Happy 1st Month Joanna!!

Dear Joanna,

Hi sweet girl! You are 1 month and 1 week old today. We are headed home from your first big trip! We spent the past five days in Delta and Grand Junction visiting family and friends. You were able to see Pappy, Maw-Maw, Uncle Wayne, Aunt Lelia, Aunt Amanda, and cousin Vienna again which was so much fun and you were able to meet your other practically family members - David, Jessica, Lillie, Drew, and Andrea. You did great on the 5 hour trip over and hopefully will do ok on the way back even though you are screaming your head off right now. :( Basically you love your car seat if you are asleep when we put you in it or if you are rocked to sleep in it but otherwise it is not your favorite place to be and you let us know! Poor girl...

You really enjoyed having all the family spend time holding you this weekend! And we had family pictures taken yesterday with Pappy, Maw-maw, and everyone. So excited to see them and I'm so glad you were in them sweetie! :)

You have had such a big first month of life! You spent your first few weeks of life getting to know your two favorite little people who happen to be your brother, Daniel, and your sister, Lydia. Daddy was able to take most of the first few weeks off work which was so nice and Maw-Maw stayed past your delivery to help with things and hold you whenever she could for the next two weeks. You were, and have been, a lot more fussy than your sister was... Much more like Daniel was as a newborn. :( So sad to hear but hopefully little by little things will get better and you start feeling better. But you do love being held! All day long for the most part! You have done pretty good most nights overall though. Almost completely since you were born you have gone at least 3 hours in between feedings at night and even though 4-5 hours in between is the normal at night, the first few nights at Pappy and Maw-Maw's you actually had 6 and even 7.5 hours in between! Yay! Mommy definitely enjoys getting extra sleep and since you seem to not have any problem with gaining weight, I'm totally ok with you getting more and more sleep at night!

Almost from the time we took you home from the hospital you were already spending time lifting up your head and looking around. You are doing better and better with that all the time and you just seem so proud if yourself!

Even though you dropped from your birth weight of 9 lbs 1 oz to 8 lbs 5 oz within 3 days which gave your pediatrician some concern, you greatly made up for that by gaining 6 oz back in 24 hours and then by 2 weeks you were up to 10 lbs 3 oz and in like the 98 percentile for weight I think. You are definitely getting enough milk from mommy and I'm so glad! Right now I have no clue how much you weigh... I'm pretty sure over 11 lbs at least though.

You love giving big smiles and have been especially the past few weeks! That and hearing you try to talk with your goos and baby talk is so cute!! :) As you little by little have more awake time it's just too cute having little "conversations" with you. Although you greatly like your sleep still and rarely stay awake longer than an hour or an hour and a half for feedings every 3 to 4 hours during the day.

Joanna, you are such a beautiful baby! Mommy loves your dark hair and I really hope it stays that way! I definitely believe we have the prettiest two daughters! :)

Oh yes! The other exciting news this month was that two weeks after you arrived we packed and moved into our new house! It's a wonderful house in Arvada and I'm so thankful we have it and that you are able to grow up in this house over the next few years at least! Right now you have been sleeping in your bassinet in mommy and daddy's room but soon you will probably move into the living room and then into your room with big sister once you start sleeping through the night! :) Hopefully that will be by July or August at least!

We love you so much sweet Joanna Beth! So glad you are here and part of our amazing family! Seeing Daniel with you is so adorable because he wants to help with anything he can and loves to check on you and tags care of you in any way that he can. Lydia I'm sure will be one of your best friends later in life because she just loves you so much and misses you so much whenever y'all are apart! She loves kissing and hugging you whenever she gets the chance. :)

Love you!

~Mommy