Turns Out Her Poop Doesn't Stick

Just yesterday I said that someday Anna will crawl away with poop stuck to her bum. Anna's not quite crawling yet, but today I learned that it doesn't really stick to her bum. Unfortunately for me, this morning she decided to poop when she wasn't wearing a diaper. I gave her a bath this morning and as usual I let her have some nekkid time on a towel before sticking her in the bath. And lucky me, she decided to poop. So there she is pooping. I'm frozen because the wipes are in the other room and the poop is coming out of her bum and she's rolling around and so is the poop (and it's not sticking to her bum). I knew enough to grab her legs and try and hold her out of it, but I didn't know what to do about the poop. But Anna knew what to do. She grabbed her poop, at which point, I finally grabbed some toilet paper and disposed of the poop in the toilet. I guess it was good I was going to give her a bath anyway. I gave her hands and mine a good scrubbing. I'd rather have her poop on the towel than in the bathtub, but as long as I'm picking I'd pick the diaper as the best place of all to poop.

Too Much Tummy Time

Back when I was working with Anna daily to get her to spend time on her tummy, the PT told me that at some point Anna would love being on her tummy. I don't think I truly understood what she meant.

She does enjoy being on her tummy now, but more than that, she insists on being on her tummy, even when I'm trying to dress her or change her diaper. Being the oldest child of seven, I remember fighting with my siblings as I tried to dress then for my mom. I'm sure I didn't do this, but in the back of my mind I have this image of holding my baby sister down with my knee. I'm thinking the knee image is my mind's way of representing the struggle that it was to dress my sister.

It's different with my own baby though because I actually feel guilty for trying to hold her down. Because I'm still changing her diaper on the changing table, diaper time turns into an all out fight as she tries to roll away and I try to keep her bottom-side down so that I can change the diaper and she doesn't fall off. Changing her on the floor is even harder, but I suppose that the consequences are less extreme if she gets away. I know that any day now she's going to crawl away with poop hanging off her bottom, but so far she's not crawling yet.

Lately she's also really resisting the car seat, which I know is normal, and I can even empathize. What I don't get is the way she fights the high chair. She loves to eat crackers, bananas, apples, noodles, cheese, anything I give her. She loves picking the food up and stuffing it in her mouth until her mouth is so full she can hardly chew. Then she opens her mouth and lets half of it fall out. Yummy. And I only give food to her while she's sitting in her high chair or occasionally when she's screaming in her car seat. But whenever I try to put her in her high chair, her legs and back go stiff, and she refuses to sit down. Maybe the upside is that she's no longer biting her spoon.

No, No, No

Lately Anna has been into shaking her head as if she's saying no. I know this is quite normal for little babies, and I'm also pretty sure that she still doesn't quite get the concept of no, but we still have fun with the idea. When she's really going Dan likes to ask her questions like, "Does Mom know what she's doing with the camera?" to which Anna shakes her head. Dan's also tried to get her to shake her head insinc with Amy Winehouses's "They tried to make me go to rehab . . ." but so far Anna has yet to be cooperative.

Anna is also yelling a bit more these days, especially when she hears loud noises. The other day she yelled out when I tore off some aluminum foil and then again when I was scraping cookie remnants off my cookie sheet. Her favorite sound these days sounds a lot like "Hey!" So of course we laugh when we make a new noise and she yells "hey."

The one sound she can't tolerate though is when someone opens a garbage sack by waving it around to fill it with air. That noise sends her into hysterics even when we try to do it quietly.

Biting the Spoon

When Anna's no longer starving, she likes to bite the spoon I'm feeding her with. We like to think it's an intriguing if not oblique peak into her personality, but it's probably just more evidence that she's normal. Lately she's also added grabbing the spoon to biting it. I wish she'd figure out how to dip the spoon in her food and get that to her mouth instead of rubbing her hand in her food and then in her hair or eyes. I know it's normal, but cleaning her up after each meal is getting to be such a chore, especially since she likes to hide little balls of food under her chins.

