12. I'm doomed - not that that's new.

Since only two people commented on my contest, both Katie and Stacey will get treats. Email me (I know you both know how!), and we'll talk stash. :)

This morning, while I was doing my usual lie-in-bed-denying-that-it's-time-to-get-up and play-with-the-baby, the Infanta sat up, almost entirely unaided. Now, she didn't start flat on her back (she was arched over my arm and on a pillow), and she did want a finger to grab for the last few degrees to upright - but heck, I'm bad at sitting up from lying prone! Sad that my baby's abs are better than mine.

Aaand now, just as I'm thinking thoughts about it being time to start transferring Herself to a proper crib (she's about to outgrow the cosleeper), it's time to brace for the eight month sleep regression. Although she's what I've come to realize is an "easy" baby, the Infanta has hit all of these Wonder Weeks early and distinctly. Send chocolate!

7. Well, I was going to post some pictures.

Blogger seems to be having trouble talking to my computer and uploading pictures today. I was going to post a photo of the Infanta sitting up on my lap, but I guess not today... Nope, can't even work it from posting it on Flickr - but here's the link.

The Infanta (currently snuggled against me in my new Moby), while not precisely crawling or sitting up independently, is making great strides in physical achievement. She creeps quite well, and pretty quickly at times - I should probably find another place for the Asian ceramics than the floor, dontcha think? She also sits quite well if placed there, as in the linked image - although she tends to lean forward and scoot off in pursuit of something that looks chewable.

SIL's naturalization ceremony yesterday was amazing. I think that every kid should attend one, as part of their education in civics. I definitely think I'll be making an effort to get my kids to one when they're old enough to appreciate it!

1. Happy New Year!

Kind of in a rush this morning, as we're going to Grandma and Grandpa's for the family Christmas celebration this afternoon, but here's a cute baby and momma picture.

I hope your headaches this morning don't overshadow the joy in possibility of a new year!

Some videos

First off, some videos of the Infanta. You can see all the videos we've taken and edited of her here, but for those who don't have time to check them all out, here're a couple of my favorites.





Secondly, I realized the other day that (duh) I could find bellydancing videos on yootoob, so I did a search, and found some great stuff. First up is a video of "superstar" Rachel Brice doing her thing (with a couple of friends, ultimately):



And here's a dressing-room interview of her talking about an incredibly inspiring moment she had watching another dancer:



My New Year's resolution is to post here every day in 2009!

Life with Squirmy Baby.

The first picture was taken just instants after Lina'd stopped pulling that blanket over her face, a favorite game since she was young, but one she can now play by herself. The second two were taken this weekend; we spent Thanksgiving with our dear friend Br. Vincent. In the first of those, Br. Vincent and Josh are playing chess while Lina wiggles on the ground (shortly thereafter Br. V draped his scapular over her head, leading me to joke about telling the abbot he was letting girls under his habit). In the second we are at the monastery's lodge, a lovely building on the Puget Sound, as the two share a package of popcorn.

Lina supposes her toes are roses

Lina has recently discovered her toes. I took these shots a few days ago, and then happily discovered that I could set up a slideshow on Picasa (Google's photo application).

Sue me, kids eat time!

I know a bunch of other moms who not only also have infants, but older children as well. How they manage to blog so much more regularly than me, I don't know. Must be practice...

I'm posting for once because someone on my babywearing list posted about this contest - and the site looks awesome enough in general that I decided to play. Besides, I so wouldn't say no to an Ergo!

And now, I know you're all champing at the bit for pictures of Little Girl.



This was Halloween - mama and baby kitties!



With Great-Grandma, on my birthday (as it happens).



Baby's first garb (and this is a dual purpose shot - something I've been working on!!! It's a UFO, but I'll finish it, I hope soon...).




This is L, a 4 year old I've been watching during the day for about a month now. And no, she's really not mine, but everyone thinks she is! This is a shot of her at Gilbert House.

