One Month Birthday

Gracie entered our life exactly one month ago today. I'm both shocked that it has only been a month and yet feel, at times, like it has been an eternity. Can you say sleep deprivation? It has been amazing to see her grow over the past month. We have seen...

• Her roll over! I keep forgetting to blog about this. The first time she did it was at 2 1/2 weeks and I thought it was a mistake. Then she did it again, and again! My parents were here, so she was obviously showing off for them. She doesn't do it every day, but usually does it about every 2 or 3 days and always does it several times in a row. It probably has something to do with her getting that 50th percentile head moving in a direction and taking her 25th percentile body with it.
• Lift her head and move it from side to side while lying on her tummy.
• Track things with her eyes.
• Smile - and also smile back if you smile at her (she usually has a select audience for that. It's usually Aaron.)
• Stick out her tongue if you do the same thing to her (again, usually for a select audience...me. Hmm, sticks her tongue out at mom and smiles at dad. And so it begins!)
• Go from a super sweet little baby to screaming mad (and I do mean SCREAMING) in less than 2 seconds. No select audience for this one...she's very much an "equal opportunity" crier.

We are seeing some nice progress with the sleeping issues. I feel like a liar typing this, because the last two days have been the absolute worst, but she was doing fairly well for the past two weeks. I'm hoping the last 2 days had something to do with too much napping in the car. A friend of mine recommended the book The Contented Little Baby Book. One word to describe the book...amazing! Grace is now getting up only once during the night. She goes to bed at 7pm (usually followed by an hour of crying...so I guess she goes to sleep around 8) We wake her up at 10 for a feeding and then she usually only gets up once in the night to eat and then sleeps till about 6:30. We started giving her one bottle a day, so Aaron is doing that 10pm feeding which means I have the opportunity to get about 5-6 hours of sleep at a time! I never thought I'd be excited about that statement...it's a far cry from my 11 hours of sleep while pregnant but a treat none the less.

We also had our first family outing to Cannon Beach on Monday with the babe. She did really well and ended up sleeping most of the day in the car seat or on a blanket on the beach - thus the horrible night of crying. She wasn't tired! I hope we can do a lot of little day trips. With Aaron's work schedule, there should be lots of opportunities for us to get out of the house and out of town for the day with Gracie.

Here are a few pictures of Grace during play time. She LOVES that black and white book, courtesy of my friend Angie. Her favorite shape is the black maple leaf, which makes us think she may grow up to be a big fan of Canada :-)