Happy Halloween!

Were you dropped on your head as a kid?

I was hoping that Anna would be able to answer this question with a yes that was not only emphatic but also accurate. But it seems that taking a fall is a rite of passage for both the first child and the mother that we weren't able to pass up. And yet, I thought I could make it. I haven't been anal about keeping her on the ground or anything, but I was lucky enough to see her roll on the floor rather than off the bed or the couch. So then I knew not to put her on the couch, although I still put her on the bed with the best of intentions to watch her closely.

But when Anna fell it wasn't because she was rolling. I had her on the changing table. (My mom never used one of these and now I'm thinking that maybe that's a good idea.) I had just finished changing her diaper and I was looking in her drawers underneath the changing pad for her clothes. A few weeks before Anna had started pushing against me while I changed her so that her head would dangle off the pad and rest on the table itself. For some reason she likes seeing the world upside down. So I'm sure you can see where this is going. While I was looking in her drawer, thinking about the weather for the day and which outfit I wanted to dress her in, she must have arched her back in order to dangle her head. But I think she got a better push than she realized. I looked up just in time to see her body in midair as her legs lost their footing on the pad and went over the far end of the table. I tried to grab her leg but without much luck.

The good news is that she screamed as soon as she hit the floor so I'm pretty sure that she didn't injure her neck. But she didn't scream too long. In fact she calmed down rather quickly. I really didn't think that I had been too traumatized by it all. I felt bad of course, but I've had enough mothers tell me about their own experiences with falls to know that these things happen. But I must have been a bit more traumatized than I realized because for the next few days whenever I thought about changing her on the table I felt that same feeling of panic that washed over me when I looked up and saw that my baby was no longer where she was supposed to be. I'm over that now, but I do tend to hold onto her leg if I'm not looking directly at her while she's on the changing table.

Recent Adventures

This is the face Anna makes when she's trying to push out a dirty diaper. We call it the pushy face. While everyone was in town for her sealing and blessing, she entertained a crowd with this face. Sometimes when she pushes particularly hard the color red will creep up from her neck to the roots of her hair. She has also been known to accompany this face with hunched shoulders and an arched back.

I think Anna does her best rolling in the crib. In the evening, after I put her to bed in the middle of the crib, I always find her smashed up against one end of the crib. Sometimes her hair will stick straight up from rubbing it against the bumper. I've learned though that there's no point in putting her back in the middle of the crib, because she'll work her way back up to the end of the crib again. So now I just try to make sure her mouth and nose have space to draw air in.

Big Happenings

A few weeks ago, we had Anna's adoption legally finalized. I admit that I was a bit anxious that someone might show up at the last minute and challenge her adoption, but things went exactly as planned.

Last weekend Anna was sealed to us. They brought her up to the sealing room ten minutes after we all gathered there so that the sealer could say a few words to us. He had a lot to say and after about ten minutes we heard a little whine out in the hall. The whines got longer and louder until the sealer finally said "I think I hear a baby." Anna brightened as soon as she saw us and she was beautiful in her dress.

If you'd like to see more pictures, just go to justbecausephotos.blogspot.com.

Where's Anna?

Anna's new favorite thing is to roll up in her blanket. She'll roll onto her tummy, grab her blanket and then take it with her as she rolls back to her back. Sometimes it turns into a game of peek-a-boo (that is, when Mom is paying attention enough to play her part). Sometimes she just likes to take an up close look at her blanket.

Try This

This is the worried look Anna gives me when I put something new in her mouth. In this case, it's a small piece of white bread.

The doctor told us to start giving her actual solids like Cheerios or bread. So I've been dutifully putting Cheerios on her high chair tray, but she mostly ignores them. I've given her long pieces of cheese and a couple green beans. She's picked those up and squeezed the life out of them before finally letting go of them. Nothing makes it to her mouth. I had to put that piece of bread in her mouth. Since then I've decided to let her decide what goes into her mouth. I think she's the only baby who doesn't automatically put everything in her mouth.

