Young Baby Young

6:03pm.  *yawn*  What a busy day!  Lemme see, I’ve eaten, napped, cried, bounced, jiggled, taken the dogs out, had my diaper changed, had it changed again (hello! I only poop in clean diapers), napped, eaten, cried, and eaten.  What next?  I’m bored.

6:09pm.  Did I mention that I’m bored?  Not tired.  Bored.  Will start fussing for entertainment.

6:11pm.  *yawn*  Yup, still bored.  Fussing is not working.

6:14pm.  Way bored.  Will cry for fun.  Not because I’m tired, mind you.  Because I’m bored.

6:21pm.  Why does she keep telling me I’m tired?  I am NOT tired.  I’m bored.  Entertain me, woman!  Whip the udder out!

6:22pm.  Ha ha, told you I wasn’t hungry – I just wanted to see how you’d react.

6:23pm.  My eyelids are getting so heavy.  But I AM NOT TIRED.  If she sings “You are my sunshine” once more, I’m going to…

6:23:37pm.  …to be very…

6:23:49pm.  …very unhappy…

6:24:03pm.   Zzz.

6:24:11pm.  *startled awake*  Oh my god, was I sleeping?!  This will not do!  Quick, pretend to be awake!  Cry, complain, hit — do whatever it takes.

6:24:15pm.  Zzzzzz.  

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

7:03pm.  *stretch*  Man, I was really tired.  Why does she keep me up so long when she knows how tired I am?  Why is she so difficult to train?

“I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date!”  I don’t have a lot of time to write, so I’ll just upload some photos of the universe according to Family Young and let you admire them.  *nodding to self*  Yes, yes, that should be sufficient for all.

Chloe enjoying a bath:

Nathan getting a much-needed nap (before the stripping of the wallpaper began):

It always makes me laugh when Emily falls asleep holding her toys.  Too cute!

Emily received a legitimate REI jacket from Team Ward.  It’s so cute!  It’s a real jacket, with reinforced stitching, pockets, zippers, etc.  I love it.

Carrie and Dave found this BabyBjorn bib for Emily.  It nearly fits around her 4 chins.  She will love storing miscellaneous bits of food in the pocket! 

Our friend Lucie outgrew these teeny shoes, so Amelia donated them to the Emily Fund.  She’s gotten many compliments already, and she claims they help her run faster.  I claim they help keep her socks on — when she lets me put them on her, that is.

This picture doesn’t capture how cute and Spring-y Emily looked in her dress and tights.  Note the booties — they were crocheted for either Tracy or me by my great-grandmother!

Emily gives a happy face to Uncle Ray as she shows her support of the MN Twins!  Go team!  Touchdown!  All net, baby!  Bend it like Beckham!  Watch out for the puck!  Homerun!  (Umm, whatever — just hand me another brewsky and the bag of Cheetos, please.)

 It’s been a looooong winter in these ‘ere pahts, but Spring is finally on its way:

This weekend’s weather was ideal for strolling.  And yes, we’re aware that we live in our own little slice of heaven.  We don’t make any money, mind you, but it’s certainly lovely:

I’m not sure what the gang symbol is all about.  The jolly face takes a little sumfin-sumfin away from her street cred if you ask me.

Grandma Jane and Kermit brought Emily a bib from St. Maarten that makes her laugh (it reads “crabby when hungry”).  She indicated that next year, she’d enjoy selecting her own…in person….

Check out the chubby legs:

It’s time to admit an ugly truth: Emily has a temper.  Currently, she loves her momma…and few others.  Grandma Jane came over last week to hang out with Emily.  What did Emily do?  Her lower lip jutted out in a big pout every time Jane picked her up and then red-faced wailing would begin.  We’d give her a few minutes to see if she’d stop crying; when she didn’t, I would come in and take her.  Emily would instantly stop crying, then she’d turn and give Jane the stink eye. 

She loves to give Chris the stink eye, too.  It’s this glaring I-told-you-so sort of face.  We were having a little success with me feeding her a bottle, so we decided to have Chris give it a shot.  He got into “the chair”, put “the pillow” on his lap, and assumed “the position” for feeding her.  I couldn’t have done it better myself.  As soon as Emily was handed off to him, she threw a fit!  We switched positions, putting me in the chair, and she immediately calmed down.  Incredible….

A nice woman that we know offered to hold Emily for a few minutes while I finished something on the computer.  I gratefully handed her off so I could have both hands free.  Emily was cool with this for about 19 seconds, then the wailing began.  She becomes more and more frantic with each second that the perceived injustice is not remedied.  Unbelievable.

In fact, tonight, Saturday night, Chris is out at the Chefs’ Gala — a big dinner and dancing fundraiser in this area — while I’m home hanging with the Emmycakes.  Her selective baby amnesia has kicked in and she no longer knows how to drink from her bottle, plus she hates everyone but me, so we just couldn’t think of anyone we disliked enough to ask them to watch her for the evening.

Oh, and while I’m telling tales about her terribleness, let me add that she peed on me today.  We were all out, running errands, and we had to do a diaper change in the car.  I said to Chris, “I really hope she doesn’t pee right now because it’ll go all over me.”  About 8 nanoseconds later, my lap felt warm.  Unbelievable!

Last Sunday, Gwen (and Sherri and Bradley) came over!  The girls hadn’t seen each other since they were three weeks old, so they were obviously keen on scoping out how the other had changed.

