Baby's first crawl! And Other Mommy Bragging

I'm just gonna say it. My baby is freakin' ADVANCED! In just a few weeks, Violet has gone from sitting up on her own (Halloween weekend), to combat crawling, to THIS!

She is already pulling herself up to her feet in the crib and play pen! My mom tells me that I was walking at 10 months so maybe Miss V is taking after me a little. Needless to say the baby proofing is moving right along. First gate is installed, the parlor doors are being closed more often. She's already crawled onto the heater grate in the floor and freaked out when she realized it was TOO HOT! No injuries but that was quite a scare for mommy. We're gonna have to figure out a solution for that one....

Here's Violet playing in the fountain at Grandma Eliza's church! (no, we were not getting baptized) She loves water, just like her Daddy.

Let's see, what are some of the other things she is doing? She is now stringing together several syllables at a stretch. It almost sounds like she is talking (in alien baby speak). She laughs and giggles more than ever. She has figured out that if she waves things like string around in front of the cat, that she will have a devoted playmate. I still have to really watch the cat though. We've already had a few "misunderstandings" with Pandora about the proper use of teeth and claws around the baby. 

With very little crying or fanfare Violet sprouted he first two lower front teeth on Halloween weekend. She seems only mildly irritated with the teething pain. We're keeping the Tylenol, Oragel and frozen toys handy. I think the teething does interrupt her sleep. She's had a harder time lately. Been keeping mommy up late and waking a little more frequently before 3am. This is a drag but I'm sure it'll pass. I guess its a good thing I'm not working because I'm getting way less sleep nowadays. 

There is one area where Violet seems to be behind the curve a little. She has bottle issues still and she isn't really interested in eating baby food. 

I try feeding her a little every day and she's just not into it at all. About the only thing she enjoys is grabbing our drinking glasses and blowing bubbles in the water but she doesn't actually try and drink any of it. This of course causes her whole front side to get wet which she doesn't seem to mind. AND she's doing this really weird thing where she can twist her tongue sideways, almost upside down, in her mouth! Its freaking Jonathan out. I'm convinced it has something to do with muscle control (ie. she has none in her tongue) and it is something she'll grow out of. Maybe once she has better control of her tongue she'll start eating human food a little more? 

Violet Rolls Over! And Some House-wifery.

We've been busy over here at Villa Vona. On Sunday our precious little Violet rolled over for the first time! Yeah, I know, it's not that big of a deal but we were pretty excited to get it on VIDEO! Along with her rollover practice we've been trying out the whole sitting up thing. She still needs help with that for a while but I think she likes the change of scenery. Violet has been even more vocal lately. Lots of talking.  She is especially good at telling us when she needs changing and when she's hungry. And yes, we can tell the difference...

Violet is 3 months old now so we've been trying to get her on a sleep schedule. Not too hard actually. (The other parents HATE us) She seems to get tired and cranky around 7:30-8:30 most nights so I just take her to her room, feed her, wrap her up and rock with her. It can take anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour but she eventually knocks out. Some nights are harder than others.

I have been trying to do other things during my time off besides playing with baby. Although I can EASILY kill most of a day just hanging out with her and have zero regrets.

This is my first attempt at landscaping. Well, the beginning of it really. I plan on dropping in some compost soil and planting a few trees back here. We're thinking dwarf lemon, peach and some blueberry bushes. Then next spring I'll be getting my dahlia tuber order from Swan Island in Oregon and then I'll have PRETTY flowers in my yard!

I've also been doing a little baking and cooking when Violet lets me. Its easier if I let her sit in the kitchen with me in her jumper chair. I'm getting very tempted to make bread. I've always been scared to but what have I got to lose but some time and flour? 

Welcome Violet Kira Vona

Violet Kira Vona was born on April 24th at 9:37pm!

She weighed 7lbs. 14 oz. and was 20" long.

Mom was in labor for about 25 hours and we ended up having a c-section after baby got stuck. It was not the best birth experience ever recorded. (more on that later)

Baby is 100% healthy, mom (and dad) will recover.

Baby Shower!

I have often said that I have the best girlfriends.
But I'll say it again... I HAVE THE BEST GIRLFRIENDS EVER.
Christine & Shannon threw me an Alice In Wonderland Tea Party Baby Shower!!! The weather cooperated so we got to be outside the whole day. There were teapots everywhere! I even got to use my wedding china tea pots! It was such a perfect afternoon with my friends. Mom flew in and Eliza made it back up from So.Cal in time. It was really nice to hang out with the girls for a whole day too. I know I won't get a chance to do that for a while after baby comes.














Here Natasha gets to see what a baby shower looks like. She tried so hard to attend her own shower we thought it was only fair she get to come to mine.














And of course we were all ecstatic that Ambrosia and Iggy made it to town in time! We hope to be seeing more of them soon. :)














This would be Baby's first fight skirt. Natasha got one too. Irene and I cannot wait to teach our daughters how to beat each other up with sticks. "Remember baby, you can ONLY hit someone in the dome!!!" Although I'm thinking we'll probably have to build our own little dome at home and do fights here. Something tells me if we try and harness our kids up at the local park jungle gym, some Alameda Mommy group will take issue with our parenting techniques...















Here's all the moms!

Baby's Room is painted!

