Exercising after having a baby: The first of many long walks

We're coming up on Daphne's 6-week birthday, which is incredibly difficult for me to believe. And it also means that it's really time to get back into the swing of things with exercising. I went to a water aerobics class three times a week while I was pregnant, but I'm not feeling ready to leave Daphne to exercise yet.

This means that heading out for a walk is going to be my exercise of choice for a while. We got an awesome stroller that's really easy to push, and there's lots of walkable areas nearby. We can go one way and stop at a Starbucks after a mile, or go the other way and get to a big lake after a mile, or go another way and walk through a neighborhood of million-dollar homes.

Today, when I woke up and discovered it was less than 70 degrees outside (the first time I can remember that happening since the morning Daphne was born, which was gorgeous and crisp), I decided it was the day to start our walking. We headed out in the stroller and walked to the lake. I wasn't exactly feeling up for walking around it (a little over a mile), so we hung out there for a few minutes and came back home.

And Daphne slept through the whole thing. I'm hoping someday she'll be more alert so she can see all there is to see when we're out and about.

Willoughby wallaby waphne... an elephant sat on Daphne!

One of the things I've had the hardest time with so far is figuring out what exactly to do with Daphne when she's not sleeping or eating. During the first couple of weeks, those two activities took up almost all of her time, but she's had more alert time lately and I'm needing to figure out what to do to fill it.

I really don't have much experience spending lots of time with tiny babies, although I have a lot more with little ones who are at least a few months old and are interacting more with toys and are mobile. But tiny babies, not so much.

So I've been trying to pick something new to do with Daphne every day. She sleeps much of the morning, but usually around mid-afternoon, she'll have a really alert hour when we can do something fun.

Today's activity was partially inspired by my childhood. I decided that Daphne needs some Raffi in her life, so we listened to his album Singable Songs for the Very Young while having some floor time. About half on her back and half on her tummy, to help her get stronger muscles without getting too frustrated. She loved watching me sing along to the ones I remember, like "Five Little Frogs," and I enjoyed being silly. There will surely be more of this activity in the coming weeks!

One-month checkup

I took Daphne to the pediatrician yesterday for her one-month checkup, and I am happy to report that she's awesome. After dropping from 6 lbs 8 oz at birth to 5 lbs 13 oz just 36 hours later, she's all the way back up to 8 lbs 8 oz! Given, this is the size of a lot of people's babies when they're born, but for my girl, it's a big deal.

Because she's doing so well, I got official permission to let her sleep as long as she wants overnight, rather than waking her up for feedings. After rolling into bed at 10:30 last night, I was pleasantly surprised for my next conscious moment to be when I heard her making cute noises at 5:18 this morning. That's almost 7 hours of sleep in a row! Crazy. I felt so alert after feeding her that I got up and made breakfast for Ben before sending him off to work, which is something I've done maybe once since Daphne was born. It's definitely fun to not have the mental haze of sleeplessness, and even if this isn't the norm going forward, I'm going to enjoy it today.

Daphne also grew an inch and a half, to 20.5 inches, and her head is 36 cm around, which is a gain of 3 cm. She's tracking with the 25th percentile on all of the growth charts, for those of you who are curious.

Photos with gifts

We haven't done this for everyone (so please don't be offended if you aren't included), but one of the things we've enjoyed is taking photos of Daphne with some of the gifts she's gotten. It's a fun way to show people who haven't gotten to meet her what she's like, and to let them better picture her using their awesome gifts. Here's some of our favorite photos:

June 19 with her Uglydoll from Angie

July 8 with her hand-knit monkey blanket from Charlotte

July 14 with her dress and stuffed animals from Gloria

Lots of things are growing this summer

It's amazing how much Daphne has grown in the last few weeks. She still seems tiny to other people meeting her for the first time, but for me, she's huge compared to the size she was when we brought her home. Her hands are getting chubby, she's getting close to being too long to fit in the newborn sleepers, and she just feels a lot bigger. I know I'm going to be saying this for the next two decades, but she's just growing so fast!

She's not the only thing that's growing though, because we finally got around to getting the summer garden established. I always tell people I'm an aspirational gardener, because I always seem to have big plans that I can't actually execute. This year, I got the spring garden in a little bit late, but reaped a pretty big harvest of lettuce. In fact, it was a little too big because we couldn't manage to eat it all before the weather got hot and the plants got super tall.

When Daphne was born, the front yard (where I do my veggie gardening) was overgrown with lettuce, kale, and lots of weeds. My mom and sister helped out by making salads for dinner pretty much every night, and then my sister spent an hour the day she left picking all the rest of the lettuce so I could start using the space for veggies that actually would tolerate the summer heat.

