At our weekly visit to my parents place on Friday she was uncharacteristically cranky. When she wasn't crying, she was either eating or sleeping. My dad also made the observation that she wasn't automatically putting everything in her mouth. He made the prediction that she would cut a tooth by Sunday. Well, he was wrong, but only by 2 days. I was just feeding her some banana and felt something in her mouth that wasn't there yesterday. Sure enough one of her bottom teeth has made an appearance!

I want to talk about food today.
I've been dutifully feeding her mashed up steamed vegetables, stewed and raw fruits and the usual suspects of cereals (boy does she not like those!). She also gets the occasional arrowroot cookie and she had yogurt for the first time today.
My question is, when do I get to feed her real food? You know, the stuff that I eat - ground up of course.
Is there an order I should introduce meats?
Can I cook stuff for her in oil?
Joe and I have no real food allergies, do we still have to keep to that 3 or more days between introducing new foods rule?
I'm having trouble picturing how to go from steamed sweet potato to, say, lasagne.
Any insight will be appreciated.

Further on the food topic, I bought one of the best things last week. I know Craftygrrrl uses one and Rocketbride also mentioned it, so after a small choking scare, I went out and got one of these:


All the parents I know with kids older than five are amazed.
I can now give her an apple slice or cookie and not have to keep an eye on how much of it is missing or constanly sweep her mouth for the large chunks she's broken off.

I also got some foam tiles for her to play on now that she likes to be on the floor more. I had been searching for some for weeks now, but either they were hideously expensive at the kids stores or my local hardware stores didn't carry them.
I was getting resigned to not getting any when I went and checked out my local Dollarama. These are smaller (approx 1 foot square) than the ones I was seeing in the boutique stores, and part of me is afraid that they're a lot more toxic as well. But hey, they were $1 each! I got 12 of them. They don't cover that much ground, but then, neither does she right now.
If we didn't have 3 pukey cats I probably wouldn't bother, but between that and the fact that she's bouncing her head off the floor regularly these days, I figure it's a good investment.

We've got weeks 30, 31 and 32 shots. You can see the tiles in these shots.

7 months today!
I've been having really mushy feelings all day today about being a mother. I didn't think I would enjoy it as much as I have been. Part of the reason why I waited so long to have a baby is that I just didn't want to be a mother. I love babies and the kids they grow up to be and I have a lot of fun with my mass of nephews and nieces, but I was always glad to see the back of them when the parents came to take them away.
I guess it's true that it's different with your own child. Despite the hard work, I am really having fun with her. It's great to see her playing and figuring out stuff (Right now she's flipping plastic tabs on her excersaucer, something she couldn't do 2 months ago.) And she loves our daily walks. She is so interested in everything around her I love taking her to new places just to see her so wide-eyed. I'm really lucky that she's such a great kid and that I can take the whole year off to be with her and see her grow like this.

hm, what else was there?
Oh yes, She went swimming for the first time last night!



I couldn't see her face for most of it, but Joe says she had what I call her experimenting look on her face the entire time. I think that means she liked it. She didn't complain once. Not even when I dunked her face in the water by mistake a couple of times, or when she started to turn a bit blue from the cold. I had to take her out after 20 minutes because her lips were starting to turn blue and she was starting to shiver. Hopefully she can stay the entire 30 minutes next week!

Also on the plus side, she's back to only waking up once during the night! That means I can get 2 good chunks of at least 4 hours of sleep a night. I am enjoying it while I can because apparently the 9 month sleep regression is a doozy. I'm loving Ask Moxie, but sometime she scares me. I know it's better to be prepared for insane baby behaviour, but part of me would love to just live in ignorance for a while.

Oh, and I almost forgot! Joe and I took the infant and child CPR course on the weekend. I'll probably be going to my brother-in-law's cottage in Georgian Bay (and I mean in Georgian Bay - an island that's a 20 minute boat ride away from Parry Sound) this summer, and since it is so isolated I wanted to be prepared for anything.
At first we thought we were going to be the only ones taking it, but at the last minute a few more people showed up including the parents of a 2 year old and the grandparents. We got to talking to them and it seems that they are taking it because their son is prone to siezures when he gets a fever.
The whole thing was a bit sobering but in all, very reassuring. I feel a lot more confident about taking her places off the beaten track now.

here's week 29:


and an extra in her goth dress from Grandma and Grandpa!

