Milestones

Prior to having Elsa 5 weeks ago, I'd always kind of secretly scoffed at the whole milestone thing and thought it was kind of silly that parents would worry about their kids and whether they were hitting milestones at the proper times and all that went with it.  In my mind, I always reasoned that "every child is different and will hit the milestones on their own time".  Which of course it true, but I didn't understand the worrying about it part.  Of course, when I thought of milestones I'd only think of the big ones - rolling over, sitting up, crawling, and walking.  I didn't realize that there are SO MANY!!

So about a week ago, when Elsa was 4 weeks old, I started worrying about whether she was developing like she should be (I just don't know what babies do and learn at different times so wanted to know that Elsa was normal).  I now completely understand the worrying part!  For me right now, we know that Elsa is in good health and physically she's doing well according to her doctor, but we can't know whether she's all normal mentally and socially and all those other measures!  So I started wondering, when should a baby be smiling?  What's the acceptable age range for that to start?  I hear of some babies smiling really early but what's too late?  Elsa makes little smiley looks sometimes but not in response to anything, it's just when she's making various faces - so I was getting worried that she wasn't developing properly maybe.  (My pediatrician, when we were discussing vaccinations and autism and such, told me that kids who are eventually diagnosed with autism usually showed signs early on, such as not smiling - hence me really really wanting Elsa to start smiling!)  So I googled milestones and found THIS SITE which I like because it gives a big long list and the target ages that things should ideally happen at.

Usually when I do one of my worrying google searches, I actually end up freaking myself out more - which Jody hates!  But this is one time that it has made me feel better.  I've gone through the list and been mentally checking off the things she's hit or partially hit and from what I see so far, my little girl is normal and pretty much on track!  Yay!!!  Of course, there are a couple things I've noted to pay more attention to - for example, grasping.  It says that between 4 and 6 weeks babies should be able to grasp an object when their fingers are pried open and they drop it quickly after.  I guess technically Elsa has done this, but maybe just about 5 times or so and usually she doesn't grasp what I try to put in her hand.  Her little fingers are really hard to pry apart too, which may partially explain that!  Anyway though, I want to work with her more on opening her fingers and putting something in them to get her practicing her grasping!  I also see some things coming up on the immediate age horizon and know to look for them, and to try to help her in developing some of these little skills.

And as for smiling, the website says that should be between 6 weeks and 3 months, so that calmed me down a little.  Of course, my pediatrician said "if she's not smiling by 2 months then let me know, there may be a problem" - that so freaks me out so I want Elsa to be smiling in the next three weeks, oh I so hope she does cause then I'll feel so much more relaxed!!  In the last two to three days, when she's in a good mood and I have her laying on her back and am doing baby bicycles with her little legs and talking excitedly to her about it, she looks like she's smiling and happy but it's not clear enough that it's a real smile, but it still makes me so excited to see it!  So here's to hoping and cheering for Elsa to smile soon for mommy!!!  :)

I will say that her neck is surprisingly strong!!  I've even noticed such a difference over the past week, it's so cool to really notice it!  And her little legs are really strong, too, both when she pushes out with them against us, or when we hold her up to "stand" and she presses her little legs down so strongly!  And over the past 3-4 days, she's a couple times followed a toy from one side of her head to the other side - turning her head to follow it (they were toys with sounds, and she definitely doesn't usually do it but the fact that a couple times she has made me so happy!)!  Anyway, it's so super cool to see that she's so far on track!!!  I honestly don't need her to do anything early - I just want her to be in the normal range of things so I don't worry, and beyond that I just want her to be a happy baby and I'll be a happy mommy!

Here's a photo from this past Monday, Elsa's 1-month birthday!!  She's so cute!!!

Pacifier/Soother Love

Elsa right after she started sucking on a pacifier for the first time - she's so cute!

