Giraffe Riding in a Strawberry Car

Have you ever had one of those moments when you get an itch at the exact moment it's the most inconvenient? I get them quite a bit lately whenever I'm trying to soothe Lily to sleep. I'll have been pacing the house with her in my arms taking in each yawn as a small victory and hiccups as a small setback when eventually (usually about 20-25 minutes) that magic moment hits. I'll stand still and enjoy her eyes becoming too heavy and this calmness come over her. When I was much more of a novice at the soothing routine, I would make the rookie mistake of letting my mind wander to what I'd like to do when I put her down asleep like SIT DOWN. Babies can sense this and will suddenly jolt to life with a cry or this "don't even think about putting me down" look. It's at this magic moment where she's just about out when I'll get this itch on the back of my leg or in that hard to get spot on the back and if I try to scratch it, Lily will wake back up. At that point, every second counts because my arms and back are talking not so nicely to me and I'm starting to go crazy from pacing back and forth feeling like a robot. The funny thing is once my arms are free, the itch is gone.

Breastfeeding used to be the #1 topic on my mind by a landslide. It's still up there because I just do it so often and still seems so bizarre to me. By the way, I'm reading the book "unbuttoned" which is a collection of true stories about the pain, quirks, joy, and frustration of breastfeeding. It's a good read so far, all except the story about the dating and lactating woman who went on a date with a guy who had a fetish for breast milk! The new topic most on my mind is Lily's sleep, lots of healthy sleep. She isn't on a daytime routine yet so trying to figure it out and how I can help her is like a puzzle to me. I already know there is no solution to the puzzle. As soon as I figure it out, the puzzle will change. It's probably on my mind so much because Lily is getting close to when many experts say her sleep pattern will be more established and pleasing to the parents. Now, when she goes to bed, I go to bed. I'm looking forward to when she goes to bed and I drink a glass of wine and watch a movie with my husband.

Our last visitors left last weekend, unfortunately. G'ma and G'pa Mather as well as Aunt Emily (Nate's sister) were in town. They were a huge help and we already miss them. I knew they'd be a big help but I didn't expect to see G'ma cleaning out the refrigerator and G'pa scrubbing the stains off our hardwood floor. I was just grateful to see them interact with Lily as much as they did.

Even though most of what I do these days is pretty mind numbing like change a diaper, sing a nursery rhyme, or rock a baby to sleep, that's ok. I do enjoy the creative outlet it gives me whether it be making up songs to get new expressions from Lily or coming up with simple stories to keep both me and Lily entertained. Thanks to my mom's gift of a stuffed giraffe riding a strawberry car, I get a headstart with keeping Lily creatively entertained. As Lily gets older, I'll probably make up whole skits that involve Nate to perform in front of Lily to get just that one giggle - totally worth it.

We posted some new pics from the last month, check 'em out. The album is titled July 09

Lily's first word. AH-OW. It means I Love You in Lilese.

During a recent diaper change, I captured Lily making some new sounds at me. Her newfound voice makes time at the changing table a lot more fun these days.

Two Months!

Wow, time has truly flown by. Yesterday was Lily's two month birthday. She celebrated by smiling a lot and saying "aaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiggggggggghhhhhh". I think that translated to "look at me, I'm two months old!". She had her two month Doctor's visit today and it went as well as we could have hoped since she received her first round of immunizations, three needles and an oral vaccine. Once the needles were done she turned as red as a beet, as red as we've ever seen her, and let out a big wail. But after she was safely back in mama's arms for a few seconds she settled down and now she's enjoying a nice nap. Aside from the vaccines, she's right on track, weighing in at 12 lbs. 11 oz. and 24 inches and showing off lots of smiles for the doctor and nurses.

Sitting in the waiting room I was looking closer at Lily's hair, and it seems to be lighter every day. Those blonde roots are more than roots now, and it's not going to be too long before she'll need a haircut. I really have a hard time picturing her as a blonde, just because the image of the first sight of her with jet black hair is burned into my brain as "what Lily looks like".

One of my jobs is to clip Lily's fingernails. It's an exercise in patience that happens at least once a week. Or whenever she scratches the heck out of herself. I just use our nail clippers, but very carefully. I looked at one of the "baby nail clippers" at the store, but it was just adult clippers with a special handle and a magnifying glass stuck to it, so I figured we'd make do with what we have. If I used to solder little chips onto boards without a problem, I can clip a baby's nails.

We now have a pretty solid nighttime routine and Lily is (knock on wood) sleeping really well. But a daytime routine remains elusive at this point, we never know when she falls asleep if she'll wake up in five minutes or two hours. But I think we'll take the daytime uncertainty if she keeps giving us peace at night.

Tomorrow Lily gets to meet her Grandma and Grandpa Mather and her Aunt Emily for the first time. Hopefully she doesn't have any after-effects from the vaccines and shows off her nice big smiles. Nicole and I are definitely looking forward to our first dinner out alone, as Grandma & Grandpa have already volunteered to babysit for an evening. Now we just need to decide between Screen Door and Yuki... fried chicken or sushi? If only these were our biggest decisions every day...