This is what happens when I don't blog in a while. So much has happened in the last few weeks with the little one that it will take a long post to catch up!

Starting with 3 weeks ago (!), we started her on solid food! She had her first taste of sweet potato and then a couple of days later she had some congee that my mom had made. My mom was so excited about the whole solid food thing (I suspect, partially because she still thinks I don't have enough milk to sustain a growing baby - contrary to the evidence.) that she also went out and got some arrowroot cookies for Z. She has also had squash (which was from my mom's garden) and carrot. We'll be branching out to apple and peas soon. She only has solid food once a day right now, usually in the evening but that will be expanding soon. She really likes the veggies but will generally only eat the rice when I mix it in with the veggies. I think it is too bland for her.

here she is with her first meal of sweet potato



Of course one of the down sides of having her eating solids is that when we are eating and she isn't, she gets a bit upset. This more than anything else is making me anxious to get to the point where she's eating what we're eating.
Those cookies though. If I want to distract her from a meltdown, all I have to do is hold a cookie in front of her and she calms down immediately. I've used it to good effect in restaurants already. And since she's big enough to sit in high chairs in restaurants, going out to eat with her is a lot easier.

Something else that has made going out a little easier is the Ergo carrier that I just bought. It's the same idea as the mei tai, but it's a bit more structured and it has buckles instead of just being tied. I lasted as long as I could with my mom's mei tai, but it was really starting to hurt my back. I will still use it because it is so much more convenient to stuff in a bag, but I don't think I will be using it for our big afternoon walks anymore. The Ergo distributes the weight a bit more evenly so there is less on my shoulders and more on my hips. Also Joe is really comfortable using it. I bought it a week ago and Joe has already used it 4 times. The only problem I have with it is that she can't face out in it, (there's the answer to your question Sandi) but she's not accustomed to it so it doesn't bother her. She's used to looking at things over my shoulder.

Monday was her 6 month checkup (she was 6mos 3 weeks) and everything was peachy until the needles of course. She weighed 15 and a half pounds which means she jumped percentiles. She was in the 10th but is now closer to the 25th. As for her height the doctor said she was off the charts, but I think she measured wrong. She got 77 cm or 30 inches, but I just measured her and it's more like 71cm (28inches). Still in the 90's though. As my sister said, she seems tall, but not freakishly so.
In other weight news, I also had my checkup and it seems I am 145lbs. I've been over 150lbs for probably over 8 years, so this is kind momentous for me. Joe is now a believer in my radical "baby as weight loss program" idea.

In the last big news of the month, she is making great progress on the crawling front! A couple of nights ago, we went to bed as usual but she was really restless. She would nurse for a bit then try to roll over (she was surrounded by pillows to keep her from shimmying off the bed and the pillows were hampering her usual rolling action). When she finally managed it she gave me such a big, self satisfied grin, it was hilarious. But she wasn't through. She then got her butt up and started lurching forward. She's never really done this while she was awake so I let her go for it. When she started to get some real forward movement happening I had to call Joe in so he could see it. When he came in the room, she did her lurching forward movement and looked up and gave him another huge self satisfied smile. And she would keep doing that - inch forward and smile at her dad. We ended up playing with her for about an hour on the bed until she got really tired and her crawling turned more into just rolling to get to places.
The next morning, I put her down to see if she could keep going, but she got really frustrated when she started mostly going backwards. It is so hard to see her get so frustrated. I want to help her out, but I know she just has to figure this one out all by herself.

I've got week 26 and 28. I misplaced the camera for week 27. Oh well.

Look who can sit unsupported! She's still a bit unsteady, but getting better every day.

I think she's getting ready for another developmental spurt too. Craftygrrrl pointed me to a great blog- Ask Moxie that had a link to the book The Wonder Weeks. It's about how, at certain weeks, babies are working out stuff in preparation for cognitive and physical advancements. Unfortunately, while they are working everything out, their sleep patterns get screwed up. (as if I wasn't having enough trouble already!) There's a big one at around 26 weeks. And right on cue, the last few nights she's been waking up every couple of hours. Yesterday, Joe came in to bed around 4am and found her trying to crawl in her sleep. After a few minutes of it, she woke herself up and wouldn't sleep for an hour. And this morning around 4:30, she started to cry in her sleep which also eventually woke her up. She didn't get back to sleep until about 8am. It's 9:30 and she's still asleep in the sling. I think she's also got a small cold. She's been sniffing like crazy the last couple of days.