I was really torn about whether to use a pacifier with Elsa or not.  On the one hand, it's said to reduce the chances of SIDS, which is a HUGE positive!  And also the Baby Whisperer said it's really good cause it teaches them how to self-soothe.  On the other hand, people say it can affect the way their teeth come in, it may cause nipple confusion, and more importantly I worried that she may get attached to it (or I may) and that could somehow affect other things - like her being verbal abilities or activity level or something.  I really hadn't looked a ton into it though, such as reading what all the various experts said, so I still didn't feel super strong either way.  BUT, because of the SIDS thing, I figured I would start introducing it somewhere between 1 and 2 months.

From my last post, you know that we started using it on her 1 month birthday.  I've been experimenting with it a little since then - in when to use it and in trying to help Elsa learn to fall asleep by using it.  It's often really hard for Elsa to fall asleep - she just won't or can't do it, so she stays awake and gets overly tired and then super fussy and anxious and unhappy with everything, and it ends up being a two-hour process (especially in the evenings), with the last hour at least with a super fussy baby.  So I'm trying to recognize her signs of getting tired, and then trying to get her calm and soothed and happy so she can let herself fall asleep.

I've had luck a couple times during the day - I'll play with her for awhile and then I see one yawn, and then two yawns, and then I lay her down and hold her, cover her with a blanket, and put the pacifier in.  I also did it once with her in her bouncer.  It worked two or three times, well it still took her over half an hour to fall asleep, but she was calm the whole time and relaxed and eventually it worked.  Last night/this morning she was awake from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. and the pacifier didn't seem to help at all with her falling asleep faster, although she was super calm and relaxed the whole time instead of fussy.  And tonight she started getting fussy and tired at a little before 8 p.m., and usually (based especially on the previous two nights) we'd be in for a lot of crying and fussing for the next two hours until she could get herself to sleep, but tonight she was pretty calm - it still took her until 10 p.m. to fall asleep, but there was minimal crying and lots of a relaxed little Elsa just being awake.

Sooooo, I'm liking it so far!  It's at least very useful in helping to relax her, and that's a pretty fabulous thing when you have a fussy baby!!!  But I don't want to overuse it, and I certainly don't want to be shoving it into her little mouth too often, but to relax her when she's being fussy is very good.  And I hope it will also start to help in getting her to fall asleep - I need to work on figuring that out more.  So I'm a happy mommy right now and also feel like I'm making some good headway on figuring out how my little girl works, and how to help her at least relax, if not fall asleep yet.  And yet I'm still going to be paying close attention to only giving it to her when we need to, or to relax her so she doesn't spiral downward when she's tired, but I want to also make sure she's getting good stimulation and play during her awake times (and before she starts getting tired) - I just hope I can help her learn to fall asleep more quickly cause otherwise I so far see the pacifier as the only way to go there, otherwise she so quickly gets so super upset.  Anyway though, it's a good start and I'm very happy that I can help her soothe herself now and get relaxed, I think it's a very good thing for her emotional development!  :)

Now here are a few more photos, some from awhile go - I'm catching up!  :)

November 2 (Elsa 1 1/2 weeks old) - Daddy cuddling our little sweetie, in her little baby ball which I love!  :)

November 11 (3 weeks old) - little Elsa sleeping in her car seat, and a tiny smile-look on her face!

Little crying face!

November 11 (3 weeks old) - Daddy and Elsa

November 12 (3 weeks old) - sleeping on the pillow after some skin-to-skin time with Mommy

November 17 (almost 4 weeks) - sleeping in her little swing

November 17 (almost 4 weeks) - dancing with Daddy (I have some SUPER CUTE video of this!) - and please forgive the awful-looking mattress standing up there, we need to move that so the photos can be good there!

November 17 (almost 4 weeks) - closeup of Elsa staring at the big computer screen while Daddy makes her dance!  :)

November 19 (4 weeks) - mommy and Elsa self-portrait.  Elsa wasn't too into it but so far it's my only self-portrait I've done, and I have basically no other good photos of the two of us together so I love this!

Good Day vs. Bad Day

Elsa at the mall with me today!!  :)

Today was a very good day!  Well especially compared to yesterday, so I was soooooo thankful for today!  I don't want to go into a ton of detail about yesterday because really it wasn't anything so bad or out of the ordinary at all, but yet emotionally I hit a wall and was so stressed/frustrated/scared/tired/etc. 

