Elora, 2 months
This month baby is photographed on Window Dressing Crossweave in Lagoon/Fuschia from HoneyBeGood! Look out for a giveaway of the whole Window Dressing set coming up soon!
How can it be that we've had this precious little one for 9 weeks already? At two months old, Elora is nearly bursting out of her 0-3 months clothes and has long outgrown her newborn hats. With healthy babies there is no still point; all is turning-turning, growing, learning.
Last month she was expressive, but this month we are basking in the sun of wide, gummy smiles. Smiles for days! Especially in the mornings. Her morning awake time is dessert smuggled in at the start of the day. That's when I took these pictures! She was slow to warm up to the camera in her face, but she gave in eventually.
Memory Box {Two Months}
Milestones: Matured vision: she can see us across the room now! Extended night time sleep: she's going 6-7 hours between feedings at night. It's lovely to sleep for a bundle of hours at a time again!!! Once we figured out that she is very sensitive to lights at night (even dim lights), we've had much better luck with getting her to go to sleep at bedtime and after her nighttime feeding too. Social smile. Hand to mouth: intentional for the first time today!
Biggest Challenge: Mold Remediation. Even though that's not exactly about Elora, it's been the biggest challenge to enjoying her this month. We discovered a few weeks ago that our small, isolated mold problem was actually a huge, systemic mold problem caused by high interior humidity. After consulting many companies, educating ourselves and coordinating much help, we've arrived at a solution. A big part of the solution was 5 days straight of cleaning our entire house all at once.
Cleaning is an understatement. We had to vacuum all walls, wash everything launderable (except my fabrics), wipe everything wipeable with a special cleaner (like even pens and pencils) and use an air compressor to blow off paper items like files that could be saved. Lots was thrown out! Huge deal. Yesterday was day 5 of house cleaning so we actually have a ton left to do. It's like we've moved but all our items are sorted by "wipe" or "blow" and can't be unpacked until they are being cleaned outside.
I'm so glad to have gotten this far though. It was very stressful figuring out how to solve our root problem, how to coordinate the cleaning, all while aware we were living in terrible air quality. Public service announcement: Your indoor humidity must stay below 60% or really bad things happen.
Best Surprise: A few days ago I was folding laundry alongside Elora's cradle while she was supposed to be drifting off to sleep. Without moving from my task, I glanced at her just with my eyes. She noticed that subtle change in my eyes - the eye contact - and immediately smiled! I restrained my reaction and continued folding to encourage her sleep. A few more times I would glance at her without moving my head and she would light up with happy smiles. What a joy to witness this connection and to appreciate how well her brain is working to understand her environment!
Special Memory: From just about day one Brandon's been calling me "Milk Lady" to baby. As in, "Don't look at Milk Lady, look at me, look at me!" in a silly voice to get her attention, and "I didn't want to do this, but Milk Lady made me," while doing a task she dislikes, like getting dressed after bath time. Oh, he makes me laugh! He'd like to be her favorite, but he'll never overcome the power of the milk-mama bond. Haha!
p.s. If she calls me Milk Lady when she learns to talk, I won't be laughing then. Wink.