That's all for now!

Art

has been requested.



First up: at OFFF, this is Lina and Mia's Gunner, who is generously sharing his big sister's cold. To be fair, after he sucked Lina's thumb, he gave her his, too.



Lina and our friend Penelope (Penny) at Gilbert House. Penny is about two months older than Lina (hence she's sitting while Lina's doing tummy time), but because she's very petite, Lina's actually a touch bigger. But they're wearing about the same size clothes, so at the swap yesterday, Penny's mom and I were snapping up all the cute girl's clothes in size 6-9 mos.



It's not a mouth, it's a clown car. I can say no more.

The Other Woman

I know, I know, you're thinking, here's yet another picture of the Little Girl - what's so special about that? Other than being, you know, a picture of adorable perfection. Here's the thing: when I laid her down, it was on her back. She got into the above pose all on her own. Grandpa got her laughing out loud last Sunday, too!



Josh has been cheating on me. Guess who the other woman is - that's right, Vacuum Girl herself!

There has been actual factual knitting going on chez nous, but as I don't have pics, I'm not talking about it at present. Soon!

Sleep Deprivation and other pleasures

I haven't gotten to sleep very much the last couple of nights, between some random internal thing of my own and Lina suddenly having learned about comfort nursing (I think).



This is my current favorite Lina picture.

~Our State Fair is the Best State Fair in the State~

I have been remiss in posting recently; all I can do is claim a teething baby (all screams, no teeth so far).

But Saturday we got to go to the State Fair; I was meeting my friend Bethany, and then I worked at the Bella Vie booth later in the afternoon. Despite getting roasted (I always forget my sunscreen, even when it's in the bag) and having to juggle a baby whose part-time job at the moment is attempting to burst my eardrums, I had a really great time. Besides, Lina made a really great prop for the birth center booth!

On the other hand, I only managed to take two photos during the day.


This one was going to be of Lina sucking the same two fingers that I sucked as a child, but Miss Squirmsalot pulled one of them out while I was getting the camera.



This knitted wedding dress evidently took a high prize - it was nifty and knitted, how could I not take a picture?



Sometime Saturday morning, Lina all of a sudden learned how to blow raspberries. So, we now have a game where we can blow raspberries at each other. The above photo was taken during such a bout; I wanted to try and capture both sides, but somehow it didn't work out as well as I'd hoped. Anyway, she ended up very pleased with herself, as you can see.

We had dinner last night with Bethany and her husband and offspring last night; in between wails from Lina (can you believe she's three months old already?!), Bethany said she thinks Lina's going to end up with my nose. I hope so, I like my nose!

The things you see when you haven't got your gun.

In no particular order:



Yes, Lina is very much her mother's daughter, complete with glares.



This is rapidly becoming my favorite dessert: marionberry shortcake, with ample whipped cream (of course). The berries were fresh from the farmer's market, the shortcakes were courtesy of Bisquick. Sue me, I'm lazy!



More uses for a mei tai.

I spose it's time to start posting about the food budget challenge, since I went shopping for next week's food today. I spent about $60 today; yes, I know, that's more than I'm supposed to spend for a week's food, even if you count Lina towards the total. However, that wasn't all food (we slipped a couple of soda-type drinks in, and I also added a $5 food container), and some items will stretch for weeks or months - for example, the tahini I bought to make hummus with. All in all, I feel pretty good about today's purchases.

