Harper - 6 Weeks

Well, Harper is 6 weeks old now!  I am trying to figure what to say about her, but it's hard because she is honestly different every day.  Some days she is utterly content, very smiley and falls asleep anywhere at the drop of a hat.  Other days she cries more and sleeps less easily.  Most of the time she is somewhere in-between.  One nice thing is that for some time now she has been "sleeping through the night."  Now, when I say that I am talking about the technical definition, which is 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep.  Indeed, she almost always has a 4 - 6 hour stretch of sleep, starting around 9ish.  Then, the rest of the night it's 2-3 hour stretches.  Often, though, just because she's sleeping, that doesn't mean we are.  She can be very loud (grunts, moans, laughs, cries, all in her sleep), plus she is always losing the binky and rooting around til we give it back to her.  But sometimes she does none of those things and sleeps very soundly and quietly.  Last night we started a bedtime and a bedtime routine.  Starting at 8:30pm, we give her a bath (which she loves and which relaxes her), then we put her in her jammies, I nurse her while playing a lullaby CD my mom got her, burp her, swaddle her and put her in the bassinet.  Last night it worked GREAT!  She went right to sleep with no "maintenance" and slept until 1:30am.  Then, I fed her, changed her, swaddled her and put her back.  Once again, she went right to sleep.  She woke up again at 5 and we did the same thing.  Then, she woke up for the day at 7:30 and has been a happy girl all morning.  She took another nap at 9:30 and is working on going down for another.  The best part of last night was that I don't think I had to put the binkie back in her mouth even once!  

Anyway, so last night and this morning she has been Harper the easy baby.  But, often she gets cranky in the evenings and sometimes she doesn't sleep as well.  Occasionally she'll also get cranky and restless during the day, but not usually.  During the day the schedule goes nurse, burp, change diaper, chat with and smile at each other for a while, maybe read a book or lay on the play mat, then she gets sleepy and in goes the bink and she goes down for a nap.  When she wakes up it's time for another feeding.  Usually it's 2 - 3 hours between feedings.  At night she always sleeps in the bassinet, but during the day I try to switch it up so that she doesn't get too picky.  Sometimes she sleeps on her playmat, sometimes the bassinet, sometimes the crib, sometimes the swing, sometimes the carrier, sometimes the carseat (when we go for walks or run errands) and sometimes my arms.  Usually when we run errands she is a total champ and just sleeps the whole time or is awake and content.  She usually loves driving in the car or being wheeled around in the stroller.

I feel like she just gets cuter everyday.  Here's some pictures as proof.  The first few are from when my dad, grandma and mom were here.

We watched a BYU game together and they won!

The blanket I have down in the crib was made for her by someone in our ward who makes blankets for every single baby who is born in the ward!  What a nice lady!

Daddy burping her.  She often falls asleep while being burped.

Talking to grandma: http://youtu.be/1UYgx5W4vyU

In her swing.

Bracelet courtesy of grandma.  She blew out of this outfit right after of course.

I just think it's cute when she sleeps with her arms up.

Out for a walk on a nice Fall day.

Snuggling with Mommy in the carrier.

Exploring the playmat: http://youtu.be/pwdiZ0Ep9x4

Fun with Daddy: http://youtu.be/XLnH3gL-Kr0

This is my favorite video, which is why I made sure to actually download it through Blogger.  She is super smiley in it.  Just wish I could mute my voice.

For Halloween she was a cow.  She dressed up for the Stake turnk or treat, a shindig at Tom's work and to greet trick or treaters at Tom's parents' house.  One night, after the trunk or treat, she was still in her costume and I was nursing her.  I looked down, and realized it was a very ironic situation.

I love the tail.

All down one of the streets by our house someone had decorated every single light post like this.  It was awesome!  Plus, one of the houses had a whole bunch of real tombstones in front of it and it looked like a legitimate cemetery.  I LOVE HALLOWEEN.

New onesie she got from my friend Crissy, which she promptly pooped on.

Smiles.  She's always smileyest after nursing, when we are changing her diaper.

Went for a walk to go meet Daddy on his way home from work:

Talking to Daddy: http://youtu.be/k5ENbF3NEpM

Watching Daddy play guitar: http://youtu.be/REEqHbXQW9k

Dancing with Daddy: http://youtu.be/eNT4VTktovc

I know, I take sooooo many pictures and videos.

