Happy Thanksgiving

Hope everyone had a good Turkey Day! Papa Tigger, Tigger and I headed to G-Ma and G-Pa T's for Thanksgiving. We had a great time and ate lots of good food. It was fun!

We started off the long weekend by packing up all our things. Having Tigger has significantly added to the travel gear. Here's everything in our living room, ready to go. Good thing Papa Tigger can pack up a car like nobody's business!

Tigger was very popular and got to spend lots of time with family and friends. Here's a group photo of us first thing in the morning:


Time with Aunt Meghan:

Reading the paper with G-Pa T:

Time with G-Ma T:


On Thanksgiving Day, Tigger was the life of the party. He was decked out in his very cute onesie that Aunt Lorelei and Uncle Michael got him. It even has Tigger on it!



The table was full of friends, family, laughter, great food - and Tigger!

Tigger enjoyed the Thanksgiving table and cooed a bit for us (check out Major under the table and G-Pa T taking pictures):



Papa Tigger and I even got in a little time with him. Here's Tigger telling Papa Tigger a story:

And me grabbing a kiss:

Clint, the resident poet, honored us with another Tigger-inspired poem:



At one point this weekend, Tigger was fussy, so Papa Tigger decided to let him enjoy the lake view from G-Ma and G-Pa T's house. He looks so lonely while everyone is watching football, but he was happy:

Tigger especially thinks Major is entertaining. Here he is smiling at Major's tail-wagging:

And our flying baby:

Fun with Papa Tigger:

And finally, a few random pictures:

Back to Work

For those of you counting, you've noticed that Caleb is nearly three months old, which means my maternity leave is coming to an end. This week, I returned to work. Not only have I officially returned to work, but I flew to Boston.

As you may recall, I was working on a project in Boston while pregnant with Tigger. The team there asked me to come back for the month of December to help while some of the leadership team is out on parental leave (there was something in the water there!). This week, I traveled to Boston for just one night. I'll then head to Boston for 3 days each week of December. I'll be working on the project full-time, but only be onsite part-time

Since Papa Tigger and I have left Tigger before, this was not my first time to leave Tigger overnight. Hitting the road again for just one night was a good way to ease my way back to work. It's like riding a bike, right? You never forget?

Well, first of all my brain was a little rusty after three months of 'vacation.' It's not like I wasn't using my brain while on leave (see the book list at right), but work is quite different. There's nothing like managing the testing and training activities of a huge Consolidation/Reporting/Planning implementation to get you back in the swing of things. A few discoveries so far:

Pumping at work is hard!! For those not familiar with breastfeeding, I have to pump while away from Tigger. This is for two reasons: 1) I need to pump to keep producing and 2) What I pump this week is what Tigger will eat while I'm gone next week. So I headed to Boston this week with my breastpump in tow. Besides finding multiple times during the day to pump, you have to find a private place to do it. This is even more difficult when you're not an employee of the company where you're working. I'm a consultant working in a client's office, so I'm kind of a visitor in their space. The conference rooms in our workspace are always full, plus they're right next to our workspace so everyone would hear the loud breastpump. The first day was tough - I pumped in the airplane bathroom and later in my rental car. The second day went much better once I broke down and enlisted the help of a fellow (male) coworker to help me find a room further away. I now have access to two small conference rooms (with doors that lock) that are downstairs from our workspace. Good progress!

A few other challenges from this week:

• Even though I can fit into my shoes (yeah!), I'm very rusty walking in heels. My feet are hurting!
• It's harder now to find clothes to wear than when I was pregnant. Maternity clothes are too big (and I'm sick of them) and I can't fit into my normal clothes yet. An excuse to go shopping, I guess....

I hear it'll get easier. One day at a time, I guess!

The Nursery is Done!!

The nursery is finally done!! We realize that Tigger is nearly 3 months old and this seems a little late, but he was a month early and has been keeping us busy. Here are some pictures of his new home:


Notice the curtains done by G-Ma T:

The crib from G-Ma C:

Check out the Tigger lamp (thanks Anna!) and the circle artwork done by Mama and Papa Tigger:

The Tigger nightlight:

And the nifty way we're utilizing the closet for storage:

Mr. Chubbs

Since Tigger was born so small, Papa Tigger and I take great pleasure in his current pudginess. Tigger is a scrawny preemie no longer! In fact, we've created a new nickname for him - Mr. Chubbs.

I took a few pictures to illustrate his adorable chubbiness. Here you can see that he has no wrist, just a chubby arm connected to a chubby hand:


And check out the double chins and chubby cheeks (he's recovering from pinkeye so his left eye is a little droopy):


Below are a few more pictures that don't have to do with chubbiness, but they're cute anyway.

Tigger and me being lazy in bed:



Papa Tigger with Tigger for a trip to the dog park. Not only did Tigger have a hat, jacket, gloves and Papa Tigger's body warmth to keep him warm, but Papa Tigger zipped his own coat over him. Papa Tigger looks like he has a growth!

Our First Babysitter

Last weekend, Papa Tigger and I accomplished another milestone - we hired a babysitter for the first time! We got a recommendation from a local friend with kids and scheduled Whiteny for Saturday night. She was very nice (and young!) and took great care of Tigger. Papa Tigger and I enjoyed a nice dinner and the new Bond movie.

The funny thing was how old the whole experience made us feel. Papa Tigger and I both have memories of babysitting when we were younger. Now we're the parents! We're getting so old:(

Anyhoo, it's good to have Whitney available so Papa Tigger and I can enjoy some alone time together. Another milestone (on our part) complete!

Uncle Michael's Onesie

Here's another onesie pic, this time from Tigger's Uncle Michael:

Thanks Uncle Michael!!

