Emilia Hits the Big 2.0 (Months)

Last Saturday was Emilia's 2 month birthday. It's still a learning process for us as we discover new things about her on an almost daily basis.

• She's smiling more now, but still rather unpredictably so it's hard to catch on camera.
• Her night-time sleeping is really good, and has been as long as 7 hrs.
• We've been tracking her weight gain, and she's had a steady increase from birth (see chart below). She's almost 11 lbs now which is about a 50% increase over her birth weight.
• She's gone through a spit-up phase, but it's seems better now.
• She eats like a horse at times, and at other times is more interested in sleeping.
• She loves her Rainforest musical mobile. Not sure what it is about it, but she'll stare at it, wave, smile, and coo.
• I think she's said "Hi" a few times. Ok, at least it sounded like it :^)
• When she has a fit, she's as strong as an ox. I think she'll outdo Momma in pull-ups.
• For some reason, she likes to turn her head to the right more than the left. She also seems to use her right hand more. We're starting to think that she might be a righty (much to Connie's dismay).
• She's been great on almost every outing we've gone on. She just seems to do better in fresh air, new environments, and with various people interactions.
• There are times during the day when you just can't get her to sleep.  That wouldn't be so bad except her awake time consists of a lot of crying time which means she requires a lot of attention to minimize the crying.  But there are also times when it seems she just needs to cry to burn off energy and tension.
• We've found a few new ways to soothe her into sleeping: 1) when it's cooler, a warm rice bag on her tummy makes her content, and 2) gentle stroking on her back will lull her to sleep as long as she isn't too fussy.
• She doesn't have a problem bottle feeding (The First Years Breastflow bottles rock - only bottle we could find that had a slow enough flow and simulates the real thing). This will help free up some of Connie's time, and will be necessary when she goes back to work.
• Pacifiers aren't her thing - yet. We're still working on it as it may become an important soothing tool when Connie is at work.
• She generally sneezes in 3's, with occasional 2's and 4's.
• She's got Momma trained really well, and she has Momma thinking she can hold a conversation with her based on one-syllable sounds and facial expressions.
• Her depth of vision seems to be around 4-5 ft.  She'll track things up to that distance, but doesn't like things too close to her face.

This last weekend we had Connie's cousin Brian and his family (Christine, Naomi, Isaac, and Elisabeth) stay with us for the weekend. Brian's wife Christine is a children's photographer so Connie and her spent some time taking some high quality pictures. Here's a teaser of some amazing pics that will be coming soon. Thanks Christine!

Photo by Christine Szeto, http://candidsbychristine.com/blog/

ps. We discovered that this newborn photography business is risky. The soiled clothing and blankets are evidence.