Back to work...

Today was the first day of my fourth week back at work.  In some ways it hasn't been as bad as I was expecting, but in other ways it's so, so hard.  The first morning back I was a mess.  I think I cried a lot the day before, I cried most of the morning, and I made Matt go with me to drop Eleanor off at daycare.  I cried leaving her and pretty much anytime anyone at work asked me how I was doing.  Matt, being the amazing husband that he has, had flowers delivered to me that first day back from him and Eleanor.  As a bonus they were delivered by a friend who also owns her own floral business :)  Dropping Eleanor off in the mornings has become a little easier, but I still miss her like crazy all day long.  I'm finding I really cherish our evenings and weekends even more than I already did.  I look forward to that time with her and don't want anything to interfere with that.  I am definitely excited about summer break and spending the whole summer with her. 

Luckily, Eleanor is in great hands at daycare.  She's in a class of all girls (!) and is the youngest baby in the room.  Because she's the youngest and all the other babies are crawling and/or walking, this means that Eleanor gets lots of attention and love :)  She is always in a good mood when we pick her up in the afternoons, and is often just babbling away at the assistant in her classroom (she's the one there in the afternoons when we pick Eleanor up).  And daycare has been great about using our cloth diapers!  I think it's been much easier than they expected.  As an added bonus, they also think the diapers are cute.  The classroom assistant told me last week that each morning they look through Eleanor's bag of clean diapers to see which ones she has that day, just because the diapers are so cute :)  I think that's funny because the ones I send to daycare are just solid colors, with the exception of the two prints that Bum.Genius makes, and there are way cuter diapers out there.  But I'm glad they've been so willing to give cloth diapering a try and are making it work pretty easily.

Here's a normal day for our family:
4:45am - alarms go off and Matt and I get up
5:30am - Matt leaves the house.  I try to be mostly ready by the time he leaves (which is why I get up when he does) in case Eleanor wakes up early.  This has happened a few times and it throws the whole morning off :)
6:00am - I wake Eleanor up.  I change her, get her dressed, give her her reflux medicine, and feed her.  We then read books (usually a story from the Jesus Story.book Bible) and we "talk" (I talk, she babbles) until it's time to leave.
6:40am - The latest that Eleanor and I pull out of the driveway
6:50am - Get to daycare.  Put away clean diapers and bottles, fill out drop-off sheet, lots of hugs and kisses for Eleanor
7:00am - Leave daycare and head to school
7:10am - Get to school and prepare for my kiddos, who arrive at 7:30
3:45-4:00pm - Leave school and head over to pick up Eleanor
4:00-7:30pm - Home!  Eleanor usually takes a nap or two during this time, but we do lots of playing, reading, going for walks, etc.  Eleanor also gets a bath every other night.  While Eleanor is napping I run a load of diapers every other day and eat dinner.
7:30pm-ish - Eleanor eats for the last time and then goes to bed.  She is still sleeping through the night, which is awsome.  Some mornings she even tries to stay asleep after I get her out of her crib!  There are mornings I have gotten her pajamas off, diaper changed, and clothes on and her eyes are still closed :)  The girl loves her sleep!  Matt and I aren't complaining about that, though - we like our sleep, too :)

After Eleanor goes to bed we get bottles together for the next day at daycare.  We also wash bottles every other day.

The days are long and I'm exhausted by Friday.  I struggle with feeling like I'm not serving my students at school well because I'm not staying as late as I used to (though I do stay later on Fridays because Matt picks Eleanor up then) and don't have the time in the evenings to work on things like I did before Eleanor was born.  I'm hoping that things get at least a little easier to balance, as I also came back at a very busy time of the school year with assessments, report cards, etc.

And because it's not a post on the blog without at least one photo of Eleanor, here you go:

Eleanor was so tired one afternoon after daycare that she fell asleep while playing with the rings on her playmat

I just got this toy for Eleanor last week at the recommendation of a friend.  Eleanor LOVES it.  Seriously.  I've never seen her lift her head that high and for that long during tummy time.  Here she's using it while in the Bu.mbo :)

Florida

A few weeks ago we flew down to Florida to visit Matt's dad and stepmom.  Matt had a work conference in Orlando that started on Wednesday, so we flew down on Monday so Matt could spend a few days with everyone before his conference.  Eleanor and I stayed in Ocala the whole week, and on Saturday Richard and Barb drove Eleanor and I to the resort Matt was staying at for his conference.  We hung out there for the night and then we all flew back home on Sunday.  It was a great trip and we are so happy that Eleanor got to spend so much time with Geepop and Grandma!  And Eleanor was a rockstar on both of the plane rides.  She either slept, ate, or looked around and "talked" the whole time.  No fussing at all!

Here are some photos from our time in Florida:

What do you think of my new shades?

Hanging out with Geepop

Eleanor loved the bouncer there!

Playing with Daddy and Grandma

Eleanor also loved the mobile above the crib.  Notice how her feet are blurry?  She couldn't stop kicking them as she watched the mobile turn and listened to the music.

Eleanor almost got eaten by a shark at the Natural History Museum on UF's campus

We hung out on the front porch while Grandma gardened

Grandma worked half days while we were there, so Eleanor got lots of Grandma time every afternoon :)

Figuring out how to reach for things during tummy time...except she managed to get her toy all the way up her arm :)

Eleanor discovered a deep love for ceiling fans during our visit

On a walk around the resort the morning we left

Eleanor and Daddy in front of the fountain

3 month photo outtake

This also happened during her 3 month photo shoot.  Look at how great Eleanor holds her head up - and check out that massive bubble she's blowing!

Things I Don't Want to Forget - 3 months

Eleanor, at three months old (how did that happen already?!?)...

-You started eating 5 5oz bottles every day on the day you turned three months.  You'd been eating 5 4.5oz bottles every day since you turned two months old.  You had started fussing sooner between feedings and acting hungrier, and sweetheart, that half an ounce has made a big difference.  You're back to going 3.5-4 hours between bottles and while you still get mad when we stop you to burp halfway through, you're content when you've finished the whole 5 ounces.

-You are still sleeping through the night!  We are all enjoying this.  Before your last bottle we get you in your pajamas and a night time diaper (because you sleep for 8-10 hours every night, your normal daytime diapers weren't cutting it, so I bought a diaper made for night time that we've been really liking, and on the nights when that one isn't clean we stuff a daytime diaper with a couple extra inserts).  You eat your bottle and then we rock you to sleep.  Sometimes you go right to sleep after your bottle and sometimes you like to spit out your pacifier and talk and smile at us instead.  You're awfully cute when you do this, and even though we know you need to go to sleep, we enjoy it and talk back to you :)

-Speaking of sleeping, you wake up in the craziest positions in the morning.  We have no idea how you manage to move around so much.  Your daddy and I have said that we would love to have a time lapse video of you sleeping at night.  Here are some photos of how we've found you in the morning, despite being put down straight in the middle of your crib. (For reference, your feet are against the back of your crib.)

-When you are sleepy, you have started rubbing your hair with one hand.  It's adorable.  You've also started fighting sleep because you don't want to miss anything.  While we love you, the crying hysterically when you're tired is not so adorable :)

-When you're falling asleep, sometimes you spit your pacifier out and it just sits there on your chest.  It's pretty cute.  (see the photo)  However, you've also decided you really like sucking your thumb, especially in the middle of the night.  Your daddy and I would much rather you suck on a pacifier than your thumb.  In fact, your penchant for sucking your fingers is what prompted your daddy and I to give you a pacifier in the first place.  Please, please choose the pacifier.  Your teeth will thank us later.  But you love your thumb a lot.  I've been putting little mittens on your hands at night so you can't get to your thumb.  Wednesday night you managed to knock both mittens off and had your thumb in your mouth sucking away when I woke up at 3am.  Don't worry, I went in and replaced your thumb with a pacifier :)

-Before you really discovered your thumb last week you had started sucking on your hand.  Like, your whole hand.  It kind of reminded me of the opening song from Golden Girls (you'll watch it someday; they're classics) where Bea Arthur's character, Dorothy, stuffs her fist in her mouth.

-You love "talking."  You have been babbling and cooing and gurgling a ton lately!  We love it.  We keep trying to get it on video, but every time we pull our phones out to record you, you stop talking.  We have one video that sort of captures it, but it's not the best :)  You also stop talking anytime we call your grandparents so they can hear you.  I took you to Koh.l's last week and you were talking to me so loudly the lady in front of us turned around and started laughing.  Daddy took you to the eye doctor two days ago to pick up his new glasses and you were smiling and talking to everyone there.  Even the eye doctor came out of his office to meet you and hear you talk!

-You love having your head up and looking around.  When we put you on our shoulder to carry you, your head is always up and turning back and forth so you can take everything in.  You've got pretty good head control for being three months old.

-We've gotten into a pretty good routine during the day.  You wake up (or lately, I've been waking you up so we can get on an earlier time frame since you're starting daycare next week), eat, and then go back to sleep for an hour or two.  When you wake up we get you dressed and we play for a bit until you're sleepy again.  Usually during this time you lay on your changing table and have some diaper-free time while we read a story or two from the Jesus Story.book Bible.  You just grin and talk and kick your legs the whole time.  (You love not having your diaper on, by the way.)  When you wake up from that nap, it's usually time for you to eat again.  Then you're awake for about 45 minutes before you nap again.  The rest of the day it's a cycle of awake, eat, awake, sleep until bedtime.  You're usually in a pretty good mood all day long unless you're really tired.

-You do not enjoy tummy time so much.  You're either content to just lay there with your head down or you start crying a lot.  Oh, and you still only like your head facing your left shoulder.  You get kind of angry when we make you turn it the other way (which we continue to do because the doctor told us to).  But you can lift your head pretty well when you want to.

-This is my last week home with you, baby girl.  I'm so glad that I got to have almost 14 whole weeks with you before you have to start daycare, but I'm still pretty sad about not being able to spend all day with you every day.  The good news is that it's only seven weeks from when you start daycare until summer break, and then I'll have ten whole weeks to spend with you!  You'll be in great hands at daycare, though, and they are very excited for you to start coming.  There are six other babies in your class, and they are all girls!  You'll be the littlest one there so I know you'll get lots of attention from everyone :)  But I'm making your daddy come with me on Monday to drop you off because it's going to be hard.  I really wish I could stay home with you all the time.

3 months!

Eleanor is already three months old!  She's getting so big.  I'm planning a "things I don't want to forget" post soon, but right now her favorite things are holding her head up to look around and standing up while we hold her (again, so she can look around).  She's also been babbling quite a bit :)