But the other day we gave her a french fry when we were at the Citris Grill. That went into her mouth almost immediately and she gave us this look that seemed to say, "What have you done to me and how do I make it stop?" A few minutes later I gave her a second french fry, after the first was squeezed to death, and she put it right back in her mouth with the very same look of confused anxiety.

Peek-a-boo

Anna has recently learned to play peek-a-boo. She'll hold a blanket over her face and then when we ask where she went, she'll pull it down and reveal a big smile. It's very adorable, except the other day she decided to play peek-a-boo with her bib, which was covered with carrots. I immediately pulled the bib down, but as you can imagine her face was also covered with carrots. I thought about taking a picture, but instead I decided to clean her up. After all, she's not the first kid to smear carrots all over her face.

In other news, last week she had a runny nose. Her snot was always clear so I wondered if she might be teething. Now I'm pretty sure that it was just a cold, because I now have a nasty cold and my snot is clear too. So much for that old rule of thumb.

Pick and Suck

Now this is what I call multitasking.

The Things Kids Do

Being the oldest of seven, I thought I knew about all the funny things babies do. I know each child is an individual, but lots of babies do similar things and I thought I had seen them all. Recently I've learned that I wasn't paying as much attention as I thought.

Whenever Anna wants to stick something in her mouth, like say, her stuffed Snoopy rattle, she always shakes her head a little bit and it looks like she wants to tear into that thing and rip it's head off.

And why is it that babies often pull their pacifier out just so someone will put it back in? Anna really only uses her pacifier when it's time to go to sleep, so it must just be her way of asking for another drink of water or any of the other things kids do to stall.

I've also noticed that lots of babies suck in air and make a sort of high-pitched wheezing noise. Being the self-absorbed parent that I am, I thought it was only Anna until I heard all sorts of other kids doing it too. But in Anna's case this noise also doubles as a poop alarm. For some reason she likes to wheeze as she pushes out. The first time she did it she was less than a month old and we thought she was dying until we discovered the present she left us.

She's not teething yet

but her new favorite thing to suck on is the Baby Bjorn. It might look like she's just resting her face on the front of the carrier, but don't be fooled. She's actually sucking pretty hard and making lots of slurpy noises while she does so. As long as she's content and willing to let me get a few things done, I don't mind.

Little Foodie

For the past week, Anna has been getting used to sweet potatoes. It was more traumatic for me than her because of the slight chance that she could be fructose intolerant. Fructose intolerance is a hereditary condition passed on recessive genes, and therefore both her birth parents would have to have it or be carriers in order for her to have it, but for those who do have it, any fructose can damage the liver and kidneys. My pediatrician told me to start her with just a few bites and then watch for any reaction. If Anna is fructose intolerant, she'll have a pretty obvious reaction to fructose with vomiting and/or diarrhea. The night before her first taste of sweet potatoes, I dreamed about feeding her sweet potatoes all night long. So far, so good, but I don't know if there's any fructose in sweet potatoes.

Her hair also looks funny in the picture above, because once again I tried to leave in the curl after her bath. But it always ends up sticking up.

There's so much more to this feeding thing than I remembered. I'm just lucky my visiting teacher mentioned that it's a good idea to introduce kids to all the veggies before the fruits. And for a few days there I felt dumbfounded about when to feed her straight sweet potatoes instead of mixing them in with her cereal. Somebody tell me if I'm wrong, but I get the idea that the only thing that really matters is that I only introduce one food at a time to make sure that there's not an allergic reaction. Otherwise, for the next month or so, I think it's just about exposing Anna to new foods.

Some Firsts for Anna

First baseball game: For a ward activity we sat on the berm at an Orem Owlz game. Anna was awake for most of it, but she also spent some time dozing in her car seat.

First swim in the pool: It was a little chilly, but once she got used to it, she seemed to like it.

First rice cereal feeding: I can't tell you how much I love trying to wipe dried cereal out from under her chin and between her fingers. Yum!

