More photos and a landmark

The baby is in a sling and we're bouncing gently on an inflatable ball and listening to Zoe Muth and the Lost Highrollers, who I may never see again (gah!) but who will be in Northampton and Boston this week before moving to Austin, TX.  Grr, Texas!  Anyhow, I think she'll let me type for a bit.  

Catherine and Nicholas flew home Sunday so Nicholas can, you know, finish his sophomore year.  The nerve!  But my dad's still here until tomorrow and he's got the magic touch.  Look at this kid passed out on his shoulder (on DeeDee's couch; thanks, Deeds!).  So cozy. 

It's so nice to pass my little daughter to my dad and lounge on a big arm chair.  

Here are a couple shots from our walk to Foster Island and the Montlake Cut Friday afternoon after our Agua Verde lunch.  Thank you, weather gods!

Tobias, Haven, and KP came over to cook us dinner (our 3rd dinner from MealTrain - such a luxury!). Haven was teething but still a total fun kid.  

Team Aurora took a trip to the Pike Place Market Saturday.  

Relaxing on the couch with water and Fresca.  Party animals!

Ooh, I found this pic from Phil's collection, from the day Ainsley and Eliza were born.  This was the last time Nicholas welcomed a niece.  

Zebra outfits courtesy of cousins Mike and Kay Arms.  They fit!!!  Crib sheet and bouncy chair courtesy of Sarah and Eva Babineau.  

We forgot to return the scale yesterday so we went for one more late night weigh-in for poops and giggles.  Wait, what does that screen say?!

Aawww, sheeeyat!  You did it, kiddo!  Now we'll stop weighing you for our entertainment :)

This will have to suffice for a family picture.  We spend a lot of time like this: one parental pinky in Fiona's mouth, the other partially obscured by her bed thing.  I'm overdue to write about the actual challenges (emotional and otherwise) of parenting even a totally perfect newborn (the bed in our bed is a bit symbolic) but the squirt is waking up to feed so that will wait.   

 After a darn good 3-cycles of night-time feeding/sleeping we're taking on some big goals today:  

1. Elliott's off to pressure-wash a big wall at the Latona in anticipation of painting it
2. Fiona's gonna have a bath (because my child smells like the sour milk that's accumulated in the chin folds of which we're so proud)
3. Some number of us are planning a trip to West Seattle to get a new breast pump (thanks, Swedish insurance!) and more milk storage bags (thanks, mammalian genetics!).  

It's a big day here on Union Street!  And it's gorgeous outside again.  

xoxoxo, e, e, and f

Nothing pithy but we got pinky!

Our 2-week check-up was totally straight-forward and positive until it was time for the 2nd installment of the Washington State screen.  Here she is wearing leg-warmers to increase the blood flow from her tiny heel.  NO FUN.  I almost popped the lab lady when she looked at my struggling face and said, "And Mommy's hormonal too".  But I didn't give her the satisfaction (or the shiner).  

This just in from Anchorage!  Syd and Robin came to Seattle for about twenty minutes and, with great generosity of spirit, took public transportation from Tacoma to track us down for a visit before their second red-eye in as many nights.  SO good to hug an old friend, finally meet Robin, and see them both with Fiona.  

Thursday was bittersweet with my mom's Friday departure imminent but my Dad, Catherine, and Nicholas' arrival fresh and invigorating.  Don't these grammies look invigorated?

Elliott and his (likely pruny) pinky keeping the girl happily asleep before dinner.   

And it worked!  We all had a lovely dinner together complete with lettuce from Dennis and Meg's Lopez Island crop and a beer (which now tastes GREAT again after losing all its luster during pregnancy; welcome back, old friend!).  

God, how I love seeing Uncle Nick holding Fiona.  

(Forgive me, Nicholas; I'll limit this.)  Admittedly, this does feel like a long time ago, but I have such vivid memories of meeting him the night he was born seeing him grow up through all his wonderful stages.  And now he's driving around Seattle, taking AP classes, and holding my daughter.  

Life is too cool.  

The grey Seattle weather has broken again and we've had a couple beautiful days.  Miss pale shoulders Ryan needs extra protection and this hat should provide it for a good year or 3...  Thanks, Rosenbergs!

Here's Fiona's feelings about Grammy heading back to Ithaca.  Her departure may well be the reason behind the extra crying the last couple days.  We actually think it's that we've gotten a little over-confident in our parenting and been less respectful of Fiona's rhythms than she'd like.  We've had some wonderful outings to Agua Verde, the path along the Montlake Cut, around Capitol Hill, to the doctor's office (where she weighed in at 5# 8 1/4 oz on Thursday!), and this has included delays in eating, partial meals under a Bebe au Lait, and a few episodes of getting so worked up she can hardly latch.  Sorry, kiddo!  We'll reign it in.  

Here she is doing nothing again.  Super cute. 

Today was, as you all know, Hopscotch CD (Central District) day.  After a mid-day feeding while the fam was down at the Pike Place Market eating seafood and buying lovely flowers, the 3 of us walked the 1.8-mile course and then some...  Fiona tagged her first sidewalk along the way.  

After recovering from the torture that was the last half hour of that hot walk, she was lulled to sleep by adoring grandparents and the dulcid tones of the NBA semi-finals.  

