Power to the People!

So most of you know that the majority of Columbus residents lost power for some amount of time this week. We were pretty lucky -- we only lost ours for 22 hours or so. Still, every minute seems like forever when you have no idea what is going on or when your lights will work again. Especially when you have a little one who doesn't like the dark so much. The lights went out when we were at my parents' house, celebrating birthdays. They also lost a tree in their backyard...it's kind of sad, really. That tree has been there longer than I have, and one big windstorm took it out. I am just thankful it happened before we were sitting outside with the kids. The Lord works in mysterious ways, I suppose. He took out the tree before it could take any one of us out.
While all of this has been exciting (and has redirected the focus of several disappointed OSU fans -- what an AWFUL showing...by far the worst yet), I have even more exciting news! Rachel is starting to sleep through the night! I don't know if it is the swaddling blanket we are using, the white noise machine Auntie Kimmie gave us, or some combination thereof, but she has started sleeping upwards of 6 hours this week. It actually makes me disappointed when she only sleeps 4 hours!
We also got our pictures back from Rachel & Aiden's photo shoot. Here are some samples -- they are too cute, aren't they?

My little wonder!

Binkie 101

I found the perfect situational metaphor for my journey into motherhood.

I didn't register for many pacifiers. I found a couple cute ones and put those on my registry, but I figured people would buy me them on their own, picking out all the cute designs they found. This is how I previously thought of binkies...I went by which ones were cutest. I even have a couple Ohio State binkies, just to keep up the spirit. I knew that they made different types of pacifiers -- this one is better for 0-6 months, that one is better for orthodontics, this one is better to protect against SIDS, etc. I envisioned Rachel taking any binkie I gave her, so I didn't worry much about any of that.

I didn't know that babies have binkie preferences. Rachel wouldn't take a binkie at all in the beginning. I longed for the day I would be able to pop one in her mouth, because she was using me as a giant human pacifier, and it was beginning to get tedious. I began to feel like a walking boob. Hungry or not, she used me to pacify herself, and any time I tried to shove a binkie in her mouth, she made a disgusted face and spit it out. Why would she want that when she had the real thing right in front of her?

I lamented about this issue, and mothers all around me started to ask me, "Did you try a different brand? Sometimes babies like one brand better than another."

What? Hmmm. I never thought about that. I honestly assumed she would take a binkie like it was a nipple and that would be the end of it.

So I went to the store and bought a few different brands from those I already had. One after another, I attempted to pop them into her mouth, and one after another she spit them out in disgust. I even tried coating them in breast milk or gripe water (another concoction of which I was unaware), but she wasn't fooled. I must have 7 different brands of binkies.

I just accepted my daughter would not take a binkie. I took her to my sister's house for the first day of daycare, and wouldn't you know it...she took a binkie from her! It's like she needed to not have me around as an option in order to accept the binkie.

Excited, I started trying all the different binkies again!

She spit them all out. Except one.

She found the one binkie she likes, and you better believe I pop that thing in her mouth whenever she starts fussing!! I had to learn by trial-and-error, and I feel like that is the perfect metaphor for my experience as a mother so far. I am basically clueless, try a bunch of different things, and when Rachel is ready, one of them works. The key part being "when Rachel is ready." She's in charge, and I am along for the ride.

First Buckeye Game!

College football is finally back! Our beautiful little girl strapped on her Buckeye gear and got to watch the game like a big girl! She even behaved most of the time! We also invited Aiden and his parents over to watch with us, because Duane went to the game. Rachel really did seem to enjoy watching the game -- maybe because it was on the big screen and most of the players were wearing red!

Then we had a bunch of people over for our NFL Fantasy Football draft, which didn't end up happening because we were missing one of the teams. But it was fun to have everyone over nonetheless. By the end of the night, Rachel was definitely ready for bed -- it was a big day for the little one! Now she is just hoping Beanie will be okay for next week. She really enjoyed watching him run!

Two Months!!

Well, our baby is two months old. Unfortunately, that means I am back at work. Where did the time go?!? It seems like it was just June, and I was hauling my giant belly to the doctor every week, waiting to hear some sort of news about being dialated. Then we were in the hospital, learning about how to take care of this tiny little person we had been waiting to meet for 9 months. Now, our little girl is 9 weeks old, and she doesn't look like a newborn anymore! She gets bigger every day, and she has definitely developed a very distinct personality.

She is extremely alert now, and she sleeps more regularly at night, although she definitely isn't sleeping through the night. Everyone thinks she looks like Duane. She is smiling very regularly, and she is absolutely in love with her Daddy, as you can see in the pictures.

Rachel's two-month birthday was also my birthday, so Grandma and Grandpa Wood came to babysit so Duane and I could go see The Dark Knight (I HIGHLY recommend it!!) and grab some dinner. While we were out, we stopped by Babies R Us and I bought Rachel a couple Fall outfits. Duane also picked out a Bomber jacket and matching pants for our nephew-to-be Caden. It was nice to get away, but I was really excited to get home.

That night, Rachel had her first vomiting

session. The poor thing just couldn't hold anything down. She didn't have a fever or a high temperature, but she just kept spewing out everything she would eat! It was a stressful night for us both.

My sister graciously offered to watch Rachel for the first few weeks when I returned to work. I love my job and most of the people I work with, but I did NOT want to go back. That morning, people would approach me and welcome me back or ask me about Rachel, and I would break into tears! But gradually, with the help of my best friend Kim and other people at work, I have settled back into a routine and it gets easier every day. I hate leaving her in the morning, but leaving her with my sister has made it easier. It may be hard when I have to leave her with the sitter in a couple of weeks!

Here are a couple of updates on Rachel at 2 months:

• At her two-month check-up, Rachel weighed in at 11 lbs 8 oz and she was 23 inches long! That is the 75th percentile for both, so at least she is proportionate! She also got several shots, but she did very well with them and only cried for a minute. I was sad and proud at the same time!
• She is far less fussy during the day. It seemed like the first couple of months, if she wasn't asleep, she was eating or crying. But now, she will be awake for long periods where she is just looking around and observing the world around her.
• She is holding her shoulders up during tummy time. I can't believe how well she controls her head. Although she still tends to upset herself by slamming it into my mouth or my collar bone!
• She "talks" to us constantly. One of her favorite things to do is coo and giggle at us when we talk to her.
• Unfortunately, she still won't sleep in anything but her swing or a carseat. If anyone has suggestions on how to get her into her crib, I am all ears!

Now we are gearing up for the first Buckeye football game of the season vs. Youngstown State. Rachel has so many OSU onesies to wear, but I am really glad because some of them won't fit her much longer! She also received the pink outfit above from our neighbors. Now, normally I am not a fan of pink OSU gear, because their colors are scarlet and gray, but I figure that until she gets enough hair to be recognizable as a girl, she can wear the outfit on Fridays before gameday!

Our First Family Vacation

Before we got pregnant, Duane and I planned a family vacation with my family in upper MI. When we realized we were due a couple of months before the scheduled vacation, my mom asked if we still wanted to go, and Duane and I figured it would be nice to have a vacation around that time. We ended up scheduling it for the last week of my maternity leave -- the perfect end to my summer with my daughter.

So last Saturday, we loaded everything baby we owned (or so it seemed!) and Rachel into my dad's truck and headed up north. Rachel did very well for such a long car ride. She really only melted down in the last hour of the 11 hours we were on the road (sidenote: it was NOT an 11-hour drive, if that tells you anything about the fun times we had getting there). Once we arrived, she was DONE being in the car, and she hit her fussy time of day, which usually lasts about an hour every evening.

Once we settled in, though, it was a lot of fun. The weather was a bit chilly early in the week, so we spent our time sightseeing, traveling around the area, and playing games with the family. Rachel even behaved for more than 5 hours for her daddy while mommy was out exploring the local wineries. When the weather warmed up mid-week, we headed to the beach a couple of times and Rachel got to sport her new swimsuit and sunglasses! Duane hit the sand dunes in a dunebuggy one day while Rachel and I went into town and hung out with Grandma, Aunt Julie, and her cousins.

We had a great time, but vacations are exhausting. Rachel slept almost the entire drive back, and I am ready for some rest.

