Weight: As mentioned last week, at Lizzie's two-week check-up, she weighed in at five pounds, 15 1/2 ounces. She's continued to eat like it's her job (which, let's face it, it is), so I'm guessing she's put on at least another half-pound at this point. My guesstimate is she's somewhere between six and a half and seven pounds. I have a nephew who is set to be arrive any day now, so the big question is: who will be bigger? Lizzie, after being out of the oven for three weeks? Or baby boy, after baking the appropriate amount of time? My money is on baby boy, but we'll see...
Medical Issues: Medical issues? What medical issues? There are none, aside from being petite like mommy :) Our sweet baby is healthy and happy! So here's to hoping we can leave this section out forever (or, at least, for a very, very, very long time)!
Sleep: Most nights are still fabulous for Lizzie, but there have been a few nights that haven't been so stellar. She can have a tendency to wake up to eat in the middle of the night and take a "cat nap" for long enough to be swaddled and placed in her bassinet... only to grunt and kick two minutes later. At which point I pick her up and do one of three things: sing songs, "shhhh" loudly in her ear (I promise I'm not a meanie. I'm doing as the "baby whisperer", Dr. Harvey Karp, says to do... plus it's extremely effective), or offer her the option to nurse a little more. All three options result in a happy, sleepy baby again... until she's placed in her bassinet. It's at that point that the vicious cycle begins again. So we go through this some nights for two hours, until she finally sleeps for real and lets mommy sleep again. This has probably happened twice now, so it's not all that common. Regardless, I'm hoping it doesn't become a routine for us :)
Her morning sleep routine changed a little for a couple of days, too. I've been trying to teach her the difference between day and night from early on, so I have all the lights and the TV or radio on pretty much all the time in order to teach her that daytime is when we are awake, bright and noisy! A couple of mornings (mornings being 5:00 a.m...) this last week when she woke to be fed, I think the noticed the light coming in our windows... which, to her, meant it was time to be awake! So those little eyes opened wide and remained that way for two or three hours. Now, don't get me wrong... we love when she's awake! But we'd prefer if that wakeful time happened to fall in later morning hours, like at eight or nine (or ten...).
In spite of a few early mornings and middle-of-the-night sleep losses, I've found that I'm far less tired than I would have anticipated. I always end up not feeling like I've been hit by a bus each day, but I'm sure it helps that I'm not working during the day.
Clothes: We're still in our newborn outfits and don't anticipate heading anywhere else anytime soon.
Some of her newborn outfits are still too big, so we still have to grow into those!
Socialite!: This week, Lizzie remained a little socialite. We visited Grandma Kathy, Grandpa Wayne and Auntie Jenny one night for supper while Andy was away at his Master's class. The girls, including Lizzie, also took part in watching the premier of the new Bachelorette season this week -- which, by the way, has way too many beefcakey guys on it, don't you think? We also headed over to Grandma and Grandpa Bristow's house on Saturday to celebrate Grandma Jean's birthday, where we also got to see Auntie Megan. Our biggest outing of the week, however, was to my cousin's wedding in Wadena. Lizzie girl got to meet lots of aunts, uncles and cousins there, but she and I both missed the wedding itself because someone was hungry (no, not me!) :) That was okay, though. We got to celebrate with everyone afterward.
Lizzie remains a fun little lady for strangers to take a peek at when we are out and about, too :)
Diet: Milk -- still eating a lot, sometimes every two hours, sometimes every one hour.
Baby Gear Love: Aden and Anais swaddle blankets for nighttime swaddling remain pretty popular around here. This week we finally started using her Snugabunny swing and she loves it. We swing on the lowest setting and listen to the nature sounds or raindrop sounds and stay content for quite awhile. It's pretty fabulous for when I need to make supper and Andy isn't home yet, or for anytime when he's at work and I need to get something done.
Crying: Still not much of a crier. Her cries are louder, though. She's letting her demands be known with a little more gusto now :) She tends to cry only when she's got a dirty diaper, is hungry, or wants to be snuggled.
Mommy News: Still feeling really good and starting to be a little more active. I'm trying to go on walks with her three days a week if we can, weather permitting (which has been tough with all this rain and wind!), and I tried doing yoga last week one day, and that went well, so I think I'll start getting back into doing that once a week if I can.
Emotionally, I don't think I've ever been so happy in my entire life. The only thing I've got nagging me is the "mommy guilt" bug some days. Does anyone else know what I'm talking about? Like, we go out to run errands for three or four hours, so I feel guilty that poor baby girl is in her carrier for that long. Or the other evening, I made cookies and made supper consecutively while Andy was outside fixing a problem with water in our basement, so baby girl spent some time in the swing that we've come to love so dearly. The whole time, I felt incredibly guilty that I wasn't holding her and loving on her even though she was sleeping the entire time. Anyway, it's stuff like that -- anyone else know what I'm talking about? Now just imagine how I'll feel when I go back to work! Yikes!
Milestones: Well, a few milestones this week. First, we hit Lizzie's actual due date on Monday, June 3rd! So we celebrated her all day and spent time being very grateful that she's been here for three weeks already and was born healthy even though she arrived early.
We also had the "mommy gets spray blasted with poop at five in the morning" milestone this week as well. Under normal circumstances, I would have likely not had a sense of humor about being sprayed with projectile poop, but considering it happened by way of my sweet baby, I found it completely hilarious and had Andy take my picture. I think that's the rite of passage into parenthood, right? Check that one off the list! Anyway, as you can imagine, I've been a little more cautious about changing diapers these days and haven't had another mishap since.
Another rite of passage includes having your baby cry loudly in a store, right? Well, that happened this week, too, at Target (I know what you're thinking: how can she be my daughter if she's crying while in Target? That's right up there with Disney World as far as being the happiest place on earth! But don't worry, it was just because she was a starvin' Marvin, so it wasn't Target's fault). This was one of those "mommy guilt" days, when we spent too long in our carrier and pushed our eating sessions too far apart, and she let me know it. Normally I would have just left and gone home, but I was trying to get a new cell phone activated (which is no excuse) and it took forever. And I kept thinking, "oh, we'll be done soon... we have to be! It's been 30 minutes already, it can't take much longer." Alas, I was wrong. So we took a little break halfway through our activation process so I could feed Lizzie and we returned much happier :) I do have to say that one of my favorite parts about being a mommy is when your child is crying and you hold them and they suddenly calm down. It is an amazing feeling.
Aside from these milestones, we continue to see Lizzie's neck strength increasing, and we're seeing a lot more smiles these days, too, though I know they're not showing up purposely yet (but sometimes it almost seems like they are...). She's also gotten really good at focusing on things and loves looking around the room. She loves when we hold her so she's sitting up or looking over our shoulder because she can see so well from there.
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