Wednesday, October 16, 2013

And Now the Government Can Track Her!

As of Monday, we now have both documents proving that Audrey officially exists (according to the government):




Getting the SS card and birth certificate were super easy...or a lot easier than I thought!  I guess I thought the process was going to be tougher than it really was.  Also, it was really easy for me because Kyle's the one who filled out the paperwork.  He will maintain, though, that it was the worst amount of paperwork that he's ever had to fill out as far as supplying your own information goes.  That's because the packet of information is like 10 pages long!  Thankfully, since Kyle and I (a) live together and (b) are married, that made the process a lot easier for him and the birth certificate lady at the hospital.  You get to skip the last two pages of the packet if mother and father are married and live together!

We got Audrey's SS card in the mail within a week of bringing her home from the hospital.  The birth certificate had to be picked up, so I only just got around to getting it a MONTH after she was born! The Health Department Office is only open until 3:30 Monday through Friday, so Kyle was never able to go get it.  *Sigh.  What a bummer...I had to get off the couch and get dressed in real clothes to get this thing!  I'd truly meant to get it earlier, but after having a kid, I realize that there actually are lots of conditions to getting things done on time (or, more importantly, getting places on time!).  First of all, there are very few days where I'm showered that early!  Also, Audrey is usually eating/napping/crying frequently until early afternoon, and when she's not, I'm pumping!  Then, on the days we do happen to get the feeding/napping/pumping out of the way and we're both dressed, it's because we have to go somewhere else!  This is usually the doctor's office and the appointments run past 3:30.  Add to that the fact that I ALSO had to be sure to have cash (which I never carry), and it seemed like the conditions were never right!  

At any rate, we finally got there, and we got both the normal-sized document as well as a little Audrey-sized one:


I had no idea what this is for...Kyle tells me it's to keep like in a bag or something?  In case you take your kid out of the country?  I guess.  When do kids even NEED to get a passport, anyway?

One interesting caveat of the SS card and birth certificate...

...if you look closely (but it's too small in the picture), you'll notice there's no accent over Éowyn.  That's because the Social Security office, the Health Department, as well as the BMV, no longer put accents over letters of names.  So LEGALLY Audrey's name is Audrey Eowyn Byard.  

Is it a big deal in the long run?  Not really.  It's just the way things are.  Actually, we'd discussed this possibility before naming her, so it wasn't at all surprising.  Because that's the way things are done, people are very understanding of the fact that an accent truly exists there even if it's not documented.  Does it bug me?  A little.  It bugs me just a little because the accent is PART of her name!  So I keep looking at this stuff and I feel like they got her name wrong.  I feel for all the Renées and Lópezes and everyone else who has an accent in their names somewhere and has had to deal with this for even longer.  We've been instructed that for official documents, doctor's forms, school registration, etc. that we have to leave the accent off to provide consistency.  How dumb!  But, I'd hate to mess something up for Audrey in the future and cause some sort of problem for her that she'd have to work out as an adult.  

On the bright side, the birth certificate lady said she loved the name and that she hadn't seen anything like it.  I guess she would know!

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Time to Play!

Audrey's favorite recreational thing to do (besides watch our faces) is to play on her activity mat.  She's not doing too much on it yet, obviously, but we try to do at least a few minutes of tummy time on the mat as well as about twenty minutes on her back looking at the different animals and patterns.  At that point, she gets pretty frustrated and bored and wants to do something else.  I've been putting her on the mat a couple of times a week over the last two weeks, and just the last time she got the idea of how to make the dangling animals move on her own, so she gets pretty excited about hitting them with her balled-up fists.  I wanted to take a video, but my camera batteries died after taking these pictures :(  We're also battling runny eyes right now, so her eyes are just a little red in all the photos:

Max gets curious
Her favorite animal is the orange giraffe with the green star
Max gets in on the action by swatting at the animals

When he tries to bite the animals, I have to shoo him away :(

Max waits patiently until I let him come back to play with Audrey

About to punch the giraffe!
Good thing Max likes to play with Audrey!  Tiger and Keebler don't find her interesting enough to play.  What lazy cats!

Audrey's First Parade

Audrey's first parade was Jay County's homecoming parade on Friday, October 4th.  It was a wonderful day for a parade...warm, sunny, and with just a little breeze.  It was Audrey's first time out to Grandma and Grandpa Knittle's house as well as to Mommy's work (we went in to see Daddy and help him straighten the classroom up a little bit).  Uncle Nick was in the parade driving a tractor, too!  We usually get lots of candy at the parade since Kyle and I know a lot of the high school students who throw the stuff, but I think Audrey kind of got us more attention than usual:

Grandma Knittle and Audrey in front of the marching band.
With Mama.
With Daddy.  Wow, is it sunny!
Grandpa Knittle came up with a solution for that!
Collecting candy!
We also got to see the great-grandparents!
Afterward, we all had dinner together.  It was a really great day!

Bathtime!

