I promise all is well in the land of Lyla, I’ve just been crazy busy recently, so I apologize for not writing a blog post in almost two weeks. My mom and husband’s birthdays are just four days apart so the end of January is always nuts. Tack onto that the fact that I’ve just come back to work and get busier here with the paper with each passing day, well, it’s been hectic.

I don’t really have a theme for this post, I just want to post about some things that have been going on to just so everyone knows what’s going on with our kiddo.

Food
Now that I’m back at work, I’m eating much better than I was while on leave because I have structure to my day and I don’t feel guilty taking a break from work to eat, because work doesn’t mind if I put it down. Granted I eat at my desk most of the time, but, at least I eat.
It kind of pains me to admit that I gave up nursing about four weeks after Lyla was born but she wasn’t gaining weight and I just wanted to her to be able get enough to eat, which wasn’t happening with nursing. She’s a stubborn girl, like mommy, and I think the tongue tie issue just set us on a different path from the start whether I liked it or not.
So, we started out with this ready to eat formula that they sent us home from the hospital with:

But it’s $10 for a box of six bottles, which lasts about three days now — Lyla’s drinking four ounces per meal now, yay — so we switched to the powdered version.
Basically this (I don’t have my own image, so, I grabbed this one from another photobucket account)

Today I picked up a soy based version at Costco because Lyla gets really uncomfortable gas and even with burping and passing gas she can be pretty fussy. She fusses badly when she’s hungry and has painful gas, otherwise, she’s a pretty happy baby.
So, this is what I got today (thanks Mom, for the $100 Costco card for Christmas)

We’ll see how the soy based formula works. I’ll report back on that in a week or so.

Development
Jason’s grandmother, Ellie, has been taking care of Lyla while we’re at work which I have previously mentioned. Every day when I get home, she tells me all about Lyla’s day, new things she’s doing and all the things she does with Lyla.
She puts Lyla in her activity gym so she can work on developing her coordination and plays music to help stimulate her growing brain.

Ellie also is doing a little bit of tummy time with Lyla every day so she can build up strength in her neck and arms so that she will be able to eventually sit up on her own as well as roll over. These things lead to eating solid foods, crawling, and all the other skills Lyla will need to be a self-sufficient person. My mom and Ellie think Lyla will be walking early and suspect she’ll skip over crawling altogether.
Lyla already has awesome head and neck control for her age. She blows me away.
Ellie told me yesterday that she is surprised by how alert and active Lyla is at 2 1/2 months old. Usually babies her age spend most of their time eating and sleeping, she said, but not our girl. She’s curious and looks around as well as just likes to see what’s going on.
Lyla likes it when Ellie reads books to her. Jason’s parents got her a box of “Baby’s First Books” with small cardboard and bath safe books.
A new favorite activity is playing with her pink elephant rattle which plays music when you pull its tail. She smiles and giggles at that.
Many mornings Jason and I will sit with her on our bed and sing along with music on the radio or his iPhone. We just got a Phillips alarm clock radio with an iPod/iPhone dock so we can play her our favorite tunes or the playlist Jason made while I was pregnant called “Lyla’s Songs.” It starts off with, “Lyla,” a song by my favorite band in the world, Oasis.
Jason was telling me this morning that he was singing to her yesterday and she really enjoyed it, she was laughing and smiling at him. That makes me happy. We’re both musicians (he played clarinet and I played viola — he plays guitar now) so she’s going to grow up with lots of music. I hope she takes to music and wants lessons of some sort when she gets older.
And we know music is good for her … I play jazz and Mozart for her, especially when we’re in the car, we listen to Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk.
Every day is so exciting with Lyla.

People ask me all the time how she’s doing and I could talk endlessly about everything she’s doing since every day is a new adventure. There’s a reason the blog is called Baby Babble!

Growth
This is the last thing I’ll talk about today. Lyla is getting bigger all the time but she seems to just be getting taller more than anything. She’s finally outgrown her newborn clothes and is filling out 0-3 month size items.
A growing Lyla also means making a change in her sleeping arrangements. We got a bassinet from a friend of my mother-in-law’s before she was born. I had zero intention of her sleeping in our room but once we got her home there’s now way I could let her sleep anywhere else.
Ellie has been putting her down for naps in her crib the past couple weeks so that when we do start putting her in there at night it’ll be an easy transition. Right now, when Lyla stretches her arms out, her armspan is too wide for the bassinet and in a couple weeks she’ll be too long to fit in it.
I had planned to put her in her crib last Friday night but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it! At this point I don’t wake up every couple hours to make sure she’s breathing — I’m such a new mom! — but we don’t have a baby monitor system so I’m still kind of nervous letting her sleep in her crib at night even though she’s only about 15 feet away from us.
Pretty soon, though, I won’t have a choice. I better get a monitor so I can better handle the transition. She’ll probably be just fine.

So hopefully in the next day or two I’ll post some videos of Lyla here on the blog so you can see why I am already planning to sign her up for martial arts — Bill Woodcock suggested tae kwon do, of course!

Till next time.