mini photo shoot

While I was in Lily's room this morning I realized how wonderful the natural light is in there and decided to try to do a quick mini photo shoot with her in there. I got everything set up while she was sleeping and then waited for her to wake up because I wanted her eyes to be open for the pictures. I waited for her to wake up on her own because I wanted a well rested--aka cooperative--baby. This did not go as planned. She did wake up on her own, but that did not mean that she would cooperate and I ended up getting a lot of photos with a half crying baby. :(

Here are a few of the photos so you can see how most of the shoot went.






She did calm down once I gave her the pacifier, but that wasn't exactly the look I was going for.


Here are two that I was able to salvage.




Maybe I will try again sometime later this week. That might give me some time to find some Valentine's Day type props so we can do a holiday shoot.

Neverending Worry

I think I am finally coming to realize that my life from now on will be constantly filled with worry and self doubt as a mom. While there has never been anything wrong with my baby I still find things to worry about, many times things I know I shouldn't be worrying about. Last night Lily slept for 6.5 hours straight (Yay!) and guess what the first thoughts out of my head were this morning...they weren't "wow I had a rest full sleep", "I'm so happy she basically slept through the night", "she is growing up"...they were "That is a long time for her not to eat, I wonder if there is something wrong with her", "Should I have waken her to feed", "I am a bad mom for not feeding her" etc.

I wish there was a way to become more confident in my mommying skills, but I just don't think that is possible with a first child. I understand that the worrying will never stop, but that it will just progress to worrying about other things as she gets older like first boyfriends.

1 Month

Yesterday was Lilian's 1 month birthday! She has changed so much in this past month. She is sleeping so much more now at night and is more awake and active during the day. She is such a happy baby. She loves smiling for her Daddy, especially when he tickles her. Unfortunately she stops smiling every time I pull out the camera. How does she know?

I had my mom embroider some numbers that I can put on onsies so that I can take pictures of her every month for the first year of her life. I think it will be great to be able to look back and see the differences from each month. Here are some photos from this first month's photo shoot.

She was a good little model. Very serious.


She started getting a little bored looking at Mom and the camera (plus it kept flashing bright lights in her eyes)


The 1 isn't attached to the onsie because I was lazy so once she started squirming around it didn't stay put either

4 weeks

We are starting to attempt to get on more of a schedule. I know it is hard to do with a 4 week old, but with me going back to work in two weeks something needs to be done. I'm starting with a schedule for myself, and hoping that a schedule for Lily will follow. Right now I'm working on getting up around the same time everyday and make myself get showered and ready for the day instead of just getting up whenever I feel like it and laying around on the couch. I need to start actually doing things during the day so that my first day back at work doesn't completely wear me out.

I am hoping to be taking more picture of Lily in the next few weeks. I haven't been taking as many as I had originally wanted because I'm just having so much fun spending time with her that I forget to pull out the camera. I know if I don't get more pictures I'm going to regret it in the future.

Bath time it getting much better. Now that her body is able to be submerged in the water she doesn't seem to mind it as much. During her last bath she didn't cry until I took her out of the tub! Hopefully this means that she will like water as much as Sean and I do.

Right now Lily is sleeping in her room for the first time! She isn't in the crib yet as it is still filled with stuffed animals, but we moved the bassinet in there for her. I was realizing that she was always sleeping while one of us was awake and therefore getting really used to sleeping with noise. While I like that she can sleep through most anything, she was having problems sleeping if it was silent. This meant that Sean and I couldn't sleep at the same time. She has been in her room for about 45 minutes so far and is doing great. Hopefully this will be a start to sleeping in her own room through the night.

3 weeks

So much has changed in 3 weeks. We are getting on a little bit more of a schedule now that the steady stream of visitors has tapered off. We definitely loved having everyone come meet our Lily, but at the same time it was hard to get an idea of what day to day life was going to be like with a lot of people stopping by.

Lily drank from her first bottle the other night. It is so nice to be able to pump and allow Sean to feed her some so that I can get some sleep. I wanted to make sure to start introducing the bottle early since in 3 weeks I am going to be going back to work. So unless I can convince my boss to let me bring Lily to work with me she is going to have to be drinking out of a bottle most days.


Sean's mom was here this past week visiting. It was so great to have her here. I loved getting to see Lily with another one of her grandparents and Mary did so much to help out. Since we got rid of the guestroom to turn it into Lily's room we didn't really have a place for Mary to stay. We ended up taking the changing table out of the nursery and putting it in the family room so we could put the air mattress in the nursery for her. It actually worked out well and I now kind of miss having all of Lily's stuff in the family room now that we have moved it back into her own room.

Mary and Steve got us a video camera! This means that we will be able to capture all the wonderful things that Lily does and put the videos up here...as soon as I figure out how to upload them onto my computer. :) So far we don't have all that many movies of her since all she really does right now is eat and sleep, but I'm hoping to get some soon since she is starting to stay awake more and more each day. Right now I have quite a few videos of Selene, which I might put on here as well.


Yesterday Lily, my parents, and I went to visit my two grandmothers. It was awesome seeing two amazing women, both that have lived long wonderful lives, get to hold their great-granddaughter. One of them turns 90 in March and the other turned 95 this past November. They both seemed so happy to see Lily. My dad's mom didn't know we were coming to visit and once we got there barely gave us enough time to get our coats off before she was telling me to get Lily out of her carrier so she could hold her.

Firsts

Lily is almost 2 weeks old now! I can't believe that it has gone by so fast. I am beginning to think that 6 weeks off work is not going to be enough. It is going to be really hard to be away from her all day.

She is really starting to track with her eyes. She especially likes watching her mommy and daddy making silly faces. I can't wait till she starts reacting more to things we do. Every now and then we get a smile or two, but I know it isn't because of anything we have done, but probably just gas.

She has so many clothes now! Sean's step-mom, Marsha, had a coworker give her a bunch of stuff from her last child so we like tripled her wardrobe. This is good because we definitely use more than one outfit a day sometimes and I was beginning to think we were going to have to do laundry constantly just so she would have clean things to wear.

Lily also had her first professional photo shoot earlier this week. Sean's dad and step-mom got me a newborn photo shoot for my birthday. Marsha's niece is the photographer and came to our house Monday morning. She was absolutely amazing. She was very patient with us and Lily not wanting to cooperate in the beginning. Right now she just has some photos up on the blog as a sneak peak and I can't wait to see all the rest of them. Here is the link in case anyone is interested in seeing a few of the photos. She is going to put all the photos she took up on a website at some point I will put up a link for that as well.

The first bath was also this week. Lily did NOT like it. She screamed throughout the entire thing. Her second bath was also this week and did not go much smoother than the first. I hope once she gets older that she starts to like water and realize that it is fun.

Here are a few photos from the week:

Lily all decked out to watch (ok, sleep through) her first OSU football game. (Her bib says "I slobber scarlet and gray).

Lily meeting my dad's mom for the first time. She is her first great-granddaughter.

Lily's first bath. My mom helped oversee. Lily was not pleased.