• Her hair’s thinning, likely because her noggin is growing and spreading out her hairs.
• Her temperament has gotten a bit more even now that we’re on a feeding plan instead of guessing if she’s hungry.
• On thursday, She started making noises other than cries! It’s terribly cute.
• Naps are occasionally in her crib now. Sometimes in her swing, sometimes still on me (if I’m ok with where I am for the time), and sometimes swaddled on a blanket on the floor. But I’ve reclaimed a few hours a day!
• I have to admit, I am a little sad about the crib-sleeping. I liked the  snuggling, but also really like sleeping in whatever position I choose. We do still nap together.
• She started sleeping in her crib on wednesday or thursday. I don’t know what changed from one day to the next, because one evening, the crib was evil and not for sleeping, and the next, she was out like a. Light. Maybe tied to some development advance that came with the new noises?
• She noticed her feet last Friday. I think they’re just things with ducks or santas or frogs on them, not necessarily her feet, but it’s cool to watch her stare back and forth between these two moving things.
• I see why people make such funny faces at babies and such weird noises. She makes extra faces when we do and more good noises when prompted. (monophthong vowel sounds get more responses)
• We went to the the machine shop. Had to clear a table of cylinder heads to change her, and Don (the owner) was just cooing over her. Very cute.
• Her hands are quite tasty sometimes.
• She grasp and holds on to things. Usually, my hair, TCB’s chest and arm hair, the bottom of her outfit during changes ( useful).
• We realized we’ve been so excellent with the cloth diapers, she’s going to outgrow a bunch of disposables soon. Fortunately, most are in a couple unopened packages, so they can go to other people without being weird about it.

• Returning to exercise is taking a little longer than anticipated, but I’m doing it slowly. No more than 5 minutes of soccer in good weather, and we’re going for walks. It’s definitely going to be a long road back to where I was a year ago.
• I signed up to re-take the D coaching license test.
• I got estimates on a housecleaner. Should have done that years ago.
• The thought of returning to work is looming. On the one hand, yay money! On the other, the commute and the job itself. I’m making a few samples of the hooded towels that I make and pair with books for gifts (because bath and bed can be fun times, and I’ve found that real towels are way more drying than baby/kid towels) to take to the bookstore, to see if maybe we could work out a thing wherein we both profit.
• Have been weighing in with the wii on Wednesdays, lost 3pounds since last week. Very exciting to watch the graph trend downwards. I suppose at some point, the weight won’t be coming off so effortlessly, but it’s fun while the obvious excess goes away.

We spent Christmas at Mom’s, where Lena met uncles and another grandma. And they all loved her. I kind of feared that someone would run away with her.

She seemed to do well on the trip up and really chilled out once she was there- she generally ate better and actually slept somewhere other than on somebody: we were able to put her to sleep in the basket, where she napped and even slept overnight in it! The lower guest bed and the ability to put my hand on her when she started fussing really helped, though she did end up back in bed with us by morning, usually, because she fusses when someone is not touching her or paying direct attention to her at that very instant. When she starts waking up in the morning, a little snuggling buys us all a little more sleep.

Lena’s first Christmas was lovely, though she slept through the presents.

I really appreciated being able to hand her off to someone else so that I could spend a minute alone or so that TCB and I could have a conversation that wasn’t interrupted by baby screams, had look-at-this-baby focus or was in hushed tones because of baby sleeping. Also- we ate some meals at the same time. Amazing, I know.

The trip back wasn’t quite as calm and successful. We didn’t leave _right_after feeding her this time and we took a longer, though prettier, way home. We had to stop to feed her, but she was fussy and immediately filled her pants to near-overflowing when we stopped. Thankfully, I’d put an extra cover on her over the disposable diaper, so the mess was all contained. We’d stopped at a gas station and I fed her in the car, but the station didn’t really have a good restroom, so we changed her on the hood of the car (we were parked off to the side.) Kindly, she also waited until we were out of the car to share her forceful spit-up, but it was over the side of my arm and the ground caught most of it. Makes me think that maybe we should simply lay down newspaper at home and burp her facing down. The rest of the trip, she just didn’t want to sleep, so we had a bunch of baby screams until we stopped for dinner at a Wendy’s. The ladies behind the counter all wanted to see her (and I wanted to know why they didn’t have some kind of space in a restroom to change her, I wedged her in between the sink and the wall), and one of the patrons getting a refill on her decaf coffee said I needed to feed her. (Little old lady grandmother-type.) And after ordering, I got out the cover, put myself in a corner of the restaurant, and fed her. And she immediately fell asleep afterward. And I counted that as a win. Slept all the way home.

