My sweet baby is a week old today! I can't belive how much life has changed already! First of all our house is the cleanest it's ever been thanks to Gary helping me every day and both of us keeping things picked up.Baby Grace eats about every 2-3 hours. She seems to eat every 2 hours most of the night b/c she falls alseep halfway through eating and I have a HARD time waking her back up. She also poops while she's eating more than half of her feedings a day so just when I think she's done she' suddenly acting like she's starving. She falls alseep either on her own or with a paci. She usually spits the paci out and keeps on sleeping but to ward off the "i lost it and cant get it back" cry which is very similar to the "i'm starving mom feed me now" cry --Gary likes to swadle her in a way that kind of holds the paci in. I was nervous about this manuver with Tyler but it worked, then when Grace was born one of the nurses did it and she could not move her head at all and that paci was in her mouth in such a way that I don't know if she could have spit it out if she wanted to! I figured after that that Gary's less constricting method was just fine. Plus- who likes getting out of bed every 5 minutes? Grace also loves to be held and also likes to lay onthe floor or in her boppy and just stare around. So far her eyes are still deep blue. She's just gorgeous. She sleeps well (just not long enough but in a couple months i'm sure that will improve), eats well, and is sweet as can be. I'm trying to enjoy these weeks where she seems to do nothing but sleep but I will admit sometimes the nursing gets to me. It's just SO time consuming! I'm very nervous about how I'll do when Gary goes back to work. Hopefully the act of sitting and standing won't hurt so much by Tuesday and I can be moving around while nursing to get Tyler things when he needs them. Tyler has adjusted very well all things considered. It's going to be quite a shock Tuesday when Daddy's not here anymore though. I"m a bit nervous about that too. Thankfully we have anice safe yard, plenty of TV channels, and he has plenty of toys on all 3 levels of the house. I'm hoping he'll enjoy having some of his own quiet time back. he's always liked to kind of play by himself somedurring the day so maybe not having Dad around stimulating him all day will turn out not to be a bad thing. :) I made Gary go golfing yesterday. He says "made" i say "encouraged". He said he wanted to go and i told him to just go. he didn't want me to be mad but i told him that if it helped him get out and do something rather than being cooped up in the house and improved his mood a bit then I'd rather him go than stay. It did in fact improve his mood! We have been out of the house every day since we got home from the hospital. Monday-Wednesday we had to go to the hospital every day to have Grace's bilirubin done. Finally Wednesday's numbers came down slightly, but came down and so we stopped. Yesterday we went to Walmart (which was a disaster- I was too hormonal apparently to handle a trip to the grocery store where we spend money...) today we took Grace to the Doctor. She's back up to her birthweight of 7 pounds exactly! She's my peanut!! She has these teeny tiny skinny little arms and legs. It's amazing to me how differently than Tyler she is built. Tyler came out a huge mass of muscle and she's dainty and thin. She's also a good pound lighter than he ever was and on a newborn- that one pound makes a difference! We already kind of feel like she's always been here. Tyler loves her and likes to sing her the Gilmore Girls song and the ABC song. he kisses her a lot, tells her goodnight and that he loves her. When she fusses he usually comes to get one of us to make sure she's ok. He's doing well keeping away from her when he's hyper but he's not exactly mastered this skill yet. Nor do I imagine he ever will! :) Overall this week has been exausting and trying but wonderful. So far she's pretty much a textbook baby and I'm very thankful. I'm also thankful that the nursing is going well- I'm much less anxious about everything than I was with Tyler. I'm still strict about how I want to do things and have my mind set on most of those things, but overall I'm way less stressed overall. I imagine that will change about 6:30 AM on Tuesday. The only thing that is hard so far (other than my own healing) is not being able to be online. So many people have commented or written me messages here and in my regular email and I hate that I have not written hardly any of them back. It's been a HUGE encouragement though to recieve all your well wishes and congrats and prayers. Ithelps so much to know that even though I'm crazy busy all of a sudden, that I have friends who love me. Hang with me dear friends! i'll be back in touch with you as soon as I can- I promise! You are all too important to ignore and I love you all! i hope you'll read this as if it's apersonal email from me to you- I wish i could email everyone personally but I just can't. I know you understand but wanted to say it anyways. We will keep trying to update photos on our photobucket and blogspot so check back when you can. I love you all and we are doing well. We appreciate and continue to need your prayers, love and suppport!!