16 weeks

Lila is 16 weeks old today, and next Monday she'll be 4 months old. Four months! She's growing so fast.

We've been out enjoying the beautiful weather this weekend. Lila has a new toy, which has kept her busy for hours.

See how she's grabbing the toys? She's never done that before, but when she's on her back on the play mat, she laughs and grabs at all of the colorful toys dangling above her head. There's a mirror at one end of the play mat and she enjoys rolling her head back to look at herself. She's even a bit more tolerant of tummy time while she's on the mat. I think it's all of the fun colors and pretty shapes that keep her stimulated and less aware of the fact that being on her tummy is actually a form of torture (or so she'd have you believe...)

Lila is still struggling with some congestion from the cold she picked up a few weeks ago. It sucks. She has been sleeping better the past few nights, not waking up snorting and choking because of a stuffy nose as she had been for almost 2 weeks straight. I took her to the doctor on Thursday and basically the doctor said that there's not much that can be done short of waiting it out. I figured as much but wanted to play it safe in case she actually had allergies or something more serious. To me 15 days is a long time to hang on to a cold, but I guess it's not that long for a baby to have a cold. The doctor told me she could be sick for up to 4 WEEKS. The thought makes me want to cry. Four weeks of misery for our little girl, and 4 weeks of tiring days and nights for her parents. What makes matters worse is that every parent of children who are in daycare has told me that colds are par for the course, and to expect her to have a cold pretty much constantly for the first year of her life. We had dinner with our neighbors last night and they told us that it's more abnormal for a child in their son's daycare room to not have a cold than for them to have a cold. Great. Makes me love being back at work all that much more.

This working mom thing is hard. It's a lot harder than I thought it would be. When Lila was born, it was hard, but I thought almost every day that being a mom was definitely easier than what I was expecting. Then I went back to work and now, well...it's hard on a level I could have never imagined. I hate that we only get to spend a few hours a day with our baby, and I hate that her happiest and most playful hours are spent in the company of others. I miss her so much. On top of that, our house is a disaster, because when Lila is asleep for the night we have a choice between going to sleep or doing everything else that needs to get done - stuff like eating, cleaning, laundry... I hate cramming everything I value and enjoy into just a few hours each day, and I hate choosing between sleep and keeping up with the rest of life. I'm hoping that things will start to balance out a bit more once Lila gets a little older.

The sun is shining, so I'm going to sign off and join Ed and Lila for some time outside.