Friday, December 7, 2007

Happy Happy Joy Joy!

Madeline just smiled at me! On purpose! While she was awake! For the first time! Twice in a row!

I was making a motor boat sound at her with my lips and she was looking at me, then she smiled. So I did it again and she smiled again! Then she cried for milk. Next time she does it I'll have to snap a picture. Toothless smiles are awfully cute!

I feel like I'm getting a better hang of this mothering thing every day. It's still hard sometimes, but it gets easier the more the baby and I learn about each other. She isn't a fan of sitting there while I walk around the house, so yesterday I put her in the baby bjorn carrier and I wore her while I cooked myself some dinner and got a few things accomplished. She fell right to sleep against my chest. I had to cook sideways to avoid cooking her toes as well, but it was well worth the slight inconvenience to avoid having her screaming or me having to carry her around and doing everything with one hand and risk dropping her.

Madeline's hair seems to be getting longer.. I thought it was supposed to fall out before the "real" hair comes in? I can't tell what texture it's going to be yet, if it's going to be frizzy like mine or not. I'm sure it's going to be light like John's though. Her eye lashes are blonde like his. She has that baby acne right now.

I was trying to figure out my time management yesterday. Say I sleep 10 hours a day. (Breastfeeding is biologically very demanding, so we're going with 10 instead of 8, plus she wakes me up every few hours.) So 10 hours of sleeping. She needs to eat every 3 - 4 hours for an hour each time (she likes to fall asleep and pop herself off and look around).. We'll go in the middle and make it 7 hours. 17 hours of my day taken up so far. She's awake about 4 hours a day for diaper changes and entertainment and talking and learning about the world around her, so we're up to 21 hours. I need to take care of myself with showers and potty breaks and brushing my teeth and hair and dressing myself and feeding myself 3 or 4 times a day, so about 2 or 3 hours? We'll go with 3 to make it a nice 24 hours now. Let's fit in cleaning up after John, which could account for a good 24 hours a day itself, but we'll go with 2 conservative hours of housekeeping a day that needs to be done. How about some "me" time? 1 hour a day. I could go on, but the point I am trying to make is it feels like I don't have enough hours in a day to do what I used to do so easily. The biggest thing that bothers me is the messy house. Maybe when Madeline is old enough I can teach her to cook Mommy some hot dogs and save myself some time. :)

Next time she smiles I'll be sure to take a picture, but in the mean time please enjoy these from the past few days!




5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Snuggly wuggly baby! Send her to me! Love you lots and lots! Miss you.......sigh!

Anonymous said...

That picture of her in the bed is adorable Bianka! She's beautiful like her mommy!

Anonymous said...

By the way Bianka, I think its amazing you did everything natural, you are definitely a wonder woman. And I'm sure being a brand new mommy is exhausting, but you look great, you switched from pregnancy glow to new mommy glow. It suits you well. :) Love you all.

ToFishTeacher said...

I think every new mom can relate to the feeling of having no time and not being able to accomplish normal tasks in a 24 hour day. I was just to dinner with my girlfriends (daddy and grandma were babysitting with a bottle for the first time), and telling them I was feeling like that, and they all told me they had the same experience. It does get better. Hang in there! I think I will write about that in Dominic's blog soon.

Jenn Ann said...

YAY!!! She is so precious and I'm glad you're doing well.