ada charlotte {2 months}

Dear Ada,

It has been so fun to see you grow up over the past two months! I love seeing you smile at me and your mom. I love your sleepy sounds when you are finally falling asleep -- they are so cute, and they make me smile every time. I love to watch you sleep because you are so peaceful. I love to watch you when you are awake because you look around at the things around you and your eyes open so big and they are adorable! I love you, sweet girl.

Love,
Dad


My sweet girl,

Another month has already gone by! It is so fun to watch you grow. I was blown away when I looked at your 1 month and 2 month pics side by side -- you already look so different! I wish I could have had a newborn photo to start with but . . .  you weren't really a newborn by the time we got to bring you home.

You were already the cutest baby ever, but this month you became a lot more interactive which has only increased your cuteness! Daddy and I say about a hundred times a day (probably not even an exaggeration), "She's so cute!" Everything you do is just adorable :) (Okay, maybe not the loud crying and the dirty diapers, but still 😉)

I'm getting a better hang of this mom thing, but I still feel clueless sometimes. I find myself wishing you could tell me what you need, but I don't want to wish away this precious time of babyhood either. So I'll just keep trying and hope things turn out okay :)

Stats

• You weigh 12 pounds even (70%) and are 23.5 inches long (90%). Your head circumference is 15.5 inches (80%). (I'm actually not sure about any of those percentiles because different websites are giving me different percentiles . . . ) To say you started out so heavy, you sure haven't gained much! I think you've just been growing into your body :)
• You're still in size 1 diapers and 0-3 month clothes. The clothes are fitting better because you are getting longer, but some outfits are still too big! You spend most of your time in jammies anyway because they're just simpler, warmer, and more snuggly. The only day you really get dressed up is Sunday, for church. Other days you get dressed up are just days we have plans and go somewhere, which pretty much never happens.

Notable events

• You celebrated your first holiday! which was Halloween :) And you looked stinkin' cute doing so :)

Tricks/Milestones

• You roll from tummy to back, but so far only over your left shoulder. Usually you do this pretty much as soon as I put you on your tummy haha :)
• Your eyes are so much more focused now! You actually look at me on purpose now!
• One day I started clicking my tongue at you, and you tried to click back! Now I do it often, and sometimes you're successful, but even if you're not, I can see you working at it, which is super cute :)
• You're making more noise these days -- more cooing and grunting etc. 
• When you're laying on your back for waketime, you move your legs a lot and it looks like you're marching :) 
• You started smiling more often around 7 weeks. Your smile is seriously the cutest thing ever! :) I love love love when we just spend time smiling at each other :)

Favorite things

• Speaking of your cute smile, I love getting you up after a good nap because you wake up so smiley! 
• Sometimes you open your eyes so wide! And not just for a second, but for a period of time. It's so funny and so adorable :)
• Sometimes before I start your morning routine, I bring you into bed for some morning family snuggles :) I love being all together like that :)
• I recently discovered that you are a T-rex -- big head and little arms! I never realized that babies' arms:body ratio isn't the same as adults'. I discovered this when I was making you sing "YMCA" . . . I busted up laughing when I went to do the "M". When I showed Dad later, he also busted up laughing :)

Random tidbits

• We still call you all the things we did in your first month, but we use Ada, Sweet Ada, and Sweet Girl most frequently. We also call you "the girl" when talking about you, which sounds kind of impersonal, but we don't mean it that way. Dad also started calling you Ada Tomat-uh and Ada Potat-uh :)
• Pretty much this whole month, you didn't go to the bathroom while we changed you. But the one time you did, you sure made it count! Haha :) But I'm hoping you're pretty much done with this phase :)
• Speaking of changing your diaper, it's still a time of total contentment for you. It's the weirdest thing -- sometimes you are crying because you just woke up from a nap and you're hungry, and then I lay you down to change you and as soon as I get started, you stop crying during the entire change. It's so weird to me haha :)
• You also like bathtime more now. You don't even cry when I wash your hair or take you out to dry you off anymore.
• After working my butt off for four weeks (post NICU) trying to make breastfeeding work, I finally decided it wasn't going to happen. I wish it could have worked out, but we've been doing just fine with bottles in the 2+ weeks since then.
• You decided to start spitting up after nearly every meal. I've been trying harder to burp you better to get away from this issue, which seems to be helping a bit, but you still spit up fairly often. Usually it's not too much though, so I don't really think there's a bigger issue.
• You squeal when I interrupt your feeding to burp you. It's so high pitched and funny to me. Somebody does not like her food taken away from her ;)
• I finally read On Becoming Babywise this month, and man I sure wish I had read it before you were born so I could have started implementing its principles from day 1. So much of my stress could have been eliminated by having a predictable schedule early on, but now I have to figure out how to get you into a schedule later on in the game. I worked hard at it for a week, you followed it for two days, and then I think you had a growth spurt, so that threw things off the next week. I'm still trying to get back to a predictable schedule. The one part of your schedule that seems to have stuck is that you sleep for 12 hours at night! You go to bed at 7:30pm and wake up at 7:30am. I feed you around 10:30 before going to bed (you're often asleep for this feeding or you go back to sleep easily), and then you wake up for one feeding around 4am (again, you go back down pretty easily). Now I'm just trying to figure out how to get you to take more milk during the day so we can drop that 4am feeding ;)
• I started doing short workouts next to you during some of your morning wake time. Sometimes I play Just Dance for a song or two, and you seem to be really entertained by my dancing! I hope we have lots of family dance parties in the future :) 
• You got your first shots and it was so sad! I was standing there, holding your arms up and out of the way, and one second you were content and cooing, and the next your face scrunched up and you let out a giant wail that just kept going until after all the shots were done and I had been rocking you for a minute or two. I've never seen you so sad and it broke my heart a little bit to see it! :(

Love,
Your Mama

And other photos taken during month two :)

a sweet little nap together :) (though I was awake when I took the pic haha)

apparently she'll suck on any part of the binky she can get!

curly when wet!

all bundled up in a hodge podge of clothes for a snowy stroller ride!