6 weeks

We went to the hospital this past week to see our friends Brian & Erin and their new daughter, Taylor. I do not remember Harper being so tiny at birth, and she was 8oz lighter than Taylor when we saw her, and she seemed like a feather. Since yesterday was Harper's 6 week birthday, we put her in the outfit in which we brought her home from the hospital. The change is pretty amazing, how she fills out the pants more, and how much higher her head is in the car seat. She is also now able to hold her head up pretty much on her own. I can not believe how quickly the changes are occurring. One of these days, I imagine I will come home from work and she will be crawling to meet me at the door.

Tummy time

Coming home from work, it is always fun to hear about how Gina and Harper spent the day. Today, Gina insisted that I look at the pictures on the camera. We try and have activity time after each feeding, and recently we have started on tummy time to strengthen her neck and prepare her to crawl. Well today, she was working so hard, she fell asleep. And in the process gave Gina some great photos.

I can't believe it, but Jay has actually started a blog. Of course, he has only posted once so far. I try and be a good student of the master photographer though. If he makes a living doing it, and is a paid teacher of photography to boot, I would be stupid not to listen. So I turned off the flash on our camera, played with the settings, and started getting some pretty great shots with the Nikon Coolpix, or whatever it was he made fun of in his lone post. They would probably be even better if I took the time to read the manual too. But I can't leave Harper alone long enough to do that. She makes the greatest faces and I am afraid I would miss one.

the other kids

Today is a baby free afternoon for us, and we have spent it working on the house. The front door on our house was in horrible shape when we bought the home. I searched for months for the right door, and the one I found was finally installed last week. With the great weather, we took Harper to her grandparents, and Gina painted the door and trim, while I installed 2 new light fixtures and house numbers. Our first 2 kids, Coal and Shelby are enjoying the new door, as we now have a storm door too and can leave the front open to let the sunlight in. This will be one of the few baby picture free posts, I would imagine.

video

I have never tried posting video, so I hope this works. For the first 2 weeks we gave Harper baths with just a washcloth. Here she is getting her first bath, even though she wasn't really submerged in the water.

4 weeks

It is hard to believe that Harper is already a month old. The clothes that swallowed her up just a little while ago are now being stretched to the limits. I am sure that has to do with her having an amazing internal clock. At exactly 2 hour intervals, most days, she wakes up hungry. At night, Gina gets the occasional 3 plus breaks between feedings. I am back at work full time and Gina is so wonderful that she tends to only wake me up to help out once during the night. We seem to have a pretty good system in place for the time being. Once Harper starts going longer between feedings on a regular basis, we will be really excited. She is pretty awesome to just stare at though, with all the facial expressions we are starting to see. And she has several different smiles already. The one thing we haven't seen yet is a definite resemblance to either of us.

Growing

We were both pretty surprised by how small Harper was at birth. And then at the first doctor's appointment less than a week later, she had lost almost a full pound. I think we are pretty comfortable with how well she is doing since that point. At her 3 week check-up on Friday she weighed in at 7lbs 6oz, a two pound gain in 2 weeks. The doctor said she looked great and was moving in the right direction on all the charts. As for us, we are trying to get in a routine, but Harper has her own timetable most of the time. Gina was loaned a great book by Steph, "The Baby Whisperer", that she is flying through and learning a lot from, so once she finished that I will have to check it out as well. I feel like we are doing pretty good and taking it one day at a time. Shelby and Coal have acclimated pretty well, although it is quite funny that Shelby seems to want to go outside anytime Harper cries. The rest of the time Shelby has been very intrigued, and protective.

Doing alright

So luckily for me, Harper has not yet developed an ear for good music and allows me to sing to her. I am enjoying it while I can, because even I know I am tone deaf. My mom always tells the story of how she would try to sing to me as a baby and I would put my hand over her mouth. I dread the first time that Harper is going to stop me. She seems to really enjoy all genres of music, as I sing with songs as they play on the laptop to cover up some of my lack of musicality. More than anything though, she loves her mom and never wants her to put her down. I tried to catch one of her smiles the other day, but as soon as the flash goes, she tends to grimace, just like her dad she hates light.

Peanut

It is great to have a professional photographer as a brother-in-law. We took Harper to Dave & Marcia's house on Sunday and Jay came over with his camera. I can't wait to see the rest of what he took, because this one is awesome. And it really shows off just how small Harper is at 2 weeks old. I had a hard time keeping my hands from blocking out her head.