Milestone: Baby Champuru is two weeks old and her umbilical cord stump fell off today.

Hubby was the designated piko cleaner, so as he was swabbing it with a Q-tip dipped in alcohol this morning, it came loose and fell off. Hubby, already knowing the answer, jokingly asked, “did you want to keep it?”

“Um, no, thanks,” I said. There are people I know who have saved their baby’s umbilical cord stump as a keepsake. Quite frankly, I think that’s a little gross. I mean, what do you do with it? You can’t exactly press it into a scrapbook. It does seem a little anticlimactic, but stump ended up in the trash can.

I can’t believe two weeks have already passed since her birth.

As I’m writing this, it’s 6 pm. I was only able to put baby down for a nap about 20 minutes ago after countless attempts to get her to sleep all day. After trying everything to calm her, I finally resorted to swaddling her and she immediately settled down and fell asleep. Normally, she would fall back to sleep after feedings and sleep for 3-4 hours during the day. Sometimes I even have to wake her up for feedings because she’s sleeping so fitfully. But, not today. She was wide-eyed and alert all day — throwing crying fits off and on. It’s uncanny, but this started no more than two minutes after Hubby and I were discussing how she seemed to be less fussy last night. Normally, she is a nocturnal creature — turning on her tantrums between 1 – 3 am and continuing sometimes off and on until 4 or 5 am. But today, oh today, it was all day. ALL DAY. I really hope that this is an indication of a “shift change” of sorts and that she will start sleeping for longer stretches during the evening and staying awake during the day. One can hope, right?