2 Months Old

So this week Avery turned 2 months old, and you know what that means...time for our monthly photo shoot! So I broke out the camera, and the sticker for month #2 and I started snapping away.  I always feel a bit like a stage mom trying to pose her in such of a controlled way (or if you're a fan of The Office, kind of like when Andy and Angela take Jan's baby and try to photograph her in the break room with all the fruits and veggies to be "Nature's Bounty"-lol!).

Look who's turning 2...
months that is!

But, our photo sessions only last about 5 minutes and I make sure she's fed, with a clean diaper, and we take lots of breaks. I think it's all worth it because it is so cool to see the growth that has already taken place between this month and last!  I can't even imagine how different she'll look when we compare month one to month twelve!

Close-up shot

Now last month, the funny moment was when I realized she couldn't sit up to be photographed and she just kept falling over in the chair.  See the funny pic here.  This month's funny photo shoot moment was: spit up! About a minute into the shoot she started to spit up, as you can see below. After the first trickle, I picked her up and I was able to get a burp up, but for some reason the spit up continued in tiny trickles a few more times during the shoot.  Normally I wouldn't worry too much because she has a white shirt on, but as I now know, the ink of the sticker can come off if it gets wet...such as with spit up.  So after a few wipes of the sticker the ink was starting to smear, this led me to quickly wrap up the photo shoot!

A little bit of spit up made its way into the photo shoot.

Here's another fun one from the photo shoot:

I love her little segment arms.

Also this week Avery had her first play date with her new friend Karadyn, who is five months old.  Avery was pretty mesmerized by her and mainly just watched her the whole time.  Towards the end though, she started to reach out to her, as you can see in the picture below.  Thanks for the fun time Karadyn!

This is my friend Karadyn.

Another "first" we did this week was to go for a walk in her stroller.  We finally got a break from the sweltering heat here in the Midwest, so I was more than happy to take my workout outside and get Avery involved.  Our first walk started off a bit rough, since it took me 15 minutes to try and get the stroller to open from the collapsed position.  I eventually broke down, got the instruction manual, and realized it was one simple twist of the handle.  After that mishap, I got Avery all loaded up with her sun hat on, and then we were ready to hit the road...or sidewalk I should say.  She really did a great job on our walk, which lasted about an hour.  She was awake for about the first fifteen minutes, but the vibration of the sidewalk must have put her to sleep, since she slept the rest of the time. We went for several more walks that week in the stroller, and now I feel much more comfortable using it.  Now if I could just get better at folding it from open position back into collapsed position, what can I say, I'm still learning-lol!

Here are some pics I took after our walk, on my back porch:

"That walk sure was fun!"

Her stroller that I know now how to open...yeah for me!

As for other areas of Avery's development, she is sleeping like a champ! Here's an average schedule of her sleep one night:

9:00-9:30 PM: swaddle her in her Miracle Blanket (read more here), feed her one more time and then she'll sleep until about...

3:30 AM: she wakes up and eats, then back to sleep, 

5:30 AM: she wakes up and eats, then back to sleep,

7:30 AM she wakes up and eats, then I un-Swaddle her, and we get up to start our morning!

That may seem like a lot of waking up and eating from 3-7 AM, but to get that first initial chunk of 6-7 hours of sleep sure is awesome for all of us! Besides, she only nurses for about 10 minutes during these early feeds, so it really isn't too bad...let's just say I have no problem falling back asleep after a quick feed!

Another cool thing she's been doing lately is really focusing her eyes/attention on people and things.  She loves to look at faces, as you can see in the pic below where's she's got her eyes locked on Grandma Karen.  She will also follow me with her eyes and head if I move away from her or walk past her, which is great for her development, but bad if I'm trying to get her to go to sleep for a nap!   

We're still rocking lots of Tummy Time here as she continues to hold her head up for longer periods of time.  We've even used some props like pillows and a Bumbo seat to have her begin practicing sitting up, and even standing up with lots of support (mainly just to give her a chance to push with her legs). Aside from this, she's started chewing on her hands some...as well as other things that happen to be near her mouth, like a blanket or someones shoulder if she's being held.  This tends to usually be a sign that's she's hungry, and that I better feed her soon or she will start to get upset.  Sometimes though it just seems like she's just exploring.

Well that's about for our 2 month update. Until next week, we'll just be here...relaxing!