(Yes, they chose to hold hands on their own.)  Emily was very happy to see another baby about her size.  (She was depressed after her visits with Jasper and Dakota.)  Gwennie is doing very well.  Just like our last visit, as we all compared notes, we were amazed by how many similar milestones they’ve reached.  They’re only two days apart in age, after all.

Let’s take a quick walk down memory lane to January 2009:

And April 2009:

After Friday’s meltdown, we were worried about the rest of the weekend because Emily was scheduled to play with some of her other new friends.  She appeared to be in a good mood on Saturday, though, as she played with her toys and got all wrapped up for a walk in the stroller.

Later that day, Rachel and David brought Dakota, Emily’s backup boyfriend, over to visit.  We met him in the hospital when he was a mere three (now four) weeks old.  

He didn’t seem overly impressed by his big and beautiful woman – Emily was twice his size (literally).  We can’t believe Emily was ever that small!  Her accentuated chins and big rosy cheeks didn’t help matters….

“Looks like you’ve been seagulled.” 

“What?”

“You’ve been seagulled,” Amelia said again as she pointed at my shoulder.

Sure enough, Emily had spit up all over me and it looked exactly like I’d been hit by flying seagull guano.  “Seagulled.  I like that!”  It’s a regular enough occurence in my world.  Hopefully now that Auntie Caroline has proven her mad sewing skilz with the ladybug pillow, she’ll start making us some bibs, too.  Yeah, they’ll probably be in Floridian colors and will say things like, “I love my aunt!” or “I wish I were in Florida”, but that’s cool — we’ll take ‘em anyway!

Last Friday, we were looking forward to going to our friends’ house for dinner.  Emily was going to drool at Jasper (and vice versa, of course) and we were going to have adult conversation with Michael and Michele.  When we got there, another fun couple, Chris and Lisa, were there with their 7-month-old baby Annika.  Yeah!  Fun!  It sounded so nice.  Alas, it was not meant to be.

We arrived at 5:30pm and knew that Emily was going to be cranky because her nap was too short.  Sure enough, she woke up screaming — both tired and hungry, never a good mix.  Then, since we were in a new location with different people and smells, she was too distracted to eat.  She let Michele entertain her for a while,and Hairy No-Milk (aka Michael) was also allowed to hold her, but as soon as dinner was on the table, she figured she’d better start screaming in earnest.

Jasper was his usual chill self and had silently put himself back to sleep while hanging in his basket.  Annika batted her baby-blues, ate mushed up foods, crawled independently, and charmed everyone.  Meanwhile, Emily screamed bloody murder for what felt like an hour.  We tried everything to calm her down, but she was becoming hysterical, so we finally had to pack up our stuff and leave.

Luckily, our hosts and their guests were extremely sympathetic — they’re all new parents, too.  And I guess that if we want to look on the bright side of things, this gives us a chance to get back together with these people again soon, right?  Poor Emily…it was a meltdown of epic proportions.

We’ve waited as long as possible — it’s time to introduce our little porkchop to her first real food.  We started last night with the patented mix of breastmilk and infant rice cereal.  Emily was a star with the spoon!  She was a little hesitant at first, and she wore more than she ate, but she figured it out pretty quickly and loved to hear herself be praised!

The older mothers reading this are probably thinking, “Just starting rice cereal now?  What took you so long?!”  Not too long ago, babies were introduced to rice immediately because it was thought to help them sleep through the night.  “They” later decided that introducing it too early could lead to adult allergies, so now they tell you to wait until 4 to 6 months.  We decided to try it at four months because I’m finding it hard to keep Monkeytoes full.  Our 100th-percentile-wannabe is constantly hungry.  We’ll see if this helps!  After she masters the rice, we move on to other single grains, then mixed grains, and then the good stuff: mashed yams, mashed peas, mashed carrots, mashed bananas, mashed beets, mashed…you get the idea.

We’re feeding her Earth’s Best, a brand that is cheaper than Gerber’s [nice!], totally organic [sweet!], has added iron [two thumbs up!], and has no genetically-engineered ingredients [hurray!].  Hopefully she’ll absorb all that is good about this product and reject the bad things…like their misuse of the plural possessive!  Babies Perfect First Solid Food.  What does that mean?  Hmmph!

In fact, that reminds me of another funny thing I saw in print today.  Emily and I went to Lowe’s so I could start a little herb garden in the kitchen window.  We had the option of buying two pots for $5 or paying $2.47 apiece.  With savings like that, it’s hard to resist.  I’ll take eight!

I hate to tattle, but I received a threatening note on Facebook from my sister-in-law: “I think there need to be more pics of Emily and her favorite ladybug pillow.”  She omitted an ominous “or else” at the end, but it was implied.  Given that Caroline is like five-foot-eleventy, I decided to comply.

Stickymitts and I have a modest goal: we want to run in a 5k “fun run” on August 1st.  We’ve started walking in town and we can hardly make it for 45 minutes.  Do not underestimate how hard it is to push 20 pounds of deadweight!  I have new respect for those mothers out there pounding the pavement with their jogging strollers.

Stickymitts was a little unsure about this activity the first few times, but now she totally digs it.  Within 3 minutes of leaving the house today, she was sound asleep.  I peaked inside the stroller to find both eyes closed and some stellar phantom-nursing going on.  I get her all wrapped up in warm things, including the alpaca hat from friend Sara and the wool blanket from Mrs. Wessel, and she’s just as happy as can be in there.  The last thing she needs to complete her outdoorsy look is some sunglasses.  We’ll work on it.