Zoë- 1 Month

So Zoë was one month old yesterday!  I can't believe how time flies!!  At the ripe old age of 1 month, the things that charaterize her experience (and ours) are eating, sleeping, crying and pooping.  So here is the long and short of how that is going so far:

At 10.2 lbs, she is growing like crazy!!  Having no other baby experience, I can't help but characterize her by comparing her to big brother.  In my opinion, there is quite a family resemblance.

Newborn Jonathan

Newborn Zoë 

But despite their looks, they have completely different philosophies about eating.  If left to his own choices, Jonathan might starve to death because he is just to distracted to stop and eat.  It took him a week after birth to learn how to nurse and he never had the patience to do so for more than 5 minutes.  Zoë loves eating.  Within 10 minutes of birth she had figured out how to nurse like a pro and did so for half an hour.  She over-eats every time and then spits all the excess back up in sneaky gushes as soon as she sees the burp-cloth has slipped.  We have started calling her Miss Vesuvius.

While she is by no stretch of the imagination sleeping through the night, she seems to have her days and nights sorted out and a natural bedtime of 8pm.  Whether this is because by 8 Jonathan is asleep and the chaos around here subsides is hard to say, but it is fantastic for us.  After her 8ish nursing, she usually is pretty easy to rock to sleep and will stay asleep once we lay her down in her bed (Fisher Price is genius.  If only we'd had this for big brother).  And from then until around 6am Zoë sleeps, waking up to nurse, but then going right back to sleep.  Amazing.

Daytime sleep is something else, though.  She fights naps a like a champ and, unlike her big brother, isn't lulled to sleep by nursing.  So she is awake happily for about an hour after she eats, but then is overtired but can't put herself to sleep yet.  So we end up rocking, bouncing, singing, walking, patting, shh-shhing, and watching her eyes blink slower and slower until they finally flutter shut.  For about 5 minutes.  Then they POP open and we are back to square one.  And heaven forbid you set her down after she has fallen asleep.