Happy mornings

Emma is ordinarily a tummy sleeper.

Yesterday morning I was lying in bed, not even half awake, and I heard her talking and cooing.  I thought I'd be really brilliant and go get her before she started crying (a rare act of benevolence on my part).  I entered the room speaking loudly, "I'm here, good morni--oh! Oh my goodness, what is this?? You flipped over, oh Baby, good job! Good job!".

She responds to squealy praise with adorable smiles (as seen above).  Since she'd only been sleeping about an hour and half before this incident, I am fairly confident that it was an accident and the act of flipping over woke her.

Which means she miiiiight have fallen back asleep if I hadn't sabotaged the situation by making lots of noise.

But oh well.  I got happy morning snugs, and I live for those!

Some pictures

So I thought I could go all Anne Geddes with the little after she went down for a nap earlier today.

As you can see, she is facing the wrong direction.  No matter what I did, as soon as I was ready to snap the picture she would sleep-stretch and flop her head the other way.

This picture is as good as it got:

She has the most delicious little baby lips:

Dos Meses

Our little Emma is two whole months old today!

She had her two month check-up at her doctor this morning.  The verdict: She is growing just fine and is a fluffy 12 lbs 8 oz, 22 inches long.

I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, HATE having to endure her receiving shots.  My poor baby.

Thankfully she was passed out before we even left the office.

These are the things that make Wonder Baby awesome so far:

• She smiles when we play with her.  It still isn't a sure fire thing, but sometime we can beg them out of her (and sometimes she gives them away for free ;-) ).
• Standing very strong when we hold her up.
• Looking adorable in even the ugliest outfits (sometimes Mommy needs to be more choosy when she's digging through the drawer...Wonder Baby hates being dressed and undressed, so I pretty much have one chance to get it right).
• SHE SLEEPS THROUGH THE NIGHT
• Yes, you read that right.  And I don't mean in the technical definition of "5 hours straight at night means sleeping through the night".  I mean that when I woke her up for church Sunday morning, it was the first time I'd seen her eyeballs since 10 o'clock Saturday night.  I'm not totally sure what to expect at this point since she's been fairly consistent with letting me sleep until 3, 4, or 5 most nights (with the occasionally relapse of a 2 o'clock feeding).  This 8+ hours of sleep thing is only four nights old, so I guess we'll see where it goes.  In the meantime, I am L-O-V-I-N-G the sleep.  You see why I call her Wonder Baby?
• She rides in the Moby like a champ.  She hates being put into it's just me trying to wrangle the thing, but she is pretty cooperative when I have Darren to help me.
• Her humongous double chin.  It is 100% kissable.
• She loves, loves, loves baths.  When she is inconsolable, we pop her in the bathtub, if only to gain a few minutes of peace (believe me, the peace ends the moment I lift her out of the water again). That being said, she hates the swimming pool thus far.  It is open now, as of yesterday, so we thought we would enjoy it as a family during the late afternoon.  Turns out babies don't like to have their feet dipped in -25 degree water. It turned into a family poolside lounging session instead, and she fell asleep.  So that was a bust. 
• Her gigantic dark blue eyes
• She watches us and can see us from further distances (not so great when we are trying to sneak past her crib)
• She has discovered her thumb! Several days of busy fist sucking around naptimes led to the imminent discovery of that thumb.  We believe that could be a part of the reason she is lasting longer through the night, and it is about the cutest thing to see and hear.  However, she and I were in the big bed the other night (we made Daddy sleep on the couch =) ), and I awoke to the slurpy sounds of a baby sucking on her fist in her sleep...hard to sleep through, but still made me smile).
• She is doing a better job of sitting in her vibrating chair and the swing, which makes it easier for me to get things done
• Basically, she's just super duper cool.

Grunty Sleep Sounds

I don't believe I've mentioned our recent rearranging of living affairs yet, and I apologize.  It pleases me greatly to announce that little Emma has moved into her own bedroom....ummm..."living space".  She officially resides in what used to be our dining area.