At least it isn't like last week. A week ago, she woke in the middle of the night. I started feeding her when I realized that she was really warm. She usually runs a little hot, but this seemed different. We took her temperature and it was higher than normal. Not scary out of control (it was high 38C/low 39C), but enough to concern us seeing that this was our first experience with a fever. A long wait on the telehealth line later we were reassured that it was merely a low grade fever and were told we should just wait it out and not give her any tempra (too late) because the fever was probably trying to fight something and as long as it stayed below 40C it was fine (for a day or two at least). She and I spent the next day cuddling on the couch watching one of our favourite video stores burn down. At least that distracted me from the thought that the fever was burning away valuable brain cells and she was never going to be the same. Thankfully, by bedtime on Wednesday, she was back to her old self, giggling while her dad fluffed the pillows and covered her with the sheets.

Here are the week 24 and week 25 shots.

Man, I just don't know where the days are going. I've been meaning to post for quite a while now, but for some reason, I just can never squeeze in the time to do it. The only thing I can offer is that she has been especially clingy these last couple of weeks. I think she's going through a bout of separation anxiety. It really kicked in about 3 weeks ago. We left her with my niece for about an hour and apparently she started crying halfway through the hour. Since then she starts screaming when we are out of her sight and if she had her way, one of us would always be holding her. She is getting better though. I went for dim sum with my parents and one of my sisters on Monday and she actually let herself be held and taken around by my sister, for a little while at least.

I guess the other reason I haven't posted lately is because we've been going out quite a bit. One of the things we've been going to is the Carry Me Close meetings on Tuesdays. They've been great. I've gotten some great tips on how to use my mei tai and I've learned that the scarf I've had for the last 20 years was probably originally meant to double as a baby carrier. Who knew? I also tried on the Moby wrap today and quite liked it. I'm thinking about going out on Thursday afternoon to buy some material to make my own.

We've also had some firsts. She sat unsupported a couple of weeks ago. It was so cool. I had her sitting leaning against me at the library. She was playing with a toy that had wheels, so every once in a while she would push it and it would roll further away from her and she would lean forward to grab it again. The toy kept rolling further from her and she kept leaning for it. Then I realized that I wasn't actually supporting her anymore and she had stopped reaching for the toy and was just sitting there leaning on her hands. I backed away from her and she stayed like that for quite some time. I've been trying to get a picture of it, but she doesn't like to just sit there leaning on her hands, she always wants to reach out or sit up straighter which means she inevitably falls over before I can get the camera.
The other thing that she has started doing is saying Dada. She hasn't connected it with Joe yet, but that doesn't make him less excited.

As for the sleeping, Stephanie had a thought that we were possibly missing our window of opportunity and that if we tried putting her to sleep before she started yawning at 8:30 that might be enough to get her to stay down. Unfortunately it didn't work. She would sleep for half an hour or so and then wake up full of beans. So we're back to going in around 10pm. I figure, this way at least she's not rarin' to go at some ungodly hour like 5am. Of course it hasn't quite worked out perfectly. She's been waking herself up in the middle of the night by rolling onto her stomach. I don't know if she's awake when she rolls or if she rolls in her sleep, but the upshot of it is that she'll hang out on her stomach for a couple of minutes before she completely loses it and nothing will calm her down except being back on the breast.

We have week 22 and 23 pictures today. Man is she getting big! And also I finally got a shot of her in the mei tai.

She just passed the 5 month mark yesterday and I'm starting to think about the routines that we have and haven't gotten into. I'm especially worried about bedtimes.
Our current routine is for the two of us to go into bed about 10pm and we lie in bed together, maybe I read her a book, but mostly feeding, until she goes to sleep around midnight (and usually I fall asleep too) and a bit later Joe comes in and moves her to the crib where she'll usually sleep for the rest of the night. (It used to be straight through until about 8am, but lately she's been getting up around 3 or 4 for another feed).
I'm thinking of moving our going to bed time to around 9pm and getting it less dependent on being on my breast, but I just don't know how to go about doing that last part!
Sometimes, if she's really groggy, we can put her into her crib and walk away, but this is really rare. Usually, if we put her in her crib awake, she will lie there for a few minutes playing with her feet or what have you, but then she will start to cry and nothing but picking her up will stop it.
Any ideas?

here's the week 21 shot as well as one of Zoë doing physically what her mom only does metaphorically

Last week while the router was down, I got an award!
Not an artist was sweet enough to give me this*:





I'm now supposed to “Give the award to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel happy about blogland. Let them know by posting a comment on their blog so they can pass it on. Beware you may get the award several times.”

