The 7 week stretch.....

Sequoia is in her seventh week of life and is growing up faster than I can keep track of.
Things at the house are continually evolving to the point that things that did not exist 7 weeks ago now form the starting point of what we consider normal. A night with 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep qualifies as a great and restful night.

The dogs are happily sharing their world with their new little buddy. Neither of them show any signs of jealousy although Yukon's unbridled joy can be a bit too much sometimes - but that is true for adults as well as young babies. Eventually Sequoia will grow up and be big enough to wrestle him to the ground -

Two big developments in her life these days are her smiles and her increased movements. Both of these are related to her generally improved motor skills. I did not realize that babies had to learn how to smile, and it is a wonderful experience when your kid starts to smile in response to you.

These pictures of her on her changing table show a variety of her fancy moves accompanied by her pretty smile.
She has been surprising us lately with her ability to not be exactly where we left her a few moments ago. She is holding on to her rattles and shaking them. She has ridiculous control over her head already. She rolls herself on to her side and almost all the way over. She has started spinning around in her crib at night so that she is pointing the opposite direction when she wakes up. She "crawls" very effectively when we lay her on her stomach with the Boppy under her belly. She will actually crawl up and over the Boppy to get to Colleen at the other end of the couch.

The long and the short of this is that we can no longer just set her down somewhere and anticipate that she will not have managed to launch herself somewhere else by the time we return.
This Tuesday she will be starting her first class - Babygarten. It is a mommy and baby class that meets once a week at the local library. We anticipate that she will be quickly promoted to the head of her class - possibly all the way up to Babygarten grad-school....
Well at least we hope that it will help continue to develop her socialization skills.

All of this increased activity can leave her pretty tired.