Finding a voice

Here is Abigail showing off her emerging vocal skills...and she keeps saying more and getting a little louder every day.  It has been a lot of fun to have these "conversations" with her...enjoy!

Abigail's Activity Mat

Abigail got an activity mat from her paternal grandparents for Christmas and she is really enjoying it as she spends more time there.  It is nice and colorful and the animals all make noises of different kinds. When Abigail kicks her feet she can make things jingle and if she hits something with her hands she also gets noise. She seems interested in the variety of things to hear and look at, and also likes looking up at the connector to the bars.  Here are some pictures of her in action on the mat.

Seven weeks: More photos

Abigail is 7 weeks old and doing well!  She continues to get stronger and more alert and is getting much more vocal.  I will try to do a video of her gurgling and babbling noises soon.

In the meantime Abigail is still sleeping well at night but is having a hard time going down at night and still prefers t take her naps on someone's chest or in the moby.  We are trying to be patient with her and finding ways to balance her needs and our needs.

Abigail also likes to fall asleep in a vertical position, pictured below, and then we have to figure out how to get her from there to a more comfortable position without waking her up.

Here she is in the moby:

Here are some photo highlights:

 In other news, I finally bit the bullet and donated most of my hair, which has been growing out since we went to peru.  Here is the before:

and after:

12 inches gone and it feels so much lighter and healthier!

Look what Abigail can do!

I have been meaning to put this up since Friday but the days seem to fly by when we are operating on Abigail time, so here we are, better late than never...

Abigail is now six weeks old (!) and on Friday during tummy time was able to pick her head up so high that she could look straight at me.  She has been close to doing this before but this was the first time she really nailed it and was able to hold the pose long enough for me to take some pictures:

She continues to grow and get bigger and stronger every day.  We also think she is getting longer:

 And makes some great faces:

Abigail: 1 month old

January 2, 2012

It is hard to believe that Abigail turned one month old on Monday.  It is hard to believe she is already that old but it also feels like she has been with us forever! Here is an update on what has happened in the last month.  

Nicknames:  Munchkin, Sweet Pea, Sunshine, Angel
Temperament: Most of the time happy, alert, curious, attentive, but fussy when overly tired
Item/Toy We Love The Most:  Boppy, swaddle wraps, the rubber ducky song
Item/Toy You Love The Most:  the skylights, the rubber ducky song
Things We're Loving Most Right Now: singing to you, cuddling with you, doing floor time and tummy time, your range of expressions, watching you get stronger and bigger
Things You’re Loving Most Right Now: nursing, sucking on our fingers/pacifiers, sleeping on Daddy's chest, hanging out on the changing table, taking baths especially having your hair washed, stretching, being sung to

Eating: Over the past month, Abigail and I have gotten into a great routine for nursing. It took a little while to get things figured out, and we had to learn how to limit her nursing for comfort, but now she is eating well and efficiently and gaining weight.  She usually eats around every 3 hours during the day but can go longer at night.  We tried one bottle feeding in late December and she was happy to take the bottle, but promptly spit up most of it once she finished. We are working on this in January to get ready for my return to work in February. 

Sleeping:  At first, Abigail fell asleep fairly easily and stayed asleep well as long as she was being held.  When we tried to put her down, we were often greeted with her eyes popping open and had to begin the process of getting her to sleep again.  Because she was nursing on demand as well, this also meant that I would be up for 4-5 hour stretches in the middle of the night because she would eat, doze, wake up when I tried to put her down, and then be hungry again. Thankfully, we have had steady improvement and she is now doing much better at being transitioned to her bed from being held and is staying asleep for longer periods.  We also went through a week or two of Abigail being fussy and hard to soothe from about 10-1 at night but that has also improved although it is not yet gone. 

While things have been improving, it made a huge difference to have a team approach to Abigail's nights.  For all but five nights of this first month, JP and I had extra people to help us with Abigail, primarily my mom, dad and JP's mom when we went to Phoenix.  Now that she is settling in to a routine, it is less daunting to think about handling the nights on our own, but I really appreciated being able to get up and feed her and then hand her off to someone else to put her down while I went back to bed.  We will see how things go once it is down to JP and I again next week.

Playing:  Since Abigail is so curious about the world, we have enjoyed doing floor time with her almost every day. She likes the chance to stretch her arms and legs and is beginning to track a toy from side to side. She will also hold and wave a rattle briefly if we place it in her hands.  She is very responsive to sound toys like her silver rattle.  We also do tummy time fairly regularly and are impressed with her head and neck control already. She can raise her head pretty high off the ground and has good control at lowering it back down.  We also love to hold her facing us and sing to her and dance with her and she enjoys that.  She also likes to look at some of the brightly colored wall decorations we have and she loves to watch our skylights in the living room.

Growth: On the day after her one month old birthday, Abigail's weight was up to 8 lbs, 10 oz, half a pound above her birth weight.  It took her a little while to begin to gain consistently but now she is doing really well.  We are beginning to see the changes in her as she adds the weight and continues to grow.  It definitely seems like she gets longer every day and her feet no longer fit in some of her sleepers.  She is still wearing mostly newborn sized clothes, like the adorable cupcake onesie pictured here that was sent by my Aunt Peggy, but is starting to wear some 3 month sizes as well.

 

It has been an exciting, tiring, whirlwind of a first month and we can't wait to see what the next month brings!

Abigail in action

It is hard to believe Abigail is already one month old and she is doing great. Here is a video of her in action during floor time.  She is mostly stretching her arms and legs and briefly playing with her rattle, and making a few noises, but we think she is pretty impressive. Enjoy!