So my ten are:

1. Joe
2. Not an Artist
3. My Sensitive Girl Hole
4. CraftyGrrrl
5. Oh Baby!
6. Rocketbride
7. Sock Crazy
8. Naked Knit Girl
9. Knit, Stitch, Click
10. saoilsinn

(*technically it was linked to my livejournal account)

Haven't written in a while! First we all got sick, then the router went down. (But then Joe fixed it. My hero!)
We made it through her first cold pretty well. This was something I had been fearing, but because of the breastfeeding, she only got a bit snotty. Joe and I fared a lot worse. And of course, out of the three of us, I am the one that's still feeling it.

First, her doctor's appointment. She had her 4 month checkup at the beginning of the month. She weighed in at 12lb 5oz, so she's on the same growth rate as before, and she was 26 inches long. The needles were just as traumatic this time,if not more. She wasn't hungry this time, so she didn't want to breastfeed while it was being done. Instead she was looking right at the doctor. When she got the first shot, the look of shock and betrayal on her face before she started screaming was just heartbreaking.

It'a weird how much she's changed in the last little while. Everyone has been commenting on it when they see her. She's a lot less newbornish, and really starting to show more character. A couple of days ago she was playing with Joe and she laughed for no reason that we could figure out. Joe wasn't doing anything that would cue her to laugh, she just found something funny. Then again today, we were all watching Family Guy and twice, she spontaneously laughed at something on the tv with no prompting from us. It's nice to know that she has a sense of humour. We were positive we were going to end up with a sullen child.

She's getting the hang of Peek-A-Boo. She loves it when Joe plays it with her, but when I play it with her, I notice she gets a really worried look on her face. I'm usually holding her when she plays with Joe so I don't know if she looks worried with him too, but I think she gets concerned that I won't come back.

She's also a lot more comfortable on her stomach. She can hold her head and shoulders up no problem. When we go to the library for storytime she really watches the older babies crawling around and tries to figure out what they are doing. She doesn't quite have it yet, but she's trying!

It's really neat seeing her develop. And it seems to be happening in such a huge burst. In the last month her hand eye co-ordination has really improved (she's no longer sticking things into her eye instead of her mouth), she's started noticing and interacting with her environment (the cats are starting to be scared of her!), She's babbling a LOT more, and her sleeping/nap schedule has started to become very regular.

Ok, enough of this. I'll try to be less boring next time.
I've got week 17, 18, 19 and 20 pictures. I forgot to take the week 17 one on the blanket so instead, it's her first time in her excersaucer.

Yesterday she turned over from her back to her belly 3 times! Unfortuntely Joe was the only witness as I was napping. Hopefully I'll get to see her do it today.

Today is a big day here for two reasons. It's Zoë's 4 month birthday and it's also the anniversary of the day I realized I was pregnant.

I remember it well. It had been an interesting December for us last year. Joe was having a bad month and was feeling pretty down and I had spent the entire month either feeling like I was coming down with a cold or getting drunk at various holiday get togethers. It wasn't until the night of the first that I realized I hadn't gotten my period yet and it had been due about 5 days earlier. So I dug out the second pregnancy test of a two pack I had bought earlier in the year thinking: I'll do the test first thing in the morning. That should trigger my period like it always does.
So in the middle of getting ready to go back to work the next day, I dutifully peed on the stick. The test result showed up pretty quickly but I waited the full 5 minutes or so to make sure it didn't change. Then, not quite believing what was happening, I went into the bedroom and woke up Joe. I shoved the test at him and asked him what it meant. he very groggily said 'How should I know? Where's the box?' I gave it to him, he read the instructions and said 'It means you're pregnant.' He later told me that he was pretty pissed off at the time to be woken up after only a couple of hours of sleep - he generally sleeps from 4 or 5am to about noon- to tell me something that was self evident. But he was too out of it to realize exactly what it was he was telling me.
I spent the rest of the day in a bit of a daze. Poor Joe though, once he realized what was going on he couldn't get back to sleep and apparently kept having anxiety attacks because he didn't know how to register the child for kindergarten.

ok, enough of that nostalgia stuff.
Zoë had a great Christmas and got her sleeping schedule screwed up for a week. She got lots of clothes and a couple of small toys. Of course she had no clue what was going on and I enjoyed that because I know next year she will be insane!

pictures this time - week 16 and opening presents!

