Developmentalooza!

The last few days have been short in events and productivity, but chock-a-block full of little baby steps.
Not literal ones, baby F. is not quite ready for that as of yet ;o)

But of course that doesn't mean that Miss F. hasn't been up to stuff.

I've slowly come to the realization that we don't have anything to fear from a coming horde of zombies bound to eat our brrrrrains!
Instead we should concentrate more of our defense funding in trying to figure out a way to stop babies from being cannibals. That's right, you heard me right.

Cannibal Babies.

How else to explain what happened last week?
Baby F. and moi were enjoying some big bed time. That's when i set up a fort - made up of a perimeter of pillows and in this particular case, my own legs - and let F. twirl her way around our bed. She can't quite manage to sit up unpropped and she can't quite crawl yet, but she's becoming a master twirler, rolling around back and forth like a maniac.

On this one occasion, she twirled her way over to my legs, which as i said, were at the time being used as part of a human fence, trying to keep baby F. from tumbling her way down to the floor...'cause she's already done that before, but from the couch. That was a great day :/

Anywho, she managed to twirl her way over to my legs...and then proceeded to latch on to one of them with her gummy jaw. As if being chewed on by an over eager, 'going-to-have-teeth-any-day-now' baby wasn't painful/weird enough, she then starts to hum as she's doing it. 'Cause apparently while attempting to eat your own Mama, you should have a song both in your heart and in your throat.

So yeah, let's do a Kickstarter on Humming Cannibal Babies and how to prevent this plague upon our race ;o)

And now a short pause for Hurrah for Genetics!

Some of you who know me IRL might know that I have all sorts of crazy sleep issues. I mean, at the moment, I mostly have 'lack-of-sleep' issues, but I am a poster child for sleeping disorders.

You know that film 'Sleepwalk with Me' that just came out? You don't? Because it's only playing in one theater? Well, it is being offered on demand, so maybe you can watch it at home. I didn't think it was that great, actually, but hey, it establishes what I'm about to discuss.

Like i was saying, you know that film 'Sleepwalk with Me'?
Well, I'm not quite that bad. I've never jumped out of a building, or wandered naked down a hall. I don't actually act out my dreams...which would be so freaking weird as most of them involve some sort of apocalyptic event. They'd be like something out of 'The Road'...except worse.

I have a weird brain.

But i have been known to talk in my sleep, either in Portuguese (my mother tongue) or in just outright nonsense. I also have night terrors, which usually involve some unknown evil force hovering in the room, from which I'll wake up screaming. Fun, fun, times for my husband.

They can be cute though. I once urgently woke up Papa-in-Training to tell him that there were some Sugar-Gliders over by our bedroom window. You know, as one does. I always remember that one because it was so specific. I mean, if you know me, you know i love squirrels (even if at present, I've wagered a small, mostly one-sided war with my resident 4th floor porch squirrel). But Sugar-Gliders? Pretty specific.

Anyway, all this is to tell you that I do crazy things in my sleep. Some even crazier than the ones mentioned above. But nothing dangerous and yes, I have done a sleep study, thanks for asking.
It was too much to ask of course that my baby would not do these same crazy things in her sleep. That her sleep would only be interrupted by marauding kitties using her bedroom as a hiding place or other such ambient noises. What, you don't have marauding kitties as ambient noises in your house? How dull ;o)

I spotted it almost from the beginning. Within days of being home, I woke up to her moaning in her sleep. I thought, 'Well, that's not good. She can't even speak yet, and is already talking in her sleep.' 

She still does that a bit, but i haven't noticed it as much.
What does she do instead?

Laughs in her sleep :D

Actually, out loud laughs.
She'll get a little smile at first and then cracks up.

Now this is the kind of sleep issue i can get behind. I try and imagine what it is that's making her laugh out loud. I like to think she's dreaming of me or Papa-in-Training playing with her and making her giggle. Of one of my funny faces. Or of us head banging, which she just adores. Who knew I'd be rocking out so much once she was born?

So yes, i have a sleeping laughing baby. Best kind of baby there is :o)

Captain Hook Jr.

So yesterday our routine was turned a little upside down in the morning.

Usually, Papa-in-Training changes and feeds baby F. her first bottle of the day, allowing me an extra hour of sleep or so. Because i always invariably end up sleeping less during the night. Either because some health issue has kept me up or the cats or the baby or who knows what else. Meanwhile PIT (Papa-in-Training) will fall asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow...and sometimes even before it. And will pretty much sleep through anything during the night, up to and including smoke alarms. So yeah, i get an extra little sleep :o)

But yesterday was different. We'd made a couple of book sales through our Amazon Seller Account and sort of, kind of, hadn't gotten around to finding the books or packing them up. So once we realized this (right before falling asleep of course), we figured out he'd look for the books in the morning and I'd feed the baby, so he wouldn't be late to work and we'd maintain our book selling reliability.

