Happy 6 Months!

February was a big month for Vivienne!  I can't believe she's already a half year old!  Here is a recap of our month.

To start, Vivie started having consistant meals (breakfast & dinner) this month and added many new food to her palate   To date she has tried bananas, avocados, sweet potatoes, oatmeal, peas, squash, and apple sause.  She is a great eater, and hasn't rejected anything yet!  We are trying to teach her a few signs (eating & more), but right now she just whines, reaches, or bangs her hand on the counter if she wants more food.

We started sleep training with the Feber Method this month too.  The first night was tough (mostly for Mommy), but Vivie sleeps 11 hours straight (7:30pm - 6:30am) most nights, and has weaned off all night feedings.  She takes 3 naps at day, mostly at the same times, which is great for both Vivie & Mommy!

Vivie had her 1st real blizzard on February 8 & 9 (Winter Storm Nemo).  We got a 25 inch drop and Vivie enjoyed having Daddy home for a few days.

Vivie loves rolling from her back to her belly and has started scooting around backwards (Feb 11).  Towards the end of the month she started getting up on all fours, but still only goes backwards (which is totally fine with Mommy & Daddy!)

We also celebrated Vivie's first Valentine's Day.  Mommy & Vivie got dressed up and went into Boston to have lunch with Daddy.  Vivie also received the book "Huggy Kissy" from her Valentine (Daddy).

Vivie is a very social baby, and we have weekly playdates with some of the friends we made in her "Great Beginnings" class at Isis.  We took another class at Isis, "Next Steps" which finished in February.  Vivie loved circle time and playing with the other babies.

On Feb 24 Vivie woke up chatty and put her 1st syllables together "Bababababa..."  Sometimes she also says "Mababa" but no "Mamama" yet.  It is absolutely adorable!

Most current measurements (Feb 12): 20lbs, 4 oz (98 percentile), 28 1/4 inches long (100 percentile)

Loves: Bath time (she's figured out how to close the drain to extend bathtime!), "If You're Happy and You Know It", Watching Mom & Dad drink anything (and trying to grab our glass/bottle), watching & trying to pet Mercedes, eating her purees and stealing the spoon (but she get the spoon in her mouth), grocery shopping.

Dislikes: diaper changes/getting dressed & her car seat.  Both activities require lots of parental singing!

If at first you don't succeed...

Why hello again!  It seems I write this post a lot: I've neglected my blog, but I'm back again...I've tried wedding blogging, pregnancy blogging, so let's give mommy blogging a shot! 

Now that I am a Mom and free time is so precious, I think I will need to adjust my blogging expectations.  Instead of trying to perfectly capture every single detail (like I did with my wedding & pregnancy) and then taking long breaks in order to "catch up" on everything, I will just try to jot down moments here and there.   My goal will be 1 post a week - although I've been thinking of lots of blog posts over the last 6 months, so maybe a few more than that to start.

Here's hoping 3rd time's the charm!

1 Month!?

I can't believe today is July 23 - only 1 more month until Baby Andersen's due date!  Things continue to be busy at the Andersens - last weekend was super baby productive though.  We got our last piece of baby furniture (a dresser) and then Arthur put together ALL the baby furniture in 1 day!  Now the nursery is actually starting to look like a nursery rather than a pink room with lots of boxes of baby stuff.  So exciting.  I can't wait to keep working on the room and put all the finishing touches on it.  


Tonight we are touring the maternity floor where our sweet girl will officially enter our lives.  As Arthur's been saying "things are getting really real!".  


Only 19 days of work left - maybe then I will actually update the blog.  Until then...

Baby is Head Down & other updates

So I know I've been neglecting my blog lately...again so here are a few quick little updates.


Last night we had our 32 week (ok 31w, 6d) check up and we asked the midwife to check our little girl's position.  She is already head down!   I know we still had another month before they would even start talking about trying to get her to flip if she was still head up, but it's really nice not to have to worry about that at all.  And now every time I touch my belly I know where her little bum is, haha.


So today is officially 32 weeks - only 5 more weeks until she is term.  Crazy!!  We have so much still left to do (although we seem to be way ahead of most people we meet in our classes).  Let's aim more for like 8 weeks, ok baby?


My nesting instinct has set in big time.  Not only do I want all the baby stuff in order, I want the entire house re-organized, de-cluttered, cleaned, and all outstanding house projects completed, haha.  We'll see how that goes...but last weekend was a very nice start (and I love an excuse to go to the container store)


Only 7 weeks left until maternity leave - but who's counting?  Part of me wants to get put on some sort of bedrest so I can start my leave early, but not really because I want to stay super healthy too.  My group keeps losing people (9 out of 25ish have quit/transferred/been reassigned), plus people are getting married/going on vacation/going on maternity leave, so there's lots of work and nobody left to do it.  Not exactly a low stress environment, and there is so much baby stuff/nesting left to do!