First time wearing her Huntington Surf and Sport t-shirt, but not the first time those fingers went in her mouth.

First Disney hat and first photographic evidence of a hanger, but isn't that such a cute face?

Photo Op

I've decided that part of the whole motherhood experience includes at least one trip to Kiddie Kandids. We made our first trip yesterday. I bet you can guess how it went.

I didn't make an appointment. Instead we just dropped in after I had already dragged Anna to downtown SLC and back. They told us we'd have to wait for about forty-five minutes before they could fit us in. I knew that forty-five minutes later would be right before naptime for a kid who had already skipped a nap, but I figured we'd try it anyway since Anna's such a good natured kid. And she was in a good mood up until the photographer tried to position her. Then she started to cry her little complaining cry. She stuck out her lower lip and let out a waa-waa.

And this is the part that will lose me points in the mother-of-the-year contest. I started to laugh and I thought, why isn't she taking pictures? This is so cute! Instead we rescheduled for the next day. I'm hoping she'll be in a little better mood.

Regression

After sleeping from eight at night until six in the morning, Anna has started waking up again at three or four in the morning. When I go into get her, she's rolled over on her side, almost like she's trying to roll on top of the pacifier that has fallen out of her mouth. I think she's just constipated and uncomfortable, but she could also be checking in to see if I'm still paying attention. The other morning when she did sleep until six, she squealed in her crib for about half an hour before I woke up. They were happy squeals and I was dreaming that someone was making faces at her. This morning I found her like this:

I use the rolled up blanket to stick under her shoulder and keep her off her flat side, so you can see how much she moved in the night. Originally her head was lying next to the right end of the blanket roll. I could understand it better if she scooted up the bed. I'm still not sure how she slides down to the middle of her mattress at night.

Anna also has a new trick. While I'm feeding her she likes to put her fist up into my armpit. Sometimes she will put her hand inside my sleeve and grab my skin. It's not very pleasant but it certainly wakes me up. She also likes to use my arm as a scratch post. I try to keep her nails short, but it's tough. I don't know if all babies have high nail beds but she certainly does. Even when I cut her nails, it still seems like she's got some sort of claw left.

We went back to the physical therapist this week. Anna's flat head problem is the result of a tightened muscle that causes her to look to her right and lean her head to her left. Usually her left ear is closer to her shoulder than her right ear. So we've been working on stretching that muscle. The PT says that her range of motion is improving, but her flat head has stayed about the same. But because it's so slight, the PT guaranteed me that she won't have to wear a helmet. I'm too cynical to depend on her word, but I do take comfort knowing that I'm not letting it get worse. We're also working on tummy time. Now I have a new strategy of rolling her onto her stomach for about thirty seconds and then rolling her back to her back. We do a few reps of that until she gets cranky being on her stomach for a few seconds. It seems to be working better than trying to get her to stay on her stomach a full three minutes like the PT suggests. Dan now says that when she whimpers in her sleep she's probably dreaming that I put her on her stomach.

Anna's Hair

Unlike me, Anna was lucky enough to be born with some hair. She's also had a bit of cradle cap, so we've been brushing her head with mineral oil. I think the cradle cap is just about gone, and I won't miss combing mineral oil through her hair, but it was fun to comb it into a little mohawk (top left hand corner).

Today Anna's hair is lying flat against her head, but she does have a bit of natural curl that comes out whenever her hair gets wet. If I don't comb her hair down fast enough after I get her out of the bath it's hard to get that curl out (top right corner). Earlier this week the curl straightened out but I couldn't get her hair to lie flat no matter what I did. I even tried to use a wet comb, but she consistently had a little mohawk (bottom two pictures). When I washed her hair again, I was better about getting that comb out before her hair got too wild on me.

How can you not love this face?

Anna is three months old and the sweetest baby. In the last month, she's learned to blow spit bubbles and discovered that she loves sucking on her fist. I've tried to convince her to focus on her middle two fingers like her Aunt Christa did, but not even her thumb is as sweet as her entire fist.

