My Sterling Girl is 1 month old

Yes, our sweet girl is already 1 month old and already changing!  While still little, she no longer looks like an itty bitty newborn.  She is beginning to fill out, starting with her chin!  At her two week appointment the doctor said that Sterling looked great and she weighed in at 8 pounds even.  That is up from 7.8 at birth and 7 pounds leaving the hospital. Here is what Sterling has been up to her very first month of life :)

*At two weeks Sterling was on a pretty good schedule of eating every 2 1/2-3 hours throughout the day and night
*Now at 1 month she is on a very predictable schedule of 2 1/2 hours during the day and 3-5 hour stretches at night.  Right now she is consistently eating 8 times a day.
*We are also already on a pretty good wake/eat/play schedule already, I guess it is just easier the second time around!  Sterling gets held a lot less than Brayden did at this age because we now know about how long she can go being awake before she needs to get put down for a nap.  She is usually only awake for an hour to an hour and a half stretch before she is ready for another snooze.  Sometimes when we put her down she doesn't cry at all and goes right to sleep.  Most times though, we put her in her crib awake and she will cry for 5-10 minutes before she falls asleep.
*Speaking of crying, when this girl cries you could probably hear it for miles!  Baby girl has some lungs on her and when she is hungry boy she will let you know!!!
*Sterling is still in the pack-n-play at our bedside and has been there from the first night home from the  hospital.  This arrangement is working well for us now with the exception of how loud this little girls grunts and noises are!  It has taken me this whole month but I am starting to get used to all of her noise and am not waking up at every little sound!  My dear husband luckily has no idea what is going on because he is sleeping soundly next to me with the help of his earplugs!!!
*Sterling has been a good little nurser right from the beginning and lucky for me has been pretty quick as well!  Most nursing sessions including a diaper change usually last just under thirty minutes.
*The first couple of weeks Sterling very rarely cried unless she was hungry, she also cried when getting her diaper or clothes changed and when she was given a bath.  I swore I would never use a pacifier again but just after the two week mark I gave in because the crying became a little more frequent and it felt like I was feeding her too often!  We only use it during the day though and have yet to have to give it to her at night.  She no longer cries when getting changed and we are now in a routine of a nightly bath before her last feeding of the day and she seems to actually like it.

How are we adjusting around here with a two year old and a newborn?!  I am not going to lie, the first couple of weeks were pretty hard and exhausting!  No one told me it would be quite this hard trying to juggle both of their schedules and keep everyone fed and happy!  We definitely could not have done it without the meals that our very sweet friends brought over those first couple of weeks!  It has gotten easier just within the past week or two and I am starting to feel a little more rested as well!  Hopefully it will just continue to get easier!
How has our buddy adjusted to having a baby sister around?  Well for the first couple of weeks I really do think he had a little bit of trouble... He was sucking his thumb a lot more, was very clingy, and was crying a lot and we were not able to figure out why.  However, that did not last long and Brayden is back to being his happy and silly self.  During week 1 he did throw a couple of balls at Sterling while she was in her pack-n-play.  I don't think it was done maliciously though and he has not done it since.  Most days he really does not show Sterling any interest, but some days like yesterday for example he wanted to hold her hand a lot and wanted so badly to "hold her" which we let him do with some help and lots of supervision.  I have tried to set up Sterling's schedule so that I am not nursing her all day when Brayden is awake so right now I am only nursing her 2 and sometimes 3 times while he is awake.  Usually while I am nursing Brayden will come sit with us in my chair and just bring me book after book to read to him.  I am so lucky that he loves books and this is such a sweet time that I will cherish snuggling up to both of my babies!  With all of the reading going on however, I am burnt out on our book collection and we are definitely going to the library this week to get a new stash!!!

I have already noticed that Sterling is being treated like the "second child" that she is!  For example, I swear we had at least a picture a day of Brayden for his first month!  Sterling girl, not so much but here are some pictures of her first month of life :)

Daddy hangin with all three of his babies

We have been swaddling baby girl from the first day we got home

Sterling has had many visitors this month, but she had a couple of very special ones:

Great Mamer and PaPa Barron with their first Great Grandaughter 

Great Granny Rehkopf

Girlfriend really loves spending time outside, I am not sure how much she can actually see but she lays there so content just looking around.  

My little sleeping beauty

I want to thank everyone for your kind words, phone calls, and visits this past month! Thanks so much for thinking of us :)  We have an incredibly busy month coming up so hopefully I'll be able to stay current with my posts!