A couple of Christmas themed pictures:
Zoë as Baby Jesus in The Christmas Story:




And for the more secular among us:




Happy Holidays from Joe, Zoë and I!

Well, it's been a pretty interesting couple of weeks here trying to get ready for her first Christmas while battling through our yearly ennui. December has never been a good time for either Joe or myself and the addition of Zoë has made it both harder and easier.
It's so much harder to get things done while carrying her around. But every time we look at her our mood can't help but lift. (As an aside, my respect for my mother has gone through the roof. How she managed to do anything when she had her first 4 kids in 5 years is beyond me. I tried to do some sewing to help my sister out a few weeks ago and I could barely manage to do a couple of seams an hour.)

Shopping with her has been an adventure. Every time we go out together I have to decide stroller or sling. With the stroller I can last longer and can carry more stuff comfortably, but I'm so much more manoeuverable with the sling. Tiny shops and public transportation are a breeze. (especially with my new boots!)
The sling has been winning for the most part. That means I'm exhausted at the end of the day though. I've taken to leaving her with Joe for an hour or so every couple of days to just sit in a coffee shop and relax.
We even left her with my niece for an hour last week so Joe and I could spend some time together without her. That was rather strange. But good. We probably won't have a chance to do that again until the new year, but hopefully it can turn into a regular thing.

Onto the pictures. I have week 15 (I missed week 14.) and her first picture with the fat man!

I was going to write a post that was all sunshine and roses about how she is now 3 months old and where does the time go yadda yadda, but it seems like the time got all saved up for days like today where minutes seemed liked hours.
For the last couple of days it's been really hard to settle her down for a nap and she always seems to want to be on the breast, but half the time she just plays there. I called my sister in a right state today and she asked if she was drooling a lot, and if so, the problem might be teething. I had to admit that the drool factor had definitely risen lately, to the point that I was considering putting a bib on her in an attempt to keep her clothes dry.
If this is her teething, Joe and I are in for a long year. She was completely bi-polar today screaming and babbling happily in turn. We tried to take her out in her stroller tonight because we were both a bit too tired to really want to carry her (and it's tough to fit her into the sling Joe uses with her snowsuit on) but we needed the air. She screamed the entire time in there. In the end I had to sling her up to get us home without completely shattering our nerves.
Also today, she was very clingy with me. Every time I left her with Joe for even the shortest time, she would start fussing, then the inevitable screaming. In the end we had to dose her with baby tempra and 2 ounces of formula to get her to calm down and sleep. Of course with all that in her, she'll sleep for hours now.

It is pretty exciting that she's 3 months now though. She babbles a lot now. I was sitting in the mall yesterday and she loved watching the people around us and was talking to them as they all passed. She's holding her head up enough that I tried her in the Bumbo seat. That seemed to be a success. She's also starting to reach for things and bat them around.
The most exciting thing is she seems to have a favourite toy and song. She loves talking to her Baby Clutch Cube and it can generally hold her attention for a few minutes. She also loves the song, Roly Poly Up Up Up (sung to the tune of Frere Jaques) that I learned from the library story time. I'm not sure if she just likes the fact that I swing her high up then low down with the song, but she laughs and the second time I sing it in a row, she starts smiling right away.

For pictures this time, we have week 12 and week 13 as well as the first time in the bumbo and putting up the christmas tree with dad! Exciting times!