Our baby shower is on Saturday!  Yay!  And it's the final baby event we have for the super packed, baby prep month of June.  3 doctor/midwife visits, 5 birth prep classes, 1 pediatrician meet & greet, infant CPR, a newborn care class, and the baby shower made for a very busy month.  Next week is only a 2 day work week and we have no baby appointments/classes scheduled!  Maybe I can catch up on all my blogging then :)

1 Year Celebrations

Back at the Wentworth

Arthur and I had lots of ideas on how we might celebrate our first year of wedded bliss.  Way back, many many months ago we contemplated a Europe trip (French Riviera/Northern Italy?) towards the end of May to celebrate both Arthur's 30th birthday and our 1st anniversary.  But that idea went out the window with the whole pregnancy thing.  Then we went the other way, not really wanting to make a big deal of it, given all the traveling & fun we'd already done this year - maybe it would be a good, practical thing to get ourselves a new iMac (we've been thinking about getting a "family" computer for awhile now - we both still have our computers from college that are barely hanging on).  While I would really like a new iMac to play with, something about a "practical" 1st anniversary present didn't sit right with either of us. Does that set a bad precedent for the rest of the anniversaries?  Aren't we supposed to be doing all sorts of romantic things now before the baby comes?  We finally settled on the following, absolutely perfect anniversary celebrations.

Our actual anniversary fell on a Monday this year, so we kept that day low key.  Dinner at home together, followed by our 1 year old wedding cake.  

1 year old wedding cake

Little confession - we didn't save our entire cake top.  We brought the top home from the wedding, put it in the fridge, then got caught up in glow of being married and leaving for our honeymoon the next day.  Went on our honeymoon, came back, and oops, we never froze the cake.  So we just cut a piece for the freezer and ate the rest.   Best idea ever.  1 year old cake, while better than I expected, is still 1 year old.  I'm glad we enjoyed most of it while it was fresh. 

I also made cupcakes just in case the cake was gross.  So the next day Arthur's co-workers got to celebrate our anniversary too!  24 cupcakes for 2 people are wayyy too many, even when preggers.

We also pulled out our gorgeous wedding album and watched our wedding video.  Now the wedding video was a fairly last minute addition.  Both Arthur and I wanted amazing photos, so we allocated a significant portion of our budget to get the photographers we wanted, and had decided to forgo the video.  My day-of-coordinator asked me if I had one and offered to recommend a few because she said not having a video is the #1 regret she hears from brides.  I was pretty against adding one so we could stick to our budget, but then my Mom went and surprised us with it!  It's so nicely done and I can't wait to watch it with our little miss!

For our actual anniversary celebration, we decide to go back to the location of our magical wedding weekend, Wentworth by the Sea Hotel.  We cashed in some of our Marriott points and lived it up in the Admiral's Suite - an amazing 2 story suite in the center turret of the hotel.  360 degree views of New Castle, the harbor, and Portsmouth.  Gorgeous! 

Arthur in the Admiral's Suite

Private entrance for the turret rooms

View from the room

View from the room

View from the room

 We spent a leisurely afternoon enjoying the resort, watching another wedding, checking out the pool, and wandering around the marina.  It was so fun to just soak in all the beauty of New Castle and reminisce about our wedding.  The weather was perfect too - very similar to our weekend, just a few degrees warmer.

Wentworth Marina

Wentworth Marina

Little Harbor

Little Harbor

Hello 29 weeks!

 After our leisurely afternoon, we got ready for dinner in Portsmouth.  When we were scouting the area for rehearsal dinner venues, we went to like every restaurant in the greater Portsmouth area!  While none worked out for our rehearsal dinner (held instead at the Stage Neck Inn in York Harbor, ME), we knew we wanted to come back and actually eat at some of the fun places we'd found.  We decided on the Wellington Room - a cute little place tucked into a renovated mill with beautiful river views.  

29 weeks, take 2

Arthur with our Turret

Dinner @ the Wellington Room

Anniversary Mouse - yum!

After dinner we headed back to the Wentworth for real dessert - new wedding cake!  Our cake was so yummy we went back to Jacques Pastries and they re-created our cake top for us.  It was even tastier than I had remembered.

Cake with the toasting flutes from our wedding

Hanging out in the turret sitting room

Post cake cutting (with our cake cutting song playing, of course!)

The next morning we finished our celebrations with late checkout and the Wentworth's decadent Bubbles & Jazz Brunch, held in the Grand Ballroom - the same place our reception was held. 

