Hello Belly!

Week 17

Thu, 4 Sep 2008 07:05:08 -0500

This week went very well. I actually have very little to say! Shocking, I know.

Over the weekend we went to see my parents, visit with my grandmother and aunt and uncle, and do a little school shopping for DeShaun. He has to wear khaki pants with a black polo tucked into them and a belt. Pretty strange for my kid, who prefers to wear the biggest, baggiest shirts and pants possible. We took Mia to the Carter's outlet and bought her some fall clothes including this adorable shirt:

We think the little girl on the shirt looks like Mia. Maybe we'll get her hair in pigtails sometime soon :)

Other than that, she's taking her bottle, sleeping in her crib at night, napping at least two good naps a day, and generally being a smiley, adorable little girl. We'll keep her!

Oh, and I also got all caught up with my oldest friend Tara (oldest as in friends the longest), which was really nice. She turned 29 (again) and we stopped by her backyard shindig, and then she came over the next day for dinner and a nice long chat... glad she's back in MA!

Week 16- Highs and Lows

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:07:33 -0500

I'm a bit short of time this week, so I'm going to make this shorter than usual. In general, this week has been good. The weekend was especially good- both Friday and saturday night she slept all through the night with only one awakening. THe rest of the week she's woken up twice, with last night being the absoulte worst with 4 awakenings. Not fun.

Anyways, on Saturday Jaime came by for a visit. After waking up she was really grumpy, so we immediately ran to the store to get Ambesol. She was drooling so much, and chewing everything madly, so I figured that it wouldn't hurt to numb those suckers. It didn't help all that much, but at least she napped better in the afternoon, allowing Jaime and I to catch up on life and watch some Intervention (that show is still so good!).

Sunday morning, she went to a princess party at a local carousel with her two best buds, Gracie and Emma. It wasn't much of a party because there were barely any kids there, but I still dressed Mia up in a frilly number just for fun. The reasons to wear such things are very few, so I grabbed the opportunity and ran with it. Here she is in her party dress:

And here she is sitting on her first horse:

Poor thing, that dress was so hot! She was exahusted after that ride, so we left and headed home. Heather came out from Boston to hang out, so we left Mia in the super capable hands of Walter and went out for Mexican. OMG, we had the best guac ever at On The Border! I am so making some this weekend if I can get my hands on some ripe avocados!

We shopped a little, I signed up at the gym for a year, and we bought these little shoes for Mia. So cute!

They are a little big without socks still, but very sweet.

Monday I went to the gym for the first time. More on that on my other blog. Tuesday was unremarkable, and Wednesday was a mess. Walt's mom watched Mia and she refused to take a bottle from her for some reason. We have to figure out why, and its just going to take a while, I'm afraid.

So there's the long and short of this week. Mia's good, I'm good, life is good.

Week 15- I am reborn

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 12:43:46 -0500

This past weekend, Walter and I talked about using the "Ferber" cry-it-out method to get Mia into her crib at night. We were totally prepared. I had read the book and marked the most important pages for Walter to read. I spent the Friday and Saturday letting Mia have her "last hurray" so to speak... nursing until dead asleep, rocking, car rides, etc. On Sunday evening, we kept her up much later than usual so that she would be super tired. We drove around and even went out to get a burrito at this great little spot in Northampton called Bueno y Sano. Delish.

With nervous stomachs we headed home and went through a little bedtime routine of jammies, books, nursing, and singing. I put her down in her crib at 8:30 and turned on her Fisherprice Aquarium. 5 minutes later she was sound dead asleep!

By herself!

No rocking!

No singing!

No patting!

NO CRYING!

I could hardly believe my eyes, frankly. She stayed in her crib all night with the exception of two awakenings for nursing.

Here's what's even better... she has done this every night since! Naps too! She finally can go down awake and self-soothe by sucking her thumb.

I'm feeling very sumg right now, so someone hit me before I jinx myself and she reverts back to the horrible habits of the past month.

Anyways, as a result of her great sleep hygiene (as the experts call it), I have been in a remarkably chipper mood all week. I have been able to roll over in bed when I want to and I find that this makes my life worthwhile.

Her new fav thing (besides sleeping like a big girl ALL BY HERSELF- yes, I had to say it again) is chewing on stuff... bibs, her hands, toys, you name it. I think she must be teething!

