5 Weeks

Somehow, our adorable daughter is already 5 weeks old! I'm not sure how that happened, but I'm pretty sure that I want to slow things down. Evelyn is already growing up too fast for my liking, though I do have to admit that I am liking not having to feed her quite so often. Here are all the things that have happened since Evelyn arrived:

Feeding, sleeping, and pooping. Yep, she does that. Because Evelyn was so small, I needed to wake her up to feed at least every two hours. As she is her mother's daughter, she does not enjoy being woken up for any reason, even food, and let me know that she does not approve of this. While she's generally a very mellow baby, she doesn't like being woken up when it's not on her schedule. However, as of last Tuesday, Evelyn is now 6 pounds, 9 ounces and growing fast. We've moved on to demand feedings, though I don't let it go more than 3.5 or 4 hours at the most. Yes, you read that right, the baby likes to get 3 to 4 hours of sleep in a stretch at night. I love this child!

Three nights ago, we finally got Evelyn to spend an entire night in her cradle. We had been doing kangaroo care, with Evelyn sleeping on my chest every night. This was fine when she weighed 5 and a half pounds, but she's starting to get a little big for it. It took a couple of nights to convince her that we were close by and would comfort her if something was wrong, but now she's sleeping like, well, a baby.

Darling J has been dealing with all of the output that a child makes. He's been in charge of burping and diaper changes, which I have truly appreciated. I give her as much milk as she can handle and then get to hand her over for cleaning. It's nice. Unfortunately, J went back to work last Monday and I've had to take over both input and output operations. I was expecting the week to be hard and stressful, but it really wasn't bad at all. I spent as much time out of the house as possible and managed to catch up with friends and do a little shopping with my mom. By the end of the week, however, I was feeling a little cocky and thinking that I had this getting up, getting ready, getting the baby changed, fed, changed, and into the car thing down. As it turns out, babies have their own pace and their own schedule to follow. I had a chiropractic appointment on Friday morning at the early hour of 10:30 and thought that I had plenty of time to make it there. Evelyn, on the other hand, decided that she wanted to be changed, fed, changed, fed again, changed again, throw up all over the place, get a new outfit, and then get loaded into the car. Needless to say, I was a bit late.

My chiropractor is great. He's a bit more into the whole focusing energy and centering oneself than I usually go in for, but he does work magic. I saw him once a week for the last few weeks of my pregnancy and it was the highlight of the week. As it turns out, he also works with children and did some work on Evelyn when she was in the womb and then worked with her on Friday. It's pretty amazing to watch a baby go from tensed up to relaxing, smiling and falling asleep. I have no idea what he does or how he does it, but that man works magic.

Evelyn has been very bright-eyed and interested in the world around her from the get go, but she just becomes more interested, and more interesting, every day. This evening she was lying in her crib watching the mobile turn over her. She would focus on one of the bears and watch it rotate until it got to hard and then she would look at another one and do the same thing. She was quite content to do this for a solid twenty minutes or so. It's fascinating to see Evelyn's brain and body develop. She holds her head up for minutes at a time and loves to look around and watch her daddy and I. Too cute.

Evelyn had her first shower this evening. J got her undressed and ready to go as I got in the shower and made sure that it wasn't too hot. In the minute or so that it took to get ready, Evelyn managed to pee through her cloth diaper and all over J. That's the second shirt he had to change in about three ours, as the first one had been spit up all over. As for the shower, Evelyn was none too pleased when she first saw it. Her lower lip jutted out and started to tremble, but quickly got over it. I had to make the water warmer than I was expecting because she had goosebumps and was unhappy with it. Turns out she likes hot showers as much as I do! As I held her under the water, Evelyn kept leaning her head back to get it wet. I would pull her out from under the water and she would lean back again. She was definitely getting into this! As great as the shower was, getting out of it was no fun at all. I continued my shower while J got her dried off and back in diapers. She was screaming full throttle and was not pleased at the change in temperature. A warm blanket and some time on her daddy's chest warmed her up and sent her right to sleep. She's been sound asleep in her crib ever since.

Evelyn is a wonderfully calm baby and she's a pleasure to take out in public. She's been to numerous restaurants and walks around the neighborhood. She doesn't startle at loud noises and can sleep through anything. I can't wait to see the little girl that she becomes.