Smiles!

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This is what makes it ALL worth it! 

8 Weeks Old

Aaron has made it to 8 weeks old! According to the pediatrician's scale on Thursday (when he was 7w5d) he weighs 13lbs, 4oz.

Here he is today, wearing a sweater made by our very talented friend Nina. It fits wonderfully and is very snuggly! (Nina -- he didn't puke on it today either. :) )

I'm 8 weeks old! Aren't I cute? :) He's smiling now, and is really a great sleeper at night. He's also adjusting to daycare. We've been there all of a week, and so far the hardest part is napping for him. His big sister is having a little harder time adjusting, but she'll get there. 

2 months old!

Today Emma is 2 months old! Some milestones...

* In double-digits for weight
* Can hold her head up by herself
* Can lift her torso when on her belly (although not for long)
* Has a sleep routine
* Smiling and laughing in response to Mommy & Daddy
* Tracks moving objects with eyes
* Recognizes her name and the word "kiss"
* Rolls onto her side from her back

Contemplating Mommy taking a picture.



The camera bores me!

Conversation with Daddy

I've encouraged Joe to speak in both Arabic and French to Emma because I want her to be exposed to different languages from birth, but also because I'd like her to retain as many phonemes as she can (children lose the ability to speak certain phonemes that are not part of their native language unless they are exposed to them in the first year). So here is a video of Daddy talking to Emma in Arabic (conversation translated below).



Daddy: "Good Morning, my daughter."
Emma: "Good Morning, my father. How are you?"
Daddy: "Good, thank God. And you?"
Emma: "Good, thank God."
Daddy: "What are you doing today?"
Emma: "Nothing."

The Grouchy Ladybug

As part of our bedtime routine, I'm reading Emma a story. We've tried a few different ones, but so far, "The Grouchy Ladybug," by Eric Carle, has been the one that works to put her to sleep.



Poor Grouchy Ladybug.... wants to fight everyone, but they're just not big enough. :) By the time we get to the last page, she's out like a light. HUGE thanks to snoopingmother, who sent us this book!

Another Growth Spurt?

Probably... she's been nursing like a fiend and is on her 3rd nap of the day (napped for 1 1/2 hours with Daddy and then another 1 1/2 hours with Mommy, and is now napping on my chest ... and it's only 4:30). Maybe we'll get up to 10 1/2 pounds before our pediatrician appointment on Thursday.

Since it's been a few days, here's some pictures of my growing girl!

With Ms. Tracy during Thursday's visit! She enjoyed that visit so much. :) (so did Mommy!)


In her carseat, hanging out after we got back from the hospital when we weighed her on Friday.



Today's outfit!



And the d.iaper that she's wearing right now.... too cute!

Ten Pounds!

Yes, my daughter is "officially" in the double-digit weight category. After much fretting about the color of her poo, her weight, her eating, etc., I decided to take her to the hospital to get her weighed. They have a great free infant scale in the back of the mother's clinic there. I also thought this was a good opportunity to do a pre- and post-feeding weight.

Pre-feeding, she was 10 lb, 1.4oz; post-feeding she was 10lb, 3.3oz. So she is definitely getting a good amount of milk when eating! That made me feel happy, especially since this was only the second time she's nursed out in public.

We've gotten into somewhat of a routine now that we're almost 2 months old. We get up between 6:30 and 7am usually (although this morning it was closer to 7:30am; Mommy had been up since 4am, sadly enough... but that's for another post). We eat, and then Mommy pumps an hour later. Today I got 5oz out of my right breast, and 2.5 out of the left (which is the one she had eaten from an hour earlier). That 5oz amazed and scared me! Anyway, so then there's a mid-morning nap, then an early-afternoon nap (which is going on right now on my chest), and a late-afternoon/early evening nap. We start getting her ready for bed around 7pm, and between a bath/reading/rocking ritual, she's bypassed much of her evening fussiness.

