Merida is 1 Month Old

I know this is a little late... or a lot late, but I am a Noob Mommy and finding extra time that isn't filled with much needed sleep is few and far between.  Merida has successfully celebrated her first big milestone: 1 month old!  We celebrated by taking more photos, of course.  We also had my Dad, her Papa, in town to celebrate too.  We all, including our precious baby girl, went to eat at the Cheesecake Factory in Orlando and had many people ooo and ahh over our baby.  We even had a few waiters and waitresses stop by just to look at her.  Must be hard to be that beautiful, huh? :)

Weight: 11 lbs according to our scale.
Height: 21 inches (we think-- hard to measure a squirmy baby)
Merida was 8.1 at birth and by the first check up (a week later) had surpassed that at 8.2.  Her last check up with the doctor was 9.6.  Merida was 20 inches long at birth and seems to get longer by the day.

Sleeping:
We are currently trying out the EASY schedule.  It's not really a schedule at this point, but more of a routine.  I'll let you know how it's going by next month.  She's too young to really be sleeping through the night, but if we're lucky, we can get her to sleep 4-5 hours a night straight.  She has to be really exhausted by that point though.  Which means that we're really exhausted by that point too.  We haven't established a bedtime yet as we're still trying to follow her lead most nights.

Refusing to go to sleep... she fights it every day.

Eating:
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to create a good milk supply.  I am pumping when I can and am able to give her at least 1-2 ounces of breast milk at each feeding.  Most of the time I supplement this with 2-3 ounces of formula at each meal.  We've been using Gentlease from Enfamil and we've seen some improvement with spitting up and gas after meals. Per meal she eats anywhere from 3-5 ounces.  5.5 being the absolute most and most of the time it's too much for her.  I think she's still learning the "full" feeling.  I am really trying to do everything I can to increase my milk production.  But I knew that having a good milk supply can be very hard for induced and also c-section women.  Hopefully it'll get easier.  Guess we'll have to see?!

Other things I want to remember:
Merida is still using newborn diapers but I can definitely see that changing very soon.  Our little girl can't fit into huggies or pampers newborn diapers anymore but can fit into the Honest Company diapers that we have stocks of so I'm happy about that.  Luckily, we have a friend or two that are expecting soon so we can give the extras to the soon-to-be-parents.
Merida is wearing mainly newborn clothing (of which we had to purchase more throughout the month).  Since we were expecting a bigger baby, we thought we would mainly skip the newborn phase, but that didn't happen.  She is starting to fit into 0-3 month clothing, but most of them are still too big for her.  Her infant socks are also being outgrown as she has inherited her Daddy's long feet.
Merida's hair has thinned out a little and is started to show red highlights.  I am assuming that's from me, but could also be an indicator of her Daddy's changing hair color.  Who knows?!  As far as her eyes are concerned we are pretty sure they are going to be brown, but now there is a light brown, almost gold ring around her irises so that's up in the air as well.  Her Meme thinks they will be a cool grey color.  Guess we'll just have to see?!

Big, beautiful eyes.

She's very skilled at holding up her head now and can pretty much lift her head 90 degrees when she wants to.  She hates tummy time on a mat, but loves laying on people's chests.  I believe that she will be an expert at crawling as soon as she can lift her weight with her hands.  Her legs are always pushing off on anything they touch.

She has started to smile voluntarily and sometimes we get one or two in a row.  We obviously have to sound like the biggest dorks in the world and make funny faces to get a smile, but it's totally worth it.  Oh!  And she has a dimple!
Besides the grunting sounds we get to hear, Merida's face turns bright red when she's making presents in her diaper for us.  She has got the "Ahh" sound down pat and uses it in a variety of pitches to make sure we understand her meaning.  She also screams bloody-murder when we take the bottle away from her to burp her.  I believe she will be a great singer someday since she can definitely hit those high notes.
Aside from lights and and windows, Merida loves her giraffe we call "Banana."  It is also a wind-up musical toy and the head moves as it's playing music.  Within the last couple of days, Merida has started "talking" to Banana while we're changing her diaper.

Merida is also very musically inclined.  We say this because if nothing else soothes her, singing or certain songs do.  In fact, we have found her two favorite songs right now are Hurricane by Mindy Smith and Call Me When Your Sober by Evanescence.  Sometimes she will calm down when I sing I Am by Jill Phillips as well.  Her Meme sings Never, Neverland to her and she likes that one too.  But because I have forgotten all the words to that song, I'll leave it for Meme.
Here are photos of her 1 month photo shoot:

Merida with her UGA Mickey given to her by Lindsay and Josh.
It's almost as big as she is! :)

Not playing xbox yet, but we're working on it.

Photo shoots are exhausting.