Fiona's "un-birthday"

Today is Fiona's "un-birthday".... AKA my original due date :)  I'm celebrating by eating copious amounts of Easter cut out cookies and chocolate, naturally.  ;)  I can't believe she's already been here for almost 7 weeks!!  I'm so glad we got to spend all this extra time with her!!

Life at home has been great! Dave and I took two weeks off together to just bond and spend with Fiona when she came home from the hospital.  We didn't take any visitors and we just spent some real quality time together as a family.  It was truly amazing and I feel blessed to have had the ability to do so. 

I have been really impressed by Dave! He never had much exposure to babies, or any real interest in holding anyone else's baby, so he was a little apprehensive about Fiona but I have to say that he really is a natural.  Fatherhood looks very good on him, and I feel lucky that our little girl will have such a great male presence in her life.  He changes a diaper like a champ, and he survived his first time being a victim of a projectile spit-up quite well :)  I love seeing them snuggle together and how she recognizes the sound of his voice as well.  It has made me appreciate Dave on an even deeper level and I'm so looking forward to raising her together!!

Today is my first day back to my full time job, and I'm working from home.  I can't even begin to express how grateful I am that I was afforded that option.  Every time I thought about taking her to daycare somewhere I was literally sick over it. I'm not knocking daycare, trust me.  I was a nanny for a few VERY young infants myself, and I know that you have to do what you have to do to pay the bills.   I have just always had a very strong desire to be at home with my children, at least until they were school age, and this is a nice compromise.  Thank you, Universe!! Much gratitude!!

So, what's a day like in the Reszkowski household?? Let me fill you in.  Fiona is still feeding every 2.5-3 hours day and night.  She usually stays awake after one of her feedings for sure, sometimes after two of them, but which feeding that might be is always a surprise to us.  When it's after the 2AM feeding like last night, it's not always a pleasant surprise ;)  Our poor little one has been really struggling with her digestion.  They say it's normal, and that her digestive system just isn't fully matured yet, but we feel so bad for her sometimes.  To begin with, our little girl is not very ladylike :)  She farts more than any human I've ever met, and you wouldn't believe that sound came out of such a teeny little peanut.  SERIOUSLY.  There's been times when I would have SWORN it was Dave, just blaming it on Fiona, but, nope, that's our girl!!  Anywhooo, I digress...  Sometimes when she's trying to sleep after a feeding she just struggles.... squirming all around and pulling her knees up, grunting like crazy, etc. etc.  She's pretty miserable and sometimes inconsolable so we're hoping that clears up sometime soon, being that she was supposed to be born today.  Other than that, she's aces!!  We have a person from the Alliance for infants and toddlers come to the house monthly to track her development, since she's a preemie, and at her first visit Fiona did very well and even exceeded some expectations.  She's a rockstar, so we weren't suprised ;) ;)  She can focus very well on objects and our faces, and she's even tracking them back and forth.  Her muscle tone looks good and we're doing some stretches with her legs and feet to help them straighten out a bit from being so squished up in utero.  We spend at least 15 minutes a day when she's quiet and alert doing "tummy time" so that she can work on lifting her head.  She's getting pretty good and turning it back and forth, and she actually seems to enjoy being on her tummy.  She is very alert when she's awake and you can see her just taking everything in.  She always looks like she's just about to say something profound.  :)  I think she's going to be a chatterbox (I know I was)!! 

We have been taking some video of her with our flip video and sometimes posting them to Facebook and YouTube. The link to my YouTube channel is: http://www.youtube.com/user/MsScarlettBegonia?feature=mhum if you'd like to follow those. 

We had her photos taken and they turned out really wonderfully. Some of the pictures are on Facebook.  We were just thrilled with how well they turned out!!  She's just so darn cute that we can't believe we made her!!! 

All in all, we are crazy in love with her and just taking everything day by day, trying to stay fully present and savor each moment we have as a family.  Thanks for following!! 

xoxo