I put together one of her exersaucers and she LOVES it. She chews on that green thing she is holding and spins the flower with her left hand.

Here she is chewing again...

And the requisite baseball hat photo :)

I love this! Motherhood is the bomb!

Week 14- mixed success

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 13:11:32 -0500

Week two of back to work has been much more difficult. Over the weekend I had all day both Saturday and Sunday to nurse her and snuggle her to our hearts' content, and come Monday, when she was faced with the bottle all day, she was very resistant.

That was an awful day for Mia, and for Walter, who I have to give so much credit to because he is so solid and so calm with her when she is upset, whereas I pretty much crumble when I can't comfort her after even ten minutes.

So all Monday she refused her bottle and Walter brought her in to nurse. Monday night was Walter and my 2 year anniversary, and my lovely mother came out to watch her while we went out to dinner. She screamed from the moment we walked out the door until we came back- or rather, until my mom turned on Sesame Street for her. So instead of dinner and a movie it was just dinner, but I was so thankful for even that!

Tuesday was much better, and she took the bottle three times. Walter seemed to have her back in the swing of things.

Then came Wednesday. Cue ominous music. Walter's mom was coming over to watch Mia for the first day. Our mistake was in not making certain that Mia was very comfortable and accustomed to taking bottles and being held by her. Mia has not seen very much of Grandma in her lifetime so far, so wasn't too sure what to make of her and refused all bottles and wouldn't nap. So I went home at 10:15 to feed her, and finally lull her to sleep. I placed her in the swing at 11:15, and she didn't wake until 2:45, at which time she still wouldn't take the bottle, so I just headed home early from work.

Nights have been increasingly bad over the past few weeks. Since she was 3-4 weeks old she had been sleeping in 3-5 hour stretches overnight and only waking to eat 2 or 3 times at night. It has recently gotten so bad that she will no longer sleep on her own in the cosleeper and will not fall back asleep without me patting/rocking her or nursing her to sleep. This usually means I have to resign myself to keeping her in my bed next to me and her nursing on and off all night long. Last night she woke up over 10 times to eat (I stopped countin at ten). About half of those times I nursed her out of sheer exhaustion and the other half I picked her up and rocked her or placed her in the swing.

Walter has moved himself into DeShauns's room. He makes too much noise in our creaky bed when he rolls over and he was getting a very disturbed sleep lying in just one position all night, so he has removed himself from the equation. I have resorted to taking Tylenol PM every night just to get some sort of rest.

I think the time has definitely come to make a change. Starting this weekend I am going to start sleeping in the other room to try and break Mia of this nursing-to-sleep association but return periodically to nurse her. Walter is going to be the patter, put-her-back-downer for a few nights and see if that makes a difference.

If there is no improvement after that, in a couple weeks she turns 16 weeks old, and I am going to "Ferberize." I know its on the edge of too early, but I also know she is not getting adequate sleep and neither am I. And after about a month of a modified Ferber technique in her swing (we let her fuss herself to sleep for about ten minutes for naps), she has been making some progress in comforting herself to sleep, so I think she may be up for trying out the crib. So, task # 1 for this weekend is reading the Ferber book to get fully up on his technique. (note: I have read and implemented some of the suggestions from the "No Cry Sleep Solution," and its not helping one bit, and although I DETEST hearing Mia cry, I know that a little fussing will not hurt her).

Well, other than the nipple torture she is giving me every night and this reluctance for her bottle, Mia is doing pretty well. She has developed a fascination for Sesame Street, which she watches while I eat breakfast, and she can know hold and chew on her stuffed elephant toy rather than just make faces at it. I swear she makes a new sound every day and her smiles are the most breath-taking things ever.

I love her and her freaking adorable face so much. Even though she is developing distinctly all Walter-ish features. Will any of her look like me? I hope she gets some tiny thing from me...

Week 13, Cautiously optimistic, I think...

Wed, 6 Aug 2008 19:41:53 -0500

Last week was a mess. A complete and utter mess. I was wrestling with the idea of coming back to work, scared that I'd be exhausted from no sleep every day, afraid that my baby wouldn't eat from a bottle, and completely freaked that she wouldn't nap for anyone but me. The fear was increased dramatically over the weekend as we had a very busy day on Saturday including attending my SIL Crystal's wedding (never really that good for an infant) and Sunday, the catch-up day, which I spent alone in paranoid agony because Walter had to work.

