Strength

It's amazing how much strength K has. I'll set her on my lap and I just have to hold her body because her neck is stable. She loves sitting up and she loves when I hold her so she can look over my shoulder. If I hold her like that though, I have to be in the mood to have a really wet shoulder. She's quite the drooler.

K's Room

Sometimes when K's grumpy, I will take her into her room. I'll tell her it's a special place and ask her if she remembers why. She always just stares at me which I take as a no. I go on to tell her it's special because it has all of her things in it. It's hers.

And that's what I love about her room. At the end of the day, I go to my room and she goes to hers. She never slept in our room. She's taken a few naps in our room but we never let her sleep with us like many people do. We realized after the first week or so that even if we did, it would do us no good. If something was wrong, we would have slept through it anyway unless she was crying pretty loudly.

Plus after we put her to bed for the night, we stay up and read, play games, and watch the most recent television show we missed in our room so it's nice she has her own room so we don't bother her. The cut down on noise is also supposed to help train her to know that it's night time.

I didn't actually remember that people keep babies in their rooms with them until last week and so I've been really curious to know what it would have been like if K was in our room with us. ... Guess I'll never know.

Parenting

One nice thing about now being a parent is that I get to make the decisions I think are best for her. Mike and I have a lot of ideas on parenting and we agree 99.9% of the time which is so nice. I always worried a few years ago that the person I married would be one who was okay with spanking and yelling at a kid because they did something wrong. We personally believe that both are types of abuse but there's a lot out there who do not and that's okay for them. It's just not okay for us.

One thing Mike's mom always says and reminds us of is that we are the parents and we now get to and have the responsibility to do what is best for our little K. And I agree. Parents should be very responsible for their children. Everyone else is just lucky and gets to enjoy the kids how they are.

Today I had an incident where a person was interacting with K and I asked this person to not do what they were doing. Instead of complying with me, the mother of the little one, this person said, "well, would you rather me..." like what they were currently doing was so much better than what they could have done. After my reply of "no," this person went back to what they were originally doing and did it in my plain sight, like they didn't believe me or that they thought they knew best for MY daughter.

I think one of the toughest parts about being a new parent is everyone telling you what to do, what's best for you and the baby, and what privileges they have because of their relation to the baby. It's overbearing and very stressful, especially for a pushover like me. I've tried to tell people how I really feel these past few years but sometimes it's best not to even argue, you know?

K is my favorite person on this whole earth besides my husband and I have been given, along with my husband, the responsibility to raise her. I've promised Heavenly Father that I will do all that I can to teach her how to survive in these last days and to teach her all I can about the gospel. I've promised to do what I think is best for her. And all of this is so hard when others don't respect that.

spit up and all the goodies

I don't think I've ever had so much wetness on me that wasn't just water. K spits up and drools on me all the time. I've even been peed on a couple of times. And surprisingly, I'm starting not to care. She spits up and drools all over my shirt and finally, and the first thing I do isn't change my shirt. I've realized it's just not possible for me to change my shirt every few hours.

Plus she's just so darn cute. I just can't get over it.

Straightjacket Feeling

I used to love that song by All-American Rejects. In fact, I used to love most of their songs but I haven't been a fan of their music lately.

I think K kind of knows what they're talking about in that song though. The past two nights, she has been wrapped in what my sister-in-laws call "the straightjacket." It works really well in keeping K's little arms wrapped in a blanket all night. I feel sort of bad when I wrap her up and pin her arms to her side but I'm sure she's grateful that she doesn't wake herself up because she smacked her uncontrollable fist into her face.

This morning I woke up to her cooing and talking. I got up to see what she was up to since usually I wake up to her beginning to cry since she had just messed her diaper. But this morning when I walked in, she was just looking at the side of her crib, smiling, and talking away. Way too fun.

Back to the old life ...

... almost. I will sleep in until noon if you let me, I have to feed someone every few hours, and I have a baby plus a diaper bag to take with me everywhere I go but other than that, life is a lot more normal than it was a few weeks ago. Not to mention the 5+ straight hours of sleep I've had for the past week and a half really helps.

