Carla is two months old

I can't believe this lil bit has been with us for two months already. This past month has seen us settling into our new normal, and the acceptance by her big brother who has finally realized she isn't going anywhere anytime soon. He is still heavy handed and takes the occasional cheap shot at her, but overall, he shows her lots of love. Like opened mouth kisses, love. 

A nasty cold hit Carla when she was 6 weeks old, but she was able to kick it thanks to all the antibodies she's getting from me. As much as I am ambivalent about breastfeeding ( let's be honest, it can be painful and suck big time), I do credit it for her fighting off her cold so well. 

She's been on a few outings--to the produce market, grocery store and Starbucks. I keep her covered in my ergo and nobody knows she's there because so many people here wear backpacks on their chests ( to avoid pickpockets). I'm a bit nervous for summer to hit, and have her uncovered for the masses to marvel at her big white girl eyes, but i dealt with it with Sal ( and still do), so I can do it again.  Hard to believe that this summer she will be the age Sal was when we arrived. 

My favorite milestone this month has been seeing her smile more. She loves when I ask her " what's up?" And answer myself with " chicken butt". I know, I know....how mature am I? She also likes when Sal reads/dumps books on her. She knows all about the sound a street sweeper makes now, thanks to his story time with her. 

I'm also loving that she is sleeping in her own crib....in her own room! Never again will I let myself keep my babies in my room. It was so hard to make the decision to transition her. I kept telling NZ..not tonight, maybe tomorrow night...and before I knew it she had been in our room for nearly two months. There's no problem with that, except for the fact that I had sworn up and down she'd be in her crib from night one like we did with Sal. In my defense, our walls are concrete and our monitor has zero reception through them. I made the decision to finally transition her once we had a sleep pattern established. She's been going down for the night around 9:00 and waking to feed between 3:30 and 4:00. My internal alarm goes off around 3:30 now so I don't need to depend on a monitor so much to hear her cries. 

She eats like it's going out of style ALL day long and likes to snack. She's now growing into 3 month clothes and bidding farewell to her newborn sleepers. I've started her in the same cloth diapers we used for Sal and so far they're working well for us. Now that our ayi has left us, I'm cursing at the amount of laundry, but also know that we are saving money and landfill space by using cloth at home.

She had her two month checkup this week and weighed 10lb11oz and was 55.5cm tall. The very next day we took a trip to Shanghai and got to visit Dr. Shen, the OB who saw me through my pregnancy ( except for delivery). I can't say enough thank you's to her for her care. 

I'm looking forward to what month three has in store. She gets to meet her grandpa Dennis for the first time & celebrate her first St. pattys day!