I'll leave you with a couple of pics to show Lily's range of emotions.

Bad TV and Exorcism

It is truly ridiculous how much crappy TV I'm watching these days. Watching as much Wimbledon as I did is justifiable in my mind because Lily needed to watch where she'll be playing someday but the crap I'm watching now is embarrassing. I watched Dr. Phil the other day and caught myself talking to the TV telling this 15 year old who wants to have a baby that I'm going to slap her back into reality. I've even started watching some soap operas, ick. The TV is usually on when I'm feeding and folding laundry which happens often. My mind is back to a place where I could pick up a book or a magazine and focus fairly easily but a Time Magazine article is all I've done. I sure am focused on reading the regularly highly recommended book "Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child" so a non-baby book is doable at this point. My parents would tell me to use the time I get to cook a gourmet meal for my husband to come home to. I could see that happening when a routine is better established. Free time is still unpredictable at this point.

Next week marks 2 months and there are new things going through my mind these days:
- I am following the theory that Lily shouldn't be awake any longer than 2 hours at one time which is usually very challenging at least once a day. That over tired state sucks and I now know what that looks like.
- Starting to think about putting Lily down when she's drowsy but still awake. We still pace the house while holding her until she falls asleep whether it be a nap or at night. We won't be able to keep this up.
- Leaving Lily with a babysitter for the first time and being surprised how hard it is to leave her. We're going to see Coldplay tomorrow night.
-Lily is sleeping longer at night so I'm guessing she can now distinguish between night and day or is it the swaddling we do only at night? When do we want to stop swaddling? When will we introduce a bath at night and maybe even read to her to help establish a routine? We'll see what hits us.
- Finding the motivation to make better use of my free time. How about working on Lily's baby book or framing one of her pictures? Jeez, get with it Nicole.
- Getting more Nicole time back in the picture like more regular exercise. I never thought I'd actually consider going to a 6am workout class. We'll see on that one. Making exercise a priority is just now something we're doing more of now. Yup, yet another thing that was harder than I thought it would be.
-Figuring out more things to do in the neighborhood with Lily.

Lily's demons have left her body. Our priest told us this during her baptism last Sunday, cute little joke. Nate said it would have been funny if Lily projectile puked right after he said that, no spinning head though, too scary. Lily's Godfather (my brother) and the rest of the Biegansky Hinsdale crew were in town and it was super cute seeing my niece and nephew interacting with Lily. Seeing Lily baptized was one of those heavy moments filled with tradition, goodness, and family.

I'll leave you with a picture of smiling Lily. Nate's parents and sister arrive next week. Lily is ready and excited to smile for the next visitors.

Lily's Dip in the Pacific

Just wanted to share the video we tried to put in the last post. Here it is:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/8lzCj-Gnazt6lms9DOa1qg?feat=directlink
You'll probably want to click on the "view HQ video" link right above the video window to get a higher quality version.

Aloha

O' Maui, how we've missed you. 3 years ago, we spent 2 weeks in Maui for our honeymoon and what a difference bringing a baby along can do to the type of trip we're used to. The only alone time Nate and I got was the 15 minutes we enjoyed in the pool and on the water slide. Our evenings ended quite early (9 pm was going wild) and dodging the sun for Lily was our primary activity of the day. Only Nate was able to make it out surfing because Lily decided to be a major fuss ball at the wrong time. We did manage to play some tennis, go to a luau, and celebrate a really beautiful wedding with friends. Tony and Stephanie, congrats again! Your wedding was a lot of fun.

We heard "you guys are brave" on our Maui trip from lots of people which is a nice way of saying "you are stupid" as we toted our six week old Lily around everywhere we went. Yeah, it was hard at times but overall, Lily did really well. We catch ourselves often playing the "at least she didn't do xyz" to make us get past a difficult time with Lily quicker. At least Lily didn't have a breakdown at the wedding after she had one on the flight back. At least Lily didn't poop on me after she just threw up on me.

As far as baby learning's go, we discovered that at about the six week mark, the decrease in poopy diapers is replaced with a "did that much really come out of someone so small" size poop. Lily introduced us to the "no diaper can hold this amount in" at the rehearsal lunch and my dress changed from purple to brown. I brought a change in top but not change in dress. Good times. We got longer stretches of sleep at night, anywhere from 5 to 8 hours between feedings for the first time ever. Lily is definitely awake for longer stretches during the day now and loves to look outward because she's apparently already sick of looking at our goofy faces. She can tell the difference between us sitting and rocking her and us standing and rocking her. She likes to move and doesn't care if the wind is blowing in her face. She also really likes a painted picture of a pineapple that was in our hotel room. I should've taken a picture of the picture and get it framed for our house. She would always stop her cry for a moment and smile at the pineapple, so strange and cute.

I want to leave you with a video of Lily taking a dip in the ocean for the very first time but I'm having computer difficulty so hopefully it can be posted soon. Instead, I'll just post a family pic. Check out more pics of our trip at our usual picasa link.