One week is already down in the life of our little Phoebe Rose. We're all a little more tired, but all things considered, it has been pretty good. Phoebe is feeding well and sleeping pretty well. We didn't have the feeding issues that we had with Ellen. We're slowly bringing Phoebe around to sleeping at night and being awake during the day. Though so far, she's more sort of continually sleeping with brief periods of active alert time. Unfortunately, one of those periods is roughly 2am. Also, as if to mark her 1 week birthday, she lost her umbilical stump. That'll make it easier for the diaper changes. Speaking of diapers, one of her favorite things to do is wait until I'm in the middle of changing her before she pees. She's quite squeaky. Also cute. Her neck muscles are very strong just like Ellen's were, so she's not all that floppy in the head and neck. Other than her feet and hands are a little more slender with longer fingers and toes, and her head being more oval, Ellen and Phoebe look identical.
We also went out and bought her a bear yesterday for her 1 week picture. Ellen picked it out for her and carried it all the way to the cashier desk. It was very cute. We took her picture today both alone and with Ellen.
Ellen has been so helpful with her new little sister. She's still excited to be a big sister. She's good at getting us things that we can't get, and she's also good at picking up after herself and us. Ellen has been a handful at times though. I'm sure part of it is being 2 and part of it is being excited all week. She's starting to calm down though. We had her going to her day care provider all week in the afternoons just like normal so her routine was still intact, and we got to have a nice rest time in the afternoon. This weekend was our first real test of the whole fam together for the whole 48 hours. Being the weekend, Ellen decided that she didn't have to sleep very long in the mornings, so she was awake by 5am each day. She wasn't upset or anything. She just lay in bed singing to herself softly.
Ellen is really into pretend play now. She loves to set out her dishes on the picnic table for dinner. Each of the 4 colors are assigned to certain people: red is hers; yellow is mine; green is her baby's; and blue is Paine's (our friend's son who hasn't been over all that much lately). Then she gets out her plastic food and her container of "soup" that she keeps in the fridge and ladles out the yummy goodness. She also loves to talk on the phone now. Where we used to say "here, say hi to grandma", now we say the same thing, and she takes the phone away to talk about anything and everything she can see in the room. Ellen also continues to soak up everything she sees. She memorizes her books from the library more quickly each week it seems. She can sing or "read" some of her books on her own. She certainly surprised her Papa when he came over.
Well, we have one week down and many more to go.
Journal Entry: March 9, 2003