Archive for July, 2008
4 Months Old and Number 2 Everywhere!
28
Jul
I don’t mean that kind…I mean the diaper kind. No, not that diaper kind…the actual diaper kind…the Number 2 diaper.
Since our little 4 month-old is sleeping through the night (thanks again Sleeping Karma Gods) and drinking formula like it’s an Olympic sport, she is starting to really fill up those Number 1 Pampers, so we tried her out in Number 2′s. I think she could probably go 48 hours now. Look at the size of those things! It makes her first diaper look like an elbow pad!
The other number 2 that we are really into is, of course, nipples. No, not those nipples. Sheesh! The same number 2 nipples that Jenn had so much fun with a while back are now the norm around here! Which is probably why we had to upgrade the diapers.
So what does a growing girl do for her 4th monthiversary? Mostly a lot of drinking and peeing.
Sleeping Karma
23
Jul
I donate blood as often as I can, as a result, 8 times out of 10 I find a parking space within a block or two of the place I am trying to go without too much circling; so I know a little about Parking Karma and how it relates to charity work. Sleeping Karma is new to me so if Jenn and or I have offended the Sleeping Karma Gods, Karmic Accountants or Whatever form they take, I APOLOGIZE!
When Grace came home from the NICU and I went back to work, she was on a fairly regular schedule. She would wake up once a night (maybe twice) for a feeding. I magnanimously volunteered to take the middle of the night feeding so that Jenn could get some much needed sleep from the last feeding of the night to the first one of the day. It worked pretty well. I sometimes suffer from occasional insomnia and feeding Grace gave me something to do and I usually managed to get a couple more hours before heading to work. When the guy at work that was determined that I be as sleep deprived as he, asked if I was getting any sleep I would say “Sure…plenty”. Jenn was too. Our schedules were out of sync as I went to bed around 10pm, woke at 3 or 4, fed Grace and then slept til 6:30….Jenn would feed Grace get to bed around midnight and then sleep until Grace woke up at 7 or 8. Not bad.
Then something weird started happening. I would half wake up around 4 and listen…nothing. I would wake up again around 5:30 and, hearing nothing, would check to see if everyone in the house was breathing and go back to bed. One or two nights of this and Jenn and I declared to each other that she might just be sleeping through the night. We had never heard of such a thing. We had heard of colic, sleep deprivation, sleep con$ultant$, hear tearing, uluating and rending of garments, but a 3 month old baby sleeping through the night, no one had ever mentioned. Even the books we have only mention such a phenomenon as “theoretically possible”. So we altered her schedule to get a feeding in around 8 or 9 pm and watched to see if she made it til the morning. And she did. Night after night. Without late night feeds, I was out of a job but I was assured that I would find another…eventually.
We were both surprised this morning to awaken to a wailing Grace at 4AM. I jumped back into the old routine fairly well. Admittedly, I was a bit groggier than in my heyday a few weeks ago and I managed to turn the feet of her pajamas inside out as I changed her diaper, which made putting her back together nearly impossible to do in the dark. Jenn came wandering in to see what the ruckus was all about and managed to help get a bottle ready and untangle the pajamess I had made. When the house settled down again, baby fed and reswaddled, we both came to the only reasonable conclusion at about the same time. We had offended the Sleeping Karma Gods by talking about Grace’s sleeping skills.
Hopefully, all is not lost. We are now on a campaign to find out what sacrifices we can make to these…wonderful…and…all powerful beings to appease them and get some more of that sleep. If Parking Gods accept blood and charity work, does anyone know what currency works with the Sleeping ones? How about a nice half-finished bottle of Scotch?
Communication Updated
19
Jul
Grace’s repertoire doesn’t allow for much fine-tuned communication. In reality, she only has about 3 modes: Asleep, awake and crying. Asleep and awake are pretty much the same all the time (she smiles in both) and crying (usually preceded by snorting) is a pretty blunt tool for getting one’s point across. She cries when she is hungry, she cries when she is cold or uncomfortable….and she cries when she has pooped (this is arguably the same as uncomfortable). The books tell us that many parents can tell the difference between cries and certainly other parents claim to hear “that hungry sound” with Grace, though they are wrong at least 50% of the time. To us, there is not much difference between the hungry cry and the irritated cry. There is, however, one sound that we have come to know and it is 90% accurate. We call it the “poop noise”. If you were to take an adult male goose and gently throttle it while showing it a picture of a
UPDATE: I am told that there are, in fact, a bunch of different cries for hunger, cold, sarcasm etc. “We” know about all of them and how dare I suggest that we don’t understand our own daughter. I immediately recognized that cry. Um…what are the words I am looking for…Yes, dear.
Forced Fast Friends
15
Jul
You may have noticed a new face and long neck appearing in Grace’s pictures lately. Her name is “Sophie la Girafe” (French for “Sophie the Giraffe”) and she and Grace are the best of friends. Actually, since Grace hasn’t figured out how to use her hands and arms properly, she doesn’t have much to say about this arrangement. We just gently place Sophie in the crook of her arm and inertia does the rest. If random movements cause the two to come face-to-face, Grace attempts to get formula from Sophie’s nose. So far, Sophie’s failure to provide nourishment has not affected their friendship in the least.
Most importantly, we are happy that Grace looks much less lonely wriggling in her crib or sleeping in the car seat. For her part, Sophie seems infinitely happier than she would be playing with Lincoln.
Sunday Achievements
13
Jul
We are back from our Beverly Hills break from reality and are reluctantly going over our long to-do lists and getting ready to return to normal life. In fact, we both have so much to do that I have conveniently picked this moment to teach Grace the fine art of procrastination. I have been ignoring my list all day and wisely spending my time working on her repertoire of baby tricks. Not only did I find that sticking my tongue out makes her smile, but after a few times, she was trying to stick hers out right back at me. I haven’t read the newborn development book yet (I’ll get to it soon), but I am sure this qualifies her as either a genius human or an average chimpanzee.
Grace sleeps thru Breakfast at Nate & Al’s
11
Jul
Had Grace been awake she might have had her first interview… Larry
King was sitting two tables away!