Mia is kind of a sensitive chick. She doesn't like loud places or people, she hates crowds, and she gets all kinds of "finicky" as Walter puts it if her naps are even a few minutes delayed. So the wedding kind of threw a wrench in her weekend as it was loud, crowded, and in the middle of her usual nap. However, you only see your sister get married once, so we dressed her up in her frilliest finery and winged it. She actually did really great there, but had a complete meltdown at home afterwards. It took all of Sunday for her to recover, with her only taking two 30 minute naps all day.

The big day... Monday. I kissed my baby goodbye about a million times. so saddened to leave her at the same time completely exhilarated that I WAS LEAVING THE HOUSE ... OMG I LEFT THE HOUSE!!!!!

Can you tell that I was/am thrilled?

The day went great, actually, with Mia coming in to nurse a couple times because Walter was nervous (and me too) that she wouldn't take a bottle. So I got to see her at 9:15, and again at 12:15, and then in the afternoon she actually took an ounce from an Adiri bottle, sent to us from my good friends Chell and Rob. I came home at 4:15, so happy to see her, and she ate ravenously, only to fall asleep at 5 p.m. FOR THE NIGHT. I mean, she still woke (sort of) to nurse several times but that is unprecendented! She must have been exhausted.

Yesterday I saw her only once during the day yesterday because she took her bottle several times. I came home and nursed her at 4:15 again and this time she fell asleep at 4:30! I ended going in at 7 and laid a hand on her, which woke her up thankfully because I wanted to spend some time with her! She fell asleep again an hour later and stayed asleep all night until 5 a.m. (except nursing), when she peed on herself while I was changing her diaper. Nice. I popped her into the swing to fall back asleep which thankfully she did without a fuss and she slept until 7 a.m.

Today she took over 3 ounces several times and napped fairly well. I still got to see her at lunch and she was actually awake for a little while when I got home. I put her down at 7 tonight, which is an hour and a half earlier than it has been lately. Both a good and a bad thing. Good in that she is getting more sleep. Bad in that I miss spending time with her when I get home.

Work has been good. I love being back with my coworkers because they are both hilarious and have daughters a year older than Mia, which means they get where I am at totally. I also love the fact that I wake up, kiss Mia goodbye, see her at lunch to give her some kisses and milk, and come home fairly early. I have so much energy to spend on her because all of my happy mommy energy hasn't been sucked out of me by 5 p.m.

If only I could solve the co-sleeping thing. I am still vacillating between loving it for about an hour of the night and hating it the rest of the night. I get so stiff! Well, she'll eventually outgrow it. I hope...

Week 12... stubborn as her mama

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:53:43 -0500

This has been another week of Mia and I fighting sleep. Me fighting to put her to sleep at that "magical moment" all the books talk about- the one where they go down without too much fuss; and Mia fighting to stay awake so that she can keep learning all about this strange and exciting world that we live in.

I've had a few epiphanies- like that the magical moment seems to be exactly 1 hour and 15 minutes after she wakes up from either the night or one of her naps. I've also learned that Mia is just not ready to fall asleep on her own yet. She's still firmly attached at the boob to me. And my days of reluctant co-sleeping are going to go on for at least a little while longer.

I had a mini-temper tantrum the other day while trying to break up some meat for meat loaf. I had already defrosted it for over 20 minutes and the freaking meat wouldn't break up. In a pique I attacked it with a wooden spoon while sobbing. In the process I broke the spoon into the meat and had to call Walter rather sheepishly and ask him to pick up Chinese, because I'm sure wooden splinters wouldn't go down very easily. God, I hope that was my lowest moment.

My concurrent feelings of excitement and dread about going back to work are exacerbated by my sleep deprivation and rather fragile emotional state, which thankfully no one but my husband (poor guy) and my family have had to witness first hand. I have cried buckets of tears in the past few weeks, leading me to wonder what the hell happened to my confident, cheerful self who never cries.

I think I must be in Mother Shock.

Here's my baby in a nice peaceful moment.

And here she is talking to her brother, although it looks as if she is yelling:

And her newest emerging skill- sucking on the pacifier!

On Monday I go back to work full-time. Prepare for the drama to intensify.

Week 11- no more sleep

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:51:47 -0500

I think if you took my blood pressure right now it'd be somewhere around 200/180. My beautiful daughter is no longer sleeping. Well, no longer sleeping easily. Naps used to be so easy... she'd fall asleep nursing and I'd slither myself off the bed, or she'd fall asleep easily in anyone's arms and we could lay her down on any soft surface.

