signs! and a tooth!

quickly, because she's impatient today...

hazel signs! i can hardly believe it, already. we noticed some pronounced mimicking about two weeks ago, so we started signing a few signs to her (bird, dog, milk, fan, light... all the important things :), but hadn't really yet gotten into the habit of doing it consistently.

on tuesday night, when i was in and out of sleep due to a 102 fever, i saw her watch the dog jump off the couch, then stick tongue in and out, then look at me for understanding. i responded, then she did it again and looked at the dog. wow... but i'm borderline delirious, did that really happen? despite my state, she was absolutely clear.

so two days later, after just having arrived in ND for christmas, as she was lying in my lap i noticed her eyes had locked onto something. she stuck her arm up and swiveled her wrist around, and sure enough, i looked up to see we were right below the fan. since then, she's repeatedly signed for dog, fan, and now light, too. (of course, milk is the one i really want her to learn so i know when she's hungry, but in order for her to learn that, i actually have to remember to show her the sign as we're nursing... i keep forgetting.) anyway, i'm sort of in disbelief that she's already old enough to be signing, and half-crawling, and clapping... time is flying by.

she's so cute, she claps (in this funny splayed-finger tapping sort of way) to inspire interaction. she claps, we can't help but clap back, and on it goes, and she gets the biggest grin when we "get" her clapping or signing. i'm sure she's thinking "finally! you people finally understand what i've been trying to tell you..."

due to a canceled flight, we killed 8 hrs at minneapolis airport on thursday (gotta love that playscape across from gate C12! the tram and moving sidewalks are also very popular). while eating a snack with eva and allowing sleepless papa to rest a bit, i noticed... hazel has a tooth! the lower left tooth was just *barely* poking through, and already now two days later it's much more pronounced. and, she already bit me (in her sleep, so it surprised both of us).

today it is -13 degrees F (-39 with wind chill... and that's not the low, that's just the mid-afternoon temp). eva spent the morning making a gingerbread house, and had a grand old time, and got the hang of piping the icing herself. christmas prep continues, as everyone works on projects in assorted groups whenever the recipient is out of view (though, not much of that has really happened yet... difficult when no one can leave the house.) larry contemplated driving to bismarck to get the supplies santa will need to make eva's gift (i think santa needs some help sometimes, right? the elves must get exhausted) but was deterred by the crazy wind chill. i mean, not that he's any stranger to this.. the first time he ever visited me here (my first year of college) it was -60 and we finally left the house to walk 5 blocks to my friend's house... only our eyes were showing, but i was still pretty sure we were going to die before we made it back home. luckily, we made it, and lived on to produce two pretty entertaining and cute kids. good thing.

catching up

i'm bummed out that i haven't posted in so long, it makes me feel like time slips away unaccounted for or something. but guess what? it seems that having two kids (combined with it being the holiday/travel time of year) means i haven't had as much time as i'd like. shocking, i know...

mostly it makes me a bit sad because there has been so much cuteness and so many fun things happening that i want to share all of it, but the snippets and sentences i think of while nursing a baby to sleep stay in my head, because i can't type enough with one hand.

at the moment, eva is snuggled on the couch to my right watching sesame street. last night she vomited all over me at a restaurant, and larry and i handled it like seasoned pros. i don't even think anyone else knew what had happened, even counting the fact that both eva and i had to basically strip in the parking lot. i think we get parenting bonus points (merit badge, maybe?) for that one. hazel is sleeping on the couch to my left, zonked out probably because she hasn't been sleeping much, particulary at night, resulting in a tired mama who refuses to just give up and go to bed at 7 like i should, because i have too much to do.

