She does seem to have a cold again, though, since she had woken herself up coughing around 4am on both Thursday and Friday morning... and then managed to get herself back to sleep on her own despite being wide awake then. And after starting to take an extra few ounces of milk each day at daycare, her appetite had been down towards the end of the week and she's been spitting up more again throughout the week, so we'll be keeping a close eye on her to see if we need to go back to the pediatrician again. She was still happy and smiley for the most part and spit up a lot less on Thursday, but then was spitting up again Friday, so I'm not quite sure if it's from a cold or food sensitivities. I think the likely candidates if it was a food sensitivity were walnuts, pineapple, and/or asparagus... the latter two I've had multiple times before and she was fine, but maybe being prepared a different way than before somehow makes a difference.
Speaking of food, that was another big concern I had while Ryan was gone - would I have enough food for the week? Ryan cooked up a bunch of food before he left, and even with my brother cooking up a big batch of risotto for me mid-week, I only had about about one meal's worth of food left by the end of the week from all of this:
[Includes a large container of cereal, an acorn squash, butternut squash, pineapple, salad, asparagus, four containers of salmon cakes, and beef brisket]
[Includes two bunches of bananas, yams, a second container of cereal, rice, eggplant, and zucchini and summer squash]
The main difficulty I had was my evening tasks - there are just not enough hours in the day, apparently, and I was pretty rundown and exhausted by the end of the week. And yet all I did each day was pick up Josie from daycare and get back home around 5:45pm, scarf down dinner, feed Josie and get her to bed (usually by 7:30pm), take a nap (since she seems to settle down into sleep better when I stay nearby for the first hour or so), get back up at 9ish, and wash bottles/pump parts/food containers, prepare bottles/diapers/my meals/our outfits for the next day, shower, pump, and then go to bed. For whatever reason, it was taking me sometimes more than two hours to do everything I needed to once I got back up from my nap, and I have no idea where the time was going since it really only should have been taking just over an hour. And then in the mornings, I was still getting up at 6:30, packing up my bag for work and all the bottles and pump parts I had washed the night before, getting myself ready for work, then waking Josie up, changing and then nursing her in attempts to be out the door at 7:30am... which never quite happened, since while she would be happily playing in her bouncer while I finished getting ready after feeding her, she would manage to make it necessary to change her again. Every single day. (Realizing I could just wait to change her first diaper until right before we left, but I couldn't bring myself to have her sit in a wet diaper for that extra hour.)
Josie also continues to be Crazy (yes, with a capital "C"). To illustrate, here is a series of pictures from when she first woke up Friday morning - these are all in order and only one is missing from the set (which was too blurry to keep):
This week was also all about Josie making some noise. She made the music go on her bouncy seat repeatedly, she's laughing and squealing much more, and she's apparently more talkative now too. We were only able to get her to laugh before by imitating other people (e.g., the way Ryan's dad laughs for her, the way our daycare provider leans in and taps Josie on the chest), but now she's laughing at more things, like just being held or poked or me saying "arm up!" and lifting her arms. Apparently this is hilarious. She has also been squealing more, and squealed the whole way to daycare the last couple of days... and I'm even blaming her cuteness for making me late to work Friday morning, because it was hard to pull myself away from playing with her when she's being so funny.
And now that she's mastered sucking her right thumb too, Josie has moved on to redoubling her efforts to suck on our fingers - she's getting more sneaky too, since she'll play with my fingers while subtly drawing them towards her mouth until she can grab on and start gumming them to death ;)
Josie seems to be more observant now too, and is starting to watch us eat and drink with an interest. We're planning on doing Baby-Led Weaning, so we expect to start her on whatever solids we're eating once she starts reaching for them (vs. starting her on rice cereal or purees), so it's encouraging to see that she's starting to pay more attention to what we're ingesting now, although we're still likely a couple of months away from having her eat anything other than milk (the time I gave her an apple to lick notwithstanding). She also seems to be happier to be in the middle of things, and although she was content playing on her activity mat at Ryan's parents' house over the weekend, she seemed to light up more sitting at the table with us while we sang happy birthday to his mom and had some cake. Now she needs just a little more head control and we'll be able to start putting her in her high chair :)
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