She's 1 Month Old Already?

I haven't posted in a while (the last post I actually started last week, but didn't get around to finishing until today), but our baby girl is now a month old! It really is amazing how fast she has changed in four weeks.

For the past week, Chris' parents have been visiting us. They don't visit as often as we'd like, so we wanted to take them around Sacramento some (the extreme heat made this pretty difficult, but we did what we could). Chris' dad works for the railroad in Chicago, mainly as a dispatcher, and has his entire adult life, so it seemed a natural fit to take him to the California State Railroad Museum. Now Chris has lived here for nine years, and I've lived here for almost six, but neither of us had ever been. We were also a little wary of bringing a 4 week old. Well, we have learned very quickly that Charlotte is an extremely good, portable baby. Chris strapped her in the Bjorn and we walked all over the museum, went out to lunch, and Charlotte basically slept most of the time.

Oh did I also mention that last Wednesday night Charlotte slept for 8 hours straight?! We went out for dinner for our friend's birthday, got back around 9:30, got Charlotte ready for bed and fed her, and then she slept from 10:30 until 6:30. Amazing! Consequently, we too had 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep. I felt like a million bucks! I went running for the first time in 9 months, but soon learned that my sports bra does not, ahem do the job anymore (I had to promptly run out and buy a "maximum" support sports bra - me!). Charlotte hasn't repeated her 8 hour stretch since, but she still sleeps great (6 or 7 hours at a time) and I feel fine getting up once a night. I guess there are advantages to birthing what essentially is a 3 month old. :)

In addition to sleeping like a champ and being so good that we can take her just about anywhere, Charlotte has started to smile! It is, in my highly biased opinion, the cutest thing I've ever seen. It just about melts our hearts every time she does it. She has also discovered that the swing isn't so bad -- for whatever reason she is fixated on the bar of the swing and she smiles and makes noises at it. Very strange, but hey, it gives us enough time to eat dinner!

So yes, I'm gushing about my baby, but she really is such a great baby. In fact, we just got back from a very nice restaurant to celebrate my mother-in-law's birthday, and Charlotte slept most of the time -- the rest of the time, the pacifier came to the rescue. We may live to regret Charlotte's addiction to her Soothie, but for now, it's a God send.