Boxing Day December 26, 2008

Happy post-Xmas everybody!  I apologize for the long delay between posts, but I simultaneously got cable and started having family in town visiting, along with being accosted by the holiday, and also getting active on Facebook again (wow, what a time sink!).

My sister Adrienne came in for 5 days, with her visit overlapping my father’s 6 day visit.  We stared at the baby a LOT, and bought & decorated a tree.  Also enjoyed were cooking, watching the new 42″ flat screen that my dad bought us, and general lazing about.

Then Amelia had to put up with just Mom and Dad for a while, until my sister April and her husband Jason arrived on Xmas Eve.  We had a lovely day yesterday: menu included prime rib, yorkshire pudding (my 1st time!), twice-baked spuds and English trifle, the latter of which I made myself.  Everything was scrumptious, and everyone’s were fabulous.

The other reason that my voice has been off the interwebs of late is that the kid’s sleep patterns have been ALL OVER THE PLACE, and thus my sleep has been intermittent at best.  We think she might have a bad reaction to my eating either dairy or citrus/tomatoes or both, so I’m eschewing much of the delicious leftovers from yesterday and going dairy and acidic food-free for a coupel of days to see if Amelia lets go of the fussing for a while.  Also, her poop is very green, not the best of signs in Exclusively Breastfed Babies (whose poop, for the uninitiated, should be mustardy-yellow.)

It’s hard to come up with tasty things to eat that have neither dairy nor tomatoes nor citrus, at least for me, but I came up with a few menu items  this morning and Tom ran to the grocery store WITH Amelia, which allowed me to go back to bed and get 90 minutes uninterrupted sleep.  Yay!!! It helped my menu planning that I got two HUGE cookbooks for Xmas – The America’s Test Kitchen Cookbook, and Mark Bittman’s Best Recipes in the World.  I am now equipped, cookbook-wise, to cook EVERYTHING.  Which I love about me.

Seriously, though, the fussiness associated with my daughter’s digestion is really getting impressive.  I won’t say colic, because it’s not like she’s crying for hours at a time (knock wood), but it’s quite disturbing when your breastfed baby pushes the nipple out of her mouth to scream.  The nipple!  This has been the automatic Crying Off Switch for 6 whole weeks!  It can’t fail us now!  Hence our taking the drastic measure of separating me from cheese, milk, butter, tangerines and ‘maters.

I must say that it’s been SO wonderful to have family here and see the love they have for my daughter; I don’t know why it is so moving – it’s not like I was expecting them not to like her or anything – but I just melt when I see my loved ones staring at Amelia with the same besotted look that I must have on my face most of the time. (Sorry – 2 AM Screaming Amelia is loved just as much as 2 PM Cooing Amelia, but the former doesn’t get all the adoring looks that the latter soaks up.)  Maybe my mild level of surprise come from the assumption that no one could love Amelia as much as Tom and I do, and it’s really touching to see how wrong that notion is, and watch Amelia being embraced into our family by so many adoring pairs of arms.  Everybody loves everybody – hurray!

More pics and things soon, pinkie-swear.

We are each other’s angels November 25, 2008

Auntie J to the rescue!

Today my good friend Lady J came over and let me take a baby-free nap for over 3 hours… it was HEAVEN. She also changed diapers, folded laundry, washed all the dishes in the sink, and held and soothed the baby while I cooked the shrimp alfredo I had been craving. And then poof! She was gone. Luckily, I have evidence of her passing (not just that the black circles under my eyes have faded to light grey). Don’t let this hard-boiled broad fool you – she is wonderful with babies.

Thanks to Auntie J for contributing to the sanity of Amelia’s mother! I was nearing the end of my rope, and now my head is above water enough to mix a metaphor or two.

On a different note, see below for what I find when trekking from our bedroom to Amelia’s nursery (where the diapers live) in the middle of the night. The glider may belong to Amelia and me during the day, but we can’t hog it 24 hours a day it seems…

things a new mother doesn’t realize until the baby comes November 17, 2008

Sleeping after nursing

1.) Sleep is the best thing in the world, and you don’t need much of it to feel WAY better.

2.) Newborns wear hats a lot. More than anyone else wears hats, I think, except for the Queen of England (and the Queen Mother).

3.) Breastfeeding will keep you just as hungry, but it will be difficult to remember to eat.

4.) Staring at your perfect baby is a full time job. And sometimes you need more than one pair of eyes.

5.) You will get more done in your daughter’s 45 minute nap than most people accomplish in an entire weekend.

6.) It’s important to keep extra batteries handy for the camera, because she needs to be photographed about every 3 hours.

7.) Your friends and family are more of a blessing than you ever thought possible, and you don’t deserve them.

8.) Rocking chairs kick the ass off a Mexican donkey.

9.) What a sitz bath is and why.

10.) Life will just get more complicated from now on, but in a beautiful, kaleidoscopic way that is infinitely more rich and delicious than you ever thought possible.

walkies November 14, 2008

Amelia and I took our first walk today.  Tom got the BOB all set up with the car seat adaptor last night, and I had planned to get out by about 9ish but Miss A had other ideas.  Finally, she had a big poop (a friend advised me to wait for this felicitous event before leaving the house) and we were able to dress and strap in and amble carefully around the neighborhood in the sunshine and fresh air for about 30 minutes.

She found it all very bright and squinty, I think, but it was nice to enjoy the beautiful 70 degree day before the cold front rolls in tonight.  Last day of Fall before Winter?  Hard to say in Texas, but I’m glad for the field trip nonetheless.

Hello, big world!

My dear friend Jane, who dropped everything to fly to Austin on Sunday upon hearing I went into early labor, left this morning for Charlotte and points beyond.  She drove us to the hospital when we transported, was present for Amelia’s birth, took us home when we sprung ourselves, and took good care of both Tom and I during the last week.  She cooked for us and did dishes, laundry, and anything else we needed, all while working remotely on deadlines that didn’t care about my early birdie.    We’ve been friends since we were 19, and the bonus of having her here this week is yet another example of the weird serendipity that came in to play with Amelia’s very unexpected arrival.  Thank you Jane – can’t wait to see you again in March!

Amelia has a taste for adventure, just like her Aunt Jane!