Anna's First Month!!

Anna, 1 1/2 weeks old

Well, we made it a whole month!  Time has really, really flown by.  Anna is a great baby ~ she has her moments, but ALL babies do!  She really likes to sleep (except sometimes when Mommy's exhausted.  Then it's time to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed ;) and goes for stretches of 3-4 hours here lately.  I'm still waking her up during the day to eat after three hours.  At night, she usually wakes up on her own after 3 or 3 1/2, but is willing to go right back to sleep after eating, most of the time.  I call that a GOOD NIGHT!!  In the past week or so, she has been sleeping 4 or 5 hours at a time - whoo hoo!!  Just like Ben was, though, she's a little night owl...Daddy has baby duty from 8 or 9:00 at night until 11 or 12 a.m. when she finally goes down for the night.  If only she'd shift that schedule back a few hours...!!

~ 2 1/2 weeks old ~

Nursing is still going well.  At her one month appointment, she weighed 8 lbs 7.9 ounces (25th percentile) and was 21 1/4" long (75th percentile).  Yay, yay, yay ~ that means she's gained over an ounce a day since her last appointment, which is GREAT! She's still wearing newborn size clothes, but has just about outgrown newborn diapers.  

  

* Kisses from Big Brother Ben *

Sweet times with Daddy...

 ...and Mama...

Anna also got her very first bath and absolutely LOVED it!  Mark and I agreed that we're much better bath-givers now than we were with Ben (sorry buddy!).  We had the bathroom all warmed up with the space heater, and had a neat washcloth-type thing you put in warm water then cover the baby with until you need to move it to wash them.  I think she was nice and cozy...

We also learned a trick from the baby nurses at the hospital.  When they gave her her first bath, they just washed her body, dried her off, then swaddled her with a bunch of blankets.  Only then did they wash her hair.  Why didn't we think of this before!?!  That way, baby's all dry and warm and it's like getting your hair shampooed at the spa!!  Ha ha!!  She seemed to enjoy it :)

And my favorite moment of all...big, strong Daddy bathing his little girl with such tender love....makes my heart happy :)

We Are Fa-mi-ly!!

With Baby Ben, everyone went back and forth...who does he look like?  Mama?  Daddy?  Some of both?!  Well, there's been no question with Baby Anna.  Why?  Because she looks Just. Like. BEN!!!!  Now that she's a month old, she's changed a little and starting to look like her own person, but in the hospital, she could have been mistaken for Ben's twin!  Check out the pictures of them ~ in all of these, Ben is on the left, and Anna is on the right...