Lovely Lydia

The past few weeks have been a blur! It has gone so fast, I can hardly believe my "newborn" is a month old. I wish she would slow down so I have more time to enjoy her!

Lydia is a very calm baby.  I didn't realize how "spirited" Avery is till having something to compare her to-- and even at one month old the difference between the girls is humongous!  (Of course it is, they are two different people after all.)

Lydia doesn't cry much but she grunts a lot.  She takes a binky when she's tired but it falls out of her mouth and distresses her so often that I wonder whether it's worth using at all.  She has a special stuffed animal sloth and a horse that she sleeps with, it looks like Nasty Nay will have some competition as most prized possession in the family!  Sometimes she only wakes up once a night (YAY!!!) and other times she is up every hour.  Todd volunteers to get up with her but when he does I lay in bed wide awake listening to him as he gets the bottle ready and feeds her, so I usually just do it myself.  One of us may as well get some sleep.

Avery snuck into my room to "soft" the baby when she was supposedly getting dressed ha ha!

Avery has been an absolute tender joy with Lydia.  She often says to me, "Mom I love the baby so so much!  She is so special!"  And she "softs" Lydia all the time by gently snuggling and petting her.  On the flip side of that coin, Avery has been quite difficult for Todd and I!  She has more tantrums and demands and wild emotions than I've ever known her to have.  The best thing to rectify this so far has been for me to simply have more physical contact with her- snuggles, hand holding, lap sitting etc.  She probably just misses me since I'm all about little sister these days. :(

We are adjusting to our new normal pretty well.  I've had a lot of help with watching Avery so I can nap and have a few precious moments to myself, and of course Todd is being super dad and taking on as much as he can to help out.  In short, I am so devoted to Lydia and so deeply in love with her!  Simply holding her and gazing into her alert eyes makes me happier than anything else I have ever done in my life (except maybe gazing into Avery's eyes :)  We love our Lydia!!

And some more photos:

Sparky the Sloth (I'm referring to the stuffed animal)

The best indicator of having a newborn: exhaustion

 

Here she is the night before I had her.  She looks much better on the outside!

I don't really like posed photos, I think we look awkward...  But oh well it's a family shot!

Baldy. :)

 Avery's second ever encounter with Lydia.  It was love at first (and second) sight.  I'm not sure what is going on with the play button in the middle but you get the idea.