Lily's A Month Old!

Monday was Lily's one month birthday. We didn't do anything specific to celebrate other than tell her it was her birthday. She gave us a list of gifts she'd like to receive, but we thought it was too early for a pony and tennis racket.

She's definitely changed over the course of the last month, but it's hard to recognize the changes when you're in the thick of things every day. But if you look at pictures (there's a new album posted in the usual place) and compare, her face has filled out a bit and changed. She's added two pounds to her 9.1 birth weight, and probably an inch or two also. She's wearing mostly 3-month old clothes, since at least the newborn sized onsies were fitting like sausage casings. She's holding her head up longer and controlling it better. And as of a couple of days ago she will smile in reaction to our smiles when she's calm and happy. To me, the smiles have been the biggest feel-good moments yet with her.

Nicole's work with the Boob Whisperer continues, and things are going well on that front. She's moved away from pumping since things have improved significantly and that's made the logistics a lot easier. No more warming up bottles and pumping = more time for everything else, like rest.

Lily got to meet her Auntie Sonya over the weekend, and they really seemed to hit it off. Lily decided that Sonya had a good shoulder for a nap and spent almost three hours sleeping on her one evening. I was actually out of town in Chicago for Tony's bachelor party for the weekend, so I missed most of the bonding. But I did manage to get almost nine straight hours of sleep Friday night, quite a luxury.

The days are still full of ups and downs. Last night is a good example. For about two hours after we wanted to go to bed, Lily just wanted to eat and would not fall asleep. So Nicole ended up feeding her on and off and in between we both tried to get her down to sleep without luck. It was really frustrating for all three of us. The only up side of those couple of hours was that during a time out, I got to see Conan's monologue on the Tonight Show for the first time. Not bad. Anyway, back to the story... After all that frustration, and thinking as I tried to fall asleep around midnight that it seemed like we'd be up all night, what happens? We wake up after 6AM. She slept over 6 hours for the first time! I don't think either of us believed it, I know I woke up assuming I had slept through a middle of the night feeding. Hopefully tonight has another 6 hour stretch without the craziness leading up to it.

Now that we're a month in I guess it's on to the next challenge. We leave for Tony & Stephanie's wedding on Maui next week, our first trip as a family. We're just hoping to be able to get in some good pool and beach time with a little surfing. But of course we'll play it by ear and just see how things go and what we're comfortable with.