we're enjoying the holiday season (despite any side-effects of the list making and checking and such). eva has become obsessed with christmas songs, and in about two weeks, she's learned so many songs. (did anyone know there's a humorous second verse to jingle bells, by the way? fun. oh, and not the batmobile one. it's about a guy being passed over by a sleigh-driver after falling in the snow.) rudolph is her favorite and she sings it beginning to end over and over. frosty and jingle bells and "we wish you a merry christmas" and silent night are all runners-up. we've been doing our advent calendar (which became a hit in the craft blog world and is showing up all over the place (google "recycle advent calendar" and i'm the top three hits, crazy!). eva enjoys finding a new tiny ornament to hang on our (rosemary) christmas "tree". she's been sewing felt ornaments for her friends. sweetest of all is that larry has been reciting (from memory :) "twas the night before christmas" to her to fall asleep to many nights.

i'll have to catch up with news from maker faire, our month in ND, hazel's new tricks at 6 months, news of eva's growh from her endocrinologist appointment, etc. but all that must wait. i can smell that hazel to my left needs a diaper, and i was waiting until she woke up. she has now pushed herself up to semi-sitting and is happily watching TV along with her sister. oops.

in case i never catch up on all that, though, what i really want to record about this time is the sweetness, the goofy playfulness that inserts itself into our days together, the inquisitive learning and leaps of thought from eva that astound us, and the overall joy. this is a great time. tired and busy, but so happy. i would freeze time right here for a while if i could.

the four month report

four months. four months! hard to believe, yet here we are. until very recently, despite all evidence to the contrary, i liked to claim that she looked "the same" as when she was born. time was standing still. she's a newborn.

well guess what?

it's not and she's not. and i guess that's okay, too. she's so big for her age that she looks like a 6 month old, and is wearing some 9 month clothing. so, all that makes it pretty difficult to pretend she's a newborn.

size: she had her well check on tuesday, and she's doing fine. she's 16 lbs 3 oz (95th %ile), 24 3/4 inches (75th %ile) and -- can you believe i remembered all these numbers? -- has a 16" head circumference (50th %ile). she's a grower. i think they say a baby should ideally double their birth weight by four months, but she did it by 2 1/2 months. she's so chunky that she has rolls and creases everywhere -- ankles, backs of knees, dents at her shoulder blades. she has pudgy tops-of-feet, fingers, back-of-head, even her pinky toe has padding. wow!

and she's proving to be physically adept, too. i didn't really get it when a friend used to talk about her daughter having stood on her legs at birth -- how is that possible? what does that mean? well, hazel has always supported her weight on her legs, and was lifting her head off my shoulder in the first week. a few weeks ago, she started rolling from her back onto her stomach, and after holding her head up and looking around for a good while, would get tired and find herself unable to roll back over. within a week, she learned to get from her stomach to her back, but in that intervening time, eva was more than willing to assist her by "rolling"/shoving her over onto her back, much to hazel's perpetual astonishment. (this was no easy task... eva only has 10 pounds on hazel, you know.) for the past two weeks, she's been rolling and rolling, inadvertently using it as a form of locomotion. i'll set her down, go spend a few minutes making breakfast and coffee, and come back to find she's well off the edge of the quilt five feet away looking a bit bewildered. better yet is when she gets herself wedged against the couch leg or something -- and even though she can't crawl or really pick up toys, i've had to start watching what stuff eva leaves on the floor near her. pipe cleaners, not so safe, i'd say. oh, and she's working pretty hard on sitting up -- with the boppy around her, she sat the other day for a good 5 minutes. since then, it's been a bit more floppy, which is fine by me. i'm not used to all this! being even a little on the early side with all this physical stuff is especially confusing to me, given that eva was on the later side of such things. for all i know, hazel will decide to start crawling before christmas.

