Doctor day...

Today Ellison went to the doctor to get her 2 month vaccines. She had 4 altogether, and 3 of them were shots. She did fairly well. She did let out a high pitched shriek, but calmed down fairly quickly after I picked her up. Her stats are great! She's 11 pounds 0.5 ounces and 24 inches long. Her head circumference is 15 inches. Her weight and head circumference is in the 50th percentile, and her length is somewhere around the 97th percentile! She's already growing at a faster rate than Garrett did. For length, Garrett never passed the 75th percentile!

So my little girl is growing very fast and I feel like I don't have enough time to put all her cute little clothes on her! She's very smiley during diaper changes, (go figure- she likes being nude as much as her brother!) but she's a little more reserved overall about giving away her smiles. I remember Garrett smiling easily with us. Not Ellison. She's got to figure you out first. She also smiles more for Mommy than Daddy.

She's also a tummy sleeper. Dr. Decker told me today that a recent study showed that the rate of SIDS is THE SAME for babies sleeping on their tummy if they fall asleep with a pacifier versus sleeping on their back! That makes me feel better. I tried getting her to sleep on her back, but the longest she's gone is 45 minutes. But having her in the bassinet next to me also relieves any worry. I hear every little shuffle she makes, and she's already REALLY strong holding up her head. At our house, she gets back time instead of tummy time because she's always on her tummy!

She's not really doing anything spectacular at this point. She's only 2 months old and still only eats, sleeps, poops, and cries. Her hair, however, is looking more and more red everyday! It's still only a strawberry blond, but I have a feeling she's going to have my hair color or darker red when she's teenager and adult. But as a kid most likely she's going to be blond.

She still prefers Mommy over Daddy, although Daddy has recently learned how to hold her the way Mommy does. She still likes to be held tight against your body, and now that Daddy knows the "baby calming position", it frees me to do more things on my own, like going to the bathroom!

I go back to work July 7th now. I met with my boss yesterday to discuss my work schedule when I come back, and one of my concerns was that I have 15 vacation days and 5 personal days to use by September 1st, or I lose them! With just coming back from maternity leave, I thought for sure I wouldn't get to use many of them. But because of the students working during the summer and less prescription volume, labor has been cut. So actually I'm only going to work 2 days a week (the days the kids are in daycare), and use my vacation/personal days the rest of the days that I would normally get scheduled! This will still keep me at full-time status while only working part-time! This is going to be great for me because then I'm not away from my kids so much right away; I get to ease myself back into the work flow, then go back to full-time in the fall!

Doug will also be starting the nursing program in January. HE GOT IN! The next couple years are going to be very hard for us, but in the end, this will free me up to cut down to part-time for a while, or even quit to be a stay at home mom! This takes a lot of stress off of me. I feel so trapped in my job because I have to work full-time to carry insurance for the family. I want to be home while my kids are young so that I can do things with them and enjoy them at this stage.

So things are going good here in the DeGraaf household. I'll update with more pics soon!