I’ve been going back to work on and off since week 2, mostly hitting important meetings for a total of about 15 hours/week. I expect both Molly and I will go a bit more in coming weeks, until she starts daycare on July 2!

Finally, Erin took her first trip outside the D.C. area last weekend (at 5 weeks), she went to Richmond, VA for a picnic for her Grandpa Wetzel’s retirement.

First, the doctor’s appointment. He was super pleased with all her progress.

• 8lbs 15oz (50th percentile). She’s been gaining about an ounce per day.
• 22 1/4″ height (95th percentile)
• 14 7/8″ head (80th percentile)

So all of that is great news. He asked us if she is meeting our gaze for a few seconds (yes) and grabbing our finger when we place it in her hand (yes). He seemed to think her color was great and that her legs/hips were very flexible. Basically, she got an A+ from the doc.

Second, my own impressions of her progress. She has really changed a lot even within the past couple of days. Her legs have loosened up quite a bit. Rather than keeping them in a ball in front of her, she has started to spread them out and around your body when you hold her (like a big kid would when you put them on your hip). She has just started making a cooing sound over the last couple of days. It really is her first non-squawking/crying sound. I’ve only heard it a couple of times so far, but it is definitely there. I think she tried to crack a smile for me yesterday, but that is the kind of thing you can really only identify for sure after she’s done it a couple of times. And we’ve crossed a huge threshold in terms of sleep (I hope). She has slept for a pretty good stretch (at least 4 hours) each of the last two nights. Last night she slept from 11 to 5:30. I slept that whole time too. It is stunning what 6 hours of sleep can do for you when you’ve been getting 2-3 hour stretches for a month.

In other news, she seems to have the standard touch of baby acne and (at least so far) she doesn’t seem to be losing her hair.

It’s clearly not quite reading, but instead some sort of picture/word-triggered memorization and recital. But, she is 3. And she spontaneously did this one day, having never before read along for more than a page, so we were quite surprised when it just kept going and going.

Oh, and one more thing… this is a library book that she checked out two weekends earlier; she’s seen it maybe 15 times.

Warning — much longer than usual, about 7.5 minutes.

And, perhaps needless to say, Morgan loves helping with the bath. She’s a great big sister.

Here are a few pics of the sponge bath and today’s ‘real’ bath.

Erin has been taking 2 monster naps a day, curled up in a ball on my chest (plus numerous smaller naps throughout the day). It is very sweet and I usually doze underneath her, but she has been resisting sleeping in her crib in the evening until 11pm or later. She’ll sleep in your arms, no problem. But not on her own in her crib until pretty late at night. So we are trying to cut back on the napping and push more of the sleep into the evening hours (of course, this means less napping for me too).

Erin also sleeps pretty late, much to Morgan’s chagrin. The first thing Morgan wants to do every morning is go see her sister (Morgan still routinely gets up in the 6 o’clock hour, though she’ll occasionally hit 7). Left to her own devices, Erin will sleep until 8 or so. One nice side effect is that I’ve been able to get up with Morgan and do a lot of the morning routine with her. It is a nice little slice of one-on-one time for me and Morgan. Though I’m not sure Morgan appreciates the cheerios/banana/english muffin routine as much as I do.

All in all, the transition from a family of 3 to a family of 4 is going better than I had thought it might. I’m getting a decent amount of sleep (if in smallish increments) and I’m getting to spend more time with Morgan than I had anticipated. So that has been great. Morgan loves her sister to pieces. She’s thrilled when Erin grabs her hand, she likes to interpret Erin’s fussing for us (she’s hungry, she doesn’t like the red light, etc.), she loves to bring Erin flowers from the front yard when she comes home from school, she loves to hug and kiss Erin, and she loves to help with dressing, diapers, carrying, etc.

We took Erin in for her first doctor’s visit the Monday after we got home from the hospital (way back on April 2). Everything was great.  She was down 2 ozs from birthweight (not at all surprising for a breastfed baby). She weighed 6 lb, 10 oz, coming in at the 35th percentile. And they measured her length at 20 inches, coming in at the 75th percentile. Note that this was slightly less than her measured length at birth.  I don’t think she shrank. I just think balled up babies are hard to measure. And her head was 13.5 inches.

The doctor wanted us to come back in a week for a weight check and so we went in this Monday as well. She weighed in at 7lb, 1 oz, which the doc said was right on target. Apparently they should be gaining about an ounce a day around now. She’s a great eater. Her biggest problem is that I’m not great at burping her. So occasionally the air gets to be a bit much and she gets uncomfortable and spits up. I had completely forgotten to even try to burp her in the hospital. As a result, she gave the nurse a bit of trouble at one point. The nurse was trying to weigh her with no diaper, Erin got upset, and then pretty much cleared everything out. The nurse ended up having  to give her a near bath in  the middle of the night. And I felt sheepish.  Always a chance to learn something new (or again). One should try to burp one’s babies. (In my defense, Morgan didn’t need burping for the vast majority of her time nursing. I have no recollection as to whether I was burping her at 2 weeks old.)