Funny Face

Baby F. is no longer a baby. People argue about exactly when a baby becomes a toddler. Most seem to think that it’s when babies start to walk, which given the artist formerly known as Baby F.’s lateness in ambulating, made it seem as if she might become a toddler right around the time she entered grammar school ;o)

Others think that it’s when they turn 18 months, or for lay-people, aka civilians without their own little rug rats, when they turn 1 year and a half. By both definitions, Baby F. is now Toddler F.
It took her a little while but she now walks *and* is almost 2 years old – whoo-hoo! – so yeah, she’s a toddler.  

Deities help us, everyone.

This also means, that in addition to being able to walk and run and stumble and chase cats, she’s also developed quite the personality.  She’s quite a jokester and has been so since at least August of last year, when I’d originally meant to write about this. But alas, many things have come along to interrupt my train of thought, some of which I’ll be writing about in the coming weeks. 

Back to my little comedian though…

Like most babies, er, I mean toddlers, F. is a keen imitator, a verifiable little monkey at aping whatever funny thing she sees moi or her Papa doing. So far this has been amusing as she hasn’t taken to imitating us when we are grumpy ;o)

I might have once upon a time, put a tea towel on my head and pretended I was a ghost for her amusement. Maybe.

Not a towel, but indicative of the various things she'll place on her head. Baskets, towels, books, cats...

Well, since then, she’s taken to occasionally placing a towel upon her own head and running around like a maniac with no set direction in mind. This has resulted in at least one minor crash. No one was hurt, neither F. nor the tea towel, nor well, the wall, but I think she then figured out maybe putting a towel on one’s head and running around aimlessly might not be the best idea ever. Still, for about a week last summer, this was very amusing.

Another just charming habit she picked up (ahem) is to make believe she’s picking her nose. She’ll place her finger just under one of her nostrils and wait for me to admonish her for it. At which point, she’ll giggle like mad and then switch to another finger and wait for me to once again ‘yell’ at her. Oh, the fun we had with this one. The disregard for authority was just oh so precious :p 

Therein lies the problem with some of these acts. I should admonish her for some of them, and I sometimes do, but then she does something hilarious and I’m left trying to stifle a laugh while trying to discipline her. And let me tell you, I’m generally a good multitasker, but suck at doing both of these at the same time ;o) 

Toddler F. also adores to ‘chase’ anyone she can through the apartment, particularly around our kitchen table. Her Unkie D. has been pressed into service to do this but she’ll do it with me and her Papa-in-Training as well. Nothing makes her cackle more uncontrollably than ‘chasing’ someone, which usually involves an adult circling the table with her in tow. 

She’s definitely a little person now, with her own personality and a myriad stock of funny faces that she employs at will to make us laugh. F.’s face seems to be made of rubber sometimes, and she’s definitely a contender for the title of Baby of a Thousand Faces…I mean Toddler of a Thousand Faces ;o)

Frapunzel

If any one of you has met little F., you might recall that her hair is well, pretty non-existent.

She’s almost 18 months old - next Sunday, WHOO-HOO! - yet her cranium coverage is sparse at best.

Exhibit A - January 2012

At the back it shows some signs of life, but up on front by her forehead? Yeah, not happening.

We had expected this.

Her Mama, aka Moi, didn’t have any hair besides some fuzzy down on her head up until she was about 9 months old. Nothing, zip, nada, zilch. Which given how much and how thick my own parents’ hair was, was a little odd.

The pictures that exist of me as an infant - earliest one is of my baptism at age 7 months - show me as a little baldy with just a soupçon of dark down upon my crown.

But then the next photos of me are at 12 months old...by which time a mess of curls has sprouted from my head and have threatened to take over everything in the land, much like a human version of kudzu.

And I’ve even found a letter from my Mama to my Avó (her Mama) saying how I’ve just suddenly sprouted all this hair at once around the age of 9 months.

So the whole ‘the-parents-have-really-thick-hair-but-the-baby-at-first-has-none’ thing was not a surprise and was indeed expected. I thought that much like what had happened with me, little F. would suddenly sprout a little baby Portuguese Afro before her first birthday.

Except that hasn’t happened.

Exhibit B: July 2013

It’s grown more, yes. But it’s still very scant and scattered.
It does show signs of having some curl, but if it didn’t that wouldn’t be strange seeing as her Papa-in-Training has straight-as-a-rod follicles.

