Rooney, 2 Months

This little girl got three shots last week. She and Eric cried. Call me heartless, but I didn't. I think it will be harder on me as she gets older and wonders why her parents are condoning such terrible things. It took her a good five days to bounce back to her normal routine. FIVE DAYS. That was hard on all of us.

Speaking of her routine, it's mostly baby-led, but she's fairly consistent. At about 3 weeks she was wanting some awake time, so we started a cycle of eat, play, sleep. She would do about 45 minutes of wake time then, and now she is up to an hour. She isn't usually happy to be awake for more than that. I put her in her swing to nap as soon as I notice her acting tired.

She eats on-demand almost every two hours and takes 3-5 ounces per feeding. I am trying to encourage her to eat less often but more at each feeding, but it doesn't always work. She has started to take a long (3 hours) morning nap and then has more awake time later in the afternoon and evening. Overall she is a very happy baby -- easy to soothe and easy to make smile -- which makes me feel like I'm a good mom. She's patient and forgiving with me, and that's a good thing.

She still sleeps in our room at night, in a sleeper next to my side of the bed. She does great with the pacifier but has been wanting it less and less in the past week. I suppose that is a good thing. She has slept for nine hours straight at night for a few weeks now, which is fabulous. Our bedtime routine is feeding, swaddling and putting her down awake with her sound machine between 7 and 8 p.m. Then Eric and I get a couple hours for just the two of us to catch up, watch TV or blog, and eat ice cream. She gets a bath from daddy twice a week and has started to love it, except for getting her hair and face washed.

Everything at her doctor's appointment checked out great (she weighs a whopping 12 pounds, 12 ounces!) except for her neck. She has torticollis, which means one of the muscles in her neck is tight and forces her to tilt her head to the side (see photos). I thought it was just a cute little head tilt, but I guess not. Yikes. We are going to physical therapy now and stretching her at every diaper change to get it corrected.

She is in the 99th percentile for length (24") and head; 87th for weight. She loves to coo, squeal, kick, lay in her activity gym, watch TV and wear jeggings. We don't sit her in front of the TV, but we also don't turn it off if she is in the room and she loves watching the lights. We let her do it, especially to use it as encouragement to look to the left and stretch her neck that way. I talked to her pediatrician about her interest in the TV and we are all OK with it. She's not really interested in holding onto toys quite yet. Yesterday she rolled from her stomach onto her back! I was a proud mama.

She still wears some 3-month clothing but has transitioned into 3-6 month stuff and even a few 6-month things. We can't wait to finish up our size 1 diapers this week and move on to the bigger size. I noticed in the past few days that she has a little diaper rash and it is not going away, so we need the bigger size to get some more air flow in there.

Not everything is the same each day or each week. And I go back to work next week and she starts day care, so things will change again. I will admit that I'm excited to get more routine back in my life, because I only shower every other day right now and I don't usually get lunch until The Nate Berkus Show at 2 p.m. :)

I didn't mean to write so much (I promise!) but I wanted to let you know what is going on with our little girl. I also look up baby schedules sometimes so I thought it might be helpful to share what we are doing.