I took half of that 5oz and put it in the freezer, and then put the other in the fridge. I want to get an idea of how much fat/cream is in that milk and how much appears to just be thin, watery milk -- some of my frozen milk looks very watery, and some looks creamy. I know the milk consistency changes over the day, but again, just something I can do to reassure myself that the milk has some good cream. I have been wondering about my own diet and how it affects the breast milk -- since I've gone off dairy, I've essentially been on a low-fat, high-fiber diet and maybe lower fat in my diet means less fat in the milk? Who knows.

In any case, I feel happier that since last week's appointment with the pediatrician, she's gained a fair amount and now that she's over 10 pounds, I feel I can relax somewhat. Our next appointment is next Thursday for her 2 month appointment and it's also her first vaccination.

We had a great visit with Ms. Tracy yesterday and I have some pictures to upload, when I get a chance. Right now I'm just going to snuggle with Emma and maybe close my eyes.... 3 hours of broken sleep is just not enough. It does lend itself to a LOT of night time thinking about life, however!

Playing with Mommy

Lengthy video (2 minutes) for those of you with dialup, but again, totally worth it! (in my opinion)

8 weeks, 3 days

That's how old my little girl is! How time is flying by, and I'm not ready for her to be growing up this fast. But the bigger she gets, the more adorable things she does. Just a few updates.

* Last night went pretty well! She fell asleep on her OWN at 7pm, and Mommy ended up waking her up a little later to change a diaper, feed her and put her in her nightgown. Then once she was in bed with Mommy (around 10:30), we woke up only twice to eat and change very, very, very wet diapers. Well, I woke up -- she slept through both! She's been sleep nursing and will stay mostly asleep through a diaper change (although she is crying/fussing, I know she's still asleep). Now, we've been up since about 5:30am because she had a poo that needed to come out and was bothering her (and poor thing, it didn't come out until 8am and it was HUGE -- and yes, still green), so that's tiring but ok. She's in the middle of her mid-morning nap here on my chest.

* Mommy pumped both breasts again this morning in between her feedings, and got 2.5 oz from one and 3.0 oz from the other. There's officially over 13 oz of breast milk in the freezer, yay! I'm not sure how big of a freezer stash I really need or want, but I just feel good that my body is easily responding to the pumping and still producing enough an hour later for her next feeding. Now, the big thing is ordering a hand's-free bra because trying to manage pumping and pushing buttons and such is a pain in the behind. :)

* A good friend is coming over to visit this morning, and I am so excited. She's been amazing and so supportive through my whole ttc and pregnancy frustrations, even while she was dealing with her own struggles. AND I got a wonderful couple of packages in the mail on Tuesday from Maurine, which had the most adorable t-shirts for Emma and some delicious chocolate for Mommy (and I'm not sharing with Joe!! Heheheh). I'm blessed to have such good people in my life!

Emma & Her Mirror

Smiles & Giggles

Emma is smiling and laughing quite frequently now, and she'll smile to get a response out of us. Some of the things she'll respond to is when Daddy or Mommy ask if she "wants kisses," and she knows the word "kiss" means she's going to get a big kiss on the cheek, lips or chin. Sometimes she'll even turn her head when we're going for a cheek so she can give us kisses too.

Today I learned that she likes Mommy's impressions! I did a (very bad) French accent, and she was giggling at me, and then I did a Fargo-esque Minnesota accent, and she liked that too! I guess I'm going to have to figure out a few more for her.

She's still got a little snot and when she's crying hard, she'll cough, but generally she's a lot better. Her poo is still green, but there's more yellow-ish stuff mixed in, and I think I'm just going to relax as long as she's pooing ok. We're still getting a LOT of very wet diapers, so she's definitely eating enough.

