Notes of a Native HyePinay: Photos: Sylvia with Family & Friends

Sylvia is growing in leaps and bounds! At just over 1 month, she weighs 9 pounds. She is slowly starting to organize herself and beginning to acknowledge the difference between night and day. Once in a while, Kevin and I are lucky and Sylvia grants us TWO stretches of four hours of sleep in the night. We are trying to encourage this by having a little night-night routine, where we bring her into the bedroom with only a blue nightlight on, feed her, and try to sing and rock her to sleep. Since her schedule is still a bit erratic, this can take place at 9 pm or at 12 am.

Mama Anoosh is happy that Sylvia is such a big girl now that she can sometimes nap in her co-sleeping box/bed all by herself (instead of always needing her usual spot on Mama's chest), which allows Mama to do such exciting activities such as check her e-mail and take a shower. Sylvia now has two distinct morning and afternoon "big naps" at about 11 am and 4 pm.

I try to sneak in some pumping at this time, which leads me to another of Sylvia's big breakthroughs: bottle feeding! Daddy Kevin now gives her one bottle a night, usually only about 1 1/2 to 2 ounces of milk. Kevin is thrilled to expand his role from being in charge of Sylvia's less-than-favorite activities, such as diaper changes and showers, to participating in her preferred pastime, eating!

In addition, Sylvia is staying awake more often during the day to engage in important developmental activities, like staring into her parents' faces. She's also very "talkative" and keeps up a steady commentary of grunts and squeaks. We have been trying to keep her on track with "tummy time," three 5-minute sessions where she lies on her belly to develop her lungs, neck, and other muscles. She lies on a blanket on the floor and kicks her legs vigorously, turns her head from side to side, "swims" with her arms, and stares at the black-and-white drawings I made that I place in her sight range during this time to develop her vision. Sylvia makes incremental progress across the mat over the 5 minutes, sometimes propping her head up on a tripod of her chin and her two enormous cheeks!

As new parents, we have benefited enormously from visits from family and friends. As promised in the last post, here's photos of some of the important people in Sylvia's life.

Here's Grandma Fran with Sylvia, when we were still at the hospital:

And a more recent photo at home:

Here she is with Grandpa Mark at the hospital:

Grandmas Pat and Sue came to visit about a week after Sylvia was born. Here she is with Grandma Pat:

And Grandma Sue:

Kevin's moms passed the baton to my dad:

Dad is going by mezhaidig, the Armenian word for "grandfather."

We had friends visit starting the very first day of Sylvia's life. Haan-Fawn (who helped us on the day of the birth) and Steve came by with food on the first night. Unfortunately, I am in all the photos with them, and let's just say that I do not enhance the photos in any way, so we'll have to take more pictures with them.

Kevin's friends from Gainesville, Tim and Crystal, who now live in L.A., came as well:

Crystal brought food to our house that first week:

Kevin's friend Christina, who also T.A.'ed for Kevin's class this past quarter, also rescued us with food:

And we were happy to get a visit from Kevin's friend Sabrina:

My friend Denise also came to visit and put us forever in her debt because she both brought me lunch and washed all our dishes BY HAND. Unfortunately, with the sleep-deprivation and breastfeeding brain, I did not have the presence of mind to photograph her visit. (Notice how diligent Kevin his about photographing his friends; my apologies to mine!)

And because we have taken SO many photos of our darling daughter, I'm including a few of our recent favorites. By the way, have you noticed yet that nearly all the photos of Sylvia feature her sleeping?

Here she is with Mama Anoosh: