Four Weeks Old!

Henry is 4 weeks old today!! How has the time gone that fast? He already looks bigger than he did when he was born! i'm kinda sad!


here he is smiling in his sleepies today :)

here's what a baby can do at four weeks old:

- babies can lift their heads a little bit by now (Henry is like crazy and can totally lift his head a lot at this point)
- he starts to coo and make sounds
- he can recognize my voice which isn't new but he will start to turn and look for me when he hears me in a room

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Henry's milestones are that he is talking to his toys, he is talking to me and Ryan sometimes (and by talking i obv mean cooing at), he smiles sometimes and i think they're real smiles...like i kept saying something about his little leggies to him last night and he smiled at me a bunch of times, it was soooo sweet!

He totally does this thing when you're holding him over your shoulder where he like flings himself to the side if he wants you to cradle him instead lol it's really funny.

he still makes the super contemplative face:


lol

he's so cute

anyways! he's perfect and awesome and i'm obsessively in love with him :)

when he sleeps he makes SO much noise omg he talks in his sleep and grumbles and grunts and it's like the loudest roomate ever. My sister bought us this little sleepy thing that goes next to the bed and he was in it last night and kept me up half the night with his sleep grunting haha

so yay! i cannot believe he is four weeks old already - how has the time gone this fast?? Four weeks! my baby!

Back on Track

today i rejoined Weight Watchers.

I had been a member of WW back in 2005ish and had had a lot of success with it. At the time I only wanted to lose 10 pounds and was thrilled when i lost 12 with very little effort, just counting points.

Now this is serious. I'm only 4 weeks postpartum but i still feel the need to get my weight situation under control. So far I've lost 26 pounds but since I gained 40 total in pregnancy I still have a way to go. It's okay and I'm trying not to be too on my own case about it but I had to feel like I was doing something proactive about the whole situation at least. So that's why i joined back up.

They've changed their whole plan around so I feel like I'm learning everything again and i guess in a way that's a good thing (but in another way i can't just jot things down from memory in a hurry which sorta sucks bc i've basically only got one arm available most of the time since i'm holding a baby in the other arm the rest of the time).

I've heard that while breastfeeding you should aim to lose a pound per week. That means it would at best take me 14 weeks to get back to my pre pregnancy weight. 14 weeks is a long time! That's March 14th. Oh well, though. What am i gonna do? Like i said, at least i'm doing something here.

i am hoping to use this whole Weight Watchers thing as a way to jump-start me back into cooking as well. I have been doing a really dismal job of making dinner since even before the baby was born and I am looking forward to getting back into the kitchen again.

This post is completely all over the place but I just thought i'd document the weight loss component since that is so very much a part of this whole pregnancy/post-pregnancy/mommy journey that i'm finding myself on. Good luck to me lol

okay off i go

tubby time!

my baby hates the bath. hates it with a passion. He screams and wails the second that his little body touches the water. I feel so bad! He wails and looks at me with the saddest little expression on his face.

tonight i tried to bring him into the bath with me in the hopes that he would take to it more. It didn't work. He still screamed only this time he was up close and clinging to me like "why mommy??" it broke my heart!

i gave him to Ryan and wrapped him up in his Shark hood towel (thanks to Emma for getting that for us!) and dressed him but i still wish he didn't hate it so much. Poor little guy!

my mom assures me that eventually he'll come around and like the bath. I hope so! Until then, sponge baths it is :)

about the baby

I am going to work on updating this thing more often. That was always my intention once the baby arrived - to document his growth and experiences (and my growth and my experiences) in a public forum like this. I think it will be fun and worthwhile.

Of course, i had no concept of how difficult it would be to get onto a computer at all in the first few weeks of mommyhood, let alone having the time to update my blogs properly with photos and witty little quips (please let me think that i am full of with and quips here).

I would like to also mention that it just figures that the first time i sit down to do this my son who was blissfully slumbering in his fisher price my little lamb swing (such a great swing) wakes up. Ohhh but he seems to be falling back asleep again. Let's hope!

Also, this blog works best if you leave comments here and I get a chance to respond. Especially if I am asking questions and you know the answers or have some helpful advice. I would love to have an archive of that advice and the best place for it to go is right here in the post where I am asking for it! Just my thoughts on things :)

His little eyes are open again so I'm on a limited time-frame here because he is making little monster grunting noises.

I wanted to just say the following and then hopefully the next time i come back I will have an actual topic to discuss: motherhood really is the most insanely challenging experience ever but it is also the BEST thing I have ever done.

I know, i know, how cliche right? That's what everyone says. But like everything else, people say it because it's TRUE! It's so great. He's so precious and wonderful and just all around perfect and i love him more than i thought possible. And at the same time being a mommy is like running a marathon that never ends. I am exhausted, i've reached my "limit" several times already but have somehow powered through. I guess it just shows that there is no limit and that really all of life's difficult moments and experiences are basically just a matter of getting your mind in a place of empowerment and positivity.

It's not all easy and rose petals but there ARE more wonderful moments than ones where you want to pull your hair out (or other people's hair out). I have had to put the baby down (somewhere safe) and walk away just to regroup and regather myself once or twice but that's okay, that's normal, that's part of adjusting. And other times I haven't wanted to pass him over to anyone else to hold because i wanted to just keep him snuggled in my arms for hours and hours where i can shower him with kisses and snuggles any time i want. Most of our experiences live in between those extremes which is a good thing and which i think shows us that we're adjusting well to one another (he to me and me to him).

I have more to say but i also have more to do before I have to get him and feed/change him (lather, rinse, repeat) so I'll be back, i promise. I want to get better at taking photos of him that are with a camera better than my phone camera but for now that's mostly what we're working with.