I'm starting my work morning routine, so today we got up at 6:30, and got ready for our day and ate, and the Mommy pumped about an hour after she ate. I got just about 2.5 oz from each breast, so that's 5 more oz for the freezer. I'm hoping to get a little freezer stash, just enough that if Joe and I want to go out to eat or to a movie, or if I ever need to go to a workshop and can''t pump, she's covered.

And now for your viewing pleasure, today's outfit!


The onsie says "I Love Hugs", and she did have matching blue pants that she was wearing. We haven't had any spitup today so far, so we're still on Outfit #1! :)

Daddy's Princess

We had an outfit change mid-morning because of some lovely spitup, so here's Daddy's Little Princess!


I have chosen NOT to post the poop pictures here, out of sensitivity to those of you who might really not want to see poop pictures! :) But for those of you who are curious, you can go to my LJ blog post and look behind the cut.

Tummy Time

This is from a few days ago... about 1 minute, 38 seconds (for those of you with dialup, it'll take a while to load) long but just cute! I have another video from today that is adorable that'll take a while to upload.

I love the little snuffle/snort she does. :)

Poop (Part 2)

Bear with me, but I need to blog about Emma's poop again. So three weeks ago (or so) I decided to go off of all dairy products, thinking Emma had a sensitivity to it because she was so gassy and was having some diaper rash. I also changed detergents from Tide Free & Clear to Charlie's Soap, thinking that might be making the diaper rash worse. (Note: The diaper rash was VERY minor, just some redness on her bum, but I wanted to nip it in the bud) At the time I went off dairy, she was still having lovely breastfed baby poos -- yellow & curdy.

Two weeks ago, her poo started turning green. It ranged from light green initially, then to a darker green. She was having some foamy green poos, which is a "classic" sign of a foremilk/hindmilk imbalance, but I was already doing block feeding (one breast at a time) and didn't know what to do. I started feeding from one breast exclusively for a 3-hour block (instead of two) and that seemed to help the foamy green poos; however, we're still having green poop.

So then I thought it was the virus that she has. She started getting congested about two weeks ago, so the timing fits, and her cold has gotten worse this past week. In fact, she has been coughing for 5 days now, but is finally getting better. Yesterday was a good day regarding her cold symptoms. But the poo is still green.

So now I'm wondering if she's got a soy sensitivity, since I was drinking soy milk as a replacement for cow's milk. Not every day, mind you, but probably every-other day. I ran out of soy milk yesterday, so I'm just not going to buy any more and see how that goes.

The poo is still curdy and soft, but it's just... well, green! Not that pretty healthy breastfed baby poo that we initially had for the first month of her life. I'm frustrated, because for the first month of her life she wasn't sensitive to dairy. So was the diaper rash stuff just from the soap? Maybe the gas was from something else? If I go back on dairy, will that help her poo? Ugh. As an aside, she also has gained weight *very* slowly the last two weeks. From two weeks ago when she was 9lb, 8 1/2 oz, then at the doctor's office six days later she was only 9lb, 10 oz, and then last night when we weighed her on our scale, she was only 9lb, 15 1/2 oz. So I don't know if the poor weight gain is because she's sick, because I'm not feeding her correctly, or just a slow growth time for her.

Mommy is frustrated.

I was going to take a picture, but I needed to wash diapers ASAP this morning so I will later. So, my dear readers, be prepared to see a poo picture later on today at some point. :) And again, if any of my experienced Mommy readers have some thoughts, I would be very grateful! Going on three weeks of green poo is just something I'm worried about.

And so this isn't just a text post, a few pictures:

Wearing one of my childhood sweaters (thank you for sending it Grandma Miller!) yesterday because it was too cold for a short-sleeved shirt.



Snowfall on the table from this morning (this is after we did have some melt last week, and then the 7-8 inches we got in the last 24 hours).



Our outfit this morning! Hello everyone!

Daddy's Lap

Apparently is the *best* place to be in the house. :)


We're finally feeling better this morning, thank goodness! Here she is (with an awesome outfit!) -- Happy 8 weeks old!