Flock In Progress: Slackerdom

So the problem with not writing in the blog for awhile is that when you come back to post you have way more to say than you can possibly have time to write, plus none of it really fits together, so your brain can only produce a mish-mash of items, none of which are that important, but all of which seemingly need to be detailed. Let's begin at the beginning...

As though she heard me, the very morning after my last post, Kayla woke up and gave me the smile to end all smiles. Clearly she did not want to be outdone by some 5-week-old upstart and so, I got to see her beam at me with a beam that could melt the polar ice caps. I am not even kidding when I say that her smile may be my favorite thing EVER. More of a favorite than chocolate ice cream. More of a favorite than traveling the globe. More of a favorite than...dare I say it??...shopping. This smile...my god. It truly makes my insides go all gooey. I guess it is good that she is still only giving it sporadically (although far more often!) since otherwise I would just be a giggling babbling mess of a woman. For those of you who have kids, you likely remember this moment. For those of you who don't, I honestly think having your baby look up, crinkle her little eyes and then burst into a toothless grin that outshines the sun, might be a valid reason for having kids in the first place. If you are on the fence, please come witness this smile. You'll be packing away the birth control and jumping on the baby wagon in no time. Of course, Kayla has totally screwed herself now, because now every time she is awake she has a face full of mom going "Come on, pretty baby. Smile at mommy. Smile at mommy. Who has the prettiest smile around? Who? Hiiiiii, pretty baby...". Annoying much? I'm sure. But it's her own darn fault for being so irresistibly cute.

Speaking of irresistible, last night Kayla had an utterly scrumptious night. She took a bottle at 1215am and then, I kid you not, slept until 530 this morning. I couldn't believe it. I have never in my life been so happy to be woken up at 530. I honestly think I could avoid ever complaining about lack of sleep again if we could just relive last night every night for the next year. Well...maybe not a full year...after all, eventually this kid has to start sleeping for more than 5 hours at a stretch, but still...5 hours last night. Ahh, sweet relief. I had fed her around 930pm and then Chris had agreed to take her for the next feeding whilst I went off to try to grab a few hours of sleep. I couldn't believe it when he didn't come in to retrieve me until 530 this morning. The sad sad truth is that there is no way this will last. I can pretty much guarantee that while this may eventually be a regular occurrence, we ain't there yet. That said, even that one night was a pleasant surprise, especially after the previous night and day were a little rough. Poor Kayla's tummy has not improved much over the weeks and she still suffers from miserable gas attacks that will literally wake her from a sound sleep. The poor kid...can you imagine?? I'm not sure if we had been lazy in giving her Mylicon or if it was just being cooped up in the car multiple times, held constantly, and overwhelmed by people and noise all weekend, but either way, Monday night was NOT fun. Let's just say that the evening culminated in multiple people's tears, a 1.5 hour walk around the neighborhood at 10pm, and a whole lot of lost sleep. But that is all water under the bridge. Let us focus on the positive - 5 hours of sleep!! Her 1230am feeding was 3 full ounces from the bottle, so I think we're going to give that another go tonight and see if maybe letting her eat a little more pre-bed isn't the magic recipe for sleep. It's so hard (okay, impossible) to know how much she gets while breastfeeding, but this was the first time that she took 3oz of breastmilk from the bottle without spitting up, so we're going to start letting her increase from the 2.5 we were allowing her based on previous spit-up episodes. Honestly, you just have no idea before you have kids how much one can care about pooh, pee, and drink amounts. Well, you learn the "drink amounts" rule in college, but that's a whole different kind of caring.

In other news, Kayla had a super busy weekend. Last Friday, we drove out to Lancaster, PA to go to my cousin Jen's wedding. This was Kayla's first opportunity to meet the Spatz side of the family and so she got all dolled up in a lime green dress to show off for Shannon, Jen, John, Uncle Jeff, Aunt Paige, Rachel, Megan, Emma, Great Great Aunt Pat, Great Great Uncle Frank, and the rest of the Spatz clan.

On Saturday, after the wedding, we all drove up to Mountain Top, PA to spend the weekend at Aunt Sue's house. Aunt Paige, Uncle Jeff and the girls joined, so it was a big weekend of Spatzes and Svobodas, 18+ people, all under one roof. This was Kayla's second time meeting Aunt Sue, Uncle Steve, Lisa and Jay, but her first time meeting Mike, Meghann, Zoe, Julie, Aunt Barb, Uncle Tom, Nick and Beth. It was a crazy weekend and I'm pretty sure it took Kayla until today to recover from the constant noise and chaos, but it was also an absolute blast. The weather was perfect, so there was lots of quality time spent by the pool and even though Kayla couldn't join in the bonfire on Sunday night (flying mosquitoes...flying Airsoft bullets...), she got more attention and love in those two days than a lot of kids probably get in an entire lifetime. This kid has no idea how lucky she is...She has more people ready and waiting to love her...It makes her mommy and daddy so proud.

Ready For The Pool