1 Month Old

Claire is 4 weeks old. I can't believe it. 

After her bath in her bunny towel.

As expected, she is very intelligent and advanced for her age: she's almost potty trained and has this English thing down. Oh, and yesterday she took her first step. And she slept through the night.

Wait. Just kidding. That isn't quite right. 

It should go: Eric and I are almost potty trained meaning we can totally tell when she needs a diaper change and we can do so quite proficiently--generally getting the clean diaper on just in time for her to use another. We have only not made it on time with the new once or twice.  Claire's record is three diapers and two sets of clothes in one changing session...

Last Thursday Eric started to hone in on her particular English dialect: when she's hungry her cry sounds hearty and is generally accompanied by lip smacking and hand sucking.  On the other hand, when she's sleepy  it takes on an exhausted horse quality--like she went to the ball game and is loosing her voice (or like she's cried a little too hard for a little too long because she HATES going to sleep). This week I, on the other hand, have come to the realization as I coo to her and try to calm her down by saying her name and things like "you're going to be fine" or"you're so tired just close yours eyes" that she is brand new and has no idea what I'm saying. Yes, she can recognize my voice and where it's coming from but that's about it. I need to be ok with her turning my way when I speak but expecting her to understand when I try to reason her out of a fit is ridiculous. I'd keep crying too if someone kept saying the same thing over and over again to me in an undecipherable language while frantically bouncing me up and down and patting my back.

Ok. So her feet don't really do much quite yet. But her hands on the other hand are very busy and dainty and beautiful. While she hasn't made real eye contact yet she is becoming very spatially aware of the area around her face. She can reach out and grab a finger and she can very adeptly fend off incoming pacifiers when she does not want to be pacified. 

Nights are actually going really well. We've been feeding and going down around 10pm. She wakes up around 3am, eats and goes back down pretty easy and then wakes again around 6:30/7am. It's pretty great kind-of having an idea of when she's going to be up. It's really the only semblance of a schedule we have going on right now.

Camera shy