One Month Old....

On May 17th, Zooey celebrated her 1 month birthday. Well, more accurately, Adam and I celebrated by commenting on how much she's grown, how cute she is, etc, etc and Zooey continued her regular routine of eating, sleeping, peeing/pooping and other general bodily functions. Note crying is not a typical bodily function for her THANK GOODNESS! She's a great baby, very content, but is still eating every 2-3 hours so we...are...tired. But this too shall pass and we want to make sure we document the heck out of these times because we surely will not remember well due to a sleep deprivation haze!

First, Zooey's size. She appears huge to us and tiny to the rest of the world. She is roughly the size of an American Girl doll. She was 4 lb 10 oz at birth and now, four weeks later, she is up to 6 lb 4 oz so growing more than the anticipated 1 oz/day in the past few weeks. We can see a significant difference. For example, her cheeks have really filled out:

One week old, after a bath

Four weeks old, after a bath

She has grown an inch! While the bison and baby aren't perfectly lined up in the below photos you can see she really has grown! She outgrew the outfit in the first photo during week two! She's a weed!

One week old with bison

Four weeks old with bison

Look at that belly! It's sticking out over her pants!

Zooey's antics are as expected. Not smiling yet and may not for a few more weeks given her prematurity. Not sleeping for more than 3 hours. (Sad face.) But she seems to recognize my voice which is fun and she is starting to make eye contact. She is generally happy unless we do something to insult her like fail to feed her fast enough, take off her clothes if she is cold, or poke and prod her by putting her into a carseat or stroller. Also, the occasional gas or challenging bowel movement gets the best of her (as it does with some adults I know, so who can judge the baby?). For example:

Waaahh! Waahh!

A couple seconds later, staring at Dad, who entertained her with a song.

A content smile a few seconds later. See, she recovers fast:)

Other antics include lots of stroller rides outside which require excellent sun protection:

Too cool for school.

She also enjoys the occasional burp in the "monkey burp pose" causing her Grandpa to quip "Maybe they can find a job for her at a Goose Island 'branch' office".

Monkey burp pose

One surprise is the amount of interesting noises she makes. For example she frequently releases these high pitched air vent noises, similar to a fumarole causing us to call her Zooeystone after the thermal features at our favorite national park. She has occasional fumaroles on top, and occasional mud pots on the bottom!

The parents are hanging in there, looking forward to the time when our little girl can sleep for more than 2-3 hours at a time. I started running again this week so that's a huge step in the right direction. More on that if I ever have another few minutes of free time!

Some more photos: