Smiles and neat gifts

I love very much being a mom, but I had no idea know how much time a newborn baby really needs from you.  I am either feeding her, putting her to sleep, changing her diaper or just holding her every hour.  But, I say it as a realization and not as a complaint, because it is wonderful spending this time during my maternity leave with her!  As tired as I am from the constant feedings and chantings every part of the day, I love being with her and seeing her grow, and I will definitely miss all of this mother-daughter time when I go back to work full-time in October. 

Below are some smiles that I caught with my iPhone camera.  I read that babies don't do "social smiles," or smiles that are in response to outside stimuli, until 2-3 months, but I swear she does a lot of grinning during the few hours of the day that she is awake!

David and I were very fortunate to receive some great gifts from family and friends at our various showers this year.  We received a few recent ones following Reagan's birth, which included some generous gift cards from his aunts, uncles and cousins in the Midwest.  

We also got a few unique gifts in the last week that I thought were wonderful to introduce to Reagan as she gets older:

My Aunt Marg, a dental hygienist, and Uncle Dave sent us a baby tooth book and baby toothbrush for Reagan when she gets those first pearly whites!  They also sent an adorable baby dress, which is currently in the washing machine, along with a bunch of other laundry that I need to do this weekend...

David's former babysitter and good family friend, Ginny, and her husband, Grant, also sent us an adorable baby dress, which is also in the washing machine, and two terrific books.  One is the "P is for Putt" golf alphabet book.  Blair and Al Clark already gave us an A-to-Z book with ice hockey vocabulary from the baby shower in May, so I'm excited for us to read both books to Reagan because I'm going to teach her the alphabet in English, French and Spanish, too. Both books will help Reagan to do a lot of practice with the alphabets in all three languages! :)

Ginny and Grant also sent us the Latin version of "The Cat in the Hat" because Ginny was a student in David's dad's Latin class at Culver and wanted to pass on her love for Latin and memories from being in Mr. Haase's Latin class.  I think that I would be awful at the pronunciation of the Latin words, so I'll let David read this book to both Reagan and me during our story time.

Finally, David's mom sent us the cutest onesie from the Culver Academies' uniform shop.  It has the Culver mascot, the eagle, on the front.  Reagan has some more growing to do before she can fit into it, but she will wear her daddy's school colors proudly when she beefs up!