Almost 3 weeks

Tomorrow Emily will be 3 weeks old.  The time has really flown by.  Already she is so much bigger than she was when she was born - I can actually feel her getting heavier.  She continues to be increasingly alert during the day.  Also, she is starting to have periods where she is more fussy.  This peaked at about 5 weeks with Abbie and then started to get better.  I expect that the same will be true for Emily.  She is able to hold her head up now when she is in an upright position.  Sometimes I have her over my shoulder and it is so cute to look over and see her head up as she looks around the room.  She has big blue eyes and we have a suspicion that they will actually stay blue.  She is VERY observant and is always looking around at us and at the house.  She loves looking out the window and at the ceiling fan.  Also, she seems to really enjoy time on her exercise mat.  Little does she know that in a few days we will be starting tummy time on that mat!

Emily is still doing a great job at night.  We have started swaddling her now.  It helps her sleep and causes her to fuss less.  She usually starts with a 3 hour block of sleep, then eats, then sleeps 2 more hours before eating again.  The only catch here is that after 3am she turns into a little grunter.  She seems to sleep just fine, but the grunting has been something for me to get used to.  I am starting to do a pretty good job of sleeping through it - I'm not sure if its because I'm getting used to it, or if its because I am starting to get more and more fatigued!

During the day, Emily is a GREAT nap companion!  When we aren't napping, she prefers to be held (as all babies do).  The nice thing is that she is totally cool with being put in the sling if I am trying to get stuff done.  Abbie never tolerated the sling, which made life more difficult, but Emily seems to be a total trooper about it.  Yay!

Awake!

Now that she is a week old, Emily has started spending time each day wide awake and looking around.  This morning, Chad laid her down on her exercise mat and she spent a really long time looking at all the colors and even batting at a stuffed elephant over her head.  Most people would probably say that her actions weren't intentional, but they sure do seem as if they are.

Key for me is that all this new awake time is happening during the day and not at night.  She is still doing a great job of sleeping in about 2.5 hour stretches before she wakes up to eat.  Then, after she eats she is usually pretty easy to get back to sleep and will even fall asleep on her own without being held or nursed.  I'm trying to be a bit more conscious of this to avoid all the sleep issues that we ran into with Abbie when she was a baby.  Hopefully it will work.

A big yawn - just for fun.  It is really fun to see all the little faces and hear all the little noises that she makes.  There is no way to capture it all with a camera.  I need to spend some time filming her with the video camera.  I know Abbie did all this stuff, too, but it is just so easy to forget once they start getting bigger.

More photos

Here we are in our first family photo after Emily's arrival.  All in all a pretty good picture of us, and Emily even has her eyes open (a rarity).

Here is Emily all ready to leave the hospital.  She looks so much like Abbie looked when she was born.  It'll be interesting to see how much they look like each other as Emily gets older.

Meanwhile, life at home has been good.  Emily just sleeps all the time.  She is a really good eater and has already put on an ounce since she left the hospital.  Last night she had a couple of hours at dinner time when she was awake and looking all around.  It was so nice to see her eyes and to feel like we could really interact with her.

Announcing Emily Marie

We are happy to announce that after weeks of contractions that seemed to go nowhere, and after a quick 4-hour labor that started in the wee hours of the morning, Emily Marie made her entrance at 6:13am this morning.  She weighs 6lbs., 12oz. and is 18+ inches long.

The upside of this quick, "easy" labor is that mommy is feeling great and that Emily never developed the classic cone head, so she is looking great.  The downside is that she didn't have much time to make a smooth transition and has been struggling all day with amniotic fluid in her tummy that she keeps spitting up.  :(

That being said, she is doing all the classic baby things - sleeping, trying to eat a bit, and pooping.  We are expecting to go home tomorrow morning.  Hopefully once she gets all the junk out of her system she'll be even more interested in eating.  Stay tuned, as more pictures and updates will surely follow over the next few days.