A walk in Parc Bertrand

Last week we met up with new friends Cristina (and her kids Valentina and Roberto) and Natalia and went for a walk in the nearby Parc Bertrand when the weather was nice (first nice day in over a week... we've been having a cold and rainy spell here).

Parc Bertrand is about 4 bus stops away and it is huge! With lots of green lawn to sit on and have picnics - once it gets warm for good. It has a huge awesome playground for kids and it is always packed with moms and babies.

Here are some shots of the playground...

 Moms can have fun too, right?

But what do you do when you're a little baby barely 2 months old? Can't play in the sand, go on the swings or climb on the monkey gym... Oh yeah, that's right - you come to the park to have a nap! Haha...

What happens...

... when baby wants to be carried around ALL DAY LONG on mommy's arm?...

Mommy has to get a wrist brace! With a metal plate inside. Ouch!

Oy munchkin, why can't you sleep like this on your own?...

How babies grow - The story of 1 outfit

This is a story of my favorite pair of PJ's Katherine had in Newborn size... Check out how she's grown overtime!

Take 1 - leaving the hospital at 6 days old.  Look how baggy it is on her!! Look at those teeny tiny fists!

Take 2 - hanging at home at about 3 and a half weeks. Filling it up nicely! Those fists and wrists are getting chubbier.

Take 3 - hanging at home in the NEXT size up PJ's. Little chub chub filling THIS size now!

Now to compare:

This is the Newborn size and the 0-3month size PJ's side by side, and then one on top of the other to show the difference in size. (ps. This is the same brand outfit as the striped one above. I had to use this one, since we had a little pooping accident involving the other one last night and it is in the laundry basket right now...)

The 0-3 month PJ's are at least 1-2 inches longer in the legs and sleeves!! And she fills the 0-3 month size completely!!

Pretty soon I will have to upgrade her to the next size up!

How sad... I really love this tiny 'I love Daddy' outfit... She was truly so tiny when she first wore it...

But no worries! I loved it so much that I also bought it in the 3-6 month size!!! Ha! So once we reach that stage you will see it in the rotation again. :))))) Look how HUGE the 3-6 month size looks next to the Newborn. Hard to believe that she will be that big soon!

Katherine's Cousin!

Happy news to share. My younger sister also had a baby recently. I had not mentioned before that she was expecting at the same time as I was, because she asked me to keep it private as it was her personal affair and she did not want it publicized on my blog. She has now given me the green light to show off her precious baby.

Katherine has a first cousin in Poland! We are so excited!

Baby Michal (Polish for Michael) was born on February 28th (9 days after Katherine) and weighed 3.73 kg (8.2 lbs) and measured 57 cm (23.3 inches). What a big boy! And as of last week he was 5.9 kg (13 lbs) and measured about 65 cm (26.5 inches). Growing nicely to be as big as his Daddy whom many of you know as Magic. :)

Here are some pictures of the little (big) guy. Can't wait to meet him in person when we go to visit my family in Poland again. Yay for baby cousins!!

Katherine is 2 months old!

Wow how the time flies!! She is already 2 months old. I kind of feel like since we came back from the hospital till just recently I've been living in a parallel universe of feeding, changing, fussing, baby gas etc... One day I realized that all my pregnant friends already had their babies and that life was moving on FAST!

So anyway, here are the updates. What a difference 1 month makes! She now weighs  and measures   .

Stats:
Weight: 5.4 kg = 11.9 lbs (75th percentile)
Height: 57.5 cm = 23.5 inches (75th percentile) - Just want to point out that it is 3 INCHES IN 1 MONTH!!
Eyes: still gorgeous blue with a dark ring around the edge of the iris. Hope they stay that way.
Hair: still has it all, male pattern baldness on top, mullet in the back, but has a bit of a bald spot in the back from turning her head to the sides all the time.

She got her first round of vaccinations at her 2 month appointment and it has been pretty rough...

