It's been a couple of weeks since I've blogged -- we have been super busy! Zoey is constantly delighting us with her little personality and the new things she does. She is definitely grasping at everything and moving it toward her mouth. I think she's pretty darn close to sucking her thumb for comfort, she just hasn't quite figured out how to stick out her thumb yet -- she just puts her whole fist up to her mouth and slobbers all over it. She's also exercising her legs a lot more by "standing up" on our laps. Sometimes she works at it so hard that she grunts and yells, which we think is quite funny. We'll have to see if we can get some video of that for you.

She's been wanting to face forward more in the last week or so, looking out into the world. Her very favorite thing is to be facing outward in our arms or in the sling while we stand on the porch and watch the wind blowing in the trees across the street, listening to the cars going by. That is how we've been spending the normally-fussy evening time, and she doesn't make a peep. Just big blinky eyes, taking it all in... and drooling. :-)

We had our first visit with our baby doctor yesterday, Dr. Sam, who is a naturopathic physician. We really like her demeanor, and Zoey seems to like her a lot too. She spent an hour with us, getting to know Zoey and inspecting her head to toe. Zoey now weighs 12 lbs 12 oz, is a little over 24 inches long and is in the 65th to 75th percentile in all of her measurements. Because my insurance doesn't cover naturopathic doctors, and also because Dr. Sam doesn't do vaccinations (mostly because many of her clients choose not to do them at all and the vaccines would just expire in her refrigerator), we will probably also have shared care with an MD pediatrician that my insurance does cover. Apparently a lot of people around here do it that way.

Next week we will be traveling! Our first big trip! We will be driving up to Seattle on Thursday evening and staying with Jason's brother Lee and his wonderful family, and then on Friday morning we will catch a flight to Minneapolis. My dad will pick us up and we'll drive another 200 miles north and spend the week with my family. My brother and his wife will be there too (coming in from Kansas), along with Mike's son Matthew and their new baby Elizabeth, who was born just two and a half weeks before Zoey. The grandparents will have so much baby time they won't know what to do! We're looking forward to getting lots of pics of Zoey and Elizabeth together.

Hope you all are enjoying the last days of July. Happy birthday, bro!

We had a busy last week, lots of activity! Our biggest news is that Jason got his first EMT job! He had an interview last week with an ambulance company and was called back for a second interview this morning, and within 2 hours of the interview, they called him to offer him the job! Woo hoo! They like to hire new EMTs and help them to work toward getting a paramedic degree, so he'll be working 3 shifts a week while continuing to go to school. They also offer classes and workshops to help develop skills to get through school, all in hopes of keeping him in the company when he graduates. Very cool. He'll start where everyone starts, at the bottom of the totem pole, and will be driving sick people to their doctor's appts. He'll be running the place before long... :-)

Zoey is doing great -- still going 8 hours between feedings at night! Yeah! We went to another mom's group meeting last week and one of the other mothers mentioned that she "had a great home remedy for that thrush." (Thrush is a yeast overgrowth in baby's mouth, a fairly common problem in babies that looks like white patches on the tongue, palate or inside cheeks.) I immediately denied that she had thrush, explaining that I had just nursed her and it was milk on her tongue, not thrush! Not my baby! Then, after I got over myself, I came to terms with the possibility that she might indeed have thrush. We've been trying my friend's home remedy for the last several days, and it has gotten a lot better. Jason picked up some super-acidophilus for me today, and I will blitz that for the next 6 days and see if that does the trick. Thrush can be hard to get rid of, and with my sweet tooth, it's even harder -- yeast loves sugary breastmilk! I've pretty much cut sugar completely out of my diet, so hopefully we can get things back on track. That little girl is a powerful motivator for me to eat right...

We think that Zoey is losing her long dark hair. There is some short dark hair coming in underneath, so we'll see what that turns out like. No freckles yet, but I had another dream about them the other night... there's no chance this girl is getting away without freckles!

She's been holding up her head a lot more, getting very strong. She's starting to push off on her legs a lot more too, so we're encouraging that by letting her 'stand' on our hands while she leans forward onto our body for support. The third month is also when babies typically start to notice their hands, so she's spending more time sitting semi-upright in a bouncy seat or in our lap rather than laying flat on the floor so that she can find her hands better. She certainly is grabbing fistfuls of my hair better!

We had a wonderful, busy weekend with lots of visits with friends, a beautiful wedding, and a street fair with music and food. This week we'll have another meetup with our mom's group, a BBQ with friends... and mommy gets a massage on Wednesday! Hooray!

2 months, 12 pounds, and 8 hours!

Zoey hit several milestones this week! She turned 2 months old on Sunday and weighed 11 lbs 14 oz (which is close enough to 12 lbs for the title of this post!). And to celebrate, she went 8 hours between feedings last night -- woo hoo! Of course, I woke up in the wee hours with the worst engorgement I've ever had, but we managed it and hopefully my body will adjust soon. Zoey had about three nights in a row where she only went about 4 hours between feedings, then Saturday night she went for 6 hours, then last night it was 8. We'll see how this new schedule shakes out in the nights to come...

Mornings have been so much fun with her. She wakes up in a great mood and just smiles at everything. This morning Jason spelled me while I went to take a shower. He & Zoey just hung out together, laying on the floor, walking around, dancing a little bit... Then when I was all dressed and ready, it was Jason's turn. He was holding her and not a second after I pulled the burp cloth from his shoulder to transfer to mine, Zoey spit up all over him. The timing was impeccable.

Zoey has been holding her head up really well lately and is also pushing with her legs more and more. Tummy time is going better, too -- she went from really hating it and crying right away, to tolerating it for much longer. Her favorite place for tummy time is on the quilt that her Great Grandma Helen made for her.

We had a nice holiday weekend, went to friends Audrey & Sarah's house for a BBQ on Friday evening but skipped out on the fireworks so that Z could get to bed. That's how it goes now, her sleep schedule reigns supreme. (It's OK though, because we were pretty tired too.) The rest of the weekend was relaxing and the weather not too hot.

Jason has a job interview on Wednesday with an ambulance company -- keep your fingers crossed for him! If he gets through this one, then he will have a second interview.

We hit a snag in our search for a pediatric care provider, as my insurance (Regence Blue Cross/ Blue Shield) does not cover naturopathic care. This means that in order for insurance to cover any of Zoey's checkups, we would have to go with an MD or a nurse practitioner. This isn't a bad thing, but we prefer naturopathic care. I have a health savings account, which means that Zoey and I together have a $3000 deductible before insurance kicks in anything. So regardless of the type of provider we choose, the first $3000 of expenses are going to come out of the savings account either way. If I go with a provider that is not an "eligible provider" with Regence (like a naturopathic doctor), then the money we spend does not get applied to that deductible, which is the downside. However, it's not likely that Zoey and I together will need $3000 worth of medical care in a 12-month period -- yes, it's possible, but unlikely. I'm healthy, and Zoey does not have any health issues that would amount to medical bills like that. So we're considering just going with a naturopathic pediatrician anyway. Often times, providers will give a discount to people who are paying out of pocket for care, so it may turn out to be cheaper anyway. We interviewed one naturopath a couple weeks ago before I learned that Regence wouldn't cover NDs, and we're working on scheduling an interview with another ND as well as an MD that many of my clients have used (and love). Maybe we'll end up with a hybrid model of care, where we see an ND for well-baby care and an MD for sick-baby care and vaccinations...

I put together a parenting group last week, made up of my favorite midwifery clients. We had our first meeting on Wednesday in the park, and it was wonderful. There were seven of us who got together with our babies and just chatted for a couple of hours about things like sleep and how to cook with babies and sleep and healthcare providers and breastfeeding and sleep... We've continued our conversations online since we met, and it's such a great group of smart women. I feel lucky to know them. And it's kinda cool that I caught most of their babies!