I also went a little crazy this evening with food pre-preparation. After a yummy bowl of leek and potato soup (leeks bought a week or two ago, potatoes delivered from our CSA), I randomly decided to start using up my white bread flour (unbleached, natch) by making some pizza dough to freeze for later use. For the curious, this means I made the dough and gave its first knead, then popped it in freezer bags (one ball of dough to a quart bag, two quart bags to a gallon bag, air squeezed out as much as possible) and into the freezer. The dough will rise in the freezer, but very slowly; the double bag method means that if any should burst their initial bag, the outer bag will contain the dough. Honestly, I don't expect it to last long enough for that to be a problem. When I'm ready to use a ball of dough, I'll pull it out of the freezer and let it defrost; by the time it's room temperature, it will also have finished rising. Then, since I had momentum (if only sort of energy), I chopped the veggies for the pot roast I'm making tomorrow. We're actually having some folks over for dinner, and since I like to cook my pot roasts until the fall apart in the pan (which takes forever), I want to make sure that I start the roast early enough that it's actually ready on time. I figure that having the veggies all ready to go will expedite things - it won't necessarily save time, since I generally do them while the roast is browning, but it will certainly save energy and brainspace (which will promptly be used up by the above cutie pie). I also started some chickpeas soaking to make that hummus I mentioned earlier; it seems that I've corrupted my picky-eater husband into liking it, and since it's WAY cheaper to make than to buy... you do the math.

We have video!

Josh has been playing with the video function on my digital camera, using our very own entrancing subject:







The first is my favorite, but the others have their charms, too - how could they not? I just love the faces Lina makes while sleeping... but then her earnest concentration while trying to crawl is just enchanting! The third is Lina tracking Josh's hand while he films - as if we needed more evidence of her intelligence. :) Ok, ok, I'm besotted - but I'm supposed to be!

Lina and I went to a local SAHM meetup this morning (that's Stay At Home Mom, for those here who don't know the internet-ese), and had a great time. I chatted with the other moms, and Lina had a blast watching the other kids playing in the fountain (we were at a park around the corner from our house that has a fountain specifically designed for kids to play in it). I've been gradually building a friendship with Bethany, and was very happy to see her this morning. Not only did she help me with getting Lina into a back carry with a wrap, but then we went downtown to the Wednesday Farmer's Market together, and just hung out a bit longer. Imagine our delight when we went to get our babies out of their seats and found them holding hands! I'm still giggling over how fast each of us reached for our camera phones... Bethany declared that clearly our daughters were instant BFFs (Best Friends Forever), so it's a good thing she and I have been becoming friends! I would love to post my photo, but I don't have a way of getting pictures off my phone yet. Maybe Bethany will send me a link to hers so I can repost it here. :) I haven't had so much fun with a new friend in a long time, and I'm very glad to have had my efforts (you know, of just getting out of the damn house?) rewarded so well.

Carolina Bright-eyes

That's my cutie!

She's now two months old (or nine weeks, take your pick on how to gauge it), and currently spending much of her waking hours screaming - because she's processing so much she can't cope right now. Not much fun for any of us, and Josh and I hope it passes very, very soon.

At her two-month checkup on Friday, we found that she's 24" tall (in the 95% for her age) and 11 pounds (50%) - tall and slender, much like me. With her height, she's almost grown out of three-month clothing, but too skinny for six-month pants. Fortunately, the weather seems to be warming up again, so maybe by the time she needs pants again she'll have plumped up a bit.

And now for something completely different. A month or so ago, I joined a group here in town that's exploring ways to make our lives greener without breaking the budget. At our last meeting, we talked about food, and Stacey passed out a set of menus and recipes aimed at eating local, cheap, and healthy - and organic as much as possible. Several of us have decided to try out the menus this month, and report back how it worked for us. Since we're going camping much of this week (in fact I need to get off the computer and go shower and pack and stuff!), and I believe we have ample food to carry us through the rest of the week after we return, I'm going to start counting next Saturday, when we go food shopping next. The goal is to spend $15 per person per week; I'd usually say that would be $30 for me and Josh, but I may fudge and add a few bucks in Lina's name, since I'm eating for two still. We'll see how it goes!

Post 101

Signing in to Blogger just now, I discovered that the last time I posted, it was #100. Funny to think that in almost two and a half years I've only posted 100 times...

Anyway, I was looking through the pictures on my camera just now, and discovered that I lied: we did get some Lina pix last week.



