Happy Holidays from the sweetest little baby in town :)

Christmas is finally here! There are so many fun things happening within the next week - we cannot wait! The snow just started falling last night - and by Christmas, it will be a winter wonderland around here :) Penelope seems to be getting excited too! She has started laughing out loud now and is getting tickle-ish... especially around her neck. She has begun to grasp toys on her own know... if her rattle is at her side, she will search for it with her hands and grab it and bring it to her mouth (she sucks on EVERYTHING! If it is in her hand - it will most definitely make it's way to her mouth!) She can now hold her head straight up when she is on her belly and can also pull herself into sitting when she is in a reclined position - which is awesome!


We just had opened our presents to each other tonight - we got her a rocking giraffe (like a rocking horse... but it's a giraffe), a high chair, a fun ball, some little wooden animals and her first baby doll... the doll's name just happened to be Abby - so we'll call her Abbey Road :)

We will be leaving for my parents' home in northern Wisconsin sometime tomorrow and then on Christmas Eve we have a snow storm to look forward to! We're excited to see our family and friends - we have family parties Thursday, Friday, and Saturday and then Saturday night Nana gets to watch Penny so that Alan and I can go to a Solstice bonfire that my best friend's boyfriend's parents have every year. Alan will come back to Milwaukee on Sunday, but Penny and I will be staying until the following weekend - then my mother will bring us back home and spend New Years with us in Milwaukee!

We were able to take Penny to go see Santa last weekend with my brother, Ryan, his wife, Jenny and their daughters. She sat so nicely on his lap and he was absolutely in love with her! (I bet she was a load off the 'ole guys knee!)

Mommy had fun trying to come up with a cute (and very last minute) picture for this year's Christmas card - the first photo up top was the winner! But these two of her sitting her Bumbo were also very cute! The snowman was given to her by Alan's mother, Mary Ellen - and she is obsessed with it! She cannot get enough of it - it lights up and changes colors and sparkles and it keeps her fascinated.



...and here she is with her "baby's first Christmas Ornament"! It took me FOREVER to find the perfect one - and this one was a keeper (that is her foot print in there!) It was so hard to find a classic looking one that was sans corny characters and modern colors - we wanted something simply and timeless. It does have a cheesy saying on it... "The first steps a baby takes... are into your heart"... but I can live with that... it actually fits us perfectly because that is exactly what it said on the card that I gave to Alan to tell him we were having a baby :).

Well we hope that everyone out there has a Happy Holidays and keeps safe and warm!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Love, Alan, Becky and Penelope!

Has it been 3 months already?!

Today is Penelope's 3 month Birthday! She's getting so big already - time is just flying by! I had to take her in to the pediatrician's office yesterday and she weighed in at 12 lbs on the dot! Such a big girl. At 3 months of age, Penny can reach toward things and sometimes even grasp objects and pull them to her mouth, she can hold her hands together and bring them to her mouth, she is a champ at holding her head up (she always wants to be sitting upright so that she can look around), and she can even push her shoulders up off the ground with her arms when laying on her belly! According to the pediatrician, that is pretty advanced - usually babies cannot do these things until they are 4-6 months of age - so she's a little mighty mouse! Above is a picture of her in her Bumbo chair - she LOVES sitting in it. It allows her to sit up and look around without mommy having to hold her all the time!

We also learned that she has eczema at this last pediatrician visit. She has had a small rash on the top of her head and on her cheeks for the past several weeks and we thought it to be cradle cap - but yesterday it had spread to her entire body, so I took her in to get it checked out again. Luckily, I had been using Aquaphor to treat the rash... and, as it turns out, that is what they usually prescribe as an over-the-counter treatment for eczema... but she had had a break out all over, and that required a stronger, medicated ointment. Since I had been treating the rash so well, it stayed relatively controlled and minor, even the pediatrician had thought that it was only cradle cap. The doctor gave me a list of things that could have caused it to break out and spread. It only took one application of her new ointment and the rash has almost completely gone away.

Now that we have all that icky-ness delt with things have been going a lot smoother around here. Penelope has been super happy and giggly lately. She went through a few nights last week where she was waking up a few times in the middle of the night to eat - and I was afraid it was going to be a habit, but fortunately, she has gone back to sleeping from about 10:30pm - 6:00am. So tonight, we're going to be brave and start transitioning Penny to the crib in her Nursery. Up until now, she has been sleeping in a playpen in my and Alan's room. I'll bet she'll sleep better than I will tonight...

