Fifteen Weeks!

Weight: My best guess is somewhere around 11 pounds.

Sleep: Sleep has been awesome as of late. Her naps are slowly getting longer (according to daycare [insert sad face] anyway) and at night, she's only waking once around 4:00 a.m. like clockwork. I'm still feeding her when she wakes rather than just trying to pop her pacifier in and letting her "soothe" back to sleep on her own because she's still a peanut, so I figure she could use an extra eating session anyway :) After that, she goes back to sleep until we wake her to get ready for daycare (again, insert sad face!).

Medical Issues: None!

Clothes: Though we have a few items that are still working in newborn sizes, most of what we're wearing these days are 0 to 3 month sizes... woohoo! Our jammies that we were swimming in a few weeks ago that are 0 to 3 months are now fitting pretty well, specifically in length.
Socialite!: Since Lizzie's gone to daycare now, she's kind of a little socialite every day! I've also been showing her off around school here and there if/when I bring her over to feed her (daycare is across the street, and since we've been having work days without kiddos, I've been able to bring her to my room to feed her), so she's had lots of opportunities to see some faces she hasn't seen in awhile :)

Diet: Milk -- still nursing exclusively. We'll see how it goes when I go back to school -- as mentioned, she is daycaring across the street. This gives me the amazing opportunity to feed her throughout the day on a prep in the morning, at lunch time, and after school. I'm not sure that I will nurse her during that morning prep (I have a few days where my prep doesn't line up, too), but if I don't, I'll pump in its place. I just feel like it's a little hard for me to feed her during that time -- so she may be getting a bottle of expressed milk for her morning feeding, which I'm completely fine with. I've been storing up over the summer just for this purpose.

Baby Gear Love: This week I'm going to give a shout-out to Tommee Tippee bottles, since we've had to use them a few times since Lizzie started daycare this week. She's had no trouble taking a bottle even though I nursed her exclusively all summer. They say those style of bottles are "closest to nature" -- I have no idea if that's true, but I do know that Lizzie girl has had no troubles switching between bottles and nursing.

Crying: She's a sweet girl! Only cries when she's hungry or tired basically :)

Mommy News: It's been a rough week emotionally. I went back to work for good on Monday of this last week, and it was tough every day. On Tuesday, baby girl cried when I handed her over :( Obviously there were plenty of tears from both mom and baby that morning. Mostly, I struggle at night, though. When all's said and done and we were finally home, it was 5:00 -- almost time to start making supper. And after supper's been made, eaten and cleaned up, it's not too far off that she needs to go to bed. We try to squeeze in every last minute of play time, snuggle time and reading book time that we can before it's bed time, but it just doesn't feel like enough time. And it breaks my heart.

What's also hard is that when we get home, I unbuckle her from her seat and lay her on the floor on her blanket so we can giggle and talk and play -- and all I can think of as my sweet girl babbles and smiles at me, is "Has anyone really looked at you today? Has anyone tried to make you laugh? Has anyone really talked to you today, and tried to get you to talk back?" And not that I'm faulting daycare -- if they don't do those things, it's probably not because they're neglecting her,  but rather because they just don't have the time with all the other kids around. Plus, I'm her momma -- so I'm probably over-the-top about those things when I'm home with her all day anyway and my expectations are maybe a bit high. Regardless, I can't shut out those thoughts each day, and those break my heart, too.

So then I started thinking that going back to work was a mistake. Not that I don't like my job -- I do, in fact, I love it. But I love my baby. And would I regret not staying home with her during these years? Ah! The torment. But after a lot of thinking, praying and talking to lots of good people, I've decided that I need to give it some more time and let us develop a routine. My goal is to be out the door in the morning early enough to be at school by 7:00 a.m. (which means waking up before 6:00 to get myself ready and to get Lizzie fed and ready, too... yikes!) -- this should allow me to get a good chunk of work done before school, so I don't have to stay so late after school. That way, I can pick her up with what feels like plenty of time to play. And after talking with my principal about it, maybe a better solution for all of this is to quiet those nagging thoughts by having Lizzie spend some time with her two grandmas a few afternoons a week. That way, I'll know someone is talking to her, making her smile, making her laugh. So I feel good about things right now as I head into the first day of school in a few days.

Milestones: This week, we really noticed that Lizzie girl is using both of her hands more. She'd seemed to favor looking to the left and using only her left hand (to which I reacted by being afraid that she'd be a lefty! Oh no! Terrible! Yeah, I'm crazy) prior to this week. Anyway, using both hands more means that she's been putting her hands together, which is a big milestone for babies! She's also exhibiting better head control all the time and is continuing to babble more. We're hearing more consonant sounds now, rather than just vowel sounds. She's also let out just a few legit laughs in the last few days :) We've also noticed that she kind of hums to herself when we put her down if she's not fully asleep, which is amazingly cool. I always sing her to sleep when I rock her, so it's probably the sweetest thing we've ever heard. Her little voice is our favorite sound!