Minnie Girl

Jillian's Grandma Galland sent her some really cute Minnie Mouse outfits. This is one. It's a little big on her but oh, so cute. I think Jillian looks like her Grandpa Porter in this picture. Maybe it's the ears...

Poem

My friend, Jaidi, found the source of my cat poem. I wasn't exact on the wording but give a girl a break, I memorized this poem 20 years ago. Here it is in its entirety.

Cats Sleep Anywhere
Cats sleep anywhere, any table, any chair. Top of piano, window-ledge, in the middle, on the edge. Open draw, empty shoe, anybody's lap will do. Fitted in a cardboard box, in the cupboard with your frocks. Anywhere! They don't care! Cats sleep anywhere.
Eleanor Farjeon (1881 - 1965)

http://www.catquotes.com/catssleepanywhere.htm

Babies Sleep Anywhere

In third grade I had to memorize a poem and recite it in front of all the other third graders in my school. The poem I chose to memorize was called "Cats Sleep Anywhere." I wore a black unitard and little cat ears and my mom made me a tail that we pinned on the bum of my outfit. I can only remember a few lines of that poem now (not bad, that was 20 years ago!) and it goes:

Cats sleep anywhere

Any table any chair

On the couch,

Window ledge

In the middle,

On the edge...*

But I think I should change the words to: "Babies sleep anywhere." Jillian sleeps in the most uncomfortable looking places. Halfway upside down on her daddy's lap, on my lap with her head under my arm, and with her arms up in the air like the cops just told her to "freeze." But she can sleep in any of these positions for hours so I guess she's comfy, so we just let her sleep in her crazy positions.

*I can't remember who to attribute this poem to, so to the author, I am sorry!

Three Weeks Old

Ok, technically, Jillian was three weeks old yesterday. And she was in a really cute outfit and I was prepared to take a cute picture and post it then but Sean was holding her and she peed on him through the diaper. So we had to change into a not so cute outfit and I didn't want to take a picture of it. Besides, she got that one wet too only about an hour later so we finally gave up and put her in her pjs. This is a picture of Jillian today, all ready for church. She did so good and slept all through Sacrament meeting and Sunday School and then we got to Relief Society and she did really well for about 15 minutes and then had a blow out which woke her up and we had to leave. Slowly we are working our way to making it to all of church. Once we got home she was so hungry and dirty and she was crying so hard because we stripped her of her stinky clothes that we didn't even bother to get her dressed but let her hang out in her diaper for awhile. She didn't seem to mind, despite the face she's making in the picture.

P.S. Heather, everyone at church loved her dress!!!

Old Habits Die Hard

This is a 3-D ultrasound of Jillian when I was 19 weeks pregnant. The doctor told us he couldn't get a good picture of her because she had her hand over her nose. I guess she likes her hand there because we caught her the other day like this...

Active Baby

This is a cute video of Jillian being active. Again, not so exciting but it's mostly for the family that's far away and can't see Jilly as often as they would like. We don't want you missing her growing up!

Carseat Sleeper

It's inevitable. Anytime we put Jillian in her car seat, she falls asleep. This makes going anywhere much easier. As long as we just leave her alone she'll sleep on and on. I just wish she didn't look so uncomfortable. But apparently she's not because she snoozes on. She must take after her parents. We both love our sleep.

Penguin Cutie

If you know Sean at all you know that he loves penguins. So when we saw this outfit at Old Navy we had to get it (we also got two other penguin outfits that same shopping trip).

My favorite part of the outfit are the shoes. They have penguins on them. How cute! We dressed up our little penguin cutie in this outfit to take her to her two week doctor's appointment. She's doing really well and the doctor said everything was looking really good and that we were doing a good job (such a nice thing to hear as a new parent). She weighs 9 lbs 4.5 oz and is 21 1/2 inches long. Lots of growth!

Church

Sunday was Jillian's first church experience. We only made it to sacrament meeting, although Jilly slept through the whole thing and we could've stayed longer but I wasn't feeling well (lucky me, I have mastitis...). We even sat behind the noisiest family in the ward and she still slept so it looks like church might not be so hard with a baby after all. I say that now, probably in a month I'll wish I would've keep my mouth shut!!! Here she is in her little dress.I think she looked like one of those Hostess Snowballs, you know the marshmallow with the pink coconut on the top. But a very adorable Hostess Snowballs. Oh, and we finally got released from nursery!!! Yay! Why ever they would put a nine month pregnant woman and her husband in the nursery together is beyond me. I guess they put us in before I was nine months pregnant but still, to leave us in was pretty crazy. I couldn't even bend down to play with the kids by month seven. I guess we're ready for something new now.

Two Weeks Old!

Jillian is now two weeks old. This week was much better than the first. No major medical problems (we did have some goopy eyes but they cleared up), the breastfeeding is going much better, and she's sleeping a good chunk of the night. Yay!

Video

This is my attempt at taking video with our new camera. Newborns aren't really that interesting, at least not to anyone but their adoring parents, but here's Jillian doing her baby thing. Enjoy.