Harper - 1 Month

Well, we've made it one month and have lots of cute pictures and videos to show for it.  But first, let me tell you how the month has been.

The easiest and best part of the month has been Harper.  She has been a very easy baby so far. She had a couple of difficult days (that still weren't THAT difficult) and has pretty much been easy ever since.  At this point, I feed her, she's awake and happy for 10 minutes to 30 min or so before she starts acting sleepy.  Then I literally just stick her in her bassinet, put her binkie in her mouth and she sits there content until she falls asleep.  She'll sleep for a couple hours or so and then we do it all again!  The exception is when she is having tummy troubles or when someone is holding her.  When she is having tummy troubles, she will get restless and grunt a lot and maybe cry, but not constant wailing or anything.  When she is being held, she is also often more restless, but not always  She honestly seems to be happier in her bassinet that being held most of the time, but we sometimes disregard her preferences and hold her anyway. 

I don't know if she's a "good" sleeper or not, since I don't have a lot to compare it with, but I'm thinking she's pretty good.  What makes the biggest difference is not having to rock her or bounce her to get her to fall asleep.  Usually she goes 2 - 4 hours between feeds at night and falls back to sleep right after each one.  The only problem is that she is HUGE grunter and will often grunt for the last hour or so of her sleep period.  So, just because she's sleeping that doesn't mean we are!  It's also kind of difficult to figure out when to feed her.  If you try when she first starts grunting, she's generally still too sleepy to eat.  So, you just have to wait for the grunts to get longer, closer together and more intense and then guess when it's the right time.  She doesn't usually start crying until I pick her up and start getting her ready to eat.  Once she knows she's close she starts freaking out like, "it's so close!  I can sense it!  Just give it to me!"  She is also a total binkie baby.  She almost always want to have the binkie in her mouth.  Sometimes she's really great at keeping it in her mouth and will keep it in for an hour or more and sometimes it falls out constantly.  Usually she's somewhere in between.  She's so cute.

Speaking of cuteness, she was such an early smiler!  She gave me her first real, purposeful smile at around 2 weeks old!  Since then she has regularly given us smiles when we're talking to her.  And her smile is just like her daddy's :) .  She's also a show off and tends to smile at just the right time.  In addition to smiling, she has become very aware of people and loves to stare at everyone.  She also makes lots of great faces and cute noises.  

The hardest part of all of this has been the physical recovery.  Hoooooly cow.  Way worse than I thought it would be.  Even now, at just over a month post delivery I am in looots of pain.  I made an appointment with my midwife again for today because I felt like I should be feeling better than I am.  I mean, I still can't really sit or walk much or anything.  She removed a bunch of my stitches (not sure why they didn't dissolve?) and put some chemical thing on this one spot to basically get it to form new scar tissue (I think?).  It hurt SO bad.  I don't think she realized it was going to hurt that bad.  And it continued to hurt all day and still does.  Booooo.  She said it should start to feel better again in 2 to 3 days.  Hopefully it really does the trick this time and I will FINALLY be on the road to recovery because I am pretty tired of being so infirm.  At this point it is almost impossible for me to remember what it feels like to feel "normal" down there...I just want to be able to enjoy my baby and hold her and play with her and change her diaper and feed her without it all hurting.  

Alright, enough of the misery.  Let's enjoy some cute!

Had to document her wearing the panda onesie that I made.  It's a good thing I took the pic while I had the chance because she has now blown out of it 3 times (every time she's worn it - it's cursed) and isn't looking quite so nice now...

My grandma and aunt came for a visit a couple weeks ago.  Grams sure loves her babies, and the feeling is mutual it seems.

Here's a sweet photo of Harper with Tom's mom.  Harper got lucky in the grandma department.

Harper can be a little escape artist.  This blanket was originally swaddled around her.

I wanted to include some videos in this post, but blogger kept malfunctioning when I'd try to upload them, so I uploaded one and the rest are on youtube.  I included the links.  This first one is just her being cute while I'm changing her diaper.  I love her hands and the sweetness of her clueless little face.

Harper in her swing that my friend Jackie gave her.  Don't worry, I added some head support to it after this:

http://youtu.be/QLcIu_dJyAw

Making funny faces in her sleep:

http://youtu.be/xsPNUHcCYBw

Milk face

One of the few photos of us together.  Burping her is honestly one of my favorite things.  She either snuggles in and falls asleep or lifts her head up and looks over at me with a cute little expression.