This is her in her adorable little baby coolie hat, which we found in the awesome spice store we visited in Olympia a few weeks ago.



Anyway, this is the little eight-week-old angel less than an hour ago (before she woke up from her nap screaming because she was hungry and there was no one in sight). Daddy's playing with her so Mommy can eat and finish her blog post. :)

more cat pictures

Yes, I'm cheating, posting with lolcats instead of knitting or baby. But this one was so exactly Peppar's reaction to us vacuuming...

Ok, ok, since I'm posting, here's some of the other content.



These are a couple of wool soakers I made a couple of weeks before Lina was born; she has now outgrown them. *sigh*



And this is the lovely Peggy with Vacuum Girl herself, back at the end of June when we visited her on a particularly warm weekend. Peggy was thrilled, Lina spent the day fussing badly.

I haven't taken any pictures this last week; was having too darn much fun with our very dear friend Br. Vincent, who was visiting us on his vacation, and has now headed back to the abbey.

Three weeks and counting

Josh snuck up on me while we were cuddling the other morning. Ok, we were sound asleep, too...

Vacuum Girl after her first bath; photo taken about 20 minutes ago. We did take pics while she was *in* the bath, but as I was bathing with her... those aren't for public consumption.

This was supposed to be for Father's Day...

But time moves very differently with a newborn.

Vacuum Girl is 2w 3d today, and at her 2-week appointment yesterday, she'd gained 13 oz. above her birth weight!

Finished Object - Picture heavy!

Carolina Rose was born May 31, 2008 at 10:04 am, 18 hours after my water broke unexpectedly, about 7-8 hours active labor, and an official 14 minutes of pushing (although my doula thinks it was more like 4 really good pushes). She weighed 7 pounds 1 ounce, and was 20.5 inches long. Doubtless she's longer now, as she's sucked like a Hoover from birth!

Incidentally, that's Carolina (Lina for short) with an "e" sound, not "i" like the state; the reverse of her fetal nickname, I now realize. Yes, I have condemned my child to a lifetime of being mispronounced. *grin*

This is the last belly pic before labor, at 38w3d. I hadn't realized how huge I looked before seeing this!

So there I was on Friday May 30th, going about my business, which happened to be picking up a prescription at the pharmacy. I had just paid when I felt a couple of little gushes... I finished my business and called my doula, who confirmed what I suspected: my water had just broken. It had broken pretty high up, so I didn't flood the carpet or anything, but still, I knew that my baby was going to be arriving much, much sooner than any of us expected. Ok, about a week sooner than her due date, but at that stage, a week feels like a million years! I continued on to meet Josh at his classroom as we had previously arranged (about five minutes' walk from the pharmacy), and with some telephoning and consultation, the three of us (Josh, Stacey-the-doula, and I) decided to wait a couple of hours and let traffic die down before heading to the hospital; it's about an hour away and lies along a major commute route. Meanwhile, Josh and I headed home to do what we could to get things moving, because my body wasn't really yet ready to go into labor, and Stacey got things ready on her end. By the time we left home, I was contracting lightly but regularly, but by no means in active labor.

Mom and babe, just minutes after birth.

So we got to the hospital, and got triaged, and yup, that was broken waters, and those were light and regular contractions, so they admitted me, and we got down to the business of getting my labor going in earnest. We walked the halls; we went outside (it was a gorgeous night) and I walked the labyrinth the hospital has in the pavement. I did some lunges midway through the labyrinth, and by the time I had come back out of it, my contractions were strong enough to make me pause, although I couldn't really call them active labor yet. So we went back inside. I sat on the bed and knitted for a while; we asked for a birth ball and I sat on that for a bit, too. My contractions were slowly strengthening and coming closer, and we decided to try the bathtub for a while. That was lovely, I must say, but by the time I got out, my labor had mellowed, and the midwife on call started talking pitocin. Since that was almost the last thing we wanted, we negotiated to try more natural methods first. Since no one could find a hospital-grade breast pump we could use, we decided to ask for some privacy so that Josh and I could cuddle and hope that worked. 45 minutes later, my labor was moving quite nicely enough that the "p" word wasn't mentioned again. :)

Isn't she precious?!