I couldn't be more pleased.  It creates a central location for most of her things (conveniently located near the garbage, kitchen sink, and rocking chair), opened up a space for her changing table (hallelujah!), opens up space in OUR room, and, most importantly, keeps her grunty sleep sounds OUT of earshot.

(...could there be more commas in the above paragraph....yikes...)

Mommy gets so much more sleep this way. And yes, that is an entirely selfish attitude. Sue me.

She is seriously growing so much.  I guess since I've been able to witness the progression of her size since Day 1, every time people say, "Oh my goodness, she's so tiny!" I don't know what to say at first.  I want to be like, "You serious?? This fatty?".

To be fair, several strangers, upon asking her age, have expressed shock that she is only 6 weeks old. Apparently her chub suggests an older age.

I seriously love being with her. She is becoming such an expressive thing (as if that were possible), and I love trying to glean her personality from her smiles as well as her tantrums.

BAM!

1. Guess what my super cool kid did? Thaaaat's right, she slept through the night! BAM! It might have been a fluke, but maybe not. Some kids start that early, you know.

2. My milk production was, um, expressive (pun intended) about the neglect it felt from the missed feedings.

3. We had JC Penney pictures taken of Emma yesterday. Nearly all of my worst fears came true from the hysterical baby all the way down to the leaky poo on her onesie. The photographers did a fantastic job of consoling her, and I'm impressed that they got as many good ones as they did.  The ones that aren't "good" are funny (to me, at least).

4. Overhead from another mom while sitting at the studio while she was looking through her kids' proofs: "Man, just one of these days I wish I had too many good ones to choose from."

5. A diet of brownies and ice cream is totally healthy, right?

6. This is a fairly normal sight:

She has also been known to have her head smashed against the bars with an arm hanging out.

Cheesy mom moment

I LOVE this picture.

Tonight was the first time Darren has been able to feed Emma.

I wanted to wait several weeks so that she and I could officially be used to nursing.  I didn't want to introduce it too early.

As you can see, she took to the bottle like a champ.  She is also a bit mesmerized staring up into her daddy's sweet face.

When Darren first told me he wanted to be able to help feed her I was super hesitant because I was nervous about complicating the feeding process, and I felt like it was my job to provide her nourishment. But then he told me about how he grew up feeding his younger siblings and how that was something he loved doing.

We decided that was something we should accommodate.  And how can I argue with a daddy who wants to bond with his daughter by seeing to one of her most basic and essential needs?

My. heart. melted.  Watching them together was special.

...and I was able to get the kitchen clean without waking her =)

Short musings

She went from being squirmy and fussy to this ^^^  in a matter of seconds.

Weirdo.

Darren is currently passed out on the couch, and Emma is passed out in her crib.  Me? I'm ashamed to say that it didn't occur to me to pass out until I typed the previous sentence.  And now it's too late, because Her Majesty will be awake soon (I assume) and need my services.

The point is that I don't really have anything to do, so here's a blog post.

She is becoming more difficult to carry around in her car seat.  Apparently I should have been bulking up in preparation for carrying her fat hiney around town.

She smiles more and more, though not on purpose.  However, I played with her lips with her little gum brusher today and got some really cute little smiles.  

She has her daddy's face, down to the mile-deep double dimples. Success!

I really need to remember to buy some moisturizing hand soap next time I get soap....I wash my hands so much, and the skin is beginning to feel like it could fall off in pretty big chunks at any moment.

She is finally big enough for the swing! She sat in it for a good little while today while I worked on supper.  She even fell asleep.  Normally she hates to be abandoned to seats and such, and never lasts longer than 5 minutes at best.  The swing and I stand a very good chance of becoming best friends.  That was the most food preparation I've been able to accomplish without stopping since she was born.  Hallelujer.