Nashville Zoo at Grassmere

When Adeline was a little over two weeks old we made our first trip up to Nashville to see my family. My mom bought us an annual membership to the Nashville Zoo as a early Christmas present so we called up our friends Erin and sweet little Kate who met us there.

Adeline's 6th & 7th Week

6 Weeks old on November 20th! (forgot to take a picture)

Sleep: Adeline is sleeping much better this week. She sleeps great in her swing 1.5-2hrs we are working on getting her used to her crib. I think it's because her swing and even her car seat snuggles around her body and her crib doesn't. Both of her grandparents have cribs at their houses so when we go to visit they have a great place to sleep so that's really the only reason we feel necessary to get her use to the crib. I had a hard time figuring out how long to keep her awake after she eats since she eats so fast. I've determined between 45 min and 1 hour seems to work best. 

Nursing: Baby girl is a FAST nurser. She averages around 10-12 minutes total nursing. That is actual sucking and swallowing time and doesn't include burping. I worried at first that she wasn't getting enough but she sleeps great and plenty of dirty diapers. I weighed her in my arms this week and she was about 10.2 lbs. 

Adeline has really started responding to us talking to her. She looks right into your eyes and smiles and has started cooing. We got lots of smiles this week. She is just like her mommy and is happiest after she eats.

Her baby acne is really clearing up now.

Big sister still loves to snuggle with baby sister

Went to Nashville again this week and saw baby Kate

and Aunt Nina. I give up on getting Lillian to look at the camera these days.

7 Weeks Old on November 27th. 

She is all smiles when she is awake except when I'm actually trying to get her to smile for a picture. 

Sleep:

We were out of town for thanksgiving so sleeping was hard for Adeline. Kevin's brother had a spare swing luckily so Adeline slept in that but it was one of those mamaroo things. It doesn't lean back far enough to just lay Adeline in without having to buckle her but when she is swaddled its hard to put the straps between her legs. The first two nights were tough on her but she eventually got use to it and she actually slept 7 hours straight for the first time!! I was so thankful I went to bed early that night because I got about 7 hours straight of sleep too! Still not the best napper. She will go down fine and sleep for around 45 minutes straight then wake up and have a hard time falling back asleep. She was held a lot this weekend so she slept great for naps in everyone's arms. She never seems to fuss when she is awake unless its close to eating or she needs her diaper changed so I just remind myself that she may not need as much sleep like Lillian did. 

Schedule: Half way through the week we switched to a 3.5 hr schedule. I have liked this schedule the best so far.

 Its looks something like this:

7am wake up for the day and eat (she seems to wake between 6:45-7:15)

8am down for nap

10:30 eat

11:30am down for nap

2:00pm eat

3:00pm down for nap

5:30pm eat

6:30pm down for nap

9pm eat and straight to bed

(She will wake for a motn feeding around 3ish)

Eating:

She still eats great and super fast. 4-5 minutes each side. She is still a "happy spitter" but not all the time. 

Since I am always so late on posting I can never remember what we did that week so i usually just go by the pictures on my phone. Here are a couple I took during Adeline's 7th week. 

family playtime

We had some decent weather one day so we got outside for Lillian to kick the soccer ball around and I held Adeline in the Ergo carrier. I'm finally getting the hang of getting her strapped in it correctly. 

Adeline's 5th week

5 Weeks old as of November 13th.

Adeline also turned one month old on November 9th during this week and a friend got me these monthly stickers (excited because I didn't have these with Lillian) so I had to take monthly pictures too! 

Nursing and Schedule: We started implementing a stricter schedule this week. We had a couple nights where I fed Adeline at 10:30 and she only woke up once around 2:45-3am to eat and then slept until somewhere between 6-7am. My desired awake time for her is 7am so I'll usually go get her up and try to snuggle a few more minutes before feeding her. Hoping this schedule continues. I haven't had to use the nipple shield this week except in the middle of the night if I can't get Adeline awake enough to latch on properly. 

Adeline started holding her head up more this week.

Physical features: As you can tell from the picture her poor head is still balding like a 70 year old man. Her baby acne is finally clearing up. We used Mustela Baby foaming shampoo every morning and it really seemed to help. Plus it smells good in my opinion. So far Adeline doesn't seem to have sensivtive skin. No eczema or diaper rashes yet. 

