crazypants

It's been over a month. I am sorry. To say that we've been busy around here might suggest more achievement and productivity than we can really claim. Instead, I'll just say that it's been nutty at our house.

Exhibit A:

That's bossy Miss Eleanor on the left and extra-curious Miss Finch on the right. I know that it's wrong to pick favorites, so I won't tell you that one or the other is my favorite. I'll just mention that Miss Eleanor is A Very Bad Cat.

For those of you rolling your eyes right now, wondering what we were thinking, let me say that we were thinking we wanted kittens. A pair of them. It's been part of our plan for years, and we were waiting for the right time and the right cats. We had assumed we'd find our feline friends before Miss M arrived in our lives, but it didn't work out that way. So now, we're just making things up as we go along.

Introducing the small creatures to each other went well enough. Out of the fifty bazillion pictures I took to preserve the moment for posterity, though, I don't think there's a single one in which at least one of my three subjects isn't a blur of activity.

The cats were pretty quick to get comfortable around the baby.

Then they started getting a little too comfortable for this nervous mama, who is constantly waiting for a cuddle session to end in blood and tears.

It hasn't happened yet.

We'd like to think that M is learning to be gentle with the cats, but honestly, it's a little too early to expect much in that department.

Sometimes, M tries to eat the cats.

Usually, though, it's the cats snacking on her.

And just when you think everyone is going to sit quietly and keep their distance...

...something exciting happens!

So now we have some extra messes, some extra noise, more than a little extra laundry, and lots of extra chaos. Really, though, it's a small price to pay for M to have her own private circus. I briefly entertained the idea of making her a lion tamer's costume for Halloween. Not that she's, like, in control or anything.

But the cats are happy. And when we're not cleaning up kitten pee or wondering who ran off with the kitchen sponge again, we're pretty happy. We can't claim to know exactly how M feels about the new additions, but she looks pretty happy from here.

action-packed

Boy howdy, has it been a busy few weeks for us! Visitors, traveling, and lots of walking in the August sun. It added up to something like this:

Two brand-new aunties!

Four ferry rides!

One sunflower!

Dancing on tables at various restaurants! (If you're curious, we were here and here.)

A trip to the top of Seattle's tallest building! (Thanks again, Uncle D!)

 And a visit to the zoo!

Whew. We were exhausted. You're probably exhausted just looking at the photos. Believe it or not, this wasn't enough excitement for M. In her spare time, she's also been rolling over, learning to nap in her crib, yelling a lot, and playing several recently-invented games with Dad.

This one is called "Queen of the Laundry."

This is either "Diaper Hat" or "Diaper Head." I can't remember which, but the rules of the game are pretty obvious.

And that, my friends, is how we spent the last two weeks of August. Here's to the cooler, calmer days of fall...

summer days

It's been a little while since I've posted here and a certain set of grandparents is itching for an update, so here's a bit of what's been going on at our house lately.

First, there was the heatwave.

Granted, compared to what the rest of the country's been going through, our two days of temperatures in the low to mid nineties probably shouldn't qualify as a "heatwave," per se. But we're used to gray and rainy around here, and Seattle babies have to make an extra effort to keep cool when the mercury rises.

We spent lots of time sitting in front of the fan and taking long, sticky naps.

There were also plenty of cool wet washcloths, which M seemed to enjoy.

Right about the time the heat broke, Miss M woke up one morning with a head cold which left her coughing and sneezing for a few days. I maintain that the wet washcloths were not to blame.

Obviously, M didn't let a little extra snot affect her over-all mood...

She stopped sniffling just in time for the excitement of minor surgery last Friday, when she visited the lovely and talented Dr. K for a--take a deep breath here--sublingual frenotomy. If you're a nerd, you can read more about ankyloglossia here. Otherwise, suffice it to say that M's tongue was too securely attached to the bottom of her mouth, which was keeping her from using her tongue the right way when she's nursing.

Other than disrupting M's nap schedule and creating an overtired monster later in the day, the quick little procedure went well. The jury's still out on her nursing efficiency, but M certainly seems to be enjoying her newly-liberated tongue.

The other big news is that M has started to laugh.

She's only done it a few times. Each time, it's surprising. And absolutely adorable.

tummy time

Every parenting book and baby-raising website talks about the importance of tummy time. There's lots about how spending time on her belly every day will keep baby's head from being flat, will strengthen her neck muscles, will help her to roll over and crawl earlier. You're pretty much a monster if you don't establish a strict tummy time regimen during baby's first few days in the world.

They do not, generally, warn you that your baby might hate tummy time.

Anytime we put M down on her belly, she'd squirm, flounder around for a minute or two, and then start howling and mashing her face into the floor. It was loud. And kind of painful to watch. As a result, there was very little tummy time at our house.

So I'd pretty much resigned myself to having a deformed, slow-to-crawl child who would have lots of things to hate me for in her teenage years.  Fortunately, a friend suggested something much simpler: Propping M up on a firm pillow.

Bingo.

Granted, it's still not her favorite thing to do, but with enough distractions, tummy time sometimes stretches to five or ten minutes.

For those of you worrying about Miss M suffocating her sweet self, I assure you that all tummy time is closely supervised. Which usually means that I, too, am spending lots of time lying on the floor. I'm kind of hoping there are developmental benefits for mamas, too...