5 weeks

Cadence is now five weeks old! Time is disappearing!!

Matt’s family-leave ends today, so his first day back to work, and my first day with both girls by myself, is tomorrow. I’m nervous…that’s for sure. My goals for this week are very minimal—keep everyone alive and make dinner every night. If I can accomplish this feat, then I’ll move on to more advanced goals (like showering and getting dressed) next week.

Here are some things we’ve learned about our new one-month-old:

She’s an excellent eater. We took her to see the pediatrician on Friday because her head cold is still lingering (going on two weeks…ugh!), and we wanted to make sure that it was still a head cold and nothing more. She’s a healthy girl, still just a head cold, but at her weigh in, she was 11 pounds!!! She was 8 lbs 2 oz at birth, so in four weeks, she has gained an impressive three pounds. Unreal! I have to say, though, that I looooooove her tiny baby rolls and I am constantly kissing her chubby cheeks. She definitely looks like a HEALTHY baby and I love it!

Baby projectile vomit is not fun. Luckily we’ve only had to deal with it a handful of times, but still…no fun. Thankfully it’s only horrifyingly scary for the adult(s) involved, and doesn’t seem to bother Cadence even the slightest bit. Cadence hardly ever spits up, so the vomiting caught me totally off guard. Through some infallible research (my postpartum, sleep-deprived memory) we’ve concluded that this baby girl has some motion sensitivity, which combined with over feeding (or a very full tummy) equals a mass exodus of the contents of her stomach. Fun stuff, huh? So ya, car rides, baby swing, bouncer…not after eating!

She’s finally starting to sleep at night! Her head cold made her lack of night time sleeping even worse—a few nights she wouldn’t sleep for longer than 45 minutes at a time. PURE TORTURE! But the worst of the nasal congestion seems to be behind us, and Cadence is becoming a much better sleeper. For the last three nights, she has fallen asleep between 10 and 12 and slept for four straight hours!! Last night was her best night yet—she fell asleep at 11 and slept until 4!! Woo!!! Getting four uninterupted hours of sleep has been heavenly and I am really, really, really hoping this continues.

Cadence is strong! She’s been lifting her head up since week one (which Adelaide never did), but now, at five weeks old, she is using that head to really throw her weight around. If she’s on a surface that is just barely graded, she throws that head and rolls right over. We’ve been joking that at 4 weeks old, Cadence is already rolling over. LOL! We’re already doing tummy-time with her too, which we didn’t start doing with Adelaide until she was 6+ weeks old. Here’s the video I took of Adelaide at 6 weeks old, just starting to hold her head up. Quite a bit different from our experience with Cadence!

And here’s some pictures of our adorable Cadence from this past week: