Likes and Dislikes

Nora loves tuvan throat music!

She also loves

• Boob
• David Bowie
• The "Big Tuba" song
• Beatles rockband
• The bar
• Being smiled at
• Being on her tummy
• Dancing with us
• "Dancing" on her own
• Boob
• Pooping/peeing/barfing on Dad
• Being tickled (though it doesn't actually seem to tickle)
• Having her arms and legs moved around
• Boob
• Dad's fuzziness
• Riding in the car
• Riding in the stroller
• Riding in the baby carrier
• Looking at stuff
• Being held
• The magic swing
• The vibrating chair
• Boob
• LaTex
• 10-d String Theory

She hates

• Lack of boob
• Formula
• Dirty diapers
• Not looking at stuff
• Not being held
• Socks (apparently--she kicks them off)
• Sleeping (sometimes)
• Sun in her face
• Not seeing mom or dad
• Her hands (the bastards hit her when she's not looking!)
• Stupid people

I think she's her daddy's girl.

Growth Spurt

A few days ago, Miss Nora Bean went through a rough patch. She was eating way more than usual (8 oz in three hours at one point!) and fussing like crazy. She also refused to sleep for more than 15 minutes at a time, and then only while being held. Given how sweet she usually is, my first thought was that someone had kidnapped my child and replaced her with some kind of wolverine/howler monkey hybrid. Fortunately, whatever was bothering her seems to have been temporary. Two days after she started fussing, she abruptly stopped, and now her smile is just as broad and lovely as it was a few days earlier.

As best we can tell, she must have been going through some kind of developmental growth spurt. New neural connection apparently take a lot out of a baby. We've seen some improvement in a couple of areas--things she'd already been doing sometimes that she now does all the time. In particular, her vision seems to have had a big jump. She loves stripes and other bold patterns, even when they're not black and white. She can track objects easily, both with her head and with her eyes alone. She seems to be able to see us from a longer distance than she could before, and she can definitely see when we're smiling at her. Her motor skills are also improving, though not as dramatically. She is still working on keeping her head up. She desperately wants more head control. Head control = baby freedom! All of this is boosted by increasing periods of alert wakefulness. She is now awake long enough that I've started to think of her as napping when she sleeps--before, she just slept all the time.

She's also grown. A lot. She's clearly turning all that milk into more baby. She's long and lean--like a string bean. A string bean with GIGANTIC feet.

Nicknames for Nora

Things that we have called our baby in the last 5 weeks:

• The Bean
• Baby Bean
• Baby Girl
• Nora Bean
• Jelly Bean
• Honey Bear
• Grumpy Bear
• Baby Bear
• The Fussy Hussy
• The Gassy Lassy
• The Sassy Lassy
• Dumpy Butterton
• Baby Burrito
• Chubbernutter
• Nora Borealis
• NORAD

Nora's many fine accomplishments

Nora Bean's granny and grandpa and aunt Caitrin visited last week from Oregon, and the presence of 5 adults in her life apparently sparked a huge leap in development. In addition to the social smiles I mentioned earlier (still the best thing ever) she can also, just as of this past week:

• track an object slowly drawn across her field of vision
• grab and shake a rattle (see figure A, above)
• find daddy when he speaks and look at him

She's also continued to improve her head control. She can almost hold it up all on her own! And she is making progress towards creeping. She has started curling her toes under--before, she was just sliding the tops of her feet along the ground. She also rolled over twice in a row, but we have yet to see a repeat performance of that trick, so I'd say that one's in progress.

She's developing so fast! It's pretty awesome to see what she can accomplish in just one week!

The experience of watching her change and develop has been so amazing. It's made us realize that we really want some kind of written record of our experience, both for us, and maybe eventually for her. All of which is to say that there should be more regular posts from here on out. Hopefully with pictures. I will also try to fill in the blanks from the last month or so, as best I can. I'm not sure how that will show up in RSS feeds, so when I'm done I'll probably post once with just the links to the catchup posts.

Dad (aka:Ross) will probably also post occasionally. In particular, the lyrics of his brilliant song, "Pooparatzzi," really need to be recorded for the ages.

First Smiles!

The Bean can smile at us! We smile, and she smiles back!

Best thing ever.

A list of things I'm hooked up to right now...

*IV line (4 bags currently)

*Epidural line

*Automatic blood pressure cuff

*Squeeze-y leg thingies (to prevent blood clots)

*Catheter

That last one's a doozy.

Not exactly what I expected...

So I'm in the hospital.

However, I am not in labor.

I went in for my regularly scheduled OB appointment this afternoon, and my blood pressure set off some alarm bells. It was really high--especially since I normally have blood pressure on the low end. So they sent me to get some labs done, and the labs came out...poorly.

Turns out, I have preeclampsia.

They categorized it as "severe", meaning that I'm hooked up to "The Mag" (Magnesium) and they are inducing labor. As our OB told us, we aren't leaving the hospital without a baby. Fortunately, the Goober is at term (38-1/2 weeks) so this isn't such a bad thing for her.

I, on the other hand, feel kind of like crap.

Updates as events warrant.