Some days it seems like Elsa cries, while not all the time, much of the time or most of the time.  I've never sat down and documented a day so I know what proportion of her awake time she's happy as opposed to fussy or crying, but it sometimes seems like the proportion is really overpowered by the fussy and crying times.  I usually manage okay or well and just go with the flow, but it does worry me sometimes and somehow yesterday I suddenly felt so overwhelmed with so many emotions and it kept spiraling downward.

I felt so frustrated that she seemed to be crying 90% of the time that she was awake.  I felt sad for the image I'd had in my mind all these years of me playing with a happy and cooing baby and how far that image was from our current reality.  I felt so guilty for feeling sad and frustrated.  I felt alone.  I felt like I was going to be trapped in the house by myself because how can I go out or be with friends when I have a fussy baby all the time.  I was so worried for the future if this is indicative of her temperament.  I felt so helpless in knowing what to do to work with her temperament and better prepare her for a good life.  I felt so guilty then at the negative thoughts and worries I was having about my self-diagnosed personality issues with my one-month-old.  And it went on and on.

Like I said at the beginning, nothing out of the ordinary happened yesterday and she wasn't necessarily crying more than she had been before or more than usual, but it just really stressed me out for some reason at that time.  I talked to Jody on the phone and he could hear in my voice that I was emotionally exhausted.  I kept crying, I kept worrying and feeling frustrated, and I kept feeling guilty for feeling that way.  And I really just wanted her to stop crying.

My feelings started when she woke up in the afternoon after a long sleep and I took her upstairs to quickly take some 1-month-old photos.  I'd made the room super warm and was all ready, and she was so good for a few minutes and took some very cute and funny photos that I love, but then she started crying and I wrapped her up to keep her warm and tried everything - diaper, feeding, cuddling, burping, leg bends for gas, walking, bouncing her, rocking her, distracting her, etc.  This definitely isn't the first time at all that this has happened and yesterday it didn't even last that long compared to other times, but it was just so hard all of a sudden and I so wished I could just have a happy baby for more of the time instead of a crying and sometimes wailing one.  (And yes, I feel guilty even writing all this because I feel like this makes me a bad mom to have felt so overwhelmed and unhappy with her baby - I keep feeling like I should justify it more or add in more good things so people won't negatively judge me, but I'm trying also to not do that and just be honest that I was overwhelmed and I know it happens and logically I know it's okay and doesn't say anything bad about my love for my daughter or my mothering abilities.)

Elsa eventually fell asleep, pretty quickly actually - I could tell she was tired from her eyes but yet she'd just been sleeping for a long time and it often takes her a very long time to fall asleep, so I was really happy that at that time of all times, she fell asleep quickly.  And then I had a little victory in that I finally got to take some cute sleeping baby photos of her, I'd felt like such a failure for all the times I'd tried and she wouldn't be having any of it so not having any of the sweet photos of my own little daughter seriously made me feel awful as a photographer and mother.  So now I have some cute ones and I'm so thankful for what I was able to get!

Elsa woke up again after I'd taken some photos, and again started crying, and I got her all dressed and warm while she cried, and again did all the soothing and checking things I could think of, and while she wasn't wailing anymore, she was still fussing and starting to cry frequently.  So then I tried a pacifier/soother.  Jody and I talked on the phone about it beforehand and agreed that we would try that, and I'd wanted to hold out a month and she was one month that day so I felt fine about it.  It took a little bit of holding the pacifier in her mouth gently, but then she took it and started sucking and calmed right down, and I held her while she soothed herself for a good twenty minutes - it was SO peaceful and quiet and calming and I looked at her adorable little face and felt so thankful.  I then started skimming parts of the Baby Whisperer book (I've listened to the abridged audiobook a few times but I see now that there's way more info in the actual book) and saw that the author highly recommends using pacifiers so babies learn how to self-sooth, which is a really important emotional skill and it's good to teach them that skill early on in life.  That made me so happy to read and to know that pacifiers are actually a good thing!  Of course we won't overuse it, but now I understand the benefits and that it actually wasn't good to not give it to her earlier cause our baby can definitely benefit from it (whereas I'm sure there are some babies who have no need for it as well).

