Clearly thinking I was going to blog weekly after having a baby when I didn't even blog weekly before I had a baby was a bit silly. So I'm just going to have to do some group updates if I'm ever going to get caught up.

At the end of August and the beginning of September Rowan was still pretty tiny (not like the huge baby she is now). She started smiling around then, not so much as a response to our smiles, but whenever she thought something was amusing. She invented her own exercise regime which mostly included waving her arms and legs about when she was laying on her changing mat. It most certainly did not include tummy time. Tummy time, for those of you who don't know, is when you put a baby on their tummy to play specifically so that they'll strengthen their neck and back muscles at roughly the same rate children used to when they were put to sleep on their tummies thus not interfering with the sitting up and crawling milestones found in baby books everywhere. (Putting babies on their tummies to sleep often helps them sleep better but increases the rate of cot death/sudden infant death syndrome and is thus out of fashion.) Somewhat by definition babies in need of tummy time aren't really strong enough to hold their heads up for very long, and also haven't really worked out that they can use their arms to prop themselves up and generally seem unimpressed by the whole idea.

More importantly my parents came to visit for these two weeks and my Dad spent lots of time trying to get photos of her smiling although mostly he got photos of the expression she makes right after she smiles :). Some of the photos are a bit blurry but here are a few of my favorites:

And here is one of her doing some exercise. She always had a very serious expression on her face when she exercised.

Check out our matching long fingers :)

This was the week when Kim went back to work and Rowan and I were left to figure things out on our own. As you can see the realities of being an actual stay at home mom had not yet set in for me and I was enjoying such frivolities as dressing Rowan up in pretty dresses and staging photo shoots in our bedroom. At least I managed a photo that shows off her super long legs - she is rather super long which explains why all the midwives kept calling her a 'good sized baby' when she was still in my belly. For the moment she seems to be maintaining her long, thin shape although she's developed some proper chubby baby cheeks.

Fortunately all of the early weeks are a bit of a blur to me now - which is probably a good thing. If any family is going to grow beyond one child forgetting the difficult bits in the early weeks is essential. I think it was about this time that we made the agonizing decision to introduce a dummy (pacifier) since she seemed to want to be sucking on something ALL the time and I needed a break. We hemmed and hawed worrying that she'd get nipple confusion and forget how to nurse properly or end up sucking on the dummy too much and not gain weight properly or still be using it when she's three years old but finally we decided to give it a try. As it turns out she gained weight just fine and has already rejected the dummy so no chance of her still sucking on it at the age of three years - she's already had enough and she's not yet three months. Anyway Kim was still on paternity leave then so here's a photo of the two of them relaxing on a warm summer afternoon.

By the time this photo was taken we'd finally escaped the hospital, Rowan had lost 20% of her birth weight and gained it all back, and I'd probably had about a dozen or so hours of sleep.

Well this post is a bit belated so I'm sure you've all already guessed what happened in week 4. Meet Rowan:

She weighed about 7 pounds at birth and was about 21 inches long.

Do I really need to say anything else?