Happy Birthday!

It's Justin's first birthday as a father today! He's 26. We're not sure how much we can really celebrate, given we are broke and have a 4 week old child ;), but I'm hoping we can find some way to make it special for him. Happy Birthday Justin!

Our little goth baby has some red speckles to go with her purple tongue now, courtesy of baby acne. More importantly, though, she's starting to smile! It's not very frequent, but the last two mornings that she has woken, she's grinned when I picked her up. I've seen lots of babies smile in my day, but I have never had my heart so completely taken from me with such a simple gesture. All the frustration and lack of sleep in the world is gone in a moment when she flashes that toothless grin!

We are slowly but surely falling into a routine and schedule, especially at night. We get her ready for bed and then read her a story before laying her down around 9:00. It takes her a while to fall asleep, she just kind of squirms for a while, but she's getting better and more used to going to bed at that hour. For a while, she would want to eat until around 11:00, but now that she's a bit older she can go longer and is more satisfied after each feeding, so it's becoming easier to let her be independent for longer periods of time.

She is getting much better about staring at things! The mobile above her swing is finally interesting; I caught her staring at it for a long time yesterday! It has a concave mirror and stuffed birds around it, which she finds almost as fascinating at her own hands. ;)

Well, it's time to do what cleaning I can while Ariana is napping! :)