12 Weeks

A little late, but here's what 12 weeks of Val's arrival into the world includes:

• She's gotten LOUD! LOUD! It's sort of graduated beyond cooing and into semi-talking. She responds to us when we talk and 'talks' back. It's so rad.
• The downside of this loudness is that her cries are now louder, which totally freaks us out.
• The other downside is that sneaking her into movies with me is now a lot more difficult.
• She's toying with the idea of going to bed at like 8 pm instead of 11 or midnight. This I don't like because when Andrea gets home from work, I really enjoy having Val's company when we're all together as a family
• I'm pretty sure she's starting to teethe. There has been a lot of extra drool lately and she's starting to bite down a lot harder while nursing. Brings me back to the early days of her life, when I winced/bit my lip in pain every time she latched on.
• She actually liked the activity mat for the first time. She also rolled from front to back while on it.

  

• When I hold her over my shoulder, she reaches out with her arms and holds on, the coolest little baby hug.
• She now understands that kisses are indeed a good thing.
• She laughs more like an adult.
• She's discovered some serious love for Sesame Street. The monsters give her great joy and I'll admit it -- sometimes, when I am very tired after not sleeping enough I turn that shit on and give thanks for the 20 or so minuets that I get where I don't need to entertain her.
• To that end, she can now rock the Bumbo seat more than before. It makes her slightly more portable -- I put her in that on top of the washer when I'm doing laundry, on top of the table in the garage when I'm packing hockey gear. Not only is it useful, she's totally hilarious looking in it.

  

She just gets more amazing every day. I'm so grateful that she's here. Yes, it was worth every part of the pregnancy and labor, not to mention all the charting and plotting that went into getting pregnant.

On a personal note, this week marked one year since the start of the cycle I got pregnant. For all those months, I said "August 7" every time I had a doctor's appointment and now, another August 7 has come and gone. In the first two weeks of that cycle, I had started to give up hope that we'd ever get pregnant. We planned our pregnancy attempt but tried to stop caring whether it worked or not, because it hurt too much when we did care.