What i didn’t expect though is that others would think she has ‘good’ hair. 

I’ll explain.

We went to our local park this morning with her Vôvô. This is something I’ve been meaning to do for ages, but the horrible heatwave and just generally miserable summer weather has prevented me from doing. Plus honestly I’ve been really tired in the mornings. Like crazy tired. 

But when I checked the weather forecast earlier in the week and saw that today we were due to have some sunny (but not too hot) weather, I thought it’d be a perfect day to pop out for some swings action.

As little F. swung away in utter joy, I got to talking a bit with the mother next to us. Her daughter was about the same age as F. - give or take a few weeks - and she had the most adorable little blonde curls tied up in tiny, for lack of a better word, Afro puffs. We got to talking about hair and how F.’s seemed to be in a state of hibernation and the other mother surprised me by saying ‘Well, at least she’s going to have good hair, unlike mine.’

I immediately said ‘Oh no, she has some curls growing in the back, they’re just combed out right now.’ And then realized that I immediately knew what she meant by ‘good hair’. Good hair is straight, which obviously then implies that curly hair is not ‘good’. 

I told her her baby’s hair was beautiful - ‘cause it was - and was left a bit sad about the curly-bad connotation.

I’ve had curly hair all my life. Not tight curls, although I did wish for them many a time as a child - that to me was the ideal hair :) - but pretty curly. And wavy. 

I’ve never not wanted to have curly hair and can’t recognize myself on the few occasions that my hair has been straightened out at the salon. Other people always seem to like me with straightened hair, but when I look in the mirror all I see is a stranger, or at best me play-acting, so its back to the curls for me.

But I had read in the past about the concept of ‘good hair/bad hair’ which is apparently very prevalent in the African-American population. I had just never encountered it in person yet.

I’m still not sure exactly what kind of hair F. is going to have. It seems pretty dark at the moment (my hair was reddish brown as a child but then became darker as I aged and it’s been (artificially) red since I was about 19, while Papa-in-Training's was straight, thick, and blonde as a baby and is now light brown and straight) and mostly straight with some curls if it gets wet or it’s humid out.

I’d love it if she had dark curly or wavy hair like me, but i’d love it just as much if it turned out to be blondish and straight like her Papa-in-Training’s. Or any combination thereof.

But regardless of what it ends up being, it’ll all be ‘good’ hair, because there’s no such thing as bad hair.

The Kitty Whisperer

Baby F. has had lots of adventures lately. The warm weather, or at least the non-rainy, non-frigid weather, has finally arrived in our neck of the woods, so we’ve taken to going out almost every weekend and exploring different new places for her.

Not that she needs to go outside to have any adventures though.

Seeing as she has her own little urban jungle right inside our apartment. Well, maybe she doesn’t have that many gigantic canopied trees to swing from, but she does have a bunch of jungle cats.

Oscar trying to nuzzle a bunny

We have three kitties. In descending order of well, size, there’s Oscar, the orange fatty, Franny, the black and white neurotic, and Polly, the tortoiseshell pygmy of the family.  They all have very distinctive personalities but they all love the heck out of us including Baby F.

They were fascinated by her from the day she came into our apartment, sneaking into her room to look at her, timidly going up to her to smell her and running to her room whenever she’d cry. Yep, they’d run into the room, not out. One might say they were checking on her, if one was feeling so inclined :o)

She for the most part, mostly ignored them at first. I swear it seemed as if they were somehow transparent during her first few months. Even after she could focus her eyes well enough to recognize Mama and Papa-in-Training and certainly Vóvó and Vôvô, still there was no sign of awareness that there were three curious furry creatures running about nearby.

But that’s all changed now.

She knows they’re there.
She knows... and she stalks them.

She’s taken to chasing them around when the mood strikes her, like when they’re just walking by, or trying to nap, or trying to eat, you know, constantly.

I might have touched upon her first word being ‘gato’ or cat in Portuguese. She also says ‘cat’, so is now fully bilingual ;o) What I haven’t mentioned is how she’ll use it as a mantra: ‘gato, gato, gato, gato, gato’. Which I’m sure is not at all disconcerting for the cats – to suddenly look up and see a very fast crawling miniature human coming at them while shrieking ‘GATO!!!’ at them.