And so whilst still very groggy, i get handed a newly changed but yet to be fed hungry, hungry hippo...i mean, baby.

Then i notice a weird stain on her PJ's. A bit brownish but all the way on her chest. Hmm, couldn't be poop. Even baby poop can't quite manage to migrate to a baby's chest...i think.
Could it be blood? But where the heck would it come from? Let's check the baby.

HOLY CRAP!!!

Baby F.'s left thumb was all cut up. The sole of it was shredded. I go into 'i'm-terrified-of-blood-usually-but-i-snap-out-of-it-in-actual-emergencies'* mode and clean it up as best as possible and apply the smallest bandage i have...

And then i realize, er, she's going to eat the bandage if i just leave it like this.

What to do? What to do?

Ta Da!

Witness the brilliance of a bachelor sock with a bachelor bootie. Et voilá!

Yes, that is her left arm and hand, not a horribly distorted leg. Don't let the bootie fool you ;o)

She pretty quickly figured out how to get rid of the bootie.
But the sock stayed on all of yesterday.
And then we changed it last night and the new sock has stayed on all of today.

Still not sure how she managed to shred her thumb. She has done this before, but to one of her toes, so I'm guessing she scratched herself with her crazy kitty-like claws...'cause she won't let us clip them!

Crazy, crazy Captain Hook baby.



*I fully realize this did not actually count as a full-fledged emergency. I just meant i'm a wuss but am usually pretty good in emergencies - unless they involve getting anything stuck in an eye...then you're on your own.

The tale of Unkie M., or how we came to be in south Jersey

Baby F.'s Unkie M had invited us to visit over Labor Day weekend, more precisely on Saturday. We were all very excited to go, not only because we hadn't seen him in far too long and because he has a pool. A pool, you say? Those things full up with water in which this Mama had not been inside of since her college days. It'd been a while for F.'s Papa as well.

So we all packed up our swimsuits, fresh off of the mothballs ;o) and somehow managed to traipse from our penthouse in the sky down to south Jersey while carrying a minimum of baby products...which is still a lot of stuff.

We all took the train down to Red Bank because well, we don't have a car and that's how we get around :o)

F. loves every type of transportation, or at least all those she's been in so far.

Stroller? Check.
Automobile? Check.
PATH train? Check.
Subway? Check.
NJ Transit train? Check.

Now we just have to get her on a taxi, trolley, boat and plane and she'll have the whole set :o)

I have realized though, that making a train is not quite as easy as it once was. If F. is with us and therefore her stroller too, that means knowing where the elevators are, or if there are any elevators at all. And getting on these same elevators takes a bit of extra time so we've got to add that on to our commute and not expect to rush and make a train. Except...

Well, we rushed, and didn't know where the elevator was, and got separated from Papa-in-training without my cell phone, and somehow were still 10 minutes early for the train. Hurrah for us!

The trip went off without a hitch and Unkie M. was in Red Bank waiting for us. We then had a lovely, leisurely ride through 'horse country' (who even knew there was such a thing so close by?) and arrived at M.'s bachelor pad around noonish.

We rested a bit and fed baby F. and M. went to inquire about the pool. And then tragedy struck. For the pool was closed and would remain so for the last two days of the season. The apartment complex in which Unkie M. lives had hired a lifeguard for the duration of the summer. And said lifeguard had decided to quit with 3 days left in the season.

Shock. Tears. Anguish.

OK, not really. Some disappointment, but after all we came to see M. not the fantabulous pool, so we all got over it. And instead we feasted on local food (although I still dream of returning for some kosher Chinese) and played a bit with the baby.

And then the real fun began. First we had a go at BuyWord, a game where one buys letters and then tries to sell words at a profit to the bank. A mixture of monopoly and scrabble...sort of.
M. pretty much clobbered us, as was to be expected as we'd never played before. I mean, really, really clobbered us. 100 point difference type of clobberation ;o)

And now cue angels singing.