We're starting to get excited to celebrate Penelope's first Christmas - it is less than three weeks away! For the past week or so, we have been digging out and setting up the Christmas decorations. Today we bought her first stocking as well as some cute Christmas jammies - but are still on the hunt for the perfect "Baby's first Christmas" ornament.

Below are some fun photos from the past few weeks - enjoy!

The Primm Family :) ... at my Parents home in northern Wisconsin. We went there for a visit just before Thanksgiving.

She is becoming a Daddy's Girl :)
She actually loves reaching for and playing with Alan's beard!

Rub-a-dub-dub Penelope's in the tub! She loves her baths... until you take her out!

Such a face! She was really happy and playing just before I took this photo. She was actually mid-laugh and just all of a sudden stopped and cracked this sad little face! We're going to be in a lot of trouble when she learns how to use that pout to get what she wants!

Penelope Laughing :)

she's one happy baby :)

Thinking Ahead for the Holidays...

For those of you who are interested ( a few people have asked me what to get for Penelope for Christmas...), I created a "wish list" for Penelope at Target. To view it online - go to Target.com and type in "Penelope Primm" in the Gift Registries and Lists under "Target Lists". You can also access it at the Registry kiosk at any Target Store.

We're pretty set for clothes for a while... but I know how hard it is to resist those adorable little girl outfits... so if there is something that you see that is just overwhelmingly adorable, please buy it size 12 months or larger. Preferably even size 18 or 24 months.

2 Months old and the beginning of CLOTH DIAPERS!!!

Penelope is officially 2 months old! I cannot believe how fast time is going! And how many disposable diapers we have gone through! Haha! Since we are finally done traveling for a while and Penelope (and her bladder) has gotten a little bigger we have decided to go ahead and start using cloth diapers :)
We made the decision to use them early on in my pregnancy. Just the fact that disposables are such an expense and are so bad for the environment. (Did you know that it takes several hundreds of years for a disposable diaper to decompose?! Some of the plastics used in them will actually never decompose!) That's ridiculous considering that Americans put roughly 5 million TONS of diapers into landfills annually - and it takes 80,000 pounds of plastic and 200,000 trees to make those diapers every year.
So we decided to do our part and try out the cloth diapers. And to my surprise, they're really not difficult to use or clean. They make so many different types that make the whole process so much easier than the traditional old-fashioned way of cloth diapering. Since we're just starting out, I decided to buy a few different styles of cloth diapers to see which brand I like best. Above is a picture of Penelope wearing a "Bumkins" brand diaper cover - and inside I have been using the traditional pre-folded cloth diapers that the Gerber brand makes. Below is a picture of her with a "Bambino Mio" brand cover, also with a Gerber pre-fold inside. I have also been trying a "G" diaper brand cloth cover... but so far the "Bumpkins" brand seems to work the best - however, since the fabric of them is super thin and white I found that, when Penny's icky, yellow newborn poop gets on them, they stain rather easy.


And the below picture here is Penelope in a "BumGenius" brand all-in-one style diaper. These are the best BY FAR! They are so easy to use and clean! And the best part about them is that they are size adjustable - which means that this same diaper will fit her from now until she is potty trained. The above brands are only fitted styles - which would mean that, once she outgrows these covers, I will have to buy the next size, much like clothing.
With the all-in-one styles, you don't have to deal with all the the inserts as much as you do with the diaper covers. The cloth insert goes inside the diaper and instead of just changing the insert, you change the whole diaper much like you would a disposable. Then when washing, you separate the insert from the liner and wash them all together. The only down side to the all-in-one styles is that you need a pretty good stack of them in order to use them exclusively. And at $20 each, it's going to take a while for us to stock up on a decent stack of them... so we plan to predominantly us the BumGenius brand, but when those are in the wash - we'll use the above brands.


In other news, I have been working hard at trying to finish Penelope's nursery! My plan is to start moving her in there sometime after she turns 3 months old. (Right now she sleeps in a bassinet in our bedroom). For the past several nights she has slept for up to seven hours straight. So hopefully it won't be too long before she starts sleeping all the way through the night. She has been changing so much these past few weeks. She has been becoming less and less fussy and has been staying content for longer periods of time without being held. She LOVES sitting in her swing, which has a toy bar and plays songs that keep her entertained. She has been smiling a lot and has even been laughing a little bit (but not out loud yet). She has also been doing a lot of cooing and blowing bubbles and raspberries.


