Weeks 4-5

Hard to believe I'm so far through my maternity leave already.  Just when I start to feel like we have something of a daily routine down, my back-to-work date looms on the calendar.  Oh well, not there yet!

Jane is doing great.  She does really well with her daily tummy time, which is not always the case with babies I've known.  She holds her head up really well and has done so pretty much since birth.  Andy likes to coax her to turn her head when she's down on her play mat.  Brisco also likes to help.  He has been really great with her.  He'll come up to the bouncer when she's in it and put his face right by her, saying hello, and it doesn't make me nervous at all.  A gentle giant.  Though he's been biting at his tail and it looks a bit like he has mange right now.

 We're pretty sure we're starting to see real smiles...

 She is a gassy lass, but I think this is the real deal!

 Here's another picture of Brisco, who's upset because he used to be featured more prominently on here.

 We went in to the lab yesterday for Jane's first visit.  We set up her portable tie-up mat and she pretty happily hung out for a while.  I was there, reading O magazine and feeding her as needed.  Which was often.

My dad and Karen were here last week... or at some point... and we managed to not take a single picture.  I think/hope they snapped some shots.  Jane has had a few nights where she wouldn't stay asleep and needed to nurse constantly, and at least one of those coincided with their trip, so we were a bit out of it.  We did make a few trips out.  Jane went to Hillside Pizza, the People's Pint, and the Night Kitchen.  And to the grocery store as well, which she's done twice now.

I've been trying to keep my eye out for jobs.  I had two interviews, the more interesting of which didn't seem to go terribly well.  I can't blame Jane for having two massive spitups before I left.  At least the fact that I got the interview in the first place is keeping me optimistic that I can find something.  That, and the dose of mega-confidence I got from labor.

I should say that the other night, I had a very rough time that stretched into the following day.  I was tired so I thought Jane and I could go upstairs to bed around 8.  She wouldn't stay asleep and I got more and more frustrated.  We cried a bit together, and I couldn't shake the bad mood the next day.  Our morning routine has been that Andy would take her downstairs when he'd wake up, then bring her back to nurse, and take her away again, leaving me to get up when I pleased.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to stay in bed very long that day, so coupled with a bad night, it was a rough day.  I say this because it's easy to look at these cute pictures and only remember my adorable daughter, but it's not always easy.  Even for a former nanny with years of experience with babies.  I'm grateful for my experience because it's made things easier but not always easy.  The cranky bursts (hers and mine) are usually short-lived.

She's still napping, so I'm going to put a few things away.  And possibly start on this chocolate cake recipe that happened to pop up.