For the past week, I've had to fight her tooth and nail to get her to go down for her naps without nursing. Its a battle of wills between me and Mia, and for the most part, I'm winning. Or I seem to be. My brain is so foggy I'm not sure what winning really means at this point.

Last Friday I had my first episode of insomnia. For the first night ever I had to wake up fully, get out of bed, and rock Mia back to sleep. Usually she just eats and falls asleep, and I either ease her over into the pack n play (or cosleeper when I had that attached to the bed) or I let her sleep there next to me all night and I wake up with a very stiff back and hips. Well this night she would not go back to sleep, and when she finally did, I laid her down, and she woke up right away! I laid there for about three hours until about 3 a.m., when I left the room to call Walter, sobbing, ""She won't sss...sss...sleep!" I could barely get the words out. Meanwhile, poor Walt has been woken up at work from a deep sleep to a sobbing wife, and he immediately thinks, "Oh my god! Something's wrong with the baby!"

I still feel guilty about waking him up that way. If I was called in the middle of the night by someone crying I'd feel pretty freaked out too. But I was at the end of my rope!

This pattern repeated on Sunday as well, the next time Walter was at work, at which point I was lying in bed awake from 1:45 to 6. Mia was sound asleep though. Just me and my Mommy anxiety.That precipitated a trip to the bookstore and me starting a sleep diary, so that I could see what kind of patterns I could find connecting Mia's napping to night time sleeping. I bought a book called Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child, or something like that. So far I've learned two important points:

Never wake a sleeping child (I had been waking her in the afternoon if I though she was sleeping too long and too close to bedtime)
Start to soothe her to sleep before she looks tired, because when she looks tired she's actually overtired.

Another positive decision- I started drugging myself to stay asleep with Tylenol PM. Ever since my first blue pill, I've been a much happier camper. I had myself CONVINCED that I had post-partum depression, when in fact I was just severely sleep-deprived. I actually thought several times- "what am I doing? I suck at this Mom thing!" However, I am over it- I think.

I am still convinced that Mia is going through something this week though- maybe a growth spurt? Whatever it is, I can't wait to come out on the other side of it. My hunch is that she started to associate sleepy-time only with nursing or Mummy rocking her, so if she's not hungry, or I'm not around, there are issues.

Here comes my guilty little secret. I've started to let her cry a little. Sometimes I'll put her in the swing and she just fusses. Sometimes she cries hard. But usually for no more than 5 minutes and then she sleeps. I don't know that she sleeps very well, and it doesn't last too long (30 to 60 minutes tops), but at least she's sleeping.

The experts say she's not ready to really cry it out until 4-6 months of age, so I'm not letting her just stay there wailing for very long. Besides, even those few minutes of crying are pure torture to me!

Other than the sleep issues, Mia is doing great. She is still struggling to get her whole hand in her mouth, and a few times this week I saw her start to suck her thumb for a minute or two. I would love for her to be able to suck anything besides just me! She loves to stand, is still very chatty and smiley, and loves to having staring contests with DeShaun.

She's still so beautiful too.

Week 10, and a satisfactory conclusion

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 21:18:40 -0500

Since my last entry, things did improve. The last few days in Maine were much better, with Mia kind of reverting to her usual napping schedule. It took much less effort to get her calm enough to sleep at night, and she continued to sleep well... which is more than I can say for me because the bed up there was weird. It was king-sized, but made up of twin mattresses of different density. As it so happened, Walter was on the squishier one and I was on the firer one, so it was even MORE uneven. If we got back next year, I'll go on the squishier side and we'll add an airmattress on top to even the playing field a bit more.

I did manage to get in a couple swims, one motor boat ride, and a kayak trip lasting about an hour. Oh, and a trip to TJ Max, where I looked at nothing for myself, not surprisingly since I am still the size of a small whale.

My mom asked me if it was worth it. Of course it was- I can now see the forest for the trees now that I am home and she is upstairs sleeping peacefully. It was a gorgeous cottage, I had lots of company (it gets lonely sometimes, just me and Mia), and my guys had tons of fun. I just hope that next year is a lot more peaceful.