I finally got her giraffe put up the other day and am very pleased with the way it turned out! It is hand cut from vintage wall paper and is super cute! I ordered it from a company that custom makes them in England. It is what inspired the rest of the wall art that I made for the room :)


Not much going on for the next few weeks. We're getting excited for Mary Ellen to visit in a couple of weeks and to go up North for Thanksgiving. I plan to start taking her to a "Mornings with Mommy" class that they have at the hospital she was delivered at on Thursday mornings.

Happy Halloween from Penelo-pumpkin!

Penelope celebrated her first Halloween! We had lots of fun - we were able to spend the holiday up in Northern Wisconsin with my family at my parent's house. Penelope had LOTS of visitors and received lots of cute gifts from friends and family. Below is a picture of her with her cousin, Zoe Jane. They were so cute in their Halloween outfits!

Alan and I were fortunate enough to be able to go out with some of my childhood friends Halloween night - Grandma was more than happy to watch both Penelope and Zoe that night. However, at the last minute my friend told me that we had to come to the bar in costume... and Alan and I hadn't come up with anything because we didn't think that we were going to have to dress up... but an hour before we left for the bars I whipped these costumes up:


....we're an American Tourist couple... complete with matching Hawaiian shirts, fanny packs, gaudy jewelery and awesome khakis. All thanks to my mother's closet :)

Penelope in California!

Well, Penelope's first trip to California was a success! She was such a good little traveler (with the exception of our final flight from Austin to Milwaukee... but with almost 4 hours in delays, we were all a bit cranky!)



We got to visit with a lot of family and friends that were very excited to meet her! Below is a 4 generations photo of Penelope with Alan, her Grandpa - John and her Great-Grandpa - Harold. While visiting with them we figured out that Penelope is the first girl to be born to the Primm family in over 100 years!


We were able to get Penelope baptized while we were there - at the Holy Family Cathedral in Orange, CA... Alan's brother, Steven and his wife, Jill are her God Parents :)


A lot of Alan's family's friends were able to join us in celebrating Penelope's baptism - we thank them all for coming!


Mary Ellen was head over heals in love with her new grandbaby! I don't think she put her down the whole time we were there!

Jill and Steven kind of liked her too :)

Our time spent out there just seemed to fly by. Between the baptism and Jill and Steven's wedding and visiting family, we were pretty busy almost every day that we were there... but we were able to hit the beach at least one day while there. So I was finally able to put Penny in this adorable little baby bikini that I have had since I was about 6 months pregnant. Words cannot describe how excited I was to finally be able to put her in it and tote her, and our huge convoy of baby gear to the ocean!

My little beach babe! I think some of that relaxed surfer mentality stuck on her because ever since we got back to Wisconsin, she has been the most peaceful and content little baby. She is especially loving to hang out in her swing!

Penelope on the move!

3 week update

It has already been 3 weeks since Penelope was born! It truly is crazy how fast time goes by. She is already getting so big! She definitely has to weigh more than 8 lbs. by now - she sure is chunking up! She has been becoming much more alert - I swear she was awake for a solid 2 hours yesterday, which is her longest so far. She's been eating like crazy and growing like a weed. She still isn't quite fitting into 0-3 month sized clothes, but some of her NB size onesies are starting to get snugger fitting.
Milestones this week: Penelope took her first trip to the supermarket and to Downtown Milwaukee. She also got to meet her Great Aunt Sue for the 1st time on Sunday!

Next weekend we plan to take her to Madison (weather permitting) so that Alan can play in a Hurling Tournament there. These next few weeks are going to go by so fast - I cannot believe September is practically over with already! We will be heading up North the weekend of the 10th to drop the dogs off at the Kennel - and the weekend after we are heading out for a two week stay with Alan's family in California :) We're super excited to introduce her to all of you out there!

Below are some pictures from this past weekend for everyone to enjoy. We were able to borrow a nicer camera from Alan's work... so I had lots of fun with that!

...you can kind of see Penelope's awesome birthmark in this picture... it is at the tip of her pinkie!

Baby feet, Daddy feet :)

How you doin'?

Anne Geddes, eat your heart out

So yesterday we had Penelope's photo session with Stacey Hamilton of times3photography in Racine - the same woman who did our maternity photos - and she already got us some "sneak peeks" of the session! I cannot believe how adorable these are! Our little Penelope is just way way way too cute - someone is going to have to inform Alan that we are going to have to go broke because I don't know if I'm going to be able to restrain myself from ordering a million prints of every pose :)

Penelope's Birth Story

 Penelope was born in at Aurora West Allis Woman's Pavilion in West Allis, WI on Labor Day weekend. I was due Sept. 15th, but went into labor on the 5th... since it was early and nobody told me that diarrhea was a symptom of labor - I spent the first 4 hours of labor just thinking it was some iffy Chinese food from a buffet we had tried out the night before. As soon as I realized I was in labor, I realized that my contractions were only 5 minutes apart - and the doctor said to come to the hospital when they were 15.... so we rushed to the hospital. 

