I can’t believe our precious little one is already 10 weeks old!! They’ve been the longest and the shortest, toughest and most rewarding, weeks of my life. Motherhood is beyond challenging, but there are no words to describe how special and awesome it is.
God has blessed us tremendously during these weeks. Lydia continues to thrive and delights us daily with her sweet self. Not this she doesn’t have her share of fussy moments, but she also smiles, laughs, coos, gurgles, and otherwise “plays” with us during much of her awake time. She’s really become aware of people and objects in the last few weeks and it’s incredible to see her reacting to sights and sounds (faces and cheerful voices, especially). She kicks with excitement, she follows her toys with her eyes when we move them around, and she’s discovering her hands and ears as objects of amusement. One of her favorite games is to lay on the ottoman (glider) and push against us to make herself go. We layed her on the ottoman at Great Grandpa’s house one morning and she started pushing against Grandma’s hands. It was really neat to watch her smiling and doing it again…so we have continued at home and she still loves it!
Lydia is gaining strength and greater motor control everyday. She’s holding her head up more and she’s trying to roll over from time to time. We’re giving her tummy time and she’s working on lifting and holding her head and upper body up. She has even slept through the night a few times, although the last time was two weeks ago. We were in WV for Matt’s Grandma’s funeral and our schedule (while never all that strict) got REALLY out of whack. We’ve spent the last week and a half getting back on track. Last night was her best night since our return and I’m confidant we’ll be back to normal shortly 🙂
One of the hardest things so far has been to give up dairy. At her two-month visit, the dr. felt her ongoing rashy stuff was likely related to milk allergies, i.e. dairy in my diet. So I’m on dairy restriction for a couple of weeks, then we’ll start introducing dairy items slowly and see what happens. If she does react, I’m hoping it’s only to major stuff like milk and cheese. It would be nice to still have access to chocolate, butter, ranch dressing, etc. And even if she remains sensitive to even small amounts, I discovered that Oreos have absolutely no dairy, so I have options!!
One other thing… I thought I would share some things that I have found useful (and not so much) for Lydia and I. Some things you only need so many of. I received many, many towels and blankets from our dear friends and church family. While I am very thankful, I must say that we returned many of these and we could/should have returned more. You only have so much drawer space and even if you don’t do laundry that often, you just don’t need 10 towels or 15 blankets. I have found cloth diapers to be very handy. They make great burp cloths and have lots of other applications. We also love Lydia’s “hippo” shower sprayer. Our tub has a fixed shower head, so we have really enjoyed this easy on/off item…and she loves getting sprayed during bathtime! Another item we are glad to have is a second car seat base. It is so much easier to just “click” the seat into whichever vehicle and go…it was definitely worth the money. There are plenty of other things we enjoy having for her, and some things that haven’t proved so useful, at least to date. As time allows, I’ll share more.
God has been so good to us (although His goodness doesn’t change with less than ideal circumstances) and we have been incredibly blessed to be Lydia’s parents. I am excited to see how He is going to grow Lydia and what He is going to do in the life of our family in the days and weeks ahead!!