Today's Adventure: Sleep!

Okay, four months is starting to suck a little less, because now The Kid is four and a half months old. She has figured out how to roll over from her back to her tummy, and this was making her angry. She hasn't quite figured out how to go from tummy to back consistently.

The first few days of last week were really hard. She was teething, learning to roll, not eating very much, not napping at all. You would think all this would exhaust a young child, but she would wake up every few hours at night, roll onto her tummy, then get mad and scream. Poor The Huz, he was getting no sleep, going into work with headaches and, on top of that, he had a huge pitch to give that week.Then on Wednesday night, she finally went to sleep for the night at 10:30 (We start our bedtime routine around 7:30, so you can see what a mess four months has been!). I was totally prepared to just feed her whenever she woke up (instead of trying to soothe her back to sleep), because it seemed to be the only way to get her to go back to sleep. She didn't make a peep all night! I woke up at 7:30am, and I was like, "Thank you, thank you, thank you for a full night's sleep! I got up and peeked in on her, and I could see she was on her tummy. My heart stopped a little - I was afraid she'd suffocated or something and that was why she never woke up in the middle of the night.Turns out she just finally figured out how to make herself comfy. I touched her face to see if she was breathing, and that woke her up (Darn, I had been hoping to catch just a leetle more sleep). Since then I've been alternating putting her down on her back and her belly. I'm also experimenting with a warm towel. The Huz puts a hand towel in the dryer when I start to feed her, and then he puts the warm towel in her crib when I'm ready to put her down. It's a very tricksy maneuver to keep her from waking up during the transfer, and it seems the warm towel helps lessen the shock of going from my warm body to a cold crib.

In a few days, it will be one year since it was 100% confirmed that I was pregnant, the anniversary of my 9 week sonogram. I'm going to try to write out the story of how I found out I was pregnant to commemorate.

Today's Adventure: Four Months

Just so you know, four months sucks.


Really, really sucks.


I mean, it sucks hard.


It sucks the most of all the months so far.


Sucks.


:(

Today's Adventure: Catch - up

And then, another month goes by.

Crazy...

The Kid will be four months old on the 30th. Here's what she's been up to lately:

• Found her thumb and is sucking/chewing on it. Sometimes she has three fingers from one hand and thumb of her other all in her mouth at the same time.

• Found her feet. I went to get her after her nap, and she was laying there with a foot in each hand, looking very pleased with herself. Today, she tried to get one into her mouth, but didn't quite make it.

• Laughed, but only a few times. The Huz got her to do it twice, once each on two different days, and I got her to do it twice, both on the same day.

• Rolled over, from her stomach to her back. She's actually done this several times, but mostly she just seemed to fall over. Today, she rolled intentionally. She's so so close to rolling from back to stomach, but she can't get her arm out from underneath her.

• Gone swimming. The Huz and my brother rigged a floating ring with a canopy so she wouldn't be exposed to too much sun, and we took her to the pool twice over the weekend. She enjoyed it a lot.

• Using her voice. She humming and squealing, making monkey sounds and babbling, screaming (not mommy's favorite); just really exploring the range of her voice.

The Kid watches us very intently when we eat, but has no interest in solids yet. She nurses very well, after some struggling at the beginning, and now I'm trying to get more comfortable with nursing in public. Because I have to use a nipple shield, it's a little bit more awkward of a process than just pulling up my shirt and latching her on. I'm learning how to minimize the exposure and how to nurse her in my Moby Wrap. I love this thing! Basically, it's five yards of t-shirt fabric that you wrap around yourself to carry your baby. It comes in very handy at those times when she only wants to be held, and my arms and back are getting tired. It's also very convenient for places where a stroller would be too much of a bulky burden. Like, at Comic Con!! The Huz and I had four-day passes (because he's "in the industry", as they say), so we took The Kid to Preview Night. I thought that it would be the least crowded day, but I was so wrong! It was PACKED. There was no room to be pushing a stroller around the showfloor. Yay for the Moby!

The Kid has her four month checkup this week. I'll fill in her weight, length and percentile afterwards.

