A Month of Many Firsts

Evie is three months mow - hard to believe (I know I sound like every new mom and I say this in every post....).  The last few weeks have been busy - Evie experienced her first Christmas, rang in her first new year, took her first flight, met many of her family members for the first time, fought through her first cold and continued to grow and develop into a more interactive and happy baby.

We had a fairly low-key Christmas this year - just spent the day at home relaxing and then hosted a small turkey dinner with our friends Mac and Jocelyn, and Mark and Ang and their one year old Ben. It was still a full house since there were also 5 dogs running around our ~550 square foot main floor....they had a pretty fun Christmas.  Evie was very well behaved and somehow managed to stay awake for 7 hours straight without a nap during Christmas dinner (happily sitting in her bouncer chair while Ben helped to bounce her).  I thought for sure I'd pay for that lack of a nap at some point, but it didn't seem to affect her routine too much.  

It is so difficult to get the dogs to pose for pictures...especially with the self-timer

Evie did enjoy looking at the lights and Christmas ornaments on the tree - Thanks Mac and Jocelyn for the cute Christmas outfit

Daddy daughter Christmas pic 

Some Christmas smiles 

The dogs love when we take out their holiday accessories

On Boxing Day, we headed out to the mountains for a ~10km hike up to Barrier Lake lookout on the edge of Kananaskis.  Evie slept through most of it, but the views were pretty great.  

Views from the top - Evie is bundled up in there somewhere

Craig and our failed attempt to get the dogs to pose for a picture....again - they had a great boxing day running around in the snowy woods

The large part of our month was spent travelling to Ontario.  It was a busy trip, but was great to see many of our family members and friends that Evie had yet to meet.  We flew home on New Years Eve and got in to Toronto at about 10:30 pm....so we rang in the New Year in a rental car enroute to Port Hope.  We spent 10 days in Port Hope and then I went up to Capreol (my hometown, 30 minutes North of Sudbury) and, not having the luxury of unlimited time off work, Craig headed back to Calgary.  Most of our time in Ontario was spent visiting with family members and friends, which was great.  Here are some pictures from our trip.

Evie enjoyed many long naps on Pop-Pop (Craig's dad, Wayne)

Evie being entertained by Nana (Elizabeth) and Pop-Pop

Evie meeting Grandma Sue for the first time

Evie and Aunt Mandy and cousin Drew

Drew really loved to hold Evie.  After about 3 minutes she would announce "I'm done now" and go on playing with her baby dolls until a half hour later when she wanted to hold Evie again.  It was pretty cute.

This was about the best picture I could get of Drew, Boden and Evie - Boden doesn't like pictures as much as his sister :).  None of them are looking at the camera, but at least no one is crying

Craig will have to learn to say no at some point or I will have to deal with a lot of complaining in the future....after swinging Drew around like this for an afternoon, his arms and back were pretty sore - at least kids keep you active!

Pop-Pop and (some of) his grand-babies

Evie and her Great Grandmother Margaret (Pearce)

Evie and her Great Grandfather Gordon (Pearce)

Evie meeting her Great Grandmother Wilda Drummond (my maternal grandmother)

We were lucky that a good portion of our friends from university were able to get together for a potluck when we were home - "Family Portrait" right here

Evie's first Moffatt family jam session :)  My mom organized a night of music, treats and baby visiting at our church when we were back in Capreol.  It was a lot of fun and Evie was happy to be passed around.  She enjoyed the music and was pretty tired by the end of the night.  Probably about 20 people came out to meet Evie and enjoy the music of my mom's band "The Accidentals"

My sister (Lynn), my mom (Faye) and my Aunt (Valerie) singing with Evie

My Mom and Aunt with Evie

Evie with her Aunt Lynn, who flew back to Capreol with us for the visit - Lynn took longer to get through security than Evie and I with her complicated metal belt and multiple laptops/tablets (who said babies are hard to travel with :)

Evie really liked looking at the wind chimes with Grandma

Evie and her Grandpa....Scout wondering why his "dad" has a new baby (he was probably happy to see us go and have all the attention back to himself:)

 I also got together with my good friend Vanessa and her three beautiful girls who are 5, 3, and 8 months (can you say busy?!?) - A lot has changed since high school!

