Six Week Photo Shoot

As of yesterday, Sarah is officially six weeks old! She decided to celebrate this occasion by sleeping through the night! That's right--Sarah slept from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. this morning! Not that I think this will necessarily become a pattern, but you hear those people who say, "My baby started sleeping through the night when he was 6 weeks old." Well, at least Sarah did it once! We'll see what happens from here on out. In any case, yesterday and today have been warm (in the 80's!) so I put one of the cute girly outfits that my friend lent to us on Sarah and had a little photo shoot. By the way, David and I think she is gorgeous! I know, I know, we are obviously biased, but we just can't get enough of her. I had the thought that some of you out there might think we are overdoing it a little on the blog, with every post being photos of Sarah and stories about her. My good friend Erin Ashley has a blog about her kids and life, and the subtitle is "For the Grandmas, Others Welcome." Well, I am not going to plagiarize her, but basically you should know that I write this with Sarah's grandparents in mind, and they can't get enough of her either! :) So, I'll try to have some variety here from time to time, but for now I have a precious little six week old daughter, and she's gonna get most of the space here! So, here are more photos!

Nighttime Adventures

David and I have had an interesting week, full of little adventures related to Sarah's nightly feedings. The first adventure happened earlier this week. Sarah (and all of us) were having a little trouble adjusting to the dry Spring weather we are currently having here. All of us were having some congestion, dry throat, sore sinuses, etc. A few nights ago, around 5 a.m. Sarah woke up and sounded like she was really having a tough time of it. So I decided to take her into the bathroom and turn on the hot shower to help clear out her lungs and all that. I got everything ready, flipped down the toilet lid for us to sit on, sat down and sure enough, the lid shattered under us! So, Sarah missed out on the benefits of my make-do sauna and David and I were left picking pieces of toilet lid out of the toilet bowl at 5 a.m. The next day, David sat down on the seat and IT broke as well!! This made me feel a little better--maybe it was just this toilet seat's "time."

A couple of days later, Sarah was struggling with some painful gas, so I spent half the night rocking her trying to help her go back to sleep. Of course THIS is the night our brand-new rocking chair decided to develop a horrible squeak! So, squeak, squeak, squeak, we rocked for more than an hour--Sarah almost falling asleep, then waking again screaming, awoken by the horrible noise of the chair!

So, we have had to recover this week from a couple of rough evenings, but parenting is still a blessing beyond anything we expected. :)

Sarah Plays

One of the fun new developments over the past week or so of Sarah's life is that she is beginning to enjoy play time! She has begun to show interest in her first toys, Phone Rattle and Crazy Moose (seen below):
Now of these two, Crazy Moose is by far her favorite. Just check out her little grin as she looks at those big goofy purple antlers!

She loves it when Crazy Moose swoops in for a squeaky (he squeaks if you squeeze his belly) kiss on her cheek.

She also loves to reach up and grab Crazy Moose's crazy antlers or bat his rattly feet with her hand (although both of these are still a little challenging for her).


However, Phone Rattle can also be entertaining for Sarah. She can't pick up the rattle herself yet, but she can grip it if you put it in her hand.
However, she hasn't yet figured out how to shake it. Instead, she is more likely to simply launch it across her play blanket, as seen below (action shot!):

She is a growing girl! In addition to playing, Sarah is smiling more and just generally paying a lot more attention to her surroundings. She is also gripping things more--the edge of her blanket, or the strap of her pacifier. Its cliche, I know, but it really is incredible to watch her learning new things every day!

Sarah's First Post

This is Sarah posting. I know I am only 5 weeks old, but you just have to see these photos of my mom's attempts at dressing me this week! She obviously has sooooo much to learn about infant fashion! It was Wednesday, and my debut at mom's women's Bible study. Women? Studying the Bible together? This is clearly a major social event, and I needed to look good. So Mom pulled out the super-cute Osh Kosh top she bought for me in Thailand. Unfortunately, the store where she bought it did not sell the matching pants. So mom was CONVINCED that the size 6 month jeans she had for me would fit. Boy was she wrong! Check out the photo evidence:

Those jeans totally swallowed me! Above you can see me saying, "As if, Mom!" Next she tried on these pale pink pants which first of all clashed with the top and second of all were total high waters--they came up to my underarms! I mean, what could she have been thinking??

Finally, she put me in these pale blue pants that fit even though they didn't completely match. You can see from the photo below that I was not very happy about the look she had chosen for me, but I can't exactly dress myself now can I? Oh, well, I just hope she gets a clue soon so my clothes will fully reflect how awesomely adorable I really am!