Anyway, Jody came home soon after that and we shared holding her as we always do, but he held her more than I did and gave me a break which I really needed.  I was still so emotional and crying often, and so worried about how she would be as she got older and if this early fussiness was a sign of much more to come.  It was a low for me for sure.

This morning Elsa woke up crying again but somehow I was in a much better mental state, even though I didn't get much sleep at all (my doing, not anything to do with Elsa).  I got her to stop crying which made me feel really good of course, and somehow everything was looking up and Elsa was pretty happy and I was happy.  I was also happy cause we were going to be making our first mommy-baby outing alone!  And I was so happy to be getting out of the house and starting to learn to be a mom to her in the big world and not just in our house.  We were meeting my friend Tavia (and her little girl Lucy) at the mall - yay!  Elsa somehow magically fell very asleep just a little before we left, so she was asleep even as I put her in her car seat!  And she slept for the ride there and for over two hours of us walking around!  She woke up just as Tavia was about to leave and I picked her up out of her car seat and she got fussy and started crying just as I was walking us into the family area and private breastfeeding room.

I spent a whole hour in there, mostly in the little room cause after eating, Elsa was fussy for awhile but I was managing to keep it contained and not let it get too out of control - or else she was just being pretty nice to me!  :)  I talked for awhile with another mom in the room who has a 4-month-old, and she made me feel so much better that it will get easier and better.  And really I didn't feel out of control, I felt like I was doing a good job with her in there.  And I loved too that while in there I realized just how much stronger her little neck has become so it's so easy for me to hold her different ways now like on my shoulder, and I also saw her touching more things which made me happy (I'll address all this in a different post on milestones!)!  She was so calm when I changed her diaper out in the main area, and then I went back in the breastfeeding room to relax her a little more before leaving.  I gave her the pacifier when she seemed sleepy and she actually went back to sleep!  So she didn't fuss when I put her in her car seat and she slept on the ride home and even during a quick errand into a store!  Then she kept sleeping after we got home and we even went back out on another errand (I left her in her car seat cause she was sleeping).

So from this morning, her schedule was: 7:30-9:00 - awake.  9:00-12:00 - asleep.  12:00-1:00 - awake.  1:00-5:00 - asleep.  5:00-10:00 - awake.  Yes, a 5-hour block of time tonight!  She was happy and so cute and sweet for the first maybe 3 hours.  Then the last two she was increasingly fussy and super fussy for the last hour.  One of her big problems I know is that she doesn't fall asleep easily.  I read that the average baby takes at least 20 minutes to fall asleep, and some children take much longer.  She'll be so tired and we know she needs to sleep but she just won't fall asleep and gets more and more unhappy with absolutely everything.  I think the pacifier helped at times for sure, but it also was a struggle getting her to accept it which is hard.  But she definitely is soothed by it most of the time once she takes it.  It definitely takes a lot of patience though when she's in her super-tired-super-fussy stages, and it really helps too when Jody is there so we can take turns holding our fussy baby.  I feel like us using a pacifier is a good first step, but we need to work at figuring out how to get her to fall asleep better otherwise I see many hard times ahead.  We talked about a couple different things today, and I want to read a few things in a couple books to see what they recommend.

So since she fell asleep at 10, and had some snacks throughout the evening, I'm guessing she'll probably start making her noises around 12:30 or 1:00 and I'll probably get up with her between 1:00 and 2:00.  (Elsa is really loud in her sleep!  She'll sleep quietly and soundly half the time, and the other half of the time she'll suddenly make loud chirping noises or grunts or such, all in her sleep but it wakes me up!)

Anyway, this got much much much much longer than I intended!  I guess I had a lot to say.  Certainly yesterday was a very hard day for me, and then today was such a good day and such a big thing for me that our first outing and errands went so well!  It definitely gives me much more confidence to be able to go out now, either for short errands or to the mall to walk around.  So it's a big deal and big accomplishment for me!!!