Here is a view of the water and our dock from the gorgeous porch, where I spent many a breathless moment, straining to hear if she was crying:

And here she is when we tried to take her in the water. Obviously that was a joke...

Here she is enjoying her bouncy seat- her new favorite thing... and mine too! This fabulous device allows me to prepare meals and even eat them occasionally too!

I enjoyed taking her out onto the dock, although it was pretty windy out there

Everyone got a turn snuggling with her.

Sunday we got home, and I had a dream of a day. She napped easily, but then the night was kind of rough. She was very restless, waking up and nursing pretty often for her. Monday was tough as well... she was fussy a good part of the day and her naps were short and broken up. Ironically, the fussier the day, the better she usually sleeps at night. Go figure.

Today she had her 2 month checkup, even though she is ten weeks tomorrow. She got weighed and measured- 12 lbs, 8 oz (only 5 oz increase since two weeks ago, which prmpted the MD to tell me to feed her more often- WTF? I think she eats quite enough already!). She is 23.5 inches long, an inch and a quarter taller than last time, an inch and a half taller than birth. They asked all kinds of developmental questions, then prepped her to get her vaccinations. There is nothing so horrible as pinning your child down so that someone can stab them in the leg four times. She freaked, but fortunately I held it together. One vaccine they had to give in a liquid form by mouth. Surprisingly she didn't spit much of it, but the infant tylenol I gave her when we got home? That came out quite readily!

The latest stuff she does? Well, here are a few things:

She wakes up every day at 5 a.m. and farts. And poops. And squirms, and cries. She used to just grunt, but now we have progressed to crying and complaining. You would think she was passing a kidney stone instead of a small amount of runny poop.
She has found her fist, and must now suck the shit out of it at every opportunity.
She drools! Lots, in fact, and I think she could probably fill my Nalgene bottle (BPA free, btw) with her daily drool.
She loves her bouncy and will happily chill in it for at least a half hour. She also seems to enjoy watching Sabrina the Teenage Witch, which is all that seems to be on at 7:30 a.m. when I eat my breakfast.
She already seems to have a sense of rhythm. She bops her head along with the beat when I put on MTV Jams. I cover her eyes when the video hoochies dance though. She is at an impressionable age.
Cooing and chatting with everyone, and smiling constantly, especially at me :)

Well, that's about it I guess. I am going to take this opportunity and slide into bed. This week we are detaching the cosleeper from the bed and setting up the pack n play because she is getting so long that she bumps into the walls. Why does that feel almost as bad as if I were packing her bags to go to college?

I guess I'm pretty attached...

Is this really vacation? Week 9...

Wed, 9 Jul 2008 12:54:21 -0500

I am sitting on a porch in Maine at a new cottage that we are trying out this year. This place is gorgeous- gorgeous lake, gorgeous lawn, gorgeous area. I really am struggling to enjoy all this gorgeousness however, because I have a baby who has decided that everything is just too interesting for napping. When babies don't nap, bad things happen. Like hours of rocking, walking, driving, etc and a baby that cries throughout the evening.

At home, we've kind of settled into this semi-predictable schedule with her. She wakes up at 5:30-6 to poop, grunting like a barnyard animal, interspersed with smiles at me because if I don't lift her up into a sitting position to poop, she cries very pathetically. I can't imagine why you can't poop out those mustardy wet breast-milk poops lying down, but apparently you can't.

Anyways, after pooping, she giggles a little, talks, gets the hiccups, one of us holds her until the hiccups go away, I feed her, and then she usually will go back down. Sometimes in the bed so I can sleep, sometimes requiring the wrap or the Bjorn.

She wakes again around 9:30, wiggly and hungry and full of cuteness, and stays awake until about 11, when she wants to sleep again until 1. At 1 she wakes up and has her longest day time stretch of alertness. After a while- around 3:30-4, she goes down for a beautiful long nap- usually between 2 1/2 and 3 hours, during which time I GSD (get shit done).

Night night time is usually about 8-9, and thank God, because once she's down, she stays down all night with just 1-2 overnight feedings, which are usually done in a semi-awake state by both of us.

Up here in beautiful, peaceful Maine, you'd think that the tranquility would equal nice long naps and an overall relaxation for both of us, but she has been giving us all a run for our money the whole time. Refusing naps, very gassy, fussy, and the things that usually work to calm her (like car rides) aren't working any longer. I've actually thought of just going to a hotel to stay so that Mia will be in a very boring, dead quiet environment... but then I'd also be in a dead boring place, and what enjoyment would that bring for anyone?

