Saturday, October 29, 2005
Kiddie Kandids
So, we braved the Halloween Picture Frenzy and got Julia's picture taken professionally today.
First, the obligatory chili pepper picture:
The the "pretty" picture:
And finally:
The Costanza picture!
last week's pics (finally)
Ok, here are some of the pictures we took last week...
(oh! and Julia responds to her name now...)
One of her in her new Bumbo Seat
And, finally a picture of Kristin with Julia
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Attack of the Big-Headed Baby
Julia had her 2 month appointment yesterday and we are happy to report that in almost most instances she actually has grown!
She has doubled in weight but only added about three inches in length. She is now 10lbs and some change. And 20 inches long.
That puts her in the 25% for weight and less than 3% for height. So, she's short and chubby. Just as she should be.
But her head. Oh her head.
It's in the 50th percentile.
She has a big head.
I just keep telling myself that it's just that she's so damn smart. She's trying so hard to talk to us that her head is swelling from the effort. It is not that she has a freakishly large head. Even though the kiddie kandids portrait we had taken a little over a week ago made her look like an alien baby. One of those gigantic aliens with the huge brussel-sprout heads and big eyes. It must have just been a bad picture. I'm sure that's it.
We took more pictures over the weekend, but I forgot the disk this morning. So... new pictures this evening or tomorrow, I promise!
Friday, October 21, 2005
Kristin's first day back to work
Wednesday was my first day back to work, and I had to leave Julia with her grandmother all day. It was really difficult for both Trista and I; however, I think it may have been most difficult for Katie. Katie is Trista's 3 year old niece, and she is not accustomed to sharing Grandma's attention and affection.
Katie: Grandma, I think you need to put that baby down.
Grandma: I can't put the baby down right now. Why don't you go get your baby. You can sit next to me and rock your baby while I take care of Julia.
(Katie gets her doll, rocks her for a while, sings to her and pats her head)
Katie then walks to her Easybake oven, throws her baby inside and says, "I think I'm going to bake this baby."
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
She's Interactive
For the most part, Julia's like a beautiful little snuggly little squeaky little lump. I love her. But she's kinda lumpish. At least she was till about a week ago. Since she was born, in the rare moments when she was awake, not hungry, and not suffering from gas or laboring to poop, I've been working with her on sticking her tongue out. I would stick my tongue out at her and try to get her to reciprocate. This endeavor has met with mixed success.
But the other day, I was holding her and she was awake and aware and happy. She looked at me and I saw this expression cross her face. It was the look of someone who has just had a thought cross their mind. She gets this look, and then she sticks her tongue out at me! I got excited and stuck my tongue out at her and then she gets really excited and starts waving her hands around and kicking her feet and opens her eyes really big and sticks her tongue out again. (can you hear how excited I am through my italics?) Anyway, we did this a few more times and then Oscar barked and she looked at him and forgot about the whole thing. And I couldn't get her to do it again.
So, I was beginning to think I had dreamed the whole interactive thing. But then my mom came over to bring Julia's first Halloween costume (a pumpkin, look for pics later) and while she was holding Julia and cooing at her, Julia becan cooing back. They sat and cooed at each other for a few minutes and it was so cute I wanted to cry. Later, I tried it myself and Julia and I had a very deep conversation that lasted for several minutes. She has quite a unique perspective on our country's current Administration and its Supreme Court choices.
She is just growing up so fast. Before I know it she will be all independent, sleeping in her own crib, feeding herself, sitting upright all by herself...
at least for longer than the 5 seconds it took to take this picture.
What I'm feeling as a mother right now
besides exhaustion, I mean.
Mainly I waver between amazement, guilt, and a burning, piercing hunger I've decided to call a new form of love (but which could also be related to the fact that I'm on a diet right now.)
But let's talk about guilt. I'm prone to guilt anyway. Let's just say I'm predisposed to feel guilty about anything and everything. War in the Middle East? I'm sure it was something I said. Famine and drought? Darn it, I knew I shouldn't have thrown that uneaten food away the same night I took an extra-long bath. Non-stop rain and flooding? My depression is calling the clouds. You heard it here first, folks: In terms of misery, I'm all powerful.
But since I've become a mother (really, since Kristin got pregnant) the guilt has increased. I'm beginning to understand why mothers load such guilt trips upon their children: they're so full of guilt themselves, there's no where else for it to go, it must overflow onto their children.
A short list of what I feel guilty about on a regular basis:
- Going to work
- Not wanting to go to work
- Not working enough
- Not holding her enough while she's so squeaky and snuggly
- Being happy that she's beginning to like to sit in her swing and thus does not need to be held 24/7
- Letting the poem that's been buzzing around my head for the last few days make me distracted and crazy.
- Taking the time to get the poem out of my head and into my computer
- Not being independently wealthy
- Not using cloth diapers
- Not really wanting to use cloth diapers
- Wishing she would sleep in her crib for at least 6 hours at night
- Not scrapbooking
There are uncounted other things which are eluding me at the moment (and by the way, I feel guilty over the forgetting of which because I think that maybe I'm not paying close enough attention to every aspect of this amazingly fleeting time). It's enough to make one crazy.
Last night I was home alone with Julia, and she was sleeping in her swing and I was cooking dinner (Aloo Gobi only with eggplant instead of the gobi because though the gobi was fine in the fridge, the eggplant was about to turn bad and mushy and needed to be used right away) and I kept thinking that I was hearing her cry and every time I left the kitchen and cooking noises behind to listen, I couldn't hear anything. Then Kristin came home and the baby really had been crying, just coincidentally stopping her wails everytime I tried to listen. I'm a bad mommy. Then, when I added the eggplant to the pan of sauteeing spices, the resulting cloud of spice vapor that even the opening of the windows refused to budge (in fact, the chill from the opened windows seemed to serve to make the vapors thicker) sent all three of us into a coughing and sneezing fit. For the next hour, every little cough and sneeze coming from the swing in the living room felt like an arrow to the gut nailing down my new resolution to begin to like my food bland. The arrows felt a bit like the piercing hunger-love, but the points have differently shaped barbs.
Music hath powers to soothe the savage baby
The two lullabies that are working best to calm Julia down during acid bm's and other infant annoyances are both rounds. The first is one I heard on a tape but of course, not only can I not remember the name, but I can't remember who was on the tape -- some sort of women's chorus: many voices all in harmony. The second is a silly little round I used to sing with my classes at the daycare I used to work for.
I don't know when or where I learned it. Imagine both sung in a breathy falsetto.
1)
When each child is born
the morning star rises
and sings to the universe
who we are.
When each child is born
the morning star rises
and sings to the universe
who we are.
We are our grandmother's prayers
We are our grandmother's dreamings
We are the breath of our ancestors
We are the spirit of love.
2)
A ram sam sam, a ram sam sam
goolie goolie goolie goolie goolie
ram sam sam
a ram sam sam, a ram sam sam
goolie goolie goolie goolie goolie
ram sam sam
a rassi, a rassi
goolie goolie goolie goolie goolie
ram sam sam
a rassi, a rassi
goolie goolie goolie goolie goolie
ram sam sam
Monday, October 10, 2005
You asked for it... more and more pics!
Ok, Kristin posted the pictures below, and I just want to point out that though Julia has been smiling for a few weeks now, we have only recently managed to capture them on film. Now we just need to get her laugh on video. Yes, she ha begun to laugh when awake! It's quite a cute little chuckle (chortle?) And let me tell you, she has quite a sense of humor. Anyway, here are a few more pictures from this weekend's photo frenzy.
Finally more pictures
