7 Weeks

We have a grubby little girl.

I say this because of her hands. While she fills out her pajamas much better than when she first came home, her hands still tend to curl up inside of her sleeves. When this happens, any fuzzies from the cloth (or any other cloth I'm sure) somehow get stuck in between her chubby fingers, so that when I'm playing with her or holding her, I'm constantly pulling out fuzzies from between her fingers. It's a little strange. She also has a tendency to spit up, as already written about, and sometimes when she does this, her head is at such an angle that it gets into her hair and behind her ears.

When one is considering becoming a parent, I assume that one rarely considers the possibility of cleaning coagulated milk from behind a child's ear. However, this is what parenthood is all about.
Alexis is now seven weeks old and will have another doctor's appointment at the end of next week, so we'll have new measurements for everyone soon. She's doing a better job the past few days about eating on a more regular schedule. I'm trying to be patient, especially at night, and give her some time to pause before continuing to eat, and I think this is helping her to be more full, therefore eating a little less frequently. This also helps in the middle of the night; for the past few nights, when I've put her down after feeding her, I haven't had to get out of bed again. This is a very nice change of events. And she's at the age where she can go a little bit longer between feedings, too. For the most part she's eating about every three hours, and a little bit longer between feedings at night. BUT, in all honesty, she could start eating every hour on the hour again this afternoon. You never know. She's a baby.

She continues to grab hair and shirts, including her own. It's really funny when she's grabbing her own hair with one of her fists. Her favorite new thing is when we've burped her and are putting her down again, she takes the cloth with her and holds onto it tightly, with her grubby little hands, of course! She also goes on "rolling expeditions" in her crib. She's still a little elevated, and she kicks her feet and moves her body around until she can get to the bottom. I'm trying to get this on video because sometimes she does it pretty quickly. When doing this, she looks like she's about to roll over because a lot of time we'll find her part of the way down and totally on her side. I know this is partially due to the inertia of the angle she's at, but it's still pretty amazing.

I think she's also beginning to react to us some. For example, this afternoon she smiled, and I gave her this big, happy encouragement after she did it. And she did it again. And I gave her more big, happy encouragement, and she did it a third time. It was pretty cool.

This past week was a little odd, though. Jason and I were both sick most of the week and went to the doctor on Wednesday and went on medicine, which meant she went on formula for a few days. And of course she was allergic to it. She's back on breast milk now and had no problem with the transition. It's not unusual at all for babies to be allergic to normal breast milk, so she might just need a soy-based formula. We'll talk to her pediatrician about it at the next appointment. It was a long few days because whenever she ate, I had to pump, and we had to go through the process of sterilizing everything, and we were trying to get over being sick (which we're both totally better now - stomach stuff), so it was nice to be better this weekend. The big thing is that she went back to breast milk without problem after a few days of being only on a bottle. I'm hoping that this is a good sign of her flexibility and adaptability, because she's going to need that in large doses come December.

And the cutest thing of all is how GOOD she's becoming at bringing at bringing her fingers to her mouth. This is great for a number of reasons. It (hopefully) means that she's truly beginning to recognize that her hands belong to her. It also means that she's trying to stick her fingers in her mouth more often and suck on them. This had happened almost accidentally a few times before, but it's been pretty consistent this week. We got a great picture of her sucking her thumb! If she learns to suck her thumb (or her knuckle, like I did), it means that when she's upset and wants to suck on something, she can get her fingers to her mouth, even if she can't pick up her pacifier. We'll give her a pacifier during the day when we're up and around to put it back in her mouth, but at night I don't want to deal with getting up if she's upset because it fell out of her mouth. So hopefully she'll continue to get better with her hands. Plus, it's just cute when she does it.

She has a number of friends. The pink, fluffy thing is Boggy, a gift from a friend's parents. (There were various opinions about whether it looks like a dog or a bear, hence the name.) And Clarence, her elephant, is her "oldest and dearest friend." (That was for you, Edgertons...) In the pictures you can actually see some of her scars as well, the top on being where the triple line went in, and the bottom line near her navel where her incision was made. (You can't see where her stitches on her bottom neck were, which will be her other scar. ) They all still look really great and I hope that they never cause her to be self-conscious and that, instead, it will be a great opportunity to talk about God's hand on her life from the very beginning.