Young Baby Young

1.  Put things in mouth.

1½.  Eat.

2.  Smile.

2½.  Eat.

2¾.  Eat more.

3.  Sleep.

3½.  Eat.

4.  Put more things in mouth.

4¼.  Think about eating.

4½.  Eat.

5.  Sleep.

5¼.  Dream about eating.

…Naked Baby!

A brisk sunny day in the sleepy town of Blue Hill.  Birds herald the arrival of Spring.  In the library, children and their caregivers convene for the weekly playgroup.  The noise level is modest and toys are scattered across the floor.

<Enter Emily and Lucie, magically flown in by the protective arms of their mothers>

Lucie:  Hi, Emily.  Do you like my quilt?  You can drool on it with me if you want!

Emily:  Okay!

<awkward silence>

Lucie:  Soooo, do you come here often?

Emily:  Yup.  I’ve been coming ever since I was little.

Lucie:  Me too!  Do you want to hold hands?

Emily:  Okay!  <contented silence>  What should we do next?

Lucie:  Let’s dance!  I’m going to slow dance by myself–

Emily:  –and I’m going to do an Irish jig!

<dancing continues for 8 seconds, then the girls lose interest>

Lucie: Can I touch your mullet?

Emily:  Of course.  “Business in front, party in the back!”  <pause>  Umm, Lucie?

Lucie:  Yeah?

Emily:  Does my outfit make my head look round?  My mother made me wear it.

Lucie:  No!  It’s no more so than usual.

Emily:  Sweet.

<awkward silence>

Lucie:  Do you want to smell my feet?

<enter Lucie’s mother, swiftly, removing Lucie’s feet from Emily’s face>

The End.

We’ve taught Emily the importance of befriending people you see regularly.  She’s still pretty little, so sometimes “people” aren’t actually people in her world.  Sometimes people can be the handle of your car seat and the green frog attached to it, for example. 

I’m sorry, I’m sorry — it was a busy week here and we have not done an entry.  It’s poor form and I apologize.

I might be going crazy, but it’s possible that Emily is teething.  She’ll be three months old on Sunday.  Teeth already?!  The books say it can happen, although normally teething happens around the 7th month.  Emily’s 5-month-old friend Lucie at playgroup has some teeth; it wouldn’t surprise me if Emily were jealous and trying to catch up….  She keeps shoving things into her mouth (which isn’t very easy to do when you have the coordination of a ragdoll) and I think I feel some fangs under the gums.  Then again, maybe she just likes to put things in her mouth.  We shall see. 

Emily has done very well in the past week to adapt to a crazy schedule.  When Chris went to camp with the boys, I realized that I’m relying on him to entertain me and define my days.  That’s not really fair, so I needed to make an effort to have my own activities.  Hence, we scheduled some dates with friends and rejoined the Y.  Oh, joyous day!  It was so great to be back.  There were many familiar faces, and “feeling the burn” was much needed.  According to the scale, I’ve lost all of my pregnancy weight, but I know it’s a lie.  Nothing is as it used to be.  There’s a lot more jiggle and sag than there was in March 2008.  Returning to the Y will be an excellent thing.

What does Emily do while I’m at the Y?  She hangs out with Sheila in the babysitting room.  There are toys and other kids to play with.  If Emily is inconsolable for some reason, Sheila comes and gets me and we head back home.  It’s ideal.

I’ve learned that the REAL workout has nothing to do with the elliptical machine or the bench press – the exercise comes from me lugging 73 pounds of stuff out to the car, then into the Y, then back to the car, and finally back into the house.  Car seat, diaper bag, extra clothes, (teething rings?), gym shoes, shower stuff — need I go on?

Mom is still in the hospital, so we’ve spent a lot of time visiting her there.  Her hip is healing well according to the nurses we’ve spoken with.  Emily continues to help Mom make friends by being the cutest baby in the vicinity.  Sometimes, though, she’s not so cute.  We had an unfortunate incident last week when we were in Ellsworth visiting Mom.  Miss Emily decided to fill her diaper.  That, in and of itself, is certainly not unusual, but some fillings are more impressive than others.  This one was particularly top-notch.  We were in the car, in the hospital parking lot, and I was grateful that it was not -10° out because she was so filthy that I was forced to open the back of the SUV to get enough room to clean her.  Much to her future chagrin, I took pictures of the incident:

These are catalogued in my brain so that in the future, when she does something terrible, I can remind her about all I’ve done for her.  The first such item in the catalogue is that I had to give birth during a blizzard and dig out the car before going to the hospital. 

