Merry Christmas!

I had really good intentions of sending out Christmas cards this year, but it got trumped by showering, eating, and loving on Samantha. We did, however, manage to take some really cute pictures in a Christmas outfit that Grandma and Grandpa Pankau got for Sammy. Enjoy!

Tummy Time

Samantha used to absolutely hate tummy time. She would squirm and fuss and only tolerate about a minute or two on her stomach. A little over a week ago she started to be able to push herself up a bit. This morning, she pushed her chest all the way off the ground and spent a few minutes looking around and smiling. I can't believe how quickly she is growing and changing.

New Noises

Samantha has been working on some fun new noises and is learning how to blow spit bubbles! You get to enjoy them without getting covered in spit. :-)

Bed Head

Here's some video I took of Miss Samantha first thing in the morning. She had especially awesome bed head this particular day.

2 Month Well Baby Visit

Samantha had her 2 month Well Baby visit today. It was at the clinic here on North Fort, which was so much nicer than having to go to the hospital. The clinic is about 3 mintues away from our house, and there is plenty of parking and a lab and pharmacy on site.

Samantha is doing great. She weighed in at a whopping 12 pounds and measured 20.75 inches. She's meeting all of the developmental milestones she should be, and is just pretty happy in general. Sammy was all smiles until we got to the vaccines. She had to have three shots today, and I've never heard her cry like this. It was just awful, but I was able to feed her right after, so she was only upset for a couple of minutes. We gave her some baby tylenol afterwards, and she's now napping peacefully (all by herself!).

Belated Thanksgiving Update

We had a great time during Samantha's first Thanksgiving. Bill and Jo made the trip out to Washington on Saturday and spent a few days at our house. We all headed up to Bellingham on Wednesday to stay with Jim and Dorothy. Samantha was definitely not a fan of the car trip. We got stuck in traffic, which woke her up, so we had to pull over to feed her.

Once we got to Bellingham, her mood improved dramatically. She enjoyed meeting her Great Grandparents and her Great Uncle Don, Great Aunt Mary, and cousins Emma and Margaret. We had a delicious meal on Thanksgiving and got to spend a lot of time relaxing and catching up with everyone. On Friday, we were pleased to wake up to sunshine, so we decided to take a walk in the park near Jim and Dorothy's house. Ok...park seems like such an understatement. The area is beatiful and full of trees and ferns and even some waterfalls. Samantha napped in her Moby wrap the whole time.

Pictures as Promised

I managed to get a picture of Miss Samantha mid-grin this morning. She was wide awake and ready to start her day, even though Mommy would have liked to sleep in a bit.



I also took a picture of her modeling one of the fancy outfits she's been given. I think she looks particularily adorable in this one, but I might be biased.

We Have Smiles!

Samantha is finally smiling for real. They're not always predictable, so we haven't managed to snap a picture yet. She seems to smile most consistently while having nakey-butt time when she's getting her diaper changed. Should I be worried that she enjoys not wearing a diaper so much?

Here's a picture of Sammy sleeping soundly until I can get a good grinning one. :-)

Crazy Hair

Samantha's hair is totally out of control, and there's nothing I can do to tame it. It is curly when it's wet, but it gets straight as it dries. Here's a picture of her crazy curly hair, and one of how it looks after I brush it. Luckily she doesn't seem to mind how it looks.

One of My Favorite Pieces of Baby Gear

Samantha is super cuddly and snuggly when she sleeps, which I love until it's time to do something around the house. When she needs some Mommy-time, but I'm desperate to do some laundry so that I have clean socks to wear, I can throw her in our Moby wrap, and she's sound asleep after about 2 minutes of walking around. It is seriously saving my sanity. I can get two hours of solid nap time on a good day.



I swear I don't feel as bad as I look in this picture. Also, ignore my remaining baby weight, which seems to all be in my cheeks!

We've Made the Switch!

We have officiallly made the switch to cloth diapers for Samantha. I'm loving the ones we finally settled on. They have several rows of snaps, so you can adjust them to fit babies from 8 lbs - 35 lbs. I snapped a couple of pictures of Sammy showing off her cute pink cover. I think she looks pretty pleased!



In other news, Samantha is continuing to gain weight well. She was 8 lbs 11 oz on Tuesday. This means that she'll be over 9 lbs at her weight check next week. She also passed her newborn hearing screening with flying colors. Woo hoo!

