Mornings With Phoenix

My mornings lately consist of listening to classical music, nursing, cuddling, and playing with sweet baby Phoenix. She is an early riser on most mornings. No matter how exhausted I might be these mornings with her are my favorite. It's a sweet time for just the two of us. A time to bond and relax.

Randall is usually still asleep at this time. We let him rest as he comes home from work somewhat late in the evenings. I am so grateful that he is a huge supporter of me staying home with our daughter. He provides for our family and I am so thankful for being able to be at home with my little one.

When Phoenix  wakes up in the morning I greet her with love and affection. I talk to her and give her a good hug and a few kisses. Then it's getting her a new diaper and I put on some classical music usually it is Mozart, or I will put on Rockabye Baby and let the songs play on shuffle. Rockabye Baby has songs that are lullaby renditions of other artists. We have been playing music for Phoenix  every morning since she was born, so this is really a huge part of our routine. She loves listening to music and we play it at other times throughout the day. And when it's  time for bed we again play some music that we use just at sleep times.

After nursing, its all about cuddles and play time. We listen to music, I sing songs to her and play with a few simple toys with her. I'm  pretty much entertaining her and being silly which she seems to love. She is all smiles in the morning and likes to make cooing sounds and "talk" to me. It's so cute! She is so alert and is learning to grab onto things. She has some tummy time in the morning and she is so wiggly, it looks like she is trying to scoot and she can lift her head up really high. I'm so proud of my sweet girl.

The past few days we have been trying to get Phoenix on a little schedule. Knowing she is still quite young for this we just have a rough outline of naps and feeding times.

We based the schedule around her most natural wake and sleep times. She usually starts to wake up around 7:00 in the morning and since she was just a few weeks old she naturally started to always get sleepy for the night around 9:00 at night. We scheduled in ideal nap times for the day time and for the most part, correlate to her feeding times.

Phoenix usually eats every 3 hours and sometimes sooner than night. I do technically feed her on demand as sometimes she just wants a snack or she wants to comfort nurse. I find that 3 hours is the perfect amount of time for my breasts to replenish milk supply for a full feeding.

During our mornings together, Phoenix stays awake for about an hour and half to two hours and then goes down for her first morning nap which can last anywhere up to 3 to 4 hours. I will wake her up by that 4th hour if she ends up sleeping that long so that she can eat. After that point it's the afternoon and she will be awake for a few hours until her next nap.

I love my mornings with my little girl. Seeing her smile when I wake up is the best start to my whole day!