Adjustments

I think Kayla is starting to get the hang of life outside the womb! Or maybe more truthfully, Ryan & I are starting to get the hang of who Kayla is and what she needs.
We are VERY blessed by the many friends who have come by with hugs, gifts and meals for us. The encouragement and help have made a world of difference for our marriage, our parenting and our sanity.
I am still recovering from labor and need to see a physical therapist tomorrow to help me with some pretty serious back pain that keeps me from walking comfortably. I am in a strange place of not fitting well into maternity clothes or my regular clothes AND I can't work out with this back pain. Hopefully that will get resolved quickly!
We continue to be very proud of her poopy diapers (because that way we know she's eating well), I am excited that she is learning how to put her arms through the sleeves of her tops, and she does not completely freak out any time we change her diaper.
I'm catching on that not all her little noises mean that something is wrong...she just makes noises! When she's really tired, it's difficult for her to fall asleep, so we've learned to swaddle her, hold her tight, rock her and whisper "shhhhh" in her ear. She will doze off and then wake up crying, doze off...wake up...and so forth until 5-10 minutes later she crashes!
Ryan has taken to giving her a bottle of pumped milk in the middle of the night so that I can get more than 90 minutes of sleep at a time. I've learned that it's okay to let her sleep at night, rather than wake her up to eat, past the 3 hour "limit" that the hospital nurses say she shouldn't pass. She wants to eat on average every 3 hours for about 40 minutes. It's so nice to go with her natural schedule rather than forcing her to get up every 3 hours to eat or ignore her hunger cries when she wants to eat after 2 hours. (We don't really ignore her, but we didn't realize that she was hungry again in the earlier days)
We're eager to see her start to intentionally smile. She makes great smiley faces now, but all the books say it's gas! :0 It's still super cute. And bless her little heart, she fell asleep last night to me" singing" parts of any song, nursery rhyme or worship song I could remember. We did Silent Night, Mary Had a Little Lamb, the Alphabet song, Stop in the Name of Love... It's hard to remember the words to anything late at night with a crying baby. She didn't seem to mind.
So that's life here...today...
She should be getting hungry soon. I should go...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!