Bubbles & Jazz Brunch

Bubbles & Jazz Brunch

  The perfect end to a wonderful getaway.  Our wedding venue was so perfect for us, and I love that we can go back year after year and remember the start of our lives together.

1 Year Ago

June 4, 2011

1 year ago today I married my love.  It was a glorious day with blue skies, a gorgeous venue, delicious food, beautiful flowers, lots of friends & family and a very happy and in love bride & groom.  A year’s worth of planning came together almost perfectly (so in terms of weddings – perfectly).  Even more important than our wonderful wedding was the amazing year that followed.  To recap:

After our wedding we jetted off to French Polynesia for an incredible honeymoon.  We spent a few nights in an overwater bungalow, took a 7 day cruise exploring various islands, saw the most beautiful underwater life during our six dives including sharks!, ate scrumptious cuisine, and both got some serious travel’s tummy.  Travel’s tummy while confined to a cruise ship is quite a contrast to the beautiful bride & groom from the wedding.  For better or worse! 

Our cruise ship in French Polynesia

We came home from honeymoon feeling off and I was convinced we had made a honeymoon baby.  Arthur bought a pregnancy test that I take in a Mexican restaurant during our 12 hr layover in LA.  Turns out no honeymoon baby, just food baby, but both of us are very surprised that we weren't more relieved to see the “not pregnant”.  The seed is planted that perhaps we both are way more ready for a baby than we had thought.

Not Pregnant

After the honeymoon we worked…a lot.  I can’t remember having a weekday dinner together once from July – September!   We did go to Martha’s Vineyard for the 4^th of July, went to a couple more weddings, celebrated Mercedes’ 1^st birthday, went to the annual Lobsterboat Races in Bristol ME, started looking at houses in Maine, and planned a few trips for when work settled down. 

Mercedes turns 1!

September brought a weekend in Philadelphia.   We caught up with friends and did some sightseeing.  We redecorated the master bedroom.  

Philadelphia

Puerto Rico

In November we went to Puerto Rico for a long weekend that neither of us really took the time to plan and decided we much prefer planned trips.  We talked about having a baby & decided to stop trying to prevent one.  In December we went to Argentina & Brazil, made a baby, and bought a house in Boothbay Harbor, ME.  On Christmas Eve we told our parents they were going to be grandparents in August!  We rang in 2012 in Iceland. 

Argentina

Boothbay Harbor House

New Year's Eve in Iceland

Arthur spent the winter working lots both at work and on the Boothbay house.  

Arthur the expert painter

Not happy about my mask

It's a girl!

 I did much 1^st trimester napping and tons of baby reading &   research.  At the end of March we found out we were having a girl!  In April we spent a week relaxing in Jamaica on our babymoon.

Jamaica

Happy 30th!

  In May I threw Arthur a very successful surprise 30^th birthday party.  We ended our first year with 3 weekends in a row in Maine and another wedding.

All in all, an amazing, action packed year.  In some ways it still feels like we are in the honeymoon stage (especially when traveling), and in others it feels like we’ve been married for years.  Except for some seriously long work hours, it’s been a really wonderful year.  I’m pretty sure the whole “first year is the hardest” did not apply (why do they say that?).  Somehow I think adjusting to life with a newborn is going to be a little bit more challenging than this past year, but I’m really looking forward to the next family focused (and maybe quieter?) years with my love.  

Dear Baby - Week 25

May 10-16 

Mommy @ week 25

Dear Poppy,

This week Mommy celebrated her first Mother’s Day.  It was a lovely weekend.  First Daddy took Mommy out for a yummy dinner at one of their favorite places, Atlantic Fish.   Daddy gave Mommy 2 presents – a pass for 5 massages to keep Mommy nice and comfy until your arrival, and a book from you!  The book is called “My Mom – Her Story”.  It’s a book where I can write memories and stories for you.  It is going to be fun to fill out and share with you.  You have a very thoughtful Daddy!!  On Saturday we celebrated Mother’s Day with your Gigi (Grammy McGowan) and then on Sunday we celebrated with your Grammy & Great-Grammy Andersen.  We are so fortunate to have lots of loving family nearby.  It is going to be wonderful for you to grow up knowing your grandparents. 

This week we also started interview doulas for your birth.  Mommy is really committed to having a relaxed and natural birth for you and we think having a doula present will really help us achieve that.  Plus studies show that a doula’s presence at birth tends to result in shorter labors with fewer complications.  We are all for that!

In other news, Daddy noticed this week that Mommy’s belly button is starting to change.  It’s slowing moving from an innie to an outie.  Still technically an innie this week, but it seems to be about half and half this week.  How funny!

Current Size:  Cauliflower (13.5 or so inches long and 1 ¾ lbs)

Love,

Mommy & Daddy