so it really is a sacrifice for him to watch her, especially when I'm not doing anything important and could just as easily take care of her. But I need mental breaks too.

Tomorrow I will try to finish up our master bedroom. I bought some cheap storage drawers to tide us over until we buy a bedroom set. I got most of my stuff hung up and in drawers today and thought I would leave Adam's clothes for him, but let's face it--if I want it done, I'll need to do it. Hanging up clothes is the last thing he thinks of when he gets home, and I have all day. I may even start on the second bedroom. Unless I want huge stacks of boxes in there indefinitely until we get furniture, I need to unpack the boxes. I think I'll just make lots of stacks of all of our books. I have to make small goals for myself for each day, otherwise I'll just sit around doing nothing. I also want to exercise, shower, and empty the dishwasher. I have such exciting days, don't I? :] I'm not too bored yet. The baby's not on a schedule really, so my days are all different. And anytime that I think I'm bored, I can mail in my application and 100 pound fee for the distance learning Museum Studies masters program at the University of Leicester in the U.K. That would definitely occupy a lot of my time.

Pool time

I wanted to try loading a video. This was taken yesterday. It is a perfect example of how parents torture their children for a photo-op. Katrina required lots of cuddles after this trauma. Luckily, she doesn't scream like this at bathtime anymore.

Hooray!

This is to celebrate a good night's sleep! Katrina slept from 10:30 to 5:30. I even woke up and checked her breathing because I was nervous, and I read that 8-10 weeks is when the majority of SIDS cases occur. This was wonderful to get so much sleep at once. The night before she slept from 9 til 3, so maybe she's forming a habit. I won't get too excited though until this happens a few more times. She actually used to have longer stretches of night sleeping in her first month, but once her days and nights stopped being confused, it turned into waking every 2-4 hours, same as her eating habits in the daytime. We'll see what happens tonight. Another reason to rejoice is that I put her to bed awake and she fell asleep by herself. She's getting more consistent with that. Of course, there was that night this week with the 3:00 am drive and the night with me popping a pacifier in her mouth for an hour until she fell asleep.

I'm so grateful for air conditioning. We're having a heat wave in the upper nineties, which is killer with the humidity, but our apartment has A/C. I've never lived in a house or apartment with it before. What's nicer is that we're on the lowest floor and shielded from the sun pretty well by the hill and apartment building next to us. We only have to turn the air conditioning on sometimes.

My friend Chelsea had her baby! Congratulations to her!

Apartment pictures

I took a bunch of pictures of our apartment today. Rather than repost them here, I'll just post the link to my Facebook album. Don't worry if you aren't a Facebook user--it's a public link.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=124987&l=12122&id=837490462

Isn't the apartment nice? It'll be nicer when we get things decorated. We want to get some art, hang some shelves, buy some bookcases for our endless amounts of books, buy some furniture for our clothes that don't go in the closets... It's so tempting to use up Adam's first paycheck before he even gets it on furniture alone! But we're smarter than that. Plus, we have time. But since we're here indefinitely (something we're not used to), we want to make it nice. We probably will even paint a little. I like to watch HGTV while nursing (Househunters, Design on a Dime, etc), so I'm getting good ideas! We're making slow progress in making the apartment our own. Like tonight, we walked to KMart and bought several things, including a showerhead. Nice Friday night date, huh? :]

Is it really almost Friday?

Adam is studying for another licensing exam. This is for his new job and it's required for all traders. I think that studying for this test may be even harder than studying for the others, even though he's graduated. Sure, he doesn't have homework, but he's going in early and staying late every day to try to get on top of things. Then he gets home and I hand him the baby so I can cook, or I am nursing and we both crash in front of the tv until one of us gets hungry enough to cook. Then we crash again because we're both exhausted since the baby didn't go to sleep until 3:30. Okay, that was just last night, but still, he rarely gets a full 7-9 hours of sleep. I do since I can sleep in, but it's all in 2-3 hour increments, so I'm often tired as well. Right now he's studying, but he's especially annoyed because his boss gave him his old PDA and while Adam was configuring it, the thing broke and will cost $50 just to get an estimate of how much it will cost to fix it. I doubt his boss will care, but it still stinks.

I feel a little lost because I seriously thought today was Wednesday. But no, it's Thursday. Tomorrow we will have lived here a week! We still may not be much unpacked, but I try to do a little every day. Even if it is really just a little. I have been forcing myself to use my free time as best as possible. However, everything is on the same scale--cleaning, unpacking, exercising, eating, showering, etc., even getting dressed and putting makeup on. I reward myself mentally for getting any of those things done, since I have problems with all of them. Yes, even eating!

Today I was super productive on the computer and figured out something for Father's Day. Shhh, don't tell Adam! :] I didn't even watch any tv. I've been pretty good at that. We have so many channels now, but I still only watch it sometimes, and then only when I'm nursing.

