Ava Lauren - 1 Month

Been a busy last few weeks. You may not know this but raisin' these kids takes a fair amount of your time.

My little princess is one month old. Her lifestyle (sleep 15 hours/day, eat 7 times/day, etc.) has not changed too much since she was born, but she is more regular with her schedule and I think we have helped that process by staying regimented. Our plan has been to feed her every 3 hours during the day, even if she is not showing signs of hunger. This keep her feed so she needs less at night and thus encourages her to sleep through the night as long as possible. One tool that has helped us in this is charting her behavior so we don't fall behind in the feeding or failing to recognize she may be a little low on sleep. We have a Word document that we printout for recording her times for sleep, eating and diaper change. I even put the values for this last week into a spreadsheet to look at her patterns. If you know me, this regiment makes sense, and you may think it is just for overly analytical people like myself, but Shannon, who is of a different mental bent than I, really likes it as well. When wondering when she last fed or slept, we go to the schedule chart. You can see the template we use here along with my little pattern analysis.

Ava is physically doing well and seems quite content for a new born. She is 50% percentile in all categories. She is definitely calmer than Jacob was, but Jacob's motor has always run high. Now, she typically sleeps 4+ hours at night, usually from 11:00ish to 3:00ish and even then will go back to sleep quickly after being fed.

Shannon is tired of course, but she is doing great. I am so proud of her. Jacob loves Ava Lauren, but he has been noticeably jealous of the time we no longer can give to him because of Ava's demands or the fact we are just tired. So he acts out more to get negative attention which to him is better than no attention. However on the plus size, he has become much better at playing by himself. He is very cute when gets his big imagination going.

Lots of questions from people on her name. What are we going to call her? The poll favors "Ava" so we know what our friends and family think. I lean toward Ava but often say Ava Lauren as I think is it fitting of a princess, my term of endearment for my little girl. Shannon is still undecided for a long term name but generally calls her Ava. We are so funny. We don't worry about it. We love our little girl, will provide for her needs and will teach her the truth of God's wonderful Gospel. She will be fine. No one winds up in therapy because their parents struggled with calling her by her first name or middle name.

Below are some pictures from the first month. I love my little princess with all my heart. She is so, so precious.

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