....And This is the Picture!
Oh boy is all I have to say at this moment. As you can probably guess by the lack of recent posts, we've had quite a week or so with our little one. Andy and I have both been fighting slight colds (luckily it doesn't look like Sara has gotten it) and I have some mystery stomach bug that will not go away (going to the doctor tomorrow before anyone yells at me).
On top of all that joy, Sara has had quite a week too. She doesn't seem to be sick at all, but she is not having good nights this week. She has gotten progressively worse each night with last night being terrible. She pretty much screamed despite all our efforts all evening, which is great for Andy since that's the only time he sees her. I nursed her once an hour to try to calm her down. This worked for about 10 minutes each time with her sleeping, but she woke up shortly thereafter screaming. Andy tried to sleep with her on the couch for a while, which worked for about half an hour around 11. I fed her again and slept with her on me in bed for about an hour and a half before the screaming started again. I got her to calm down and she slept on Andy until about 4:30. I fed her again around 5 and we put her down in her swing out in the living room with all the lights off. This seemed to work and she slept until almost 9 - her longest stretch in a while. I just hate putting her in the swing all the time because I feel like she'll never learn to sleep on her own in a bed if we don't keep trying to put her down in one at night. However, desperate times call for the swing and this little family needs sleep! It may be used all night tonight if she repeats the same behavior just so we can get some rest.
After such a great night, Andy still got up at 5 and went to work on no sleep. This has been such a horrible experience with Andy's work. For those who don't know, his plant is in a MAJOR turnaround where they shut everything down, refurbish/replace parts, and then start back up. This hasn't been done in something like 8 years to give you an idea of how massive the project is. Of course this started a week before Sara was born and Andy has been working non-stop since his two weeks off with us. He's had to go in almost every weekend and this one appears to be no different. He's working so much on such little sleep and I am with a newborn all the time with little break. It's so stressful on its own and now we're both not feeling well. I'm sure everyone who has children can empathize! At this point I'm just praying for a break of some sort - hopefully the doctor can figure out what's wrong with my stomach tomorrow and at least get that under control since we clearly cannot control our newborn!
While this week has seemed endless and not so nice, there are a few positive things to talk about. Sara had her second set of visitors this past weekend when her Nana and Grandpa came to see her. Of course they were smitten with her and really enjoyed spending time with her. Nana was even excited to change diapers - she clearly had not had to do this for a while to be so excited about it!
Sara also had some friends stop by and got to meet Dottie, Jason, and Cambria for the first time (they've been fighting illness too!). Andy and I were shocked to see how much Cambria had grown in just a couple months - she is walking and talking a bit too. She is definitely going to be tall like her mom. It will be so fun when the girls are old enough to really play together!
Fred, Katie, and Lily also stopped by for a visit. Lily really digs her exersaucer and is all smiles these days. I'm so jealous of how well she sleeps in the crib - even when it's Sara's crib she's in! There will be a serious celebration in the Athon house when Sara really sleeps on her own consistently and only gets up to eat at night!
It's so great when we get to see friends and I'm able to talk to other moms about all kinds of baby stuff. I feel really lucky that Dottie and Katie had their babies first so that I can ask them all kinds of questions. They are such a great resource - I hope I can pay them back someday with some great tip I've discovered!
Also this past weekend, we really started to see some new developmental changes in Sara. She could always focus on a face, but now she is really looking at people for long periods of time and studying what they are doing. She tracks people when the walk across a room - even turning her head upside down a bit to follow someone. She has also started to turn and look at a person when they come into the room and sit down near her. It's neat to see her becoming so aware of her surroundings.
She also appears to be able to see quite a bit better these days. We think she's looking at pictures on the wall and other objects that are approximately 3-6 feet away. She seems to be able to really look at these things now instead of just glancing around sort of in a daze and objects catch her attention more than the ceiling now :)
The most exciting development is that Sara is starting to really smile now. She's still working on it, but just this weekend she started to respond with slight smiles when being talked to. She's starting to do it a bit more each day and it really seems as though it's intentional now and not random like it was before. We're looking forward to more smiles and less crying for sure!
Well, the little creature is starting to stir again so I better go for now. I added some more pictures to the website - the ones of Sara in the purple outfit are from her one month birthday. I had planned to add them that night but things just have not worked out lately. We also have a few more videos that we hope to upload soon. They take such a long time to load that I've just been focusing on the pictures for now. Hopefully we'll all get healthy and happy soon and I can get a bit more things on the site!
Hope you are all doing well - we love the comments and appreciate everyone checking in on us from time to time. We miss you all and hope you can all come to see Sara sometime soon!
Lots of love,
Andy, Valarie, and Sara
....And This is the Picture!
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