Well, the winter weather didn't stop Zoë and I yesterday. It was a bit rough though. Because I wanted to do some heavy duty grocery shopping while out, I decided to pop her into her stroller instead of carrying her in her sling. (I did carry the sling with us - just in case) She was actually ok about it for the most part, which is unusual. And she was certainly warmer than I was since she had on her wool jacket, inside her cuddle bag and covered by two blankets. In fact, she complained loudly if I didn't uncover her when we were inside stores and was completely calm when we were outside.
For once, she wasn't what was giving me a headache. It was the stroller. It's a 10 yr old stroller that was handed down to me from my brother. It's in pretty good condition and I had no probems with it up until now. But let me tell you, pushing that sucker through the ice, snow and slush was hell. If I had had my choice (and the money to go with it) I would have gotten a stroller with tires that were meant to take on the winter. As it was, when the stroller wasn't skidding on the ice, it was getting hung up on the snow.
On the way home, I decided to put her into her sling because I thought she might want to eat. That made matters even worse. Since my old winter boots exploded last winter, I don't have a good pair of boots. I was in my runners and terrified I was going to slip while carrying her. I eventually had to put her back into the stroller for my peace of mind!
This will not deter us though! I can put up with the stroller if it means getting out of the house regularly, although I reserve the right to continue to bitch about it all winter. And this just gives me a good reason to buy new boots!

And here she is at 11 weeks plus one more close up in her Godzilla T-shirt.

Today Zoë and I went to the library baby story time for the first time. I was really glad to get out of the house, but I have to say the timing of it could be better. It starts at 10am which is just about the time she gets sleepy after being up for two or three hours. A couple of the other moms there said they also had that problem. She's also still a bit young to fully appreciate it, but the other parents there are nice. I will try and make it a regular outing for the two of us.

Last week's doctor's appointment went as well as could be expected. The needles were a bit traumatic for everyone concerned but since they managed to do them while I was breastfeeding her, I think she forgot about it almost immediately. Joe and I still remain scarred though.
She weighed in at 9lb 9oz and was 23 1/2" long. No wonder she is starting to grow out of some of her sleepers. We also had to start buying the next size up in diapers. She had been wearing the newborn size up until earlier this week but they were definitely getting small on her. Thank goodness the cloth diapers we are using at home don't have such a small size range. The ones that aren't 'one size fits all' mostly go up to about a 15lb limit, so I have a bit of time yet until I have to buy more of those.

That's it for now, so I leave you with week 9 and 10 as well as a bonus close up. (in week 9 the sleeper she is a size 3-6mos which explains why it is so huge on her!)







(thanks to Stephanie for the last one!)

I don't know why I haven't posted in over a week, I guess things just get away from me so easily these days.
It was her 2 month birthday on Friday. It feels like so much longer (in a good way). I can barely remember our life before her. Of course that could be the tiredness talking. She has changed a lot in the two months. She has most decidedly grown out of the newborn sized clothes that we have and is starting to fill out the 0-3month clothes. She's holding her head up consistently (it still flops when she's tired though) and she will occassionally grace us with a smile. She has started to babble and she may or may not have reached out for things on purpose. I think her eyesight is getting better as well. She seems to notice us when we are further away. And when we take her out these days she is much more apt to stay awake and look around. She really enjoyed Dufferin Mall and Home Depot last week!

And of course there was Halloween on Wednesday. We weren't going to do anything with her this year even though Joe and I love Halloween. But when Joe was out buying candies, he saw some costumes and had to get one for her. She wasn't too impressed, and slept through the whole thing.


Next year we will go all out though.

The other thing that seems to have gotten away from Joe and I are taking the weekly pictures. We missed week 6 and the week 8 one is just by chance and not on the blanket. (we were at the one month birthday banquet of her cousin)






Today is her two month check up. She gets her first round of vaccinations today. Wish us luck!

Before I go on to anything else, last night she smiled, on purpose, at me for the first time. She did the same for her Dad this morning. We just can't stop staring at her now, waiting for her to do it again!

Went back to the lactation consultant for a weight check this week. She is growing steadily now. She gained an average of 23gr a day for the week. As of Wednesday she weighs 8lb 6 oz.
What's even more exciting for me is that the last two days we haven't needed the ounce of formula at night to settle her. We are actually trying to get her into a better schedule. Up 'til now, she had been going to sleep somewhere between 2 and 4am, and getting up between 8 and 10am for a feed then knocking off for another couple of hours. This has been a bit tough on us, so these last couple of days I've been trying to get her settled earlier. I find that if I take her into the bedroom and feed her lying down, she goes to sleep faster, so I've been doing that starting at around 11pm. I think it's working. The two nights, she's fallen asleep before 2 am. Not much before, but still. She still sleeps a lot in the mornings, but all her naps seem to have moved up by a couple of hours. And she's a lot less fussy when we try and get her to sleep. I think when we were letting her stay up so late, she was getting over tired and over stimulated so it took a long time to calm her down.

