Josie is also already adapting to daycare better. She started off the week still just taking two 30-minute naps during the day, but ended the week with a couple of 30-60 minute naps and one that was two hours! She also had 22oz on Monday, which scared me a bit since I hadn't pumped that much during the workday... and then it turns out that daycare had used all of the frozen milk (40oz!) I had given them last week and sent back the refrigerated milk for the weekend, but since I hadn't labeled them, we only ended up using one bottle since I wasn't sure how old they were, and then threw the rest away. Since I had sent about half of my freezer stash, I was a bit panicked that we had already gone through half of what it took me a month to build up in two days, especially given that I wasn't keeping up with her by pumping during the day. I had only pumped twice at work on Friday, so I added a third session on Monday, and then a fourth session during the day and a session before bed (and possibly another during the night if she is sleeping well) starting Tuesday. The amount I was able to pump has gradually increased each day, so now I'm able to freeze a few ounces each day again, so at least I hadn't damaged my supply too much by pumping too infrequently for the first couple of days she was at daycare.
Besides that, she's doing really well at daycare. She's usually awake and alert most of the day, watching the other kids and apparently charming the adults. The owner told me Friday that Josie is "the best baby ever", which was so nice to hear someone else confirm it ;) And after not taking a pacifier for the last few weeks, she took one for Ryan on Monday night when she was so gassy she kept waking up, so he had taken her downstairs and she slept on his chest for four hours after falling asleep with the pacifier. Then she started accepting it at daycare too, which seems to have really helped her naps, and she has been able to fall asleep on her own several times now with just the pacifier rather than being bounced to sleep. Or maybe she's just really exhausted, since even with the longer naps, she's still so tired by the end of the day. I had been afraid that she would be overtired and fussy and unable to fall asleep, but instead she's usually pretty quiet, just really zonked out. So each day we have played with her for maybe half an hour, then I nurse her down to sleep and she's been asleep for the night by 7:30pm each night, sometimes with a short nap before that. As a result, this week I mainly have lots of pictures of her sleeping in various places:
[How she woke up after her nap on Ryan - we're thinking maybe her arm had fallen asleep, since she was quite upset and sad almost immediately after waking up :( ]
Even with her not getting enough sleep last week, she still mostly wakes up happy (except on the weekend, when it seemed like she was quite put out at being awake at all). She usually stretches a whole bunch of times, flings her arms over her head, and kicks and flails around. This week she's added grabbing her ears to this routine, and also wringing her hands, which makes her look like an evil professor who's plotting to take over the world.
I do find it funny that during the diaper changes in the middle of the night, I'll try not to interact with her too much so that she doesn't get so stimulated that she has trouble falling asleep. So I'll be focused on changing her diaper and not really looking at her face, then will check in with her to see how she's doing. Almost invariably, she'll be grinning and then when she sees me looking, will start into her kicking and flailing dance party, so I usually end up shaking my head at her and whispering, "You're crazy!" to her. And then she usually falls back asleep pretty easily anyway, so those are fun little interludes... especially when she only wakes up once during the night as she did for the most part this week ;) She's also been more playful with Ryan, smiling and giggling in reaction to whatever dancing, singing, or trumpeting he does, rather than mainly just smiling at ceiling fans and lights. She is also starting to like mirrors more - she had been showing some interest in them for a while, but now is all smiles once she gets in front of the mirror, and also likes it when Ryan does "super baby" with her and she gets to fly towards the other flying baby in the mirror :)
Last weekend, we took her to our development's Fall Fest, which was also her first experience with the Cold. She didn't seem to care for it that much, but still managed to fall asleep anyway... possibly because we were in the longest, slowest line for funnel cake ever.
[Not too keen on the cold and wind]
[Sleeping through her first funnel cake experience, but helpfully holding our napkins for us]
We also went out for sushi on Sunday, and although I fed her before we left and we went earlier than normal so that it wouldn't be too close to her bedtime, she still was fussy from being tired and hungry. Or, possibly, it's because we dressed her like this:
It was funny, though, since as soon as the other customers left, our waitress immediately came over and grabbed Josie. I felt a little guilty that the waitstaff was taking care of her so we could have some sushi (which is hard to eat with chopsticks when using the wrong hand because holding a sad baby is occupying the dominant hand), but they were thrilled to hold her and she seemed mollified by it, so I guess it was win-win. Although she ended up gassy the next day and I'm not sure if the sushi, soy sauce, and/or tofu may have caused that, so we still have some more experimentation to do to see if we can pinpoint what she's sensitive to. I also need to get better at remembering which foods have dairy or soy in them (hint: if "soy" is in the name, or its main ingredient is soy, chances are it has soy in it).
And here are two random pictures:
[A picture of Josie and me that isn't a self-portrait!]
[This is so funny to me since I think there's something about the perspective of this picture that makes Josie look even more enormous than she actually is]
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