Samantha's First Visitors

We enjoyed a really nice visit with my parents over the weekend. We were excited for Samantha to get to meet her Grandparents for the first time. We weren't able to get out and do much, but we did go out to eat and take my parents on a little tour of post. We also hit the PX and the Ft. Lewis museum. It was nice to know that if Samantha hadn't done well on the outings, we had 4 adults to try to soothe her instead of just Pat and me. Luckily, Sammy was a champ! She spent most of the outings sleeping. If she happened to wake up, all I had to do was feed her to keep her quiet and happy.

Speaking of feeding her, after a slow start, Samantha is now gaining weight well. At her lowest, she had dropped to 7 lbs, 6 oz. A week ago, she was back up to 7 lbs, 10.5 oz. I was a little nervous when I took her to get weighed yesterday (it's hard to tell how much milk she's actually getting during each feeding), but she weighed in at a whopping 8 lbs, 3 oz! It makes some of the marathon nursing sessions we've had totally worth it!

I was planning on posting a family picture that I had my Dad take, but when I downloaded them to the computer I was shocked to see just how sleep deprived Pat and I look in them. So much for using it for the Christmas cards this year! We'll try again after a good night's sleep. For now, you'll have to settle for the family minus Mommy.

Taking a Walk

We decided to bundle Samantha up in her stroller yesterday and take her for a walk around the neighborhood. It was nice to get out and get some fresh air. She stayed awake the whole time, but she definitely looked perplexed by the whole situation.

Samantha's Birth Story

So much for first time labors lasting a while! I had some cramping off and on all evening on the 6th, but didn't really think much of it. I went to bed like normal and slept until about 2:30. I was in complete denial that I was actually in labor. My contractions were about 7 minutes apart, and I decided to do anything I could to slow them down, assuming it was false labor. I got in the tub for a while, drank a big glass of water, and laid down on my left side. No dice. Finally, around 5:00, I decided I better wake up Pat and call the midwife and my doula.

The doula was going to come over to the house to help decide when we should head to birth center, and then we were going to check back in with the midwife. Before my doula got to the house, my water broke, and the contractions got really intense. We called everybody back and told them just to head straight to the birth center.

The car ride to the birth center was awful. I was already fighting the urge to push. When we got to the birth center, I was fully dialated already, so they put me straight into the tub. Pushing only lasted about 35 mintues. The cord was around her neck and her little hand was by her face as she came out, so the midwife was amazed that it all went so quickly. Labor only took about 6 hours total. It was painful and intense, but totally worth it now that we're home with our sweet baby girl.

Introducing Samantha Marie Vogt!

Samantha was born at 8:04 AM on October 7th. She weighed in at 7 lb 13 oz and was 20 inches long. Her entire birth took less than 6 hours. I was worried that we weren't going to get to the birth center in time! Pat got us there safely, and now we're all at home doing well.

We don't have a ton of pictures yet, but I wanted to post a couple. We'll work on getting some more up here over the next few days as we (hopefully!) settle into a routine.

The first three were taken at the birth center right before we headed home. The last one is from today.

More Excitement Than We Bargained For

The last couple of weeks have been a little crazy baby-wise. It all started with a couple of bad appointments at the hospital on post. I was not crazy about how long I waited to get into my appointments or the amount of time that the doctors spent with me. At the first one, they completely forgot about me and left me sitting in the exam room for 30 minutes. At the next one, I had to remind the nurse to take a sample for a lab test. I'm all for taking charge of my own healthcare, but this was ridiculous. Then I was handed the standard procedures for Labor and Delivery and they didn't give me a warm-fuzzy feeling either. The worst one was that Pat wouldn't be able to stay at the hospital with me overnight once I have the baby. They kick all the husbands out at 10:00 PM and don't allow them to come back until 9:00 AM. The thought of this made me a little weepy (although some of that might have been hormones).

So, I started looking into alternative birth options, and we've decided to go with a midwife at a free-standing birth center (amazingly, it's covered by my work insurance!). I was 100% sure of my decision after my very first appointment with her. She spent a full hour with me at the appointment, and had found some areas of concern in the records I brought from the two military hospitals where I'd been seen. It turns out that I was severly anemic, and even though it was noted in my file that my iron stores were low when I was 7 weeks pregnant, no one had ever put me on a supplement or retested me. The midwife started me on a pretty high dose of iron immediately, and after 1.5 weeks I already have more energy. Low iron stores put women at risk for hemorrage during labor, so we're hoping to get mine up before Blasto decides she's ready to come out. She also saw that there was a note about my amniotic fluid levels being low at my 20 week ultrasound. No one had mentioned this to me or rechecked it, so the midwife sent us for an ultrasound on Wednesday.

