Introducing Gemma Graciela Roman (Feb. 9, 2012)

I apologize for the long hiatus from blogging. I've been meaning to post about our baby girl for over a month now. She turned one month last Friday. To say that the last month flew by is an understatement. I don't know where it went and I was trying really, really hard to remember each and every moment. Now that I have her newborn photos in, I have no reason not to at least introduce her and provide a few pictures!

Gemma is doing great. She was born weighing 5 pounds and 14 ounces on February 9, 2012 at 3:18 a.m. She has been an angel ever since. She is a great eater, which you may guess we really appreciate. She not only gained back her birth weight in two weeks, which is the goal, but exceeded it by a good amount. She is currently about 8.5 pounds. I won't say we have a chunky monkey on our hands, but we are super excited by her tiny fat rolls.

Gemma definitely has her own personality already. In addition to being a good eater, she loves to be held and to cuddle and she isn't bashful about vocalizing this desire. For the first week or two, she was particularly vocal about this need at night. This was a far cry from our little champion sleeper, Cole Reynolds. Now we've settled in (knock on wood) to a fairly good pattern of eating a couple of times at night followed by nice restful sleep. She typically gives us one 4 to 5 hour period of sleep between 9:00 and 1:00 to 2:00, which means Joel and I get up to 3.5 to 4.5 hours of sleep depending on how fast we can get in bed and get asleep after she goes down. After that, we are on the 2.5 to 3 hour cycle.

During the day, Gemma is pretty chill. She likes to be held most of the time. She is awake more during the morning hours than the afternoon and evening hours (with the exception noted below). We started tummy time today, and she did pretty well. She didn't love it but she didn't hate it.

The Witching Hour - Gemma has not evaded the normal infant witching hour phenomenon. From the period of 6 or so until 8:30 or so, she is quite fussy. She must be held and even then, she'd prefer to be bounced as you walk. this makes dinner and Cole's bedtime a little tricky since at least one of us is dedicated to her. The books say this will last till around 8 weeks. Only about 3 weeks to go. ;-)

Cole Reynolds loves his little sister. This is not to say that he pays an awful lot of attention to her, but when asked, he responds that he loves her. That is not, however, the true litmus test of how much he likes/loves her. The fact that he SHARES his toys with her, often without being asked to do so, is. Cole is going through the typical phase where taking turns and sharing is not his forte. However, with his baby sister, he gladly forks over his toys. It is pretty sweet. He likes to hold her from time to time as well. He will wrap the nursing pillow around his waste and "hold" her on the couch. Yesterday, he tried to share a paci that he'd found in a drawer. We tried to explain that Gemma wasn't really interested in the paci but that she was very thankful that he'd thought to give it to her.

Joel and I are doing pretty well. I don't know if I speak for Joel or not, but I think the second kiddo is much easier. Maybe it's that you aren't afraid of everything or that you know that most things are just phases that will be over soon, but I'm really enjoying every moment this time and am far less stressed out. I also have the luxury of having a lot of help with Cole--this definitely allows me to say that it is easier to have a second child when somebody is helping you out with the first one!

Hopefully there will be many more posts about the kiddos in the coming weeks and months, but despite things seeming easier, one thing is the same--it seems there is never enough time. In the meantime, below are some of Gemma's newborn pictures.