We had a nice holiday. Technically there's still a day left, but there's no more travel and there are no more house guests, so I think a recap would not leave much out at this point.

SNG's family came here for Christmas, which was nice since going anywhere with a small baby is a bit like going anywhere with concrete shoes on your feet. After everyone went home or back to work, I ate a lot of 50% off Christmas candy, watched a lot of TV, and as you may have guessed, played on the computer a lot.

Friday, SNG, e-baby and I went shopping, and we got a new camera. YAY! It takes much nicer pictures than the old one. The biggest differences are in speed: it takes a picture faster (push-button-to-click time is very short-- better for catching a spontaneous expression, like a smile) and it can take pictures of very fast things (which means fewer blurry pictures of babies and dogs). We've been keeping DOTi most of the week (Peace and Fuzzy's dog) and she is VERY fast.

For the weekend we went to SNG's parents house. Dianaverse will be there until New Year's Day, bt we came home today to beat the traffic. Nothing like sitting in hours of home-from-the-OBX traffic with a baby howling and a dog pooting in the backseat. It was a good idea: there were very few cars on the road today.

As an ending to what may be the most boring blog post ever written, here are e-baby pictures for December. Enjoy!

Two Posts In Two Days! or, Diaries From a Boring Kitchen Table:

e-baby has found her hands. I had read that this happens around 3 months, and in true e-baby fashion, at 3-months-and-1-day we caught her staring intently at her right hand, turning it over and over, wiggling the fingers (1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4), then sucking on it, then looking at it again. It was the most interesting thing she'd seen since lunch. The next day she found her left hand. Now, flailing her arms about, she stops mid-swing to look at her hands, turning them over and over.

She already knew how to grasp things in her vicinity, like pushing her pacifier back into her mouth if it was slipping (more of a forearm-push than a grasp, really). With the discovery of hands, however, she is learning to grab objects held in front of her. This feels like a milestone, the beginning of Big Things. However, it seems that grasping comes much earlier than letting go:

*On her swing, there's a setting where she can grasp the fish hanging on the sides to make the music start and stop. She's been able to control this feature for a few weeks. However, after a few minutes of playing, she'll start fussing and then crying and tugging, tugging, tugging the fish, changing the music each time. It is quite evident that she does not know how to let it go.

*SNG gave her a tiny red teddy bear, and she bopped herself in the nose, chin, forehead with it before crying and shaking it about like a sticky piece of trash, all the while clutching it tightly in her tiny fist. She was undoubtedly aiming for her mouth, missed, and wanted it to Go Away.

Our lesson for the day is this: If a baby grabs your hair and won't let go, remember that it is probably as distressed about the situation as you are. Addendum: Don't take your baby mackerel fishing or you will pay hefty fines for keeping illegal-size fish. Most states won't even give a fishing license to a 3-month-old for this very reason. Babies just don't understand catch-and-release.

Oh, yeah- this post is going to reel in some interesting Google searches.

We had a fabulous Christmas. I'll post more about it later. But first, I wanted you to see these adorable pictures:

Who is that? No, it isn't e-baby. Hint: look at the date.

All along I've thought e-baby looks like my mother, but this is uncanny. She doesn't have my grandfather's nose after all. It's SNG's.

FRAU:(shouting) "Send in the clone!"
NUMBER TWO: "He is identical to you in every way, except he is one-eighth your size. "
DR. EVIL: "Breathtaking. I shall call him Mini-Me. Mini-Me, you will sit to my right."

TEN DAYS OFF WORK YAY YAY YAY!

I'm stocking up on 50%off Christmas candy and warming up my credit card for things I don't need.

Did you know that on average, people lose about 100 hairs a day? Just normal hair loss, not pattern baldness of any kind. While I was pregnant, I don't think I lost a single hair to natural causes. Honestly, I did not have to clean my brust for 9 months, plus two more months after the baby was born. The awesome thick hair was one of my favorite things about being pregnant. People attribute the phenomenal hair, nails, and skin of pregnancy to prenatal vitamins, but it's not that because I'm still taking them and the hairs have started to fall out. It started about a month ago, and apparently, I'm making up for lost time because I leave a trail of long blonde hairs everywhere I go. So let's see... even if I lost 50 hairs a day (which I think is an overestimate), then that's 48 weeks at 50 hairs NOT lost a day, so there are 16,800 hairs to lose now, plus the usual 100 a day. The thick hair was nice enough to almost make me want to be pregnant again. And then I smack myself in the back of the head and return to my senses.