Aunt Kayla and Uncle Jeff came to visit us over the weekend. 

I finally got a baby carrier this week, I ended up getting an Ergo original that was used for $60. I had to watch videos to figure out how to put Adeline in properly.

Hoping this will help when we go out and about especially the grocery store where I'll actually have room to put groceries in the cart.

And I'll end with some sweet sister pictures

Sweet smiles!

Adeline's 4th Week

I got behind and can't remember what all happened her 4th week.  Here is her 4th week picture

I do remember that sleep was an issue for us this week and turns out she was in a wonder week. One night I fed her at 10:30, 1:30, 3:45, 5:30 and 7:00. Thankfully that only happened one night because I was so tired the next day. 

Lillian loves her sister. I found her like this when I walked into another room for a minute. And she loves to give her sister kisses. 

SISTERS!

Halloween did fall during Adeline's 4th week. We had a neighborhood fall festival on Halloween but since it was raining our neighborhood decided to hand out candy for trick or treating sunday afternoon. It ended up still being overcast but rain held out long enough for Lillian to enjoy herself. Lillian still talks about "tick r tweet" 

Our very hungry caterpillar and butterfly

More pictures from this week, lots of snuggling going on around here 

I have had to remember that Lillian and Adeline are two different people. I can't compare how Lillian was as a baby and how Adeline is but they sure have similarities. I saw this on our monitor one evening 

both of them staring at the monitor and 10 minutes later I saw this. 

I read Adeline her first book this week. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, one of my childhood favorites. 

Adeline's 3rd Week

Adeline turned 3 weeks old on Friday October 30th. 

Physical features: Baby acne seems to be clearing up some. Hopefully by next week it will be gone. So far she has not gotten cradle cap yet but the infant shampoo we bought for her acne supposedly helps with cradle cap too. And poor girl has no hair on the top of her head, she must take after her daddy. :)

Nursing: still nursing pretty fast. If I use the nipple shield it takes her about 20 minutes total to eat but if I can get her to latch without it she is done in less than 15. I can tell she eats faster without the shield because she spits up a little more afterwards because the milk is coming out so fast. Also if Adeline starts crying hard while I am holding her or in the same room it makes my milk let down. That never happened with Lillian so the nursing pads are a must right now.

Schedule: We started sticking to a stricter schedule this week. By 3 weeks Lillian was only waking once at night to eat but Adeline wakes up twice so i'm working on getting full feedings during the day to last her at night. We are doing a schedule of a desired wake time at 7am, then eat every 3 hours so 7am,10,1,4,7,10pm and currently 1 and 4 am at night but if we could get her to wake just once around 3ish that would be awesome.

Sleeping: She is a pretty good sleeper but she doesn't sleep as long as I would like her to. this week she has been falling asleep for naps fine but will wake up once or twice before her next feeding. If I can't get her to fall back asleep I will hold her and she sleeps great. I don't want her to get use to only sleeping in someone's arms but I know she needs the sleep in order to eat better and sleep better later. We had been putting her in her swing to sleep but I want to try and get her back in her crib so she will go down easily in the crib and not become dependent on the swing. She doesn't fall asleep well in the crib, I think it is because she isn't as "cuddled" as she is in her swing or someone's arms. We have let her cry it out a few times and she had been crying for just 6 or so minutes then falls right to sleep but there are times where 10 minutes has passed and she doesn't seem to let up so I go hold her and get her calm enough to fall back asleep. If she does wake up in the middle of the night and it's not time to eat it usually means she needs a diaper change.

Postpartum: I'm feeling great this week. I am pretty tired around 9am most days and may or may not have taken a quick little nap on some of these rainy days we have been having lately.

Got some big smiles this week

Only sleeping in mommy's arms so I made a make shift sling out of a scarf

Lillian didn't seem this small and fit into 0-3 month clothes when we came home from the hospital. Adeline gets swallowed up in anything not newborn so thankful Aunt Brittany and cousin Aubrey let us borrow a few newborn things before Baby girl #2 arrives for them. Here is one cute little outfit that actually fit!