Around 6 weeks we hit a bit of a wall. Josh felt like he wasn't handling the adjustment to a family of four well, even though I felt like things were going much better than we had anticipated. Up until 6 weeks, Rachel had been fairly chill, but then she started getting fussy. Now, two and a half weeks later, she seems to be mellowing back out a little, but the second month has definitely been harder. (Laura was like that too, although her fussy period started at about week four and lasted much longer.) Laura has also been more difficult the past few weeks, as well. Maybe she is just acting out because she senses everyone is a little more on edge, but she has been pulling out all the stops lately. The worst part is, she knows exactly what makes me the most mad the fastest - clever little monkey, she is. One of them is her chanting in an impossibly annoying manner, "Baby Rachel, wake up!" while Rachel is sleeping. I know she is just doing this to get (negative) attention from me, but it really takes all of my control not to pummel her when she does this. Luckily, this particular behaviour seems to be on the downswing now. She has now taken to poking her in the eye or pulling her hair. Sigh.
On a happier note, as of week six, Rachel has also started smiling at people. It's pretty cute - if you smile at her, she'll smile back. Or randomly at the fence. She is also cooing and gurgling a lot more now, too, which is also pretty cute. She has outgrown all her newborn clothes, so this past weekend I went through her dresser and re-organized everything, putting away all the too small items. She is still in the newborn cloth diapers, as they are supposed to go to 12 pounds, but I suspect she will be out of those shortly, too. She was 9 pounds 12 ounces at her 8 week check-up last week and 21.5 inches long. She had her first needles, then, too, which she didn't like too much. When we got home in the afternoon she was inconsolable for a while so I caved and gave her some Tempra, which seemed to help. I may or may not have cried from putting her through that. Poor little thing.
We have also officially moved Rachel out of our room this past week. All of her clothes and laundry and changing station, et cetera that we had in our room are now in the nursery. We've been trying to transition her to sleeping in there, too. She sleeps in there in her cradle from about 10pm until 2am, and when she wakes up to feed, I bring her back into our room so I can nurse her in bed. She stays with us after that and usually wakes up again at about 5:30am. Sometimes she stays awake then for about an hour, but will eventually go back to sleep, and luckily for me, Laura doesn't usually wake up until after 8am, so I usually get to go back to sleep, too. We are planning to get Rachel a mattress for her crib this week because there isn't really enough room in the nursery for the crib and the cradle.
Oh, and she has also started trying to suck her... fist. Or thumb, or something. It's not really working very well for her right now, so we'll see if anything pans out. I remember Laura went through something similar, but it never caught on. She is also starting to look less like Laura, I think. The first 7 weeks or so, I was considering having them genetically tested for being twins, but lately Rachel's face has started taking on it's own shape. There are some other subtle differences too, that are beginning to make themselves more pronounced.
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