Playing the Day Away

 Oh my, where has the time gone? Little Harper is already two months old & it is so hard to believe! In the beginning, I wanted time to stand still so she would never grow out of being a newborn. I felt like the drive home from the hospital changed her immediately from a newborn to a baby & it was so hard to handle. I must admit, I had a bit of the baby blues for the first two weeks. With the overwhelming new responsibilities & the fact that she was literally growing before my eyes. It was hard to handle! Eventually, time & lots of sleep made it better and I began to LOVE watching her grow.

Now she is smiling & totally interacting with me while we play, and I couldn't love it more! At two months old, she is a happy baby (other than the occasional spitting up which she is not a fan of) and sleeps (noisily) through the night! The only time she really cries is when she decides that she was hungry five minutes ago and wants that bottle right away. Hungry Hungry Harpo!

Here is a look into our typical day.

 

4:00 am is when she first wakes up for her early morning feeding. Throughout the night she makes horse noises & grunts randomly to wake us up, but she is still asleep. She is currently sleeping in our room swaddled in the Nap Nanny, which has been AMAZING for her spitting up. Being in the propped up position helps her sleep.  We are very aware of the recall & the dangers, but we follow the instructions so that she cannot tip out of it. As soon as she is able to start rolling around we will need to explore other options or hope that she can sleep flat on her back by then. I feed her at 4 & she immediately falls back asleep at 4:30.

8:30 am is when she wakes up for the day. I feed her again & we play in bed for about an hour. She does tummy time either on the bed or propped up on her boppy. We play with her Skip Hop Sheep and I read "Goodnight Moon" but we either read it from back to front or say "Good Morning" instead.

She gets sleepy pretty quick & I put her down for her morning nap at 10:00. I usually just put her in her swing and tuck the blanket around her tight, not swaddled, but tight enough to help her startle reflex from waking her up. Those hands of hers have a mind of their own!!

Noon is when she wakes up typically & I feed her again. After that we sing the whole Jack Johnson playlist on my ipod, which she loves and gives me the biggest smiles. Sometimes I play along with my Ukulele, which she isn't quite sure what to think of yet.. but she is the exact same size as it right now! We hang out in her room where she lays on her play mat or sits in her bumbo for a bit & we read a bunch of her other books.

My husband tells me that I look like I have duck feet because my feet are short and really wide, so I saw this book at Buy Buy Baby & just had to buy it. It is SO cute! And Harper definitely has my feet! The Sneetches was Brandon's favorite book as a kid, so we had to buy that as well. All of the short stories in the back crack me up, we love them!

 Harper loves to look at this hilarious little creature during tummy time. We named him Bug.

She takes another nap around 2 until about 3:30. Then I feed her again & she hangs out in her bouncer. I hang all sorts of different toys from the bar, Jacques the Peacock is one of her favorites, along with all of those multicolored links that she loves to swat at. We also play dress up at this time & send lots of pictures to daddy! I usually cook dinner (ish) while she swings or bounces and then I feed her again at 6:15 right before Brandon comes home from work. She sits in her bouncer while we eat dinner & then she spends lots of quality time with daddy afterwards. This usually consists of singing funny songs (Harpie the Baby to the tune of Frosty the Snowman.... wow my husband has spent way too much time with me!) and holding her in the airplane hold across his arm and walking her around the house looking out the windows.

I love reading her this book called You Are My Cupcake too because she recently started realizing that she can touch things, and all of the pages are textured. It's also just plain adorable!

She usually takes a little cat nap from about 8-9 in her bouncer and then it's bath time!! She loves to be a nakey baby! My friend gave me great advice that her son slept best when they started giving him a bath every night, so we tested it out and it worked!! I haven't skipped one since. We give her another bottle at 9:30 and read "Goodnight Moon" again in the rocking chair...and tell her a million bazillion times how much we love her. Then off to sleep! 

I know, that is one heck of a schedule. I didn't really try to set this and I definitely don't live by it, but it just seems to repeat each day and it works well for us. I would LOVE to hear any fun ideas & activities that you all have for entertaining your little ones!

Side note, I have a super obsession with kids toys & seeking out the cutest stuff. So much that I have recently sketched out some things and am obsessing over DESIGNING kids toys!! After seeing the things that catch her eye and entertain her, I wish I could just make some toys for her myself with fun colors & patterns that looked cute as well. I wish I knew the right people to make this happen! Jessica Alba just whips up a baby company out of no where... can't I do the same?! :)