Oh one more thing!  This may be TMI if there's ever a guy who actually reads all of this but since I think it will mostly be just girls, and since this is my little place to write whatever I want, I'm mentioning it!  On Sunday I stopped wearing the ugly granny panties that I'd gotten for after-baby wear and went back to my normal little panties with just a pantyliner in them - and I don't think I'll have to wear the pantyliner for much longer at all - yay!!!  I feel so good not wearing those big things anymore!  I feel more like me again!  Now I just need to start losing the 20 pounds that's still there.  I think going to the mall and walking will help a little cause at least it's better than just being here in the house.  And in two more weeks I can start exercising any way I want again - I think my best bet will be to get a workout DVD and doing it 3 or 4 times a week here, and with little weights as well.  I hope that, combined with eating well and walking at the mall, will help a large part start to come off.  And I hope it happens soon cause I can only wear my maternity pants still - my butt is too big to fit into any pre-pregnancy pants, I hate that!  Go away butt!!!!

Okay that's all for my big couple days!  To finish up, I'll say how thankful I am to have had such a good day to follow my low of days.  I felt more in control today, I felt hopeful and happy and very very in love with little Elsa all day, and I didn't even feel any real frustration at all even tonight when she was really fussy, and that makes me so happy!

Little Elsa so cute in her car seat last Friday!  She looks like such a little angel, so so so adorable!!

Happy 1 Month B-day, little Elsa!!!

Our little girl is 1 month old today!  So crazy how it seems like just a couple weeks ago that I gave birth, but it also feels like she's been with us for more like 2 or 3 months, she's so part of our lives now.

Here are a few photos from Elsa's birthday - October 22, I love all these photos SOOOOOOOOO much!!!!!  I'll repost these as well as a bunch more when I post our birth story, but for now just a few from the couple hours after Elsa was born, oh such an absolutely amazing day!!!  :) :) (And yes I see that the larger photos overlap the column on the right but I don't care, the larger photos are better and I hope to change the template soon anyway!)

LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE

LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE

She had some seriously long fingernails already!  And you can't tell from this photo, but her little hands and feet actually looked kind of scary the first few days - they looked kind of red and scaly almost.  Then they started to fill out and had peeling skin for a week as the old smaller and dry skin was coming off.  She has adorable and perfect little baby hands and feet now!

She had SUCH a conehead!  And the top of her poor little head was all bruised, too - all from coming out facing upwards instead of downwards, which made the labor much harder on both of us.  We don't actually have a really good photo of just how much of a conehead she had, so this one sort of shows it!  :)

I LOVE this, Jody first holding his little girl (a little over an hour after she was born), and it looks like she's looking right at Daddy!  :)

Daddy protecting his little girl from the bright lights!

And here's one quick photo of Elsa from today, at 1 month old!!

This is definitely not the greatest photo of her but I had a limited time to take photos and then she wasn't having any more of it!

I have so many cute photos to post!!!  I should be able to get to them by the end of this week (and also posting a couple each day - I'll go through just a few at a time so I can post photos more frequently!)!

My sweet little girl at 3 weeks old!

She's soooooo cute!!!!  :) :) :)

Random iPhone photos 1 - sleep

This last one makes me laugh!  Elsa often makes faces in her sleep when she's not in a deep sleep - I sometimes think she's about to wake up but then she drifts back off again.  This was one such little face!  :)

Elsa's 4-week doctor check-up

Elsa had her second doctor appointment on Friday (two days ago).  She was 4 weeks old that day!

It was going to be my first solo outing with her, but it snowed a ton the night before so Jody didn't want me to have to drive on bad roads for my first time out with her which made me very happy (even though she slept the whole time there and back, but in case she had been crying the snow would have been double the stress).  So daddy came to her second doctor appointment, too!  I love these two photos of Jody with Elsa!  We had to get her undressed down to her diaper and he was cuddling her in her blanket to keep her warm!  :)  :)

So here are Elsa's current growth stats:

Weight
Birth: 6 lb, 3 oz
Her low weight after birth: 5 lb, 7 oz
2 weeks: just under 7 lb
4 weeks: 8 lb, 4 oz


Height
Birth: 19.25 inches
2 weeks: 19.25 inches
4 weeks: 20 inches


Head Circumference
2 weeks: 34.5 cm
4 weeks: 37 cm


I knew she had grown!  She still wears newborn size but a couple of the sleepers are really snug now in length, and she fits now in a couple of the smaller 0-3 month sleepers that were too big before (most of that size are still way too big though).  And she has a little double chin sometimes and her little legs look a tiny bit thicker than before!


I talked to the doctor about possible acid reflux - I had read about other babies having it, and over the past week or two Elsa had been spitting up a lot, she got the hiccups after almost every feeding, she sometimes cries after burping, and she sometimes chokes a little when eating.  When I googled infant acid reflux all these things were listed as symptoms.  So it was bothering me so much thinking she might be in pain (and I thought maybe it could explain some of her fussiness).  The doctor gave us a prescription for baby Zantac, we give her a syrup twice a day and I immediately noticed a difference!  She hasn't spit up nearly as much, that's the biggest thing by far, and she also hasn't gotten the hiccups as much.  I hope it keeps getting better, I'm so happy we have this now!  Poor Elsa hates it though!  :(  Her expression when I give her the syrup is actually so funny, it's the face of just hating the taste (it smells very pepperminty, but of course she's only ever had sweet breastmilk so I can see why she doesn't like it).  I should video her reaction cause it's so funny!


The doctor also showed us that Elsa had diaper rash - I'd seen it being red before sometimes but didn't know that it was that.  So we've been putting diaper rash cream on her now and maybe it's helping her feel a little better.


And we also talked about gas - cause Elsa definitely gets gas.  We often wake in the morning to Elsa pushing and straining and we hear poop but also farts, and sometimes at other times during the day she strains and pushes as well and sometimes we hear little farts.  But also sometimes she seems to be straining but nothing comes out, so I attribute at least some of her fussiness to gas discomfort.  I try doing baby bicycles with her but I've never gotten a fart out from that.  The doctor said it would help the gas move and get out though, so I'll keep doing them regularly and sometimes it seems to soothe or calm her.


I think that's all!  Her next appointment is on December 29, the day after we get back from Michigan.  She's getting her first shots that day.  I'm still not totally sure about my thoughts on vaccinations, but so far I can see the benefit in these early ones.  I still may decide to put them off a little though, but right now the plan is for her to have them.  I do plan right now though to put off the MMR shot when it's time for her to get it, that one is the one that scares me the most.


On the way home we got her passport photo taken!  It took a long time and may tries cause the requirements are so strict and yes, even for a newborn.  Her head had to be straight on so both ears could be seen, she had to be looking sort of towards the camera, and her mouth couldn't be wide open.  And her head had to be centered and the right size for the image, and you couldn't see any hands holding her head.  After lots of tries I think we have a good one, although it's so weird cause it doesn't look like her to me, I mean I could pick it out as her being my baby but she just looks SO different.  Also she's wearing the sleeper that I call her prison sleeper in it cause it's just gray and white lines, so it looks like such a little mug shot!  So funny!  Our little girl is getting her very first passport!!  :)  Here's a very funny photo Jody took - we first tried putting her in the bumbo seat but she was too little so the top of the seat was way showing which wouldn't be allowed, but we couldn't stop laughing at how funny she looked sitting in it, so tiny and also her expression was hilarious - she wasn't impressed!!!  :)  So cute and funny!!!

Okay that's the report on her doctor appointment!!  And here's one more photo - a silly little Elsa photo that I love, it makes me so happy when I see it!!  :)

Introduction :: Another Mommy Blog!

