Friday, June 24, 2011

24 days

First of all, let me say "Happy Birthday" to my brother Ross! I didn't get a chance to call him today, so this is my birthday shout out...we love you and can't wait to see you again! I will try to call you tomorrow :)

And since Zoe has yet to reach the one month mark, we're still counting by days, so today is 24. She is growing fast, and I can't wait to see what she weighs at her check up next Friday. Breastfeeding experiment #2 hasn't been as miserable a failure as it was the first time around with Ziva, but it has been a failure nevertheless. So I'm pumping again, which I said I wouldn't, but this way Zoe's still getting breastmilk, just in the bottle. And I'm pretty much guessing on how much I should give her, based on how often she gets hungry and how much she drinks, and she seems to be a bigger eater than I remember Ziva being. So we'll see in a week how she's packing on the pounds!

Overall she's a pretty easy baby....she still sleeps a lot, and sleeps pretty well at night, which is great. She's not usually too fussy, sometimes just for a while in the evening. Typically she's fussiest right at Ziva's bedtime, so my stress level is maxed out, but it's okay. At Ziva's 3 year check up, our pediatrician quoted a saying from Bill Cosby, something to the effect that you're not really a parent until you have more than one kid. I scoffed at it then....one is plenty of work! But oh man. It's kinda true. One to two has been challenging in some ways, but mostly ways I hadn't expected or thought about, which makes it seem harder than it probably is. Post-partum hormones probably also make everything seem harder than it actually is :) The biggest shock to my system is just not having Ziva as my baby anymore. Suddenly she's a BIG girl, and it's funny how my expectations of her changed so quickly. She's doing great and loves being a big sister, but I know it's hard on her sometimes, and that's hard on me. But just tonight I was praying and remembered that it's a really good thing for her to learn that it's not all about her, to learn to share and have to wait for things and think about someone else besides herself. Even if it's painful at times, those are great life lessons and if we could somehow go through this transition without her learning those things, she'd be missing out in the long run. And I will keep reminding myself of that, day after day. I will need it, I'm sure.


Vince with his girls on Father's Day...we got to go to church for the first time with all four of us.


How sweet is this?



We're seeing more and more alert time, and I've even gotten some coos and smiles in the last few days. I know it's early but I swear they're real smiles....


We had family over for Father's Day, and Uncle Nate was able to come meet Zoe for the first time. Ziva's looking very serious in her big sister role.



Already climbing over the couch :)



Thursday, June 9, 2011

Welcome Zoe!

Zoe Kaitlin arrived on May 31, 2011, weighing in at 6 lbs, 13 oz and 19 1/2 inches long. I know I'm late in putting up pictures......we'll keep more coming!












Love this one...Ziva is a great big sister!