The Next Big Change

Today we moved Lily's bassinet into her own room, and I feel like someone severed my arm. I can't believe it! I thought I wanted to sleep, but it's going to be really hard to sleep without her at the foot of our bed. When she first came home, she hardly made a dent in the bassinet, and now she's almost grown out of it. It's time to get a real crib. And a crib won't fit in our bedroom. Which means she'll have to sleep in her own room. Which means we have to get used to having her all the way across the hall. And she has to get used to it. So we moved her bassinet into her own room. Sigh.

Language Development: Stick Out Your Tongue!

I Don't Want to Forget This Later, It's One of Those Things That Only Comes When I'm Almost Asleep

In my mind while I'm sitting with Lily waiting for her to be asleep enough to put in the crib, I'm deconstructing This Is the House That Jack Built and thinking there is some structure there that I can make into an equation and make up a new verse with new characters and a modern plot and it could be really funny for adults or just for kids, it doesn't matter, if I figure out the equation, the relationship of each added verse to the previous verse, then I can make any number of new versions. It's just math with words. I can figure this out. I just have to go to bed now because I've taken 2 Percs for the pain in my head and I need some rest but I know I can figure this out later and I really want to. There has to be a wallabee in one version, because Lily likes that word. and Uffda, I said that to her tonight and she smiled. So maybe a Minnesota version. Yes. Just later.

Because

she's beautiful in my arms sleeping and I'm looking down at her round little head that still doesn't have much hair and I see her long eyelashes and it melts me into a Mommy puddle and I remember how she stared and stared into my eyes earlier when I read Green Eggs and Ham to her in funny voices and thought wow, she's changing, she's becoming more and more alert and more connected to me and loves my voice and earlier today she fell asleep to me reading her Go, Dog, Go, one of my favorites, and I love doing different voices for her when I read, it's like I finally got an excuse to have this much fun reading and playing and I love it. And we didn't ever send out any Christmas cards or even buy any or even start on writing our annual Christmas newsletter that everyone loves to read because it's fun and silly and not boring and I miss doing it but I don't care, I don't care if it doesn't ever get done this year because she's beautiful and wonderful and I'm up at 1:30am after holding her and playing with her since her 9pm feeding and finally getting her to peaceful sleep at 1am and like a broken Baby Alive her eyes popped open when I lay her down in the crib and she was ready to eat again and I just had to grin at her and get the next bottle of milk ready and pick her back up in my arms and go change another diaper and now she can almost hold the bottle all by herself which is amazing and my shoulder hurts all the way up my neck into my head and down my arm into my back because I haven't been doing my physical therapy exercises like I thought I would on vacation like a lot of things I thought I would get done on vacation but I have her and she's always there and I'll always drop whatever I'm doing and no, I don't need that food heated up, I'm used to eating it cold and it's okay, it doesn't matter that much, not like seeing her stop crying and snuggle up against me when I pick her up and know what to do. I can't make everyone else happy with me anymore, like I ever could, that was an illusion and a guilt trip I can't afford to take anymore, there just isn't time because I've got her now and me and her, we're happy.

Beautiful Laughter

It's been a hard day, at times. They don't seem to last all day long, the hard bits, which is nice. The morning was awful, I couldn't get any rest and the dog and the baby were needing attention at the same time. At one point I was on the floor with Lily on her playmat and Cocoa wanted to play fetch with one of her balls. Since this was an improvement over the constant pestering to go outside every 3 seconds, I went with it. She'd bring me the ball, I'd throw it. She'd bring it back. Often she brought it back so close to me that the ball rolled right into Lily's head. Luckily it's just a rubber ball, and Miss Lily had a cushy hat on besides, but it just seemed a littly funny, like it wasn't totally an accident that Cocoa was bonking Lily's head with her ball. "Oops! Silly me!" My hairdresser friend said her dog is depressed right now about their new baby, that he acts like Eeyore.

Anyway, now it's 1 in the morning and I'm finally awake. I just fed Lily and John is sleeping. She fed very easily, hardly waking up, and just eating very steadily and smoothly, so no big burps needed. Then when she was done, I just held her for a good half hour and looked at her and kissed the top of her head a lot. I watched her face changing expression in her dreams, and she suddenly started laughing, it was so sweet. It wasn't baby coo laughter, it was real laughter, jiggling her belly and everything. Every now and then she does that in her sleep and it's the most amazing thing. It's like she's visiting heaven where she knew everything before she came here to us, and she's laughing with the angels. God is great.

The Raspberry Stage

I never knew about this stage in babies, when they start doing raspberry noises with their mouth. It's really funny, especially since Lily seems to work so hard at it. She has her practice sessions during the day when she'll just do them over and over and try different tongue placement and lip movements. And the dog is rather intersted in this. Cocoa has always taken it was a sign from us that it's playtime when we do raspberries. So now here's this baby, who she's doing her best to ignore most of the time, doing that fun noise. Cocoa has been glancing at Lily the last couple of days during raspberry hour and trying to figure out what it wants...

Sleeping Through The What?

I got my hair cut last night, which is a good thing, it's been driving me crazy being too long, and then it gets in my face and when I don't get a shower (don't ask me how many days that happens) it just all makes me very crabby. So it was fun to go see my hairdresser, esp. because she had a baby about the same time as us, although hers wasn't a preemie, and I haven't seen her since she went on maternity leave. But her baby sleeps through the night. No, I mean really sleeps. From 9pm to 6 or 7am. Waaaaaah! The best we've gotten so far was 7 hours one time, but it still averages every 4 hours.

Some days the sleep deprivation is just really painful. I get that stomach ache you get when you just shouldn't be out of bed. It's my body protesting. And it causes me to get more headaches, which I need like, um, more headaches. Yesterday I got lucky and Lily fell asleep in her chair while I was on the phone with John saying I didn't think I could stand it, that I had to go to bed. So I didn't move her at all, I just curled up on the love seat in her room next to her bouncy chair and we snoozed for a couple hours. Phew. That was just dumb luck, though. Today she won't sleep unless I'm holding her, and Cocoa is driving me insane wanting me to let her outside in the fridid cold (12 degrees) every 2 seconds. She just wants me to leave the door wide open and let all the heat out. Aaaaaaaaaah!!! I need a vacation. Oh yeah, I get one in just a couple weeks here. I can hardly wait.

Special Baby Skills

I think babies go to secret schools before they're born, where they learn how to spit up everywhere but where you want them to. Yesterday I had the bib on, the burp rag in place below that, and Lily turned her head and somehow puked up my sleeve. Now, how does that happen? Maybe it's like pets: they never barf on the hardwood floor or the kitchen tile where it's easy to clean up--no, no, they have to go find the carpet where it will soak in good and leave a pungent aroma. Ah, barf stories. Good times.

Motor Sounds + Butt = Motorbutt

It makes me laugh every time Lily farts. I know, I'm so juvenile, but there it is (pun intended). She's so oblivious to it, she just sits there tootling away and her facial expression doesn't even change. Sometimes she'll cough and fart at the same time, and I just can't help but thinking of an adult doing that and being all embarassed. The funniest are the little series of toots that sound like a motorboat. We start laughing and then that makes her happy so she smiles. I just hope when she starts talking that Grandpa Jack won't teach her to say "I feel better now!" like he did one of his other grandkids after a burp. Because then I'll just laugh more and it will be hard to tell her "No, we say excuse me," and be Mature Mommy while I'm laughing.