Great-Grandparents Galore!

An exciting week for Michelle! She had her 1 month check-up yesterday. She is 9lbs, 22 inches long and her head is 14.5 inches. In other words, momma's milk is working just fine! We have introduced her to one bottle of breast milk at bedtime and after some mild protest and realization that there IS and alternate source of "the good stuff", she is sucking back the bottle in no time. It has also been a good way to tank her up for a longer stretch of sleep. Plus, Barry gets to join in on the fun.

Most importantly, Michelle met her Great-Grandparents, Bea and Bert , last weekend. They came down with Tammy and Erica on Friday and we drove up to Tammy's on Saturday. Tammy even had a special cake for the occasion.

Barry is out of town this week for work. This is the first time Michelle and I have been home alone without any help. By the end of the day Monday, the house looked like a hurricane had hit it. It really hit me how much Barry does around the house to keep the wheels turning. As I cracked open a can of soup for dinner, I mourned the loss of chef Barry big time!

I am very grateful to my friend Stephanie who came down with her 7 month old baby and spent the night. She watched Michelle so I could go grocery shopping, made dinner for us, cleaned my kitchen AND made coffee (decaf) before taking off this morning. Michelle and I are heading up to Tammy's this afternoon and plan to spend the night so clearly I am not without support this week!

Io and Stephanie's little boy, Keith, were quite amused with eachother.

4 weeks old today!

Michelle is 4 weeks old today. Big milestone last night. She took a bottle of breast milk! It took some coaxing but she finally took it with a "bait and switch" tactic by getting her on the boob and switching to the bottle. Tonight we will try bait and switch and switch again by handing her off to daddy for the feeding.

4 week celebration walk around Titlow. Man, Not bad for 4 weeks postpartum!

Finally fitting into the "Bum Genius" diapers. In many colors!


Daddy time!

Our little poster child for Newborn acne. Don't know if she'll have a prom date this year :-(

The battle of the pacifier....

I have not wanted to introduce a pacifier to Michelle until our breastfeeding was well established. I think we are now at that point but she has done well without one so I figured, why introduce something that we may have a battle with later trying to take away? However, I have read in a couple of baby books that a pacifier may help refluxing babies by stimulating saliva production to neutralize the acidity. So last night, in an attempt to calm our colicky, refluxing child, we tried the pacifier. My boobs were dry. She had been sucking on them non-stop for hours. They needed time to fill up and Michelle still needed to suck on SOMETHING. I figured it would either be a "Ahh, where have you been all my life???" moment or a "You can't fool me with that mockery of a nipple!" moment. And the verdict? Officially "You can't fool me with that mockery of a nipple!" When I first stuck it in her mouth, there was a very brief quiet moment of "Oh! A nipple!" quickly followed by a crinkled nose spitting out the pacifier and crying louder as if to say "you would ACTUALLY try to feed me silicone? Are you trying to POISON me???" So we waited until she calmed down a little bit and tried again to gently introduce the sucking device. This time she fought it with her tongue, refusing it before it could even enter her mouth. Eventually, when she was just worn out with crying, we tried again and she did actually suck on it for a couple of minutes before realizing she had been tricked. Then, of course, she crinkled her nose, made a face and spit out the imposter. The good news I guess is that we won't have to break her of a pacifier habit. The bad news? Well, I was planning to get pumping breast milk this week so that Barry could give her a bottle in the evenings. My nipples and Barry would appreciate delegating an evening feeding. At 4 weeks, this is apparently the window to introduce a bottle so lets hope the bottle goes better than the pacifier!