Like Father Like Son

Ever wonder if Tigger was switched with another baby at birth? Nope! He is definitely his father's son. Check out these pictures of our lazy Saturday morning:

I do want to point out that sleeping in our bed is a SIDS risk so Tigger always sleeps in his crib or the Pack and Play. This morning I put Tigger next to Papa Tigger to help me wake up Papa Tigger. Apparently, my approach did not work. Tigger is now being relocated to his crib to sleep until the next feeding....

p.s. notice how much nicer our pictures are? We got a new camera now that we have such a great subject:)

You Gotta Do What You Gotta Do

In the recent Sleeping post, I described the schedule we have Tigger on. Part of that schedule is making sure Tigger stays awake enough during the day so he sleeps at night. Here's Papa Tigger trying his best to keep Tigger entertained and awake:



Unfortunately, Papa Tigger was not successful.....

Here are a few other pics of us being unsuccessful. He's so cute when he sleeps!

Aunt Meghan's Onesie

My Aunt what?
Oh, my Aunt loves me!
Thanks Aunt Meghan!

Sleeping

People always seem to be curious about how much sleep you're getting with a newborn, so I thought I'd blog about Tigger's sleep patterns.

I'm not going to lie; the first 6-8 weeks were a bear. Tigger needed to eat every 3 hours, though that wasn't the hard part. The hard part was getting him to sleep! He rarely wanted to go down in the evening and would rarely go back to sleep after those middle of the night feedings.

Now, things are much better! We put Tigger on a schedule (based on On Becoming Baby Wise: Giving Your Infant the Gift of Nighttime Sleep). Basically, you follow the same schedule every 3 hours. Tigger gets fed (30 minutes), has awake/play time (one hour), then sleeps (for 1 1/2 hours). We're not too rigid on the schedule; if we wants to sleep after just 1/2 an hour of awake time, we let him. Or if he gets up after a 45 minute nap, that's ok too. I think the biggest lesson learned from the schedule is teaching Tigger to go to sleep in his crib. We lay him down awake and he's learned to go to sleep by himself. We don't have to rock him, put a pacifier in or anything. Once he learned that, the nighttime was lots easier!

So now our schedule is to 'stuff' him (i.e. supplement with formula after breastfeeding) sometime around 9 or 10 pm. Then Tigger sleeps 5-6 hours and gets up around 3 or 4 am. He gets fed again then goes back to sleep. He's up again at 7 or 8 am and we start our day.

Now that we've made such great progress, I'm going for the gold! My goal is to eliminate the 3/4 am feeding. Last night might have been a sign of that progress - Tigger slept 8 hours! For some reason, he woke up at 11 pm and since Papa Tigger was up and I was trying to sleep, Papa Tigger gave him a few more ounces and put him back down (we ordinarily would have let him cry for a few minutes and go back to sleep). He didn't wake up until 8 am! I think we're going to do that going forward - top him off around 11 pm or midnight. The book actually suggested that, but we hadn't tried it yet.

In summary, we've been pretty lucky in that Tigger likes to sleep:) We hope it lasts!

And not that it relates to sleeping, but here's a picture of Papa Tigger with Tigger:

Meema's Onesie

Today brings another installment of the onesie pics. Here is Meema's (a.k.a. G-Ma C) onesie, modeled by a sleepy Tigger:

Our First Night Away

This weekend Papa Tigger and I left Tigger for the first time! We had a wedding Saturday night in Middleburg, about an hour outside of DC. We wanted to enjoy ourselves at the wedding and didn't want to drive back to DC after the festivities, so G-Ma and G-Pa T offered to babysit Tigger.

The wedding (of our friends Jeff and Audrey) was at the Goodstone Inn and we stayed at the Red Fox Inn. The town was neat - lots of cute shops and great B&Bs; it's a fun weekend getaway. The wedding itself was beautiful and the food was amazing! Papa Tigger and I agreed that the reception dinner ranks as one of the top meals we've ever had. The Goodstone Inn recently hired a new chef and he is out of this world! For those in the DC area, Papa Tigger and I highly recommend the Goodstone as a DC weekend getaway.

Luckily, the food and fun almost made up for being away from Tigger:) Though we were gone just 24 hours, it seemed like forever! Thanks to G-Ma and G-Pa T for letting us have a little mini-vacation. It was hard to be away from Tigger, but we had fun and I think it was good for us!

G-Pa T's Onesie

Here's another onesie pic; this time it's G-Pa T's scenic SML onesie:

Good Eyes!

Today we took Tigger to a pediatric opthamologist to get checked out. Since Papa Tigger had a few problems when he was younger (cataracts, strabismus), we wanted to have Tigger checked as soon as possible. Luckily, we're only two miles from the best children's hopsital in DC, so we headed over to their opthamology department this afternoon.

The good news is that the doctor saw no signs of cataracts in Tigger. Yeah!! He said to bring Tigger back in 4-6 months to check again, but it looks like Tigger won't take after Papa Tigger in that regard:)

G-Ma T's onesie

Continuing the onesie postings, here is G-Ma T's onesie, modeled by the very cute Tigger:

Tigger Holds His Head Up

Tigger is getting so big! Papa Tigger set him on his desk this morning and our little man did so great holding his head up.




Here he is holding his head up, watching CNN (he was a big follower of the election):


Our little man sure is growing up. He'll be crawling before you know it!

Tigger Votes!

In our quest to raise a good little Democrat, we took Tigger to the polls yesterday. He enjoyed the democratic process, accompanying Papa Tigger to the voting booth. I tried to take a picture of Tigger casting his vote with Papa Tigger, but the election officials wouldn't let us take a picture.

So here is our picture after we got home; notice Tigger's 'I voted' sticker!