Smiles?

Annabelle has been smiling more and more, although it's still not 100% clear that they are intentional.  They are definitely cute, though!

Texting

Since we live in Silicon Valley, Annabelle is likely to grow up with a lot of tech savvy friends.  I think it's important for her to learn how to text and check Facebook from an early age.  She thinks I should concentrate more on not letting her fall off my lap when I get distracted by my phone.  That only happened once, Annie!

Playing dress up

One of the best parts about having a baby girl is all the cute clothes.  I don't always have the energy to play dress up, but Nana does!

Annie doesn't always agree with her choices, though...

Visit from Grandpa

My dad came to visit last weekend and was happy to meet his newest granddaughter.  Here is a picture of them looking cute together.

What we've been up to...

Here's a clue: it's not sleeping!

 Enjoying our bouncer

 Coffee shop!  Uncle Dan was nice enough to hold Annabelle so I could eat my bagel. I think I must have been looking tired pre-coffee, because Max and Sierra gave me a quick pep talk.  They told me things were hard now, but it would all get better soon.  They reminded me that they had been babies once, and now they were fun kids!  Sierra pointed out it would probably get hard again when Annie is a teenager, but that was a long ways off.  Did they come up with this pep talk on their own?  Or did they overhear a conversation between Dan and Michelle?  I'm not sure, but I appreciated it either way.

 Trying out the new Maya wrap.

I think the wrap holds her really securely, but as you can tell from the upper picture, Annie's not so sure.  Today she held onto my shirt for the entire walk, just in case.

Hanging out with Annabelle's new friend, Calista, and Calista's mommy, Heather.  I thought we could all take a walk together, but Calista and Annie thought it would be more fun if we just stayed home and breastfed.  I seem to spend a lot more time than I used to hanging out with topless women.  And people said life gets boring after you have a baby! ;)

Gym time!

Nana brought out the baby gym for Annie today.  Proving to be quite the dedicated athlete, she exercised until she vomited. Good girl!  I see athletic scholarships in her future!

Nana

My mom has been here since a week before Annie was born, and I can't even begin to describe how grateful I am.  The only reason I have time to be typing here on my computer is because she is an expert baby soother, willing diaper changer, and has taken over all household cleaning, cooking, and shopping until I get my feet under me.

Luckily, she's a big fan of Annie's, so I think she's having fun here, too, despite all the work.  Here's a picture of how she thinks a baby should dress for a walk around town.  You can tell from the look on Annie's face that she's not so sure about the hat, but Nana insists that babies should wear hats when out of the house!  She still hasn't convinced Annie, though, who tends to cry until I take it off.

Happy 2 week birthday Annabelle!

Annie turns 2 weeks today!  I can't believe it's been that long already, and then again, I can't believe there was a time when I didn't know and love her.

I'm hoping this blog can serve both as a way to get photos out to family and friends, and also as her baby book of sorts, as I'm not really the type to fill in a baby book with any regularity.  I meant to get started with the blogging right away, but things have been a little busy around here!  I'll try to do a quick recap, then post some pictures of our first two weeks.  I need to get better about pulling out the camera, especially when we have visitors over - I will work on that this week.

8/2/11: Annabelle arrived!  I went into labor around 12:30am, with contractions becoming increasingly painful and more frequent throughout the night.  I was hesitant to believe it was the real deal, though, as I'd had a couple false starts the week before.  But by 5 am it seemed like things were really happening, so I got up and took a shower.  I had 4 contractions while in the shower, so when I got out I let mom know this was probably it, and we started officially timing the contractions and making preparations to head to the hospital. We got to Kaiser San Jose around 7am, met at the front door by Amanda, my awesome labor coach, and met very soon afterwards by Dave, my softball coach and favorite anesthesiologist, who had my epidural in by 8:15 or so.  Annabelle Frances Kelly finally made her appearance into the world at 5:10pm.  She weighed 7lb, 12.9 oz, and was 20 inches long.

8/3/11: We spent the day in the hospital getting to know each other.  Annie was immediately a popular girl and had 9 visitors that day (Amanda, Nana, Jamie, Roshni, Dave, Teresa, Michelle, Donna, and Bob) (I delivered in the hospital where I work, so there were lots of eager visitors in the building).  We were allowed to go home that night, and were met almost immediately at the house by Andy, Thomas and Amy, and Annie's Uncle Dan, Aunt Michelle, and cousins Max and Sierra.  Sierra was SO excited to hold her new cousin, and kept exclaiming, "She's so cute!".  I totally agree, Sierra!  Sierra has remained a big fan of Annabelle's, despite her reservations about the whole thing when I was pregnant (she was worried Annie would be loud and interrupt her sleep).  The other day Dan was teasing (as he does every day), and was calling Annie 'little miss poopy pants', and calling me 'poopy tummy'.  Despite the fact that Dan had a point (Annie had just made a huge poo, some of which had leaked out onto my shirt and tummy), Sierra really let him have it - "You should NOT call Annabelle poopy pants!  And even if Meg had a poopy tummy you should not say it, she JUST got out of the hospital!".  I hope Sierra will continue to stick up for Annie, it's nice to have some older cousins to look out for you!

8/7/11: We left the house for the first time!  We went to coffee shop to join Dan, Max, Sierra, Nana, Thomas and Amy.

Not sure of the dates, but also in the first two weeks, we took our first bath, had many visitors (Janet and baby Taylor, Barbara, Micki and Noah, Stu and Wendy), and learned how to breastfeed.

There was a slight setback in my recovery last weekend when I developed a uterine infection and suddenly became quite sick.  Annie, Nana and I revisited the site of her birth at Kaiser in San Jose, and a few days and 5 different types of antibiotics later, I was feeling much better and we were once again allowed to return home.

Okay, I think you are all caught up!  I'll try to make future posts more about descriptions of pictures, to keep it interesting, but I wanted to get down some of the details of her first week.

These photos seemed to load in random order, but I'm going with it, b/c Annie is starting to wake up.  This one is Thomas, my neighbor and coffee shop buddy, who became an immediate Annabelle fan when he held her at just one day old.  (Which I failed to capture on film - but I made up for it when he stopped by last night).  Thomas's wife, Amy, has been dying to hold Annabelle as well, but she's still recovering from the cold I gave her at the end of my pregnancy.

 Annie getting cleaned up in the hospital, right after she pooed on my hand.  She's probably 20 minutes old in this picture.

 Me and my girl.

 Amanda made a fabulous labor coach!  And she was happy to snuggle a baby when the whole thing was over.

 I think we were on the way to newborn club at Kaiser, to get weighed.

 Annie at one day old.  Doesn't she look tiny when Andy holds her!

 Mom spends a lot of time here.  Annabelle can often convince her Nana that it would be nicer to hold her for naptime.  It can get lonely in the crib!

 And no wonder she gets lonely in there - look how big it is for her!

 Post feeding drunken pass out.

 Close up of the drunken pass out.

 Giant man-hands, or tiny baby?

 Being back in the hospital was exhausting!

 Annie's favorite toy so far is 'diaper bear', a gift from our friends Angela, Calla, and Lena.  Looks like Nana was also trying to interest her in some organic chemistry work.

 We were practicing her bunny impression in her cute bunny onesie from Amanda.  I didn't click on the best picture, but she totally mastered it in one of the shots.

It's important to stretch before doing your bunny impressions

 She didn't love her first bath.  We're going to try one in her little tub later this week.