1 Week Old!

Rylee Dawn is 1 Week old already! I can't believe how fast that week went...it was all kind of a whirl wind. She is doing great! She is such a happy baby - we are so lucky! For only being a week old she is so alert too. She loves to lift her head up when you are holding her and look around and loves to look at you when you talk to her. She acts like she is listening so intently to every single word you say. I love to tell her stories. I sing to her too and I am a terrible singer and she doesn't even seem to mind. She is a very good eater too. Although she does fall asleep a lot while I am feeding her so I just have to keep playing with her cheeks or her hands. She wakes up to eat during the night every 3 to 3 1/2 hours. I've actually had to wake her up a few times to feed her but now the Dr. said I can let her sleep til around 4 hours and then wake her up if she hasn't woke up on her own. As she gets bigger she might want to eat more often but right now it is a pretty decent schedule. My body is just starting to adjust to only getting a little over 2 hours of sleep at a time. Oh and another good thing is that she sleeps right through all the noise and commotion in the house. That's nice so we don't have to tippy toe around her while she is sleeping. Overall, she is just so precious and all I want to do is keep kissing her!

She had her 1 week Dr.'s appointment yesterday. Here's her stats from the check-up:

Weight: 8lbs (50th percentile)

Height: 20 5/8 in. (75th percentile)

Head: 35.5 cm. (50th percentile)

We were so glad to see that her weight went up past her birth weight already. Sometimes that takes around 2 weeks. Because her weight is good the Dr. said she doesn't have to come back until her 1 month check-up. She also said her bruise on her head has went down a little. She thinks it will take 4-5 weeks to go down but the more gradual the better. Her Dr. also wanted her to get blood work done to check for jaundice. This was her 3rd time getting her blood taken and I feel so bad for her when they do it. She was sleeping yesterday and when they pricked her she let out a scream of pain (Brad and I felt terrible) but when they stopped she went right back to sleep. The results from the blood test were great and her billiruben levels have went down even more so she's still not jaundice so we don't have to worry about taking her for any treatments. Yeah!

I also wanted to mention a little something about why we chose her name. We knew we wanted to name our first child after my Grandpa Don so if we were to have a boy his middle name would have been Donald but since it was a girl we went with Dawn as her middle name. My mom and Vanessa are also named after my Grandpa and their middle name is Dawn too. We had loved the name Rylee from the start and we decided to spell it this way because mine and my dad's middle name is Lee so that is after us as well. A lot of you already knew all the family history behind her name but I thought I would fill everyone in because it was important to us when choosing her name.

My family is all leaving tomorrow to go home. That makes me sad. It has been so great having them down here and I don't know what we would have done without them. They have helped with everything: Rylee, dinners, shopping, cleaning, pictures, baths, etc. It is going to be another huge adjustment for us once they leave and we don't have all of that help. It's going to be so hard for them to leave too. They keep saying that they want to take Rylee with them so we better watch out. This is when it is really hard living 10 hours away from home. Hopefully someday we will be closer. Brad took Monday and Tuesday off of work last week and then is also taking this coming Monday and Tuesday off. That way after my family leaves he will be around to help for the first few days. Then after that it is just Rylee and I. And we'll make it okay it is just going to be different without everyone else around. We have a lot of family coming back down for Labor Day weekend because Northern plays University of Indy for their first game. That works out perfect that we'll get to see them again so soon! Brad's parents are also coming down Labor Day weekend so they'll get to meet her for the first time then.

So that's the 1 week update. Here's more pics of our babe. After Vanessa leaves I won't have nearly as many pictures to post so I figured I would post a lot now. To us she seems like she is changing daily so it is good to have a lot of pictures now.