We be Parents

Yesterday Hazel turned 8 weeks old – it’s amazing how fast the last (almost) 2 months have gone and how much she’s changed in this time.  The last week has particularly seen a number of changes.  The most exciting one is that Hazel has started to smile a lot more…and these smiles don’t seem accidental like some of the previous ones, she smiles when she seems genuinely amused.

Here’s a photo of Hazel from this past Saturday night, taken when Yenari and I were singing and dancing for her to some Disney music:

While her smiles are more common now, they certainly still get us just as excited as the first ones she graced us with a while back.

The other main change over the last few days is that Hazel has become a much better sleeper, though writing this will probably reverse the trend!  We’ve had less trouble getting her to sleep and then once she does get to sleep she’s been sleeping for a lot longer.  On Sunday she let us sleep until around 11 in the morning – what a luxury! Now, that sleep involved waking up to feed/burp/change her at 1am, 3am, 6am, and 9am….but…it still was a lot of sleep!  The only problem with her sleep now is that she really sleeps a lot better when she’s in bed with us, sleeping right between us.  Some would probably yell at us saying that it isn’t safe, but we’ve been careful and we’re sticking with what works for now…though we’ve been trying to encourage her to sleep in her bassinet as much as possible.

We’ve also started in on another controversial topic – the pacifier.  Sometimes she gets very fussy at night and just wants to eat eat eat…except she eats so much that she ends up spitting up all of Yenari’s precious milk!  The was that she wasn’t really hungry, she just needed something to soothe her, and all of the swaddling, singing, bouncing, and rocking techniques didn’t do it.  Since her breastfeeding was already well established and she’d even gotten relatively good at taking a bottle (of pumped milk) we thought that the pacifier would be worth trying…and thus far it’s been very helpful, though we’re trying not to use it too often.

Hazel also attended the biggest event of her life – my company‘s summer picnic with 200+ attendees.  We were definitely worried about how she would handle all the people, noise, and the warm weather.  Her diaper bag was just about bursting with any and every supply we could think of – we were prepared for a hurricane!  And how did she actually respond to the picnic?  She slept straight through the 2 hours we were there, even with all my coworkers peeking in to see her.  The other exciting thing about the picnic was that there was a raffle for some prizes and I won one of the bigger prizes – a 12.1 inch digital photo frame that is now sitting at my desk at work cycling through tons of photos of Hazel and photos of Yenari and my wedding and honeymoon.  It was excellent timing to get a present like this as I wanted to have a photo of her at work but she’s growing so much I didn’t want it to get out of date.

The night before we had another visit from Sarah Lee and Hazel was able to catch her first glimpse of Guitar Hero as I brushed of the plastic guitar that has gathered dust for the last 9 months or so and rocked out to the tunes.  I think she was already sleeping when Yenari stepped back into the ring to show that she hasn’t lost her skills as a Wii boxing virtuoso (idiot savant?).  Hazel did wake up just long enough for me to play a game of Wii Sports tennis while cradling her in my left arm…I blame her for my loss since she made it a bit hard for me to get the backhand shots against the top rated computer player in the game.

The last outing of the weekend was to visit Yenari’s cousin in order to meet their new arrival, who was just 3 and a half days old on Sunday afternoon.  He slept through our visit, but it was amazing to see how little he looked even compared to Hazel and even though he was born at a healthy 8 pounds and 1 ounce.  We’re really happy that Hazel will have a second cousin who is the same age and who lives only 20 minutes away.

Here’s to an exciting 9th week!

I haven’t found the time to write recently – once Hazel falls asleep the urge to write doesn’t quite seem to popup, but I wanted to share a couple of recent photos from this past Sunday when my good friend Sarah Lee came by to meet Hazel for the first time:

Hazel is doing well…she’s finally graduated from wearing her little “don’t scratch your face” mittens and has her little fingers out in the wild.  She’s definitely a lot more responsive now, staring deaply in our eyes, frowning when she’s getting ready to cry, and getting pissed when we aren’t paying enough attention to her (e.g. when writing on this blog).

