Elliot's first 12 weeks: a recap

Elliot's 12 weeks old today, so I thought it would be fun to give you a quick recap of the first dozen weeks of his life.

One of the items on our registry was this little box of Milestone Baby Cards. They're just what they sound like: cards about certain milestones your baby reaches that can be used in photographs. I thought these were really cool and we've used them for every milestone so far!

Here are his age milestones.

The next age cards are those from 4 months up until his first birthday. I can't imagine one day being the mother of a one-year-old!

And here are some of the other milestones he's reached so far.

Elliot started sleeping through the night when he was 2.5 weeks old. Up until then he would nurse right before midnight and then wake up again around 2. From 2.5 weeks onward, he nursed between 11 pm and midnight and then slept until 6-ish. Lately he's been sleeping for 7 hours straight, and there has even been the occasional 8-hour night. No complaints here!

He smiled for the very first time when he was almost 3 weeks old. I know lots of people say that when a baby smiles before the age of six weeks, it's just gastric smiles. Still, I know what his gastric smiles look like and these were nothing like that. We discovered we could make him smile by gently blowing his hair and face. He loved that. And look at that twinkle in his eyes. *sigh* He loves it when people smile at him and he gives them the biggest smile back. He's such a perfect little boy. <3

I also wanted to show you these. They're some more pictures of Elliot (and I) that Klaas took for his 365 project.

He loves playing under his arch. The vibrating purple elephant is his favorite. I'd been waiting for him to start grabbing toys or random items and he finally grabbed the elephant just last night!

Just when you buy an extremely warm and cozy bear suit for your baby, you get the softest winter in years...

 

Elliot has always been great at lifting his head. He loves looking around and has done so ever since the day he was born. Every single person tells us how attentive he seems, as if he's taking in every last bit of the world around him. 

  

In this picture he looks so much like my brother (Elliot's godfather) when he was a baby himself. :-)

 With his feline pal, O'Malley.

And three more pictures, depicting some of his lovely Rolls. (Before I got pregnant, and even when I was actually already pregnant, I swore I would never think of baby rolls as precious and lovely. Until I saw them on my very own baby...)

A message from Elliot

Happy Easter!

Sunday walk

As I mentioned in my last post, Klaas and I went on a Sunday walk in hopes of maybe kickstarting labor. As you can tell, this didn't work.

Still, it was a beautiful day and we enjoyed being out for a change. Klaas took his camera with him and made a ton of pictures. I like this one he took of some ducks in the pond:

It had been a long time since I last instagrammed, so I snapped some pictures of the park.

You should've seen me squatting down to take that last picture. It's a miracle I didn't just keel over!

Taking stock

Random blurry picture of Juul riding his invisible bike.

Making: our house easier to clean.
Cooking: nothing.
Drinking: water.
Reading: Hanna's Daughters by Marianne Fredriksson. I'm not really into it yet, though.
Wanting: a nicer house.
Looking: forward to winter.
Playing: nothing.
Wasting: time. I should be prepping for my job interview tomorrow.
Sewing: absolutely nothing.
Wishing: I had a job.
Enjoying: having a lot of time to myself.
Waiting: until 3.30 pm so I can go pick up Klaas from work.
Liking: watching the entire first season of Under the Dome in only a week.
Wondering: what our baby will be like.
Loving: Klaas, our bun, my family and my friends.
Hoping: that one day I'll find a job I actually love.
Marveling: at the kicks in my belly. They get stronger every week.
Needing: another sandwich.
Smelling: an apple cinnamon scented candle
Wearing: jeans, a top and a sweater.
Following: a lot of cool people on Instagram.
Noticing: that the older I get, the faster time seems to fly by.
Knowing: that it's really hard to keep a house tidy at all times.
Thinking: about a new TV cabinet.
Bookmarking: websites about breastfeeding.
Opening: the fridge, looking for cheese and jam.
Giggling: about Juul lying on the floor like a seal again.
Feeling: extremely tired. 5.45 am is way too early.

Inspired by this post and this post.

Bits & pieces

Some random thoughts from the last few weeks:

1. A couple of weekends ago, Klaas and I joined my parents and brother to a Roman reenactment. It wasn't much in itself, but it was nice to be out. And I'm not gonna lie, those 2 hotdogs didn't hurt either. Now I want another hotdog.

These guys made me want to watch Gladiator again.

 

2. Since the end of August, I've been sooooo ready for fall. I've started wearing sweaters again, even when it's only a little chilly and my favorite poncho is hanging from a chair in the living room instead of in my closet. I didn't have any ankle boots anymore (only flats, pumps and actual knee-high boots), so I bought 4 pairs. These are two of them.

