Before I go on to anything else, last night she smiled, on purpose, at me for the first time. She did the same for her Dad this morning. We just can't stop staring at her now, waiting for her to do it again!

Went back to the lactation consultant for a weight check this week. She is growing steadily now. She gained an average of 23gr a day for the week. As of Wednesday she weighs 8lb 6 oz.
What's even more exciting for me is that the last two days we haven't needed the ounce of formula at night to settle her. We are actually trying to get her into a better schedule. Up 'til now, she had been going to sleep somewhere between 2 and 4am, and getting up between 8 and 10am for a feed then knocking off for another couple of hours. This has been a bit tough on us, so these last couple of days I've been trying to get her settled earlier. I find that if I take her into the bedroom and feed her lying down, she goes to sleep faster, so I've been doing that starting at around 11pm. I think it's working. The two nights, she's fallen asleep before 2 am. Not much before, but still. She still sleeps a lot in the mornings, but all her naps seem to have moved up by a couple of hours. And she's a lot less fussy when we try and get her to sleep. I think when we were letting her stay up so late, she was getting over tired and over stimulated so it took a long time to calm her down.

Because of the cooler weather we have been occasionally getting, I am finally able to get her into some of the knitted things she has! She looks exceptionally cute in the hat Mel made for her!



Oh, and I wanted to mention the two very strange encounters I've had recently when we have been out for our walks. The first happened on election day. I was at my voting station staring up at the large flight of stairs I had to go up with the stroller when a very nice elderly woman came up to me and offered to watch her while I went inside to vote. Now, I like to think the best of people, but even I wouldn't leave my child with a total random stranger. Did she really think that I would agree? She seemed mildly miffed when I refused her kind offer.
The other encounter was much more bizarre. Vaguely mortifying and hilarious at the same time. I was walking with the kid around 4pm across College street in the stroller when she started to cry. She had been making some hungry cues right before so I put on the sling and popped her into it to try and get her to start feeding. No matter what I did she kept screaming. She was screaming so frantically that I could see the passersby checking me out to make sure I wasn't murdering her or something. After a little while of this, I realize that an elderly chinese woman (what is it with the elderly women?) was speaking to me. After trying to tell her that I don't speak chinese, she started trying to help me get the baby to feed. I mean, she was right in there trying to push my nipple into the screaming kid's mouth. I was actually too shocked to do anything. This is one side effect of breastfeeding in public that no one warned me about!

The warmest babies in Toronto

Ok, let's talk baby showers.
A couple of weeks ago, two of my very good friends, Stefanie and Maria got together to throw me a shower. (here they are preparing before the event)

Because it was the middle of summer and for some reason people like to take vacations then, not everyone could make it, but the turn out was still enough to fill Stefanie's back yard. (who knew I had so many friends?)
Games were played, food was eaten (lots and lots of food) and fun was had.
There were also many presents for the little one.
A few highlights from the gifts include:

A really cool bib with a hand embroidered duck from Jasmine (along with a Beatrix Potter book)


A kimono designed and made by my neice


and of course the baby monitor otherwise known as the 'walkie talkie set' from our friends Todd and Cait.

There was a lot more, including some really cute outfits and lots of necessary blankies, towels and diapers. But I'm a bad blogger and not much of it is recorded for posterity. But it will all be used, I assure you!

Then, last night at Lettuce Knit, the regular Wednesday night stitch and bitch turned into a massive 3 way baby shower for myself, Jen and Mel. Sadly none of us thought to bring our cameras so we will have to depend on the kindness of others - mostly Laura, for pictures of the actual event.
But I did take a picture today of all the beautiful knits that I have recieved for the little one. Stephanie mentioned that these three babies will be the warmest kids in Toronto this winter and I have to say I agree.


That's everything from last night, plus a couple of knitted things that were given to me earlier.
Across the bottom we have the orange placket sweater from Jill, the wrap sweater from Jean Anne, the bonnet and bootie set from Mel, and the gifts from Jen - the stuffed frog, the green booties, one of my fave kids books The Very Hungry Caterpiller and some amazing smelling Lush soap.
Next row up is the sweater from Laura made from her own handspun, and the infamous Tulip sweater from the Stephanie.
Above that are the blocks from Emily (whose daughter I love and would steal away in a second if I wasn't about to have my own), then the unbeliveably cute booties from Erin, across the blanket we have the stuffed ice cream cone (we've decided the flavour is french vanilla) from Aleta and Rachel H's gift of the beautiful stuffed sheep and the book, Is Your Mama a Llama.
But the piece de resistance is the amazing blanket that everyone from SnB contributed to.

Thank you to everyone. I can't believe how lucky I am to have such great friends and I can't wait for my daughter to meet all you wonderful people.

Finished the first baby related knit item last week! It's a blanket made out of Seawool. It's a bit on the small side but I have been assured that it is a good size, especially for carseats and strollers.



There are other things nearly finished or still on the needles but we'll get to those later.

In other pregnancy news, still feeling pretty good. Just the tiredness (which is really kicking my ass today) and some pretty bad tendonitis in my left wrist. Oh, and I'm eating everything in sight, which is totally cracking Joe up.
I had been pretty good with keeping my eating under control until last week when I realized that no matter how much I had just eaten, I still wanted more food. I guess she's growing pretty quickly in there and I just haven't been able to keep up with the food intake.