I think I can also safely say that Anna has now learned how to sleep through the night. I'm sure this means that tonight she'll be up again in the middle of the night, but the middle of the night has moved in the last few weeks from 3 a.m. to 4 a.m. and this past week she hasn't woken up before 5:30 a.m. for the past seven nights. She's been sleeping through the night off and on for the past month, mostly on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night when Dan is willing to get up with her should she decide to be up at three or four. I'm now getting enough sleep myself that a nap during the day usually means I won't be able to fall asleep at night.

In the past few weeks I've also started running more regularly with Anna in the morning. Most days she seems to expect to go out in the stroller in the morning. I'm also learning to watch the weather and use it to my advantage. We continue to have at least one or two rainy mornings a week, but now I know that those are good days to try and get out of the house during her afternoon nap. On the days I go running, I usually don't get a chance to shower until her afternoon nap since she typically wakes up just as we pull up to the drive way. I'm willing to sacrifice good skin for the chance to be outside and some exercise. Unfortunately I don't have enough self control during the rest of the day for that exercise to do anything for my physical health. Yesterday I ate about twenty donut holes. But the good news is that I was so disgusted with myself at the end of the day that I think I'll be able to avoid sweets for at least a few days.

The best thing I've done recently though is create a housework schedule for myself. I've split the laundry and the cleaning up into manageable chunks so that I only have to do so much each day. Usually I've got just enough time during her nap to get that done and make dinner. And this way I can also feel okay about taking a break to scrapbook or blog once my chore for the day is done. My house doesn't sparkle or anything, but it works for me. Now if only I could finish writing all my thank you notes, which is probably what I should be doing right now instead of blogging.

Bows

I have never been very impressed by bows on babies, but then I got Anna. Every now and then when I really want to dress her up, I stick a bow or flower on her head. But I'm learning that I'm still not that much of a bow person. I've heard that there are some moms that put bows on their kids when they're not even going anywhere. That never occurred to me--a bow for just around the house. But in our house, Dan is the most anti-bow. These days he takes Anna during Priesthood and whenever I meet up with the two of them, the bow is stuffed into the diaper bag because according to Dan, it's too much hassle to keep on her head.

She may have a flat head but she's no dummy

Yes, Anna has developed a flat side to her head. So my proactive pediatrician had me take her to a physical therapist, which turned out to be a very positive experience. Mary, the PT, spent almost an hour talking to me about why Anna's head is flat and how to fix it. She also told me that my baby is ahead of the game in the way she can hold her head up and focus on far off objects. So I know that neck strength isn't usually a sign of intelligence and around high school age it tends to signal the opposite, but I choose to see it as evidence that even if she's getting a flat head, her brain isn't getting smashed.

Smile Hunting

A few weeks ago Anna became a social smiler. She started to smile in response to Mom or Dad's voice, but we've had a hard time catching a good smile on camera. We've caught the hint of a smile every now and then, but I'm holding out for a wide-mouthed smile that comes with a happy squeal. She always seems to get tired of smiling right when we get the camera out. Or maybe it's the red laser beam that shines from our camera (I think it's supposed to help with red eye elimination) that zaps those smiles away.

Painting with Grandpa

Last night Anna met Dan's parents for the first time. It was sweet to see how they embraced her. After Grandpa held her, he didn't want to give her up, but he did agree to let her go when I said she needed a diaper change. But after that he wanted her right back so he could read a bedtime story to her. At first she was a little fussy but after a few minutes, it quieted down in the bedroom. The rest of us were watching the news in the living room. Then Grandpa called out, "I think I need a little help in here." Anna had spewed all over him, and I mean all over him. Maybe it was the vaccines, but that was the second time she gurgled up like a little geyser that day. After we got her cleaned up and Grandpa borrowed a change of clothes from Dan, she was still a little fussy so Sandy took her and calmed her down. Now they just need to change a dirty diaper and they'll have the full Anna experience.

