I am TWO!!

Months, that is. But still. TWO! Months! We've kept a child alive for TWO MONTHS! Who'd have thought?

Some random notes from the Norman camp:

Dexter was 12 lbs, 1 oz at his last weigh-in at lactation class. He goes tomorrow for his two month check-up at the doctor, so he'll get weighed and measured then. Can't wait to see how long the child is. He's already getting close to hanging out of his swing and his bouncy seat. Actually, the feet already hang off the bouncy seat.

Have any wood close by? You're going to need it for this one. Dexter has been pretty reliably sleeping from 9 or 9:30 pm until at least 3am, every night. NOW is when you knock on wood. NOW! HURRY! Most nights he will actually sleep until 4 or 4:30. So we're working toward a good solid 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep from him. He goes to bed at 7:30pm, gets up at 9 or so to eat (not his choice - I make him get up), and sleeps a good solid chunk of time before waking up to eat again. Our next step? When he's ready, we'll drop that 4am feeding. And Mom can SLEEP ALL NIGHT! :-)
The exception to the sleeping through the night rule happened the other night, when Dex woke up crying at 1am. But not his "dude, I am hungry" cry. More like a "HELLO? What's going on here?" kind of cry. Why? Because Mr. Muscles had busted BOTH ARMS free from his Miracle Blanket. Which I just didn't think was possible. Ah, but who swaddled him that night? His DAD! Who is FAR too nice. He said "I didn't want to make stuff too tight around his arms." OK - next time you want to make stuff not so tight, YOU can get up at 1am to re-swaddle the boy and get him back to sleep...

Naps are not, unfortunately, going quite as well. Dex seems to have become a perpetual 45 minute napper. Which means that Mom can get a lot less done during nap time. Ah, who am I kidding? I didn't get anything done, anyway. So what it REALLY means is that I am (kicking and screaming) slowly coming to terms with the fact that MY naps are going to be significantly shorter now...

Dexter is still kicking butt with his bottle feeding. John feeds him a bottle a day. Which allows me to: go to girlie movie night without worrying at all about how the baby is doing, go to Target and Wal-Mart to do some shopping without a kid strapped to my belly, and maybe, sometime, start going to the gym at night. Woo-hoo!
Dexter is smiling all the time now (except, of course, when I have a camera in my hand), sitting up in his Bumbo chair, kicking the snot out of his play gym that makes noise when he kicks it, and grabbing stuff. Also following hands and other objects as they move across the sky in front of him. Cool stuff!

Also, right now. Dexter is hungry. We shall continue this post at a later time...

One bath and one feeding later, and we're back! Also, check it out - Dexter can have normal hair when his mom remembers to comb it after a bath! No worries - give it one nap and it'll be back to being the crazy hair that we all know and love.
Dex is, I am pretty sure, going to win any beer chugging contests in college. Right now he nurses for 10 minutes max, and in that time period eats four to five ounces of milk. Which, apparently, is HUGE. We feel like slackers at lactation group, as we're in and out of there before most moms are even done nursing. No dilly-dallying for this boy! Which is cool - less pain for my nipples, and it leaves us more time to play.

Speaking of nipples, I can't WAIT for them to not be in pain. One of these days (and I am guessing it will be after Dexter is done nursing forever) I will be able to actually hug my husband again. Right now I can't because OWWW. Nipples smooshed against another person = hurt.

And according to some of you savvy moms (and all this baby stuff I keep reading) this is about the time that Dexter should start to poop less. WHEN? WHEN does that happen?? This whole six poopy diapers a day thing is getting old...
So what's on tap for us this week? Doctor tomorrow, and shots and weighing and stuff. Recovery Wednesday. Lactation group Thursday. Maybe some photos on Friday, or a visit to the Easter Bunny (gotta take advantage now, when he doesn't care that he's being held by an enormous scary thing with big ears and googly eyes...). Saturday Dexter gets to hang out all day with Dad while I go help a friend at a competitive trail ride in Fair Hill. And that's about it! We'll be busy this week!

Also, happy birthday today to Grandma Cowan!!

Happy Birthday, Grandma!

These are a Few of My Favorite Things

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens...

Blue hats from Grandma with matching blue mittens...
Black socks that look like they have some shoe strings...
These are a few of my favorite things.

Cream colored ponies and crisp apple streudels...

Big drops of spit-up, oh man I have oodles... (hey, YOU try rhyming with streudel!)
My Miracle Blanket, good sleep it does bring...
These are a few of my favorite things.

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes...

Play gyms with fishes that make sounds like splashes...
This cool green ball that I just learned to cling...
These are a few of my favorite things!

