Tuesday, November 11, 2008

5 Weeks

Every week that goes by seems to come with a new lesson. This last week it was learning that it is not about what I want Jillian to do, it is about what she wants. I'm sure this lesson will come in handy when she goes to college and decides to major in art history rather than pre-med.

If you've read my blog, you realize that I'm a bit of a type A personality, and because of that I read as much as I could before Jillian's birth so that I could be the best mom possible. So I came into this whole motherhood thing with certain expectations about Jillian's behavior. For example I expected her to feed at consistent intervals like every 3 hours, and I tried forcing her into that which only resulted in frustration for the both of us. Jeramy, on the other hand, was much more willing to go with the flow and adapted to whatever worked well for her. Once I finally gave in and began imitating some of his techniques and approaches, she became a much happier baby. Feedings are starting to go much better, and during the past day or so we have been much more successful in preventing gassiness.

Night time sleep has gone quite well (I'm knocking on wood here) as she has consistently gotten a 5 to 6 hour stretch of shut-eye in for the past couple of weeks. Daytime sleep has been another matter entirely as daytime naps have been spotty at times, which inevitably results in a fussy baby. So working on daytime sleep is the next focus, which will likely involve increased use of the miracle blanket and swing. We'll see how things go.

Every day is now a baby fashion show at my house too. Jillian just has so many clothes and is growing so fast that I've gotten in the habit of changing her into a daytime outfit. Otherwise I'd just keep her in pajamas all day and all of these cute clothes would go unused. Here is a sampling of her wardrobe from the week. (I just love the expression she has in the second picture, and you'll see that she is now fully sporting the mulhawk hairstyle...half mullet/half mohawk).




10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I LOVE the look on her face in the purple outfit! Too cute!

My sister is type A with type B kids...well 2/3 anyway are type B and they survived and so will you :) Good luck with your continued learning!

nancy said...

Ah yes, the infamous "too many 0-3 month clothes" issue. When we're on maternity leave, there is just no reason to change them out of their onesies! :)

I just emailed you back.

Birdee said...

LOL, I know that look in #2, did you hear a rumble shortly afterwards? J/k

I love her hair - and her clothes are so cute.
I remember loving dressing Dylan up in his cute clothes every day. And when they have rear explosions, you get to dress them up even more! =D

gotchya on myspace ;)

Sunny said...

Her expressions are priceless! I'm jealous of cute girl clothes. It's much harder to find cute boy stuff. But my mom bought him the CUTEST button-down shirt, I'll probably be posting a pic of it soon because it's a crack-up. It looks like he just got home from work. LOL

RBandRC said...

She is just too cute! I'm so with you on the lack of daytime sleep. If you come up with a good solution let me know since short of sleeping with her, I'm not sure what else I can be doing to get her to nap well during the day--and since I'm back at work I (unfortunately) can't spend all day sleeping with her. :(

jenn said...

Wow- 5 weeks already?! I know I am going to have to keep the tags on clothes until she's ready to go in them so I can still exchange for bigger sizes if needed! Not that I expect to actually get that done, but it's nice to dream!

The baby faux hawk/mullet is awesome!

Nicky said...

Daytime sleep for us requires motion, at least until sound asleep. Swing, car seat, sling, front carrier, stroller, ....

We have yet to reliably get 5-6 hours in a stretch at night, so you're ahead of us there.

Amanda said...

It's already been 5 weeks...holy cow how time flies!

She is so beautiful. I'll have to admit I'm a little jealous of your outfit choices. There just aren't as many cute and fun outfits for baby boy. But that's what my niece is for!

Good luck with the daytime naps!

Kelly said...

Oh I love her hair!!! The mulhawk is just too cute! She's a very stylish little girl:)
I love hearing all your type A traits as I am VERY much the same way. I appreciate you paving the way;)

Jamie said...

She is such a cutie! My friends always have too many newborn outfits but for some reason the tiny ones are so cute and irresistable in the store!