As we do every Sunday in celebrating her birthday, we relive the day she arrived. I have a few funny stories from that day that I forgot to share in our first blog post after she was born. First off, my water broke at home and we needed to get going to the hospital but I was determined to shower, wash my hair, and dry it before we left. We also had to pack a few more things for the hospital. Mike thought I was nuts when he said "ok, let's go" and I said "no, I need to shower and get ready." Thankfully he was patient and let me do my thing before we left. We left our house to drive to the hospital at 2:30 AM on Saturday night/Sunday morning and I was absolutely convinced that every driver on the road was a drunk driver. I think I drove Mike about crazy as I exclaimed about every car "WATCH OUT! There's a drunk driver!" Our hospital had recently changed it's procedure for arriving overnight. It used to be that you'd enter at their main entrance which was right next to labor and delivery. Beginning February 1 (5 days before we showed up), check in was at the emergency room. So we parked in their parking ramp and went into the emergency room around 3 AM. The staff on duty didn't seem to quite know what to do so they gave us some paper name tags and sent us on our way. After we walked about 10 feet, I realized we didn't know where to go so I went back to ask. The security guard just pointed at the name tag where it said "East Wing, 1st Floor" and said to look for that. Ok. So we set out on our own to find labor and delivery. Let's just say that finding the East Wing is NOT an easy feat and Mike and I walked around that hospital, completely lost for quite some time. Because it was 3 AM, there was also nobody around. (And let's keep in mind that I was having very regular and not so pleasant contractions at this point.) We thankfully, finally ran into a maintenance worker and begged him to help us find our way. Even he wasn't entirely sure where to go and didn't even have proper access to get there! We did finally get there but the whole adventure was a bit stressful at the time and now makes for a good story.
While my mom was here, Mike and I were able to go out to eat BY OURSELVES twice! A huge thanks to my mom for watching Maude and to both her and my dad for paying for our dinners out. =) What a treat! We were gone for maybe an hour and a half both times which felt like a long time to be away from Maude but it was also nice to have some adult time.
Maude is starting to be awake a bit more throughout the day. It's fun to have more time to interact with her but also makes it difficult when I need to get things done. I think she also got pretty darn spoiled with my mom being here and holding her all the time. In the 4 days since she's been gone, Maude hasn't wanted to do much else besides hang out in our arms.
We think we've seen a few smiles that aren't of the I-have-gas variety but we're not 100% sure. We like to think she's smiling at our silly antics but I think it's more likely they are involuntary grins. She should definitely be smiling in reaction to our smiles sometime in the next few weeks. She's also starting to make some noises that aren't just grunts or cries which is a lot of fun. There's a part of me that can't wait for the next new thing she'll do, but I also want her to stay her tiny self for a while longer.
On the subject of staying her tiny self, our gal is packing on the pounds (er, I mean ounces)! As of our last blog post, she weighed 7lbs 5oz and just four days after she weighed in at that, we had to go back to the doctor and she weighed 7lbs 13 oz! It's been over a week since that appointment and my guess is that she's around eight and a half pounds by now. She can still wear about half of her newborn outfits, but some are a bit snug at this point. She's been starting to wear some of her 0-3 month outfits, too.
This will be Maude and my first full week on our own. I'm really hoping to get into some sort of routine. Not sure how possible that is with a 5 week old, but we'll give it a try. It will be nice to have our time together and figure out our days. I'm very much looking forward to it.
Here are more pics of the little lady. Enjoy!
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| Ice Cream Cake! |
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| Clearly she was thrilled to be having her ice cream cake celebrating her one month birthday! |
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| She's a big fan of her fingers when she's coordinated enough to get them to her mouth and have them stay there! |
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| One month old! |
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| Had to get one of Stella in here. She loves to lay on Maude's play mat. |
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| As long as that pacifier is even near her mouth, she's fine. If it moves too far away, she lets us know! |
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| 5 weeks! As you can see, we give her a bath each Sunday and take a lot of photos at that time. We have a photo that looks almost identical to this from each week since she was born. |