Eating:
She is on a pretty good 3 hour schedule during the day. We start the day at 7:30, then 10:30, 1-1:30, 4-4:30, 7-7:30. The afternoons can get a bit irregular depending on activities. If we go for a walk and come home early she might decide she's not going to wait and wants to eat right away. Or if she has a bad day of gas and screams all her energy out, she wants to eat sooner too. Or if we stay out longer, we may push it to 3.5 hours. We try not to go over that so that she sticks to her routine. The pediatrician agreed with that.

Late in the evening we try to do a "dream feed", kind of a half asleep feeding around 11pm-midnight. Still trying to figure out what works for us. Ideally I would like to feed her around 10-10:30 then go to sleep but a lot of the time I end up going to bed at 9-9:30 because I'm so tired so I have to set my alarm clock for the dreamfeed anyway.

After that on a good day she'll sleep till 3- 3:30, eat, then sleep till morning. On a bad day she'll wake twice during the night, aroud 2 then 4. Not bad at all though.

Since even when she wakes at night she does not cry, just kind of fusses and flails her arms and grunts, at her appointment, her doctor told me to try to not get up and go feed. She told me to wait till she actually starts crying. Being over 5 kilos, she's supposed to have enough energy to go the entire night without replenishing calories. We are going to attempt that going forward. I might start with dropping the late night wake up and see what happens.
Sleeping:
Following the daytime feeding schedule, she will take shorter or longer naps. It all depends on a day.
***I do not have a good way of putting her down for daytime naps so if anyone can recommend something, that would be great.***
Right now, she won't be forced into a nap if she does not want one. She sleeps really well during walks so if I want to make sure she gets some sleep, I take her on a looooong walk around the city.

She is very gassy though - borderline colicky - so sleeping longer stretches during the day is a challenge. She will fall asleep and then wake up all of a sudden and start screaming like someone is poking her in the belly with a hot poker. It was really bad earlier on. She seems to be growing out of it slowly.
We've tried a ton of different remedies American gripe water which we brought here from home, English gripe water purchased here, InfaCol (English version of Mylicon), dill seed tea, belly massage, bicycling legs etc, and nothing really works. No surprise though. If there was an effective remedy for baby colic there would be no colic anymore.

Of the things we've tried the English gripe water and dill tea seem to work the best. I knew from before that dill seed is typically used to relieve gas so I was glad it worked. She had a bad reaction to Infacol and was spitting up and crying a bunch after it so I threw it out. Our pediatrician also said that she just has to grow out of it so we're crossing our fingers and waiting.

As far as night time sleep - she has gone 6 hours between feeds a few times, but it is not consistent. Once she went 7 but I think that was a complete fluke. Most of the time it's about 4.5 hours and she goes into her grunt, flail arms routine. As I said before, she never really cries at night either just grunts, tosses around and flails her arms. Which according to her doctor is most likely just a sleep stage and I should leave her alone, not feed her, unless she actually cries... We shall see...

So anyways, when she starts her routine I wake up and start questioning is she hungry is she not, am I being a bad mother and starving her if I don't feed her...  So a few times I've gone and fed her and she only ate a small amount and then woke up 1:30-2 hours later grunting and smacking her lips like she wanted more so I went and fed her again. Maybe her doc is right after all...
And then on a good night I will guess it right, feed her enough and she sleeps till it's time to get up.
I guess these are all the kinks I need to work out. She sleeps pretty good at night though once she successfully falls asleep.

Activities:

During the day she will play on her activity mat several times. She loves it! We have a Skip Hop Funky Farmyard mat and she loves looking at the animals and listening to their jingling, squeaking and music. She will kick around and laugh. So cute!

Of course after a while she gets overstimulated and gets hiccups and starts crying so I have to carry her around and soothe her. She is a major crier and wants to be carried around A LOT.
She now follows us with her eyes and "talks" to us a lot. Love it!

