Monday, April 4, 2011

Unnecessary Therapeutic Writing

Dear Millie,
When you're older and reading about your early days, you may notice that I haven't written as many stories about you as I did your sister's first few months of life.  Please don't take this personally.  Honestly... it's a good thing.  With your sister, I was so ill-prepared for parenthood... and she was so much work... that I needed an outlet for my frustration and shortcomings.  Looking back on my maternity leave with her, I still remember specific days that I wrote about and how I thought at the time that I shouldn't have been allowed to procreate... that I was a terrible mother and this whole idea of starting a family was a BAD idea and that I was destined for failure as a mother.

Never underestimate the power of therapeutic writing.  It's part of the reason we decided to have you!

But, to be fair, I suppose I should talk a little bit about specific days with you.  Or rather, what a typical day is with you.  I can't really write about major freakouts you have... because you never freak out for more than 15 seconds. And even that is just a little crying.  And is usually pacified with a binky or a boob.  One of the most amazing differences between you and your sister is that you don't need to eat every hour on the hour.  You are pretty much in a 3-3.5 hour routine.  Occasionally, you'll feed every 2.5 hours, but that's rare.  And you've never been a dive bomber when I hold you, even if you just ate.  Which is one of the reasons we call you Chilly Millie.

So, a typical day.  You eat, you sleep, you poop, you eat some more, you do some tummy time, you play in your gym (not a big fan, btw) you sleep, you eat... you repeat.  You do like the swing... thank goodness.  You just started to enjoy the swing this week.  I was worried you weren't going to take to it, but wow!  I can put you in the swing wide awake and walk away.  And when I come back 5 minutes later, you're sound asleep.  It's pretty incredible.

When you're not sleeping, you are so aware of the world around you.  You love to look at me and it does my heart good when you calm down when you see me.  Yes.. you are very aware who Mama is.  Your neck is SO strong already.  Today, you practiced standing on my lap. At 6 weeks!  You just stood there looking at me with such curiosity.

Your social smiles are becoming more common.  And you do a lot of cooing.  You've never been a big "coo-er" per se.  You've just been a really quiet baby.  I swear, sometimes I forget that you're just there in the swing. Even when you're wide awake.

Lately, you've only been waking up once per night.  Which is pretty awesome.  I feed you at about 10 and you'll wake up about 2-ish and then again at 6-ish.  However, you really fight going back to sleep after that first feeding.  The last couple of nights, I've had to call in Daddy after you've fought me for 90 minutes and I need to get some rest for your NEXT feeding!

You are sleeping in your crib really well.  It's amazing to me how completely freaked out I was with Hazel and her crib.  I had her sleep in the Pack-N-Play for the first three months of life.  With you?  Well.... it just seemed right that you get in your crib after the first month.

I love sleeping with you on me during the middle of the day.  There's nothing quite like the peace of  a baby sleeping on you and I'm trying to relish these moments as I know that they won't last.  You haven't been so much a snuggler as your sister was.  You fight sleeping on our shoulders.  Part of this may be because you absolutely HATE sweating and if any part of your skin (usually your neck) touches any part of my skin (my neck or crook of my arm)... well, that's pretty much the only time Chilly Millie gets fussy-wussy.

That's all the news that is news these days.  You got to meet Grandma and Grandpa Nadolski this weekend... and Aunt Helen, Uncle Bart and your cousins Matthew and Andrew.  They were sure enamored with you and your big sister.

Also... a note about the so far lack of pictures.  Yea... so when we had Hazel, we borrowed Daddy's work camera.  And because we were new parents that had no idea what else to do with ourselves... and had nothing else to do but snap pictures... well, there were a lot of pictures of her.  We also had our camera that we took a lot of pictures with.  Flash forward to your birth and Daddy couldn't get the nice SLR camera from the office, we had misplaced our camera and the other work camera that Daddy brought home from work to take tons of pictures of you with... well, Daddy has to take it back to work EVERY DAY.  So all those cute pictures I want to take of you during the day when you're awake and all sorts of cut?  I only have my camera phone to take them with and half the time IT doesn't work.  So, while I continue the mad search for our old camera (it could be anywhere at this point), I think I'm going to have to ask Aunt KC if I can borrow her camera because the lack of pics of you is getting a bit ridiculous.  In the good news department, I pulled the trigger and finally bought a Flip video camera so that we can document our growing family.

Speaking of growing... you had a bit of a spurt this weekend. Seriously, baby girl... you fit in your newborn clothes on Friday.  But not on Saturday.  And you ate like a horse.  Enough so that my boobs (that's right, boobs) started to hurt again.  I finally had gotten them used to the pain to where it was no big deal... AND THEN YOU HAVE A GROWTH SPURT.  Damn!

That's all for now.  Your Daddy is passed out on the couch... he missed the entire NCAA Championship game.  You are asleep in your crib... fingers crossed you stay there until at least 1:30ish.  And Hazel has been asleep since 7.  The kitchen is clean.  How I Met Your Mother is on.  I had a nap this afternoon with you, so I'm not completely exhausted.  But, it's still time for bed.

Love,
Mama

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