Snowbound Herpetologist

Since she's on her best (well, better) behavior in the mornings, we try to maximize the time :) Burp time! Fat milk hobbit She's starting to notice the cat!

This week, Maya decided to give up naps...oh, except she still needed them, so she was exhausted and cranky all the time (hence, no time for blog posts).  Today, though - we're on our second nap of the day!  Longer than 10 minutes!  Yes, Virginia, there IS a Santa Claus! So now I'm super behind on work (housework and real work), so this will be a short post, mainly a quick update to a)  let you know  we're all still alive, and b) post some photos.  She's looking so old, and I can't believe that she's already six weeks!  Wow! In between cranky baby bouncing, I am putting together Maya's room.  This probably should have been done before she was born, but we had this snafu where the basement didn't get finished, so we didn't have a new guest room, so Maya's room had to stay a guest room until our parents were done visiting to help us through the tough first few weeks (and we are SO grateful for their help!).  Anyway, the room is finally, slo...

We said "enough is enough!" and got the f out of dodge! Polar vortex #3,418 - you lose! :)

So what is Maya like as a baby?  She’s what my mom and I are calling a “Spirited” baby - she knows what she needs, and she’s not afraid to let you know that she is displeased with your efforts to satisfy those needs (read: she can raise the holy dead with her screaming).  She’s a baby who likes to be in motion (incredibly difficult when stuck inside your house due to the weather - really, MORE sub-zero temperatures this week???), so there is no sitting around and cuddling for her!  The only time I can sneak in cuddles are when she falls asleep while nursing (my cat was anti-cuddle at first, too - I trained it out of her by giving her treats every single time I picked her up and cuddled the crap out of her.  Would this work with a baby, I wonder?).  Since we can’t go outside to walk, we spend an inordinate amount of time bouncing on the yoga ball.  As long as I move around with her a lot and keep her on a strict Eat-Play-Sleep cycle, she has her good momen...

Maya plus Dunkleosteus :) P.S. Bonus - baby wearing hides the spit up/milk leak stains :)

Almost one month old :) 9lbs, 5 oz at the pediatrician this morning!

We just really, REALLY missed husband, who's away at a conference in California (being a biology rockstar, we couldn't be more proud of him!!). This photo is for him! I think Maya mostly liked it! Also, she got her first piece of mail yesterday, even addressed specifically to her - her social security card! She exists :) Now we can get her passport so that we can continue our regular trips to Canada! Moving right along....

Umbilical stump just fell off today :) Now we can try a REAL bath, we can't wait!!

This is the face Maya makes when she's just about to poop - EVERY time :)

Because this is really getting out of control. Especially around the ears.

2017 edit: Husband's version of Maya's birth story is here , and our second daughter Annika's birth story is here . Overall, the whole labor and delivery is pretty hazy and foggy in my memory, so I’m afraid that I’m not going to be able to do this post justice.   Whether the haze is due to the fact that the whole process was a bit traumatic (and this is my mind’s way of coping) or because it’s been too long since the birth itself (almost three weeks, most of which has been spent trying to forget the whole thing), I don’t know.   In either case, I’m going to do the best I can below! (P.S.  Husband wrote his version of the birth story as well, so I hope to post it as a companion piece sometime soon.  I haven’t read his version yet, but from talking with him, his perspective is very different from mine - mostly because he doesn’t have any haziness!  It will make a good juxtaposition, I think.) I went into labor during dinner on Tuesday, December 17th around...

"Feels like" -27°F I had an appointment yesterday with my midwife to check on my incision, and it took so long to get on her schedule that I didn't want to miss it due to the weather. So we all bundled up something fierce and went, despite -27 degree wind chill! Thankfully, husband went too (and drove!) or it would have been an epic failure. Anyway, despite unbelievably high city property taxes here, all road maintenance is funded through the (very poor) state, so things like snow plowing are considered "optional" here. This video shows the last leg of our journey yesterday - we absolutely wouldn't have made it without 4 wheel drive, not a chance. P.S. This video looked *way* more impressive in high def - trust me, there's like 12 inches of snow on the road here, not the dusting that it looks like in this crappy quality version - we are hard core!!!  Looking forward to some warmer weather later this week! Also, my mom returns for ...

Oh yeah, and this is what the great "Polar Vortex of 2014" looks like here: Those lumps against the corner of the railing are...chairs, actually.

I wrote this at 10 days postpartum - this post is part of my processing of my birth experience so that I can give you all a more balanced birth story post (separating it from my recovery), rather than a frustrated one.  So please read it in that light - this is just me working through my feelings about a difficult recovery! ******************** Somewhat ironically, this story hit the (trashy) news circuit just a couple of weeks before I gave birth.  You see, some rich Norwegian model posted this selfie of her postpartum body just four days after giving birth...and the blogosphere went apeshit with angry women: The model’s further explanation when questioned about why she felt it necessary to post said photo was (essentially) that she shouldn’t need to feel bad because other new moms don’t take care of themselves like she did. Well, let me tell you, as a fellow thin person who gained a perfectly reasonable amount of weight during pregnancy, good genes and good d...

And it was so glorious, I cried. Literally. P.S. The ergo was a no-go - it puts pressure right in my incision. We went with the K'tan instead, and although not as comfortable, it worked ok!

Whose great idea was it to have a newborn in THE NORTH COUNTRY in DECEMBER??? Sorry, this is just a quick vent.  Right now, it's 4°F outside, and everything is covered in about 8+ inches of snow and ice.  Thus, little Maya and I are completely stuck inside the house - and I am going a bit stir crazy :(  I am running out of indoor-oriented "activities" for her to do each day, and I am seriously considering wandering the mall a few times a week.  If she were a bit older, we could be more adventurous in trying museums, etc., but she is still soooo tiny that all I really want to do is to take an afternoon walk around the block or to our local park each day...and we absolutely can't until it warms up a bit. If we still lived in California, this would not be an issue.  I wouldn't even care if we were still living in crack alley in Oakland (yes, husband and I did this for 2 years), I would *welcome* the walk past the drug deals going down at the house with the tin-...

Adorable, eh? :) Sorry that posting has slowed down - it's been a busy week! I'll try to pick things up again now that husband is back at work (half days) and there's a LOT of baby + me time.... On the work front for me, I managed to review a paper yesterday, which made me feel inordinately proud of myself :) Today's a day "off," then it's on to reviewing grad applications - I was given 20 to review, yikes! Wish me luck! Here's a disgruntled face from Maya - happy Thursday! And happy new year! Oh!  And two last things!  We had another ped appointment this week, and two days before she was two weeks old she had regained her birth weight plus some - 8lbs 2oz, we are so proud of her!!  She'd fallen to 6lbs 14oz at her lowest, which scared the bejeesus out of all of us (my milk came in really late - function of the c-section?  Stressful labor/birth?  Just because?  We'll never know) - so this is HUGE progress!  Also, the pe...