Today K slept in until about 8 am and around 10, she took almost a 3 hour nap. It took me a half hour to wake her up. She's like her dad - if she doesn't want to wake up yet, she won't.

During the last hour, I read some forums online to see what other people said about how long their 6 week olds sleep. I worried I had let her sleep too long. Most of them said their babies only sleep 2-3 hours at a time with 4 or 5 hours being the longest amount of time. And one lady mentioned that most healthy babies will wake themselves by 6 weeks if they're hungry. And that was when I stopped worrying whether she was sleeping too much. That lady was right. When K is hungry, she let's me know.

So today, I'm so grateful K sleeps so well. I hope this doesn't come back to bite me in the butt.

Do books help?

I'm not sure. That's what I discovered last night.

I was reading through the books my sister-in-law let me read again last night. I skimmed through them before K was born to get a general idea of what I needed to do but haven't really used them since. I remembered the key things like the S's and to keep K up after feeding her unless it's during the night, but other than that, I've just been letting K's life happen.

I was so amazed to find out last night that K is following the books quite well concerning her sleep habits. I don't track her naps very well but other than that, she's doing great. She is just such a good baby.

Which made me wonder, is she doing so well because I took some hints from the book or would she have done this well on her own? Would she cry more without the books' help? I just don't know. I do know, however, that I'm glad I know the things I know. And I'm giving the books full credit for my happy baby.

A Good Sleep

Last night, K was the grumpiest she has ever been before going to bed. She was red faced, screaming at the top of her lungs and the only thing I could think to do was to follow the S's of a happy baby.

First I swaddled her nice and tight so her limbs weren't flailing all over. Next I turned her to her side in my arms and repeated "shh" into her ears. Then I swayed back and forth with a slight bounce to grab her attention. When those 4 things were done, I was able to put her pacifier in her mouth so she could suck.

About 5 minutes later, K was out cold. I put her in her crib and she didn't wake us up for 6 1/2 hours straight.

So thank you to my sister-in-law, H, for letting me read your books. Without them, last night could have been pretty bad.

Grabbing

K has developed this thing where she grabs things to put them into her mouth. This is a pretty awesome development ... except when it's feeding time. And poor Mike got to experience that little joy this morning.

Grumpy mom

I went on and on yesterday about how K has done so well at sleeping through the night but I obviously spoke way too soon. She woke up at 2:30 and 5:30 am and was hungry. If it weren't for our upstairs neighbors, she would have had to suck it up and go back to sleep but with them upstairs with a little 14 month old, I can't just let her cry. I hope they go out of town this weekend though because as soon as they do, she's going to have to cry through the night.

diapers

It's times like these when I seriously consider reusable diapers. K and I have only been up for an hour and a half and I've already changed her diaper 4 or 5 times. She's sitting here with me and she just wet her diaper yet again! We ordered about 250 diapers from diapers.com about 3 or 4 weeks ago and had a couple people say we wouldn't use them all. Boy were they wrong! We've got to order more today.

5 1/2 weeks

K is changing so much all the time. Lately she's been much more content looking around and staring at the walls, furniture, and other things. She of course still likes to be held and such, but she's becoming much more interested in the world around her.

She is also beginning to sleep a lot better during the night. Her first stretch during the night is about 6 hours and then she'll give me another 3 hours between feedings. But that also means more frequent feedings in the evening which is okay with me if that means I can get more straight sleep!

Moms Know Everything

Okay, that may not be true but I feel like I am finally getting the hang of K. I have started to be able to predict when she's going to be hungry within a few minutes and when she starts crying, I usually know what is wrong.

One of my most favorite moments was last night. It was about 11:15 pm and Mike and I were about to watch "America's Got Talent." I told him that K was going to need to be fed in about 45 minutes and I should maybe get some sleep. Well, we watched the episode and a couple of minutes after midnight, K began to cry. She was hungry. Mike was amazed and so was I.