Milestones:
Around week 6 she started smiling. Very sporadically at first, and I questioned if it was just gas, but now she does it all the time and even laughs out loud and lets out these adorable squeals huh's and agoo's. Love it! I don't have any pictures of her smiling though because every time I whip out my camera he gets distracted and just stares. And daddy is not around to take a picture of us being silly. Maybe soon. This is the best I've got I guess but it's hard to tell that it's a smile.

Randoms:
She started HATING the guts of the Boppy pretty much right after I posted the 1 month update haha... And she is totally fine being on her back now.

After completing week 5 she went through a growth spurt which basically meant she wanted to eat every 2 hours or less, and the rest of the time she slept. After that all of a sudden she did not fit into the Newborn clothes anymore. She has gotten so big! Now after the doc appointment we know that the growth spurt resulted in growing 3 inches! Whoa!!

Just before she turned 8 weeks old we started putting her in her crib in the nursery to sleep the night and she took to it right away!! There was no transition period or trying to get her used to it. I attribute this success to the VTech musical and luminary toy we got from one of CJ's co-workers. I will post about it separately because it is just so darn cute how she likes it. Watching the lights and listening to the music became our bedtime routine and we've been doing it in her room from the beginning. At first, after the musical toy time, we would transfer her to our room into the pack'n play after she fell asleep, but then one evening I just put her in the crib and she slept just fine. So now that's what we do! Yea! Next step - get her to sleep longer stretches at night.

But the best thing so far - and I might be deluding myself in thinking this - she seems to recognize me and smiles and talks to me a lot. Sometimes when I leave her on the activity mat or in her crib or p'n p just hanging out she will be entertain herself for a while and then she starts calling after me. At first it's a nice soft 'Mom!' (I swear that's what it sounds like!!). Then it gets louder 'MOM!', then it's "MOM MOM!!' and if don't come back she does one more cry and then goes into meltdown mode... haha. But when I show up she will quiet down and start showing off. She wants me to watch her play. Too funny. Also, sometimes when she gets frantic from crying I am the only person who can soothe her. Mommy powers I guess...

Here are her 2 month pictures. Looking fairly content...

And then I wanted one where you could see her body (and with a head band...) so I took her PJ's and this is what happened... HILARIOUS!!!

Silly Mommy... what were you thinking... I set off a 30 minute screaming fit. I must have touched the tender spots on her thighs where she got her shots today. After this she would not let me put her down for a second until she went to sleep for the night. That's what I get got messing with her... haha...

We love this little girl so much!

Katherine makes friends too!

Not to be outdone by her Mom, little Katherine has made lots of new friends in Geneva too. She loves hanging with them and dressing up all cute for her playdates. Here she is heading for cake and coffee with Mom one day... looking just a bit chunky because her sweater is a few sizes too big... hah...

 Here are her friends Hunter (USA Kate's son, born in January) and Elsa (Liza's daughter, born in December). I think they're dating... haha...

 Here is the troublemaker of the gang, Hunter's sister, Piper (16 months)

 This is one of Katherine's boyfriends, baby Arthur (Agatha's son, French, born in March)

 And here are more friends...
Holly (UK, Lucie's girl, born only 2 days after Katherine)

 Oscar (UK, Bryony's son, born in March)

 Skye's girl, Neve (Australia, born in April)

Ava (Finland, Katja's girl, born a week after K)

Andres (Adriana's son, Mexico, he was so tiny at the hospital that the nurses called him Piccolino. But already a month later he was much bigger than Katherine. Boys grow fast).

Luna (USA, Elyse's daughter). Katherine and Luna hung out at the the hospital together... check out the second picture... Yes I know, K looks orange in it... she had a bit of jaundice at first...

Notice Luna nicely swaddled like a good baby should be, whereas Katherine has her fists up... Absolutely NO swaddling that girl... She wants her hands to be totally free.

There are a couple of more babies she is friends with but I don't have their pictures. Will have to post another time.

And I just have to say, these babies have been around for no more than 2 months (Katherine is the 2nd oldest) and they have changed SO MUCH already!! Insane! It will be so much fun watching them grow and interact over the next year here.

New friends

I have to say that moving here, I was a bit concerned about making new friends. I have a theory that once a person leaves college it is much harder to meet and make new friends, REAL friends, because everyone is so absorbed with their new, adult lives, relationships, work, houses, etc plus there is always the issue with people losing their innocent ability to get along with just about anyone. Typically people end up being friends with just their spouse and maybe a couple other couples. Meeting new friends is tough.

I was lucky enough to meet some fantastic friends in Charlotte, some on my own, some through CHOA, and through CJ. I feel truly blessed for having them in my life. But for that exact reason I was worried that living here would feel lonely and on top of that I would lose touch with people back home.

Well so far the second thing has not happened. Largely thanks to Facebook (glad to hear FB bashing less and less... haha).
For the first concern - it proved to be completely unnecessary. I made so many awesome new friends here, many if not most of them thanks to being pregnant and now having a baby.

Here's a little summary of my new buds in Geneva.

Girls from work: from left Mirian (Spain), Anfissa (Kazakhstan), Miranda (USA), Olga (Russia - not in this picture). Love these ladies to pieces. They were by far my most favorite work team to ever be on. We got along soooo well, we laughed, joked, complained, hung out etc alllllll days. My freak of a German boss aside, this was the most fun I've ever had at work. Up till now we regularly meet for lunch and they bitch to me about Michael, who is as much of a douche as ever.

Girls from G-Locals (a local Expat online service, kind of like CHOA in Switzerland): in order - Liza (Czech Rep, but moved from London), Kate (USA), Agatha (France). These ladies are fantastic. We met back in October soon after I left my job. Agatha posted a meet-up event for future and new moms and Liza, her and I met then. Kate joined soon after and we've been meeting regularly, hanging out and visiting each other all the time. Agatha was the last one of uf to have a baby and now we're a group of new mommies looking forward to nice summer so we can hang at the park or at Geneva beach.

Girls from my pre-natal class: Lucie (England), Bryony (England), Skye (Australia), (from left in the last pic) Adriana (Mexico), Elyse (USA), Katja (Finland).
As stated - we met at the prenatal course we all took. We somehow kept in touch after the class, exchanged pictures of our little ones as they were coming and now we started meeting for walks in the nearby park, coffee and cake etc.

Girls from the expat circle (wives of expat dudes): Samantha (last on on right USA), Lauren ( next to me USA), Tracey (in blond wig Ireland). These were my party friends before Katherine arrived. And they would be my wine drinking buddies if I needed some wine haha. I knew Sam and Lauren from Charlotte. Lauren used to work with me at Rubbermaid.  Tracey is the sweetest girl, whose boyfriend works for CJ. They moved here in July or August and she went through a similar work experience here as me, resulting in almost having a nervous breakdown and leaving her job. What a crappy place for people to work...  Glad CJ is loving it.

Also expat wives but they're Moms/soon to be moms: Cristina (Italy), Natalyia (Ukraine). This is the latest addition to my little circle of friends so I don't have any pictures with them yet. Cristina is the wife of CJ's big boss, Emilio (head of Tools for Europe). She has a girl and a boy and is expecting another little boy in July. She was super interested and supportive when we met and has given me some awesome breastfeeding advice (TMI I know...). And Natalyia is the wife of CJ's co-worker Jerry (Mexico). They moved here from Munich and they are also expecting a baby (girl) in July. Just started hanging out with these ladies recently but I already like them a lot.

It's funny how coming here (and of course quitting my horrible job) has turned to be such a social blessing! I can honestly say that I've not had such a wide network since I left college. Loving every minute of it! As Katherine gets better about eating regularly and sleeping longer (so I have more energy) I will be able to properly enjoy all my new friends here.