She’s also come to be quite boorish when it comes to the kitties, I mean, besides the whole charging them at full speed while screaming like a banshee thing. She’s taken to watching them eat. And then afterwards tries to eat their food. Yep, doesn’t want to eat her own food, but stale leftover cat food? Yum!

Franny catching some zzzzz's in Baby F.'s rocking chair

This past week we had this great little happening:

Scene: Kitchen floor, box of recyclables full of folded up cardboard boxes and paper odds and ends.  Amongst them is a folded up ‘empty’ bag of kitty vittles.

      Baby F: [grabs folded bag and takes it out of the box]

      Papa-in-Training: [casually grabs bag out of hand of baby, but succeeds in upturning it, emptying
      its’ ‘empty’ contents] Crap!
      Baby F: [proceeds to start grabbing various bits of dry cat food from floor]
      Papa: Don’t eat that! [as he removes small tidbit from her hand]
      Mama-in-Training: She’s chewing on something!
      Papa: [removes vittles from inside baby’s mouth]
      Baby F.: [immediately puts another one in mouth]

      [Repeat infinitum until all tidbits have been quickly swept up]

She’s also come in very handy in cleaning up after them.

We just purchased a vacuum cleaner after much research and advice – we thought we could keep the place clean with only a broom and mop (we have laminate flooring and tiles), but 3 cats and a baby have proved to be our undoing. But if we had a couple more babies around like F. we probably wouldn’t have needed to buy one. 
Because she will pick up everything from the floor! The tiniest, most microscopic thing, like for example, a bit of clean litter left behind, will be expertly and minutely picked up by her very precise finger movements. Sigh.

She’s also somehow managed to develop perfect timing and will scare the begeesus out of the cats…on purpose. Earlier in the month, while sitting on my lap on the living room couch, she waited until Polly was walking right next to my legs, underneath her, to let out a big YELP! thereby making the poor cat jump out of her skin and take off running.

Polly checking out her new crib

Yet somehow they love her and watch out for her, with Oscar offering up his belly for a cuddle and nuzzling her with his head, while Polly tries to entice her into playing with her. Franny…well, he’s a bit wearier – I chuck that up to him having been a street cat in his early life. But given the right circumstances, i.e. he didn’t notice ;o) , he’ll let her pet him. Of course, the whole petting thing is still a bit of a struggle, as Baby F. thinks it entails pulling on their fur really hard…but then again, that’s what she does to us as well, so at least we’re all on equal footing ;o)

It’s great to see them with her though, just a couple more members of our family :o)

The Terrible Thirteens* …or how I almost came to lose my mind in the space of a fortnight ;o)

As I type this, which I’ve been trying to do for oh, about 2 weeks now, Baby F. is crying in her bedroom. The bedroom, whose door I’m sitting directly in front of. That she can see me from. That I’m only about 10 feet from.

I think I’ve been very lucky so far with Baby F. She wasn’t colicky, she slept through the night almost immediately after arriving home from the hospital, she’s good with people, friendly and sweet….

So maybe I had it coming after being so fortunate ;o). 

We had a period almost like this late last year. I call that time my lost Autumn. The season, principally late October and all – and I do mean all - of November, when she decided she’d become inconsolable and unhappy regardless of anything I did. And so I stopped doing pretty much anything besides feeding and changing and trying to amuse her.  My sleeping went kaput, I became a daytime zombie, and I fell into a terrible hole from which I just managed to emerge sometime around December 1^st or so.

But then it was all okay again. As quickly as the weirdness came, it went away. And all rejoiced, for Baby F. was truly merciful ;o)

But now it’s back. The weirdness, the tantrums, the indiscriminate screaming, the crazy flailing.

Even worse than before. 

Now she can crawl. The developmental stage that we were so pleased with, has now turned into a source of daily grief. Because with the ability to crawl, comes the unwillingness to stay still anywhere. Where before, that long gone time of 2 weeks ago , she was perfectly happy to amuse herself in her bedroom  - secure with a door gate (and it’s a large room) – she now freaks out at being placed in it.

Baby F. alternates between wanting to have some hugs and a cuddle on my lap to immediately pulling ‘The Matrix’ and throwing herself completely back, horizontally, with a stretch and a tautness that before seeing it, I’d have thought impossible from any human, much less a baby. 

And sure, some of these little tantrums are likely teething related. 