I've heard that mommy blogs are super popular and there are way too many out there.  Oh well!  I have so many thoughts each day and I don't want to just be putting up tons of Facebook status updates every day to document them all (which I don't do so then I don't write them down at all often).  Instead I want a place to be able to write anything I'm thinking about, and then all our family and friends can go directly to the site instead of me writing many different emails.  And then also, it's all in one place so I can look back, and Elsa can read this blog when she gets older - I'll print it out and put it in her baby book (and typing is way faster than writing and I'll write much more on this blog than I would in her baby book, so it's a win-win!)! 

Elsa will be 1 month old tomorrow!!  It's so crazy that on the one hand I feel like it wasn't nearly a month ago that I gave birth (that day is so strong in my memory, it was completely the most amazing day of my life so far and I wish I could relive it over and over!), and yet I also completely feel like Elsa has been with us and in our lives for much longer than just a month.  So anyway, tomorrow I get to print out a sign that says "I'm 1 month old!" and sit her in a chair next to it for photos!!  Hopefully she won't be fussy so I can get some cute photos - and I want some with just a diaper on and some with a cute baby outfit! 

I also have hardly any photos of her and I together, and really no cute photos or photos of her and I when she's awake (except for one photo I took on my iphone where she's sleeping on me that I like) so I'm going to try to take some good self-portraits of us together tomorrow.  I keep saying I want Jody to take photos of us (and we need some good ones of the three of us, too!) but 1) the sun sets so early now so we could only do it on weekends and 2) on weekends either we do other things and we're tired from it or I don't put on any makeup and at least for the good photos I love, I want makeup on.  I love a couple of the photos from right after she was born in the hospital, but also 95% are horrible of me - I had SO MUCH water retention and literally my second chin was as big as my normal chin and my face looked soooooo huge, so while I love those photos they aren't ones that I would necessarily print out for everyone to see.

Here's the iPhone self-portrait I took, I LOVE LOVE LOVE so much when she's in her little baby ball, it's so so so cute to me!!!  :)  And her cuddling and sleeping on my chest is absolutely one of my favorite things in the whole world, I feel so happy and peaceful and like everything is right with the world when she's like that!

Okay, that's all for my very first post.  I need to try to make this blog look a little customized.  And I want to eventually move it over to my own domain name and use the same blog format that I use for my photography blog so the photos are nice and big!  Big photos are the best!!! 

I have SOOOOOOOOO much to post!!!!  And now that I have a place to do it and can write whatever I want I'll be doing it so much!!!  Coming up will be (not in this order necessarily): Elsa's birth story with photos, my thoughts on my wonderful husband over the past month, Elsa's little boogie and gas and reflux problems, my recent obsession with milestones and wanting to make sure Elsa is developing like she should be, my thoughts on missing being pregnant and adjusting to mommyhood and the lack of independence that goes along with it, my worries about my fur-babies and them being sad, and so many other thoughts and worries and observations and all that!!!  And of course photos!!!  :)

p.s. When I was just finished writing the above stuff, Elsa woke up from her half hour nap, after being awake for 2 1/2 hrs before that, and it took me another hour to get her back to sleep - an hour filled with lots of fussiness and crying.  I will also be occasionally getting some of my frustration out through writing.  I love my little girl so much but it's certainly not always all roses and butterflies and easy, and sometimes I do wish I had an easier baby and that she wasn't so fussy and easily upset.  I try to tell myself that I wasn't an easy baby for my parents when I was really young and I turned out fine, so it's just something we need to get through and I keep hoping that she'll be less fussy when she's a little older and can do more and understand more.  I hope, cause the fussiness is emotionally and mentally exhausting sometimes.  It will probably help me to be able to write down my thoughts when I'm frustrated sometimes or feeling overwhelmed or sad - it always helps me to get things out in writing and then I can go back to being fine.  She's very cutely sleeping now at least, and hopefully she'll be asleep for a few hours now since she's been awake so much, and then when she wakes hopefully she'll be her cute and happy self cause when she's fussy recently I worry so much about her being in pain from gas or reflux and that's so hard, to think of my little girl in pain and me not being able to just fix it for her.  Okay more on that in a later post.  I'm so happy already that I started this blog!