Cousins

The other day, my mom and I watched my nephew and baby girl. I could NOT have handled this by myself, so I wrangled in my mom. 2 year olds want to play constantly! Not that that is a bad thing, it is just hard with an infant to watch at the same time.

So anyways, he adores her. He loves helping us take care of her. While someone is feeding her, he will come and hold the end of the bottle to help feed her. He also is waiting for his chance to help suction her nose out. He will bring the bulb syringe to you and point it at baby girl and say use this on her (in so many words).

They also love to stick things in other things. He took the battery cover off of the remote and stuck the end of the bulb syringe into a hole in the back of the remote. And to watch him do this is funny. When he is trying to figure something out, he is so intent on getting it done.

Here are a couple of pictures from the other day. I just love how they look at each other.

Their first father-daughter dance...

...We thought we would try this thing out and see what happened. She loved being inside of it, especially when it was just laying on the couch. Good thing is that she didn't even cry when he had it on and her in it.



The gas is getting much better. Now she she grunts and snorts. I try to clean her nose out, but she HATES it, to say the least...

She seems to be getting very long. I can't wait until her two month appt to see how long she is.

I will be starting today trying to get her to nap in her crib a little bit. We have not swaddled her since we came home from the hospital. But the crib is so spacious compared to the bassinet, I think I am going to swaddle her to keep her from jumping out. I am not sure how else to keep her from wiggling to places she shouldn't be. I will take a picture, if I have any success with this whatsoever.

Fun times ahead...

Who's having more fun?

While the mommy's are out, the kids will play. I am not sure who has more fun while babysitting, my nephew or my DH.

I think its the DH.

Happy Due Date!

Today is baby girl's original due date. WOW! I can not imagine still being pregnant at this time. I am SOOOO glad she is here with us and has been for a while.

We are still having issues with the gas and abdominal pains. For the last two days she has started screaming and looks like she is in so much pain. Last night, she reached a new level of shrilling. It was awful. And this was after we had started feeding her. We have quit giving her breast milk (yes, I am still pumping), but she is solely on soy formula at this point. And we have been giving her gas drops at every feeding. The nurse said we should notice a change in a week. I am hoping it does not take that long. After the week trial period, if she is better, we may reintroduce the breast milk a little at a time. If that is causing the problems, then we will quit. It is not worth watching my child squirm and groan and scream just to give her antibodies. I just can't do it.

The doctor said we may have been feeding her to much as well. So, she is now on a 3 ozs every three hours schedule. It is not too bad at night, b/c I have been able to get her back in the bassinet after a late-night / early morning feeding without her really even waking up.

We were at the big baby store last night, and there was a couple behind us whose baby was one day younger than ours. The woman asked if baby girl was sleeping through the night, and I just said "no (with a look of I wish!). She said, "ours isn't either". Well good. Dare you ask me that if yours was. I don't like people who brag. Although I am sure if my dear sweet princess was sleeping through the night, I would tell anyone who would listen.

Where does the time go?

Baby girl was one month old yesterday. I can't believe how fast time goes, especially considering she wasn't even supposed to be here yet.

She weighed 7.4 lbs approx and was about 18 1/2 inches long. These weights and lengths were done by mommy and daddy, so they are not exactly accurate, but to the best of our abilities!

I was gone yesterday for the longest I have been away since she was born. About 7 hours. Way to long! When I got home she was sleeping, and all I could think, was wake up, I want to play with you. (of course I was thinking the opposite at 5:30 this morning.) But when she did wake up, we played and played and played. We had so much fun.

Here are her one month pictures. You have to love the double chin!







We put the sleep positioner in the bassinet to prevent her from turning sideways and getting into the blanket. Then she comes up with this.



I am afraid that she will learn to jump out of the crib if we put her in there. THe bad thing about her squirming her way down was that had we not been there to move the blanket down every so often, she would have slid under it. And yes, we do tuck it under her armpits when we lay her down. Oh well, we still love her anyways!

Is this considered thumb sucking?

