1 month

As you were laying in my arms last night, sweet girl, having just fallen asleep on the day you turned one month old, I thought about how much I love you! You have just been out here one month but already it seems like we have known you a long time. I guess part of this is due to the fact that we have known you for a long time - you have been around 10 months and we knew about you for most of that time... but you have your own little place in our hearts, and it keeps growing. A soft, sweet little place that is almost always happy, except when your tummy is hungry or doing funny things. We are so glad you are here.

Sonia has little baby acne right now. Actually, they were at their worst yesterday, on her 1-month day. They are slightly better today. Maybe they will get bad again, or maybe not. 

Not knowing a ton about babies' cognitive development, I can only say with certainty that Sonia is doing a lot of work in that area. Like I said on Tuesday, I think she is already making some sense of what she sees. I also think she is starting to recognize our voices, just a little bit. It made me laugh yesterday - I was wearing a black and white striped long sleeved sweater. The stripes were pretty broad and they went all the way down my arm. So when Sonia woke up to nurse, her head was always right there, by my arm. She noticed the stripes several times throughout the day while nursing. Noticed isn't really the right word though. She was fascinated by the stripes. She stared at them, studied them with her eyes open wide, but of course her little tummy was hungry, so she also wanted to nurse. But she couldn't focus on nursing and look at those stripes at the same time, and it was mildly frustrating for her. I say only mildly because she would start drinking, then get completely distracted by the stripes and stop (losing the latch-on). After several seconds, she would fuss a little and I would help her keep nursing. The cycle kept repeating itself and I laughed to myself a little and said, "Sonia, it looks like you can't look and think and eat at the same time yet..." Eventually she would close her eyes and focus on drinking. 

She has her favorite little activities too. She likes to have us jump her, and she will push with her legs to request another turn. I think I already mentioned this. It is quite the workout. We also recently discovered that she likes to take rides in this little box that a co-worker brought dinner in. We pad it with blankets and other soft things, and prop her up in a sitting position. Isaac calls it her car. Although Papa and I enjoy sliding her around in it, it is pretty low to the ground and our backs and/or legs get tired after awhile. Then we discovered another advantage of having multiple children. They are already lower to the ground, and if old enough, can be used to pull the smaller ones around. Excellent. Now we can just sit back and eat fudge and drink wine. I will eat the fudge. No, really though, it was a great thing, because Isaac got to essentially use Sonia as his living prop in his imaginary play. She was "driving her car" to different places. For Sonia, the motion was fun and pretty constant, since she had an energetic, yet careful, 3 1/2 year old pulling her around. Win-win situation. 

We aren't really sure who she looks like yet. I think she must look more like Papa because I don't see any features that look like me. Except of course, her skin color and the fact that her hair is straight/wavy. According to Nana, her disposition is like mine was as a baby, very calm and easy-going. Papa thinks she looks like Grandma (Joanne). I can see some of that. Papa's friend Adama didn't see either of us in her and said she just looks like Isaac. That is confusing though, because most people would say that Isaac looks like me, and Sonia does not, at least not yet. But I agree, they do look like each other. I think she has Papa's eyebrows more than Isaac does. 

One thing I have realized with having our second baby is that it is okay to have different reactions to each child. They are their own person. Of course, I love both of my babies (Isaac says "I'm not a baby" - okay, children then) equally, which I didn't think was possible before Sonia was born, but is indeed possible. 

At first I was worried that I wasn't feeling the same intense feelings with Sonia as I had with Isaac. With Isaac, everything was intense. When he was waking up, he would cry - intensely. If I didn't hold him (for most of the day), he would cry. When his tummy hurt in the evening, he would cry for about three hours. We took him on long, long walks, and sometimes that helped. And sometimes it didn't. I felt really incompetent and was usually very sleep-deprived, and this apparently resulted in intense feelings on my part. Intense feelings of love, intense feelings of empathy for his poor little tummy and also intense feelings of "I am almost going to lose it because Isaac is crying so long and loudly and nothing I do seems to help."  Even the day he was born, Isaac made many more facial expressions, and opened his eyes wide several times. 

Sonia just had her little dolly face with her tiny little round mouth (it looked like it was smaller than her tiny nose!), or her crying face, with just a couple other variations. She barely peeked out of her eyes. She hardly cried at all. She did not suck on her upper lip (which, by the way, was hilarious when Isaac did it). She just seemed so content and peaceful, delicate (although apparently according to some photos was quite chubby as well). So I felt like it was wrong that I was not also having the intense feelings like I did with Isaac, like maybe somehow I was not as attached to her. But, within just a few days, I realized that it was probably because I didn't need to feel this fierce attachment to counteract the intense desire to go find someone else to take care of the screaming baby. I also don't have to go back to work until she is almost 4 months old, whereas with Isaac, he was only 1 month old when I had to take summer classes, so that seems like only a distant threat to our current state of baby bliss. She was mellow and it was okay that I had more mellow feelings. Calm, peaceful feelings of love for a sweet, precious, good girl. Her cry is a normal baby cry volume. She wakes up and is happy to just look around for a few minutes. If her tummy is full, she is contented when we jump her. Even if she is still hungry, jumping her will calm her down. If she is crying inconsolably, she is probably just tired and she will fall asleep within the next five minutes. I don't really think there have been many inconsolable moments though, unless we are driving somewhere. When she is awake, she is awake, alert, and looking around, so there is no reason to worry about her love of sleep. She is just so good, all the time, that there is really never any reason to be frustrated with her. Now that I write that, she will probably stay up all night tonight. :) I find new things to enjoy with her every day. I love you, little Sonia Annick Esperance.