Learning Her Ropes and Ready for Church

My Quinn was an odd baby. She didn't cry much, and I never once had to rock her to sleep. She ate, she stayed awake, and when she said "boo-hoo," I put her in her bed, and she went to sleep. When she woke up, she ate again and it started over. Naps were long. Feedings were awake. It all happen every 3 hours like clock work. When we were in Arizona, she slept 5 hours at a time.

McKenna is normal. She is on no schedule. She needs to be rocked to sleep. She gets pissed. She has bad days and good days. She has different kind of cries for different problems. A hungry cry, a tired try, an "I'm trying to poop" cry.

There is nothing wrong with a normal baby ... unless your first baby was not normal. If your first baby was a freak like mine, then you constantly think there is something wrong with your new baby. You complain that your arms hurt from rocking and your voice hurts from "Shhhhhh" ing or singing in their sweet little awake ears. You get eye strain from staring at their eyelids in a dim room to see if they are closed. You have to get way more creative than you would want to in order to get them to not sleep during mealtime -- dress and undress them, unneeded baths, tickling their feet, opening their eyes, generally messing with them ... wet willy, anyone?

So I guess she's normal, and I am learning and figuring it all out. She has a specific cry for "feed me, you jerk. I don't care when the book says I should eat. I'm hungry now." She almost always passes gas and other treats if you lay her on the ground or couch all by herself in between sides of a feeding. I do this to wake her up, but it is also a dead ringer for filling a diaper. And she has a whiny cry for when she is done being awake and ready for a nap.

So far she always needs to be swaddled in order to sleep longer than 5 minutes. She has to be completely asleep when I put her in her bed, and she hasn't had a successful nap on her side yet. She likes shushing noising, but they have to come from me and not a sound machine. She likes to be sung too, but never with the songs that Quinn liked. McKenna seems to love the song, "Love is spoken here," which is nice because I know all the words, and it is long enough that I don't feel like I am repeating myself every minute for 10 minutes. She also likes the song, "In this Very Room," however I do not know the words, so I kind of make them up. But the song is beautiful and makes me a bit weepy. I love singing to my angel. As long as I am not all tired and angry.

When she is awake, McKenna enjoys watching the birds on her swing, dancing with the monkeys on the mobile or just chilling out anywhere. But all of these things only last between 5 and 15 minutes. She loves the car, so that is not a good awake activity. She is out like a light, but I feel lucky for that. As long as a baby likes the car, you can never go wrong because if times gets tough, you can always take a drive.

Tomorrow marks the end of McKenna's second week. We are going to church for about an hour because it is Benny Purdie's baby blessing, and his parents are our best friends. It is kind of nice to do the church test run in a different ward in case it all falls apart. And the Purdie's were awesome to ask for special permission to blessing the baby on a second Sunday because we are blessing McKenna on the next first Sunday. Neither of us could bare missing the other's special event. Them's is some great friends.