Playing in her bassinet

Made it 6 weeks, I can exercise again!

Starting to fit into her clothes

Playing in her "cage"

pretty in purple

Smiler

Harper has recently started smiling, which has been incredibly rewarding and fun. She inherited 3 dimples - 1 on her chin from Andy and 2 on her cheeks from me. We think they're pretty adorable.

Harper's First Trip: Thanksgiving in Cleveland

We took Harper on her first big trip, airplane included, to spend almost a week with Andy's family in Ohio. Unfortunately, the entire family was not there. Andy's younger sister, Elizabeth, is volunteering in a teaching program for the year in Yakima, Washington and older brother, Tony ~ also known as Father Moses of Jesus, spend the holiday in Texas with the Mission of Divine Mercy. But it was great to spend time with Andy's parents and younger brother, TJ, along with his wife Quinn and their daughter Lucy, who will be two in February. TJ and Quinn are also expecting another baby at the end of May.

Lounging in her chair

Cloth Diapering 101

Three week update

Harper turned 3 weeks yesterday. Everything is going great. The last week of my pregnancy, labor and delivery are turning into a distant memory - God's way of making sure that Harper gets a sibling. We are constantly amazed by her and by the drastic way her arrival has altered our lives.

On Thursday November 13, she weighed 7 pounds, 8 ounces, up from her birth weight of 6-13 and quite a bit bigger than the weight she dropped to after birth 6-3. (It is normal for babies to lose 10% of their body weight after birth.) At three weeks, she is starting to develop a personality. She is overall a very sweet and mellow baby but has a feisty side and lets it be known when she is unhappy.

Sleep has been erratic. She usually gives us a large stretch when she first goes down for bed, about 3 to 3 1/2 hours, but after she wakes up from that first stretch, anything goes. Her favorite activity is eating and the one thing I didn't realize about motherhood were the hours I would spent nursing her. Sometimes she does nothing but eat and need her diaper changed for hours at a time. I have been pumping often and Andy has been giving her a bottle a few times a week.

Andy had Harper duty for 3 consecutive hours yesterday while I got a massage and ran some errands and she drank 7 ounces of milk and went through 3 outfits! I haven't gotten the full story on why she went through so many clothing changes and maybe it's best I don't ask.

We decided to use cloth diapers instead of disposables and it has been going really well. It is actually much less work than we anticipated it being. The only difficult part is that I like to dry them on the clothesline or on the clothes rack instead of in the dryer, to keep it as environmentally-friendly as possible, and that can take hours on cold, cloudy days. Luckily we have more than 300 days of sunshine in Colorado. Our drying rack is like a new piece of furniture in our living room.

Not sure if she wants to be in her swing or not.