 

 

The stove is turned on and I'm burning apple-cinnamon essential oils. I watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation a few days ago (it's only just about one of the best Christmas movies ever made!) and it got me looooonging for the holidays. Seriously. I was thinking that I really want to start decorating my Christmas tree and then I almost started crying because it's too early for that. Can you say "hormones"?

 

 

3. On the other hand, fall is also synonymous with doing your laundry and discovering this:

 

And I was home alone. :(

 

4. This baby does not want to move for Klaas. It's happened numerous times by now that I feel the baby kicking for minutes on end and tell Klaas to put his hand on my stomach, only to realize the baby has completely stopped moving. I think there are two possible explanations for this: a) the baby doesn't like his/her daddy, or b) Klaas has an extremely soothing effect on the baby, lulling the little bun back to sleep by just touching me.

 

5. Klaas and I went to a wedding last Saturday. We like to play dress up.

 

 

6. The new Astrid in Wonderland season is starting tonight and I couldn't be more excited! I loooove this show. Tonight will be kind of sad, though, as we're saying goodbye to John because of the divorce. :( But first: lasagna and a visit to my parents! The other half of our packaging material for the sugar beans has arrived and I want to go check it out.

Summer bucket list

When Joke posted a summer bucket list on her blog, I was inspired to do the same thing. (Mind you, 'inspired' is not the same as 'motivated' because it took me ages to get my butt on here and actually post the thing.) I'm sure mine will be nowhere near as impressive as hers since Klaas and I don't seem to be as outdoorsy as her and Gary, but I still felt like compiling a list to document our summer. It will serve as a testimony that we're hip and busy people too!

Now, as summer is already 1/4 over (I haz a sad :'(), I am also including the things we've already done so far.

1. Disneyland
Klaas and I went to Disneyland for three days with my parents, brother and cousin. We left the last day of the school year and stayed until Monday. My parents had actually taken me and my brother there once before, although I can't really remember how old I was back then. Anyway, it was a long time ago, so in a way this trip was like going to Disneyland for the very first time. We had a lot of fun staying in our own cabin. Klaas took some pictures while we were there, so I'll make another post entirely about the trip sometime next week.

2. My birthday party
Seeing as it was birthday just a few days before finals started, I didn't get to celebrate with my family on my actual birthday. Instead I invited them over the weekend after our Disneyland trip (i.e. last weekend). It was a perfect sunshiny day, we had delicious cakes and our dogs had a lot of fun chasing frisbees. Klaas forgot to take pictures though. :-(

3. BBQ at Klaas's mom's
Klaas's mom just finished her B&B (an artistic cabin in their garden) and invited the entire family at a barbecue Friday night to show us how it all turned out. It was soooo cold. We were all huddled up in jackets, scarves and blankets, but it was so cozy. I love spending time at this side of  Klaas's family, so I didn't mind the cold very much.

 

4. Go on more walks with Flo and Juul
I guess this one is pretty self-explanatory.

5. BBQ at our house
Klaas and I have invited our friends over for a barbecue next weekend. We're very excited about this and looking forward to having our friends over again. It's not often that you get to meet up with all your friends at once and we're very happy that most of them (not all of them :() can make it. I hope the weather will be warm, because it would be a bummer to have to do the actual eating inside.

6. Paris
This is a big question mark. Klaas has never actually been to Paris (No, Klaas, Disneyland doesn't count!) which I think is such a shame. I was thinking about planning a three-day trip to the City of Love, but I'm having second thoughts. August can be miserably hot in Paris and with nowhere to cool off, it might not be such a good idea to go there. Too much sun and heat makes me uncomfortable and it would be a shame not to go out during the day when you're in a city like Paris... We're still going back and forth on this thought, so we'll see what we end up deciding.

7. Go to the beach
When Flo was about 3 months old, Klaas and I went to the beach with her and took her for a walk along the shore.

She wasn't too fond of the water though, something about strong winds, the loud sounds of the waves and her paws getting wet. Still, now that we also have Juul, we'd really like to go to the beach again. We're thinking about only leaving in the afternoon or even nearly at dinnertime, so that the beach is almost empty when we get there. We're also going to look into whether there are beaches that allow you to walk your dog off their leash, because that's always fun to do.

8. Have my/our picture taken by Joke
She may not be aware of it yet, but I fully intend on meeting up with Joke in August to get our pictures taken. There's something about that field right by her new apartment that screams: "Hey, look at me, I'm a field, and I'm nice to stand in whilst taking pictures!"

9. Go to IKEA
I'm in the process of decluttering our house. All of a sudden, I'm very annoyed with how long it takes for me to decently dust and clean this place. So basically, everything has to go. Klaas is with me on this one, although for him, this means passively watching his wife making plans, looking things up and running around frantically trying to sort things out. These three cd racks, for instance, are driving me crazy.