But only a very select few.

For the most part, she’s just going through a really bad phase.

I know this rationally, of course.

Both I and Papa-in-Training have Googled our hearts out and consulted whatever books we’ve picked up along the way or that fellow Mamas and Papas have kindly passed on to us. So we know this is not unusual or odd.

But knowing this and dealing with it on a daily basis is another thing altogether. I’m finding it very hard to deal with it. I dread Mondays and having to take care of Baby F. on my own until either Papa-in-Training comes home or Vóvó drops by for a wee visit. And of course I feel like crap for feeling this way. But when you have tons of things to do, your apartment is in shambles, you’re neglecting your friends, and your baby is being impossible, it’s hard not to end up feeling crappy.

Weekends help tremendously, when Papa-in-Training pretty much takes over and I get to at least have a semblance of some time without having to take care of a wailing baby, whether it be to have a proper shower, write a letter or tidy up a closet.

But it’s not quite enough right now.

We’re pretty much stuck, the two of us. 

Baby F. with the wailing and the flailing and me with the guilt at not really knowing how to or wanting to deal with it, but of course doing it.

I hope this ‘phase’ goes away soon so we can get back to being semi-productive and having fun learning and playing, instead of near-constant tantrums. 

I know it will. We’ll just have to wait it out. 

Wish us luck :o)



*Thirteen months, of course, not thirteen years ;o).

Raider of every last book

We knew from the beginning, even before Baby F. was born, that we wanted her to be bilingual. I’m originally from Portugal and all of my family speaks Portuguese. A few of the younger members can speak English, but for the most part it’s Portuguese all the way on my side.

We read the articles about how Baby F.’s language development might be slightly delayed due to the dual nature of her learning, but also read about how babies eventually caught up. We thought it well worth the small delay, since to do otherwise would cut her off from half of her family – the larger half too ;o)

The way we’ve managed it so far is thus:

During the day, Mama-in-Training, aka moi, and Baby F., speak in Portuguese…well, I speak and she mostly babbles. Then in the evening when Papa-in-Training comes home, we switch to English. I try my hardest to only use Portuguese during the day, although of course, the occasional English word slides in unannounced. Mostly when I encounter something apocalyptic in her diaper or when the cats have once again rebelled and attempted to take over our flat ;o)

I think it’s going pretty well – she babbles a whole lot, even when she’s just on her own, playing.

But the best part is that she has now spoken her first words!

And Ta Da! -  they’re in both languages!

She can say Mama – which is the same in Portuguese and English - as well as Daddy; but most importantly for her everyday life, she’s said gato, which is cat in Portuguese.  She sort of ignores the hard g and instead says 'ahto', but she definitely says it. She almost said Oscar today (one of the cats’ names), but I think that’s still a bit too complicated. I’m pretty pleased with 'ahto' for now :o)

She can recognize many other words though and point to the objects they stand for, which is just in keeping with a child her age. Today’s recognized item was meia, or sock. She looooooves her socks. Particularly loves to take them off and chew on them. Sometimes she likes to chew on them while they’re still attached to her feet – she’s all sorts of flexy…then again, so is her mama. I could’ve been Daniel Day-Lewis’s stand-in for My Left Foot. Really. It's a bit freaky ;o)

And reading to her / reading while nursing her or while near her, seems to be paying off as she absolutely loves to ‘read’. Loves to look at books - although honestly at this point, she mostly looks at them upside down – and loves to play with and grab them off shelves.

Exhibit A:

'I'll just take a look at one wee little book, shall i?'

Exhibit B:

'Every book in the world...i must haz them!'

Cue Papa-in-Training’s reaction upon entering Baby F.’s room:
'WTF?!?'

What he didn’t see was that after the first bookshelf cube was emptied, Baby F. wanted to start in on the upper one. I told her no, to which she promptly reacted to by wailing her head off.

Ah, the joys of reading  :P

Time keeps on ticking, ticking, ticking into the future...with apologies to Steve Miller ;o)

Gaaaaaaaaaah!

How can it be March already? I've blinked and Christmas flew by. Then my birthday. Then Baby F.'s birthday. Then Presidents' Day.
Will I next blink and it'll be Easter?

Wait.

Is it Easter already?

Did i miss it?

Gaaaaaaaaah!