Stepping Out

As I've mentioned before, Anna and I have been sneaking out occasionally and I decided to take her to Church the last Sunday in April. But I didn't want to be too crazy, so I decided I'd take her for the last hour and a half of Church. We sneaked into the back of Sunday School, but wouldn't you know it, a toddler spotted her. I think it's pretty cute how little kids like babies, so I wasn't too worried until the toddler sneezed on Anna. Oh well, I figured.

Sunday night was a rough night in our house. Anna woke up more than usual and seemed especially stuffy. And I was exhausted from not getting enough sleep over the weekend. She seemed a little warm to me, so I took her temperature under her arm and it was 99.2 degrees. I was sure that meant that her real temperature was actually 100.2 degrees and if I called the pediatrician she would hospitalize her. I never thought I would do the mother guilt freak out thing, but I did. I was sure that her fever was all my fault because I cheated and took her to church (and a family baby shower) before she was officially two months old.

After crying all morning (remeber that I was a bit sleep deprived), I called the doctor's office and they made an appointment for me. When I got her in there, her rectal temperature was only 99.2 and she had no signs of an ear infection. So the diagnosis was a simple cold. In the end, she was fine and I didn't get busted for taking her out.

Today she finally hit her two-month mark and received the first major vaccinations, so now we're free and clear to take her to Church and out into the real world. To celebrate, I stopped at the grocery store on the way home. But that's not to say that she's ready for the full grocery shopping experience. I think we'll put that off as long as possible.

House Arrest

Anna has a very strict pediatrician. She told me not to take Anna out in public until she was two months old because if Anna got a fever, she would hospitalize her and run all sort of tests just to make sure she knew exactly what was causing the fever. The doctor doesn't care if I take Anna A friend of mine warned me about young and overzealous pediatricians, but in every other respect, I really like this pediatrician. Finding a pediatrician when one is adopting can be a bit tricky, but this doctor and her nurse have always been wonderful about answering questions before and after we adopted Anna. I don't call the nurse often, but they always make me feel like I can call anytime I have a question. And the doctor's threat has probably also helped keep me from trying to do more than either of us is really able to do.

So I'm not bitter, but we have been sneaking out every now and then. Her first trip out to a public location was to the library. Revealing, ay? And, don't tattle on me but this past weekend I took her, along with my sisters, to the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point. The tulips were nice but the wind was not. It buffeted us the entire time and after I got home, I actually found small grains of dirt in my ears. Anna was a very good sport, snoozing in her stroller the entire time (except for those times we pulled her out for a photo). We tried to keep her covered up, but I think she still ended up with some dust in her sinuses. So maybe I should have listened to my pediatrician and kept her home this time, but at least we got some cute pictures.

Daddy's Little Girl

When Anna was about three weeks old, I talked Dan into watching her on a Wednesday night so that I could go grocery shopping. Lately, whenever I get a chance to get out, I tend to take advantage of Dan's generosity and linger at the store longer than necessary. Well, maybe for my sanity's sake it's necessary. I did my best to hurry that night and I was just finishing up when Dan called. I think he started off by asking when I was going to be home, but when I explained that I just needed to grab a few things and check out, he quickly made it clear that the only correct answer to his question was "I'm leaving the store right now." Dan was freaking out because Anna had "vomited" all of the three ounces he had just fed her. Having just spent an hour grocery shopping, I wasn't about to abandon my cart, so I suggested that he clean her up. "How do I that?" he accused. So I explained that he should wipe off any spit up with a wash cloth and change her clothes. I admit that I was completely patronizing and unsympathetic. My poor, inept husband I thought. After all, he is an only child, whereas I'm the oldest of seven and I've seen my fair share of spit up. At any rate, he did change her clothes and I got out of the store with my groceries, but Dan wasn't pleased with my light attitude towards his experience.

