WOW time really flies the second time around. I’m a bit delayed in putting up a blog entry on Anne’s 2 Month “birthday” largely because she decided to go through a growth spurt earlier in the week. YIKES it was hard!!! She went from getting up once at night to getting up 4-5 times and eating for an hour each time. I was run ragged, but I pushed through it! She was just so enthralled by the world around her. She could look at a book for 10-15 minutes before getting tired of it. She LOVES mobiles and other moving toys. They seem to fascinate her. This has helped with car rides immensely, since she looks at herself in the little mirror the whole ride now. Less crying on car rides = awesome.

Her two month stats are amazing. She’s in the 50th percentile across the board. Olivia had been in the 90th percentile. So far Anne is a little peanut, but she may catch up! Kids are so different. Anne is laid back except when it comes to a dirty diaper. She doesn’t cry for food unless it’s been way too long and I’ve made her wait it out to finish up a chore. All in all, couldn’t ask for more!

2 Month Stats for Anne:

• Weight: 10lbs 12oz

• Length: 23″

If you’re interested, here were Olivia’s stats at 2 months: http://family.travin.com/?p=63

Grandma (Milner) was up here for a whole week visiting too. We had a lot of fun eating out, playing with the kids, and shopping for Olivia’s birthday. We’re going to be doing an Ariel themed party for her this year since she’s literally obsessed with The Little Mermaid (chip off the old block!). She can’t get enough of her “Ariel movies.” As silly as it sounds, I forgot to whip out my camera the whole trip to actually take pictures of Grandma with the girls. I don’t know what I was thinking. Usually I’m the first person to glue a camera to her face.

Speaking of cameras, here’s a few 2 month portraits of Anne:

And my personal favorite:

I SWEAR I’m trying to get more of Olivia. She’s just entered that stage where she has no interest in the camera whatsoever. We’re going to head out to a park this weekend, so maybe I’ll just get some decent lifestyle shots of her playing on the playground or paddle boat.

In my continued quest to find the perfect sibling shot, I made a great attempt this morning and actually got eye contact from both girls. That’s a miracle in child photography. Seriously. Usually you have to do head swaps and magic with Photoshop to achieve these effects. Anne still requires some work from us to get a smile, so sadly she’s not smiling here, but it’s ok. You can tell she’s oh so excited to be in this shot LOL!

Here we are a month after Anne’s arrival. We’re better rested and have adjusted to having another child in the house. Olivia is still struggling and fighting for attention, mostly because she doesn’t understand that Anne is being held by me primarily for feedings. Whenever I put Anne down, Liv runs up and hops into my lap to sit for a few minutes. To help combat this, I’ve started to ask her to snuggle up with us when I’m feeding the baby, or to fetch a book so I can read it to her.

We made our second outing to the park as a family this past weekend. I wrapped Anne up in a Moby wrap instead of using the stroller, since she likes to be snuggled against me so much. It was actually a LOT easier to just wear her as opposed to pulling the big stroller out since there aren’t any sidewalks leading up to the playground. It’s quite a hike with one of those big travel system strollers! Olivia got a lot of play time in, which is great, because I feel like for the past month we’ve done nothing but sit in the house and watch bad daytime television — or The Little Mermaid. We also braved a trip to Red Robin for lunch. Anne did great and the restaurant host was kind enough to nestle us down into a remote spot so I wouldn’t be shy about nursing. Of course, I have a huge blanket that hides everything anyway, but I didn’t want people looking over and wondering what I was doing under it if you catch my drift.

I’m still trying to snap as many pictures as I can of Anne. She’s at that awkward stage where I can’t really pose her and she isn’t really making good eye contact yet, nor does she have control of her limbs at this point. I’m dying to get the 3 month shots, because that’s when she’ll push up on her arms and smile a lot. She’s smiling now, of course, but it’s very hard to catch on camera. She’s quick and sneaky about it. Apparently she really enjoys it if I sing Lady Gaga songs to her…

As always, I’m trying to keep Flickr updated and there are more images there than here in this post.

I’m not particularly good at Macro photography yet, but I do have a macro lens to allow me to get some pretty neat close-up shots. Typically people use these for food photography or flower photography. It’s a neat lens. I just have to learn how to use it more efficiently. I like to use it to capture the tiny details like fingernails, her nose, toes, lips, etc.

Anne is nearly a month old, and so far we’ve been doing alright adjusting our lives to having two children instead of one. Olivia is getting better by the day, especially now that Anne isn’t cluster feeding as much in the evenings. We’ve found ways of including her in baby care activities and doing special things with her (like baking a cake or going to the park). Anne is getting HUGE though. I look at her and think “my god, you’re growing too fast! SLOW DOWN!” I wish it were that easy. I’m afraid she’s going to grow up too fast!