Good news of the week: PartnerInCrime and LeBon have their electricity back!! Not only had they been without power for a week and a half, but her whole family was coming to town for Christmas, and oh yeah, did I mention she's VERY pregnant? Because she is. And she just got over a terrible several-week-long stomach thing. And she lost a whole freezer full of casseroles that she had made for after the baby's born. Now it's time to track down the person with the voodoo doll of my cousin before anything else happens.

Not-good news of the week: Peace is sick. She and Fuzzy were supposed to be in Philly for the holidays and we were planning to watch their dog DOTi this week, but now it looks like Peace won't be going anywhere soon. Send happy-healthy vibes for her.

Speaking of family in town, SNG's parents will be here sometime tomorrow, staying for Christmas and a little after-Christmas shopping. We'll have turducken again. I love turducken. SNG's mom will make some pies. Turducken and pies. Those are leftovers I won't complain about.

Of course, this is e-baby's first Christmas so she is dancing to some Christmas jazz music.



Merry Christmas to everybody!

Have you noticed that blog posting for me is feast or famine? This week it's feast.

From the file marked "Gee, really?", Christmas is Monday. New Year's Day is the next Monday. What is noteworthy about this is that my company closes for business between Christmas and New Year's every year. Ten days off. I love that.

January 2 I return to work full time. I don't love that as much. I'm still trying to figure out how to work exercise into my schedule once I'm back FT. This month has been easy because I take e-baby to day care at 9, work until 10:30, jog 30 minutes, feed the baby at 11, grab lunch until about 12:30, and work until about 2:30 or 3. But day care is only open 9-5, so something will have to be cut short to get in a full day's work (which is also 9-5). Soon she'll be big enough to ride in the baby jogger and I'll be able to take her to and from work on foot, but before that can happen the weather will have to be warmer. So I think that's not possible until March or so.

Hopefully I'll be traveling less next year than in previous years. For several years, upper management have been telling us that teaching via the internet is the wave of the future and that we'd all better get on board with it. I resisted this for as long as I could because I really LOVE being in the classroom face-to-face with my students. I also love seeing new places so travel was always a treat. But now that my priorities have shifted a bit, live web teaching is looking much more attractive. Let's just hope it doesn't make me start to hate my job. Because have I mentioned before? It's the perfect job.

Not being able to get in more than a 30-minute workout 5 days a week has certainly made it difficult to lose the baby weight. Oh, and being hungry all.the.time doesn't help much either. I think my pregnancy appetite stayed around. But, I guess this is temporary and once I can start jogging and biking to work again, I'm sure things will settle back to normal.

So what else? Nobody else will be around to hang out next week, since friends from work will be out of town and SNG will be at work and Dianaverse doesn't have the whole week off. So it'll be e-baby and me, cooped up alone like the family in The Shining, only without the axe-murdering Jack Nicholson character. Or the creepy twin girls. Or the blood-spewing-elevator-shaft.

Other than eating 50%off Christmas candy and going shopping for things I don't need, what is there to do for 4 weekdays on my own?

I'm trying out a trick to embed videos here from youtube. It's e-baby chatting with us about her big night out in Manhattan.

One week: Two trips, two colds, one bottle, three pizzas, and a very large rice krispie treat.

Last week I took my first trip without e-baby. It was two nights in suburban Philadelphia, which is quite a bit more boring than urban Philadelphia, but probably less violent. So I guess that's good. I was feeling the beginnings of a sore throat on Sunday night, and I hoped that by the time I got home I wouldn't be contagious anymore and that maybe e-baby wouldn't catch it.

SNG's parents came up to help him out and since they live in The Land Of Crappy Malls (their mall is likely to carry more double-wide trailers and fishing boots than Abercrombie sweaters) they took advantage of the day care to get some Christmas shopping done, and in the evenings there were 3 pairs of hands to feed, change, and snuggle with the SmallAndFuzzy one. She probably felt as though this was ALMOST the level of luxury to which she should become accustomed.

