10 Days Old!

Scarlett Grace is already 10 days old!

(forgot to push "publish" yesterday)

The past week and a half went by so quickly... probably because of family visiting for the first week. I had told both grandmothers that if they came right away, they needed to stay in a hotel, but then went back on my word and my mom stayed with us the whole first week. Oh well... at least Riley had a great time and was definitely not feeling any lack of attention! My brother and sister-in-law also visited for a couple of days, so Scarlett went on her first Philly sightseeing trip at five days old. Now we have short visits from friends and no houseguests for a while, which is great. My mother-in-law comes in a couple of weeks and stays with us for a whole week, so I'm happy to have some downtime before having to host again!

Things are going great so far as a family of four! Riley seems to be adjusting very well still... there has been one crying episode where she said she didn't want to be a big sister, but I think it had more to do with me telling her she wasn't a baby and needed to act like a big sister when she was being grumpy, and didn't really have anything to do with Scarlett. It was only a matter of time before she was asking to hold the baby and giving her kisses! Overall she is actually not acting much different then normal, except being much more social and talkative around other people, which is great! We've both had some alone time with her so far, with Mr. Beaver taking her to swim class and I took her to a farm's harvest festival. I don't know if she even thought anything about it, but I felt good about each making sure to spend some one-on-one time with her.



Scarlett is not doing much yet besides nursing, pooping, and sleeping a bunch. She is staying awake for longer periods of time, sometimes even a couple of hours, and is pretty alert when she is awake. She looks around a lot, and seems to really focus on our faces and the mirror reflection on her playmat. She is already holding her head up for several seconds at a time, and she flops her head and body around so we have to be careful holding her! We introduced the bottle and pacifier early this time, and she takes both pretty well and is still nursing like a champ -- in fact, she's gaining weight just as quickly as Riley did!  She was 6 # 5 oz at birth, 6 # 4.5 at four days, 6 # 7 at five days, and 7 # 1 oz today, at ten days old. I never bothered to wake her to eat, so we had a few pretty good nights of sleep where she slept from midnight until after 5, and then back to sleep until after 8! Last night was more of a feeding marathon with alert time early this morning, but I'm hoping she keeps her days and nights straight and we continue to be somewhat rested.

Scarlett is just about as cuddly as Riley was, and already seems to be smiling both in her sleep and when awake! I know it's not intentional, but she is pretty convincing :) 
She is great in the moby wrap, which makes walks and errands relatively easy with both girls (though I haven't been out alone yet!). Both girls were brave at the doctor's getting shots this past week, Riley watched hers and didn't even make a face!! The nurse seemed very surprised, but I have known for a while that she has my pain tolerance! Scarlett didn't react too much, just let out a little cry for a second before we gave her a pacifier.


Overall, things seem to be going pretty well! Mr. Beaver will go back to work full-time on Monday, but with him working from home I hope it won't be too hard to handle both girls on my own. Riley and I are both excited for Halloween and the many different events going on for it, and we're having fun taking advantage of no work- in addition to the harvest festival we're planning to do the pumpkin patch/farm, our children's museum, and the zoo. This weekend is a halloween festival with lots of events on Main street in our neighborhood, and then we have a halloween parade on Tuesday and my work's family halloween party on Wednesday, plus trick-or-treating! So it should be a very fun, even filled week!