Anna's 1 month old!

Anna is now one month old. It’s been a month of adjustments. William really seems to like her, although he struggles with the amount of attention she gets. When he looks at her, he can’t help laughing and calling her ‘baby Anna’ in a high-pitched, happy voice. He gets very enthusiastic about it and frequently slaps her in his excitement. We have to keep reminding him not to touch her face and not to hit her. There are suddenly a lot more things for him not to do. I feel bad for him sometimes. He gets a lot of negative feedback. I have to try to remember to throw in the positives whenever I can or follow up the ‘no’s with a suggestion of something he can do with his sister.

One day I had Anna on the floor in William’s room and was talking to him about the things he could do that Anna couldn’t do yet. I told him that she couldn’t eat anything but milk yet and someday he would have to teach her to eat goldfish (the cracker kind) and everything. He took a goldfish from his baggie and reached toward her. “Baby, open mouth,” he said and then tried to push it in. It was really cute.

When Anna cries, William likes to alert me. “Baby cry,” he says. I ask him why she’s crying and we list some of the possible reasons. Generally, though I think it’s just because she wants to be held. Anna’s quite a snuggler. Her favorite position is upright against my shoulder, where she frequently spits up all over me. After eating, I always lift her onto my shoulder to burp her and she tends to fall asleep while there. Then, I take her to her bed and put her down. Sometimes she goes back to sleep. Sometimes she doesn’t.

Anna’s very strong already. From her first doctor’s appointment people were commenting on her ability to track things with her eyes and head. She’s very good at holding her head up when I have her on my shoulder and she’s already making attempts at rolling over. I’m guessing she won’t take as long to get mobile as William did, but it may just be survival instinct that gets her going, what with William hitting her (not in a mean way) every time he sees her lying on the sofa.