Tired

Being a new mom wears you out!

Curls

Sean and I were giving Jillian a bath this morning and I dried off her hair and low and behold it curled. So then Sean asked, "Where did she get all those curls?" He figured they came from my side of the family. But if you know my side of the family you know we all have stick straight hair. So I looked at him kinda funny and said,"No, honey, the curls are from you!" In Sean's baby pictures he has long curly hair. In fact, his mom loved his curly hair so much she let it grow long and then people thought he was a girl because he had such beautiful ringlets. Guess she takes after her daddy in the hair department.

One week old

Can you believe it's already been a week? And what a week it's been. Jillian's had her heel pricked three times (this is after the bunches of times they do it in the hospital, they make sure the mommies are not around for that), been to the doctor three times and sat on a box radiating blue light for three days. Whew!

Hopefully, next week is better!

No more bilibed!

The doctor called yesterday afternoon and told us that Jillian's bilirubin levels were low enough she could come off the bed. So we took her right off and put some clothes on her, poor thing has been naked for the last three days because the light needs to have direct contact with as much skin as possible. She's been much happier since she's been off the light.
Since you can't really tell, I have to say that her shirt says, "I (heart) daddy". I know she really does because he is such a good Dad. He's been so helpful. And he loves her so much. Yay for daddies!

Billibed

Being a baby is hard work. Being a baby who has to sit in a Billibed for 18 hours a day is even harder. Poor Jillian is a little jaundiced and is currently spending any time she's not eating lying over a blue light in order to help her out. She's also eating a lot (which means extra pumping for me) because the way to get rid of jaundice is to poop. She's being a real trooper though, she's had to get her heal pricked twice in the last two days and then spends most of the day lying in the blue light and is hardly fussing at all. The only real problem is since she needs to be eating so much we've had to supplement with formula so she's lost all interest in breastfeeding. If anyone knows anything about this and has some good advice, pass it along! I caught her and her daddy sleeping side by side. It's tough work to be a dad too, I guess (he's the one that got to sleep last night...).

Jillian's here!!!

She's here! After 27 hours at the hospital Jillian Ivy Galland made her appearance into the world. Sean and I drove to the hospital at 7pm on January 4th where I was admitted and was put into a room. I got a pill in order to ripen my cervix (it was not oral...) every four hours. My contractions started about 12am and they were pretty manageable until about 4am when I needed some pain killers. Sadly, the pain killer only worked for about 20 minutes before it wore off and the contractions were quite painful. I wasn't even dilated yet so I knew we were in for the long haul. I finally got an epidural at 9am which made life so much better. Thank goodness for drugs!!! I still wasn't really progressing much until about 4pm when I finally was dilated to a 4 (I went from a one to a four in just an hour). I stayed at a 4 until 7:30ish when I jumped to 9 cm dilated!!! My doctor was shocked. So were the nurses. I had to have two nurses check me just because the first one didn't believe that I jumped up so quick. I started pushing 8pm and Jillian came out at 9:53pm. The doctor was nervous that she was too big for my pelvis (apparently it was a tight squeeze) but I was bound and determined not to have a c-section so I just went for it and pushed her out. I'm pretty sore today but so excited that she's here. Jillian was born on January 5th. She has a full head of dark hair and was alert right out of the gate. She weighs 8 pounds 9oz and is 20 1/2 inches long. She has dark eyes and her dad's ears. We love her so much! And we'll post more pictures later...promise!

41 weeks

It's induction day!!! Here I am, ready to go (it's 6:30am, I don't get induced until 7pm...I gotta a few hours to go). Look at that belly! Whoa baby!

The last couple of weeks have been incredibly boring for me. I've been on maternity leave but without a baby to be maternal with I've run out of things to do. So this is what has occupied my time in the last little while.

I did a puzzle. This is it on New Year's Day.

This is it today. I'm determined to finish it even though I already know we're missing a piece. Sad when that happens...

I made curtains. Well, ok, I bought curtains and then hemmed them. But I hand hemmed them because it was going to be too much work to pull out the sewing machine for a 2 minute project. And I helped hang them.

I also helped hang the toy hammock. Mostly Sean did the hanging and I handed him the screws and tools. But I think we are now ready for a baby. And I don't have any more maternity leave without a baby (because she had better come by Monday if they're inducing me tonight!!!).

Nerves

I don't know why I'm more nervous to be induced than going into labor naturally but I am. Every time I think about going to the hospital my tummy does flip flops. I wasn't nervous until I realized that tonight is my last night before I'm a parent. A little daunting. Technically, I probably won't be a parent tomorrow night either as I don't go to the hospital until 7pm but really, I'll be at the hospital starting labor. So that doesn't count in my book. Anyway, for those that are wondering I'm pretty sure that Jillian is not coming on her own so I expect her to arrive at some point on Saturday. Until then, I'm just waiting it out. And getting excited to see my mom who flies in tomorrow!!!