Kayleigh Loves Baby Sarah

So I mentioned in my last post that Kayleigh Greene, our good friends and neighbors' little girl, was so excited to meet Baby Sarah, as she calls her. Well, she even came over the next day to "play" with Baby Sarah. Thankfully Kayleigh is a big enough girl that I could give her some ground rules as to what that means. I told her she could show things to Sarah, touch her gently, and give her kisses. Well, Kayleigh loved it! And I got these adorable photos of them together:


Sarah seemed to enjoy "playing" as well. She was fascinated by Kayleigh's face and her voice, and most of all she loves ANY kind of attention she can get, and Kayleigh lavished it upon her! I think these may be the beginnings of a beautiful friendship!

Homecoming

A few days ago, David, Sarah and I boarded a plane and finally made our way home! Our first flight left at 7 a.m., so we began our first ever attempt at traveling with a child by getting up at 5 a.m. A driver we and several of our friends had been using while in Chiang Mai arrived at 5:15 to pick us up. From there he was supposed to pick up our friends Vandenn and Danielle, who were leaving on our same flight. Instead he took us straight to the airport! So, because of us, he was late picking up our friends and they just barely made the flight! Actually, it was because of us, because of a huge crowd at the airport, because of new baggage limits (which we and our friends were WAY over, of course) and because taking an infant out of the country they were born in requires about 30 minutes of paperwork at immigration, they barely made the flight. But still, we were soooo glad that they did! Here is a photo of the 6 of us at Burger King in the Bangkok airport:
Check out the way the reflective strips on our stroller glow when they are photographed. I need to be more careful to make sure the stroller stays out of our photos because it has already ruined the lighting of several. Anyway, David and I debated what outfit Sarah should wear for her grand debut home. We went with this adorable white sleeper with cow feet that she will soon grow out of. We just can't get enough of these feet:

In Bangkok, we were out in the heat and humidity only for about 10 minutes before boarding our next flight. However, we learned that heat and humidity are not so great for Sarah's hair:

It was not only curly but frizzy and sticking straight out in every direction! When we showed this photo to one of our friends once we got home, he said it looked like she had a bad case of mange. Yeah, not her cutest look, I'd say!

On the plane, they were very accomodating to give us bulk head seats and install a bassinet where Sarah could sleep! The flight was only a couple of hours, but it was still wonderful for her to have a place to get some good rest, and it sure made the trip more enjoyable for us--she slept almost the whole time!

One of the people MOST excited to meet baby Sarah when we got home was Kayleigh Greene, the 2 1/2 year old daughter of our good friends and neighbors John and Alisa. She just couldn't wait to hold her! Later on in the evening, she asked her parents if she could sleep over with Baby Sarah!

Here are our good friends Josh and Danielle Shelley, with the Greene's kids Kayleigh and Zeb all checking out the new arrival to our little community! That night we all had dinner together and hung out at our house. It was great to be home!

New Mom Joys

(Note: This post has a lot to do with breastfeeding, so if you feel uncomfortable with such topics, feel free to skip. All you moms out there will get me on this. Holla. :)

So, the other day I realized that I understood why so many facebook users were so up in arms with a new facebook policy outlawing photos of moms breastfeeding their babies. This isn't to say that I myself wanted to put breastfeeding photos up on facebook, but for the first time I understood WHY someone might want to do such a thing. It is because babies do some of the cutest, most endearing, lovable, adorable things right before, during or immediately after breastfeeding! For an infant whose primary waking activity is eating, this pretty much makes sense.

So, I am taking a bit of a risk in writing this post, knowing that many of my male readers (i.e. my dad, father-in-law, brothers-in-law, guy teammates, etc.) might be offended (I hope you just skipped instead of being offended!) but SOOO many of the little changes I see happening in Sarah that are so wonderful and exciting are breastfeeding related! One of the first things I started noticing a week or so ago is eye-contact--for the first few minutes of a feeding, Sarah and I will lock eyes and it is absolutely precious! When she was first born, her eyes were mostly closed, or if they were open they just glassily stared off at nothing, so eye-contact is a significant change! While she's eating, she will also rest her little hand up on my chest in a way that just indescribably expresses that she somehow feels connected to me. Another favorite is after she has finished eating, she will pull her head away and up, and then set back down again right on the breast like a pillow and let herself doze off to sleep. I have no other words to describe these little interactions other than amazing.

My friend Erin-Ashley's most recent post includes a poem where a mother describes all the housework and other things she is neglecting because she realizes just how precious and fleeting such moments are. It made me tear-up when I read it this morning (to which my husband said, "Hormones!"), because I realize I RELATED to it (well, not so much the neglected housework since I am still at the Juniper Tree with all my meals cooked for me and laundry washed and ironed, but I get the JOY of rocking your child, just staring into his or her eyes, etc.)

So, no bare-breasted photos on facebook, or otherwise (for that matter!), but I am enjoying some wonderful and precious moments with my little girl that I just couldn't go without describing for you all. I am making the incredible discovery of a wholly new and amazingly intimate relationship created by our Heavenly Father. Praise Him!