6 Weeks!

She smiles!! The major excitement of this past week has been Cadence’s on-purpose smiles. Her first smile was for Matt (and her second, too!) which is completely appropriate because no one in this world makes me smile more than he does. She gave me a smile one afternoon too! It’s so great to see her make a happy expression! I was just surviving the last six weeks assuming that as long as my child wasn’t screaming, she was somewhere in the vicinity of happy. But now I have proof! Smiles are so great. I don’t have a good picture yet…hmm…but I’m working on it! This little half smile is as close as I’ve gotten:

More things about Cadence:

• In the sleep department, she has continued to get better. She doesn’t have any “awake” time at night anymore, at all, ever. So awesome! And her sleep schedule is pretty consistent. Not exact, but consistent. She goes to bed between 9 and 12 and sleeps for 4 hours. Then she’s up for a feeding and diaper change, and back asleep for 2-3 hours. Then up for a feeding and back asleep for 2 hours. And sometime between 6 and 7am she’s up again, but only until I pull her into bed with me to snuggle and then she falls back asleep until we have to put her in the car to take Matt to work. I am OK with this! Even with the consistent sleep schedule, Matt is still sleeping in the guest room so he has a guaranteed eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. I hope he doesn’t get too comfortable in there, because I miss him!

• Cadence will take a pacifier…reluctantly. Her favorite thing to suck on is mommy, but if I’m not available, her next choice for soothing is her hand, but that is often short-lived because she hasn’t figured out how to isolate a finger from her fist. This kid is going to be a thumb sucker for sure!

• She loves to hold onto things. It’s soothes her. When she’s fussy, almost more than sucking, putting my finger in her hand calms her. When she’s falling asleep she loves to hold onto her blankie or my shirt or a finger, or her own hands…whatever she can get in her grasp. It’s very sweet.

• Cadence seems to have finally gotten her digestive tract used to life in the outside world. She was soooo gassy for a while that I started modifying my diet to see if it was something I was eating that was causing her so much discomfort. Luckily nothing I eliminated from my diet seemed to make much difference. And now, she’s a very efficient pooper/tooter, and hardly ever complains about it! It’s the little things…

• Cadence had her first bath with her big sister this week! And she didn’t scream her head off the whole time. Adelaide really enjoyed having her little sister in the tub with her. I see many joint baths in our future!

In other news…I survived my first week home alone with the girls! There were good days…and there were some bad days…On one particularly bad day, I was saved by our good friend Joy, who kindly took Adelaide for the afternoon. The three of us are settling into a routine now, though, so I’m hoping the hardest part is behind us.

Here are some pics from this week: