8 Weeks Old

Dearest Sweet little Natalie,

You are eight weeks old. It seems like you've always been here.

I'm struggling with your name. While I okayed naming you that, I don't love the name Natalie, I struggle with saying it to you. In fact it sounds wrong to me. I've started calling you "YaYa" which is derived from the Polish pronunciation of Jadzia (yadshja?). I think your daddy suggested calling you that, but everyone else calls you Natalie. I felt this way with Gwennie. I rarely called her Gwen until she was about 9 months old.I wonder if I'll grow to love your first name, don't get me wrong, I like the name but I just don't love it. I wanted to name you Jadzia, when I thought you were indeed a girl, it was the name I called you in the womb. I love that name, pronounced both ways, like Jadzia Dax from Deep Space Nine and the traditional pronunciation. I have moments when others call you Natalie and I want to tell them that that is not your name, but I let it go. I know its just a little bit of me beng crazy. There is more to this, but honestly I didn't sleep much last night and am having a hard time making complete sentences.
Slowly you are becoming more alert during the day. There are times when you just wiggle,wiggle, wiggle. There are also times when you stare and contemplate the world with eyes that look like they just might be brown. (How cool to have 3 girls with three totally different eye colors?) Right now you are just sitting there in the boppy wiggling and grunting while you watch me intently.You are working hard to suck your thumb. Your hands are chapped from all the sucking and gnawing on them that you do. I am also pretty sure you will be a hair holder. You rub your head when you are sucking on your hands and you did that in the womb, too. While you enjoy your milk, usually we can calm you just by picking you up and letting you look over our shoulders. I struggle with nursing you sometimes because you are quite busy. But it is worth every ache and pain (for me) to nurse you. I love the bond that we have because of it, and how holding you just releases so much happy hormone for me. When I feel stressed I hold you, rock you, in the chair and soon I feel much better.Occasionally you squawk to get our attention. You'll keep doing it, not angrily or sad, just a "Hey! Look at me! The baby! Yes over here! Pick me up!" One of you favorite things to do is to lay on the floor diaperless. When we are home you do this a couple of times a day. Since we are using cloth diapers I will take off the wet/soiled one, lay you on the waterproof pad I change you on with a prefold under you (its like a burp cloth) and just let you hang out there. I don't know what we'll do when you start rolling. Rhayn says you did that a few days ago. (I'm watching you right now and you are so close to rolling over.)

Tummy time is not a favorite of yours, and you get mad easily when I put you on your tummy. I prop you up with the boppy and you like it much better. You have pretty good head control but sometimes it gets far to heavy for you to hold up.

I can not believe you are 8 weeks old (tomorrow since I am posting this on Monday evening so that it will get posted and I will add a few more pictures of you tomorrow.) And I can not wait to see how you grow and who you become.

Love,
the mama