Four Months

I am trying really hard to not say "HOW am I writing ANOTHER MONTHLY UPDATE?!" every time I write another monthly update. I don't think it's working so far.

So, FOUR MONTHS! Ivy is doing so well. She's super alert and tuned in to her surroundings lately, which is so much fun because I can show her all kinds of things. I have been taking her on walks down the street to a house that has a ton of Halloween decorations, including lights all over the house that flash to music. She has a good time watching those, especially the giant blow-up hearse that has sparkly lights in it.

Ivy's also working on her accuracy with her hands. I give her a toy and she's good at pulling it up to her mouth, and she practices switching hands and moving the toy around. She's pulling hard enough now to make the music play on her pull-toy on her play gym. She also wants to be sitting up ALWAYS. She is barely awake in the morning when she starts grimacing and lifting her head up off the bed, and lifts her feet up off the bed for longer periods of time.

Weekend napping still isn't great. A good nap for us is an hour. Part of the problem is that on the weekends we have things to do, so it's hard to get her to nap unless we happen to be in the car (which is fine, except that we don't schedule our traveling based on when she needs a nap). I'm hoping that eventually we'll be able to put her down twice or so during the day and have her actually sleep for a good chunk of time.

She's also learning to use her voice! It's fun to hear. She started using consonants (mostly G's) a few weeks ago, and is now practicing volume. In the car or in her crib, when I leave her to her own devices, she tends to start fussing but ending with talking. It makes it hard for me to figure out when it's time to go rescue her!

Smiling is happening way more than it used to, and so is tracking people's movements and turning her head when someone calls to her. Eye contact is happening for longer at a time. Rolling over from back to front isn't routine yet, even though she first did it so long ago. She has done it a few times since then but not recently and not lately (at least not at home). She does arch her back and push her butt up in the air a little bit with her feet, but that hasn't transferred yet into rolling over onto her back.

A bubbly tummy still seems to be her greatest nemesis. Just last night she half-woke-up several times with bubbles and woke me up every time. Burping tends to be easier now than it used to be; I'm sure that helps.

On Friday Ivy will enjoy some booster shots at the pediatrician. I'm not looking forward to it - I still remember in great detail her two-month shots, and the look on her face when she felt them. :( She had a quick appointment up in Portland with the surgeon last Thursday - she weighed 12 pounds 4 ounces, and they didn't measure her length but did comment on how tall she looked. Everything else looked just fine, and we don't have to go back there for another six months.

And now, to nurse!

One Year

Yesterday marked one year since Ivy and her tiny sibling-blasocyst were transferred from their deep-freeze tank, their home for the preceding five years, into my uterus. We said goodbye to two others that afternoon, who didn't survive the thaw. Five years earlier we'd said goodbye to four of them, and all our hopes were riding on these last two tiny possibilities.

I don't have tons of time to reminisce these days, but the weather reminds me. Dark and chilly in the mornings, like the mornings we got up at 4 to drive up to Portland for blood tests. Sunny and warm-but-not-hot, like the days I spent looking for signs from the universe or pregnancy symptoms on Google, like the lunchtimes we spent in the car at the park so we didn't have to see anyone while we waited for phone calls. Trees starting to turn color, like the ones outside the window of our tiny prep-and-recovery room, that I watched as I walked back and forth, waiting for my bladder to fill.

Those days and weeks feel like yesterday and also like ancient history. Sometimes my body suddenly relives the intense nervousness of waiting all day for The Call, the surge of adrenaline of being wheeled into the transfer room. I would have given anything to know, a year ago yesterday, where I'd end up in a year. Now that I do... it still catches me off guard, how incredible it feels.