When the dog bites
When the bee stings
When I'm feeling sad...
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don't feel so bad.

A songwriter, I am not. Nor a rhymer. I cheated. Go to rhymezone.com, you can cheat, too!

Back in the Saddle

That was me today! Quite literally back in the saddle again. Yay! Man how I have missed the smell of horses. I was so happy to come home today dirty and covered in horse hair. I was riding my friend's horse, Spot. It's not the same as riding my Frazier, who I still miss. But hey - at this point I am happy to be in a barn and have a horse to ride. Cate said "let me know when you feel up to riding ten miles. I'm sure it won't take long." Ummm. Yeah. I haven't ridden since JUNE. I am sure I will be unable to walk tomorrow. So it might take me a little bit of time to work up to ten miles!

I'm not sure I say enough how great a dad John is. I pumped some milk this morning, got some more out of the freezer, and then went breezing out the door. Bye, honey! I'll be back some time! Maybe! Have fun with the little boy! And he did just that. Fed Dexter, played with him, went for a walk, sent me a picture message on my phone so I could see Dex out walking, put him down for a nap, got him up again a little while ago when he was crying and I was chatting on the phone. And now he's off winning Dexter some college money, at a poker tournament. :-) Seriously. He rocks. Dexter and I are lucky.

Dexter appears to be a growing boy today, eating every other second. Growing boys are hungry boys! As he was 12 pounds at lactation group on Thursday, I fully expect, with this growth spurt, for him to hit 13 pounds this week. I swear, by next week at his 2 month check-up he will have to wear 6 - 9 month old clothing! I can't wait to see how long he is these days. My guess? Seventy billion inches. Or maybe 30...

Boooo. VT lost in basketball. And Maryland was well on their way to getting crushed the last time I looked today. Who do I have left to root for? I guess - GO ORANGE!! Stupid Syracuse. Who, really, has a mascot that is a big orange ball? I mean, even a castrated turkey is way cooler than that...

Oh, how I've missed this view. Frazier's cute ears look at the ocean (HORSE EATING WAVES!!!) last February. Back when having a child was one of those "hey, want to do this?" kind of ideas... Must get Dexter a pony. Soon.

Faces

Audience participation. Make your own captions - I'm plumb out of ideas!

Straightjacket

So (cross your fingers) I think we have found the solution to the non-napping baby who just played in his crib looking at the world all morning long:

Look, Ma! No hands!

Swaddling!! DUH! I am a moron for not doing it sooner. I mean, we swaddled. Half-heartedly. And since Dexter was VERY good at busting his arms out of our swaddles, we thought "well, he just LIKES having his hands up by his face. And he's still sleeping ok. So what's the harm?" It just took me a couple weeks when he started NOT sleeping ok to realize that perhaps those flailing arms hitting him in the face every three seconds was contributing to the not sleeping problem. Hey - nobody ever said I was smart!

So now we are swaddling much more aggressively. Like lean on those arms, strap them down by his sides, and wrap the swaddle so tight you wonder if the boy can breathe... And we have, for the past three days, a boy who naps MUCH MUCH better. Yesterday he was quietly fussing up in his crib for a bit, and when I went to check on him to see why - well, Mr. Muscles had busted out of his swaddle. So, what did we learn here? Swaddle = sleep. Not swaddle = cranky baby and unhappy Mom. And nobody likes an unhappy Mom!

Glad we found the solution, before they had to take ME away in a straightjacket!

Aunt Maria came to visit last weekend. Thanks for coming to play with me!!

Lest You Think Life is All Sunshine and Roses...

May I present a few photos of Dexter in his "OMGIAmStarvingWhyAren'tYouFeedingMeRIGHTNOWWoman!" state:


Mind you, he's not normally quite so cranky. This is in the evening, after the boy had slept for CRAP all day (even in WAL-MART!! Fussy in Wal-Mart! Definitely not right. Definitely needs more sleep.)

He's still hella cute, though, in his little blue jeans and sweater. Ready to join a fraternity...

And THIS picture just cracks me up:

Earth's Best, But Not Dexter's Best

I love the people who gave us diapers. I truly do. We have not bought ANY diapers since we've had this baby, except for a lone package of Pamper's Newborns when Dex ran out of the ones we stole from the hospital, and he was just too small to effectively fit in to Huggies Newborns (hold on. This baby used to be SMALL??). But otherwise we've been using your generous gifts, which has allowed us to compare some brands a bit.