They're just standing there, taking up space. They're also very fond of dust and dog hair and it's impossible to clean under there.

Ewwww.

Which is why they have to go. Instead, I'm going to get something along the lines of these IKEA boxes to sort all of the DVDs that are now in the CD racks. The boxes, in turn, will go in the dresser next to the racks. (Bear in mind that this means decluttering the dresser. It's a good thing I have the entire summer off from work.)

While in IKEA, I'm also going to get two large Ribba frames (we had actually bought two, but used them to give our parents an enlarged wedding picture) and a bunch of extra smaller frames for the wedding collage I'm planning. Klaas is getting rid of his aquarium, which means that I'll finally have a dresser to put decorative stuff on AND that the wall behind the dresser will be empty and frame-ready.

10. Klaas's dad's birthday
There's very little I actually know about what will happen on this day. I only know that we are expected to clear our schedules on the last Saturday of summer, that we'll get a guided tour of Ghent and that "those suffering from seasickness should take a pill for it"...

11. Garden extravaganza
This has actually been a work in progress since last month. We've bought a concrete wood-look fence to line the back of our garden and part of the side, but the construction of it is a lot of hard work. We're doing everything ourselves because having it done by the people that sold it to us would've cost us more than double. Again, this deserves its own post once the entire project is finished, which will probably be somewhere in August...

Once the fence is up, we'll have to replant the bushes that we planted last year (we had to dig them up because they would've gotten trampled during the project) and we're also going to look into which border(stone)s we want to sort of enclose the back strip of our garden containing the bushes. We don't want any grass growing in between our bushes, so we're probably going to buy a tarp and mulch. Cutting holes in the tarp for our bushes to grow through should ensure that we don't get any weeds or grass in there...

12. Get a chicken coop and chickens
This is actually part of our garden extravaganza. I don't know why, but for some reason, the previous owners of our house poured concrete in the far right corner of our garden. (Our house is an L-shape and the longest leg of that L runs straight to the back of our garden. Behind the house, there's a good 8 by 4 meters of that concrete left). There was also a brick dog house there, so maybe it was some sort of DIY kennel? Anyway, seeing as this is a somewhat "forgotten" corner of our garden because it's so out of sight, we thought it was the ideal place to put a chicken coop. When our fence is done, we're going to enclose this space with garden wire fencing, buy a chicken coop, adopt some chickens (of course) and hopefully soon have our own eggs to cook and bake with. I'm sooo looking forward to this!

13. Taking a walk by the Molenbeek
I just asked Klaas what he wanted to do this summer and this is what he told me (along with going to the beach). I think he probably saw pictures of this brook on internet and now wants to go take pictures of it himself. :-)

14. Going for a picnic
We don't go on a picnic enough. I surprised Klaas with one last year and it was so much fun. We went to the park that is just around the corner from our house and had macaroni salad while watching all the scary ducks and geese.

This is all I can think of for now, but I'm sure we'll randomly add stuff to the list as we go. We never really plan a lot of activities when Klaas is off from work, because we rather enjoy just being at home and spending time with each other (and our pets :-)).

Do you have any thoughts on places we can visit in a day? I'm open to suggestions!

A quick recap

It was my birthday two weeks ago! I had such a fun day, because I only had to teach one hour and my one birthday request to Klaas was for him to be home in time. He's been crazy busy at work lately, which usually means working about two hours longer every day. He actually took the day off on my birthday, which I thought was so sweet of him. He made one of my favorite meals (his oven casserole) and we had my parents and my brother over for dinner. He got me two presents: The Impossible on dvd (I expected to cry the ugly cry, but no tears were shed. Tsk tsk, Joke!) and the new Dan Brown book. I started reading it a few days ago and I'm already loving it. It's actually my bath book, but it's so addictive that I might have to upgrade it to the status of couch book (more on that in a later post!). I'll be kind of busy correcting exams though, so book temptations may not be the way to go.

The Saturday after my birthday, we went out to dinner (we're very loyal customers at the Greek restaurant that is just around the corner from where we used to live in Ghent. We also went there the night of our civil wedding to celebrate, just the two of us) and then went to the movies. We saw The Big Wedding and I actually loved it. Movies like this one are right up my alley.

My handsome husband during our Greek dinner. Check out the ring I put on it.

We also had our first barbecue of the year. The weather wasn't actually great - it was rather chilly - but I enjoyed all of the deliciousness anyway!

 

 Chill cats. Like lol cats, but more relaxed.

Klaas's mom and stepdad are in America for three weeks. Their dog was supposed to stay at my sister-in-law's, but he didn't get along with her dog. So now Flurk is staying at our house for the remaining 2.5 weeks. Three dogs is a lot, but we can manage!

Sheldon getting tired from all that correcting...

You gotta love students sucking up. ^^