Then about a week later, Anna did a similar thing to me. While feeding her, she had seemed especially easy to burp. She burped easily and often. But after her bottle, she seemed a little fussy, so I was walking around with her. We haven't yet moved to the stage where she can cry herself to sleep, so I'm often holding her until she falls asleep. Suddenly spit up spouted from her lips. It bubbled up several times and even came out her nose twice. The whole time she just looked at me like "this is a new and interesting experience." By the time she was finished, she was drenched in spit up and so was I. There were also a few puddles of it on the kitchen floor. I expected her to cry, but she just looked at me a little exhausted. Suddenly all my nonchalance was gone. For the next few days, I was leery about feeding her too much and if she seemed to burp too easily, I shorten her feeding unless she cried for more, which she did most of the time. So I've repented of mocking Dan.

So we're both getting a bit more used to Anna's bodily fluids. Just the other day Dan told me with some pride that she'd hit him with everything she had all in one day. He'd changed a massive poopy diaper--in the middle of changing her he'd discovered the hard way that she wasn't finished pooping--he'd been peed on, and she sneezed a booger onto his hand. What a great dad!

Big Events

On Friday Anna's umbilical stump finally fell off. What a relief! I was starting to think she'd still have it when we went in for her two-month check up.


Saturday night Anna went nine hours between feedings. She might have slept even longer, but we did the new parent freak-out thing. Since she finished eating at 5:45 p.m., we assumed the longest she'd go would be eleven. But when it was three in the morning and she still hadn't woken up, Dan talked me into changing her diaper at three to see if that would wake her up. It didn't hurt that my mom's in town again and she had already volunteered to take the early morning feeding. Maybe if I had been the one feeding her I wouldn't have been so willing to get her up. We've decided that we almost sleep better when she wakes up regularly because then we don't feel like we need to check on her periodically to make sure she's still breathing.

I've also been working on developing some beefy arms just like Trogdor. Even though she's getting better at sleeping through the night, she seems to need me to hold her a lot during the day. I like to get her to go as long as possible between feedings because she eats more and sleeps better that way, but it sometimes means that I spend a lot of time holding her while I try to get a few household things done.

The Transition

Recently, I've frequently been asked two questions : Are you getting any sleep? and How is the transition from working full time to being home full time going?

I admit that I was a little worried myself about that transition. Of course I was dying to be a stay-at-home mom, but I wondered if it would be hard to go from working sixty hours a week outside of the home to staying home all the time. I wondered if I'd be bored. Now that I've been home with Anna for nearly a month now, I can say with some certainty that I don't miss my job at all. But then last night I dreamed that I was back in my classroom and I'd lost the ability to get control of my class. One more reason I don't miss my job. I'm not bored at all, although I do occasionally get fidgety, and I've learned that while some things make me feel like a lazy slob, others help me pass the time. For example, unless it's after midnight, watching Oprah makes me feel like a slob, but watching episodes of Alias all day doesn't. Just another one of my idiosyncrasies I guess.

In fact in some ways I'm having a harder time with the identity aspect of all of this. I have spent so much time and energy defining myself as someone who doesn't have kids that it feels really weird to say that I have a child or I'm a mom. I'm more comfortable saying that I have a baby (again, another part of my weirdness). It feels a lot like when I turned thirty and I would sometimes forget, when people asked me how old I was that I wasn't in my twenties anymore.

I've also noticed that women at Church seem to have an easier time talking to me. Now that could be because a week before we brought Anna home, I was called to be in the Relief Society presidency, making me more visible. But most people talk to me about my baby. I get the feeling that it wasn't that they didn't want to talk to me before, but they just didn't know how. That bothers me a little bit. It makes me appreciate all my friends with children even more because all y'all figured out how to include me even though I didn't have children. Perhaps I should teach a mini-lesson in Relief Society on the simple phrase "Tell me about yourself." I've found that it can wonderfully bridge perceived gaps.