Her sleeping has been good, bad, and a mix of the two.  Two nights ago she slept for 5 straight hours – from 1am to 6am – her longest night-time stretch yet.  I felt – dare I say – rested when I got up for work that morning.  Other nights she’s been a lot fussier, wanting to eat all night, spitting up after eating too much, and not wanting to be swaddled (without which she won’t sleep for more than a few minutes). We’ve done some practice feeding her with a bottle to make sure she knows how to do it in a month and a half when Yenari goes to work.

And now to the congratulations – first to my college friend Rebecca and her husband Troy.  This past Saturday they welcomed their beautiful baby boy Ewan Duke Turvy into the world.  He weighed in at a big 9 pounds six ounces – probably close to Hazel’s weight at six weeks or so!  The next congratulations goes out to Yenari’s cousin Kisook and her husband Yong, who welcomed their (second) baby boy into the world:  Jason 건우 Kim.  We can’t wait to meet both of these little dudes!

Hazel turned six weeks old this past Sunday, so now she’s a good way through her seventh week, but these days we’re running late on just about everything, so why not this update!

This past weekend we had a couple visitors which was very nice.  On Saturday, Petyon and Kathleen came to visit – Kathleen is Hazel’s 11 year old aunt!  It was great to see them and I think they both really enjoyed seeing Hazel.  It was particularly sweet seeing Kathleen with Hazel – she seemed so thrilled to be meeting her little niece!  We had a really nice Chinese takeout dinner with them before they headed to San Diego to continue their vacation. Here are a couple shots I took while they were here:

On Sunday – the official six week milestone – Jeff and Sarah came out to visit for the afternoon. They had visited us in the Hospital on Hazel’s first day, so it was nice to see them again when things were a little less hectic. Here they are:

Hazel’s biggest new trick is that occasionally she smiles at us – she was already smiling in her sleep, but now she’s started doing it while awake…not to often, but she’s started nonetheless…and of course we totally melt when she does it!  It even makes us forgive some of the trouble she gives us – the dirty diapers, the crying, and the sleepless nights.

Sleep wise, she’s generally been pretty good, waking up 2-3 times a night.  A couple times she’s been a little less cooperative, keeping us up until 3 or 4 in the morning, walking her around the house, trying to get her sleepy, trying to make her fall back into the regular routine.  Last week I was holding/rocking her, walking around our house in the dark at 3am, and I managed to stub my toe so hard I thought I broke it – it’s still black and blue a week later!

When she does sleep, she really does sleep though:

Yenari’s doing well too – just yesterday she went for her 6 week post delivery checkup and passed with flying colors.  Overall we’ve have nothing to complain about – Yenari’s healthy and Hazel is a healthy baby who’s quiet most of the time, sleeps well most of the time, and makes us happy just about all of the time!

Today Hazel is five weeks old.  Time is both flying by and moving slowwwwwly.  She’s getting bigger, she’s much more alert, holding her head higher, and stronger.  On Monday we took her in for her one month checkup.  The doctor said that everything looked good, she weighed in at 9 pounds 8 ounces, and looked good on the height, weight, and head circumference curves.

We survived our first week without extra assistance – Yenari took the brunt of that pain, taking care of Hazel while I was at work.  The big challenge this week was a cold that traveled from me to Yenari to Hazel.  I got sick first with a cough, then a stuffed nose, then a fever.  Yenari caught on next with most of the same symptoms, and Hazel finally joined the fun with a stuffed nose.  The stuffed nose is tough because newborns breathe almost exclusively through their noses and a stuffed nose makes that a lot more difficult to do.  Luckily it wasn’t too bad and it seems that she’s on the road to recovery.

Here she is passed on our comforter:

We had a relaxing 4th of July weekend – taking three days to do just about nothing…and nothing has never been so hectic and busy!  My only real venture out of the house was to run to Ikea to pickup a crib that Yenari and I had checked out earlier…that crib – which incidentally was one of the nastiest to put together Ikea pieces I’ve bought – is now the starting piece to Hazel’s room.  Over the next week or so it should finish the transition from grandmother and great aunt bording room to baby Hazel room.

Here’s to an exciting 6th week!