Our little girl seems to have all the qualities of a child's toy. She's just like an animated Betsy-Wetsy doll. When placed on her back she kicks her legs and moves her arms much like a turtle when placed on it's back. However, she also looks just like a battery operated crawling baby doll that has been placed on it's back. Futilely moving her appendages with no hope of ever turning herself over.
Waking her up is also fun. When laying flat on her back her eyes remain tightly shut. However, if you pull on her arms to raise her to a sitting position as she gets closer to vertical her eyes will open wider and wider. If you lay her back down the eyes go back to closed. It really is incredible. I did this for about 10 minutes the other morning. Baby Goes Up. Eyes Open. Baby Goes Down. Eyes Closed. Fascinating.
And of course the most obvious of similarities. We put liquids in one end and fairly quickly they come out the other end.
This weekend Carrie's parents came into town and we took baby G to the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. This is our daughter's first big outing. We had previously only taken her to the doctor's office and once to my sister's house. Since this outing was substantially longer we needed quite a bit more stuff. Apparently babies roll pretty deep.
We had a stroller, diaper bag, baby carrier, pumping kit (well that was sort of for Carrie), a whole cadre of blankets, hats and a little baby snow suit. Basically we filled the trunk of the car and we were only going out for a few hours. After coming home we realized that we had over packed. Sure we needed most of the larger items but some of these things could have been combined into one single bag.
Our over-packed diaper bag included:
15 diapers - She goes through about 8 diapers in a day and hasn't really been having diaper changes that go through more than one diaper at a time. Next time we'll reduce the number of diapers to 5. Still a little high but way more realistic than 15.
2 clean onesies and 2 clean outfits - On the average day we only change her outfits once every 24 hours. She isn't getting out and running around and only when she hasn't pooped in days do we really need to worry about her soiling herself. Next time we'll drop this to one outfit and onesie.
18 ounces of milk - Our daughter drinks about 6 ounces every 4 hours. Since we left right after her 10:00 AM feeding we should only have needed 12 ounces of milk. However, since Carrie was planning on pumping at the museum we only really needed 6 ounces because we would get more while we were there. We also brought a few ice packs to keep everything cold. She doesn't like cold milk and we had no way of heating it. We walked around with bottles of milk in our pockets for several hours trying to warm the milk up. Next time we'll do some better estimating and won't bring a cooler.
Snow Suit - We didn't need the snow suit plus the two blankets. If we really wanted to be sure she was warm we could have brought three blankets which still would have been less bulky than what we brought.
If we do manage to pack lighter we'll be alright. But once she starts to walk around on her own and won't travel without her favorite toys we might need to get a larger car.
A little note on last night. We fed her at 10:00 PM and put her to bed. She fussed for about an hour or so but then proceeded to sleep until 6:30 AM. Carrie had forgotten to set her 6:00 AM alarm to feed her. The new plan is to make the morning more flexible. We are going to let her wake herself up at whatever time (after 4:00 AM) and give her a full bottle then. Then when she wakes up for the rest of the day, just give her a snack to tide her over until 10:00 AM. This might end up with more sleep for everyone.
It appears that Genevieve has figured out that if you keep your hand in front of the pacifier, it won't go flying when she tries to spit it out. This is a vast improvement over her previous method of getting her fingers underneath the pacifier and then yanking as hard as she can.
The doctor told me two weeks ago to put Genevieve on a 4 hour eating schedule. He said that she was ready, given her current weight. When I asked him what to do when she gets hungry before the 4 hour mark, he said to do whatever I can to get her to wait. Yep, should have known that this would be fun.
Danny has implied that the feeding schedule is going well. This is sometimes true. She will finish the bottle in 20 minutes or less and then fall peacefully asleep for an hour or so. Awww.
Then, there are the other times. The times when she's hungry an hour before her scheduled feeding time, and I get to figure out how to keep her from screaming in the mean time and at what point I will be giving up. If it's over an hour until the feeding frenzy begins, I usually try giving her gripe water. At the hour mark, I try the pacifier. Genevieve likes this as it gives her the opportunity to work on her spitting skills. Right now she can launch the pacifier just past her feet, but we are hoping that she can get it over the side of the crib by summer. Once the pacifier stops working, it is on to walking and bouncing her. This can work almost as long as your back can take it. Then, it is on to putting her on her stomach and rolling her back and forth. The constant change in perspective seems to overload her system and thus stops the crying momentarily. When this stops working it is time to throw in the towel.
I tried getting her to wait longer once, but then when she did start eating we got stuck in a vicious cycle of crying-so-hard-she-don't-know the bottle-is-in-her-mouth/guzzling the milk as quickly as possible/choking/taking away the bottle to try and calm her down in fear that if her head turns any redder from screaming then she will explode, and repeat. It took her 10 minutes to drink one ounce this way. Of course I felt horrible and so we now stop after the rolling phase of waiting.