It's just so tiring!

3 Weeks plus 2

You know, a lot goes into the timing of taking pictures of a baby. At this point, it is a guessing game as to which feeding she is going to stay awake after. Sometimes it is in the morning, sometimes the afternoon, and of course, at night. Bottom line is, these weekly pictures were almost taken on time. They were taken a day late, but who will ever know.

This is an outfit her Aunt C bought and mailed to her. She was telling her daddy how much she liked the outfit, but he said it showed too much skin. Guess who won in the end?





This week we had our first real bath. We could not figure out how to do it in the sink, so Mommy just got in the bath tub with baby girl. It went good. She did not cry near as much as we thought she was going to. We also tried to lotion that is supposed to calm them down and help them sleep. Whatever. I was worried that she was going to poop in the tub, but she didn't. She did however pee. Good thing we were on the way out.





I have determined at this point, that we just have a noisy baby. She is just a grunter. Like my mom said, her grunting just seems so loud at night, because there is no other noise. Again this morning I gave up after an hour and a half of the grunting and put her on my chest, and we went to sleep. I try not to do this, but I just want to sleep sometimes. My DH was so sweet on Friday night, that he did all the night time feedings and let me sleep until 5:30. It was wonderful! He is wonderful!

I took this picture yesterday. Such a rough life she leads!

Time flys...

...I figured I better get up 2 week old pictures before she turned 3 weeks old. We took these pictures on time and I had such good intentions of posting them on time. Oh well. It is the thought that counts at this point.





We are having some sleeping issues around our house. Ever since I posted the picture last week of her sleeping so soundly, things have gone downhill. That very afternoon, this is how I found her.



So, I fixed her and the blanket. I wrapped it tightly around her, so that she could not slide again. Who am I kidding? 5 mins later, she was back in the same sideways position. She apparently kicks and moves her arms enough to turn herself around. So, we put the angled positioner in the bassinet. It was under the mattress to set it at an angle, but now we need the triangles to keep her from moving.

For the last week, I guess, she has had HORRIBLE gas. She grunts and strains to no avail. We started giving her the gas drops, and it helps her poot, but she is still having lots of gas. We are tying a new formula and a new bottle style. She has also started to spit up more when she has breastmilk. It makes me feel bad we can not make her feel any better, b/c she looks like she is so uncomfortable.

We went for her two week check up on Monday (7/7) and she weighed in at a whopping 6 lbs 9 ozs. No weight gain issues her anymore. Now just sleeping issues. But the dr said she looked wonderful and we should not be concerned. But we need to remember she is a baby and don't shake her if we get upset, just lay her down and walk away. Has anyone else been stressed this over and over by different drs? Do we just look the type of people who are going to do this? Baby girl smiles so much while she is sleeping it is hard to imagine anyone hurting a baby. I hate hearing her cry (which is not much (unless she is laying in her bassinet and she doesn't want to). I immediately run to get her and try and comfort her. And immediately she stops crying. She does this for my DH as well. It does feel so good to be able to make her feel better immediately. I keep thinking in the back of my head though, she knows what she is doing. Oh well, I will be a sucker for this one!

Here are some random pictures.

1st reactions are everything...

...We received this from DH's work the other day.



DH's reaction (which was before mine) "Wow, look at all the baby stuff". My reaction "Wow! Look at all the chocolate!". Who has their priorities in order?

This is what happens to baby girl, when mommy leaves her with daddy for a little while.



She did not like the pacifier. He said she kept spitting it out. Could be a good thing, could be a bad thing. Only time will tell. Thanks to DH's sister and husband for the Kase.y Kahn.e socks.

Her are the two kids playing together.



I just realized how big that outfit looks on her compared to her newborn outfits.

Here are some misc pictures.





She looks so innocent in that picture. And she sleeps like a champ in it, until nightfall. When it starts to get dark or after dark, she is not having one bit of it.

Birth story has been posted

If you scroll down to june 26th and 27th, that is where they are. Sorry it took so long!