Toward the end of October, Lily was able to meet even more family when her Great Aunt Sherriann, along with Isabel and Sherriann's mother, stopped by the house for a bit while in town on vacay. Sherriann gave Lily a box of assorted colored socks that have little bows on the toes, and I think they are Lily's and my favorite clothing item she has received! I love them because they look like little shoes, and there is a color to match every outfit. Lily loves them because she is entranced with their shine (they're satin) and color. It's quite hysterical to watch her stare at her toes and feet as she kicks them around. Plus, they're just stinkin cute!
Lillian has always been a great sleeper, and I can only recall two nights where she was up for any reason other than a feeding/changing. Her first few weeks, she was very consistent with waking every three hours to take care of business, and then would go right back to sleep with very little effort. At about five weeks, she started sleeping for longer stretches, and by six/seven weeks, she would go for about seven hour stretches. At about eight weeks, she leveled off to sleeping about 8 or 9 hours (a couple times close to ten!) at a time. Every now and then, she'll "ask" for a feeding somewhere in a nine or ten hour block, but overall we are so blessed to have her sleep so well! She went straight to crib when we brought her home, so perhaps that has something to do with it?
Those longer stretches of sleep mean that when she wakes up in the morning, she is READY to eat and by golly I better get there asap! At that point, the only real way to soothe her is to get her that stinkin bottle, but there was one morning that all changed...I opened the door to the nursery to pick up my little screamer, and I turned on the light and headed to her crib. As I always do before picking her up, I gently rubbed her belly and talked soothingly to her while she let her eyes adjust to the light and what was happening. Once her eyes were wide open, she did the unthinkable: She stopped crying and gave me the biggest smile I had seen from her at that point! I absolutely melted on the inside, but it didn't stop there... I brought her downstairs to give her the bottle and talked to her about our day, how she slept, etc., as I always do, while she is eating her "breakfast." She was staring at me intently and all of a sudden stopped sucking and smiled that huge beautiful smile again! ...with the bottle nipple still in her mouth! It cracked me up! That was a wonderful day!
When baby girl was 8 weeks old, she made her first trip to church! ...outside of my belly, anyway. It was also my first trip back to church since I didn't even feel physically able to go out and about until after six weeks. I think I lost my dressing privileges of Lily after this outfit. I will admit, the color scheme is atrocious, but here's the deal: I wanted her to wear a dress to church for her first visit, and she only had a couple, only one of which actually fit. When you're trying to get the newborn dressed and ready in just a few minutes before church, there is definitely a point-of-no-return where time doesn't allow the outfit to be changed even if it atrocious. Anyhoo, she was still adorable and did moderately acceptable during church. :-) She was very gassy, which made for a very uncomfortable and very grunty baby. We forgave her because she's so dang cute! She's been great at every church outing since.
I am not a fan of shots, needles, or anything sharp near my body, so I wasn't exactly pumped when the doctors told us that we needed to get a flu shot. I'm also not a fan of taking medicine unless absolutely necessary, so I've never gotten a flu shot before. However, I'd do anything to keep my baby girl safe and healthy, so I went in to the health clinic with bells and whistles on. The shot itself wasn't that bad; it was what happened after... The nurse, along with everyone else who meets her, was completely enamored with Lily and her beauty and I guess felt the uncontrollable urge to pinch her cheeks. ... Yes, the nurse...in the clinic...during flu season...squeezed both of my daughter's cheeks with her bare hands. Un. Be. Lieveable. I hope she had HER flu shot. Ugh...
Developmentally, Lily has changed so much in the last few weeks. She's always held her head up really well, but she's getting even better at it, sitting up like a big girl now and showing off during tummy time!
She's also starting to gain a lot more control of her arm and hand movements, purposefully grabbing at things now. ...especially things that she can then chew on. Haha!
She's working very intently on giggling and actually noticeably giggled for the first time with Dad when Steven wasn't home. She works up to it a bit every now and then but then quickly gets upset as she rides her emotional roller coaster. Her new sound that she discovered on the way to giggling is a hysterical squawking that can be either a happy or agitated sound, sometimes both in the same sentence. :-) I have a fabulous five-minute video of it, but Blogger won't let me upload it for some reason.
When I was up to heading out and about again, one of the first places I went was my school to visit with my coworkers, NOT the students. Those germy vessels can stay away from my little angel! Everyone loved her, of course, and she did great!
Her first Halloween was unfortunately kind of a bust. I bought some items at Hobby Lobby and made her a pair of angel wings, a halo, and a harp. Our plan was to take the little angel out to eat and let everyone swoon over her, but things don't always seem to go as planned. I came down with mastitis and a crazy fever that morning. (For those of you counting, that makes my third, yes third, infection. Good thing I love that little bug so much!) I was down for the count. Luckily, Dad was able to come up in the very early morning both days to watch her while Steven was at work. We took "Halloween" pictures a couple weeks after the fact, and I'll get those back soon. :-)
I'm still loving being on maternity leave and watching this pumpkin grow and change so much every day! Not much new is going on with Steven or me right now since we spend all our time swooning over the Lily bug!!! Love her so much!
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