The biggest shock for Dan and me has been the realization that there's a lot of criticism we need to take back. I mean, we didn't spend lots of time criticizing people with kids, but more than once we both wondered how hard is it really to have kids? So, now we know that it is hard and we take back every negative or judgmental thing we ever said. Well, maybe not everything. I'm still pretty certain that I'm not going to feed Anna sandwiches during sacrament meeting, but then again who knows.

As for whether I'm getting enough sleep, the answer is probably no. And this is the hardest thing for me. I do my best to take naps during the day, but I always feel a bit chastised when people tell me I need to sleep when she does. Because seriously, how many moms actually took a nap every single time their first baby did? I know that once child number 2 and number 3 show up, most moms probably wish they had taken more naps, but occasionally I do need to wash bottles so that I can feed her and nap time is the best time to shower. But I was foolish enough to think that sleeping while she did would be easy and that this sleep schedule would only last for the first week or so. I also figured that my biggest obstacle to exercising would be finding a way to do it with Anna, not my own exhaustion. So please tell me that I'm not crazy for not lying down every time I put Anna down. And on that note, I think I'll go try to get in a nap before she wakes up.

Spa Treatment

Lately, we've been having some issues with clogged tear ducts. Often Anna wakes up with lots of gunk in her eyes. Being the paranoid first time mom that I am, I called the pediatrician and they told me that as long as the whites of her eyes aren't pink then it's just clogged tear ducts. But it's pretty frightening to get your baby up in the night and see her eye lids glued together. The easiest way to remove the gunk when she's got lots of it is to put a warm wash cloth on her eyes and then use a wet cotton ball (one for each eye), to wipe away the moistened crusties. She's really good about just lying there as long as she's got a pacifier or a bottle in her mouth. Anyway, I thought it sort of looked like she was getting a facial, or like she's blindfolded and wearing a straight jacket, but we prefer to keep it positive in our house.

While wiping her eyes one day, I got just enough water in her hair for some of it to start to curl. Of course, now that it's dried, it mostly stands straight up. I never thought I'd be one to do bows or put hair product in my baby's hair, but I'm starting to understand why some people do. We're still a ways off from that though.

Some things I love about Anna:

1. Often when I put her in her crib for a nap, she grunts like a little pig.
2. When she's hungry and I'm not making her bottle fast enough, she sucks on my sleeve.
3. I love her frog legs (see the bottom right corner in the photo above).
4. Sometimes when I pull the bottle out of her mouth, she makes loud smacking noises.
5. Most of all, I love to hold and cuddle her.

Dress Up

About once a week, I pick out an outfit or two for Anna to try on. I've always heard that most babies are bigger than the clothes assigned to their age. Not Anna. Thanks to lots of great friends we've already got lots of 0-3 months clothing, but they all swamp Anna. Newborn is the perfect size for her. It looks like she's destined to be a shorty, but I love her skinny legs!

Alive and Kicking

Thanks to Anna's jaundice, she's old friends with our pediatrician. She's even accustomed to having her heel pricked since she had her blood taken five times in the first week of her life to check her biliruben levels. But she's getting better at voicing her opinion about all of this. The first few times she had her blood taken, she let out a bit of a whimper, and then fell back asleep, but the last time, she let us all know that she wasn't happy about it. And when she had her blood taken for her second PKU at her two-week check up, not only was she mad about that, but she was also hungry.

After they took her blood, I took her out into the waiting area to put her jacket back on and get her nestled into her car seat. It wasn't so easy to put her jacket back on because she was screaming, kicking me, and thrashing about. Of course, the kicking didn't hurt, but only after several kicks did I look down and realize that her bandage had slipped off. So every time she kicked me, she also dabbed me with her blood. Finally I got her out to the car and fed her.

The two pictures of Anna are before and after her appointment. In the second picture her sock is still missing from the foot that was pricked because after being splattered with blood, I didn't want to risk pulling the bandage off again by putting her sock back on. And the third picture is of my clothes as marked by Anna's displeasure. I know kids can do a number on clothes, but the blood was quite a shock. So aside from that little trauma, the appointment went well. She's a healthy kid.