Jill doing her best Eila impression
Her little brow gets so furrowed sometimes!
I also like this photo of her feet while she's nursing—if she's not freaking out, she is so relaxed and peaceful.
My talk in Vancouver went well, and I'm happy to be heading home tomorrow! Less happy that I have to wake up at 4. But it's worth it to get home sooner.
Coolest, smartest, strongest, cutest, etc.
It's so hard to believe it's only been 12 days! She's growing so much and every day is a new adventure. Mostly an adventure in sleeping well, eating well, and pooping. Eila has still had some fussy times but thankfully has been sleeping relatively well between midnight and 6 am or so (still!). And we ordered a miracle swaddle that might help keep her hands in check. In the arms race (literally!) we're trying to come out ahead.
I'm currently on a plane to Vancouver to give a talk at the World Congress on Audiology—I hate being away and the timing is not great. I miss my ladies already!
Sarah has been visiting this weekend, which has been awesome—she's such an encouragement to us both, especially Jill, and soooooo good with Eila. Auntie of the year award!
Tonight we went over to Abram and Kristin's—Grace enjoyed holding Eila for a few minutes (some of which involved more crying than seen here), and Abram calmed a fussy Eila after our dinner from Fork 'n' Stix.
When Eila was crying in her bassinet/stroller, Grace went over and asked her: "Why are you crying???" and then informed the rest of us "She's not talking!".
(After THAT, we watched the Notre Dame game, which we really don't need to mention again...it was bad.)
We had a rough couple of nights—particularly in the evening and early nighttime, Eila is just not interested in sleeping. It seems the thing she is most interested in is crying. We give her a chance to soothe herself, which during the day works well—but at night this does not seem to work. Neither does rocking, shushing, holding, cradling, walking, swaddling, unswaddling, singing, or any number of other things mom and dad have tried. Thankfully she has been sleeping OK from 2am-6am or so (and last night, from 12am-6am, with one feeding in there). Jill has been very sweet to let me sleep more than she does (since I'm not able to nurse). Eila's less than two weeks old, so hopefully she still has time to figure this all out.
Oh, and her umbilical cord (mostly) fell off, which is great, because it was smelly and getting blood on her clothes. (File under "surprising things about having a baby".)
Today, we took Eila to Children's Hospital to participate in a research study. It's for a lab that studies pre-term infants, measuring their brain structure and function against full-term babies. Eila is a control in the study. She did an hour and a half of MRI, and ~5 minutes of optical imaging (we were there for half an hour but it was hard to get her settled with a good signal).