Gardening with a newborn isn't exactly the easiest job, but Ben and I found a couple of times in the last two weeks to get out and do a little bit more work. We weeded the front third of the yard, turned the soil, and set out some big stones to create paths between my garden beds. I planted zucchini and yellow summer squash, and hopefully Daphne will enjoy their flavor because we're going to be eating a lot of them in a couple of months.

The next task was to plant tomatoes, and I gave myself a little bit of motivation by buying tomato seedlings at the farmers market last Saturday. With them sitting in their tiny planting containers, completely root bound, I knew I had to get them planted in the yard soon. My wonderful mother in law helped me weed the middle third of the yard, to give the kale a bit more space and prepare the bed for the tomatoes. Then they went in today, and hopefully they'll grow quickly so we get a harvest before the fall arrives. We took a photo with Daphne and a tomato plant to see which one is bigger by the end of the summer. Keep an eye out for updates!

Faroe family visit!

This week was full of excitement as Daphne had visitors from the Faroe side of her family. She cried the first time she met her Uncle Chris, but other than that, she loved all of the attention and getting held and stared at by so many people. She was definitely the center of attention!

4th of July and some thoughts on babywearing

A month ago, we were wondering what our 4th of July would look like -- mostly whether we'd be in the hospital, just getting home with a brand new baby, or if I'd be hugely pregnant and miserable. Turns out it was none of those, so we got to celebrate with friends from small group.

After a week of thunderstormy afternoons, we got a gorgeous (although hot) day to enjoy at a friend's house right on the water. No swimming for us, although I did dip my feet in and Ben enjoyed some cannonballs off the end of the dock. We mostly hung out on the porch, enjoying friends and food. Daphne got passed around and was a superstar, not to mention incredibly cute in her denim jumper. Forgot to take a picture -- oops.

Today, she ate a lot and we both dozed until noon, when I realized that my little breakfast from five hours ago wasn't holding up, so I ventured downstairs for lunch. At that point, Daphne decided she really wanted to be held, or maybe fed, despite having eaten less than an hour before. There's no way I could cook and eat with my little one screaming, so out came the Moby wrap.

I'm really proud of this garage sale find -- just $5 for a super long strip of fabric that I magically wrap around myself and can securely tuck my baby into. So far, we've just been using the "hug hold," which puts Daphne upright with her ear right where she can hear my heartbeat. Within minutes of getting put in today, she was fast asleep. I got to enjoy my lunch, water my herbs, kale, and summer squash seedlings, toss some diapers into the wash, and type a blog post. Brilliant! I have a feeling this thing will be getting a lot more use in the coming months.

New mommy street cred: Taking a shower

Ok, so I'm really proud of myself right now. I somehow managed to take a shower, despite the fact that Daphne and I are the only ones at home right now, and she's been a light daytime sleeper, to say the least, for the last few days. But with stuff scheduled for tonight and the smell of curry oozing out of my pores, it had to be done.

The process looked something like this:

1. Feed Daphne. A lot.
2. Change Daphne's diaper.
3. Feed her again to make sure she wasn't going to suddenly decide she was still hungry.
4. Rock her to sleep and put her in the baby bouncer she loves.
5. Wait a bit to make sure she's really asleep, not just pretending.
6. Turn on the shower.
7. Carefully move Daphne in the baby bouncer into the bathroom. Wait a bit more to make sure she's still soundly asleep.
8. Take shower. Quickly! Before she wakes up!

All in all, it was about a 90-minute process, only 10 of which involved me being in the shower. But hey, I'm clean now, and that was the goal here!

Our favorite pajamas

I don't think Daphne could care less what she wears, but Ben and I definitely have our favorite little outfit to dress her in for bedtime. And because I finally did my first load of laundry (clothes laundry that is, because I've done about five loads of diapers so far), she's gotten to wear this one twice. And photos got taken both times, of course.

June 21st - She really likes to pose her hands, I promise we didn't do that.

Tonight, hanging out on her changing table before bed

Turns out my daughter is a dolphin, too

I've always loved being in the water, so I've been wondering what Daphne would think about it when she got the chance. She ended up just getting a sponge bath in the hospital, and her cord stump took a couple of weeks to fall off, so it wasn't until now that we got to find out.

This evening's activity (yes, we plan just one activity per evening, if at all, and it can be as simple as "bathe daughter") was getting a real bath. Daddy got the baby bath set up and filled and put in the little newborn sling so she'd be fully supported. And he picked out the adorable duck hooded towel for her to wear when she got done.

And then the moment of truth... I slowly lowered her into the water, and she gave a little cry of surprise, but after that, she was happy as can be. In fact, in the video of her first bath, you can hear a child screaming, but it was one of the other three hanging out downstairs after our community dinner.

Hopefully this trend will continue and my little girl will always love the water as much as I do!