Status report: Month 2 (Maia)

Two months? Really? No wonder the 0-3 month clothes are fitting so much better. Maia's' two-month (really eight-week) checkup last week went very well; she was 11 lb, 3 oz, which is perfect, 50th percentile. She's also 50th percentile for weight, and 95th for head size. I guess our kids are just that way.

She was furious about her shots and let us know, and then slept. A lot. Which was a change. Like Chloë, she hasn't been doing as much sleeping as the books say she should. She also gets very cranky at night and usually about half an hour after feeding, though that half-hour is usually pretty pleasant these days. She looks around, smiles, follows faces with her eyes, puts up with her sister's kisses and prods.


But the crankiness, oh, the crankiness. Nights have been especially bad, high-pitched screaming that usually only gets stopped by a cork (i.e., the R.I.N.D.S.). It's bad enough and inconsolable enough that we're considering it night colic. The pediatrician suggested that reflux might be causing it, as she also much prefers being upright and in motion, never, ever refuses a R.I.N.D.S., and I have my suspicions that she doesn't actually need to eat every two hours so much as she needs to suck on something, and she won't take a pacifier. Or a finger. Or a bottle, we've discovered. (More on that later.) We got a prescription for baby Zantac; we'll see whether it works.

We're having no issues with the R.I.N.D.S. this time around, at least as far as the direct interface goes. We have discovered, though, that she won't take a bottle. She did a few weeks ago, when we left her with the mothers for a few hours for our anniversary dinner; but Eric's been trying to get her to take a bottle for several days now in preparation for my return to work, and no dice. Our parents and the doctors say that when she's hungry enough, she will; which seems heartless but there's really not much we can do, since I must return to work and it's not close enough to come home every two hours, and I doubt they'd let me bring her to work with me. She'd bring down productivity too much.


(That's Chloë's doll. She'll get her own, but it'll have to be when I've got time to make one, which is not going to happen while we're nursing every two hours and walking the halls with her at night until bed.) My plans for a summer quilt for Chloë are also scrapped for now. I'm pleased I finished Maia's before she was born. Maia's slept under it a few times and seems to approve.


She goes to bed with me around 10-11, usually nursed down. The bassinet has been much emptier during her first two months than with Chloë's. She's still waking up mostly every three hours, though we've had a couple of four-hour stretches. I'm wondering if nursing her in bed is part of the problem, but she's still awfully little, so I'm not sure. She sleeps when she sleeps. And usually with her hands in the air, for some reason.


I think her birth hair is starting to fall out; I've been seeing fine strands here and there. Her eyes are still blue, but very dark; I suspect they're at least going to be like Chloë's changeable eyes, if not fully brown. She's mostly able to keep her head up now, and has kind of rolled over--not true rolls, I think, but it indicates some trunk strength, which is good. She is a sweet little girl.


Thank you. Thank you very much.

Status report: Month 23 (Chloë)

Chloë the almost-two-year-old! Eric says, "Where did the time go?" I'd say mostly into diaper changes, but Maia's got her beat.

But Chloë is a happy, running, talkative--oh, so talkative--girl, big and adorable and getting ever more clever and funny. Yesterday morning she was watching my morning ablutions and said casually, "Lotion on mouth no?" (her syntax for "no lotion on mouth," an injunction we've drilled into her since she frequently asks for lotion because she likes to spread it on her face and hands). "No," I agreed. "Lotion on forehead? Lotion on cheeks?" she went on. I concurred that these were okay. "Have lotion? Please?" she concluded, and I, having seen the general drift of this conversation, dispensed some from the bottle I'd already picked up.

She hardly ever asks to be picked up anymore, but she's done it several times lately I was holding Maia. But mostly, she's been a great big sister, wanting to see her and kiss her and know where she is. I'm afraid I've been so focused on the jealousy aspect that I've been overlooking her love for her sister. Recently she wanted to see the pictures on my phone, and when I set the slideshow to run drove me crazy with her refrain of "No, no, no!" After I yelled at her about it and drove her to tears, we worked out what she was no-ing, and it turned out she wanted to see only the pictures that had Maia in them.


