It’s so true when parents say that each week gets better and better.  I loved this week! This week Annabelle has started recognizing us and give us the biggest grins when we talk to her or pick her up (way more than last week).  She has the best facial expressions as you can see from some of our pictures this week.  I can spend hours watching her purse her lips, raise her eye brows, and move that little tongue of hers.  She’s also discovering her hands and fingers, and is grabbing onto things.  She’s trying to put her hands in her mouth and suck on them.

Annabelle is officially growing out of her newborn clothes and we’ve started transitioning her into 0-3 month clothes!  I’ve started to fill a box full of things that no longer fit and have pulled out all her new outfits.  Now that it’s started feeling like fall she’s finally wearing all of her long sleeved onesies and pants outfits, trying to get as much use out of all her clothes.  The 3-month clothes are still a little big but she’ll grow into them before we know it.  Dusty and I couldn’t stop laughing at the absolutely adorable picture of Annabelle sitting up (look below) because her pants are so far up past her belly that she looks like an old man who wears high-waist pants with a belt.

Annabelle’s getting better and better at sleeping.  Depending on the night she wakes up just one or two times.  She’s still sleeping in our room in her bassinet.  On a good night, she goes to bed by 9pm and wakes up between 2-4am to be nursed. Then she goes back to sleep until about 7am to nurse again. One of my favorite moments this week was that on a couple of those days in the morning, after nursing her we would snuggle in bed for an hour or two.  She’d fall back asleep and I’d just watch her sleep.

Now I’m working on getting her to take longer naps during the day.  She tends to wake herself up after a while and ends up taking a bunch of catnaps throughout the day, napping for 20 minutes or less and then playing for a bit and then falling back asleep for another short nap.

I’ve noticed this week that Annabelle can tell who I am and the moment I pick her up as compared with someone else, she seems calmer (I secretly love it).  When these kinds of things happen it makes me just a little sad to go back to work because I know she’ll start getting used to someone else and I might not be her one and only lady.

I go back to work in a little over a week.  I’m excited to get back into a schedule and see students but I know it’ll be hard to leave our little bean.  Because I’m not teaching for the rest of the semester and my work schedule is pretty flexible, we’re not sending Annabelle to daycare until January.  We have a friend of ours nanny for us and will be coming to the apartment a few days a week.

Here are a few updates on what we did this week.  Last weekend Annabelle walked in her first Race for the Cure 5K.  This week Annabelle and I bonded a lot.  Dusty was in California for five days so Annabelle and I got a lot of one-on-one time. Monday and Tuesday my sister, Annabelle and I went to visit our family in northeastern Iowa.  Most of my dad’s family lives there.  We wanted Annabelle to meet her great-grandpa as well as the rest of our family.  Grandpa and Annabelle got along just great and they were two peas in a pod.