Happy One Month, Amalie!

Amalie turned one month old yesterday. Jon says "she's one!", and I say "she's thirty!". Every day has been its own adventure, so I like to commemorate all of them.

At her one month pediatrician's appointment, she officially weighed 9 pounds, 0.5 ounces. This puts her in the 50th percentile for weight (she was in the 25th percentile at her 1.5 week visit), which is welcome news to Mom, who has been constantly worried about milk supply. As for length, she is closer to the 75th-90th percentile at 22 inches.

The pediatrician remarked that Amalie is particularly alert and focuses well visually. With those gigantic eyes, I would hope so! My mom said that I was highly vigilant and wide-eyed when I was a newborn too.

Important landmarks: her umbilical stump finally fell off at 2.5 weeks, and she got her first "real" bath. Note how curly her hair is when it is wet!

At around the same time, she really started unfurling and playing with her hands. The pediatrician says this is unusual for an infant this young. But Peanut certainly does have amazingly large hands and long fingers! Some say "basketball player", others say "piano player". I did both of those things as a kid, but I also played bassoon; and given that I was recruited by the band teacher to play bassoon because of the size of my hands, then perhaps Amalie will be similarly charged.

Amalie's been using her arms and hands for a while, and I think she really started hitting me out of frustration (with a fist) if I did not get her situated for nursing quickly enough when she was only a couple of weeks old. However, at about 3.5 weeks, Amalie found a new use for her hands that unfortunately hurts HER: she grabs her very thick hair, pulls, screams in pain, but does not yet know how to let go. So we have to disentangle her. This originally worried me a bit (signs of impending stereotypy?....sometimes I wish I didn't know any psychology or neuroscience), but then Kristine relayed a far worse tale of her son Cooper, who grabbed something MUCH more sensitive when he was about the same age. I guess it's a good thing Peanut is not a boy.

Right at the week 4/one month point, Amalie demonstrated her first social smiles. She's been smiling in her sleep for a couple of weeks, and she began sleep-laughing about three or four days ago, but the actual waking smile, in response to our voices, just started a couple of days ago. It is fleeting and infrequent, but it is the most wonderful thing to see after several weeks of blank stares. I've tried to catch the smiles on film, but fleeting as they are, I'm mostly getting the tail end of them. Here are some attempts:

Not many have made comments about whether Amalie looks like Liam. They are definitely unique, but I notice that she looks like Liam in some of his photos when she is nursing. It's the profile from above, and I think it is particularly the nose and the double chin that I'm reacting to. Given that that specific view is one that only I can have, I can't really get a second opinion.