Milestones

We have been experiencing quite a few changes in the bossgirl in the past week. My little girl used to have two states: screaming and sleeping. Now I get a happy period as well where she is all smiles and sunshine. Yesterday, it seemed like she was even trying to laugh when her grin became wider and her little dimples came out. I find myself doing the silliest things to elicit a smile and losing all sense of self-consciousness about it. After all, watching her personality emerge is more important than my dignity.

We have also taken back some control in the bedroom. Lest you think I meant something else (ha--laughable), I will elaborate. We now have a sleep schedule. I have discovered that if I pump after all my daytime feedings, I work up a bottle of about 4 oz. Now we feed her that bottle following a long 8 p.m. feeding. We read her "Guess How Much I Love You", put her in her sleep sack, dim the lights and it is bedtime Samara. She sleeps until about 4 a.m., sometimes even 5. This has been nothing short of a miracle for us. When she goes back to bed, it is now until 8 or 9 a.m. so we are getting about 8 hours of sleep plus alone time in the evening. Life is lovely when we sleep. Of course, now since I've blogged about it, I have certainly jinxed it, but I am knocking on wood so hard my knuckles are bruised.

Samara is now batting at her toys in the bouncy chair and reaching for the toys on her gymini. I am shocked by how giddy this makes me and how amazed I am. It seems like such a small thing, but to me, it is astounding. That thing that came out of me! It has a brain! It can play! It is able to communicate!

On that note, The Little Miss is much more verbal than she used to be and can now express pleasure with little coos that are the cutest things I've ever heard. She is also growing, up to 8 pounds 3 ounces last Thurs. And although we passed the big six week old on the bike path yesterday (a 14 pounder we met in a cafe last week. I thought she was 3 months, her mom then told me she was the same age as Samara. Ouch), I still feel like we are accomplishing something.