one month old!

It's hard to believe that Kendall has been with us for a full month already. We continue to get used to our new "normal" and get adjusted to the changes that her presence has brought. We also note the similarities and differences between our experiences with both of our kids as newborns.

Since Kendall's day is pretty much divided up into three categories, we'll give you the lowdown on each at one month:

Eating:
Kendall weighs about 8 lbs 11 oz, up from her birth weight of 7 lbs 14 oz. While she's not a voracious eater, the doc is fine with her rate of weight gain, especially since her number of daily eliminations are satisfactory. (They seem far beyond satisfactory to me...) Using a baby scale we were given, we can see that she's taking in at least 3 oz per feeding, which is fine for this age.

She eats at least 7 times per day at approximately 3 hour intervals, with two of the feedings (the late evening & overnight ones) by bottle as she can't stay awake long enough to get her fill. So mom is still pumping a couple of times a day, but that's not a problem, especially since I'm able to feed her the bottle.

Sleeping:
Kendall seems to have gotten her night sleep organized pretty quickly as she's pretty much out from about 9pm - 6am. (Pretty Much. She's fighting sleep as I write.) We give her a late eve "dream" feed of 5 oz to tank her up for the night and she'll sleep anywhere from 4-6 hours before she cries out for another feeding. I'll give her another 5 oz using milk that mom expressed the night before. This will usually carry her through until 6-7 am when the normal feeds start up again. So we're getting about 7 hrs sleep in two blocks of 2 - 5 hrs depending on how early big brother wakes in the morning. The deprivation catches up with us pretty quickly though, so we're looking forward to her dropping that overnight feed in the next month. Hopefully Riley will get back to sleeping until 7 am again as well.

Kendall is particularly adept at 'de-swaddling' herself. The ability to extricate oneself from a tight swaddle seems to be in our genes as Riley was good at this as well. Kendall seems to be far more of a squirm than even Riley was, so we find her mostly unwrapped when she starts squawking at feed time.

My Squirmest Girl



















Waking hours:
It seemed that for the first 4 weeks Kendall was either sleeping, eating or crying. While she likes being held (like most babies), in the past few days she has starting to enjoy her after-meal "waketime" a little more. She has started to have some tummy time resting on a Boppy and has begun to spend some time lying on a play mat. She enjoys looking at the lights in the room and will also look at the toys that hang from the bar on the play mat if you shake them so they make noise. She sometimes enjoys the baby swing (Riley likes it better I think) but she isn't crazy about the bouncy seat. She falls asleep quickly in a stroller and car seat, thoough she hollers when we first put her in either of these.

Interestingly, so far the place that Kendall cries least frequently is church. She seems to enjoy the music and is generally quiet while we're there. She didn't cry during her baptism yesterday (more in a future entry) and I definitely did not expect that.

Kendall is definitely more spirited than Riley was at this age. She isn't a quiet girl, but I don't think she cries an abnormal amount either. She cries more than Riley, but that's not surprising since he rarely cried at all. She lets us know when she wants something that we're not giving her and will not stop talking until she gets it. The girl knows what she wants. Sometimes though, we don't. So this can lead to periods of crying for what seems to be 'no reason' that must have some cause. Hopefully this will tail off a bit as she gets older, or we'll figure out what it is that she's looking for.

Riley really seems to love his sister. He always wants to give her a kiss goodnight, and when we're out together and I tell him we're going home to see Mama, he will always say "Keh Ko" to ensure we include her too. Kendall seems to have fit into her place in the family quickly, even from her brother's viewpoint.

I'll close with some pictures:

Cutie in a carseat














Which she doesn't always like...



















The binky and the bouncy seat just slay me for some reason.



















She does well in the Phil & Ted's stroller...it has this handy sleeping configuration.














Fun on the play mat














She's starting to notice stuff!














Kendall is mostly OK with the swing...



















But Riley is obsessed with it, at least when Kendall is in it.














Tummy Time!














Sleepy thumb sicking girl














The new normal. It's different, hard at times but mostly good.

Jonathan