Everyone tells you when you're a new mom that time flies. To appreciate the baby years because they'll soon be gone and you'll have a grumpy teenager in your hands...not literally in your hands, 'cause then they'd be like Thumbelina, but i digress...

But then you actually have a baby.

And if you stay home with her as i did (no idea if the same applies for work-outside-the -home mamas), you scoff and tell them, Pshaw, I say! Pshaw, to your idea of time flying.

Because time draaaaaaaaags when you stay home with a newborn. The days go on for weeks, months even. You hope it's a Friday and realize it's only 9:30 am on Monday, so sleep-deprived and disoriented have you become.

But then something happens around month 9th or so of taking care of your newborn. And suddenly, you can't keep up with time. It flies, it gallops, it slips past you without even a 'How do you do?'

And all that slowness that you complained about almost constantly? That vague tortoise-like feeling you experienced on a daily basis? It's gone. And left in its' place is a sense of not being able to keep up, leaving things to the side, always being behind, because the days are so fast!

Of course, time is only an illusion, a man-made construct to help us organize our lives. We all know the feeling of those last 10 minutes of a class in the 6th grade - how excruciatingly long they were - and how 10 days of a wonderful vacation can feel like merely a moment. But geesh, i really wasn't expecting such a drastic change.

I'm trying as much as i can to appreciate each moment with baby F. and i think I'm managing for the most part. Ironically enough the thing that i think made the first months seem to drag so much, the lack of sleep, is still a constant in my everyday. I've always had sleep issues but they've obviously been exacerbated by having a little one that occasionally wakes up during the night.

But that's actually the funniest bit...she doesn't even wake up that often during the night. Almost not at all. And when she does, Papa-in-training is the one to soothe her 'cause i just seem to get her too excited and even more awake.

What she does do though is take long naps...on top of me. And yep, she's almost 13 months and i haven't yet managed to break her out of that habit :o(

So i end up spending upwards of 3 hours during the day sitting down without being able to move a great deal. And i don't get to do most of anything during the day...which then leads me to staying up late at night trying to catch up, to write a friend, to do some writing, to do some tidying up.

But getting back to my original thought...

Even though my sleep is still crap, suddenly the days aren't so slow anymore. And I'm not really sure why.
Until i figure out why, I'll just keep on enjoying getting to see Frida grow and learn new things.

Artwork made for our friend's birthday using Penguin cover Postcards :o)

P.S. Because i always like to have a pic of something I made/did in each post, and since he finally received it, here's one my friend took of a birthday present Papa-in-Training and moi made for him.

P.P.S. Programming note: If you like Pawn Stars at all but like your items a bit weirder and heck, even a bit scarier, then fire up your Netflix and throw Oddities in your Queue. Lovely store-owners with super eclectic tastes. I've sort of devoured most of the available episodes within the last 3 days...i did mention the whole being trapped under a baby thing, didn't i? ;o)

The Afternoon at the Museum

Baby F. the art genius baby.

That's right. I said it. Genius. With a capital G.

OK, mayhaps I'm going too far. But it could happen ;o)

She has been to a museum two times now. And is only eight months old.

We took her to the Newark Museum last weekend to see Angels and Tomboys: Girlhood in 19th century American Art, which had some amazing pieces, like this hilarious one:

A Bedtime Story, 1878 - Seymour Joseph Guy

Do you see the horror in the little ones' faces? Heehee. Their sister must be telling them a scary story ;o)

There were loads more really amazing paintings as well as some striking photographs. I think some of the writing in the show left a bit to be desired, but the work speaks for itself really. If you're anywhere nearby, I'd highly recommend it...even if you were never a girl ;o)

Baby F. proved to be quite the draw while in the museum btw. As Papa-in-training and Auntie Lulu and BF were otherwise engaged using the stairs, Baby and moi had to look for various elevators. We ended up sharing one of them with a group of elderly folk. One of the gentlemen started to gush over F., although he did think she was a boy :P Such is the fate of little bald-headed baby girls whose Mamas refuse to put ribbons on their non-hair ;o)

We later encountered the same group in one of the galleries, whilst i took a photo of F. in front of a funny collage in the permanent collection. The same gentleman from before wondered whether Baby F. was going to know all about art once she grew up. I mentioned that it was her second time in the museum which delighted the kind gentlemen and his friends :o)

So like i said, Baby F., the art genius to be :o)

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.