Maybe-Blue Eyes and Other Girlishness

I thought, since my last few posts have been pretty Nathan-centered, that it was time for an Anneliese update. We have fallen into that second-child pattern of not taking nearly as many pictures, so this is another of the portraits from when she was a week old.

For Mark and me, her most distinguishing facial features are those big round cheeks and her dark blue eyes. We have no idea where she got them. Nathan told us they were maybe blue. Which is his way of saying navy. (He also thinks his skunk costume is maybe blue; he gets it confused with black!) I don't know if they're quite that dark, but they are certainly darker than most other caucasian babies we've seen! But oh so pretty. :)

Anneliese had a two-week checkup on Tuesday, and she is up to 9 1/2 pounds! So... yeah she's getting enough to eat. :) I have totally healed from my injury, and I'm glad to be done with the bottles for now. My life is so much simpler this way. Don't get me wrong, though, we'll be glad to reintroduce them when we're ready to leave her alone, though!

Also at her appointment, we realized that her umbilical cord stump had gotten kind of stinky and was oozing something green and gross, so (against conventional wisdom and what "the books" say) our doctor went ahead and pulled it off, since he was pretty confident it wouldn't bleed (he was right). It was a little infected but he didn't want to put her on an antibiotic at this age (and cause thrush/yeast infections, etc) so he thought we could kill it with... air. And he was right again; it's much better now and not stinky at all. And soon it will be totally healed and she can have a real bath. (And by real bath, I mean any bath, since we have not only been slack with picture-taking but also with baby-cleaning.) I'm kind of glad that cord stump is gone, Nathan's took almost a month and this one was looking that way too!

Our church had a rosebud in honor of Anneliese's birth last Sunday. Since then, some friends have been bringing us dinners. Since Mark and I are both still exhausted (yes, still), and since the evening hours are the hardest for us (both our children are fussiest between 4 and 8, it seems), we're very grateful for the support!

She is getting much better at using her waking hours for things other than fussing, and she is actually turning into a champion sleeper! (At night anyway, and that's when it counts.) She has been going 5-7 hours in a stretch, which means she only gets up for one feeding per night. Awesome. It's totally worth it to have her eat every hour and a half during the day, and not nap well. I promise.

Anneliese has almost outgrown many of the newborn-sized clothes we had on hand for her, so I'm enjoying dressing her in some of the slightly-bigger (up to 3 month) stuff. This is why having a daughter is fun, right? :) And my multi-talented friend Kristy made her these gorgeous burp cloths (amongst a box of other great gifts), in her spare time from being a doctor, apparently. At first I thought they were too pretty to get spit-up on them, but then I realized I wanted to make all the other moms green with envy when I pulled them out of her bag. (Yes, the awesome bag.) So we will definitely be using them, pretty as they are. They need to be shown off.

We have one more week with Mark before he goes back to work. He's easing back into it, though, so it won't be too sudden. I'm still a little concerned about what I'm going to do with Nathan while I'm nursing Anneliese, to keep him from destroying the house or hurting himself. I know zillions of moms do it, though. Anyone have any hints?