Baby Emilia

I feel awful that I have not updated appropriately on our latest addition. Coming right before the season of birthdays and then all the holidays made it difficult to carve out some time to just talk about our sweetest baby girl. She is truly one of the most pleasant, easy-going babies I have ever been around, and I've been around quite a few babies. She makes my job as a mother almost too easy. Two days before she turned 8 weeks, she started sleeping through the night, usually going down around 10 -11 pm, and then I would wake her up between 7 and 8 am to eat. Now she has done a few nights of sleeping 7:30 am - 7:30 pm. We always lay her down completely awake, say our good-nights, and she falls asleep on her own. Like William, when she wakes up, she does not cry so I have to listen very closely on the monitor for any sounds in order to determine if she is awake or not.

When she is awake, Emilia is often smiling and cooing. She loves, more than anything, to interact with other people. She has the biggest smiles, but she saves the very best of them for her brother and sister. She seems to be pretty tickled when Terra dog gives her kisses too. She's had great head control pretty much from Day 1 (just like Lily). She can now intentionally grab her toys, but doesn't show much interest in rolling. She did, however, move from under the Gymini onto the carpet so it seems she's mastered the scooting move while laying flat. She really likes to look out and see the world so she spends much of her time in the bouncy seat or in the swing where she can see more. She definitely likes to be held facing out so she can see everyone as well.

Like William, Emilia is a thumb-sucker. I think this is a large part of the reason that she started sleeping through the night so early. All signs seem to point to Emilia being more like Lily in terms of height/weight and eye color. She is definitely steadily gaining weight, but doesn't seem to be particularly light/heavy or tall/short. In my estimation, she is probably somewhere around the 60-70th percentile for both height and weight. We will see in February when she goes to the doctor for her 4-month check-up.

As I've stated in previous posts, William is very taken with his baby sister. He even told Emilia that he loved her the other day, and he has never said that to anyone ever. He is mostly gentle with her but just wants to be as close to her as possible, which sometimes means being directly on top of her. Although, I do remember Lily being worse when William was born in terms of just constantly wanting to be right in William's face. Lily definitely loves Emilia too, but I think it is different because she does not spend the entire day with her. She interacts with Emilia and shows her plenty of affection, but the truth is nothing can detract Lily from her one true love, William. I'm not sure that I can adequately portray how much Lily loves William. She insists that they hold hands each and every time they are in the car together. Almost every story that Lily writes at school involves William, and she writes a lot! Writing workshop is her self-reported favorite activity at school, and she finds any excuse to write when she is at home. As a prime example of Lily's affection for William, Lily's school is celebrating their 100th day of school tomorrow. Lily's class was instructed to bring in a hat with 100 things attached to it. What did Lily choose? One hundred pictures of William. No joke. Not 100 pictures of her, our family or both siblings....just William. Luckily, William adores his sister as well. He follows her around, goes along with all her antics, dramatic play, and games, and can quite often be heard emphatically saying, "Okay, Lily!" I don't think that developmentally William can quite match Lily's attachment to him, but as much as a two-year-old can be attached, he is...to both sisters.

At this point in life, I think that we are at an almost surreal place. Sure, it will be nice when Carl is finished with residency and fellowship so we can live a bit more comfortably, but to have our entire brood here, all together is amazing. To see all those years of dreaming, wishing and hoping for this family come to fruition is overwhelming. I love living in St. Louis and being close to (most) of my family and Carl's sister. I love being able to get together with my friends from high school and also my new friends through WUMCHA. I love Lily's school and the neighborhood we live in. We are so close to so many amazing resources, including the Transportation Museum, the train store/playroom, and the Magic House, all of which William adores - not to mention all the great parks. We have a house that I never dreamed of at this stage in our lives with a backyard that makes all members of the family (even the furry one) thank our lucky stars. And most importantly, I have a partner in life that I love and respect that I still sometimes can't believe has agreed to share this journey with me. As our children each sleep soundly in their rooms, wrapped up in warm blankets with full bellies on this winter evening, I realize how profoundly lucky we are and will never take this for granted.