Here is a great pic of Summer that Jessica took on the 14th. Summer, right this second is crying in her crib, trying to fall asleep. I fed her from 4:44 til 5:30...walked with her half an hour, and she's back and forth, sleepy. Will have to interupt this writing to walk her some more...but going to put up this pic first, then I'll update how she's been doing lately. The picture is formatted for a standard 4x6 print, if you click on it, download it and want to print it out...
So, here she is:
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So, she stopped crying and I checked on her and she rotated herself 90 degrees in the crib and quieted herself down. Took her about 8 minutes. She's learning we won't come right away and she is getting much better at putting herself to sleep.
So, all the dirt. Summer has been changing a lot lately. Not only is she getting bigger (she's 11.6 lbs, last I checked about two days ago...so she's probably about 11 pounds 10 ounces), she's getting longer. She's about 21 inches long, that's me measuring with a tape measure while Jessica is holding her, so she if possibly longer. Her doctors appointment is next Monday, so we'll get some "official" weight and length then.
Summer is starting to not just cry, but she's trying to mimic our voices, our talking. She moans and grunts, and we try to "speak" back to her a little in turn, trying to support her attempts at speaking. Obviously that is a LONG time away, but they (books and websites) say to mimic her back and help her see that certain actions get certain replies.
Not only is Summer trying to talk, she's standing much more. At first she would stand when she'd cry, just push out her legs and she'd pop up. Now she likes to do it all the time. We just put her sitting in our lap and she'll push out and stand up. Absolutely no control over balance, but she loves standing up. I've also put her sitting up, and with her boppy, she can stay sitting for a moment, but tends to fall forward. She's gaining her balance and trying. You can really see it in her eyes, she's trying hard.
Her focus is also increasing. She can lock onto things and really see what's happening. She notices the TV, so we turn the swing away from it, so she can't see. If we don't, she'll just stare. She also likes to stare at lights or places on the wall. Anything with a bit of contrast, so it stands out. One big thing, is she's always kinda looked up at the lights on her portable swing, but never noticed/looked at the fish on the mobile on her regular swing. Well, about 2 or 3 days ago, I first noticed that when I turned on the fish mobile, she looked up and stared at the fish turning round and round. When the fish stop turning (everything's on a timer) she gets upset and will start crying. She used to be like that with the music. Have the songs playing on the swing and when the timer ran out, she'd cry, basically telling us, "Hey, mommy/daddy, my music stopped, please turn it back on!" We'd go turn it on and she'd lose herself back in the music. Well, now she's like that with the mobiles. With or without the music, she really notices moving objects now.
We're not too sure about looking at herself in a mirror. We haven't gotten a crib mirror yet, but both Jessica and I hold her up to our bedroom mirror and hall mirror, and she'll look at herself, or us in the mirror. We can tell she recognizes us, but no idea what she thinks seeing herself.
One last(?) thing, she is starting to show early signs of teething pains. They (again, books and such) say that when the baby spits up/makes bubbles and chew on their nuk pretty hard, they are feeling something. It seems way too early, and she's likely just playing with her spittle. Just her playing and doing these things makes us think that she's noticing more and more that she has some sort of control over things, as she spittles and puts her hands in her mouth, so I think she's noticing that she can get her own hands wet. She's a lot better at putting her hands in her mouth to pacify herself, that's for sure.
Let's see, what else? We called the breast pump manufacturer and they helped us adjust the pump and it works now. It wasn't working and Jess could hand express faster and it was quite annoying, not catching up and able to freeze any milk for daycare (which is coming up in 3 weeks). Since we called on my off Friday, everything is much better and we have 4 big bags saved up, ready to go. And it appeasrs we'll (Jess'll) be able to get much more ready. We still supplement with formula a little bit at night, but even that is less, since she's getting more milk more consistently.
Speaking of at night. As mentioned above, she is learning how to put herself to sleep a little better, so at night we make sure she gets a good amount of food, put her down and she'll sleep for 4-5.5 hours. We're trying to get her on a set schedule and we're defintely getting closer to that goal. Three more weeks to get it a bit more set. Don't get me wrong, she's still a fussy little baby, that likes to scream when she wants something. More than anything else she likes to walk, not just sitting and bouncing. Car seat/swing, none of it seems to work exactly well. We're push-overs and walk and walk and walk her all over.
I think that covers most everything, except a few mosquito bites or something on her leg, but that's no big deal. She's never had a fever, no diaper rash has returned since that second time and she still loves her baths and she's basically healthy and happy overall. She still loves to stick her tongue out at me and she sticks it out far and pointy. She does it with mommy, too, but not so far out. She's SO CUTE! I'll see if I can ever catch that on "film" as well.
I've downloaded some more video, so I'll be able to pull off some more pics and see if I can host a couple quick/small videos as well for a later post. Now, I have to get ready and get myself to work.
Anyway, we're still both amazed every day how much she grows and how much more she notices all the time.