Now I have one more day with my daughter before returning to work. :(

Through My Daughter's Eyes

I was a fat kid. In the beginning, it was cute. That baby fat turned into pinchable cheeks and an adorable potbelly. Somewhere between the third and fourth grades, the cute aspect of my weight problem disappeared and gave way to the stigmas associated with weight gain. Instead of a cute little potbelly, I had a stomach that was three times the normal size and an extra chin or two. I was the fat girl in class, and this continued to be my label throughout elementary school. I hated shopping for clothes, because I knew that the cute little outfits that the mannequins wore would never fit on me. Even if I could find the right size, the cuteness of the outfits would lose their appeal at twice their normal size.
I wasn’t thrilled about being fat, but I was happy in general. I didn’t have a ton of friends, but I was ignorant to the hardships of social stigma. I ate what I wanted without the guilt associated with counting calories, and I was happy. You also tend not to fret about the things most girls fret over – my hair was insanely frizzy and I had no clue how to style it, I had the beginning stages of acne, I had large breasts (as many overweight girls do), and I didn’t particularly concern myself with boys.
During the summer between elementary school and high school, my sister signed me up to play field hockey. It wasn’t my first venture into athletics. Although my favorite hobbies were eating and sitting on the couch, I had dabbled in a few extracurricular activities here and there. I had played volleyball since fourth grade, and I was surprisingly good at it (must have been the thick wrists). And somewhere around seventh grade, my mom signed me up for tennis lessons. She had this vision of getting me in shape by forcing me to get involved in sports year-round. I quit after four lessons…
So when my beautiful size 6 sister signed me up for field hockey without my knowledge, I was a little perturbed, but I knew I would probably just quit after a week and everything would go back to normal. I could take my place back on the couch and spend the remainder of my summer relaxing and sampling different flavors of Homemade ice cream. I might even get a little exercise when I biked to the store to buy a pint.
When summer conditioning began, there was a lot of running involved. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a runner. I don’t enjoy it. It doesn’t relax me or send endorphins shooting through my brain. It basically makes me feel like I want to vomit. And what my sister neglected to mention is that field hockey is basically running up and down the field, so conditioning for field hockey was basically running a few miles every day, then doing sprints, then sitting against walls to strengthen the leg muscles. I had never experienced such excruciating pain from exercise in my life.
But for some reason, I didn’t quit after that first week. Maybe I felt some sort of competition toward my sister – if she could do it, so could I! Or maybe I was tired of quitting. The second week brought more running and more pain. Just as I got close to my breaking point, the coaches approached me and did something that would change my life. They asked me to be the goalie. It seems so obvious, doesn’t it? Choose the biggest girl on the team to be the goalie – it solves the problem of having a girl on the team who can’t run, and it gives you a person to fill the position no one else wants. I said yes, primarily because the goalie didn’t run as much in practice as the other girls – we spent our time doing different exercises and training.
I began that summer at the heaviest I had ever weighed: 186 pounds. At the end of the summer, I weighed 163 pounds. I didn’t even notice I was losing weight until I got on the scale and my weight was in the 160s. I hadn’t seen the 160s since the fifth grade. But there were two benefits to the constant exercise: (a) the running was more exercise than I had ever experienced and (b) I was so exhausted by the time I got home that I didn’t have the energy to have my normal second helping of food. Thus, I was taking in half the calories and burning off twice as many as before. Over the course of the season, my weight plummeted to 155. My clothes became baggy and my face thinned considerably. For the first time in a long time, I began making a conscious effort toward my appearance. I cared what I looked like.
After two seasons of field hockey, I weighed in at a pretty consistent 145. My weight wavered between 140 and 150 for the remainder of my high school career. I had gone from a size 16 to a comfortable size 10, and when I graduated, I had a boyfriend and a much more vast wardrobe. But in college, I gained the freshman 10, and I found myself once again in the 150s at the end of freshman year. I panicked.
I spent my sophomore year in the gym, struggling each day to burn the 1,000 calories I allowed myself to take in. My diet consisted of crackers, salads, and lite frozen burritos. Occasionally I allowed myself to have Chinese food on the weekend, but I ate only one meal those days, and I made sure to visit the gym to make up for the extra calories. I had gone from a girl who cared nothing about appearance to a girl who was obsessed with her appearance.
My ignorance had been bliss, and my knowledge had become hell. That was when my view of myself became irreversibly warped. I would never again see myself how others saw me. When I looked in the mirror, I didn’t see the thinning frame, bony shoulders, or tiny waist others saw. What I saw became similar to one of the reflector cards you have as a child – the kind you turn at a certain angle to see one picture, and when you turn it at a different angle you see an entirely different picture. I was caught between the 130-pound anorexic girl and the 186-pound fat girl with frizzy hair. I saw fat where there was none, and it became my obsession.
