The first real smiles were a huge deal. As I previously posted it almost brought me to tears when I walked in the room and she recognized me and smiled at my presence. It made all those sleepless nights becomes a distant memory. Now, a few weeks from that very first smile, she smiles non-stop. Rob and I sing silly little songs to her and she smiles so much it basically lights up the room. Her current favourite is "Toe Knee Chest Nut" which is an action song and it never fails to make her smiles and even give a little giggle at the end.
Her vision has improved even further, along with her hearing. The other day we were visiting her grandparents and while grandpa was holding her I walked from one side of the room to the other while talking and she tracked me the entire way. She has definitely become some what of a mama's girl, which is to be expected since she is with me for the majority of the day.
Sleeping wise I feel we are pretty lucky. From early on, we created a bedtime routine with starts with a bath, then a story with daddy, and a last feed, then she gets placed in her crib to fall asleep at 7:30pm. I'm not of the "cry it out" method, so if she were to cry I would pick her up, calm her down, then place her back in her bed, but honestly that has never been an issue. At 7:30pm, when she is placed in her crib with her soother, she looks around for a few mins, or stares at her mobile and then falls asleep. No muss, no fuss. Occasionally she might spit out her soother before she's truly asleep and sqwirm around until I put it back in, but then falls right back asleep. Once she is out, the soother falls out and she stays asleep for a good 5-6 hours before she wakes to nurse. Then she eats, goes right back to sleep for another 4-5 hours. Its been nice to finally get some sleep myself. Those first few weeks I felt like I never caught a wink of sleep.
Due to how well she is sleeping at night, she is awake and alert for much longer periods of time during the day now. This has been great because we've been able to get out and enjoy the world. She has really taken a liking to going swimming and we try to get to nursery swim at the local pool once or twice a week. We've also joined a baby massage class on Tuesdays for the month of April and so far she loves the rub downs. They teach silly little songs to go along with the different body parts and she just smiles away whenever I sing them.
She has also grown much more than I expected. When I got her weighed at 6 weeks she had already gained 3 lbs and grown 2 inches. She has a very long torso, which has caused her to outgrow most of her newborn and 3 month onesies already. She's still in newborn and 0-3 pants because she has average length legs and a skinny waist, but is into 6 month shirts and sleepers to accommodate her torso length. She gets weighed in again this coming Wednesday and I can't wait to see how much more she has grown. She is definitely a healthy and happy girl.
Unfortunately we are still battling the yeast rash. She's been back to the doctor and we are continuing with the prescription creams but it still hasn't completely gone away. Now I am changing things in my diet to see if that helps her clear up. Its been over 7 weeks now and I am beyond frustrated with it. The doctor will be re-examining it at her appointment on Wednesday and hopefully he has some other solution.
Milestone wise, most recently she has decided she wants to try and sit up. She has had an extremely strong neck right from birth and has been holding her head up at my shoulder for weeks now. The other day when I had her leaning on the breast feeding pillow she just decided she was going to try and sit right up. She held it for a few seconds before laying back down and that caused Rob and I to look at each other and ask "what just happened". We thought we were months away from her sitting up, but she might just surprise us. She also has incredibly strong legs and constantly wants to stand up while we hold onto her waist or when we hold her against our body she uses whatever ledge she can find to push herself into a standing position. I really wouldn't be surprised if she skips crawling all together and goes straight to walking before we know it!
5 weeks old
6 weeks old
7 weeks old
8 weeks old
