Christmas in Florida

We spent Christmas with my parents and my younger brother Matthew in Florida.  Why Florida?  Well, I knew it was just going to be Matthew and us visiting my parents for Christmas this year, and I happened to see a billboard as I was driving along one day that advertised a direct flight from Champaign to Ft. Myers, Florida for cheap.  (I should explain that Champaign's airport is TINY--four gates and flights only go to Chicago mostly, with one flight a day to Dallas.  There might be one a day to Detroit too--I'm not sure if that one still exists.  Anyways, not very many options out of Champaign!  And the flights are usually expensive).  The flight to Ft. Myers was only like $200 or something, and less than 2 hours long.  That is WAY better price wise and especially time wise than flying to New Mexico where my parents live.  Plus, it's the beach!  So I convinced my parents and brother to fly out and meet us there instead, where we rented a house for a five days or so.

I love this picture! Yay for Uncle Matthew!

It was a lot of fun--we swam in the ocean on Christmas Eve, which was definitely a first for me.  The only down side was that I got sick the day we went out there, so the traveling felt SO exhausting (even though it was a direct flight and Abby did great) and by the time we reached the house I felt pretty lousy.  Matthew joined us the next day, when I felt somewhat better, and then my mom and dad came the day after that.  By then I felt much better but I sounded terrible (lost my voice, etc.)  The weather was awesome and the house was pretty nice (we never did try the pool though).  Abby got sick too and was fairly cranky most of the time.  BUT, she slept amazingly at night--like 8 hour stretches!  That was awesome, I must say.  

Somehow Abby managed to wiggle her way out of one leg of this outfit and put both legs together in one instead .  I guess she was going for the mermaid look.

 

Christmas day--Abby's new outfit from Grandma 

We took Abby with us to the beach and laid her in this little travel crib thing I bought.  She mostly liked it, but she did NOT like it when Kevin decided to dip her toes in the waves.  Maybe next year at Christmas she'll be ready to actually swim!  (Not that we'll probably be at the beach next year for Christmas, but hey--you never know!  Maybe we'll start a new tradition.)

It (was) beginning to look a lot like...

Okay, so I have all these post drafts sitting here on my blog for months now.  It's ridiculous!  I'm just going to go ahead and post them, even if they're kind of incomplete.  Actually, I've forgotten a lot of the details anyway so that will make it easier to write I guess--or at least keep the posts short.


In December we had our Ward Christmas party, where we Abby sat on Santa's lap for the first time.  She was pretty oblivious to old St. Nick in general, although she DID look awful cute on his lap.  I couldn't get her to smile for the photo, though.

In this picture here you can see Abby's Christmas outfit she wore the day of our ward's Christmas program at church.  What you can't see in the picture is that she had just had a big ol' blowout right before this shot--we figure'd we'd better hurry and take a picture cuz all the clothes were coming off shortly!  I'm sure you all wanted to know this, but hey--let's not sugar coat things.

Also around this time I got reeeeeally sick with a yucky stomach bug.  I was vomiting and felt awful, and I learned what it means to be a mom and not have the luxury of sick leave!  And not to be too graphic, but let's just say that with all the vomiting I also learned that the bathroom sink is not really a good place to throw up in because then you have to clean it out and it's YUCKY and also that my nether regions were not so recovered from labor as I had previously thought and the force of vomiting did not bring out the best in them.  This picture shows me on my sickbed singing to Abby to help her sleep.  Abby was being super cute and cooing along, despite my not-exactly-enthusiastic voice.

A Word to the Wise

Good idea: reading the Kindle your mom gave you for your birthday while feeding your baby

Bad idea: reading your Kindle while you slice tomatoes.  Ouch.  (Don't worry--no stitches or anything)

Oh yeah...

