8 weeks old!

So it turns out I rather like this little 8 week old. She has become, overnight almost, a pretty charming creature. We've had smiles for a few weeks now, sure. But this week-- these smiles are the real deal! The moon-eyed, face lighting, you-are-my-whole-world-mom real deal. And the cooing! "Ha- oooh..." is the new vocabulary word of the day, added to "ah" and "ohhhh!" and "eh-HEH!" (the best I can do to spell her little breath-catch laugh. When life is really good, the smiles, the coos, the laughs and the kicking all come together to make for one very adorable and engaging girl...

From 2010-07-04 July 2010 4th of July

And then there's this baby...

From july2010

Yes, there's definitely a bit of a family resemblance. :)

Lest you think we have given birth to the same child twice, here a couple of examples from today which should illustrate that Ivy is, in fact, a very different baby.

1. She loves her bath. Loves it. Today after she smiled her way through hair washing and body scrubbing, she continued to laugh, coo and wiggle in the tepid and rather dirty water for a good 5 minutes. Her brother at this age, by contrast, was a human thermometer who would tolerate a bath only as long as the temperature was maintained at precisely 99 degrees, and shrieking to let us know if that changed.

2. Last night, this 8 week old slept for 9 hours without waking. Yes, 9 hours. Not a typo. (OK, so it was 9 hours in the swing,not in a crib, but I am still counting it.)

I am tempted to look back through Jack's blog to find the exact date at which the little non-sleeper his that milestone. You can be assured it was not at 8 weeks. Perhaps 8 months.

I know better than to expect that Ivy will continue this sort of sleep on a regular basis. But I am giddy with the possibility...