In better news, she is sleeping after her 10PM feeding until at least 4AM unless there is a severe diaper situation. It's progress in the right direction!
After her last checkup Carrie decided it was time to put our daughter on a schedule. Her plan was to start putting her to bed every night at 10:00 PM and to feed her every four hours starting at 6:00 AM and ending at 10:00 PM. Oddly enough this plan worked really well. We feed her a little more per feeding but since she is fed less frequently her total consumption is down. She doesn't yet make it through the night. She gets up every night at 4:00 AM for a little snack which tides her over until 6. She also usually wakes up around 2:00 AM screaming but we don't feed her. We give her a dropper full of gripe water and she passes right back out. And by passes out I mean spits her pacifier out every 10 seconds for 15 minutes until I'm ready to pass out. She didn't do it last night but I'm sure it was just a fluke.
Carrie and I have a separation of duties now. She takes anything after 3 AM and I take anything before then. Sometimes Genevieve will start crying at 2:50. I'll look at the clock hoping not to disturb Carrie. If she doesn't notice for 10 minutes, I'll be home free. However this hasn't worked yet. She always wakes up and says, "It isn't three yet!!!" I sometimes wish we didn't have a digital clock. Without her glasses I bet she couldn't tell where the big hand was on the dial.
On a side note I mentioned that Genevieve is paying attention to everything now. This is particularly true during feedings. She has picked up an annoying habit of turning her head to stare at things. This, in turn, causes the bottle to pop out of her mouth. Rather than turn her head back, she'll just continue to stare and start whimpering at the same time. It doesn't really matter if you move the bottle and put it back in because she'll just move her head another inch or so until the bottle pops out again. We played cat and mouse for 10 minutes while I tried to keep the bottle centered on her face and she kept peering left and right. I'm tempted to devise some kind of harness that will just hold the bottle in place. That'll show her.
It is getting obvious that Genevieve has started becoming aware of her surroundings. She will fixate on things like the dolls on her dresser and track them with her eyes as you walk her around the room. She also understands that if her pacifier slips out of her mouth a bit she can use the back of her hand to push it back in. Unfortunately she hasn't completely grasped this concept because sometimes she'll just yank it even further out of her mouth and end up tossing it across the crib. This only serves to make her angry.
She has also started to pay attention other toys. Both her crib and her bouncy chair have mirrors that she will stare into. I don't think she is being vain as I've been told she doesn't realize that what she is looking at is her. She thinks that it is another baby. This is the same trick that they use on parrots to keep them from being lonely. This coupled with my mother walking around saying, "Who's a pretty girl? Who's a pretty girl?" all the time leads me to think my baby will be squawking in no time.
The cat is out of the bag. Our girl is a little chunky. Sure, she weighs at two months what she should at four months, but I just like to think of her as advanced. Though judging by her other abilities she isn't as advanced as her size would warrant.
Diapers, for those that do not know, come in sizes based on weight. We've gone through many sizes newborn (below 8 pounds), 8 - 10 pounds and now we've been struggling to keep her in her 8 - 14 pound diapers. These diapers do not fit her so well anymore. These ranges don't really make sense. She isn't 14 pounds yet you have to really struggle to get them closed. Last night we decided to switch her to the larger diaper size. I went to the closet and took out the larger size but instead of something like 14 - 20 pounds it was 16 - 24 pounds. Well, our sub 14 pound daughter was swimming in these larger diapers. I never took fluid dynamics but I'm pretty sure her blasts were not to be contained by a diaper that didn't even rest against her thigh much less fit snugly. How could this have happened? What am I supposed to do for the next two pounds? We decided to double wrap her. If one diaper is good, two must be better. She looked a little silly with two diapers but the fit was tighter and the mess less likely. After putting her onsie and sleeper back on my little baby looked like she had some "junk in her trunk."
After a little sleuth work I figured out what happened with our diaper ranges. We switched brands. There appears to be some sort of vendor lock-in with diapers. They make their own size ranges overlap but they don't overlap with the ranges of the other brands. We just didn't pay attention to our weight gap. Carrie is going out to the store today to see if she can find some diapers to hold us over until our baby gains two more pounds, which, judging by current trends, should be Thursday.
Ever the cost conscious parent we were just buying whatever was on sale and not paying attention to brand. Especially since we don't yet know which brand is better, there is no reason to pay top dollar just because a diaper has a picture of Elmo on it. Not like my kid even knows what or who Elmo is. Nor does she have the ability to peer down and check out what cartoon character might be plastered just below her navel. I really can't understand why they bother putting these things on the diapers. I'm sure it raises the cost of the diaper as they have to license whatever they chose to put on there. One brand even had John Lennon quotes on the diaper and images drawn by the former Beatle. I'm sure Yoko is raking in the dough on this one.