K is growing like a champ. It's crazy to look at pictures of her from 5 weeks ago and to see how much smaller she was. Her face is also rounding out nicely. Her eyes are no longer so close to her mouth. Her little thighs are chubby. Her little belly is very potbelly-ish. Her fingers are getting chubby. Her hair is thinning. And she's getting much longer.

sleeping

I always get asked if K is sleeping well at night. I'm guessing it's because if she gets sleep, I must get sleep too. My response is always, "Yeah, she sleeps really well!" I wish that was the same for me. Actually, I just wish I could sleep like babies do. They are able to go into a deep sleep much more quickly than adults so while her 3 hours of sleep leaves her well rested, my 3 hours of sleep leaves me groggy and exhausted.

Two nights ago, K let me sleep almost 5 1/2 hours! I was hoping for the same thing last night but 4 hours was the most I got which is a big improvement from the 2 hours at a time I was getting her first couple of weeks!

hair

K's losing her hair and it makes me really sad to find little hairs all over her clothes. She also needs a haircut. She's got a serious mullet going on.

The past 2 hours, she has cried every time I put her down. She's lucky that I love to hold her.

Miss Grumpy Pants

Lately K's been holding her pacifier. It has a little ring on it and she'll put her finger or fingers through it and hold her pacifier in place. She'll also just use her hand to push against it to hold it in.

Apparently this morning, Mike was taking care of her so I could sleep a little more and she was upset because she was hungry. Mike kept putting the pacifier in her mouth to keep her from crying but finally she had enough of that. She grabbed her pacifier, yanked it out of her mouth, and threw it across the room. She's only one month old!

Man, I am not looking forward to the next 18 years.

grumpy baby

Normally I call K "Cutie" but lately she gets called "Grumpy Baby" quite a bit because that's what she's been.

Yesterday was frustrating for me. She wanted to eat every 1-2 hours which is tough because she's a slow, slow eater. So that meant that basically nothing got done yesterday. I thought since she was up most of the day that she'd sleep well last night. I went to bed pretty happy. But when only 2 1/2 hours had passed and she was already up again, I was pretty bummed. Then 3 hours later, she was up again for basically the rest of the morning.

The past few days prior to this, however, have been pretty good. She usually goes down around 11 pm and doesn't wake up until about 4 am. Then she's up again around 8 or 8:30 am. I definitely can't complain with that schedule!

But last night she was back to her old schedule so I hope this was just a mishap.

Oh, and K is one month old today! To celebrate, we went out and got free frozen yogurt from a shop that just opened up in Orem called "Golden Spoon." Mike and I aren't fans but it was nice to be able to try it for free.

burping

Other than when she's asleep, burping K is one of my favorite parts of the day. I just think she's so adorable as she sits on my knee with her mouth partway open, just waiting for a burp. Just recently she's started actually burping after or during feedings. With those burps sometimes comes a little bit of spit up. Oddly enough, I use my hand to catch it all if there's no cloth around. I never thought I'd do that, but apparently being a parent has really changed me.

I also like when she actually burps. Usually one will come out, her eyes will open huge, I'll give her a kiss, and she'll turn and look at me like, "What just happened?" Way too much fun.

Oh, Oh, Oh

... That's what K says. She also opens her mouth into an "o" shape and we're still working on getting her to say "oooohhhhhhhh" like a true Asian.

I also got at least 4 straight hours of sleep last night. We're really not sure how much sleep it was because we can't really distinguish days from each other anymore. But anymore than 2 hours at a time of sleeping is very welcomed.

Mike's been really good about helping out with K lately. Sometimes he even jumps out of bed when she cries before I do. He can't do much to help but it's nice that he'll start changing her diaper and try to console her until I can get myself off the bed.

The attention she gets is always so funny to me. So far I haven't been one place with her when someone hasn't commented on her hair. She currently has about an inch and a half of hair. Yesterday in the mother's room at church, one lady was there with her 7-month old son. I'm pretty sure K had that much hair about 5 months ago. That poor kiddo was nearly bald. Although I bet those parents never have a problem with him pulling his own hair. We had to start worrying about it on day 1.