Now that the "fourth trimester" is over, we're trying to incorporate The Kid into our lives more. You know, doing the things we normally did when we didn't have a baby, just modified to include her. She's been to birthday parties, weddings, out to eat at restaurants. I'm going to get involved in some mommy groups, if only to find a good babysitter if nothing else, so we can go out without pressing our parents into babysitting duty (They are the BEST babysitters, but slightly inconvenient, since they live 100 miles away). I'm also running out of things to entertain her with on my own!

On the knitting front, my friend C and I went to a Stitch-n-Pitch baseball game, Dodgers v. Astros. Astros killed, 10-2. We got four or five free bags, and I picked up a silk folding case for my Addi Cliks. I worked on my Wicked (I'm about halfway through the shoulder increases), and I taught C how to do a dropstitch, so she started a scarf with some Sugar n Creme I had laying around.







So that's it for now!

Today's Adventure: Early Morning

It's 5:00 am right now. The diapers are on their second wash now, as we had forgotten to finish them last night. There are only three small lights on: the one over the stove, which I think The Huz turns on as a comfort more than anything else; the lamp on his desk, which glows with just enough light to change a diaper; and the light of my laptop, which bathes my daughter in soft white as she nurses and I browse the Internet. The Huz stays up in the living room for a little while, but he has wisely decided to go back to bed, because he will be on duty later this morning. The Kid has fallen asleep on my lap - she smiles every once in a while in her sleep, and it makes me smile. The refrigerator hums, the wall clock ticks, and The Huz lightly snores in the other room.

I am content.

This is a wonderful adventure.

Today's Adventure: The Kid - 2 1/2 Months

Here are a few videos and pictures of The Kid:



She is cooing a lot, and she is trying to get things from her hand to her mouth, with varying degrees of success. She loves chewing on cloth.



She smiles at us when we get her out of her crib as if to say, "Oh yeah, I remember you, you're the one with the milk/who wipes my butt." She is following things and people with her eyes, tracking them as they move around her.




She's been camping already and looks incredibly cute when hanging out by the fireside.

She LOVES Sara Watkins' solo album, especially the song, "Long Hot Summer Day" - I kid you not, she can be in the middle of a full-out meltdown, and if I put that song on, or start singing it, she goes silent.

She does NOT like to be laid down when she is enjoying being upright. She has learned how to scream and it is very high-pitched!

She's so stinkin' adorable I can't get over it!

Today's Adventure: Return of the Knitter

I haven't written anything about knitting in a long time - mostly because I haven't been doing any. I had all this free time on my hands when I wasn't working and I did not use it to do any knitting until the end of my pregnancy. I knit up a burp rag in Sugar'n Cream, and I made a tiny pair of socks for The Kid. I misplaced the socks right after I knit them and didn't find them until a week ago - of course her feet are already too big for them.
So, I'm jumping back onto my knitting bandwagon and knitting up a storm. For my first Mother's Day :) The Huz sent me to one of the LYS nearby (that's Local Yarn Store, for those who don't know - yes, knitting has lingo) and buy whatever I wanted. I bought three skeins of Malabrigo in the Cinnabar colorway. This is a yarn that everyone on Ravelry (an online knitting and crocheting community) just raves about, so I've been wanting to try it out. I must agree, it is a yummy yarn, so I went back a few days later to buy the remaining skeins, in order to make a sweater. Malabrigo is dyed in small batches of like 6-10 skeins, and someone else had bought one or two, so there were only two left. I'm going to make a Wicked sweater, probably with short sleeves since I think I will just skate by with the exact right amount of yarn. I have swatched and cast on and I am on Row 2!

My mom also took me yarn shopping for Mother's Day at her LYS (not that she knits, but it's a yarn store that is local to her, not me). They were even having a Mother's Day sale, so I got four skeins of Elsebeth Lavold Angora in an orangey colorway, six skeins of Berocco Comfort in a variegated pink, and five balls of Monet in a mottled black and pink. The Monet will become a shrug for my mom (happy Mother's Day, you just bought your own present!), the Comfort will be a shrug for me, and the Angora is for me to pet! ;) I haven't yet decided what the Angora is for.

I also took myself yarn shopping for Mother's Day, and picked up some Schaefer Sandra in purple, pink and blue, and a small skein of Ella Rae Bamboo Silk in a pretty turquoise. The Schaefer will also be a shrug/sweater like this one (Ravelry link) I made for Mom, and the Bamboo Silk will become a cowl in some lace pattern I haven't picked yet. I'm thinking fir cone, but maybe something else. I have to wait until the 17" cable comes back from the Denise kit people - the cable broke on another project, so I had to send it back to the manufacturer to replace it - yay, lifetime warranty! I bought the new Addi Click interchangeables, too, and I'm using them on my Malabrigo Wicked - I'll let you know how I like them, but so far, I'm annoyed that the kit doesn't have a 16" cable - I can't start my cowl! :( Okay, I could go buy another circular needle, but that just seems a bit silly when I have two interchangeable kits.

And since Michaels is re-doing their yarn department, I scored three skeins of Lion Brand Cashmere for $.99 a piece, and I picked up a few skeins of their new Impeccable yarn in the Embers and Garden colorways.

As for stash knitting, I made this cute little sweater (Rav link) for a friend's baby, using Sugar'n Cream in Rose and Cream. I think I'll make one for The Kid, too.

The Knitter is back, and she's ready for action! I just have to find the time to do all of this knitting...

(ETA: The tiny socks are made with Koigu KPPPM - thanks for reminding me, Emily!)

Today's Adventure: Mommydom Update

Okay, so, I suck as a blogger. I'll put in a lot of pictures so it will be worth it.

Here's what happened: I had a baby, see? And if that doesn't warrant a bit of a break from blog obligation, I don't know what does, okay? I know it also obligates me to blog about my new addition eventually. So, I kept meaning to write, and meaning to write, and everyday, more stuff happened that I should have written about, but didn't. And it just kept piling up and piling up. Eventually, it was just too much to write about, and it seemed very daunting, so I'm not gonna. I'm just going to start from right now, six weeks in. She's much more interesting now, anyway. Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration. She still doesn't really do much of anything.


The Huz is NOT a bad blogger - as a matter of fact, he's a very good blogger. He DID write about the birth of our child. I attribute this to the fact that he does not have to feed her from his chest, so he has a little bit more free time. For the thirty-plus hour extravaganza that is the birth of our daughter, The Kid, and an overview of her first two weeks, please go to The Huz's blog, Baby In Progress, or One In The Oven. Here, I'll take you...

Six weeks have gone by since The Kid was born, and they have been the longest six weeks of my life. It feels like she's been here forever. Paul Reiser was right - babies slow down time! Every time we think we have gotten into a rhythm, she changes it up on us. She'll go down for the night at 9:00pm three days in a row, and then, on the fourth, she'll want to eat at 9:00pm. And 10:00pm. And 11:00pm. And 12:00am. She'll sleep for six hours straight three nights in a row, then only sleep three hours the next night- stuff like that.

The Huz and I call each other Mom and Dad instead of Babe and Hon. I don't know what makes us do this.

Breastfeeding has been quite an adventure. I think it will get its very own post. We're also using cloth diapers. That will get it's own post, too.

Today we went to Target, just the two of us. I bought The Kid a size 3 month sleeper. She's already outgrown Newborn.


The Huz had six weeks of paid paternity leave. That was amazing! But he went back to work this week - sad! We miss him during the day. It's hard to get stuff done when The Kid wants to be held, so the extra set of hands was very helpful. The household is my job now, since I am pretty much a stay-at-home-mom, but it all has to fit in between caring for The Kid. Baby steps. Today, lots of things got done - laundry, dishes, stove, emails. Yesterday, not so much - we managed to go for a walk, and that was about it. The Kid is sleeping now, and everyone keeps telling me to sleep when she sleeps, so I think I will go to bed now. I chose one picture for each week, plus a hospital shot, so you can see how she's grown so much already! Nite!