She’s given us her first smiles already, though they aren’t consistent. I get 1 or 2 in the morning hours when she’s the most alert. By the time 1pm gets here, she just wants to eat, poop, and zonk out for a couple of hours. I don’t know when this will change. She’s vastly different from Olivia, who used to eat, play for 15 minutes, sleep for 30, rinse wash repeat. Anne’s much more quiet and observant than Olivia too. She will sometimes be content to just sit in my arms and look up at me. Not hungry. Not tired, just observant. She’s like a little scientist.

The nursing is also going well. A month strong now and I feel like I can keep going. I’m going to try to push through the 4-6 week growth spurt as well as I can. What drives me is knowing I’m giving her a life-long gift that I was too stupid to not be able to give to Olivia the way I had hoped. If I can make it past 6 weeks, I think we’re golden for a very strong nursing relationship. I’m thankful to have a lot of support from family and friends who have pushed me up and kept me going when I kept trying to reach for a bottle of formula.

Anne Marie Nelson has arrived! She was born April 20th, 2011 at 2:33am. Just a couple of hours shy of being a Judgement Day baby (Terminator reference). The birth was very quick from start to finish, thank goodness. We knew it would be quick, but we didn’t know it was going to be turbo charged!

All day long I had been experiencing what I thought were Braxton Hicks contractions, but no matter how many glasses of water I drank nor what positions I’d lay in, they wouldn’t let up. They were only about 10-15 minutes apart until 5pm when they started to get closer and closer together. Maurice came home with Olivia after a long day at work when I realized “oh my” and ran to the restroom. I’ll spare the details, but suffice it to say, I knew something was up. Olivia barged in on me and said “OH NO! Baby Anne is coming! I got to go!” and then slammed the door on her way out. Cute, but ominous given the fact that I spent the rest of our dinner timing contractions anywhere from 2 minutes to 5 minutes apart.

We decided after 7pm to call the doctor and see what she thought. After telling her I’ve had an average of 4 minutes between contractions for the past hour, she said to come into L&D to get checked. We scooped up Olivia out of her bed, grabbed anything we thought we’d need to keep her entertained while I was being checked and rushed off to the hospital around 8pm. Maurice dropped me off so he could go park and take care of Olivia. I waddled into the ER entrance and stood in line behind about 5 other people looking to check in. That’s when contractions hit me harder and the lady at the desk looks up and asks: “Maam, are you contracting?” To which I gave an enthusiastic “YES!!!” I was placed in a wheelchair and quickly rolled around to a check-in counter where once again I was asked if I was contracting. I was polite. My hormonal side wanted to say “No, I’m here because I’m in good health.”

I was settled into the only available L&D room, because I suppose everyone in NOVA wanted to pop that night. The triage area was completely full, but this worked to my favor. The doctor checked me, and I hadn’t changed at all since my appointment on Monday. She decided to monitor me for 20 minutes, then give me an hour to walk around the hallway and see if we could jumpstart things. 30 minutes into the walk, contractions were getting hard to even stand through. I could barely breathe. I didn’t remember them being THAT bad with Olivia, but I’ve heard that it’s stronger the second time around. The doctor had been watching me make the rounds in the labor and delivery ward and asked me to stop walking for a check about 45 minutes into it. When she checked me, I was admitted, because she was afraid I wouldn’t make it back to the hospital in time if I went home to labor on my own for a few hours. I endured without an epidural until I was 5cm dilated, then had to call it. I was glad I made it that far, especially when it had been offered much earlier.

We were admitted roughly around 10:30pm on the 19th. By 2:10am the following morning, I was 9.5cm dilated. Ten minutes later I was ready to push already much to the shock of the doctor and nurses! Only six contractions and out came Anne at 2:33am! She cried only a little, but immediately quieted down when I snuggled her. She just stared at me. It was like night and day with Olivia’s birth. Olivia came out and did nothing but look at us and scream for hours. She weighed in at 7lbs 9oz and was 20.5″ in length. That was 4oz and 1″ smaller than her big sister.

Aside from the jaundice discovered on evening 2 at the hospital, we had a relatively easy postpartum experience. She eats and sleeps pretty well for a newborn, but I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we know what we are doing this time around. The only thing that upsets me is the realization that this is my last baby. I turn 32 tomorrow and don’t necessarily see myself with teenagers in the house by the time I’m 50+.

I have taken a great number of newborn portraits both from the hospital and at home in a professional setting (naturally!). All of these are available on my public Flickr book for Anne here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/georgianelson/sets/72157626592411116/

I’m adding to it almost daily as I have time to spare for editing!