Ada at six weeks.

I can't believe it's been six weeks already!


And we've gone from this:

to this:

And from here:

Ada at nine days

To here:

Ada at six weeks

When I last weighed her using Pa's great platform and the kitchen scales (which isn't very exact of course, but gives a rough indication), a day or so before her six week "birthday" Ada was around 10 lbs, 13 ounces.

While she's doing all the typical baby things, it feels like she is starting to show her own preferences and personality. Some times it is difficult to know what's just "baby" and what is specifically "Ada," but it's all good.

Ada has started to "talk" much more and she's smiling all the time, especially at diaper changes. It is hard to catch them on camera though, since even though they're more and more frequent, they're still pretty fleeting. I think I heard her laugh for the first time, too. It was a reflex, rather than specifically in response to anything in particular, but I'm pretty sure it was a laugh, or at least a proto-laugh.

She has great head control, and keeps her head up all the time. She's starting to balance a bit when sitting up on our laps, and she's just generally happy in more positions rather than just up on our shoulder all the time. She kicks like crazy, with her legs going all the time, as you can see in the Bagpuss photo above. 

She is showing interest in more things, like her reflection (and Mark's) in the mirror and the whozit. She can follow objects with her eyes and she'll turn her head to look for the source of sounds. She's responding to our voices and faces now, which of course is the best part of all!

She still has the biggest, longest yawns:

She is getting more used to her swing, and even snoozes in it, from time to time, especially if the dryer is running.

At tummy time, she doesn't stay still and constantly scoots herself up the mat. Although sometimes it gets exhausting.

She's finding her thumb more and more, and getting better at not poking herself in the eye when she sucks.

She's had several baths, in her tummy tub. She seems to really, really enjoy it. She also is now starting to use her legs a bit, sometimes using the buoyancy to try to stand up in the tub.

 Mark and I are much better at our post-tub routine (which now includes warmed towels!, thanks to Pa's suggestion), so she doesn't get as upset once she's out of the tub. We weren't quite sure where it came from, if it was just that she missed the tub once she was out, or if we just needed improvement.

And speaking of transitions, I guess all babies are like this, but I think it's transitions that Ada has particular problems with. So being in the car seat is fine, but getting into it is not. Ditto for the Bjorn.  Being in the bath is fantastic, but getting out of it is awful. Being naked is great, and being clothed is great, but moving between the two is not fun. The only transition activity that she not only tolerates but seems to like are diaper changes. Thank goodness for that and let's hope it continues!

Ada's sleeping habits are becoming more of a focus for me (I guess I only have three things to choose from, and she seems to be eating and pooping OK). She's getting into more of a routine at night, with the longest sleep of three and half to four hours happening first, up until about 1 am. Then she'll typically wake again two more times before moving from night time sleep to day time naps around 7-8am. 

Her day time naps, though, are very sporadic. I'm trying now to monitor when she's typically drowsy so I can learn when to start to put her down before she gets to that point (as suggested by the baby/child health book Julie gave us), but right now it seems like she's drowsy all the time, so it's hard to know what's "real" and what's just the fact that she's tired because we missed the "real" window. So for the last couple of days, she's been sort of drowsy all the time and I've been trying to get her to take naps all the time. Except when she's eating and the times in between when she's perky and talkative (and very cute). But fortunately, even when we have a "bad" napping day, she still pretty much sticks to the night time pattern, which is nice - though of course I'd love to have her be like the formula fed baby (who is the same age) of a friend of ours who is now already mostly sleeping through the night. But I guess since she's breastfed, that is probably a little ways off, even if we're lucky and she starts doing it "early." She did have a night recently when she was waking up more frequently - but we think she was going through her 5-6 week growth spurt. So I'm trying to be thankful for her pattern, which could be a lot worse!

Because of all the napping stuff, and because I'm still feeding "on demand," we don't have a regular daily schedule yet. I'm not really trying to enforce one, but rather just waiting to see if one naturally forms, and waiting to see how the nap monitoring pans out. It does seem that she sleeps the most deeply in whatever nap we manage around 2:30-4:30ish, so that may end up being one of the "anchors" for the day. We'll see.

The one thing that we are now starting to do is have bath time at roughly the same time every day, as the starting point of a bedtime routine which we'll add things to and make more formal as she gets a little bit older, maybe somewhere between 3-6 months.

Were-baby still makes an appearance most nights, and I do think this is partly due to the napping situation and a bit of extra tiredness. Now that we're having the regular bath time around 6:30pm, it tends to surface after that, rather than before. It varies in length and severity from day to day, but I don't think it's actually ever been long enough or unrelenting enough to be classified as "colic," thankfully. She'll usually calm down fairly quickly with Mark holding her, either rocking her or swaying in the BabyBjorn (which, by the way, she loves, especially if Mark is "wearing" her), and usually with ocean waves or forest rain in the background. If she's particularly fussy we escalate to Alaskan windstorm, and if that fails, go to the tumble dryer on an airing cycle (I have now reached the point where I only typically have one load a day to do and sometimes I've already used it up on a swing nap to take a shower in the morning!).

The other big development lately is that we have introduced a bottle of breastmilk to her. Mark gave it to her while I hid in the other room ("they" say it helps babies to get used to it), and Ada seemed to take it just fine, and she fed as normal overnight fine, too. As Jenny and Julie suggested, and unlike all the warnings from "them," she didn't look at my boob after getting the bottle and say "What is this? What do you expect me to do with this?" We'll keep giving her probably a bottle a day and see how it goes.

So we're all continuing to learn and grow and having a great time!