She's still a good eater, but becoming more picky--no, that's not the right word. Lunches are in fact usually pretty small, but then she often eats whatever's left over as an afternoon snack. She simply has definite opinions about what she wants now. That's really what's characterized the last month or two, I think. She knows what she wants, and she can tell us (mostly), and if she doesn't get it she gets mad. No huge tantrums, but plenty of small ones--but mostly, she's still a happy girl.

The water park was a huge, huge hit. She still talks about it constantly, and mentions the slide she went down with Mimi or the sunscreen she had to put on or that she went in the wave pool with Omi and Mimaw or the closet she and Addie played in. It also cured her hesitation on her slide at home--we got it out the other day and she went up and slid down, up and slid down, endlessly. It didn't cure her of being a water baby, though. We went to the farmer's market the other day, which is located right by the river, and spent more time stopping along the walkway looking at the river than actually at the market.


Playing hard at Kalahari unfortunately didn't cure her of waking up at 6 AM, but it did help her sleep hard. She's still a somewhat restless sleeper, and unfortunately a frequent nighttime nose-bleeder. She can't seem to keep blankets or sheets on at night, but she sleeps so hot it doesn't seem to matter.



Her vocabulary and usage, and understanding, continue to amaze us. Her record sentence so far is six words: "Milk fall down on blue pants." Then there was the following conversation the other day, while Eric was combing Chloë's hair (yes, he's the one who does it; I used to but he decided to be all smart about breaking out his own comb instead of the baby ones we had and she likes his better):

Eric: Your hair is getting so long now.
Chloë: Koë hair get long?
Eric: That's right.
Chloë: Koë get big?
Eric: Yes, you are.
Chloë: Koë huge!

She has a shape-sorter, has had for a while, that she wasn't interested in. But recently she started playing with it, and now she can easily fit and name all four shapes--circle, square, triangle, and star. She's working on non-rainbow colors, and adoring her Potty Elmo video--I'm starting to suspect for the music, though she's interested in Curly Bear, who's just learning to use the potty, too. "Koë baby nope?" she just said. "Koë big burl?" And yes, she certainly is.

Kalahari

And we're back from Kalahari, the water park, where we stayed for three-ish days with the mothers and Eric's sister's family. Chloe had a fabulous time, in the kiddie area or the wave pool with Daddy or me or Mimaw or Omi or Michelle. She started out timid, but by the end was going down the slides by herself, slipping down on her back and lying there in her life jacket waiting for a hand up so she could go again. Whenever we took a break, she'd willingly accept a drink or a snack or a diaper change, but pretty soon she was tugging at somebody's arm to go back into the water.


She got to spend a lot of time with her cousin Addie, which I think both of them enjoyed. Addie tends to be a bit bossy, as befits her role as eldest cousin and four-year-old, but they played in the water and at the kids' playground, and in our room in the mornings, and giggled together a lot.


Maia continues her schedule of feeding every two hours, but with a ratio of seven adults/teens to four kids, I got to spend a good amount of time away from her (which sounds terrible, but hey, I like being in the water too). She seemed to like the humidity and warmth and white noise while we were there.


Hey, how come I don't get to go on the water slides?
This was our first real Snyder family vacation with the girls, and I think it was a success--we all had a good time, and the community of extended family is always nice, and the scramble of coordinating schedules and preferences wasn't too bad. I was happy we went, for all of us but particularly for Chloë. We played hard, which I think is how this sort of vacation should be, and spent today recovering--after a disagreement on whether the concept of "having a bath in the morning" exists, Chloë's hair finally no longer smells like chlorine. Hooray!

I gave my love a cherry

Man, only two weeks left of maternity leave. This last week we've been trying to get a few things done, plus getting ready for the water park trip. In the meantime, the girls continue to grow up.

Chloë talks herself to sleep these days. It's hilarious to listen to her. "Mama Daddy Chloë Maia. Monkey jump. Dolly baby jump. Dolly baby sleep. Pooh bear sleep. Wait a minute! See you in the morning? Bye-bye Mama, bye-bye Daddy, bye-bye Maia, bye-bye Chloë. Bye-bye milk." She announces whatever happens to her and whatever she sees, and apparently whatever crosses her mind: "Someone coming downstairs." "Mama go potty now." "Go see Mimaw Omi Addie Raegan? Aunt Angie? Grandpa Halmoni? Grandpa Nana?" "Chloë watch Potty Elmo other day." (It is amazing how serious the actors sound on that show.)