After an impressive diaper filling like the above, I’m thankful that she’s starting to enjoy her baths, and that the house is no longer so cold that I worry about her getting chilled.  She now takes a bath every few days, and sometimes more often if we have, err, accidents.

Please note the fat — and totally perfect — Michelin tire baby arm rolls.

Sometimes, Emily lets us know when enough is enough.  Like right now, she’s sound asleep in her carseat.  She slept through an entire visit to Grammy Ann in the hospital (much to Grammy Ann’s displeasure) and she’s still asleep now, even though she was scheduled to eat almost an hour ago.  Or on Wednesday, we were getting ready for playgroup and I set her on the bed while I used the bathroom.  I came back in about 1 minute later and she was sound asleep.  “Huh.  No playgroup for you, I guess.”  She wasn’t nearly as disappointed as I was!

The birds are demanding I put their pictures on the blog, right here, right now.  I cannot argue.

I guess there’s not too much else to report.  She saw her boyfriend Jasper and his mother Michele on Thursday (he’s only 9 weeks old — we’ve got a cougar on our hands!), plus we had excellent lunch dates with Suzanne and Christina.  Spring has arrived in Blue Hill and everyone is happy about this.  It’s still really cold out, but the sun is shining and the snow is melting (albeit slowly).

Yesterday, Chris and I were walking out of the hospital cafeteria with Emily and I was trying to keep her from fussing.  In front of us was a crotchety 85-year-old man ambling down the hallway.  I was talking to Emily as we bounced along and sympathetically said, “I know, I know, your life is so difficult!”  The old man, without missing a beat, said from 25 feet in front of us, “It only gets worse from here!” and off he went, leaving me chuckling in the dust.

Why were they in the hospital, you ask?  Excellent question.  Mom slipped on the ice and broke her hip on Friday, then had hip replacement surgery on Saturday.  Surgery went very well and she appears to be recovery nicely so far.  Emily has been in to visit each day and has made many friends amongst the nursing staff.

The birds appreciate that so many of you are concerned about their lack of attention.  Believe me, they’ve been complaining.  An upcoming entry will be entirely devoted to them.  They’ve already posed for some excellent photographs.

Brief update: Emily is recovering well from her shots.  In the past week, we’ve seen some big leaps in her motor skills.  She now focuses on an object and tries very hard to coordinate her body parts to make said object land in her sticky little mitts.  Sometimes it works; more often, it does not.  When she tries, her entire body is engaged.  Her frog legs kick non-stop, her arms flail, her mouth forms a shape of serious concentration, and she vocalizes in what can only be deemed a come-hither sort of way.  She’s awake for much longer stretches now and is able to amuse herself for 10-15 minutes.  And she’s almost always in a good mood. 

Yesterday was one of her favorite days: playgroup day at the library!  She gets to see her 5-month-old friend Lucie, and she usually gets to see her 1-year-old friend Julia, plus all of the other regulars.  It’s wonderful to see how alert she is doing playgroup — kids love to look at other kids.  She can’t *do* anything at playgroup yet, but her mind is actively engaged while we’re there.  There is usually some older child (like a 2-year-old) who will come over and pat her head, touch her face, or look at her hands.

Things are starting to startle her now.  For example, she was happily nursing this morning when Natalie wandered into the room.  I said hello to Natalie and it surprised Emily.  First she startled, then her face slowly squinched up, a gynormous pout formed, and the tears finally flowed freely (for approximately 8 seconds).  Luckily, we all recover quickly from such disturbances and the day continues with no lasting damage.

Yesterday was a tragic day in the world of Emily: she had to have a round of shots injected at the doctor’s office.  The guilt is still weighing on my conscience.  She had woken up in a good mood and she was all smiles for everyone.  She had her weigh-in (a hefty 12 lb 5 oz, making her larger than 75% of her peers) and all was well with her check-up.  Then the nurses came in to administer the shots.  She was still smiles…until the first shot.  Her little face turned beet red and her indignation was palpable.  Her mouth opened, as if to scream in outrage, and nothing came out.  Her tongue curled up and finally, finally, she let out her wails of displeasure.  Big tears spilled over her long eyelashes and I felt like Judas.  Thankfully, she calmed back down pretty quickly and she spent the next few hours in a deep nap.  Since then, she seems to be doing pretty well and I appear to have been forgiven.