Luckily everything turned out to be fine, but the ultrasound tech said that she would have sent me straight to the hospital if she had done the 20 week ultrasound. There's always a chance that the estimated was incorrect, but it bothers me that no one questioned it. I feel like I'm being cared for on a much more personal level now, and I have a lot less anxiety about my upcoming labor. Another good thing to come out of it was that we got a little peek at Blasto during the ultrasound. She was sucking her thumb the whole time, and was not very pleased about being poked and prodded. At the end, she absolutely refused to budge when the tech was trying to turn her to get some more measurements.

Here's one of the pictures from the ultrasound. You can see her little face with her thumb in her mouth. I can't believe we'll be meeting her in person soon!

The New Ride

Jo requested some pictures of the new car, so I thought I'd post them on here. We definitely feel like official Washington State residents now that we own a Subaru. It's an 06 Forrester for those who are curious. I'm just excited to be driving a car with an automatic transmission and 4 doors! Tomorrow we tackle installing the carseat.

Back to Nature

We've been enjoying some really lovely weather here in the Pacific Northwest lately. It's pretty much been sunny and warm, with the exception of Labor Day weekend. One benefit of all this nice, sunny weather is that we've been able to see a ton of Mt. Rainier. It's visible from all over post, and it's actually kind of startling sometimes to make a turn in the car and seeing it looming in the distance. It's so much taller than all the other mountains around it that it looks like it's all alone on the horizon.

We've actually been impressed with most of the scenery on post. Our neighborhood backs right up to a lake. There's a swimming area and a place to rent paddle boats and canoes. We had plans to spend the day there yesterday, but unfortunately all the fun stuff shuts down after Labor Day. Hopefully next summer we'll be able to take advantage of it all.

Since our lake plans didn't work out, we headed to a town just a couple of miles away called Dupont. We took a picnic lunch to enjoy in one of their parks, and then explored a couple of their walking trails. The first one took us along the golf course and had some nice views of Pugest Sound.



The second trail wound through a wooded area and was nice and cool because of all the trees and shade. We had kind of been going back and forth about getting Blasto a jogging stroller, but the trails convinced me. They're so nice and convenient, but a lot of them are gravel, so I think the jogging stroller will definitely be worth the money.

Mini-Roadtrips

A couple of weeks ago Pat and I decided to do some exploring in Seattle. We started with lunch at the Pike Place Market. We found a little place with a nice view of Puget Sound.

From there, we walked a few blocks to take the train to the Space Needle. We wandered around for a bit and then headed back to the market. We stopped at The Crumpet Shop and had some crumpets and tea. The crumpets were delicious and came highly recommended by one of my co-workers.


We found some good buys at the market. We found a fun little spice shop where Pat got some smoked paprika. We also bought some Snapper at the famous Pike Place Fish Market where they throw the fish. All the produce stands feed you as you walk by, so we bought some "Oh My God" Peaches that were super yummy (that's seriously how they were labled on the sign). And on the way out we got a huge bunch of flowers for$5!

Over Labor Day weekend we drove up to Bellingham to visit some of Pat's family. We stayed with his grandparents and also got to visit with his Uncle Don, Aunt Mary, and cousins Emma and Margaret. We had so much fun with them all. We got to explore Bellingham a little and even got to see Don and Mary's house. We went for a walk in a gorgeous park that is only a few blocks from their house, and I'm still kicking myself for not bringing our camera with us.

The trips are probably on hold for the next month or two. Blasto is full-term today (Yay!), so I'm getting to the point that I don't want to venture too far away from home.

Road Trip

We've found the box of camera chargers and cables that I forgot to set aside before the move, so I'm finally able to post some pictures from our road trip to Washington and the new neighborhood. The road trip itself went pretty smoothly. The drive across Iowa was brutally boring, but the scenery just got prettier and prettier as we went. Montana was absolutely gorgeous, although we weren't prepared for a high temperature only in the low 60s. Washington was no disappointment either.