A head-supporting pro. 

Pretty relaxed.

It's hard to fight sleep with this lump of love on your chest.  

And now we're gonna go give in until she wakes up in about an hour...

Lots of love.  

p.s. We weighed her at home for fun and she's up to 5# 12.8oz.  That's almost half the weight of that 12-pound baby on our post-partum hallway.  Hah!  She's got a solid double chin, her belly's nice and poochy, and her thighs are getting some respectable meat.  Super-Baby.

OK, sleep when we can.

xo, liz

We are not really going to Peru.

We like to think of ourselves as fun-loving and adventurous but we are not really leaving our 1-month-old baby to go to Peru next month.  Clearly I didn't make my irony apparent and now I fear there are horrified readers out there picturing us leaving our child to fulfill a spontaneous travel dream.  My only point was: we have a lot of milk in the freezer.

OK, in new business:

Elliott filed Fiona's nails while she slept and it went great.  She hasn't scratched her face in 36 hours.  

Fiona found her thumb several times in a row.  We're hugely proud.

Don't worry, of safety-conscious readership, she doesn't sleep with bunched blanket by her head, but she does hang out on beautiful, hand-made blankets (Thanks, Joanne!) in her heirloom bassinet once graced by Elliott's mom, his big brother, and Elliott himself.  These days we mostly don't put her down unless we're all sleeping but, if we're all eating or nursing aching arms, we roll her around in this and keep her close at hand.  

Super cozy on the dining room table.  

Oh, a weight update:  She clocked in at 5# 7.6 oz today!  

Here's Dennis flexing his grandpa muscles. 

xo, liz

Week 2 is off to a wonderful start.

Let's get the big news out of the way: we stopped syringe-supplementing 2 days ago because it seemed like we were overflowing her poor little tummy.  And... we just weighed her in at 5 pounds, 4 ounces! That's super reassuring.  Not that we were too worried.  But now we're very unworried.  

In other news: 

1. She's louder.  Those respiratory muscles are getting stronger.  She still doesn't cry very much.  As Megan says, we "may have gotten a super-baby". 
2. She's more alert and more often awake between feeds.  She often stays awake during the day after a feed for an hour or so, gazing at (or sort of towards) us and responding to our voices which is wonderfully satisfying.  Her accidental smiles are more frequent and more full-faced.  
3. Mom and Pop had a big outing last night.  Darnit, I slipped into parental third person...  Elliott and I went out to eat last night with Fiona!  After a 5:30 feed we walked up to 15th Ave, ran into Al and Peter outside the Hopvine (we can't go in with her), and sat down for a pint and a pizza at Harry's.  We totally tempted fate by not bringing... anything...d like, for instance, a nipple shield, diaper, back-up outfit, changing pad.  And it worked!  She needed a bit of pinky comfort but we ate like civilized people, only kind-of chugged the end of our beers, and made it home for nursing before she freaked out.  Score!
4. My internal battle to feel more human than utilitarian has turned a corner for the good.  It's a big and strange transition to the physicality of motherhood.  Yes, Carla, I feel like a milk truck.  I've been thinking of it as magically transforming my pregnancy weight into milkshakes that keep my kid out of the ER and improve her disease-fighting gut flora.  (That Michael Pollen article is great, by the way.)  I also have started feeling much better after the C-section and last night's walk felt much better than the walk two days prior.  I dropped the ibuprofen and am just using tylenol.  I'm pretty much a champ at getting out of bed.  This issue is no joke, though.  It's the thing (in the context of sleep deprivation) that gives me the best peek at baby blues.  In that vein it has been central to my happiness to feel so supported in my need to cry at least once a day.  It sneaks up on me, explodes, and is over as fast as it came.  Crying is awesome.  The snuggly intimacy of breast feeding is a wonderful tonic to bluesy feelings too.  There's not much in this world better than skin-to-skin time with a happy newborn.  

Here's an incredibly boring video of newborn tummy time.  She just lies there.  It's adorable.  

Wuzzup, littlest homegirl?

Chillin' in her preemie Bear onesie.

Note the tell-tale milk dripping down her face.  This correlates well with her happy drunk look.  

We're planning on going hiking in Peru for the month of July with KP, Tobias, and Haven.  We'll leave Fiona with Grammy and this growing freezerful of milk.  We figure after a month of parenting we deserve a month-long break.  That's how it works, right?  I mean, really: is it useful to have this much milk?  Yes.  The answer is "yes" but I'm not sure when we'll tap into it.  I'm grateful to Elliott's foresight (again) in buying this fridge for Fiona's room a couple weeks ago.  He's also researching college funds between naps which I can hardly conceive of but am super grateful for.  

Our friend Megan's sister, Kelly came over yesterday.  She's a civil engineer with a new interest in newborn photography.  So we did her the generous favor of allowing her to photograph our baby.  You're welcome, Kelly.  It was pretty fun.  After a good feed Kelly strung up a (luckily somewhat water-resistant) tablecloth between our bedposts and we plopped Fiona down on it with a towel-covered heating pad under her for coziness.  She was nudie and peed twice, pooped twice, and complained pretty much not at all.  Here are some teasers which may well be featured soon in a birth announcement near you!  Ridiculous cuteness.  

Good lord, I love her.  

xo, liz