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Apparently babies have growth spurts. And from what I can tell, they happen at day 4-7, again at 3 weeks, and then again at 6 weeks, 3 months, 6 months and 9 months. Alice has hit a 3 week growth spurt… with a vengeance! No more of this casual eating every 3 hours. Every 1.5 – 2 hours, she is hungry. And when hungry, she REALLY lets us know! We are about 3 days into her feeding frenzy and apparently it can last from 2 – 7 days. I took this picture because it is such a delightful scene: formula that’s ready for her to drink.

Ahh.... a fridge ready for a hungry baby!

The opposite of this what seems like only a few hours later. OK, more than a few hours, but much less than a day! That’s when we don’t have formula ready to go for her, and it’s most likely going to be in the morning after exhausting every bottle we’ve made over night. So far it’s only happened once where we had to result to a bottle of ready-made we had left over from the hospital, but we needed it FAST!

There’s not too much to making formula, but it takes planning and time. You boil water, sterilize bottles and nipples, let the water cool, measure water & formula, mix, and refrigerate. But from when you first start to having a bottle ready, is probably about 2 hours…. you don’t want to burn yourself making the formula, and you definitely can’t feed boiling formula to Alice!

And from the fridge, it’s another few minutes in the bottle warmer. No biggie… just a few minutes, right? Unless you’ve got a screaming baby who’s just decided feeding time started 15 minutes ago and you’re late! Small price to pay, but worth documenting so when I look back at the sleep-starved first few weeks, I can remember all the formula I made, a couple times a day. And you can’t get ahead of yourself… it’s got a shelf life of 24 hours once you mix it. And once served to Alice, that specific bottle and its contents are good for only 2 hours, max. Just another one of those things you don’t see yourself doing until you’re doing it. I’m sure this is barely just the tip of the iceberg of things I never really anticipated doing….  🙂 It’s OK for all you parents to be snickering at me… you probably shared similar experiences one way or another!

My post wasn’t all about making formula all the time. I also wanted to post a few random pics taken over the past couple days. 2 are from a couple hours ago when the 3 of us had our first family outing… a BBQ on a beach hosted by some friends of ours: Thanks Jana & Tomas!

The other 2 are a shot of Kim holding Alice in our kitchen, and the other is Alice’s view above her crip with Winnie the Pooh decals and a mobile Aunty Laura made for her.

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