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| Dec 16 - Elsa discovered she could bat at her toys!!! |
So yes, this little girl has so captured my heart. I love every little sound she makes. I love every little face she makes. I love all her different expressions, all her different moods. I love the way she stretches huge when she's waking up. I love the chirping sounds she makes in her sleep. I love the way her little legs kick out when she's playing on the floor. I love the way she rubs her eyes. I love the way she spits out her pacifier and then immediately wants it back, and turns her head to the side opening her mouth for it. I love the excited expression she makes when she's hungry and knows she's about to get food. I love the way she keeps opening and closing her little mouth when she's really hungry after a very long sleep. I love the way she smiles and laughs when she's in her little gym. I love the silly milk-drunk face she makes after eating. I love the way she stares at the big painting behind our couch. I love her little face when she's laying on my chest and looking up at the painting. I love her little grunts when she's trying to push out a fart. I love how silly it sounds when she pushes out a big poop explosion. I even love the smell of her poop - yes, I did say that and yes I do, it smells sweet and so her so somehow I love it. I love the little curve of her nose. I love how her whole eye area, from eyebrow down, turns red when she's upset or tired. I love her expression of disgust when I give her her medicine twice a day (I understand, when I taste it on her pacifier I make the same face). I love the sound of her half-upset cry. I love how she calms down and stares at me when I cradle her tight, hold her hands and keep her pacifier in her mouth. I love the loud sailor burps she has sometimes. I love how she grasps at me with one hand while she's breastfeeding. I love how soft the top of her head is. I love how perfectly plump and soft her little cheeks are. I love her excited kissy face. I love her silly pirate face. I love love love her stretching-back-and-to-the-side face (I still haven't captured that on camera, it's one thing I NEED to capture). I love her little arms. I love her little legs. I love her little feet. I love her little belly. I love how she's loud in her sleep sometimes (not because it's fun for me but because it's something that's her so it's so cute to me). I love how she laughs and smiles for me when I talk excitedly to her. I love how she cries while I'm sucking out boogies but is immediately fine afterward. I love her smell. I love how she loves me doing baby bicycles on her. I love holding her when she sleeps. I love kissing her and her little various expressions when I do. I love how she loves her bounces and jumps. I love being close to her. I love looking at her. I love my little daughter so much. My heart is so full.
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| My silly girl!! :) December 15 - almost 8 weeks old |
Now to more deep and sad thoughts, but thoughts that come because I realize just how strong a mother's protective and unconditional love is. I sometimes find myself thinking of all the mothers who ever existed who lost their children and how absolutely awful it must have been for them. I don't know why I have these terrible thoughts sometimes. When Elsa is having a bad stretch sometimes and is wailing and wailing in my arms, it's awful and stressful for me but I deal okay - but I find that when she's crying like that and I'm not holding her, it's almost painful for me and I NEED to hold her to try to soothe her. It was during one of her first baths at home, when Jody was giving her the bath and I was taking photos and she was wailing - and I was telling her it was okay but she was just looking at me wailing away, that I suddenly thought of all the mothers whose babies were torn from their arms and the babies were wailing and the mothers were powerless to go to them - I can't imagine that pain as a mother, not being able to hold and soothe your baby and let them know they are loved and protected and safe. My mind went to the Holocaust for some reason, and mothers with babies who got off trains, and probably had their crying babies torn from their arms before they were sent to the camps alone - and their last view of their babies was their babies looking at them wailing, begging to be rescued and held and loved and instead it was the opposite. I started tearing up right there during her bath when these images and emotions started flashing through my mind, and I managed to bring myself back to reality but it's stuck with me and I've thought of it a number of times since. Jody watched a documentary recently and in it, a woman and her friend were murdered in their house and her infant was in the house at the time, and that has stuck in my head, what this woman must have been thinking when she knew she was going to be killed and she couldn't get to her baby to protect it, and also knew her baby would grow up without her. I'm certainly not thinking about these terrible scenarios and situations all the time or most of the time, but I guess it's my way of acknowledging that in some ways, it's scary to love someone so much and feel so protective of them. My heart so goes out to all the women throughout history who have had to go through awful situations of having their children taken from them or hurt, I truly can't imagine the pain and in some cases, how they could go on.
So back to happy thoughts and reality! Last Thursday, December 16th, Elsa first batted at a toy!! I was so excited and proud and she did it over and over again! They were the toys that hang down on her bouncer, and before that day I'd had the toy bar taken off so that was the first time she was sort of sitting up with toys hanging in front of her (as opposed to laying down in her gym with toys hanging above her head - I often take her little hands and show her how to bat at the toys, but she has never done it on her own before).
Elsa is also becoming such a good little sleeper now! She usually sleeps at least 5 hours in a stretch at the start of the night, and in the last week she's had a number of nights with 6 or 7 hours in that first stretch!! So nice for me!!! And she's so cute when she does wake up then, cause I pick her up and she's immediately opening and closing her little mouth and rooting towards me, it's so adorable! And if I take too long to get the pillow adjusted and get everything set, she starts fussing! So I'm usually up with her for an hour then, I first feed her and burp her, then change her, then feed her again, and then it takes awhile to lull her back to sleep (I stay very quiet the whole time and don't talk to her, and when I have her settled in my arms afterward I put her pacifier in and then I do my own thing - reading news on my phone, etc. - while she is quiet and eventually falls back asleep. After that, though, we don't have as long stretches. She often wakes up two hours later, sometimes a little more but sometimes a little less, and that's painful for me cause I'm back in a deep sleep. I don't think she's usually hungry then, she either has gas, or she just wakes up and can't fall back asleep. I usually try giving her her paci first and half that time that gets her to fall asleep for another half hour or hour, which is good enough for me. Then after that I'll usually pull her over next to me (she sleeps in a bed that's attached to our bed so she's the same level as me) and have her breastfeed while we're both laying down - I couldn't do it when she was littler cause it was too hard to get her in the right position, etc. but now we have it down, I just lay facing her and I turn her on her side facing me, and have her at the right level as my boob and she finds it and latches right on, it's fabulous! And then we often fall back asleep after that for sometimes a couple more hours. I'm so not a morning person and I think it would actually be easier for me to wake up at 5 a.m than at 7 a.m. cause I fall into a really deep sleep early in the morning and it's really hard to wake up from it, all I can think about is getting back to sleep for just a little while at least.
Over the past week I've been finally really selecting all of my favorite photos I've taken of Elsa and uploading them to smugmug for our families and friends to be able to view anytime - and I can share many more photos that way, I like that!! And it's been so cool to see the changes already in her! I started with the most recent photos - December photos - and I've just finished and uploaded all the final November photos. Next I still have to make an album and choose the photos for October, her birth and her first week and a half! Today I looked at a few photos from when she was a week old! I can totally tell it's Elsa, she still looks the same to me in many ways, but of course more filled out, too. What really struck me was looking at some photos from last week of her in her gym and remembering similar photos I took when she was 2 1/2 weeks old. I need to show what I'm talking about here:
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| November 9 - 2 1/2 weeks old |
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| December 14 - 7 1/2 weeks old |
Okay that's all for tonight. Lots of sweet thoughts and depressing deep thoughts! I've been meaning though to write about the depressing thoughts cause it's part of what this experience is for me, so I want to document it - and really it's about realizing just how deep and strong this love is.
I'll add in a couple more cute photos!!
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| December 14 - laughs for mommy!!! |
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| December 14 - laughing in her gym! |
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| December 14 - this was RIGHT before she rolled over for the first time - tipping over to her side, then tipping onto her side, then tipping and rolling back to her back! And she did it again right afterward and then 3 hours later for daddy! |
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