So now it's back to trying to feed this child until she passes out from satiation. Last night was just too frustrating to repeat. She was tired but couldn't stay asleep, even with all of the tried and true methods. We took a 20-30 minute drive finally and got to sleep at 3:30. I've already put her to bed once tonight and she woke up a few minutes later, so I'm feeding her for the third time in three hours. Unfortunately, her eyes are wide open still. But we've had some success over the past couple of weeks with putting her to bed while she's awake but sleepy and then having her fall asleep by herself. I'll try that next.

Little Victories

Yesterday was much better. Katrina was her happy self again and I was able to shower, unpack the kitchen, and cook dinner! She sits happily in bouncer watching me while I do things. She also took several long naps. She woke up more often last night, which was no fun, but I haven't been driving Adam to work, so I get to sleep in. Thanks to everyone for all of your helpful comments. This baby is still weird--yesterday she fell asleep during every single feeding after only a few minutes--but I can deal with it. I was worried that she wasn't getting enough to eat, but after thinking about it, she probably gets most of her nourishment in the first few minutes anyway and just likes to stay there nursing for comfort for the rest of the time. I'm fine with that, since nursing is such a bonding experience. It's the soreness that was really taking a toll on me. But I think I finally figured out why, and it's been getting a whole lot better just in the last two days.

Enough about nursing! Today I got to exercise! It was the first time in months that I have formally exercised. I walked an awful lot while pregnant out of necessity, but I haven't done much of anything since Katrina came. I want to go on walks here, but the stairs out of our apartment building are awful. They go up, then down, then up again. Makes it tough to lug a stroller around. Anyway, Katrina sat in her bouncer while I did 20 minutes of Pilates. I have to say, it was pretty embarrassing. I know I was being naive, but I assumed that things wouldn't be quite that bad! My abdominal muscles are so weak!

Unfortunately, the reason that drove me to exercising is not good--my back is in a really precarious state. I am honestly afraid that it's going to go out on me any day and that I will be bedridden. I can't find my sheet of back exercises from the physical therapist, and it's easier to try to ignore that there is such a bad problem. But the pain and feeling of frailness was pretty bad this morning, so I got out the Pilates finally, like I've been wanting to do. Pilates routines usually have quite a lot in common with physical therapy exercises. My plan this week was to get up when Adam did and exercise before the baby wakes, but it hasn't worked so far. Today felt good though, so I will continue as best as I can. I may pull out my pregnancy Pilates routine, since that one goes easy on the abs exercises.

On a completely unrelated topic, I have had four friends have babies in the last week! Two more are having them any day, and one more in a month! We're all around the same age, I guess, but it's still kind of remarkable to me. Too bad all of them are in Utah or Washington, D.C.

I could use some help!

So Katrina the past few days has been acting awful. She'll nurse and nurse and still be hungry at the end. Or if she's not she'll be hungry less than an hour later. She's fussy and won't stay asleep for naps. I think she's tired and that's part of the reason she thinks she's so hungry. She's seven weeks today and I don't think this is a growth spurt. Last weekend she was nursing a lot too but that seemed to be a growth spurt. I'm wondering if she is having problems because all of last week she spent in the car during the day and took her naps that way. Occasionally when this happens I end up giving her a bottle of formula and that satiates her. But the last two times that it's happened she's ended up not having any dirty diapers for over 24 hours. Last time she got this way I think it was because I ate some Chinese food and that bothered her stomach. I've decided that I really want to avoid giving her formula again, even occasionally, because last night her gas and constipation kept waking her up, and then today she had a "blowout" that was the most disgusting thing she'll probably ever do again! Gross, I know.


So if any of you have any ideas, let me know. I'm worried that I'm not producing enough milk. Adam kind of wants to give up on breastfeeding because I'm really sore and it's super energy-consuming, but I'm determined to keep it up. I know that she's super young, but this is a little out of the norm for her. She has, up to this point, been gradually putting herself on a schedule. Is it just because she's tired and can't take naps without the car? She falls asleep at night just fine and is even pretty good about falling back asleep after her night feedings. I just hate taking steps backward like this. Plus, it means our apartment is super messy and largely unpacked. I really need to be able to step away from her for longer than, oh, three minutes. When Adam's family was visiting on Saturday, his fourteen-month-old nephew was in everything. That's going to be really stressful on me if I can't get things toddler-proofed before they visit again, which I hope to be soon.


Well, here's my obligatory cute baby picture:
And here's a kind of funny one. I bought material so that I could make my own "Moby" wrap. You may have heard of those. Unfortunately, Katrina doesn't like it very much. She hates her movements being constrained. She likes the sling though, which is a little weird. I tried the other day putting her in the wrap again, and she hated it, until I turned her around so she could see things. You're not supposed to carry a child that way until they can hold their head up on their own, which won't be for a couple of months, I think. However, she loved it! So I snapped a picture and took her out.