Sara Kate's newborn pictures

We had Sara Kate's newborn photographs taken when she was about 2.5 weeks, and I recently realized I haven't shared any on my blog. I had an awesome photographer and friend, Beth Hall, take her pictures and they turned out great (you can visit Beth's website here)! I thought I'd post a few of my favorites (it's so hard to choose!).

7 Weeks Old

Sara Kate is 7 weeks old! Not too much to report from my last post. She has started taking a morning nap, well at least the last couple days. And right now she's taking her morning nap on her grandma Greer. She has even taken a couple of good afternoon naps...that never happens! Maybe we're working into more of a schedule. And hopefully I haven't just jinxed myself. Ha! She's doing well at night, still sleeping 5-6 hour stretches and then another couple after her night feeding. She's been such a happy baby lately, and I am soooo going to miss that when I have to go back to work Thursday. Yep, I'm just plain dreading that day. I just wanted to snuggle with her the other morning because the mornings is what I'm going to miss the most. At least I'm starting back on the end of a short week before having to make a full week. I think today we're going to try to go the outdoor mall today so that will be something new for Sara Kate. I'll have to dress her in a cute outfit!! :-) Like I said, I really didn't have much to report this week so I guess it's picture time!

Smiley Sara Kate! (in all these pictures, she's looking at her friend, the ceiling fan!)

Beautiful baby blues!!

Sleeping baby!

6 Weeks...a few days late

Sara Kate is 6 weeks old! Actually, now she's 6 and 1/2 weeks old, but who's counting?? :-) It seems I haven't updated lately on what she's been up to so I'll try to do that now. She has changed so much lately. She's still in newborn clothes, although I keep trying 0-3 month clothes but they're still too big. She's still wearing newborn diapers, too, but we're on the last few of those and we have 1's out ready to go! In the last week she has really discovered her hands, and she's smiling so much more...I love that!! She smiles and Chris and I, and she also smiles alot at her best friend, the ceiling fan. That's right, she LOVES the ceiling fan!! She'll just look at it, and make faces and smile at it. It's actually pretty cute. She's gotten better at self-soothing, too. We can use the pacifier more now to help her stay content longer, which is nice. We're doing play time on her play mat every day, which she likes most of the time...she really likes to look at herself at the mirror on the play mat! Nights are getting a little better. Within the last week, she's moved from getting up two times a night to getting up once, between 2:30 and 3:30. After that, she'll stay down for a bit but then wants to be held and will sleep for a couple more hours on my chest. Speaking of night time, Friday night I moved her from our room to her crib! She is sleeping in her crib from the time I put her down until she wakes up to eat in the middle of the night. Then I'll put her back in our room for the remainder of the night since she doesn't stay down long. That was a big step! I wasn't too worried about it...my worry is the stupid cat jumping in the crib and smothering her. Anyone want a cute little white cat?? :-) What else...she doesn't nap very well during the day; she just kind of cat naps, which is sometimes annoying! She and I have started making little afternoon trips...we've been to the post office, FedEx, Target, the park, lunch with a friend, up to the university to visit my grad professor and the office ladies, and I am going to try to take her up to Bentonville this week to the office so they can meet her and hopefully to see her great-grandparents. Now that she's taking a bottle, as long as I have milk it's definitely easier to make these little trips! I have less than 2 weeks left of my maternity leave and that kind of makes me sad. It just hit me last Thursday, when she turned 6 weeks old. I love just looking at her and making faces at her and seeing her smile at me. She'll be in great hands with my mom, and then with Chris, but I feel like I'm going to miss so much! I'm sure all mothers feel this way and I'm glad she still has 2 months before she starts daycare. I expect lots of pictures sent to me during the day! :-) Speaking of pictures, let me post some of what we've been up to!

Sucking on our hand!

Church! Here's a shout out to Cousin Hannah! Sara Kate was wearing Hannah's 1st Easter dress in this picture. She looked super cute!

Snuggling with mommy!

Snuggling with daddy! I love this picture!! She's so cute with the little bow on her head!

Trying on her big flower headband!

And just hanging out!

Finally, here are some pictures of that beautiful smile that melts my heart!

(She was grinning and making faces at the fan in the last picture. It's blurry b/c I took it with my phone...didn't want to disturb her by grabbing the big camera. Ha!)

Multitasking - Haha!!

Drinking coffee, while feeding Sara Kate, while checking his iPhone, and his laptop in his lap. Need I say more??
I should say one more thing...doesn't he look cute with the pink boppy around him? :-)

My Busy Day!!

After some pretty heavy rain and storms rolled through over night, today turned out to be a beautiful day in Northwest Arkansas! Well, at least that's what my mommy told me. So we decided to go to the park! This is what I thought about the park when I got there.
We walked around a while and then I saw and hung out by a bench!
And then I saw a tree...very exciting!
I saw some cool play ground equipment...one day I'll be big enough to play on it!
I saw some pretty purple flowers. Hey, these would go great in my room!
I even saw a gazebo!
Probably the coolest thing I saw was a stream that was flowing with lots of rain water. There were these neat little mini-rapids! Maybe one day I'll go floating on a big river that has rapids!
I tell you what, the park is exhausting!! But I hope to go again sometime soon!
Right now I'm telling mommy that I'm hungry and I probably have a dirty diaper so I better go! Peace out!

More Firsts....

So this exciting Friday has brought not only some firsts for Miss Sara Kate, but this evening has brought some firsts for mommy! What might I be referring to?? 3 little words - beer & cookie dough. Ha!!!! Ah, how I've missed thee! :-)

(Don't worry, I pumped milk for Sara Kate before I drank the beer!!)

Now that the important stuff is out of the way (ha!), onto the other events of our day! Today I had my 6-week postpartum doctor's appointment. Chris and Sara Kate went with me, and baby girl did good! She slept most of the time, and we had a bottle to give her afterward since it was her lunch time. My appointment went well, and we learned that I'm all healed up! That's good to know! I have to say that I love my regular doctor, but the doctor that delivered Sara Kate (and I saw today) is a very close second. He was really great when I saw him during my pregnancy, at delivery, and today, and I would be happy to see him again in the future. After my appointment, we had a little family lunch at McAllister's and then we had our first family trip to Target!! We needed diapers and wipes, and while we were there we picked up a baby carrier. We ended up with the Baby Bjorn...I figured that Chris would be more likely to wear that compared to some kind of sling. Sara Kate did good at Target, too! She did get a little hungry so Chris carried her and fed her a little. I'm sure we were quite the sight! When we got home, we had to try out the carrier. This is Mr. GQ and his baby. Ha! You should have seen some of the models in the the Baby Bjorn catalog with their babies...hilarious! He totally could have made the cut!
And this is what Sara Kate thought of the Baby Bjorn.
To end our evening, Chris played some tunes for Sara Kate.
So as you can see, we've had an eventful day!! I'll end this post with some pictures of our girl, I mean that really why everyone reads this blog, right?? :-) First, it seems this week that Sara Kate has discovered her hands. Its happens when she's hungry, and in this picture it seems she found her thumb! Not sure we want that...ha!
And finally, how about a few little grins from our girl?? She was staring at the ceiling fan...obviously it was quite amusing!
Ok, and here's one more just because I think this picture is funny! If I could caption this picture it would read, "This is what I think of you and that darn camera, mom!!"