Some of you may have heard the rumor that Emma, while very tall like her sister, has a smaller head. You may even have heard that rumor from me, because apparently I’m the one that made it up.
Oops.
Everything starts to blend together at this point, so I can’t recall if they told me that at the hospital or I read it somewhere, but I somehow thought that Emma’s head circumference was around the 10th percentile. On Thursday, December 29th, she had her one-month check-up, and they gave me our first printout of her growth charts, and her head circumference was around the 35th percentile, and it shows it was in the 36th percentile 4 days after birth. Clearly there was some misunderstanding or hospital measurement (or reporting) error - Emma’s head is proportional to her weight, which ranges from the 22nd to 33rd percentile over her first month. Like Lily, these stats are completely overshadowed by her height – 91.99% at last measurement.
Anyway, this is not groundbreaking news, but I just wanted to correct myself and report on her growth. She outgrew her newborn clothes before Christmas because of her height – her sweet fleece sleepers were straining when she straightened her legs, and her sleeves had become a chilly 3/4 length, so she has moved on to 3 month clothes (although they seem to swallow her up because she’s on the thinner side). As for the rest of her one-month visit, everything is going just fine! You’ll note in the pictures that she’s peeling a lot, but this is just normal newborn skin sloughing. Our most fun news is that she is smiling! She had been making smiling-ish expressions for a while, but on December 28th, the day before her 1-month birthday, she gave me several clear smiles that were truly reciprocal – melt my heart! Over the last couple of days, she has smiled a few more times each day, with her happiest time being right after breakfast. I can’t wait until we get to see her sweet smiles all day long and I can capture one on camera for you. I just can’t bear to put her down to grab the camera (and miss her smiles myself), so you’ll just have to wait! I’m so excited that she’s getting more interactive. She has also enjoyed looking at her toys more, and tries to reach toward them now.
I will say that Emma’s timing for her first smile was wise, because I was particularly tired that morning and needed a pick-me-up. Over the last week or two, Emma has had some trouble at night…wait…I should say *I* have had some trouble at night. Emma is happy as a clam, but I’m the grump. The problem (for me) is that she sometimes doesn’t want to go back to bed after eating in the middle of the night. I’m very lucky because she will go up to 6.5 hours between feedings during the night (woo hoo!), but then won’t go back to bed (boo!). She’s not crying or fussy if you stay with her, but she’s just *awake* for about an hour and a half. I think if she were my first child, I’d be more upset about this (because it IS tiring), but I do have more perspective this time around, and know that this will get better soon. The first four months were roughest with Lily, and we’re already one month in!
In general, Emma is a wonderfully sweet baby and doesn’t cry very much at all except when she’s hungry, has a dirty diaper, or is over-tired. When she does cry, she is usually pretty easy to soothe. When she does fuss with no obvious cause, it doesn’t last more than 10 minutes. She loves to be swaddled, rocked, and will use a pacifier, so I’m not complaining! She generally stays awake for about 1.5 hours at a time (alternating awake time with 45-minute to 1.5 hour naps during the day), and only wakes up once (MAYBE twice) during the night. We try to get her in bed between 11 and 12 at night (yes, we’re still late-night people!), and she wakes up for the day around 9:00 or so. We’d love to get her on the same 9:30 to 8:45 schedule Lily is on, but she just can’t go that long without awake time yet, so we’re trying to at least match up their morning awake times for now.
As for our original bundle of joy, Lily still takes a nap in the afternoon, but has been skipping it some lately with the excitement of the holidays. She usually naps about 2 hours when she DOES take one. When she doesn’t, she stays in bed talking to Annabelle, singing, and talking to herself, and STILL hasn’t gotten out of bed without permission yet. She is such a good girl about that! She has her obstinate moments for sure (especially of the “No, I will do it MYSELF!” variety), but she really wants to please and still hates it when we’re disappointed in her.
Lily continues to adjust well to Emma’s arrival, and has been such a sweet big sister. Amazingly, she doesn’t seem jealous of all the time and attention Emma requires, and is the first one to express concern when Emma starts crying. One of the first couple of days we had her home from the hospital, Emma started crying in her pack-and-play while we were eating dinner. Before any of the adults could even move, Lily was shouting, “Ahhhh!!! Mommy help her, help her, help her!!!” She is always offering suggestions when Emma cries (“Mommy, should you feed her?” “Mommy, does she have a blue stripe on her diaper?”), and will reassure her (“It’s okay…Mommy’s coming, Emma”) if I can’t get to her right away. It’s very sweet, and Lily is sure to praise Emma or point it out to me when Emma is doing a “good job” not crying or being patient. She sometimes asks if I can put Emma down in her pack-and-play or give her to someone else if she wants me to play with her, but she never complains if I tell her I can’t. I’m sure this big sisterly love will be tested when Emma starts crawling and toy-snatching, but it’s all roses for now. She even made a Christmas ornament and card for Emma of her own accord. Lily has wholeheartedly embraced Emma as a member of our family, and I couldn’t be prouder.
Less stellar are some of my own adjustments to having two kids (and sleeping less), such as the fact that I’ve left the house not once, but twice, wearing slippers instead of shoes because I’m too tired to notice (once to take Lily to school and once to take Emma to the doctor). I also took both girls to a birthday party at Gymboree when Emma was about a week and a half old. While Lily played with her friends, Emma stayed in her carseat, looking around and being content for the first half of the party, lulling Michael and me into complacency. Cue my embarrassment later in the party when my friend, Jasmin, gently notified me that the crying baby (who I had tuned out) was my own, and that I might want to go get her. Oops! Yeah, we had kind of forgotten we had a baby with us (this was our first outing other than the doctor’s office). Good thing we were with friends! My mom made me feel better, at least, by telling me about the time she forgot my infant self at home when rushing off (with my brother) to MY pediatrician appointment. Oops!
All in all, 2011 was pretty awesome. We are so happy and lucky to have such sweet girls and wonderful families, and if Michael could kick this bronchitis he has had since October, we’d really be rockin’. Fortunately, it seems to be the same illness I had from October until after Emma’s birth, so she appears to have gotten some immunity to it. But poor Michael has had some sympathy for my middle-of-the-night feedings since he’s dealing with his own middle-of-the-night coughing-up-a-lung fits.
Sorry this post is so long on words and lacks pictures, but I’ll always have the pictures on a disk and won’t always remember the stories in my head. I’ll try to do a separate post with pics in a short while.
Wishing you all the happiness in 2012!
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