Katharine Lange: Arwyn Week 8: Baby Houdini

At 8 weeks old, Arwyn has officially rejected the swaddle for sleeping. Our little Houdini gets her arms out pretty much instantly, so she's graduated to the sleep sac. It's funny because so many of my friends asked me when I "moved" Leia out of a swaddle, but it was exactly the same for both girls...they just started escaping all the time around 8 weeks and told me that they were done. Arwyn is not sleeping too well during the daytime these days; she needs to have human snuggles or the swing to go longer than 20 minutes. And while that was slightly frustrating, it was ok since it was balanced by good sleeping at night (at least one 5 hour stretch!). But then we had a little burp when she was only going 2.5 hours at a time all night, but luckily that went back up to the 5 hour time zone again once we got on the same page with good naps. It sure is an exhausting time commitment to get her down for so many naps during the day when they only last for 20 minutes!! Also, her eyes have gotten better because she starting to do the trademark Stevie Wonder move to see what's going on around her all the time...so cute!

Arwyn had her first bottle this week. Based on our difficult experience with introducing it to Leia, we decided to start early enough to have plenty of experience with it before I went back to work, but Arwyn was like, "ok, whatever, this works too" and took the bottle the very first time with no fuss. Absolutely amazing! Needless to say, she continues to be a very easy and chill little girl!

Leia's new phrase is "actually"...."Actually, I have to go get baby some milk..." or whatever it is that she actually has to do besides what I might be telling her. It's actually quite hilarious. I love how advanced her vocabulary is all the time. She's also started a gymnastics class at school (aka, "mastics"), which she loves. It's about the only motivation trick we can use to get her to school on time these days! And one day we met a bunch of friends up at the Village for a beer fest, and Leia ran into her best friend from school, McKinsey. Watching how excited she was to finally have a friend to play with made us feel so bad for not organizing more play dates with kids/friends her age...the two of them were having a blast!

Leia got asked out on her first date this week, and by an older man, no less! Josh was completely freaked out, it was hilarious! Our new neighbors have a 5 year old son named Rye, and one day he just knocked on our door out of the blue and invited Leia over for a movie. Unfortunately she was at school at the time, and they watch movies after her bedtime, but we promised a raincheck.

The big excitement of the week was watching the tractor knock the house down on our street. It used to belong to my Aunt Lucy and Uncle Bob, but our other friends bought it a few years ago, and had an unfortunate issue with a frozen pipe, mold, and a cleaning job gone bad. So sad to see such a great house get completely demolished, but it sure was fun for Leia. She couldn't stop talking about "why they knock the house down??"

It was also a big week for out of town visitors. We were graced by the company of Ben Kraines and wife Sara, Jon Coe and family, as Zeena and her whole extended family. So many parties! Leia woke up one morning after a fun party asking where her Jesse was, and was disappointed to learn that "my party's over." We also had a fun day playing in the pools at the Resort at Squaw Creek...Leia had her first trip down a water slide!