Stella One Month

A little about Stella and her first month of life...

When she's falling asleep, she'll keep one eye open as long as she can, watching you. It's always her left eye and no matter how heavy the eyelid gets, she forces it open as long as possible. We lovingly refer to it as her "pirate eye."

When she's upset, there are 3 things that calm her fairly quickly. 1) She loves to swing side to side. 2) She also enjoys the binky quite a bit, she's still not great at figuring it out though because she also loves to stick her tongue out when she's content - a vicious cycle e. We have to hold it in her mouth for her for a few minutes before she really gets it. And Mike always laughs at how she can cry and suck on her binky at the same time. 3) And the final trick is the rocking chair. She crashes immediately after she hears the first creak from the chair.

She loves to spit up and throw up on mom and pees and poops on dad. Every time. :)

She loves bath time and always has the most content and happy look on her face while soaking in the tub and being scrubbed clean.

She enjoys her tummy time, especially when she's getting a back massage.

She's a great sleeper - goes to bed at 10pm and only wakes up around 2am and 6am. Once she eats, she has no problem going back to sleep immediately. We really are so lucky.

She's a good eater. She eats every 3 hours for about 20 minutes (except at night where she goes 4 and sometimes 5 hours between meals)

Morris has been amazing with Stella. Of course, he's never alone with her, but when he's with her he loves to give her kisses and lay with her. He licks her arms, hands and face all of the time. And he fans her with his huge feather-duster tail (which she loves to grab with her little hands.)

Mike and I are adjusting to parenthood well. We basically just love it and dote on her nonstop. She is so much fun, and we're just trying to soak it all up. Because as you all know, time flies.

** It's easier to click through each page vs. the slideshow because it goes pretty fast.

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A week of firsts...

Well, it's been a lot of firsts for Stella this week... first day at the beach, first golf outing, first time playing guitar, first time eating from a bottle...etc. She is growing so quickly, it's amazing. She's finally fitting into her 0-3 month clothing and is just now squeezing out of her newborn clothes. It's amazing how different she looks already. You'll notice she's chubbed up a bit and her hair has gotten longer and blonder. We're just trying to soak up every minute of it and enjoy her in each phase, because as they say... it goes so fast. I can't believe she's already almost 1 month old.

It's hard to stay put now that Stella is nearing 4 weeks old. I just can't stay in, so we walk a lot. I love being in the city for this reason. I can just quickly put her in the stroller and we walk around the city for an hour or so every day. She enjoys the walks, especially in our neighborhood - Old City. The sidewalks are so bumpy and there's a lot of brick and cobblestone to keep her happy.

Mike's company had another round of layoffs last week - this time it was big. They cut about 60% of the employees. Although Mike was confident in his position, it was still stressful and scary. Thankfully, Mike made it through again (this has been the 4th round of layoffs at his company since October.) We are so grateful for everything we have and are thrilled that Mike still has a job and a job that he enjoys just makes it that much better. We are also so thankful for family and friends. It's been so nice having family here to visit over the past 4 weeks. I don't know what we would have done without you - Stella is one lucky little girl. And now, Grandpa Vic comes next week and we just can't wait!

Here are some new pictures (remember you can click on them to make them bigger.)

Our new favorite photo... (taken last night)


Just hanging out.

Bath Time!



Walking along the river.



Watching the British Open with daddy, which inspired us to do some golfing of our own.



At the Driving Range - Stella's first golf outing.

My last campaign before my maternity leave was a campaign for Philadelphia Tourism. We developed a large campaign encouraging visitors to come and visit Philadelphia. My client had a special onesie with the campaign logo made for Stella as a gift before I left. Here are the pictures I took to send to my team who worked on the campaign with me and my client.

At the beach. With my sister in town, we decided to take Stella to the beach and loved it so much, we went 2 days in a row. The first day we went to Ocean City, NJ (about an hour from Philly) and the second day we met up with CJ and his family at Point Pleasant Beach, NJ (about 1.5 hours from Philly).

Daddy feeding Stella her first bottle. She took it like a champ.

Morris has been so amazing with Stella. He pretty much just ignores her, but he gives her a lot of kisses too. And her favorite thing is when he fans her with his tail. She loves it!

This time we thought we'd throw in a couple of videos too...

Music Time

Dancing

Kayley Comes to Town...

So, this past weekend was our first time alone as new parents. We had a great weekend- Stella met some of our friends, we went on walks, went out to eat where we could sit outside with Stella...etc. It was so much fun.

Cookie bouquet from Mike's Boss - it is so cute I don't want to eat it, although I broke down and ate one and it was delicious.

Daddy's little girl.




Walking Morris and Stella in our neighborhood.

Our friends Meghann and Bryan came to meet Stella.

One of Stella's favorite things, supervised tummy time. (In a cute outfit from her Aunt Audrey!)


Dad and Stella rockin' the sling.

I just can't get enough of her.

My sister Kayley flew in on Monday and it's been soooo much fun having her here. She's already been amazingly helpful - she has made lunch and dinner for us (and taught me how to make the dishes while doing it), she deep cleaned the house for us (literally on her hands and knees scrubbing the floors), helped take care of Stella...etc. She's been awesome and it's just so much fun to have my sister with me 24/7. Tomorrow and Friday we're heading to the beach... can't wait!

Lessons from my sister - an amazing mother of 3.

Aunt Kayley and Stella Time...

On our daily evening walk through Old City...

Stella's First Photo Shoot

We bought a new camera before Stella was born and have definitely got our money's worth. We love it! I think we have literally taken thousands of pictures in the last week. We are trying to learn how to really use the camera and so we attempted our own newborn photo shoot since we don't have any of our favorite photographers here to shoot Stella. We were really surprised and happy at how well they turned out for us amateurs. (Of course it came with a few poops and a pee while naked- ruining our set :))

Week One with Baby Stella

Wow - Stella's first week has gone by in a flash. I'm so sad that as I'm writing this, she's already 10 days old! Now I understand what my parents meant when they said how quickly the time flies with kids.

This week was a big week for Stella. She met her Grandma and Grandpa Baltz, her uncle CJ and Aunt Kari and 2 cousins. Once they left, she had a whole new group of family members to meet. Grandma Sheridan and Aunt Audrey and Uncle Dave flew out from SLC and Minneapolis to meet her and we had an amazing time with them. We are so lucky to have such incredible families that have flown out here to meet Stella and show their support. Stella is one loved baby - lucky girl!

Below are some pictures of her first week and our visitors...

Thanks again mom, dad, CJ, Sheridan, Dave and Aud for coming out, we enjoyed every second of it and can't wait until we all get to see each other again!

We are such proud parents. We are so happy and so, so thankful for little Stella. We already can't imagine our lives without her.

Thanks to everyone for all of the beautiful flowers that were in our hospital room and for the ones sent to us at home.

The Baltz's come visit.

Uncle CJ

Cousins Hannah and Haydin.

Hannah calls Stella to talk to her now, it's soooo cute. She just talks "Hi Stella, How are you doing? What's going on today? Well I'm just..." and so on and so on. I love it!

Me and Stella

Grandma Baltz - snuggle time!

Extreme close up.

Stella's First Bath. She was not a big fan.

Can you tell, we have no idea what we are doing? She's a slippery little sucker when she gets all wet.

She loves having her back rubbed, even if it is in the bath.

She was so happy to have that out of her way.

All clean :)

Mike's mom and sister and her husband came to visit and meet Stella (and it looks like she'll be meeting Grandpa Day at the end of this month - yay!!!)

Mike, Audrey and Stella

I love her face in this photo. There it is again, she LOVES backrubs.

Stella meets Grandma Sheridan.




Stella meets Aunt Audrey and Uncle Dave








4th of July - 6 days old.

Our first outing, all dressed and ready to go.

We love holding her and just staring at her.

It's so amazing that she is finally here right in front of us.

Love her!

Mike, Grandma Sheridan and Stella getting ready to hit the festivities.

Stella really liked her stroller. She LOVES the cobblestone and all of the horribly bumpy sidewalks in Old City.

Of course, we had to try out all of our gear in the 2 hours we were gone. Stella got hungry and had to eat, she pooped and Mike went to change her diaper and she pooped again, all over him (She loves to do that to him - she's pooped or peed on Mike at least 10 times while he's changing her, it's hilarious.)

Look at how funny we all look. Dave eating and staying in the shade, Audrey sunbathing, me trying to feed Stella and Sheridan trying to help any way she can.




Our second outing, a walk around Rittenhouse Park.

Mike admiring Stella, he's such a good dad.