Miss Kayla

It's amazing how much Kayla has "grown up" in just a few short weeks. Not only is she filling out (drinking 4oz in one feeding will do that!) but she's getting to be more and more wakeful and responsive every day. Last night, for instance, I think she made the connection, for the first time, that those crazy pink things that go flying past her face from time to time actually belong to her. "My God," you could almost hear her exclaim, "You are mine and I can control you," as one small hand came whizzing past her face and she suddenly focused on it, halted it in mid-air, and slowly, ever so slowly, brought it to her mouth. VICTORY!! Since then she has perfected this move so that she can now single out an individual thumb for a contented round of sucking. Pretty impressive stuff for someone who is just over three weeks old. Her parents are both proud and terrified that this means they will be forcing her to wear mittens or nasty tasting thumb goo to kindergarten.

But truly, Kayla is becoming more and more of a baby and less and less of a newborn every day.

Let's review:

Brand New Kayla



One Week Kayla



Two Week Kayla (I can focus on Mr. Panda now!)



and now Three Week Kayla who loves faces and lights and her swing and who is going to smile at mommy any day now, mommy just knows it.



In some ways parenthood still feels so new and in others, it feels like we've been doing this for years. I guess that is one of the great miracles of parenthood, that you can both feel like a natural and feel totally out of your element at the same time. When I was six months pregnant, I explained to a friend that the whole thing still felt so surreal...that even though I had now fully come to believe in the pregnancy, I still couldn't quite grasp/believe that we were going to get a BABY at the end of it. I remember her laughing and saying that even once you have the baby it is still surreal...you can never quite believe that they are there and they are yours and that you MADE them. Wow, was she ever right.