Four!!!

Tuesday, Nov 4, 2014

A lot has changed since my last post! Our little Sarah Juliet was born a month ago and we couldn't be more happy! She is the sweetest little bundle, although she was a big girl when born and is growing fast! She was 8 lbs 6 ounces which made my all-natural delivery pretty painful (Read my birth story here). But, she is so worth it.

One month old Sarah

She has a constant look of wonder in her eyes and a sharp, hard, little Molinari nose. She is quiet and loves to sleep, which is great because so do I! We had a few tough nights when we first brought her home, but since then she has been, for all intents and purposes, been sleeping through the night.  Since she is still so young, I still wake her up every 4 hours or so to eat something, but she would probably sleep for 6+ hours if I let her.  She also tends to go right back to sleep after her nighttime feedings, so aside from the 20 minutes or so when she is sucking away, we are all right back to bed pretty quick.

She has one of the most beautiful smiles I have ever seen. 

Sarah is already starting to show developmental advances, too. She swats at some toys on her play mat and has a super strong neck.  She was born able to raise her head and look around, but she seems like she's getting stronger and stronger every day.  She also has started to smile more and give us some super sweet baby coos.  Sarah loves to be on her tummy and sleep against my chest, which is nice because I love it, too.

Snoozing on Mama listening to my heartbeat. 

Bringing home Sarah seemed to be an easy adjustment for her, but it was a little tough for Maddie.  For the first 3 weeks or so she started tantrumming and whining much more than she used to and we had a hard time combatting Maddie's hitting, also.  But that behavior seems to be diminishing and Maddie is acting more and more like her sweet, silly, girly self.  It was really helpful to have Phil home from work for a full month to help with the adjustment and to also try out some things as a team before I had to do them on my own (ex: loading the girls into the car and going to the store).

We loaded the girls into the car and took lots of walks, went to the parks around town and visited the petting zoos in the area in the early days to make sure Maddie had some fun stuff to do and to fill Sarah's new baby lungs with lots of fresh air. It was nice for Phil and me to get out of the house, too. 

Day one of just us girls at home. Phil went back to work the day before Halloween.

We carved pumpkins together that evening and...

The next day, we went trick or treating at Dada's work

Maddie loves candy!!!!

Maddie loves her little sister and likes to help us out by bringing me pillows when I'm nursing Sarah or handing us blankets or a burp cloth.  She loves to lay down on the floor next to Sarah and play with the toys and she is great at patting Sarah's back when she needs to burp.  We are teaching her to be gentle and, aside from a time here or there when I had to prevent Maddie from pulling Sarah across the floor by her leg, she's doing a pretty good job.  :) Mads gives really nice kisses on the head, and soft hugs against Sarah's tummy.

Two beauties! 

I was unsure how Maddie would react seeing me feeding the baby. I didn't know if she would remember when she used to do it and get jealous or if she would just find it interesting.  She knows that mama is off-limits when the baby is eating, so when she asks to get "up", she catches herself even before I answer "no" by saying "baby eating.  baby eating."  After seeing me feed Sarah a few times, she was very interested in it and asked if she could, "try?"  Haha!  I told her, "No.   This is only for the baby."  Thankfully she was ok with that answer.

Phil fed Sarah her first bottle of breast milk this past weekend! 

All in all, I think we have all adjusted pretty well to the new family-of-four lifestyle we have.  Maddie is sleeping well at night even when Sarah does cry and we all feel very rested and have fun throughout the day together.  One sweet little story from the first day back from the hospital was that Maddie was very distraught from Sarah's crying at night.  Maddie was having a hard time falling asleep and started crying herself. So, I went into her room and gave her a hug and asked her, "Are you upset because the baby is crying?" Maddie replied, "Yeah." I told her, "It's ok.  The baby is upset because she is having a hard time falling a sleep, but Mama and Dada are taking care of her. Are you sleepy?" She said, " Yeah." I asked her if she wanted to go to sleep and she said, "Yeah."  So, I gave her a kiss, said, "night night." and left the room.  She went straight to sleep.  All she needed was reassurance that the baby was being taken care of. It truly warms my heart to think that from day one, Maddie has been looking out for her little sister.  I think they'll get along just fine.

So precious

I just love my two girls!