We had noticed that her baby acne didn’t seem to be going away, it seemed to be getting much worse and spreading down her chest. It really seemed to pick up steam over the holiday, too, and at home, we noticed that it would be fairly clear in the morning, then get much worse after breakfast, and maybe kind of bad though the day, or it might clear up. We ruled out dairy, since the formula contains dairy and she had no problems with it (and her face would clear up after having it, sometimes), and traced the pattern of breakouts to getting worse after I ate eggs. So, since getting back, I cut out eggs and her face cleared up and she seems much happier- no screaming with tummy pain after eating. Yay! Today, I had muffins containing eggs and, yup, instant breakout and horrible baby screams of tummy pain. To be fair, I didn’t feels so great after eating them, either. But it seems that eggs are causing some sort of issue with this baby.

We spent New Year’s Eve with the neighbors, where Lena slept most of the time. I like that she’s so portable right now, and that we can just take her with us wherever we go.

She does have more active periods during the day now. We can play with her after she eats for about an hour before she naps. She’s calm, curious, cute, and makes noises other than baby screams. She also smiles, which is pretty awesome. She squirms and lifts her head and likes to play “bounce and wiggle” and “baby rocket.” She enjoys songs about counting, like the “1-30″ song from “Sounds Like Fun” and replacing the letters with numbers in “ABC” song. Also likes the “Piggles have Wiggles” song that we made up. It involves a lot of wiggling the piggle. She’s started grabbing shirts (not just chest hair) and pulls my hair with her deathgrip; I pull the hairs she’s yanked out out of her hand because she won’t let go of them. She makes so many faces and still makes piggy snorts and I had to make her a piggy hooded towel. And she’s growing; washcloths don’t work as well for a blanket anymore. I miss the weekly weigh-in to confirm her weight gain, but I can see it in her person (double chin! folds in limbs!) and just realized that I can use the Wii to check her weight.

Cloth diapers are still going well. We only took disposables to Mom’s, figuring that they would be easier, and both TCB and I were surprised at just how many we could go through in a 4-day timespan. In fact, the first thing TCB asked when we got home was, “where are the cloth diapers?” We’d only gotten a few before seeing which fit her best and which we liked best, and gDiapers and bumGenius win. Fuzzibunz and prefolds + (most) covers don’t fit around her skinny legs, which I attribute to them having snaps instead of velcro. Love the velcro, don’t like the snaps. The stash is big enough that, if I do laundry halfway through the stash, the load is done just before she runs out of clean pants. We use maybe 2-4 disposables a day right now.

I’m still recovering from having her, those pulled stitches didn’t do me any favors. Blah. Because I’m not as active as I was even at the end of pregnancy, my back’s starting to hurt. Trying to stretch it out when I can, and trying to sit better, but it’s hard when I have a baby sleeping on me, or bending over to change her, or bending over to do laundry. Going to end up a hunchback. A waddling hunchback if I don’t remember how to walk normally again. Soccer season starts Sunday and I’m hoping to get on the field during the season, though probably not for the first couple or three games.

I can’t believe I’m at the end of my short-term disability leave and I can’t imagine having to go into work on Wednesday, and am really glad that I’m able to take the whole 12-week FMLA leave. Part of it’s because of still recovering and not being ready to face the real world, part of it because she’s still not on any kind of schedule, so waking times aren’t predictable, and part of it because I like being at home and doing anything besides going to that job. Programming’s ok, I’m pretty good at what I do, but I’m ready for some career change.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 10,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Lon tongue-tie, but did get the number for a lactation group at a different hospital that does therapy to help correct latches, not just making observational statements.

She’s starting to look less like a newborn and more like a baby. She’s definitely bigger and longer and heavier.  Still has those chubby cheeksthat get cuter now that she makes noises other than screams.

Went back to the office on Friday, and Lena had gained 2oz in 2 days. Yay! I had pumped a little bit already, so after  Wednesday’s crash, we started feeding her pumped stuff after each feeding. And then she startedgoing 3 hours between feeding instead of 2, and she wasn’t screaming in between. Feeding stopped being an hour-long affair. And I also started feeding on only one side per feeding, making me less sore and, hopefully, getting her some better nutrition. It’s still tiring and there’s not really room for error (I’m just barely keeping up), but it does seem to work. And if  I get behind, I have the pre-mixed formula samples by “the chair,” which makes me comfortable knowing that a back-up is immediately available at 4am if she’s still hunger- screaming after giving her everything I’ve got.

