Erica Plays

The night of June 19th I was on the floor with Erica. We were lying facing each other and she was punching at me. Each time she hit me, I said "POW". It felt like we were playing, and the game went on and on. Then Nate tried the game, and sure enough she punched him too, and he didn't even say "POW".
Then, I had this realization that we had an activity mat that had toys on it that would make noise if she punched them. At last, a chance to use some of the "stuff" we have for her! I set it up, and we put her down on it. Sure enough, she started punching the little chimes.
She was really intent on her toy. Of course we let play time go on too long, and she got overstimulated and had a meltdown.
Since then she's punched her chimes, kicked her chimes, and kicked her octopus. All great fun!

Oh my, how she's grown!

Erica's about to grow out of her newborn clothes, but before she did I wanted to get a sense of how much she's grown. I had a picture of her on her changing table from May 17th in one of her newborn outfits. So, I put her in the same outfit, stuck her on the changing table, and took a picture of her on June 21st to see how much she's changed. The results are below.

I wish I would have had the same perspective in both of the shots, but you still get a sense of how much bigger she is. Note that the onesie is now pulled tight against her belly, and the pants fit much better. (She's not grown out of her newborn pants yet.) She has chubby little cheeks now, and she's much longer. Sadly, I don't think I'll be able to shove her in the same outfit next month, so thus ends my experiment with my little girl.

We went in for an appointment with the pediatrician last week. Erica has a birthmark that just showed up at 4 weeks. (Um, hello, then it's not a "birth" mark people: it's a four-week mark.) I didn't know what it was, it's kinda scary looking, so she got hauled to the doctor. It ended up being nothing to worry about, and as a bonus we got to weigh her again, so I have another point for my graph. Note that there has been a significant trend upward in her weight!
You may wonder what Erica thinks of all these experiments and data gathering. Well, I think the first picture I took of her in her newborn clothes says it all.

Can't you just hear her? "These clothes are horribly uncomfortable. I can't believe you are doing this. If I wasn't an infant, and incapable of moving, I would jump off this table and run away from you. However, because I am stuck here, I will participate under duress."

Erica's Room

We've just about got the nursery done. All that's left is to finish the crib skirt, which is in progress, but getting finished at a very slow rate. Oddly it's hard to find time to sew with a 6 week old, who knew? The inspiration for the room was a quilt Grandma Dyanna wanted to make, and a flower pillow I wanted to make. We bought the fabric, and our "theme" was born. The flower pillow is huge, about 3 feet in diameter, and can be seen on the main page of our blog.

Here are some of the highlights of Erica's room.

Here is Erica with Grandma Dyanna and the quilt she made for Erica. It's on the wall now, but will go on her bed when Erica's finally allowed to have soft things on her bed. There is a smaller quilt on the opposite wall that matches. The crib and a matching armoire were bought for us by both sets of grandparents.

Nate painted these old dressers we had to match the colors in the quilt.

Mom and I both worked on the curtains, and Nate painted Erica's name to match the dresser.

The ambiance of the room is completed with music from a CD of piano music that Grandma and Grandpa Levene made for Erica. Grandma Donna performed the pieces while Grandpa Barry taped them.

Someday Erica will look back on all this hard work and say "Mom, I can't believe you MADE all of this stuff for my nursery. I'm so embarrassed! All my friend's parent's bought their stuff."

Happy One Month Birthday Erica!

Wow! It's hard to believe that Erica's already been here a month, and (in some ways) even harder to imagine what life was like before her. I think I went to work, and was spit-up on less back then. There was more sleep, but less sweet dinosaur noises.

We've had a big milestone since the last blog. Erica finally surpassed her birth weight and came in at a hefty 7 lbs, 7.5 oz last Thursday. Here is a chart of her weight changes from birth to June 5th.
Who knew having a baby would give me new data to graph? I didn't take her in this week to get weighed, so you'll have to stay tuned to see if the trend continues.

For those of you who care less about data, and more about pictures, here are some recent shots of Erica.

Erica and Nate doing tummy time. (Tummy time is a good chance to take pictures, in case you can't tell.)

Erica and Johanna after tummy time, on one of the days I actually managed to take a shower.

Baby feet! I have about 700 attempts to try and get a cute baby foot picture. This is close to what I want, so I will keep trying.

Erica and Grandma Dyanna on the porch.

Erica and Great-Aunt Diane on Erica's one month birthday!

Here is Erica on her birthday, wearing a lovely outfit borrowed from her stylish friend Annika Yaworski.

And a close up of our little girl. One of the things I found out that she's inherited from me is a penchant for red eyes in pictures. You can see a hint of it here, but I've got a ton of cute shots where she has glowing red eyes. I need some better photo editing software now that I have a baby with red eyes!

That's all for now!