Here she is wearing her cousin Josie's jacket.  I think she looks like a little cabbage patch doll.  She was just ever so serenely staring at her daddy here.

Bunny ears

More daddy napping

A couple videos and pictures of her having a good time on one of her two playmats:

http://youtu.be/DLEE001IByY

http://youtu.be/XZJ_93yliRE

More mommy burping time.

I figured out a better way to swaddle her.  There aint no way for those arms to escape now!  Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOnsKlluHIg

Making sad faces in her sleep.  This is always accompanied by the most pathetic little whimper.

Making cute hand motions in her sleep.  Have I mentioned I love her hands? :

http://youtu.be/mgJtqESH3G4

Playing on her other playmat:

http://youtu.be/Z-_DlVordkI

In her cow costume, which is still huge on her:

http://youtu.be/qgbH4UU27kk

This is her stretching face.  Love this picture.

Mommy and Harper in the hotel room in Park City last weekend.

As I just mentioned, Tom and I went to Park City last weekend.  They had a great hotel room deal on Groupon a few months ago and we figured I'd feel pretty recovered a month after she was born.  We were wrong, but it was still a good trip.  We stayed in the hotel room the entire time, but it was nice to have a change of scenery and a TV.

Also, my parents came to town this past weekend and we blessed Harper at church.  The blessing was absolutely beautiful and it was great to see everyone at church.  I really do like our ward.  There are so many nice people in it.  It was also really great to have both parents and my grandma here and to get them together with Tom's family for a dinner that evening.  Very pleasant.  I love seeing family members interact with Harper for some reason.  My dad and grandma have left already, but my mom is still here all week.  Thank goodness, because I can sure use the help!!!  She wanted to come earlier, but wasn't able to.  I'm kind of glad she came now instead though, because I probably need her even more now than I did then!  Below are a bunch of pictures from the blessing.  The dress she is wearing was made by my aunt and was worn my all of my female cousins, my sister and even me at our blessings.  Now it is also being worn by some of the cousins daughters.  In fact, most of the time it still hasn't set in that Harper is MY daughter, but seeing her in the blessing dress and knowing that I wore it and other family members wore it caused me to have a nice little moment where I realized, "wait, she is part of MY family."

First family photo.

My mom wanted me to get some pictures of Harper in the blessing dress and with the blanket that she made for her.  I initially thought I'd have to wait a little while after church because it had been a while since she'd eaten, plus she kept being woken up with all the activity going on and I just figured she'd be cranky.  On the contrary, I set her down to change her diaper and she seemed to be in a good mood, so I thought I'd give it a shot.  Boy am I glad I did!  She was in SUCH a good mood and just kept smiling at me!  She is such a doll.  Had such a hard time narrowing it down even this much: 

Can you see a little Tom smile?

Viva la blessing!

4 generations:

Tell me her hand pose (which we did not do) is not endearing.  I love her hands. 

Happy grandma.

Last night we put grandma on baby duty in the living room while Tom and I slept in the bedroom.  The idea was for her to bring her in when she woke up hungry and I'd feed her and put her back.  Usually she will wake up every 2 - 4 hours in the night.  Well, I had last fed her at 6:30 and Tom and I went to bed around 10, so we were expecting my mom to bring her in pretty soon after we fell asleep.  Imagine our surprise (and worry) when we woke up at 4am and she hadn't been brought in at all!  Tom, especially, was freaking out, thinking she must have died or something.  I went out and check on her and saw that both she and my mom were still sleeping, touched her to make sure she was still alive and warm and checked the fridge to see if all the breast milk was still there and that she hadn't just been bottle fed or something.  When I came back and told Tom she was still sleeping and still warm he was like, "is she still breathing???"  I'm like, "well, I'm guessing if she stopped breathing she wouldn't be warm anymore!"  He made me go out and check though, and we ended up waking her up and feeding her just because we were so anxious!  According to my mom she just grunted a few times and my mom would just put the binkie back in her mouth and she's drift back off to sleep!  Hopefully this means she's going to start sleeping for longer stretches at night!  Even if she doesn't, it's ok, but it would sure be nice!

The two of them still sleeping this morning.

Well, that's about all for now.  Hope you enjoyed!