one month

 My sweet Ellie is a month old already.

This first month has gone too fast.  I think it was all the craziness with the move,

but I just didn't get all the newborn snuggling adoring time that I wanted.

Another reason I'm glad to be in Utah now--more time to just be at home and enjoy my baby.

And she is a joy.

I feel so blessed to have such a sweet, easy baby.  She has a predictable routine of eating and napping, she's usually content to just lay and watch us, and she is a champion sleeper.

She doesn't like her carseat, and fusses the whole time we drive,

but as long as we aren't in the car, she's pretty much happy all the time.

She is starting to smile more too, and she gives us a grin a couple times a day now.  I get giddy every time.
And when she isn't smiling, she is really intent on our faces, always staring at us, watching us--she has been that way since she was born.

She is deliciously plump. It seems like every morning we wake up and she's bigger than she was yesterday!  I love love love those thighs.

She nurses every 2 1/2 hours during the day, 

but she takes a bottle perfectly if I need her to.

She kind of reminds me of a little piggy when she is hungry-

she starts to snort and grunt and wiggle when she wants to eat,

and then as she's eating she gulps and squeaks. 

She loves to grasp something as she eats,

and her fist is usually wrapped around the edge of my shirt or my finger.

Her favorite place is on my chest, with her head right up next to my neck.  She falls asleep almost instantly if I swaddle her and put her up against me.

And I admit, I love it.

She loves her pacifier, and Nicholas is always telling me,

"him dropped him pinky!" when it falls out of her mouth.

She sleeps.  Oh how beautifully she sleeps!  

She doesn't nap well; she's a light sleeper,

but what she lacks in day sleeping she more than makes up for at night.

If she wakes up, it's only once, usually around 3 or 4.  

We put her down at 11, she wakes at 4, and then not again until 7 or 7:30 when Nicholas gets up.  

And the past couple of days, even though she caught a cold from her brother,  she's been sleeping straight from 10 until 5.  

It's glorious.  I feel about a billion times better than I did when Nicholas was this age and he was waking up 4 or 5 times a night.

 Nicholas still loves his little sister; he snuck into this picture all on his own so he could tell her how cute she is.  

I'm often finding things in her blankets that Nicholas gave her--

toy cars, extra pacifiers, formula packets, pretty much anything he thinks she needs. 
He's really quite helpful, wiping her spit up, throwing away her diapers, and always trying to give her the binky.

And he gives me a constant narrative of what she's doing.

"Him have hiccups again, Mom!"  

"She sneezed like this-choo!" (he's slowly learning to call Ellie a "her" instead of a "him")

and my favorite "Baby crying Mom!  Baby crying!!"  as if I couldn't figure that out on my own.

We don't get much time to just sit and adore our little girl, 

but my favorite time is at night, 

when it's quiet and we're in our pajamas, cuddling on the couch, just holding our Ellie and watching her smile in her sleep.

This is the life.