Wednesday, June 30, 2010

A week's worth of mini blog entries



Sproingy toy IN MY MOWF!!!

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New favorite toy: fortune cookie, in wrapper.
New favorite person: Tim
New favorite flavor: General Tao's chicken sauce

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According to the lady at TK WU, Nora is huge. Also, she's that big because I've been eating at TK WU.

Friday, June 25, 2010

Three Months!

So Nora just turned three months old last week (June 20th). She's changed so much! She is a standing machine these days. She loves being hoisted in the air. She flirts with everyone, dishing out huge, toothless smiles. She is the happiest baby anyone has ever met, even when she's fussy. She's teething, so we go through 2-3 outfits a day. She doesn't seem to mind. I worry that she has bad dreams, because sometimes she cries out in her sleep, and is upset when she wakes up. When she sleeps, she looks like a little girl instead of a baby. She's getting better at grabbing things. She can intentionally go for a particular object. Though she will occasionally manage a one-handed grab, she mostly employs the "mine, all mine!" approach, gathering everything together. She can often get things into her mouth, though her angle is sometimes off, which makes it difficult to fit things in there. She will hold onto a burp cloth like a blankie. She prefers to suck on her first two finger, just like her daddy did when he was little. She makes a huge variety of noises. Sometimes, she'll get on a talking streak and squeal away for an hour or more. She seems to get the basics of conversation, and will usually wait until it's her turn to talk. Her noises have gotten increasingly elaborate, and she'll string them together into long statements. Best of all, she knows who we are, and we get smiles intended just for us.

Likes:
*Mom (aka: food lady)
*Dad (aka: fuzzy man)
*Standing up
*Sitting up (though standing is better)
*Being lifted high in the air
*Baby weight lifting (shoulder presses with the baby)
*Timber! (a game involving standing, tipping over like a tree, and kisses)
*Space invaders (a game with dad involving sound effects)
*The baby in the mirror
*The macbook
*The iphone
*The video camera
*Sproingy baby toy
*Wood teething ring
*Singing frog and spinning turtle
*Ice cream
*General Tao's sauce
*Chewing on things
*"Talking"
*PEOPLE!!

Dislikes:
*Spicy Thai sauce
*Blue cheese dressing
*Diaper blowouts
*Teeth
*Waking up

Indifferent to:
*Drool
*Cats

Nicknames:
*Sunny buns
*Fussernutter
*Chubbernutter
*Drool-a-don: the scourge of tiny Tokyo

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Baby nightmares

Is it possible for babies to have bad dreams? Nora sounds like she's having a rough time of it. What would baby nightmares be like? Your dreaming of boobs, and then suddenly the boobs go away? Your parents vanish and you can't see them and they don't come back? Whatever it is, I wish I could chase it away.

Happy Father's Day Ross!


To the best daddy a girl could ever have!

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

The circle of life

They say that you need 500 extra calories a day while breastfeeding. My experience has been that I need *way* more than that. I was a bit overweight when I got pregnant, and ended up gaining only about 15 pounds. Two weeks post-partum, I was down to my biking-season weight: about 20 pounds lighter than I was pre-pregnancy. I am also hungry ALL THE TIME.

Here's what I've eaten today:
  *A bowl of cereal with raisins, dates, and walnuts
  *Half a bowl of udon noodles with beef and broccoli
  *Half a rice crispie bar
  *A BLT sub with mayo and cucumbers
  *A large chocolate chip cookie
  *An extravagant handful of cheezits
  *A full fat blackberry yogurt
  *Half a salad with walnuts, blue cheese, cranberries, and apples
  *Half a slice of cheesecake
  *Six perogies with cheese, bacon, and sour cream

Granted, I've also been hauling box after box out of the basement, so this is a bit more than I'd usually eat. But not much!

It's a little weird when you think about it. She eats stuff that I produce. Which means that my body basically is an elaborate mechanism for turning cheezits into baby thighs. Delicious delicious baby thighs.

I made those cheeks. And those hands. NOM!

Sunday, June 13, 2010

A week's worth of mini blog entries



Mmmmm... carrier.


Did you ever get so mad you farted? Nora has.

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Baby bean just spit up a huge volume of milk as I was carrying her across the room. Most of it went directly into the basket of clean laundry. Sometimes, there's nothing to do but laugh.

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She has started to say something that sounds eerily like "Hi!". Our enthusiastic reaction (or perhaps just a developmental advance) seems to have prompted a whole torrent of other sounds: GAH!, GaYAH, AhYAH, yeh-ah (sounds a bit like yeah), eeeee. They are mostly vowel sounds and modified squeals, but there are a few consonants mixed in--I've heard mostly Gs and Hs.

