19 Weeks

Ella has been in such a good, smiley mood all week, until we get out the camera and then there's no sign of a smile. Oh, well! I think part of our problem with her crankiness the last few weeks has been because we were trying to put her to sleep when she wasn't really tired yet. I was rushing her to bed at the first yawn (as instructed by the baby sleep books), but I think some times the yawns are from boredom instead of actually being ready to go to bed. So now I wait until there are a few yawns, some eye rubbing, or ear pulling, glassy eyes, etc. It's working much better. She rarely cries and goes to sleep pretty quickly after we lay her down. Some of her naps are still short and then she gets cranky fast, but it's an improvement for sure. We're able to do more now too because she's awake for an hour and a half or two hours before she starts getting sleepy.

She's had a few new developments this week. She's started being friendly to pretty much everyone. She seems to recognize familiar faces (besides Mommy and Daddy) more and warm up faster to those people than to strangers. She can see really far away now, she'll follow me with her eyes and smile at me from across the room if I make eye contact and talk to her. She's started playing this little game where she'll make a sound like "aboo" and then pause and look at me. I'll make the sound back and then she'll do it again. If I take too long to mimic her, she'll make the sound again and look at me expectantly. It's pretty funny. She's also finally started looking at books. We started trying to read to her pretty much as soon as she was born, but she would never look at the books and would get fussy pretty quick. Now she'll sit quietly in my lap and look at the book and listen. She is starting to sit up with out assistance for a few seconds or so at a time. If she's on my lap she can do it for longer.

Today we went to an informational session about baby swim lessons. I wasn't planning on signing her up for lessons until the end of April, but after observing the 4 to 12month class, I got so excited I went ahead and signed her up to start next Friday. She did so good at the pool. I'm glad she got a chance to be there first with out getting in the water. She was very interested in the other babies and intent on watching them in the water. All the babies seemed to be having such a good time. I only heard one very brief cry from a baby who went under water for the first time. I'm a little nervous about that part, but it'll be a while before we try that. The instructor says we won't even attempt it until both Mom and baby seem ready. I can't wait to take her back and get her in the water next week. We will definitely have some pictures of that for our weekly post.