8 weeks!!

It is so hard to believe our little baby is 8 weeks already!! and sometimes it feels like she has never not been a part of our family. We have been truly blessed with a beautiful baby. She has a great temperament and doesn't cry too much. In the past 2 week she has started really smiling, giving me her biggest smile when I get her out of her crib in the morning. Oh, yes, she is now out of her moses basket and sleeping in her crib. She looks so small in that big crib! She has started cooing and giggling. We can carry on whole conversations that consist of "gooooo, gaaaahh, oooh, ewwww", it's pretty sweet.  As if my English hasn't gotten bad enough living in a foreign country, now I speak baby talk half the day. . . Anyways, she has been sleeping through the night for over a week now. She usually goes to bed between 9:30 and 10:30 and sleeps anywhere from 6-8am. Then gets up to feed and goes back to sleep for another 2-3 hours. It's pretty sweet, I'm not gonna lie. Now if I can just get used to all her noises at night, I might get a peaceful night's sleep myself!:)

We've decided to stop breastfeeding, as much as it pains me. The last week or so, she has stopped drinking from me and will scream bloody murder anytime I try to even get her close. I think she has maybe gotten used to the bottle, I don't really know. So we decided since I'm only producing barely an ounce anyways, it's not worth the fight each time. It's a hard decision but nothing went right from the beginning in that area. Hopefully with the next baby things will be different. I'm just glad I got to feed her for the 2 months I did. It's such a special time.

Ellie was supposed to have her first round of vaccinations on Monday. We wanted to go an alternative route and have our general practioner administer them. In the Netherlands, they have a clinic called the Consulatatie Bureau, who does all the preventive medicine for children up to the age of 4. So she goes monthly to be weighed, measured, head circumference, hip checks, etc. They are also the ones who typically vaccinate the children. However, after much research, we decided that the Hepatitis B vaccine was unnecessary for Ellie at this point. Maybe something to look at later  (especially since schools in the US require it, but we'll fight that fight when it's time) but right now we felt it was best for her not to receive something that just seems extraneous.  So because of this, she couldn't receive her vaccinations at the CB, because they have it mixed in with the other vaccinations in one shot. So we went through craziness to figure out how to have it done some place else and long story short, our huisarts said she would do it, we just had to pay for it. But when I went to the pharmacy to pick up the vaccinations to take with me to her doctor's appointment, they didn't have it and said something was wrong with the vaccine and they weren't sure when they'd get it in. Dan and I were both on the fence anyways about giving her so many vaccines so early, we both just felt a little uneasy. So we talked more that night and continued tons of research and decided that in addition to opting out of the Hep B vaccine, we were going to do an alternate time schedule for her vaccines as well. We're not sure what that's going to look like yet but we do know it means waiting a little bit longer before starting her vaccines. After all of this decision making, wondering if we were making the right decision for our daughter, we have officially decided that parenting is hard. :)

And in final news, Ellie had her 8 week checkup today and she weighs 4640grams or 10.2lbs. She gained a pound since her 4 week check-up and only grew 1 cm! The doctor said she looks really great, alert and strong.  She'll go back again right before we leave for the States for a month.