These are the Days: How the weeks fly by....

We've been quite busy the past month, and one might say we've overdone it!! Lots of fun has been had, but I am welcoming a slower pace in the month to come. Since the last post, we celebrated Davis's 6th birthday with a Skylander birthday party, I had a sample sale/trunk show, we celebrated out 9th wedding anniversary, Barron turned 40 and we had friends and family to the lake for Labor Day weekend, and then a dinner party to celebrate with friends! It's taken me two weeks to recover:) Emmy is now 8 weeks old and she's been smiling for at least a week now. Her smiles are pure joy to me, and it's a little glimpse into what her personality might be as she grows. She's also starting to "talk" by cooing back and forth with me. She's happiest after she eats and has burped. Those are the best moments I have with her! She's doing well at night for her age. For about two weeks we've been in a routine of her nursing between 8 and 9 for her "last feeding" and then not needing to nurse again until around 2 or 3 am. She will then get up again anywhere from 6 to 8 am.... depends on when the other feeding happens. Of course, some nights have been very off from that, but that's fairly typical. Her longest stretch happened one night a week ago from about 8 pm to 4 am! Hoping to get a repeat of that again soon! I feel like all I do is feed her. Her reflux medicine seems to be helping her a lot when she's nursing. Her naps are starting to get harder where she doesn't dependably sleep each round, as she was doing. Up until now, she has napped anywhere- the bassinet, the boppy pillow, the car seat, etc. I have just started trying to have her take some naps in her crib so that we can move her out of our room at night eventually. I am convinced I sleep better with her in the room because I am able to give her the paci and rock her and get longer stretches out of her, more so than if she was in her crib and I had to physically get up to soothe her. At least she seems to know her days from nights, and her only reason for getting up is to eat. And she spends most of her time sleeping in the bassinet and not with me, which is a great improvement. Eat-Awake-Sleep.... that's what we do!! I think she's doing better than the boys were at this stage (don't know for sure). It's been tough to figure out her schedule so that it works with tang jack to/from school and picking davis up from the bus stop. Most days, I can do an 8-11-2-5 schedule so that she's "awake" when we have to leave the house. It's more difficult on days like today where she's off from that and I have to wake her to put her in her car seat when we have to leave. Totally messes up both up! She seems to be growing a lot and gaining weight-- she's a sweet baby. She definitely has fussy time in the evening, and some night she goes right to sleep after nursing, and others Barron stays up with her for an extra hour while she grunts, pushes and cries before passing out. Him doing that allows me to go ahead and go to bed and get an hour or more of sleep I would otherwise not get!
The boys seem well adjusted to her so far- they love to love on her and get too close-- but mostly they don't seem that affected overall. With Davis gone most of the day, Jack's getting more attention than usual instead of less. It's definitely a hard time because my time is really not my own anymore- but life keeps running like it is. I am behind on everything- some things I just let go. Others, I need to be better about because of the consequences of not getting things done. It's more about being mentally ready each day and prioritizing what needs to be done. I just lose steam mid-afternoon, which is when I need to most to get through the 5 pm to 7 pm time. In that time, I have to nurse Emmy, fix dinner for boys, then prepare dinner for Barron and me. The boys need to eat around 5:30 since they go to bed around 7pm... it's just a lot to pack in during that time!!
Anyways- boring post-- so here are a few pics from all we've done!