Overall it was a really great trip - unfortunately for the last week of the trip and up until now Evie has been fighting her first cold.  It started with an eye infection and turned into a chest cold, as well as an ear infection (so she has had antibiotics both orally and in eye drop form).  I also caught the cold - pretty hard to prevent after spending a week with a baby coughing in your face and throwing up on you daily.  Evie has been pretty tough through the whole thing and her temperament has still been pretty good (I think she is handling it better than me).  It is just kind of sad to hear her little cough and know that she doesn't really know what is happening to her body.  Babies can't blow their noses or spit out mucus either, so the only way to clear her out is with the nasal aspirator (which she HATES) or when she coughs enough that she ends up gagging and throwing up.  That doesn't bother her too much, but its a little inconvenient.  That has been happening during overnight feeds mainly, since that is the time when she is most congested.  We have a routine though - I feed her, then she starts coughing, I take her out in the hall (hardwood, away from the carpet in the nursery), she pukes, Craig gets up to come and clean up (and sometimes change her if I also need to go change), and then I feed her again.  Not fun...  

I was pretty anxious about my flights home with her on my own (mainly because I was afraid she might throw up all over the place), but she did very well.  I got lucky and had extra seats beside me on both of my flights and the people around me and flight attendants were all very helpful and friendly.

The dogs were happy to have us back and Evie has started to notice them a little more too

Since being home I feel that Evie has really started developing quickly - it's like overnight she has started to display some new skills and habits.  She seemed very tired when we were travelling (probably from being passed around and taken to so many new places, and not really having much restful sleep), and even I was surprised by how much she slept when we were in Ontario (and so were many of our family members).  In either case, it seems like she has changed more in the last week than any other week of her life.

This week, Evie has learned to grab her toys with a bit more intention.  She will grab them and try to eat them.  She is also much more vocal and seems to like to hear the sound of her own voice even if no one is talking to her.  She will lie on her own and play for 15-20 minutes or so as long as she is fed and rested, which is kind of nice (and is how I am able to write many portions of this blog post....).  She will sit contently for the same length of time if I read to her (not sure if she really knows what is going on, but she isn't crying and she seems to look at the pictures, so that's good enough for me).  She also smiles a lot when I sing to her - hopefully she'll join in one day (before these last couple weeks she just stared at me blankly when I sang).  

Evie playing with her toys

 She really likes to grab this ball and try to fit it in her mouth

A funny video of her playing with the ball

She finally seems to enjoy tummy time and almost overnight she was able to lift and hold her head at a 90 degree angle (before this tummy time was more like baby struggle time and a face plant into the floor/mat).  It is pretty wild how they develop some abilities overnight.

Talking during tummy time

It has been a busy and tiring few weeks, but I'm glad we got to finally introduce Evie to so many of her family members.  I am very happy that both Evie and I are getting over these colds.  It's definitely exhausting being sick with a little one - you can't really take any time to rest and recover yourself.   I'm just glad we just had to deal with colds and not the stomach flu or something worse.  Regardless, it's still tough to see your baby suffer.  

It really is amazing how much it's possible to love your baby - you always know that your parents love you, but I definitely have a new understanding of what that love means now that I have a child of my own.  I can't even get through books like "Love You Forever" without tears....I'll have to work on that before Evie gets bigger and wonders why Mommy is crying :)

Speaking of bigger - As of Monday, Evie weight 13lbs 7oz.  She's about a half pound away from doubling her birth weight of 7'1.  She is transitioning out of the 0-3 month clothes into 3-6/6 months (I am a bit sad to make the switch and pack the little clothes away).  

Well - I will leave you with some sweet smiles (pictures just don't do a baby smile justice though)