Audrey's umbilical cord FINALLY fell off late at night on Wednesday, October 2nd (the same day we took newborn pictures...pushing it much?).  We were so excited because it felt like it would NEVER come off!  Nowadays, doctors and nurses tell new parents not to do anything to the umbilical cord (like put alcohol on it, rub it, etc.) and that it'll fall off on its own.  True, but I feel like when I talked to those people who have older kids and were advised to do something specific to care for the umbilical cord, their kids' cords fell off faster...

Anyway, we were super excited to give Audrey a real bath, because she wasn't allowed to be fully submersed in water until after the cord fell off.  I know she's a baby and doesn't know any different, but I would hate to go several weeks without bathing, so we were pretty antsy to get her into her little baby tub.  Since the cord fell off so late at night, we planned to give her a bath the next day right before bed, hoping it would settle her some and help prepare her for sleep.

And after three different bath days, we realize now that Audrey doesn't get relaxed after taking a bath...she gets excited and wants to be awake!  No matter how soothing we try to make the bath experience, at this point she just becomes so alert!

Audrey's first bath was a little rough for us since we had never bathed a newborn before.  Babies are so slippery!  Even though we didn't fill the tub very full and it's too narrow for her to slump over into the water, I still worry that Audrey will slip under the water.  Kyle is in charge of holding Audrey while I scrub her down, and this arrangement has worked very well so far (especially since if she decides to pee in the tub, she does it on Kyle!).  She's only peed in the bathtub once so far, and Kyle didn't realize it was happening until it got all over him.  Poor guy.  She also pooped right as soon as we stuck her in the bathtub the first time, so we had to pull the poor girl out and start new water!

First bath...she didn't want to get out of the warm water!


Now that we're a little better about deciding how to bathe and we have a system, she's much happier after baths!

Kyle also likes to give Audrey mohawks, combovers, and other weird hairstyles when her hair is wet.  He told me this is an imitation of how he styles his hair.  Sadly, he held her until her hair dried and it stayed this way until the next bath a few days later!


Sleeping Audrey


So, I've got some pictures of Audrey that I'd like to upload, but instead of doing one long post, I think I'd rather upload the photos and just a little bit about life with Audrey in small snippets instead.  I can't believe this girl is four weeks old already and will be a month old tomorrow!  She's doing great all-around...eating well especially!  When we went to see the lactation consultant on Friday, Audrey weighed in at 8 lbs 12 oz!  She's gained a good amount of weight from her doctor appointment not even two weeks before (7 lbs 9 oz).  Yay Audrey!

Audrey is also a big-time sleeper!  We have very little problems in that area (yet).  I've read that for such small babies, sleeping 5-6 hours at a time at night is considered sleeping through the night for them.  She's been doing that fairly consistently since birth!  Just a few days ago, she woke up once in the middle of the night for a half-hour diaper change and feeding and promptly went right back to sleep, with a total of about 8 hours of sleep time!  WOW!  How did we get so lucky?  

Sometimes Audrey will want to do nothing BUT sleep all day, but the downfall is lately she won't do it anywhere but in our arms.  This week we're going to work really hard with putting her down in her crib, even if she wakes up screaming only 15 minutes later.  I'd like to start going back to bed in my own bedroom and get my butt indentation out of the couch!

Audrey loves sleeping in the car:



On pillows on the couch:
 






And on people's laps:





She sleeps best when being held by people who are up moving around.  I think that's strange, but I suppose that's most like the womb, isn't it?  







She fits in great with us...we love to sleep, too!  And we're really grateful that she likes it so much, so that we can continue to get it over these first few months :)

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Meeting Audrey

I had this entry started a week or so ago, but never got to finish it (someone in this house is VERY demanding of my time!).  So, while her daddy is cuddling her into nap-phase, I figured I'd come quick finish.

Here are the pictures of everyone (so far) in the family meeting Audrey:

Grandpa and Grandma Byard (9/14/13).  Audrey was brand-new!  First visitors!

Grandpa and Grandma Knittle (9/15/13).  Second visitors!

Aunt Betsy and Uncle Nick (9/15/13).  Betsy held Audrey the entire time; my brother was afraid to hold her!

Great-grandpa and Great-grandma Knittle (9/19/13).
Great-grandpa and Great-grandma Byard (9/27/13).
Daddy's best friend, Uncle Zach (9/28/13).  Zach came to the hospital, but didn't get to meet Audrey before he left.  So we brought her to his work in Indy!
Uncle Matt (10/04/13).
Okay, so Nick already met Audrey, but this was the first time he held her (10/04/13)!  I think that deserves a picture.
We still have Audrey's aunt Kelsey (who's coming home in a few weeks) to meet and although she met her uncle Jacob, we didn't even think about getting a picture.  Oops!  BUT he hasn't held her yet, so when that happens, we'll be sure to snap one!  We also have Great-grandma Evans in Michigan that we need to see, too, as well as several of Kyle's and my aunts, uncles, and cousins.  Audrey is the subject of quite a few pictures since she's the first grandkid, great-grandkid, and niece to ALL of these people!  As you can see, she soaks it up (while sleeping).