Well, after a little trial and error with the trim color (green is bad) we finally finished painting the baby's room! This is Jonathan, very hungry and totally over it. I was pretty much over it too. All that crawling around climbing ladders and trying to not ruin the floors was a lot for us to get through with my growing belly and his bad back. But we made it! And we're really happy with the results. Now there's just the rest of the house to paint.....

Here's the latest pic of "the belly." I'm now 28 weeks and heading into my last trimester. (about 7 months) Baby is kicking all the time and moving around lots! She seems most active when I'm trying to sleep or sitting on the couch. She is heavy! I'm now lugging around about 2 lbs. of actual baby and about 18 lbs. of extra tissue and fluid housing the baby. Last night I got woken up by my first leg cramp. That was interesting but not nearly as bad as the round ligament pain I was having from weeks 14-24. Now begins all the prep work. Classes at Kaiser, setting up the rest of baby's room, planning for my maternity leave from work. Lots to do! We're trying to pace ourselves.

Here's a little fun in the basement! Jonathan's parents got him this awesome work bench for the X-Mess and both our parents hooked us up with a whole bunch of great tools & gear for working around the house! I'm betting this will all come in pretty handy in the near future. It's just really nice having a central location for everything. Before, our meager set of tools were spread all over the place.

Growing Belly, Pretty Quiet December

Well, this is a little creepy to see. In the span of about 4-5 weeks my belly has gotten pretty noticeably bigger. And that second pic is about a week and a half old so I'm even bigger today! I am now officially in maternity clothes and just kind of getting used to taking up a bit more space than usual. Our little Demon Baby is kicking A LOT lately. Or at least she's big enough that I can feel it more often now. We're getting more excited and/ looking forward to the new year and all the work that will go into getting her room and the house ready for her arrival in May.














Here's a couple totally adorable kitty pics from this month. We call them the "Trifecta of Terror"
although Pandora is really the only terror of the bunch. She took an instant liking to the X-Mess tree and proceeded to try and help me un-decorate it immediately after I had finished decorating it.


















I need to post a couple more pics of the lovely X-Mess dinner we had in our house! It was super casual and laid back, which was about all I could handle, being pregnant and all. Just my parents and Jonathan's parents over for turkey dinner. It was a really great evening with our awesome families.

It's A Girl!

We're having a girl! Hurray! We're so excited. Just what we wanted. She was very uncooperative during the amnio. She was bouncing and dancing around, not showing her spine to the technician. But eventually we got to see all her insides, fingers and toes. They said she looks perfect so far. And the test results came back ok! She's got all her chromosomes and they are all pointing in the right direction. Whew! The test wasn't too tough. Not like I've never been stuck with a needle before. The cramping afterward was unexpected and a little scary but it went away after a couple hours. So now we're into the 17th week and things are going great! We think we're going to paint her room lavender (with purple and mulberry trim). Going with dark wood for all the furniture if possible.

Doorway for Baby!

So now that we have a baby on the way we need a little more access around the house. When we moved in the only way to get from one side of the house to the other was to walk to the entryway and cross over. We really need better access from the nursery to the kitchen. So Mom and Doug came down and stayed with us this last week and while they were here Doug helped us install a new doorway! 

Here's an adorable pic of Lucky explaining to my parents what she'd like us to do with the back yard. We tried to tell her that project was being put on hold for a while but she was being very insistent about the koi pond. 

BEFORE SHOT - So here is the back wall of our kitchen. The door you see goes to the small hallway that holds the office and 2nd bathroom. We decided to put the new doorway right in this corner so that we'd have easy access to the baby's room from the kitchen and by looking at the layout of the place it doesn't seem like this position would interfere with any electrical or heating stuff. and putting it in the corner wouldn't break up the wall in the kitchen or the baby's room. 

Here's Pandora helping mom and I lay out plastic. This was going to be one of those messy jobs so we cleaned out the kitchen as much as possible. 

The initial deconstruction went a little slow. Doug wanted to be careful we didn't cut through anything important or disturb any load bearing walls. We got lucky on this one. We didn't run into anything at all really. It just took a long time to get through the lathe and plaster which was underneath two layers of sheetrock. The first layer must have been the original from when the house was built. I'm guessing the second layer was from more recently. It was thicker. 

Eventually, the men started working from the other side of the wall. You can see Jonathan's "zombie shot" through the boards. 

Of course when the men got hungry Mom and I made sure they ate well. 

Here's the doorway with most of the framing in. Doug spent a lot of time online figuring all this out. There's a lot more to making a doorway that I thought! Having a house that is 115 years old means the walls are weird dimensions which doesn't make things standard or easy. You can see Jonathan is working on the threshold where there's linoleum and wood to dig out. Our neighbor said he might have a spare piece of oak that he could fit in there for us. 

AFTER SHOT - And here is the almost finished doorway, before and after sheetrock! Jonathan has been plastering the seams for a couple days now. Eventually we'll paint. (that's another blog entry)

And now we have a doorway! It took a week but it got done! Thanks again to the parents! It was great that you could help us out! 

New Addition to the House!

So in about 7.5 months we'll be getting a small new addition to the house! That right there in the picture is our future demon spawn! We're super excited! The Dr. says it's the right size and I even got to see the blood flow already! This week it's about the size of a raspberry. More updates to come!