Well, she's napping now, thanks to my mother's "Grammy magic," so here I am... typing away on Petr's computer...

Maybe I should stop and enjoy the vista for a while... pictures to come next time. Later...

Week 8- turning a corner?

Wed, 2 Jul 2008 19:47:47 -0500

I am feeling remarkably optimistic today. Compare that to Monday, where I felt pretty awful. Life is so strange...

This past weekend I went again to my parents' house because Walt was scheduled to work on Saturday. So we drove out Friday (by way of the soft serve place... I'm doing pretty crappy with the diet and exercise thing) and we got a chance to have a nice dinner outside. Mia has decided all of a sudden that she enjoys the bouncy seat, especially if said bouncy is placed outside where she can hear the birds and feel the wind in her hair. She chilled in the bouncy and I. ate. my. dinner. In peace! Without shoveling! She ate her dinner rather ravenously too- in fact, she chewed a hunk off my right nipple. Or at least it felt that way.

Saturday morning started with me pumping a whole 5 oz. from my super special left boobie- the boobie that always has the most milk. She's always there for me in a pinch. I managed to do this, much to my surprise, while entertaining Mia, who now also enjoys lying on her back, kicking her legs, and gurgling. After showering, my mom and I ran errands. First to Target to buy every single bottled brand that they carried. I bought Avent, Nuk, Playtex, and Dr. Brown's. I also bought an ugly pair of green capris just because I knew they'd fit and I couldn't go on vacation to Maine with only two pairs of capris and a maternity bathing suit.

Speaking of bathing suits- oh horror of horrors- I tried on several at TJ Maxx. I have never been so horrified in my life, and Mia was too- I could see the shocked look on her face in the mirror where my mom was bouncing her to keep her quiet. She may need counseling some day.

Anyways, I did NOT buy any bathing suits, although I lucked upon a pair of navy capris hanging on the rack just outside the dressing room. Perfect for Maine and perfect for back to work. It hit me then that yes, I am going back to work, and no, I do not have enough clothes to make it through a work week. I forsee a trip to Lane Bryant in my future (shudder). I can feel big girls pain now. There are no choices in plus size fashion! I will kiss the ground the day I fit into size 14s, never mind my size 12s!

Sunday I got picked up early by Walter who had to get back for a ggolf tournament. Some day, I swear it, I will stop resenting Walter for all the things he gets to do outside the house without a baby attached to him. Such freedom! Its hard for me to keep the jealousy inside at times and it manifests itself as annoyance with his whole golf obsession. If I had time for my own equally fun hobby (how I miss salsa dancing and hard core working out!), I wouldn't begrudge him his golfing outings. But being stuck inside with a baby who needs me constantly makes me a bit bitter at times, I guess. Sorry honey.

By Monday, my boobs felt like ground beef from all the cheweing she had been doing, and I diagnosed Mia with a poor latch due to milk oversupply issues (like the other day when it squirted her all in the face during a feeding). I called up the pediatrician's office, who squeezed me in with Lucy, the friendly lactation consultant for a visit. She basically told me exactly what I already knew, then tried to help me give Mia a bottle, which sent Mia into a purple rage. While waiting for Walter to pick me up from the appt. (he had gone home to pack his stuff because he got a partial tour of duty- to my annoyance), a car full of women congratulated me on my baby who they thought looked Chinese. Mia may not look like me, but she sure doesn't look Chinese.

Yesterday Walter came home, and we bustled around the house like mad people getting ready for the trip and for Walter's sister to come over with her husband and two kids, Vernell and Joquan. I went to the store for almost an hour and a half and she slept peacefully in the swing! Hooray- the swing is a godsend. In fact, yesterday Miss Mia seemed to get back to the Mia of old who likes to sleep a lot and is generally contented. I love it!

Today I can honestly say that for the very first day yet, I completely enjoyed my baby. I enjoyed every single moment with her. That may make me seem a faulty mother to some people, but I think its pretty normal. It was a good day. Long naps, I popped her in the Bumbo and actually enjoyed my dinner, and she went down for me tonight at 8 like a dream. Only way it could get better was if she'd start sleeping through the night.

Well, I'm hoping.

Here she is in her Bumbo. And yes, that freaking thrush is back.

I love this girl!