Thank you so much for the support on the last post. I really, really do appreciate your stories and advice, and I’m wishing we’d figured out this weight thing earlier so that we wouldn’t have gotten so stressed out trying to calm a hungry baby, I would have gotten over the whole formila thing longer ago, and we could have enjoyed our baby sooner. She’s kinda neat when not screaming her head off. I also wish that the breastfeeding class mentioned that a) it’s a challenge, b) formula is not the end of the world, and a bottle of it doesn’t mean you’ve failed and doesn’t mean you have to totally switch, c) sometimes you just need a break to catch up on sleep, to heal,  or to let your own supply come in. The class we went to was run by the head lactation consultant at the hospital, and when I saw her post delivery, she kept trying to push formula, whichIthought was weird, given her near-total dismissal of it during the class.

The pediatriction that weve been seeing at the practice told us that she’d had to supplement when her first son was born, too, and she felt like a huge failure when that happened. But, by 6 weeks, everything worked out and they weren’t having to supplement any more.

What really helped make this work was grandmothers visiting. I could feed her, hand her off to ahappy grandma to go to sleep, and then pump to prepare for the next feeding. Lena doesn’t really nap unless she’s being held or cradled in some manner: our record for the crib is about 10 minutes at this point. Maybe 30 minutes in her swing. 5 minutes in the bassinet. And a million hours when held, wrapped up, or snuggled next to us. She’s very much a snuggler, trying to get as close as possible and burrowing into our necks when taking a light nap.

Lena’s Ben trying out her hands. She grabs my hair and TCB’s chest hair, shehas tried out sucking on all combinations of fingers. So far, favorites include the thumb and index finger at the same time, like she’s whistling, and the middle two fingers, like Dear Seester used to do. I laughed pretty hard when I saw her doing that.

My pooch is still deflating, stretch marks seem to be getting more purple and angry-looking. But! My favorite part of my belly button, the little overhang at the top, has returned! That disappeared New Years Eve 2003.

I know there are spelling errors and run-together words in this post, I’m typing this on the iPad, and it tries to guess my next words. And autocorrects, leaving out spaces.

Went home with another weigh-in appointment, a bunch of formula samples, and a lot of feeling like I’m failing at this.

Me: Lost 20 lbs! And have about the same amount to go to reach my pre-preggo weight. I was told to do less, though, since I’ve pulled on some of my stitches (I know when I did it, when plopping down on the bed.) It’ll heal, but will just take a little longer, but I still need to do less than I had been. Otherwise, things are fine physically with me.

She: gained weight at an acceptable rate from the last weigh-in, but still wasn’t up to her birth weight, or even her discharge weight. So we go back on Wednesday for another weigh-in and, if she’s still gaining at the rate they want, then they’ll be happy. She also apparently shrunk an inch? We have the incredible shrinking baby!

For those plotting along at home:

• Weight: 9lbs 2.5oz
• Length: 21 inches
• Head: 14.5inches

We’ve had some rough nights. She does fine all day: eat, awake, nap, repeat. At night, around 11, she goes into super-fuss and nothing seems to calm her down. She’s been fed, though roots around and falls asleep after a minute on the boob, not waking when poked, so we rule out hunger. As soon as I move her, she’s awake and screaming. Butt’s dry, she’s swaddled, rocking and patting will help, singing does a little, too. I end up handing her to TCB and try to sleep myself. She’ll pass out for the night after I’m asleep and TCB brings her to bed. Unless she doesn’t pass out, and then it’s going to be a long night of repeating those same cycles until she and I end up in the chair, trying for some sleep for one of us.

Her umbilical stump fell off on Tuesday, so she got her first real bath on Wednesday night. She was uncertain about it. We did it in the bathroom sink, lined with a towel, but that sink is a little too small. We’ll try another sink for the next bath.

My hormones leaving her body are showing up full-force and she’s got quite a pizza face now.

Thursday, I decided that I gave up on trying to get Christmas/announcement pictures of her, so I called a friend who does these sorts of things and we went to her studio. And we learned that, if you want this done right, a professional is amazing. Amazingly amazing.

Yesterday, I decided it was cloth diaper day since I’d used a couple on previous days and figured that, if I have to wash a couple, might as well wash them all. I used a mix of gDiapers (with cloth inserts) and bumGenius fitteds, and it was super-easy. I liked the gDiapers better, because they seemed to fit better on her skinny-ish legs and they have less to wash per diaper change, though neither kind leaked. And her butt looked so cute. Washing was easy and I can’t tell which had poo and which didn’t.

This morning: I’m not sure how something so small can produce so much poop in a 20-minute time span.

(Right now, she’s sleeping in the swing, for the first time. Sshhh.)

(Just kidding. She started screaming immediately after I wrote that.)