So I sat on the birth ball again for a while, and then lay in bed for a bit, because I wanted to try to rest some between contractions, and I wasn't able to while on the ball at that point. But lying in bed made the contractions more painful, so I was just thinking of moving back to the ball, when GUSH! My water broke low, with enough meconium (baby's first poop, for those who don't know) that we all felt some concern about getting the baby out without delay. Fortunately, my water breaking like that also got my labor really going in earnest, so delay wasn't a worry.

Back to the birth ball, and on to a timeless time in Laborland as I dozed between contractions, and sat up and breathed and moaned (and sometimes puked - hospital barf bags are fabulous!) through them. My voice was hoarse for days after. I had about two contractions, probably right before transition, where the "e" word floated through my head (that's epidural), but right after that I had the classic "I can't do this" moment while on the toilet, and it was time to start getting prepared for pushing.

The new family - yes, I know it's dark.

So the nurse checked my dilation, and I had a bit of a cervical lip, so everyone helped me on my side to encourage that lip to melt away. I did about five contractions there, as the urge to push got more and more overwhelming, and the medical folks got set up for the endgame. Those five or so contractions of not pushing felt longer than the whole night had been, and blowing instead of pushing was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do in my life.

Finally, the medical folks were all ready, and Stacey had them set up a bar I could grab so I could squat and push more efficiently, and they helped me sit up so I could push. And push I did! Stacey was an invaluable help there, reminding me to push into my bottom and not into my face. After about three endless contractions, I could feel the baby right almost crowning, and I knew that she was almost here, and that I would probably tear pushing her out, because I knew there was no way I was going to be able to ease her out. So on that last contraction I pulled myself upright, gave a mighty push, and there was the head! And I pushed again, and there was all the body! And she was beautiful and purple as the midwife put her in my arms. It all happened so fast that the medical personnel didn't get a chance to see her sex, but I was holding her in such a way that I could feel that she was a girl, just like I'd hoped for nine long months and more. Because of the meconium, she needed to have her cord cut sooner than I'd hoped so that the goo in her lungs could get suctioned, but lo and behold, when Josh (not liking to touch icky things) passed on the opportunity to cut it, the midwife offered me the scissors. Of course I accepted. :) After the suction team had their way, they put my baby girl back in my arms so I could nurse her, and boy did she ever! She latched on well right away, and sucked so well I was comparing her to vacuums.

Meanwhile, the midwife (or "medwife", since she seemed much more inclined to the medical model than not) was starting to get impatient about delivering the placenta. I would have been happy to let it come when it was ready, which it clearly wasn't yet, but she was anxious and started applying traction. Ultimately, she was quite rough with it, and I hemorrhaged a bit. Not a ton, not dangerously, but enough that I clearly lost more blood than I should have, which loss I'm still recovering from. I did indeed tear as well; one second-degree tear and two near-skidmarks that the midwife stitched just because of their position. Still, while we're annoyed about the placenta incident, we're very satisfied overall with our experience, and wouldn't hesitate to go back to that hospital the next time.

Lina today.

Because of my hemorrhage, I was in the hospital an extra day, just to make sure I was going to be all right going home. I'm actually rather glad of the extra time, because it gave me a chance to remedy my near-ignorance about infant care, something Lina is tutoring me in every moment still. Lina stayed with me the whole time, usually snuggled in with me; Josh stayed with us, too, except for brief trips out for special goodies, or home to feed the cats. We came home on Monday, and I've spent the week mostly sleeping, or nursing, or trying to find a few minutes to take care of myself; I didn't even get a chance to look at the pictures until today!