The doctor gave her a gift at this visit of the book “Little White Duck”.  I couldn’t figure out if that was a personal gift from the doc or a gift that the hospital, or the state of Maine, gives to every child at their 2-month check-up.  I was looking at the book yesterday and I must say, my own face went beet red and my tongue curled with indignation.  Listen to the “chorus” that repeats throughout the book:

There’s a little white duck sitting in the water,

A little white duck doing what he oughter.

“Oughter”?  How am I going to explain to my child that her beloved white duck book uses a totally fictitious word?  Hmmph!

Emily is growing so fast and it’s been incredible to watch the changes.  With each passing day, we enjoy her more and more.  My favorite time with her continues to be after her late-night feedings when she’s all warm and tired.  I hold her until she falls back to sleep.  I love to feel the weight of her body against mine, to hear the sound of her breath in the stillness of night, to snuggle my cheek against her soft bald head, to feel her trusting fingers unclench as she relaxes. 

Life is good.

In the mail last week, Emily received a most wonderful thing: the purple hat.  Auntie Carrie had them crochetin’ needles workin’ again and she made the funniest hat I’ve seen yet.  I’ll let the photos speak for themselves:

In other baby news, Emily is starting to develop some exceptional motor skills.  (She’ll be driving Chris’s car in no time!)  When you dangle a toy in front of her, she tries to grasp it.  (Actually, it’s more like if the toy happens to land near her hand, she wraps her fingers around it.)  Still, it’s very exciting!  She favors the black and white toys over the colored ones.  And she LOVES her playmats:

Speaking of Chris’s car….  For his birthday, I got him a card and yellow cake with chocolate frosting.  For himself, he got a new car.  As you do.  The Toyota was reaching an advanced age and Chris has been saying for ages that he wants AWD.  The funny thing is that we’ve now ended up with his and hers dark red Fords with gray interiors:

We live in a small enough town that things like a new car get noticed.  Our snowplow guy mentioned to Jane, who’s currently in Florida, that we had a new car before she heard it from us!  Jane assured him that his eyes were playing tricks on him — my car is the red one he must have seen.  Little did she know!  Coincidentally, snowplow guy also knew about Emily’s birth before the rest of the world because he happened to notice that the SUV was missing from the driveway at an obscene hour of the morning.   Ahhh, the joys of small town living!

Chris took his new car to Camp with the Boys this weekend (hence all of the dirt on it) and I was left to fend for myself for two nights.  Two dogs and a baby made for a difficult weekend — more so than I had anticipated.  It seemed like someone was always needing to eat or go to the bathroom.  And at night, as soon as one “person” stirred, everyone was up and requiring immediate attention.  I was never so happy to see Chris come home as I was today.

Luckily for me, I have wonderful people around who are eager to lend a hand.  Grammy Ann was here on Friday, paying attention to Emily while I regained some sanity under the shower head, and Grandma Mary Ann was here on Saturday to provide similar relief.  (Grandma Jane was enjoying the Florida sun, and Grandma Charlene was about 3000 miles away in Washington, but I bet they would have been happy to help out, too, if I had asked!)  Grandma Mary Ann displayed her patented baby-holding moves last weekend and we’ve decided that whenever we need a human swing to entertain Emily, Mary Ann will be the first person we call! 

Let’s give a little shout-out to Baby Daddy Chris as he enjoys his birthday today.  Coincidentally, Auntie Tracy is also celebrating a birthday today.  Let there be cake!

Emily is now 10 weeks old.  We didn’t want to say anything earlier, lest we jinx ourselves, but we noticed a huge difference after she passed the 8-week mark.  Suddenly, she was sleeping longer and interacting more.  When she started throwing those smiles, we were hooked.  And when I had my first night’s sleep where I only woke one time in the night, I was like a new woman.  In fact, the cashiers in the grocery store have started carding me again — apparently, I look so fabulous one could easily mistake me for a 20-year-old.  My vanity appreciates this.  So, the Emmycakes is no longer on probation: we’ve decided to keep her. 

In the video below, Milk-Fed (as Auntie Caroline calls her) learns that she is all-powerful.  Kicking her feet makes toys move.  She enjoys this very much, and in fact gives herself the hiccups in the process. 

And in this clip, Little E talks to Big E about important things.  I’m sorry if you don’t speak in tongues and thus cannot understand our conversation.  I’m sure you’ll be able to interpret her body language, though — she knows how to work those eyebrows.