Enter 'The Settlers of Catan', the bestest board game since Cranium! We loved playing it and F. was nice enough to be pretty accommodating during the games, either napping or happily sitting and watching us as her Mama and Papa tried (unsuccessfully) to dethrone Unkie M.
So much fun though! And anyone can play, no large vocabulary or trivia knowledge necessary (though I dearly love anything involving those) :o)

After that, Papa-in-training showed off his now non-existent Guitar Hero skills - oh, what taking care of a 7 month old will do to one's video game chops ;o)

We then finally exhausted Unkie M.'s hospitality and came home.

All in all, a great day.


P.S. Wholly unrelated, I finally finished a project I'd been working on since before baby F. was born. I asked our family and friends to send her a postcard of either where they lived or of something they liked. And to say something about themselves in the card.
I received quite a few and ended up laminating them so the baby will be able play with them without destroying them. And then I set them up here:








I'll eventually have a mobile for the baby hanging from the ceiling, but meanwhile she can look at this and know how excited everyone was for her to be born and how much she's loved :o)

An apple a day and all that...

I didn't want this to turn into a weekly diary. I mean, the definition of a diary is right in the word: diary = daily.
But...

Well, I guess life gets in the way, etc, etc. Which I hate really. Just a bunch of excuses. You either do it or you don't. The whole purpose of this is to keep a record of baby F.'s early life and how I'm handling it. If I'm writing it down a week after it happened, then I'm not really giving an accurate representation and then what's the point.

So my new school year resolution (does anyone else - without kids and out of school - still think of September as a new beginning?) is to well, actually write on here daily. Even if just a short note. Because that is after all the point of this exercise ;o)

F. was in top form yesterday. Me, not so much. Been feeling a little strange and so asked her Vôvô to come on over and keep both of us company. Just wanted another adult around.
Vôvô duly came by in the afternoon and both baby and moi were happy. Moi for knowing that there was someone there to watch F. if I should feel more poorly and F. because, well, isn't it obvious?

Vôvô!!!

Vôvô dotes madly upon baby F. and she dotes right back. They have silly conversations about her being the queen of babies and him being a mere ogre and serf-like creature (I am not making this up) :o)

And she smiles and babbles like mad at all the attention given to her, 'cause let's face it, I'm not speaking to her about serfs and queens 24/7 like Vôvô does.

So, my physical day not so great, but mine and F.'s overall day was pretty fab.

And last week, Thursday to be precise, we went to her monthly doc visit. Which went well...and not so well.

She's fine. That part was the well part. Developing as she should, growing like a weed - 18 lbs and counting, at a little less than 7 months at the time of her visit and with a head circumference in the 97th+ percentile. For those without wee babes, that means that her head is bigger than 97+ percent of babies her age. We'd never had the + before, but hey, she does have a huge head. Then again so do her parents, so not really a surprise there ;o)

And her hearing is great as well. We had some doubts because the hospital where she was born was unable to get an accurate result when they measured her soon after birth and I thought maybe she wasn't responding as well as she should to our voices. So the doctor had told me during the previous visit to remind them to do the test this time. So again, all good there.

The not so well part comes with everything else regarding the visit.

Now, we don't make appointments at the last minute. So far, we've been lucky and have only had to see F.'s doctor for wellness visits - shots and the like. So all our appointments are made a month in advance. Yet again and again, F. and I (and usually her Vôvô too) will sit there for 90+ minutes waiting to be seen. This is understandable if emergencies have come in, but when you look around and see a whole bunch of healthy kids there for their wellness visits too...
Well, that's when you start to get annoyed. What is the point of making appointments when it all ends up being first come, first served?

And then as if all that waiting wasn't enough, they expect me to undress F. in the consultation room and keep her undressed for far too long while either a Physician's Aide or the doctor finally remembers she's there.
I was particularly put off by the fact that a family that arrived after us, ended up being seen before baby F. They  (3 kids) were called right after F., but because the Aide ended up being super slow with her measurements, they ended up being seen (all 3!) by the doctor before us.
Grrrrr!
Was so mad.

Plus I'm starting to wonder if maybe I need to find a new doctor for F. The mother and daughter practice she now goes to are professional enough, but I don't get any warm fuzzies from them, and well, I kind of want that from a pediatrician. I want to feel like they really like children and I'm not getting that vibe. And maybe it's just my first time mama's nerves, but I usually end up feeling like I'm bothering them when I ask my monthly visit questions. I'm not one of these mamas who's calling up their pediatrician for every little thing their baby does. That's perfectly fine for those that do, but it's just not something I do. Which makes me feel even stranger when I get dismissive responses to little questions that I might have. So I'm taking some notes and if both the ridiculous waiting *and* dismissiveness keep on happening, then maybe it'll be time to move on to a new doc.

More on last week, to come...