the love list:
i love her expressive eyebrows. everyone comments on this, so it must be really noticeable. the eyes may be the windows to the soul, but watch her eyebrows and you can see what she's thinking, how she's feeling...
i love that her mouth is the exact shape of the yellow hat worn by curious george's friend. it's true.
i love how she can be so agitated one second, then as though a snap of hypnotist's fingers, eyes close, arms go limp, head droops to the side, toes uncurl, and she's in utter peace.
i love that low grunty sound in her throat, the one she uses when she wants to remind you "i'm still here".
i love how for months now, she'll start cooing, louder if i look away: ohhh, youuu, ahh (a few months back, eva said sleepily in the middle of the night: "i think hazel's trying to spell something.") with all those letter sounds, perhaps she is.
i love how she often wakes with a look of searching confusion, then sees me and breaks out a giant gummy grin, laughing "heh heh heh!"
i love how she delights in having an older sister (despite the occasional pinches to the arm this week) -- she'll stop crying or start laughing when eva entertains her.
i love the two random exra-long hairs on the top of her head (one wavy and one straight) that have been there since birth. i check for them almost daily an will be sad one day when they are no longer there.
i love how she flaps her right arm when she's happy, and that now that she has discovered use of her legs, how she can entertain herself by kicking, kicking, kicking.
i love it when she sighs with contentedness upon latching on.
i love hearing her chuckling in her sleep or while nursing, because i know she's happy.
i love rubbing her furry hair.
and most of all, i love that she's mine, that we're the ones who get to have her in our family because she's perfect for us.

and i love that she knows to wake up right when i'm done typing. :)
the end.

"i love u"

"i love u", originally uploaded by kelanew.

hazel is cooing at me from her post next to me on the floor. she has a way of getting my attention, so i won't write the blog post i was planning just now. in fact, i have one half-written that is already a month old! hazel, my dear one, some day when you bemoan the fact that i wrote more about eva when she was a baby than i did about your babyhood... take solace in knowing that often enough, i put the computer down so i could just stare at your cute face, or so i could do as i'm doing right now, and watch you roll back and forth from stomach to back, holding your head up high, grinning at your own accomplishments.

photo: eva wrote this card for me. in her words, "it says 'i love you', because i love you mama, but i wrote two Us but one looks like a V but that's okay." she did it all on her own, without the usual asking how to spell the words or how to make the letters. (for the record, "love" just happens to be one of the words she can spell/read.) we were shopping for some clothes for hazel a month ago, and she said "let's get this shirt that says 'love' on it." that's how i know she can spell it. i think that came from the valentine's day project. :)

okay, now that hazel has "crawled" several feet away from me by inching forward on her belly, i'm going for real. she's too much, that one. oh, love, indeed.

clothing swap

swimmer, originally uploaded by kelanew.

when you have two girls in a family (or maybe two boys? though i know nothing about that...) you expect that eventually there will be sharing of clothing. this can be a good or bad thing (or so i hear), depending, but it worked out well for me. growing up with two sisters and a stylish mom, i thought of it as a convenient extension of my own wardrobe.

well, first thing this morning, we had dueling bed... "issues". eva had an accident, and before i had the opportunity to do anything about that, hazel promptly projectile vomited across a broad swath of the dry side of the bed. well, good morning, indeed! no stranger to such things, i tend to have a stack of spare blankets, towels, waterproof pads, and fresh pajamas next to the bed so i don't have to go running downstairs in the middle of the night. so, i replaced or covered bedding as needed and swapped out the jammies of the kidlings... however, i had nothing dry for hazel, not even a swaddling blanket, so i put one of eva's pj tops on her.

i expected this 18 mo sized shirt (that eva still wears!) to drown poor hazel, but in fact, it fit her pretty well. the sleeves had to be rolled up, but the rest was fine. in fact, she's still wearing it now. so, it seems they might be raiding each others' closets sooner than i would have thought!

i'm going to blame the clothing swap for today's brilliant mothering moment: as we were leaving eva's school after having dropped her off, i put hazel back into the car. i felt low bloodsugar due to my slightly late lunch (my nursing body is rigidly tied to the clock with respect to caloric intake, i swear!) and i was also a bit preoccupied, which is my excuse for the fact that ignored the quiet little voice in the back of my head that said "hmm, something is amiss."

i pulled into the driveway at home 12 minutes later and opened the rear door to find hazel wasn't in her carseat. what, what?! oh... she's in eva's seat. eva's *foreward facing* seat! hmm, that's why my brain was trying to tell me, hey, those shoulder straps look a bit high...

seriously. some days i think i need supervision... and no, just because your child is in an 18 month sized shirt that your preschooler can still wear does *not* mean she should be forward facing in the car. eek.