The nurse that was checking us in almost wouldn't let me check in because she said that I looked too relaxed to be that far along in labor... I talked her into checking me and I was already at 6 cm, so they admitted me. When I got into my room, I REALLY wanted to get into the birthing tub to soothe my labor pains but, since my water had not yet broken, they insisted that they break it for me and we could talk about the tub afterward. Weeelll... they broke my water and when I went to go in the tub they told me that I couldn't because it was a risk of infection since my water was broken (to this day I am convinced that those tubs were just for show and do not actually run water). 

I progressed pretty quickly but was stuck at 8 cm for over an hour. My OB was on call that day but was not at the hospital yet - he was on the phone with my nurse the entire time, telling her to get me on Pitocin. He said he was "letting his dog out". I kept looking at her like he was crazy and said, "I don't have to tell you that I'm moving quickly enough, do I?" She was SUPER nervous the entire time because I wasn't doing what my OB was asking her to tell me to do and, since she kept coming up behind me to close my robe - I just took the thing off and was walking around naked. 

My entire labor, I had a song stuck in my head from a music video I had watched the night before - "Dont' Stop Me Now" by Queen... little did I know, it was Freddie Mercury's birthday!


It was a good thing I didn't cave and do Pitocin because I skipped 9cm and went straight to 10. Before I knew it, I REALLY felt like pushing - but my OB was not there yet. The nurse was yelling at me to not push as she was frantically yelling for a doctor and nurses to come help from the hallway. I only had 15 minutes of pushing... but at one point, the doctor had pulled my skin around Penelope's head to "help her", but this caused me to tear. I told him, "uhhh that hurts!" and he said, "yeah... you're in labor, it's going to hurt!" I wanted to say, "noooo.... what you just did hurt!"... but another contraction came on and it was my last push. 

They put her on my chest right away and I remember wanting to check how long her legs were right away. Toward the end of my pregnancy, she would stretch her legs a lot and I could feel her butt jabbing out one side of my belly and her heels on the other - I swore that her legs had to be the same length as my forearm... and they were! She was born with a strawberry birth mark on the tip of her pinky and to this day I am super bummed that it didn't stay. My OB didn't show up until 20 minutes after Penelope was born. 
I had checked into the hospital at 11:45am and Penelope was born at 4:15pm.

We stayed at the hospital for three days. We could have gone home after two... but since it was Labor Day and Penelope had some slight jaundice, we did not want to risk not being able to get in to see a doctor if something were to happen. All was well - they fed us well and there was a Beatles Marathon. We couldn't pay much attention though - all we could do was sit and stare at Penelope. She was perfect!

We had one visitor in the hospital - my brother, Ryan, who was living in Thiensville. I didn't want people staying at our house when we brought baby home, so my family didn't come to visit until the following week. Penelope was a good nurser from the start. Typically babies loose weight in the first few weeks when breastfed... but Penelope GAINED 2 pounds! I always joke that she did me a solid by being born nearly two weeks early - I am convinced that she would have been born 6 pounds heavier!

Penny in living color!

Here is a short video of Penny hanging out in the basement with Mommy and Daddy:

Penelope's 1st days!

All snug in her bassinet at home.

On our way home from the hospital.

Such a content and peaceful baby - we can't help but sit and watch her for hours!

Happy Baby Penelope! She smiles a lot!

...but she's not always happy :(

Hello World! - Getting washed up after delivery

Bright Eyes

Such long, wrinkly fingers :)

Long feet!

1st morning with our peanut

Intoducing Penelope Lane Primm!

Penny was born on Saturday September 5th at 4pm. She arrived sooner than expected, but it was clear she really wanted out, it only took 12 hours for her to be born after contractions started. Becky, Penny and Alan are all doing wonderfully. Here are a few photos, but there will be plenty more after we get back home in the next day or so.

let the countdown begin!

Had our 38 week appointment yesterday and things are looking good! Penelope has dropped and I am dilated one centimeter :)
The doctor said that there is a good chance that we can expect her sometime next week!

Maternity Portraits

We got our proofs back from the portrait session that we had with Stacey Hamilton last weekend and they turned out wonderful! Just sent in our order for prints yesterday :)