Gradually, with help from professionals and friends, I overcame my eating disorder. I found a healthier way of exercising and eating right, and my habits took a better turn. My weight lingered between 135 and 145 for the remainder of college, and when I got married 4 years later, I weighed a healthy 130, although my view of myself was still terribly warped. I wore baggy clothes to hide my stomach and legs, and I never showed off any unnecessary skin.
When my husband and I decided to start trying to get pregnant, I wasn’t sure how I would handle it. I had started to gain weight already, following a vacation to the Caribbean, so I noticed myself falling into bad dietary habits again. When I say “bad” dietary habits, I am not referring to what the average American would consider bad – I didn’t eat pints of ice cream or gigantic plates of pasta. I just started eating normal helpings of meals – instead of just soup for lunch, I had soup and a salad. I ate milk on my cereal, rather than eating it dry to save on calories. I gained 8 pounds just trying to get pregnant, and when we conceived after 4 months, I weighed in at my first doctor appointment at 143.
Over the next 8 months, I gained 43 pounds, ironically weighing in at my last doctors appointment at the 186-pound mark that had been my highest weight in elementary school. I constantly fretted over my weight gain, though I never considered denying myself food. I knew I needed to provide nutrition for my baby, but I feared for the aftermath that would inevitably follow her birth. I would once again be struggling with my weight as an overweight person. For even though I never felt thin before, I knew I was in decent shape at 135 pounds.
Six weeks after giving birth to my beautiful baby girl, I weighed in at 163 pounds. I allowed myself 10 pounds for breastfeeding (my breasts were massive, after all), but that meant I needed to lose about 20 pounds to be back at my ideal weight.
Looking at myself in the mirror, my self-image was once again distorted. What did I look like to other people? I saw this stomach that, admittedly, was a bit bigger than my stomach had been at 135 pounds, but surely there weren’t 20 pounds of fat there. My face was a bit thicker, but only slightly, and I felt the extra weight in my thighs, but how much weight can thighs honestly hold? I didn’t think I looked much heavier than I had been.
Then I made a crucial mistake. I tried on my pre-pregnancy clothes.
I had been wearing a size 8 pre-pregnancy. I was lucky to fit into a size 12. My heart shattered. I broke into tears, and my husband rushed to my side, telling me how silly I was because, after all, I had given birth just 6 weeks earlier. He might as well have said, “It’s okay that you’re fat now. You just had a baby,” because that is what I heard. I was fat again.
As I begin putting on my make-up today, I look at my daughter. Her big gray eyes look up at me and she smiles her toothless grin, kicking her legs in excitement. I stroke her head, which is just barely covered in dark brown hair. I touch her cheeks, which are plump, and sure to resemble my apple cheeks – pinchable and full when she smiles. I take her hand, which is attached to a roly-poly arm. She grasps my finger tightly, still grinning at me. I see myself in her – the shape of her eyes, lips, ears. The color of her hair is similar to mine, and I wonder if it will lighten as she grows or stay the rich brown that is dominant in my family. Will she struggle with her wavy/curly hair the way I have my entire life? Will her potbelly go away with her growth spurts or will it transition into the fat girl belly I lived with for so many years? I look down at my own stomach, disgusted by the extra flab hanging there.
I continue with my make-up, and I catch the shape of my hairline in the mirror. Her hairline is exactly like mine. But for the first time in a long time, I don’t see the frizziness I usually see – I see what she must see when she looks at me. Beautiful shiny dark brown strands of hair, falling into loose curls around my apple-shaped face. I wonder if her hair will look like mine. I look at my eyes, and I see a rich amber brown in them, not just the blah brown I usually notice. I wonder if her eyes will be that color, or will they be hazel like her daddy’s eyes? I look at my button nose, which I have always felt was too slanted and stuck out in my profile. Her nose is still growing, but it resembles mine already. I love to touch her nose with my finger, because it makes her giggle. I see all the beautiful things about me in her – my hair on her isn’t frizzy, it’s soft and shiny. The shape of my eyes – her eyes – is beautiful, and her lips are full and perfect for kisses. For the first time in a long time, I am seeing myself through someone else’s eyes: my daughter’s. I see her look of pure joy when she stares into my eyes and recognizes her mommy – she loves me unconditionally because I love her. She doesn’t care if my hair is frizzy or if every strand is in place, so long as it is my hair and she can stare at it for hours. She loves to look into my plain brown eyes, because she recognizes the love I have for her in them. Then I look at my stomach again – how could she possibly love the blob of a stomach I have now? What is there to love about it? But I think, I grew that stomach for her. I patted it lovingly as she came to life inside me. I talked to her as I stroked my stomach, taking on every pound so I could support her life inside me. And now, as I type this, she is nursing at my oversized breast, laying on my oversized stomach, and I can imagine what she will see when she looks up at me. The most beautiful woman in the world, through my daughter’s eyes.