Back by popular demand ...

... PHYSICAL ACTIVITY! Ah, exercise my old friend. I'm officially back in the gym and I'm not sure I have the words to express the complete joy I felt today as I set foot in and eventually back out of there. I cannot wait to go again tomorrow, and pretty much every day! I AM BACK ... well, still technically about 25 lbs. from being "back" but at least "back" in the sense that I've regained another piece of myself, ahhhhh. It's going to be a real hoot losing baby weight during the holidays, if the word "hoot" is a synonym for almost guaranteed failure. :) Wish me luck!

All we need is just a little patience

Hopefully the Guns-N-Roses fans out there appreciated the title of this post.

-

Seriously though, a little patience is just what we needed. We've hit the 6 week mark & things are going much more smoothly. Hailey is getting into a routine, sleeping a little better and is generally more enjoyable when she is awake. Maybe it's the fact that I feel so much better or that we're sleeping a little more that makes her appear that much more pleasant to us during the waking hours. Maybe it's her beautiful social smile and general progress as a person. Who knows? We're just glad things are better. I don't know how long we could have existed in that whole first month environment.

-

I am finally mailing her birth annoucements off, but for those of you that cannot wait ... more pictures for your viewing pleasure ... and our bragging pleasure.

A little scrapbook of Hailey's week

Okay, we know the reason most of you are checking the blog is for new pictures of her highness. Maybe not. Maybe you just really care a bunch about what's going on with us. But here are pictures of her anyhow since she is much more attractive and charming than we are. Plus we figure that since we like staring at her all day, there might be some other folks out there that would like to do the same. She changes so much everyday so we'll try to post pics more often. It's tough since she refuses to be set down for much longer than it takes for her mom to pee. In fact, she is physically attached to me as I type this. Thank heavens for the inventors of Hotslings and the Baby Bjorn! Once she reached 12 lbs., carrying her unassisted for hours on end was out of the question!

-

We study her closely waiting for her to resemble one of us.

-

This picture looks like she should belong to one of the Beastie Boys or something.

She almost always has this look of concern on her face. I think she figured out the bum deal she got when they were giving out parents & now she's contemplating how to deal with our complete ineptitude. Of all the qualities I desire for her, I think PATIENCE falls pretty high on the list.

-

I don't know why I'm posting such a bad picture of her except to tell you that we call this look the "Fat, angry marionette." I'm going to try sleeping like this tonight. Looks fun!

-

And now the moment we've all been waiting for (Aaron & Amy included) --

She's AWAKE and HAPPY! We just get very small glimpses of this each day but it keeps us plugging along.

So I've discovered the dirty little secret of motherhood ... something that your "good mom" girlfriends don't like to talk much about before you have your own kids. It's the fact that the first few weeks with a new baby are so tough and lonely and unrewarding ... generally miserable ... not at all the way they make things look on the Johnson & Johnson commercials!

It has been really difficult to know if I am having any "success" at all. I wake up every morning to complete chaos in the household, a baby that's covered in spit-up, pee, you name it despite the fact that I just bathed and changed her. After several days of that, you can see how I might feel a tad hopeless.

-

Anyhoo, I was feeling like a particular failure today when suddenly I realized that my only real job right now is to keep this little angel alive and thriving. If she is alive and relatively well fed at the end of the day, I have accomplished something. Looking at the picture below, I saw distinct ROLLS OF FAT on her sweet little arms as well as MULTIPLE CHINS below her tiny cherubic face. Then I made Aaron weigh her to confirm that she has indeed gained 1/2 a pound over the past couple of days. And for the first time so far, I felt like I've done by job ... at least one of them ... the important one anyway. So until there is more expected of me (like helping her get a decent score on the ACT or behave appropriately in a restaurant) I will count this as VICTORY for our little family, however small it may be.