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New toy! Nanna and Grandpa visited and brought a thing that hangs on her vibrating chair. It has lots of new! things! to look at! Her mind may officially be blown. 

Like the other one, this one has a frog in the center, who plays music. I've decided to call him Beebop. There's also a turtle who rattles. I think I'll call him Bones.

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Last night, I woke up in the middle of the night to a not-crying baby sound. Nora had wiggled out of her swaddler and was babbling to her hands.

Tonight, I woke up because she was farting repeatedly in her sleep.

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She's working on standing. She's pretty good at it.

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So many noises! She's working on a whole range of sounds. I think I heard a w tonight. Ross thinks he heard an m earlier.

Monday, June 7, 2010

Snooze

Sometimes, the littlest things make me feel like an awesome mom--like just now, when I got the baby to go to sleep. She was so tired, and I was able to give her what she really needed, but didn't know she wanted.

This makes up for the (many) times I feel totally incompetent.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

We're going to be so sorry we taught her to do this.

For the past week or so, we've been encouraging Nora to grab things. We basically started with it when we made our trip out to Pittsburgh (around the 20th of May). By the time we got back, she'd gotten considerably better at grabbing for an elephant rattle we hang from her car seat.


This past week, we've been actively teaching her to grab the frog that dangles from her vibrating chair (see above). When you pull the loop on the frog, it plays a little tinny tune, and the first time we got her hand around it, she seemed thrilled. She affected her environment! How exciting! When we put her hand on it, she'll hold on and try to get the frog to play over and over again. Today, she started reaching for the frog all by herself. She still can't quite get to it. But I think that we're about a week away from wanting to murder that freaking frog.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

A week's worth of mini blog entries

Totally awesome hat


BOOKSHELVES ARE AWSUM!!!

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She grabbed the elephant! On purpose! She tried to bring him to her mouth, but he was too wily.

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She loves the water. I can't wait to take her swimming...

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Did this baby always have so much hair? It doesn't look like it, but the hair now covers her entire head. When did that happen? Also, it appears to be three different colors: blond, brown, and red. Crazy.

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New nicknames:
*Sunny Buns
*Beanie Weenie
*Sassafras

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Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Baby Races

ZOMG! Our friends Tim and Ali just had a baby! Her name is Elinor, though they will be calling her Nora. Since both of our babies are named Nora, I figure we should have some baby races.

Race 1: Weight
Our baby is clearly smashing Tim and Ali's in this category. Our Nora weighed over 11 pounds at her last pediatrician visit. She probably weighs almost 12 pounds by now. Tim and Ali's Nora weighs only 6 pounds 5 oz. Yes, she may be at a slight disadvantage--being just born and all. But our baby could eat their baby. Crush her. No contest!
Winner: Our Nora

Race 2: Hair
Ok, so our baby is a bit lacking in the hair department.
Exhibit A
And from the picture I have, the new Nora is rocking a really awesome faux hawk. Our child will not have that much hair for years. Sorry my dear--you'll have to earn your hipster cred with ironic onesies instead.
Winner: Other Nora

Race 3: Cuteness
I happen to think that our baby is pretty cute. I mean...look at this face:
Exhibit B
But I am willing to concede that Tim and Ali have also produced a fine looking baby. One might even say adorable. One might even go so far as "super adorable". So we'll call this one a draw.
Winner: Nora

So that leaves us at a tie
Nora: 2
Nora: 2

I guess we'll have to wait until they're older for the cage match tie breaker.

30

I turned 30 last month. Crazy, eh? With all the changes around here, I almost missed it.

Unlike in years past, I'm not going to use my birthday as a time to set goals. We are still learning about what our lives are like now. In a couple of months, we will be moving to a totally new city and I will be starting a totally new job. How could I possibly know what goals will be useful? What will be feasible?

So instead of focusing on what I have not yet achieved I'm going to take a cue from a friend from college, and focus on my accomplishments. In lieu of a To Do list, this birthday will feature a "Done, Bitches!" list.* Feel free to join in aloud after each item in the list.

  • Start swimming again (DONE, BITCHES!)
  • Visit a new country (BELGIUM IS TOTALLY DONE, BITCHES!)
  • Get a job (DONE, BITCHES!)
  • Write a new paper (DONE, BITCHES!)
  • Finish my dissertation (DONE, BITCHES!)
  • Defend my PhD (DONE, BITCHES!)
  • Have a kid (TOTALLY FREAKING DONE, BITCHES!)
Not too shabby when I write it that way!


*The main advantage of the DONE, BITCHES list? You don't have to think about the things that didn't make the list! Or things that will be on the next list!