Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! The three of us celebrated a 'quiet' turkey day at home. We took a break from watching football and decided to get out of the house for our daily walk around the block. It was a beautiful sunny day in the upper 40's, so we bundled up.



For some reason, Reese's favorite (most calm) thing to do is to hang out on her changing table. She seems to be training her legs for biking by kicking.

Reese is really getting big. Last Thursday, she went in for an appointment and weighed 7 pounds 13 ounces. On Wednesday, she weighed in at 8 pounds 7 ounces - 10 ounces in 6 days!!! They say that they should gain an ounce a day, so she's certainly packing on the pounds quickly.
Reese sleeps great at night. She typically eats at 10-11pm and then doesn't wake again until 3am, then goes down until 7am. So, she is going about 3-4 hours per feeding at night, however, she doesn't really sleep much during the day. We're thankful that we get reasonable stretches of
uninterrupted sleep at night. Last night she slept for 5 hours straight!

What we've learned in our first 4 weeks as parents:
1) Breastfeeding is REALLY difficult - the cover of this breastfeeding book shows a lady in bed on her side, smiling, and baby is feeding on its own. We've come to realize that the cover of this book is completely made up and that the 'baby' must be a doll and the mom is obviously a model who has never breastfed before (otherwise she wouldn't be smiling).

2) The authors of the parenting books that say babies sleep 16-20 hours per day, obviously have never had children. I think that this is a typo and should read, "16-20 minutes per day".

3) "Sleep when the baby sleeps". Great advice, but when does this 'sleep' actually happen?

4) Congestion - Babies sound like Darth Vader, and apparently this is completely normal.

5) Back Pain- Nobody told us that we should have done back exercises prior to having a child.