2 Months

Our little girl is growing!! She had her 2 month checkup and was 10lbs-4oz, 23" long and still has a cute tiny head (37.5cm, around 5% percentile). It's so fun to carry around a tiny little girl - her weight and length are around average, 25% to 50% percentile, compared to Benjamin being usually greater than 95%. She is smiling a ton now and her favorite things are to lie in her crib looking at her mobiles, to be given a bath, and to be naked. If she is fussy we take her diaper off and lie her in her pack-n-play on a change pad and she kicks her legs and laughs.

Pre-Christmas

Since Grandma was leaving us before Christmas, we did some of our Christmas traditions first. We had her take our family picture in front of the tree,
we went and saw the Christmas lights on a street that has every house completely decorated every year for Christmas,
and Grandma and Benjamin exchanged their gifts. Benjamin had made her an ornament and some cookies and gave her milk duds (her favorite). He then made sure he assisted in the unwrapping (all wrapped in drawings he had made) so that she 'share' the food items. She told him she was planning to save the milk duds for her flight home but he informed her she had to open them now to 'share'. Maully remained close by too in case Grandma & Ben felt generous.
He also made her a Christmas card and below he is explaining it to her. On the front he drew a picture of Grandma giving baby a bath, in the inside it was her giving him a bath. Not quite a Christmas theme but it's what he wanted to draw (Grandma gave Mae her bath every night).

Grandma & Mae

Mae didn't quite fit into Grandma's suitcase to go home with her.
Grandma was here for 2months and we're unsure who was more sad in this house to see her go. The day after she left Benjamin had me call her at breakfast time so he could tell her that he wanted her to come back NOW. When Mae was fussy, needed a diaper change, didn't want to sleep - she instantly went to Grandma :)

More Bro & Sis

As you can see below - Mae has begun to smile. Benjamin gets the most and biggest smiles from her!

Brother and Sister

1 Month

So I am completely copying this from my sister - but my 'goal' is to take a picture of Mae every month with her monkey to show how much she grows. I missed her 1 day old but here is 1 month:
It has been a pretty good month so far. She is definitely more of a sleeper then Benjamin ever was. She now gets up once in the night between 2 and 4am (I also wake her, or attempt to, around 9:30pm to feed her before I crash) and then sleeps till 6 or 7. And for most of the week (she does have her 'off' days) she will give us 2 shorter naps and one 2 to 3 hr nap. She also will sleep in the swing, the car....Ben NEVER did any of that!! She does have Bens lungs though and almost always refuses to go to sleep without screaming first :) She LOVES tummy time and Sam got her to give him her 1st smile earlier this week! These next pictures are just some miscellaneous ones:

Halloween

Earlier in the day Benjamin finally got to give Mae a bottle and he was thrilled!!!

Awake Time

So we are trying VERY hard to get Mae set up on a schedule to hopefully create a better daytime sleeper then Ben was. That means when she wakes I nurse her and then she 'plays' for about an hour before going to sleep (hopefully) again. The following are just some shots of her wake time activities when Benjamin's not here. When Ben is here the wake time is usually spent watching Ben play - at Ben's insistence.

Grandma & Mae

This 1st picture is a frequent sight in our house these days. Grandma and Mae spend a lot of time in the rocking chair just talking to each other.
Mae didn't cry once through the entire bath grandma gave her. Yet she's cried every bath Ben & I have given her. Grandma definitely has the magic touch.
Grandma gave Mae her 1st bottle (which she guzzled) while I was off getting my foot xrayed to see if I had broken 2 of my toes.

Big Brother

Benjamin LOVES his baby sister. We thought the novelty might wear off after the 1st few days but he still thinks she is amazing. He wants her around all the time (watching him play, dress, brush his teeth, bath, eat, etc) and he is always wanting to take care of her - sticking her 'geegee' (pacifier, but he calls it geegee) in her mouth whether she wants it or not, running to get me a diaper if I need one, wanting to give her a bottle (he's not impressed that currently only 'mommy' can feed her), holding her for story time, helping with her bath, singing her songs, etc. He really is an amazing big brother.

Mae Catherine Waters

Baby Sister aka Baby Girl (for the 1st 2 or 3 days of her life Ben didn't know her name since this is all we call her) has arrived. After 2 days at the hospital of being induced she arrived at 12:29am on Monday October 11. I spent the previous Friday at the hospital from 7:30am till 4pm being induced, and while it started contractions every 15min apart it didn't start 'active labor' so I was sent home and scheduled to return Sunday. So back in I went Sunday at 7:30am again for another attempt. Finally by around 9pm that night they classified it as active labor so I happily requested my epidural and felt nothing the rest of the night :) I was ready to deliver by 11pm (maybe earlier since I wasn't feeling a thing I don't know, but that's when the nurse checked me and discovered baby girl was ready to come out) but the doctor was doing a c-section so I was told to not push. No problem for me thanks to my wonnnderrrfulll epidural. Shortly after midnight the doctor came in and started getting ready for the delivery - and 3 pushes later there was our baby girl!! 7lbs-9oz and 19.5" long.
Already we can tell she is SO different then Benjamin - this girl SLEEPS!!!! She sleeps through the dog, ben, nursing...I keep waiting for it to end (yes I'm pessimistic) but I am currently LOVING it!

AZ Museum for Youth

For another Friday activity in September Benjamin and I headed to the AZ Museum for Youth with his friend Jonathan. I learned after the Children's Museum that if I wanted to rest my feet it was definitely better to do activities with friends of his! J and B are night & day in terms of personality (J can stand quietly and fish for 2hrs!! while B you have about 2 min if you're lucky...) but as long as we choose places where it's okay for them to set their own speeds they get along amazingly! We spent about 2.5 hrs here, then we took the boys to a McD's playground where they ran for another 1.5 hrs almost. And yet my son didn't nap when we finally got home....
Ben is showing off his 'monster mask' he made at the museum. He loves that mask!

Camping with Jonathan S

In mid-September Sam and Benjamin headed up North for another weekend (1 night) of camping. There was just 1 other boy there this time - Ben's good friend Jonathan (and his Dad). They had a wonderful time and I was able to spend my 2 days grocery shopping and freezer meal making before Bens sister arrives! Sam had Ben in the same clothes the whole time so while I was grateful I didn't have a ton of laundry when they returned - WOW were those clothes a mess!!!
This is a rare sight to see with our boy :) I think he got pretty wiped this camping trip!!