It would make more sense if these diapers carried product endorsements. Think of the advertising potential. Instead of marketing characters to the kids, they should be selling products to parents. Logos of Desitin or Vaseline could adorn my child's bottom instead of Looney Tunes characters. I wouldn't mind diapering my baby in Budweiser diapers if it kept the costs down.
It takes most babies 4 to 6 months to double their birthweight; our child has come close to doing it in two. She went in for her 2-month check-up today and now weighs in at a whopping 13 pounds, 13 ounces. As the doctor plainly put it, "She's a big girl." It seems that some babies gain 3+ pounds a month for the first 2 or 3 months and then level off, which is what we are hoping for here. If she is still gaining at the same rate by her 4-month check-up, we'll have to do an intervention.
In other check-up news, she got her first immunization shots today, one in each thigh. She cried when she got them, but not as much as I thought she would. She calmed down very quickly and gave me a look that I'm sure was meant to convey the message "you'll pay". Her thighs may swell from the shots, which would be interesting as they are already enormous. She may also have a fever and be cranky for the next few days. Great.
We've gotten some complaints that the blog contains too many poop stories. I'd just like to say that (1) she really doesn't do much else, and (2) if you changed her diapers, you'd have to write about the experience, too. That said, if you are one of Genevieve's fans who is tired of us poo-pooing her, do not read any further.
Last Tuesday Genevieve had a normal day where she ate, slept, cried, and pooped. Then she didn't poop all day Wednesday. Nothing to worry about. Thursday went by with no movements - starting to get a little scared at this point. Friday and Saturday - nothing. On Sunday we we're a little worried and were trying our best to get someone else to change her. But finally, she let loose on Sunday afternoon. This was the Mount Everest of poops. It was a scene that you just had to stare at in confusion as to how it could have happened, and what could you do about it now. We seriously considered cutting off her clothes, but finally found a way to remove them without spreading the mess to the few parts of her body that weren't already covered. Please keep in mind that we haven't even removed the diaper at this point.
I removed the diaper and proceeded to laugh so hard that I couldn't see through the tears. I had just never seen a sight like that before. The diaper never stood a chance. Genevieve was very calm and helpful throughout this, often putting her hand into things I wished she wouldn't and peeing all over everything for good measure.
The good news is that after two baths she is finally clean. I really hope that this does not become a trend.
You've got to ask yourself, "Do you feel lucky, punk?"
Before I go into this story I just want to clear some things up. All the stories we have told so far about Genevieve's poop endeavors are considered normal. She is healthy and nothing is out of the ordinary, though that doesn't mean it isn't strange to us.
I've mentioned in the past that changing our daughters diaper is quite like playing with a loaded weapon with the safety off. Lately it has become more so and now I'm scared. It has been about 60 hours since she has pooped. Every time we think she might be about to poop it is only gas. She is not in any kind of pain as this isn't uncommon in breast fed babies. However, what this means is that she is saving up for some kind of poop armageddon that will unleash itself with the fury of a thousand suns.
I try to change her diaper as quickly as possible and hope that when the inevitable happens I'm not the one at the business end of her business end.
Carrie and I still are not quite used to calling our daughter by her proper name. While she was in utero we only called her 'it' or 'the fetus' and that hasn't completely worn off. However, we've also just given her lots of nicknames that seem a lot more suited to her at present. So with out further ado....
The Top 10 Names We Call Our Daughter:
10. Baby
9. Kiddo
8. Pooperella / Stinkerella
7. Sir Cranks-a-lot
6. Stinkerbell
5. M.C. Poopy Pants
4. Crank-a-muffin
3. Cry-baby
2. Baldie
and finally, the number one name that we call our daughter
1. Chubby Chubberson
It really is a good thing that she doesn't understand a word we say.
INFOMERCIAL:
If you thought crying was great, well then you'll love new crying with tears. That's right, tears. Little rivulets of water can now stream from my baby's eyes as blood curdling screams emanate from her body. Folks, have you ever thought to yourself, "Sure, my baby cries a lot but it isn't quite unbearable enough?" Well, think no longer because new baby cries with tears make thinking impossible. Yes, baby cries with tears, nature's way of telling us we are bad parents.
Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse she starts smiling and you think everything is okay. Then, wham, tears. Now instead of just sweating profusely while crying she also has tears. It makes what used to be just clinical discomfort into emotional distress. It certainly makes diaper changing more fun.
For those that were keeping track, she is actually sleeping better. We've been putting her to sleep in her boppie pillow as if it were a laz-y-boy recliner. This means she can sleep from 4 - 6 hours straight. She goes to sleep at around 10 pm and wakes up around 4 am and then again around 8. While this should mean a lot less work in the middle of the night and only one of us should be sleepy that still hasn't happened. We are both still exhausted.