Because of the cooler weather we have been occasionally getting, I am finally able to get her into some of the knitted things she has! She looks exceptionally cute in the hat Mel made for her!



Oh, and I wanted to mention the two very strange encounters I've had recently when we have been out for our walks. The first happened on election day. I was at my voting station staring up at the large flight of stairs I had to go up with the stroller when a very nice elderly woman came up to me and offered to watch her while I went inside to vote. Now, I like to think the best of people, but even I wouldn't leave my child with a total random stranger. Did she really think that I would agree? She seemed mildly miffed when I refused her kind offer.
The other encounter was much more bizarre. Vaguely mortifying and hilarious at the same time. I was walking with the kid around 4pm across College street in the stroller when she started to cry. She had been making some hungry cues right before so I put on the sling and popped her into it to try and get her to start feeding. No matter what I did she kept screaming. She was screaming so frantically that I could see the passersby checking me out to make sure I wasn't murdering her or something. After a little while of this, I realize that an elderly chinese woman (what is it with the elderly women?) was speaking to me. After trying to tell her that I don't speak chinese, she started trying to help me get the baby to feed. I mean, she was right in there trying to push my nipple into the screaming kid's mouth. I was actually too shocked to do anything. This is one side effect of breastfeeding in public that no one warned me about!

I'm trying to get into a regular schedule here which would allow me to post at least a couple of times a week, but it's been a bit difficult to figure out. The main problem is that any down time I have, I feel guilty if I use it for anything not house cleaning related. After a few of weeks of buying into that whole 'let the dishes pile up and don't worry about the state of the house' business, the house is now a disaster area (although we did keep on top of the dishes). It doesn't help that Joe and I have generous friends and family, so there was a huge pile of things that people gave the kid piling up in our living room that we didn't have time to put away. (Also if anyone needs a baby themed gift bag, I may have one or two kicking around!) At least she stays quiet for a little while when I put her down to do things - even when she's awake.
We've also been managing to get out of the house at least once a day lately, even if it's just for a walk around the block. She really doesn't like the stroller or the car seat though. There's usually lots of screaming when she gets put into one of them. Eventually it subsides and she falls asleep, but she can have some real staying power with her crying. As a result, we spend a lot of time with her in her sling. (hm, I should get a good picture of her in her sling.) With that, she just cries for a couple of minutes before she quiets down. I've got to build up my stamina with it though.

We're still having issues with the breast feeding, or rather with how much milk I have. It turned out that at her 1 month check up, the doctor was a little concerned with how little weight she had gained. Even though she was healthy in every other respect, she was only averageing a weight gain of around 16g a day since the 2 week visit and the healthy range is 15-30g. So she was in there, but very low on the scale. The doctor suggested we go back to supplementing with formula. Not a lot, just one ounce a day when my milk supply was lowest - but pump during that time so the milk supply could build up. (This really made my mother happy because she was convinced I was starving her granddaughter.) I also went back to the lactation consultant who helped me a lot - more mentally than physically. She also reassured me that Zoë was in fact growing and developing well. When we went back the next week she was up to 8lb 1oz and had averaged 23grams a day that week. I have one more appointment with the lactation consultant on Wednesday for another weight check, But I can tell she's getting heavy and she's starting to fit some of the sleepers she was swimming in a couple weeks ago.

Here are some pictures - weeks 3, 4 and 5

It's been just over two weeks now and things are going pretty well. She's almost back up to her birthweight. She had dropped the accepted 10% of her weight in three days and I was pretty worried about it dropping more as my milk supply had yet to kick in. We had to supplement with formula for a few days which was nice for Joe as he was able to feed her that way.
We are off the supplements now, but it's still tough going with the breastfeeding. We're still trying to get the latch right so I'm not in constant pain! I have also developed a touch of mastitis, so the girls are feeling really tender right now. Apparently the trick is cabbage leaves.
In other news, I'm trying to get back in the swing of day to day life now. I have to start getting out on a regular basis. It's going to be tough to get out of the house with her in the winter, so I want to take advantage of the fall weather while it lasts. And her schedule seems to have settled down so I can maybe start doing things other than feed her and sleep now.

And finally, for posterity, here are pictures of her at one day, 9 days and 14 days.