Four Weeks Old!

Well I have been a bit delinquent in terms of taking photos of my flowers as they bloom, but these stargazer lilies are my favorite so I had to take a photo this morning.

Nadia is 4 weeks old today! She has changed so much already!! Her hair has grown quite a bit so hopefully she won't be one of those whose hair falls out. Nadia's eyes are still blue like her daddy's, but I know we won't know for sure if they're going to stay blue until a couple more months have passed. She's finally starting to grow some eyebrows also. Her nails are getting longer also, but I can hold off on trimming them. She is OFF the shield!!! Cold turkey was the way to go. It's been more than 48 hours since she's used one so I think it's safe to say those are "history" now. Yahoo! In many ways she takes after her Daddy, but I can identify at least two ways she takes after me - #1 hiccups a lot (my parents say I did that a lot as a baby also) and #2 has cold hands. Hopefully in time we'll learn some more "positive" ways she takes after me like maybe she'll also enjoy playing the piano or something like that. :-)

Friday and Saturday nights we didn't have any 4 hour stretches of sleep, but Sunday night she went 4 hours again at one point and then up once every hour after that. Last night was her BEST night ever. She slept for 3 hours and then another 3 hours and then 1 hour and the 2 hours. WOW! We've never had TWO stretches of 2+ hours in one night before. WOOHOO! I didn't go to bed right when she did but still I managed to get almost 8 hours of sleep last night!!! The odd thing is that even when I get more sleep I still feel tired. I guess it will take awhile til I'm "caught up" but still I am very, very grateful to be getting 5-8 hours of sleep on average compared to the 2-4 hours on average the first 3 weeks.

She also is staying awake a LOT more. Yesterday she was awake almost the whole morning while her Grandma and cousin, Brandi were watching her. While they were here I mowed the lawn (most of it anyhow) and did 2 loads of laundry. Then after they left Nadia and I took a 2 hour nap (she napped on top of me). She had been staying awake more and more each day, but yesterday was a very dramatic change in terms of the number of hours she had her eyes open.

I was going to go to ladies Bible study this morning as it's the last time they'll meet until mid September, but I changed my mind yesterday and decided I needed to just stay home today. Donna is coming over this afternoon to rehearse a flute solo with me (for August 3) and also to help me do a little packing. I haven't done ANY packing yet. I plan to do most of it August 4-8 since Paul's party will be on the 2nd. Nadia will get to meet her Uncle Maurice, Grandpa Harton, Uncle Al, and Aunt Millie that day! We are going to move our boxes and some small furniture to the new home on August 9 and then the movers will move the big furniture on the 11th.

I also need to get back to doing a little school work as I have two things I must submit by August 5. Paul is getting VERY little sleep these days as he works on finishing his thesis. He hopes to finish writing it today so that tomorrow he can work on formatting it, doing the table of contents, abstract, etc. It will be SUCH a relief when he submits it (hopefully tomorrow) and even more of a relief once his defense is done (next Tues). I can't wait for him to stop sleeping on the couch and start sleeping in our bed again for one thing! I miss my hubby!!

I'll close by sharing two funny things her Daddy has said to her over the past week. Once he was looking at her and said "if she's as smart as she is cute, she'll be like Einstein." I think that means her Daddy thinks she's awfully cute!! Then once last week when she was really screaming while I was trying to nurse her he said that he was going to have to send her to her room. LOL getting sent to her room at only 3 weeks old, and she was born prematurely at that! Of course she didn't actually get sent to her room. :-)