Making Blueberry muffins

Pretty smile

1 month stats

Oops. I'm a little late (1 week and 2 days to be exact) on Reese's 1 month doctor's visit stats but here they are non-the-less.

Height-22 1/2 inches- 91st%
Weight- 10lbs 14 oz-89th%
Head circumference- 15 1/4 inches- 83rd%

The doctor looked Reese over and declared her healthy and had no concerns for her. When he asked about how feeding was going I mentioned the symptoms she had been experiencing and he said that it sounded like she had silent reflux. That is what I was thinking so it was nice he came up with the same conclusion I did without me telling him my opinion first. He told me to cut all spicy food out of my diet and to continue giving her the over the counter meds and see how it went and call him back on monday and see how she was doing because if she wasn't doing any better he wanted to put her on a prescription med. Well that night (thurs) it got worse and she was fighting me harder and harder and friday and saturday were worse still. Then saturday night she fought me so hard that she ended up throwing up her entire stomach's worth of breast milk all over me. I don't know if you have ever seen a 5 week old throw up, but it is scary. Poor girl was wiped out after it too. So after that I said enough was enough and called the doctor's exchange and they ended up calling in a prescription for Zantac for us.

So we have been on the Zantac since Sunday and it is definitely working, just not as night and day as I was hoping. She threw up once on Sunday again and (knock on wood) none since and overall the feedings are less drama and fighting. She seems to do the worse in the evening. I am thankful for the change I do see though because it was so sad to see her so panicky and having such a hard time eating. Obviously we were powering through it because she was gaining weight but it is still not fun to have to work that hard to get your child to eat. Plus no one wants to see their child in pain.

In more exciting news, Reese is sleeping so well!!!!! 2 and 3 nights ago she had a 6 hour stretch between her first night time feedings and last night she went 7 and a half! I am so happy and so proud of her! Especially since we had friends over last night and had such a great time that they did not leave until 1:30 am which means we probably didn't fall asleep until almost 2 am. I was sure she was going to get up any minute when I laid down but next thing I know it was 4 am. Then she ate, we were in bed again at 4:45am and she slept til 8am so even though I didn't go to bed til almost 2, I still ended up getting 5 hours of sleep over 2 stretches, which surprisingly has me feeling pretty good right now. I am going to try to get a nap in today so that will help too. So she was so nice to her crazy parents that were hanging on the deck and pretending that they were young again.

Also Reese is smiling a ton now and man is she cute! Donovan has really started to show an interest in her these past few days and it is so fun. He will often call for her, saying "Baby REEE-eessee". He wants to hold her and hug and kiss on her a lot now and has his stool right next to the pack and play so he can comment on her poopy diapers as he watches her get changed. Donovan is really into getting tucked in under his big blanket right now so he wants to tuck Reese in under her blankets, even if I have untucked her on purpose. Oh well, it's adorable.

Ok well better late then never. I need to post some video of and tell a story about Donovan and baseball soon so hopefully I will get to that in the next few days.

Reese photo shoot

For father's day for both grandpa's we gave them a framed picture of Reese and her footprint. Both grandma's got the same for mother's day when Donovan was a baby so we had to make sure Reese was represented as well. I took about 30 pictures of Reese and finally settled on one to frame but here are some of my favorites.






Dono decided to love on the covergirl after he saw how cute she was.

Holding her hand.

Snuggling.

In awe of his sister.

Tummy time...

is a group activity around here.


Reese getting some support from her dad, brother and Grandpa B.

Happy 1 Month to Reese!

Our little girl is one month old today! Time has flown. Here is what we are up to...

She is a pretty good baby overall. Not totally laid back but not as crazy demanding as her big brother. She will sleep in her cradle and pack and play by herself, as well as her swing, which are all welcome departures from what Donovan would do. She does not sleep half as soundly during the day as she does at night though unless she is in your arms so much of the day she is being held. She does request this as well so we have already broken out the baby bjorn since when I have both her and her brother by myself and her brother needs help with something, I can't do it so easily with her in my arms. She still loves to be swaddled and sleeps best when swaddled tightly. She does fight sleep during the day and will often make you walk laps around the house holding her before she finally surrenders and goes to sleep. You would think this would have allowed me to lose my baby weight by now but no no, don't you fear, I'm still hanging on to some. At night she does much better going right back to sleep after feedings. In fact, sometimes she only eats for about 5 min and then insists on sleeping which does not make her mama happy at all. Before the last two nights I could count on her doing one 4 hour break between feedings for the first break at night, then a 3 hour one and then the rest being 2 or 3 hours between feedings til it was time to get up. The last two nights have been bad. Only going 3 hours at first and then every 2 or less. Boooo. Lets hope that was a small fluke and tonight will be better because getting 4-5 hours of sleep a night for a mommy, all in hour nap increments is no good.

In other feeding news I thought she had reflux for a while but now I think she might just be an over eager feeder at times. She will be eating and then all the sudden get very frantic and panic looking, then her face will get red and she will start fighting my boob and yelling, all while still latched on and eating. Then she ends up gulping down air and needs to be burped more often, which then produce beer drinking man sized burps. It's very frustrating for both of us when she does this because she ends up eating so poorly. As a result of this, on friday night she ate so poorly that I think she backed up my milk and gave me Mastitis. Lovely. I thought it was reflux at first and we tried some over the counter meds that didn't really do anything for her, but I don't know if that is it anymore since she only does this during the day and not at every feeding. It's strange. Hopefully she will grow out of it soon.

In other news she is one feisty girl with her movement. She is pushing up with her feet, trying to stand pretty often now, especially when I have her facing me and I am burping her. She also rolls over multiple times every time we do tummy time. Her head and neck control are getting pretty good too. And on occasion she will flash us a smile, which just makes me start to count down the days until she turns 6 weeks old and really starts to smile for real. She is definitely filling out as well. I love the cheeks she is getting and her new thigh rolls delight me. I love the extra work I have to do to clean them every diaper change and bath. They are just so dang adorable. She just graduated to size 1 diapers on Sunday after multiple days of pooping out of her newborns, so it is probably something we should have done days ago. She is also too big for most of her newborn clothes, but not quite big enough for the 0-3 month ones so she is in the gray area. She ends up just wearing clothes a little too baggy for her currently.

Overall she is a pretty bright eyed baby. She wants to know what is going on around her at all times, which is also why she fights sleep during the day so hard if you ask me. I love giving her kisses and calling her "girl friend". It just rolls off the tongue. I told Tom tonight that I never thought I would have a daughter so little things like the fact that I get to take her to get her ears pierced sometime, and I get to paint her toenails and possibly enroll her in dance class are so exciting to think about for me right now. Oh the possibilities! I think those are the basic one month facts. We go to the doctor on thursday so you will have to wait til then for more facts. I need to get to bed anyways, especially how things have been going these past few nights.

Pictures from our bath tonight.


A little blurry but this was the tail end of a smile.

And for posterity's sake, this is Donovan's belated 2 year growth picture, with the appropriate age documented. With all the hub-bub around his birthday with this pregnancy and what not, we forgot to take one so tonight he got to take one after Reese was done. Oops.

Siblings

Dono "helping" fix Reese's bouncer. (I had taken that part off on purpose. He disagreed with that decision obviously.)
"Oh Hi brother!" Sweet brother kisses.

Bother and sister.
This was Dono going in for the kiss right before Reese lost it. As soon as she started crying he hopped off that couch so fast you would have thought it was on fire. She scared her big brother.

Stickers!

Donovan is really into the "Cars" characters Tow Mater and Lightning McQueen and last time we were at the Dr's I picked up some "Cars" stickers for him. Then promptly forgot about them. So few days ago I got them out and gave them to him and he was in heaven.

These first pictures are from when he first got them at night after his bath. He really wanted them on his arms so I obliged. When he was done with them on his body and shirt we put them on his toy tub, then back on him, then eventually on his wipe container.

I love how happy he looks in these pictures.


Then the next day he woke up and requested the stickers be put on him again. I have no idea how they had any stick in them left but by the grace of God, they did. He was only in a diaper when he put these on originally but I put shorts on for the picture.

My two bathing beauties

Missy in her bikini or "kini" onsie.

Fiesty

Just a short little video I took of Reese, trying to get some tummy time. She had other plans.