We probably saw 300 signs touting the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota, so we stopped in Mitchell for lunch to check it out.

We also took a little side trip through Badlands National Park. I highly recommend it if you're ever in the area. We would have liked to have spent more time there, but the weather was rainy and we still had a couple of hours in the car until we got to our hotel.

On the way to the Badlands, we stopped an area where you could feed prairie dogs. They were so cute, but obviously well fed. They were much fatter than the "wild" prairie dogs we saw in the park.

Mimi was a trooper through the whole trip. She stared at us angrily from her crate for most of the first day, but after that she would lay down and nap for most of the drive. Hopefully we won't have take her anywhere for a while.

Officially Homeless!

It's been a busy few days for the growing Vogt family. As most of you know, we closed on our house on Friday, so we're officially homeless until mid-August. We stayed with my mom over the weekend, where we tried to squeeze in some relaxation (and sleep!) in between visits with both sides of the family. We've settled into an extended stay hotel for this week, but we check out Saturday to head to New York for a wedding. Mimi has been handling our nomadic lifestyle better than I had expected. She's enjoying her freedom at the hotel, and has taken to sleeping either under the bed or on the extra-wide window sills. We had a little bit of excitement yesterday when the smoke detectors starting going off, but it turned out to be a false alarm.

In baby news, Blasto is still doing great. She now weighs over three pounds, and seems to take endless pleasure in flipping around my stomach. Sometimes she likes to wriggle her way up under my right rib cage, but I can usually convince her to relocate. We had a potential problem last week when I failed my 1-hour Glucose Tolerance Test, but I passed the 3-hour test just fine. I have some insulin resistance issues when not pregnant, so it wasn't a huge shock, but it is a major relief to not be diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes.

28 Week Appointment

I had my 28 week appointment on Monday, and everything is still looking good. Blasto is moving around like crazy, and her heart rate and measurements were all good. I'll have one more appointment at the hospital here before we move to Ft. Lewis. They want to see me right before we leave just to make sure everything is still ok. Also, it could take a little while to ge an appointment at the hospital at Lewis, so it will be nice to have one last check before we leave. I got my doctor's permission to fly in a couple weeks. We'll be going to Poughkeepsie, NY for the wedding of one of Pat's friends. I think Pat might even end up being a groomsman. I think it will be fun to see him all decked out in a tux! It will be a little crazy making the trip in the middle of trying to move, but I'm sure Pat will do a good job of keeping me sane. He's been getting a lot of practice these last few weeks!

Take that Housing Market!

We received an offer for our asking price on our house today, and we've accepted it! Closing is scheduled for July 31st. It's happening a little more quickly than I had expected it to, but I'd much rather sell the house sooner than we want than be stuck with it later. I'm definitely glad that the showings are over. We've only had 4, but it's dificult to have to leave the house with only 15 minutes notice, especially when I'm working from home.

I realized today that I'm actually going to be a little sad to leave this house. It's the first house that Pat and I have lived in together. We'll also be leaving behind some good friends and family that will be hard to say good-bye to. We're going to stay in town for a couple of weeks after closing so that Pat can out-process and finish up his Masters. We're tentatively looking at hitting the road on August 14th. A road trip with a pregnant lady and a sassy cat! Sounds fun, right?

A Little Bit of Everything

Things have been a bit crazy at the Vogt household lately, so I figured I'd just throw it all into one post. First and foremost, Blasto is doing great! She's measuring right where she should be and I'm feeling her kick every day. Pat has even been able to feel her a couple of times. People keep asking if I'm showing much yet, so I guess it's time for a belly photo. This is me at 25 weeks. We're also getting ready for our impending move even though Pat doesn't have orders yet. We were told on Monday that we're confirmed for a specific post, but I don't want to share what it is until we see it on some paper work. We've been told that we should get that by Friday, but we've heard that before. The house actually went on the market today, so Pat and I have been cleaning like crazy and making some small repairs around the house. We still have a few things to do, but overall the house looks great! I'm really going to miss this house, even if we have to deal with prehistoric insects now and then.

I realized that I never posted any pictures from our trip to Jamaica, so I'm throwing in some of those as well. We had such a nice time. It was just a really relaxing week. We spent most of our time floating in lazy river or playing in the ocean. Blasto was so calm the whole week. I think being in the water put her to sleep most of the time!

That's it for now. Hopefully we'll have some more news on Friday!