the hazel report

mama and baby, originally uploaded by kelanew.

i have so much to say about my sweet baby, but never find the time to write it. (yeah, what have i been doing with my time anyway? and i have to say, that whole hospital thing really put a damper in lots of my plans, like sending out birth announcements in a timely fashion -- they're all ready to go, if i can just get them printed :) so here goes in a totally disjointed stream-of-consiousness fashion, keeping in mind that my consiousness is half asleep and distracted, and that apparently i don't know how to spell consiousness but am too lazy to run spell check:

i said before how hazel is a pretty content baby, and i will say she does actually cry some these days, but still, she's pretty great. the cool new trick she's developed (i hesitate to write this down lest the sleep gods smite me for it) is that she goes to sleep around 8 or 9 and pretty much sleeps until morning! what's that all about?! i mean, she wakes up to eat every two hours for most of that, sure, but she sleeps one or two longer (4 hr?) stretches and doesn't require tending in the night, like rocking or whatever to go back to sleep. cool! i doubt it will continue this way, but i sure am loving it for the moment. hurray for side-lying nursing and co-sleeping so i never even have to sit up or get out of bed (other than to change a diaper...)

she's a great nurser -- once we got the oversupply thing under control, we've been doing just fine. in fact, she nurses like crazy and has been growing a ton. she gained a full pound in just 6 days. at three weeks, she had gained over 2 pounds (the doctor's comment... we usually just want to make sure they're back at their birth weight at this point. :) she does like to nurse pretty much all the time, like every hour or more... basically one feeding blends right into the next. that's fine with me, though. she's doing what she's programmed to do, and it seems to be working out well for her. :)

she makes crazy noises, and has since she was first born. she grunts, she squeaks, sometimes sounds like a deranged horse. she's amazingly cute when she sneezes. she's really strong -- from just a few days old, she's launch herself right off your shoulder. she holds her head off your shoulder for a really long time. now she's practically holding her head up and will even support her weight on her legs. i know lots of babies do this, but i've never had one before that did (eva was little and had neck issues :). she smiles a ton, especially in her sleep, and she has really bright eyes that for the moment are a similar but different shade of blue/gray than those of her sister. and on that note, she looks a lot like her sister did, but they have distinct noses and chins.

today we had our first official solo outing, just me and the girls. we went to splash in the fountain with some friends followed by a trip to target, and everything went smoothly. hazel's 3 1/2 weeks old, and i recall that eva was 3 weeks old when we had our first solo outing (to a milk bank event in the park followed by lunch with sarah and baby liam, where i changed my first diaper in a public bathroom :). biggest slip: despite my efforts to keep her out of the sun (by draping a blanket over the sling and such), she did get a bit of color on one side of her face. why one side? well, it happened when she was nursing for 10 minutes in the shade of a baby tree. not a big deal, but i think i need to travel with an umbrella from now on (thanks wendy for the idea!) because the extra layer over the sling will just make both of us extra hot. today it was 104 degrees when we were out -- for 2 hours! oh, hot.... crazy texas.

okay, off to take my baby upstairs to join my big kid and all snuggle up in bed. it's funny, today went well (eva didn't freak out once! not all day!) and thus my whole perspective is changed and refreshed. i think i'm too susceptible to the most recent data point, i need to remember to take an average or something. well, at least on the bad days... on the good days i'll just continue to take it at face value. :) i was going to save this for another post but who knows if i'll get to that -- eva had a great day i think because we got out of the house, and because she actually ate and thus wasn't low blood sugar all day long. but i think part of it was that we were reconnecting a bit -- we did a lot of talking about things so that she knows i'm not upset with her, just frustrated in general, and how sometimes i don't like her behavior but i always love her, etc. later today out of nowhere she came up and told me "mama, i still love you even when you fight with me." hmm. i think she's getting it though, and i'm glad we can talk about it. (and this was better than last week when she told me "mama, i'm having trouble playing with you lately." yeah, i guess you are. sorry, baby, mama's trying her best.)

okay, off to bed for real. props to larry for holding a hungry baby while i finished that last paragraph. i'm slow, since i can't concentrate on two things at once and my brain shuts down at the smallest amount of background noise. someday i'll get my brain back... maybe.. :)