One of her favorite words lately is "give." Our friend Nancy came by a few weeks ago to meet Maia and brought a present for each of them; Chloë's was a fuzzy duck with accompanying blanket. She picks up the duck and announces, "Incy gave ducky." (She can't do Ns to start with but seems to be okay with them in the middle of words.) When I let her have her favorite snacks, blueberries or fruit strips, she invariably walks out and tells Eric, "Mama gave blueberry/fruit snack." It's a good thing I hadn't given her anything I didn't want him to know.

Maia, in the meantime, has discovered the baby in the mirror and is starting to spend more time alert and not crying, which is nice. She's spending almost no time in the bassinet at no time, which drives me crazy, but I think the same thing happened with Chloë. I don't know if that's a result of my lack of patience or their habits. Ah well. I'll take the quiet time, and the solitary sleep will come eventually.

Where have all the cowgirls gone?

Where did my chicken-legged little baby go? Sometime while I wasn't looking, Maia has started packing on the weight, especially in her thighs, and gotten bigger all around. Even though she's six weeks (and a day) old, I've been thinking of her as newborn, "0 months," because all of her 0-3 months clothes were so gapingly huge. Not so anymore. They're hardly tight, but she no longer swims in them, and she's moved up to size 1 diapers. And her legs and arms are no longer scrawny. It's good progress, but it startles me.

And where did my Kayyee go? Because that's how Chloë was pronouncing her name up until, I think, yesterday. Suddenly, today, she's Koë. (Ls are still on our wish list, along with Ss, Fs, and THs.) Was it because her Aunt Karolyn was here for a visit, and Chloë called her "Aun' Kayyo"? Sometime soon she's going to stop referring to herself in third person, and Eric will be relieved, and my heart will twist because it will mean she's really truly her own person, and not just mine. Is that selfish? I wish I had more time with her. Jealousy cuts both ways.

Can't touch this

Yo, homies.

Status report: Month 1 (Maia)

Maia's first month has been a blur of feedings and diaper changes. And more feedings. The feedings are going fine; she seems to be healthy and happy, except in the evenings and also, when she's not feeding. Ahem. I am a little biased on this topic. We're leaving Maia and Chloë with their grandmothers for a few hours tomorrow to celebrate our anniversary and I don't know what I'm going to do with myself, not having a baby attached to me that long.

Maia came into the world smoothly, after an induction and a happily short labor with an extremely precipitous delivery--her father didn't have to catch her, but possibly only because the midwife decided not to leave the floor after I was six centimeters dilated. She was born mid-afternoon and met her sister, one grandpa, and two grandmothers not long after, and has been meeting more people all month. We woke her up more than we apparently had to her first couple of days, for feedings, to make sure she didn't get jaundice the way her sister did. I miss that lost sleep. Ah well.


Her sister has been and continues to be fascinated by her; she's been kissed and prodded and her hands and feet touched and examined more than any baby not in the hospital probably ought to, but it's all been in the name of love, or at least interest. She's just started smiling, and half the time it's at Chloë rather than at us.


We're all starting to settle into the routine, or at least the routine until I go back to work. We feed every hour and a half to two hours; she sleeps sometimes, often on Mama or Daddy's chest, sometimes through Chloë's "indoor voice," sometimes not. She gets cranky in the evenings, and prefers to be on the move. Eric and I expect to get plenty of exercise if this keeps up. She likes to be shushed (apparently it mimics the sound of my heartbeat in the womb) and swung back and forth, but isn't keen on her swing unless she's already mostly asleep. She does like baths, as long as she's nice and warm and not slipping down--sponge baths were bad, but the new baths in the tub are great.


She's starting to grow into her skin, filling out and looking less like Gollum and more like, well, a baby. I can see her sister in her, and sometimes have to remind myself that this is an entirely different baby. It's not so hard to remember when she screams; her scream is different. People say she looks like me; the technician at the hospital, who was the same one who helped out at Chloë's birth, said to Chloë when she first visited, "I don't think Mommy and Daddy make babies that look like Daddy." But Eric's mom and some other people say they see him in her. That's only fair. I don't see either of us in her (I didn't with Chloë either until relatively recently). I see a baby of ours, and that's all. That's enough.