For the past week I've been cursing at (or using) Earth's Best diapers, with a maybe 75% success rate (although right now it feels like a 2.7% success rate). While I like them in theory (chlorine free, organic), in practice they have made me want to run my ass out to Colorado and gouge out the eyeballs of the guy who designed them (c'mon. You KNOW it's a guy. There's no way a woman would design a diaper that fits so poorly). Because? They leak. Pee, poop, whatever. They leak. And after four clothing changes today, the most recent at 3AM when the diaper was TOTALLY dry but Dexter's fleece PJ's, waterproof mattress pad, and Alissa's PJ's were totally NOT dry... I threw in the towel. Sorry about the wasting of perfectly clean diapers, but I can't hack it any more. Bring on the Huggies.

Maybe Dexter's legs just aren't designed to fit organic, chlorine free diapers that are supposed to be good for him. He apparently has legs shaped to fit Pooh Bear decorated, probably terrible for you, soon they will discover they cause cancer, less expensive (good boy, Dex!) Huggies diapers. And maybe some other brands - we've still got more in the closet so this little experiment isn't over yet!

These legs are made for Huggies...

SLEEP!

Dexter's been eating about every 2.5 hours. Sometimes 3 hours if he sleeps for that long. So we've had a little bit of a "routine" down, based on that. Yesterday the routine went right out the window as he slept (eventually) until about the three hour mark. So our routine was pushed back by a lot.

So at 10pm I fed the little man, and put him in bed, telling John "I'll just not set the alarm, and will let him sleep til he wakes up. Maybe I'll have to get up twice tonight. No big deal."

And he slept. From 10:30 until his paranoid mom woke him up at 4:30 (DUDE! All the sleeping! Aren't you hungry? Can you really sleep for this long when you are this little?). And then he went back to sleep from 5AM until 7AM. Woo-hoo!

So you'd think, then, that I'd be well rested, right? Because I slept from 10:30 til 4:30 and that's about three hours more continuous sleep than I usually get. Right? Ah, of course not. I woke up at 2. Was that the baby? No, it was CoCo snoring. Then at 3. Was that the baby? Nope - just John, breathing. Damn these other animals in my room, sounding like awake babies! Finally at 4 I got up, just to assure myself that the baby was still alive. And at 4:30 my neurotic self couldn't hack it any more and got him up to eat.

This probably will never happen again. But still - yay! Dexter's always been an awesome sleeper at night. It's just those daytime naps that we have issues with. I swear, in the morning I put him in his crib for a nap and his train of thought is something like this: Hmmm. Wonder when I can eat again. Oh, look! A hand! Hmmm. I like boobies. Oooh! A pony! Hmmmm. Wonder when I can eat again? Cool! A ceiling fan! Hmmm. Boobies... Awesome! I have FEET!

And he'll just happily play away in his crib. Til he decides he's hungry again. I finally, out of desperation and an attempt to bore him to sleep, took his mobile off his crib. There's still plenty of cool things for him to look at, though - the blinds, the slats of his crib, the checker-board pattern of his bumper... The world is just way too much fun!

Burping with Grandma

Grandpa! I am trying to do a fist punch with you! Get with the times! It's what all the cool people are doing these days!

This looks insanely uncomfortable. But, hey. If you want to sleep like that, buddy, you go right ahead.

I don't believe it!! Aunt Jeanne is touching a kid!! Dexter must be way cute, for this to happen.

I am both stylin' AND irresistable.

3 to 6!

It's Dexter Jeopardy again! If you think the question is "What is the time that Dexter screamed this morning?" then you would be... WRONG! Fortunately! Nope - the boy may wake up at 3AM and again at 6AM to eat, but between those times he is sleeping. Or if not sleeping, at least quiet.

This is, of course, what I do between 3 and 6AM. Or at least Mom thinks I do. She doesn't stay awake long enough to know for sure...

So the question is: "What size clothing is Dexter currently wearing?" Ridiculous! My 5 week old is wearing 3 - 6 month sized footie PJ's, because the 0 - 3 month old ones were 1) not even coming close to fitting his big long feet, 2) not allowing the poor boy to straighten out his legs, and 3) cutting off the circulation in Dexter's shoulders. I swear they fit last week. Dex grew about 17 inches over the weekend. So we've barely worn all the clothes in the dresser, and I have to pull out new stuff.

WHEEEE!!! I can straighten my legs out again!

Further affirmation that Dexter is ginormous: at lactation group this morning he weighed in at 10 lbs, 15.8 oz. Which is 1.5 pounds heavier that he was at weigh-in 2 weeks ago. This is Mr. Packin-In-The-Pounds! Also, will need to get photographic evidence of chunky fat rolls on thighs. DEXTER'S thighs, not mine! His fat rolls are cute. Mine? They're just fat.

