Joey Lulu, Two Months Old!

Joey Lulu, Two Months Old!

Today is Joanna’s two-month birthday! This month Joey …

• weighs 11 pounds on the dot! She’s getting so big!
• loves going out to dinner… We take Joey out to dinner (or lunch or brunch) about once a week and she’s been so great at it. Usually she sleeps in her car seat the whole time, though she sometimes wakes up and just looks around. We’re dreading that first public breakdown, but at this point as long as she’s well-rested and well-fed before we leave, she’s fine.
• is on the fence about taking baths… I give her a bath about every other day in the afternoon, and she’s pretty ok with it. She doesn’t exactly seem to love it, but she’s only cried a couple of times. We tried doing baths before bed, but Joey did not like that at all, which works out well for us because evenings around here tend to be crazy busy and chaotic. Once Andy gets home from work, I try to cram as much as possible into the few hours that he can watch Joey, like exercising, blogging, taking a shower, and then of course we also have to cook and eat dinner, which never happens before 8. We start Joey’s bed time routine at 9, so adding a bath in there too would be overwhelming. Phew.

It’s kind of amazing how much has changed in a month. Joey is so much more aware of the world around her and is interacting with us a lot more. Most of this change has come in just the last two weeks. Our pediatrician had warned us to expect fussiness to really peak at about six weeks, and that was VERY true. I’m so glad we had been warned because that week was ROUGH. Joey went from waking up about every three hours, which was fine, especially since Andy and I split night-time duties, to sleeping for as little as 20 minutes at a time. Uuuuggghh. The fussiness and lack of sleep is apparently due to a major developmental milestone that happens around that time where babies suddenly become aware of the world around them and get totally overwhelmed by it. We felt so bad for her because it was obvious that she was upset, super cranky and over tired (um, just like us). After a few days, though, she leveled out and started sleeping nights even better than before, sometimes going 4 or even 5 hours!

This new-found awareness is also so much fun. Joey loves to smile and is starting to giggle all the time in her funny not-quite-sure-how-to-make-the-right-sound way. She gets so amazed at the littlest things. Hold a toy in front of her and she’ll stare at it with wonder for half an hour like it’s truly just the most phenomenal, beautiful thing in the world. It’s ADORABLE.

Her chubby cheeks are awfully adorable, too!

(Joey’s cat sheets are from Land of Nod.)