Meanwhile, in suburban Philly, I slept about 5 hours a night (oh cruel insomnia! oh terrible sore throat!) and every evening had SNG put the phone up to ebaby's mouth so I could hear those panting and grunting noises that I love so much. I came home Tuesday night, and SNG was waiting for me with e-baby in the car seat. As I came down the terminal hallway I saw her face light up and she smiled big for me. I think she knew that I was in need of some major baby therapy, and she stayed really cheerful all evening.

On Thursday, SNG, e-baby and I flew together (!) to New York. We got pictures of her first cab ride and her first hotel room and she even got a security badge at the regional office. So cute! Thursday night we had dinner with my cousin Cosmopolitan at a pizza joint owned by Mario Bataly (OH it was SO good). I always love seeing her when I can. She's the first person from my dad's family to meet e-baby in person and of course e turned on the charm. She smiled and cooed and then gracefully fell asleep so that the grown-ups could chat in peace over pizza, cheese, veggies, and a nice bottle of wine.

*side note: I really wish I could see my cousins more often. Every time I spend time with them I am reminded how much I like them. My mom's family always gets together at Easter, but the southern Louisiana family reunions have sort of died out. We need to get that going again. Cousins' weekends? Different city every year?

On Friday SNG and e-baby wandered around Manhattan and met some of our friends in the NY office (again, full-on charm) and then we hit LaGuardia for our:

5:30pm flight home.

The pilot for our plane was scheduled to arrive at LaGuardia at:

8pm.

Do the math on that one. It's OK, I'll wait.

Luckily the snack bar in the C-gate area is transcendent and I found a rice krispie block that was about 1/8 cubic foot. It was gone before we left the ground.

I was too optimistic to hope that e-baby would be spared by terrible sore throat and cold. By Saturday she was snot-logged and now she's a pathetic, whimpering mucous fountain. Poor little e-baby.

NEW PICTURES ARE POSTED!!!

Here are pictures of e-baby from weeks 7-9 , right before Thanksgiving

Here are pictures from Thanksgiving in Austin

Enjoy!

The Earth (hearts) Boobies!

Since becoming a mother, I've gradually become a complete and total devotee of breastfeeding. And it isn't just because of those La Leche League meetings I've been going to. But they are a lot of fun. While pregnant I had decided to nurse e-baby the first year, but I wasn't sure whether I'd like it much, or whether it would seem weird.

I've also become a connoisseur of baby and child care books, and one thing is clear from all of them: there are countless benefits of breastfeeding over formula where the baby's health is concerned. Health benefits aside, it is a lot cheaper and it's darned convenient. The thought of having to prepare and heat bottles of formula above and beyond everything else that baby care entails makes me twitch a little. There are a million other reasons, e.g. if I get a flu shot, the baby gets the immunization through the milk. Pharma can't manufacture an antibiotic cocktail that even approaches colostrum & milk for its timely adaptability to exposure to germs.

Besides all that, there's something ticklingly sweet and Hallmark-tastic about looking down at that little profile and her look of utter and complete peace & satisfaction at having a cuddle with mommy and eating and being warm and safe all at once. I wouldn't allow myself to be deprived of that for a million dollars. When e-baby is a surly teenager someday, I'll try to remember those little nursing moments to remind myself that she was, once, perfect.

This is not to diss women who don't breastfeed, and I have aunts on both sides of my family who didn't and their kids are fine. And, of course, adopted babies are generally not breastfed and they are fine, too. But I just love it. I didn't know if I would. It took a couple of weeks to get the hang of it, and it hurt at first. It's since evolved to where I can feed the baby in the backseat of the (parked) car in the middle of a busy day of shopping and fun. Without flashing anybody, either! Formula would be a lot more trouble.

So, the bee that pollinated my bonnet for this blog entry? I was surfing the web for info on Fenugreek (since I travel for work, I need to keep my supply up), and found this site .
If that doesn't convince you to start lactating and go nurse some random baby right away, I don't know what will.

Bike Rider in Training

Bike Rider in Training
Originally uploaded by catandtony318.

I will post pictures from the Thanksgiving trip to Austin soon. In the meantime, here is our "Cindy Lou Who" in her biker gear.