One more important thing happened right around Thanksgiving--I deposited my dissertation!  I had finished writing it a few days before Abby was born, but I had to give the committee time to read and tell me if I needed to do any revisions.  They took their sweet time (and one member at first said he couldn't get to it until after Thanksgiving break, which would have meant I wouldn't make the deadline for December graduation.  I told him "hey, I understand--I guess I just won't graduate in December and will have to pay tuition and fees next semester" and that sufficiently guilted him into hurrying up.  Actually, I discovered later that I wouldn't have had to actually register for spring in order to deposit spring semester, but I didn't know that at the time and it definitely helped my case!)  Anyways, the graduate college just had a few minor revisions for me, and then it was officially done!  Woohoooo!!  I did still have work to do for my Science manuscript, but at least I officially finished and whatever happened, I had a PhD!

Miscellaneous Cuteness

Nothing much happened the next few weeks--I took care of Abby of course, and also worked on our manuscript here and there.  I even started going out and doing stuff with Abby occasionally--visiting teaching, watching my friend's kids (well, sitting on her couch while they took naps.)  And I actually cooked dinners (some of the time anyway).  I also had my 6 week OB appointment and was declared completely recovered and ready to resume all normal activities.  Part of me was excited to start feeling more normal again, but part of me was a little scared to be out of my 6 week recovery buffer.  I mean, now I'd be expected to *do* stuff!  Besides taking care of Abby, I mean!

 But all in all, I was feeling confident.  And Abby was cute.  So things were good.  :)  

Don't mind that weird leaf thing--it's part of her swing.

Abby smiles!

Another thing that happened right around Thanksgiving was that Abby had her first real smiles!  I think the first one I noticed was the day before Thanksgiving, but I wasn't sure if it was really real or not.  But she did it again the following two days, and then I was sure!  She was most willing to smile right after waking up from a good nap.  Makes sense, I suppose!

I can't really explain how my heart leaped when I saw those first grins!  Just one little smile seemed to make all the hard work and sleep deprivation worth it! 

Thanksgiving week

Orange in honor of Thanksgiving of course!

The week after Kevin's mom left was the week of Thanksgiving.  I didn't feel up to cooking a full Thanksgiving dinner, but I did want to celebrate the holiday, so we just did a laid back dinner--I cooked a turkey breast and Stovetop stuffing, and we had mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie (Kevin cooked the pies!)  We could have gone to a potluck Thanksgiving at church, but it seemed more of a hassle to try to coordinate the baby's needs away from home with the timing of the potluck.

Is it wrong of me to think a picture of my baby screaming is funny and cute?  

Earlier in the week, I ventured out back to my lab for the first time since Abby was born.  Kevin came with me and we took Abby in to meet my advisor and labmates.  My advisor *loves* babies.  It was pretty funny--he actually offered to babysit sometime!  The main reason for the visit, though, was to have a meeting with my advisor and one labmate about my paper manuscript.  (We were working on submitting the stuff I did on my thesis to Science magazine, and one of our collaborators was being VERY picky about things, so we had to do lots and lots of revising before submitting.)  Kevin took Abby back home and I stayed for a couple of hours.  I think that was the first time I had been away from her that long!  But Kevin did great with her and I came home just in time to feed her, so it all worked out great.

We also took Abby in for her 1 month doctor's appointment the week of Thanksgiving.  Her collarbone was officially pronounced completely healed, and we were given the go-ahead to treat her normally (pick her up under the arms, etc.)  She was gaining weight well too, now that we were supplementing with formula.  Everything looked great!

A couple of things I want to record about Abby during this timeframe:  she almost always had her arms tightly tucked into her sides, with her hands clasped at the chest.  She had very strong arm muscles and it was tough to get her to move her arms any other way!  (Especially hard to try to wash her under there!)  Here's a couple of examples:

Another funny thing she often did was what we liked to call the zombie pose.  Sometimes when she was asleep she would stick her arms straight out in front of her, with her wrists flopping downwards--just like a zombie.  Aww, our little waking dead princess.  I don't think I have any really good pictures of this, unfortunately,  Here's one that kind of shows it, but not really--her arms were usually sticking out more.