Now for today's installation of "Alissa is an Idiot." I just bought two slower-flow nipples on the way home from lactation class. And put them in boiling water to sterilize them. And then walked away. To start writing this post, I think. And then Dexter woke up, and I fed him. And then heard something popping, and smelled something weird...

Can I still use dangerously-close-to-being-melted nipples? How about the pot with melted latex in it?

DOH! What's my bottle going to taste like tonight? Burnt milk?

A Week of Firsts

Been a busy week for me. I've been doing and learning all kinds of new things!

1) My first trip to Home Depot! I apparently was so cute, though, that they threw me out after mere seconds. (Or, Home Depot doesn't understand that FEBRUARY is still WINTER. And why on earth would anyone want to have something like, oh, HEAT in winter? Therefore, anyone staying in our basement will be cold, because is is apparently no longer "space heater season." Here - go mow your completely brown lawn instead, because Home Depot has lawn mowers!)

2) I saw my belly button! (Yeah, Mom is a habitual scab picker. So when I saw that it was really just hanging on by a thread, I ripped that bad old umbilical cord right off. Poor John was jealous. He said "You get to do all the fun stuff!" Eat your heart out, baby. When my fun consists of belly button discovery and you're jealous? Something's wrong...)

3) I went out to lunch! (The boys at my old job took me out to lunch. And the nice man at Roma's was terribly cute. Dex was sleeping by the table, and the waiter was OH SO QUIETLY removing dirty dishes from the table. Don't wake the baby! Very cute.)

4) I went to work! (Were I smart I'd have taken a picture of all the ladies at work gathered around the car seat carrier giggling at Dex. Why were they giggling? Because his face was suddenly, tremendously, red. Whatcha doing there, boy? Making a little poopy? Who wants to hold the baby now?)

5) I rode in Dad's car! (How has the boy NOT ridden in John's car yet? Also, the very cutest people at the big consignment sale last night were John, with Dex in his Snuggly. And the biggest purchaser of tons of baby stuff was Dexter's mom... Too bad Grandma wasn't here, though, Dex! She'd have gone to town!)

6) I stayed home alone! (Yep! Just like McCauley Caulken in the movie. Dex stayed home, put aftershave on his face, and thwarted bad guys who were trying to rob the house. He wasn't entirely alone, though. We left CoCo here. We figured she's old enough to babysit while we go to the mall and go out to lunch. Ok, ok. Stop calling social services on us! Nonna and Granpa were here, too.)

7) I ate out of a bottle! (Also Known As: WOO-HOO!! Mom freedom!! Although, truthfully, I was a little sad. My little boy doesn't need me around all the time any more. He's getting to be all grown up. But, Dex rocked the bottle feeding. We need to find a slower nipple, though. Who'd have thought that any nipple could be faster than the fire hydrants I have for breasts?)

8) I had a bath! (Lest you think that the boy has just been stinking up the house for four weeks... What Dex means is that now that his umbilical cord fell off, he could have a REAL bath, in his bath tub. To hell with that silly sponge bath on the kitchen counter crap - we're living large now! It was ridiculously easier than I had imagined. And the hose attachment in the kitchen sink rocks for rinsing!)

9) I turned one month old! (Although he gets the shaft on this one, as February doesn't HAVE 30 days. So we'll pretend that March 1 is his one month birthday. It's close enough. He won't know the difference.)

10) My first real snow! (AKA, PANIC! The entire state is shut down! Five inches of snow! Do we have our milk and bread?)

Me and My Family

Here's a few pictures of me and the fam:

My sister CoCo and I sleep on the couch. Mom was sleeping on the couch with us but, obviously, was awake here (otherwise who'd have taken the picture?)
CoCo and I are (kind of) awake. Also - check out my cute cute cute socks!!
Nonna and Granpa are here for the weekend. Which means I never have to be put down, ever. Right?
Dad gazes adoringly in to my eyes. Which are closed. And also, what color are they? A mystery, still. I think they're eventually going to end up poop brown, like my mom's.
Dad made me get dressed in this outfit that he picked out for me at the last consignment sale. Mom was laughing so hard she was crying. And I look pleased, right? Sexy outfit! Good choice, Dad. Thanks a lot. You KNOW Mom is going to pull this picture out for my first girlfriend to see, right?
Chillin with Pooh
Check out my head and neck strength. I am strong like bull...

Conspicuously missing? Any photos of me and my MOM. Dad needs to get on the ball with the whole picture taking thing! Maybe Nonna took a picture or two that we can steal (SNORT! One or two?? I have camera flash marks burned in to my eyeballs...)