Snowbound Herpetologist

Making very, very slow progress - but progress nonetheless! Her eyes are so blue right now!  Will they stay...???

Very excited to report that little Maya Moo slept from 8pm to 3am last night - quite the record!! We both looked bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as a result :)  Here are some unabashed selfies on a cold but sunny morning! Ladies in Gray: She's missing pants because she spat up all over them.

Doesn't she look like a precious little daffodil? More owls! We do love them 'round here....

The weather was reasonably warm today (see below).  In anticipation of yet another Polar Vortex week to come (also see below), husband, baby, and I tried to go out for a bird walk.  However, everything was incredibly icy - like 4 inches of solid ice sheet on every pathway icy - so we attempted but had to abort three different options (including an awesome lake and an arboretum) over the course of two hours.  We ended up buying some brownies from our very favorite bakery and just heading home. OK today, not so much later on. But it was still "warm" and sunny upon arrival back home, so I told husband that I was just going to sit outside in the snowbank to breastfeed.  OK, I didn't actually latch her, but I totally could have, and it made for a really funny photo op :)  Gotta take what humor you can in conditions like these! At least my snow pants fit again!

We had Maya’s two month appointment (and shots!) yesterday - she handled everything so well!  She is now 24 inches (20.2 at birth) and 11lbs 12oz (8lbs even at birth, dropped to 6lbs 14oz at her lightest while my milk took its sweet time showing up).  Percentile-wise, she’s mid-range for weight, and she’s on the tall side of average. Frankly, I thought she might be up over 12lbs because we had to go into size 2 diapers (which are supposed to be 12-18lbs) a full two weeks ago, but no, she just makes a LOT of poop and it overwhelmed the capacity of size 1’s :) Icicles at the ped's office - yep, it's still winter, and my patience is waning. So what is Maya like at two months?  Alert, kicking, and still not napping (I’m writing this very, very quickly while she watches me from her swing).  She’s very independent - she still doesn’t much like to cuddle, preferring instead to be on the floor watching everything around her.  I’m still working on her, though, ...

Today was recruitment for prospective grad students, so husband and I both went in to conduct interviews. We played pass the baby and managed to get a bunch of them done (and husband still has a few more this afternoon). Welcome to the world of working moms - with an 8 week old, crazy! Here are some photos of the departure, including one from outside in case anyone thought I was exaggerating the awfulness of this winter - and today is super warm, near freezing, which is why the baby is *only* in a fleece "snowsuit." Ummm, yeah, that's my garden on the right. And here is Maya in my office all tuckered out at the end of it all - and I don't blame her!

Not a lot to do while nursing, so here's what we've been up to the last few days! 1. Went up a size in clothes again. 2. Abby stalked more squirrels. 3. Assembled the glider!!! Maya's room is now mostly finished :) I think it came out pretty well! Aaaaand I was able to rock (glide?) her to sleep in it for the first time today, for the win :) 4. Tried a new K'tan hold, now that she's basically two months old. I look like crap, but so it goes - I'm housebound due to the freezing weather, so no one sees me but me!

I've been remiss in not posting the winner of the contest to see who could get closest to Maya's birthdate, weight, and height in 3D space.  Frankly, I simply never got around to plugging her real stats into the code I wrote while still pregnant!  Since it's a weekend, and husband is home on baby-yoga ball-bouncing duty for the morning, I decided to finish it up really quickly :) Here's the plot showing everyone's relative position to Maya, who is represented by the red dot: And here's the table showing how close people got, on a scale of 1 to 10 (where 1 would have been a perfect guess of all three metrics, and 10 was the furthest of any of the guesses): What we can see from this is that 1) no one really got all that close, but nevertheless, 2) Grandma Lynn (Mütti) won!!  Congratulations!!! :)

Growing up so fast :)

Always make sure to have snacks on hand when you start nursing, just on case your baby falls asleep in your lap at lunchtime and can't be moved without waking :) Also, more morning smiles :)

I think that poor Maya is kind of reflux-y.  We have decided that this is just a normal part of baby development that she will outgrow, but it's currently contributing to her crankiness.  She spits up A LOT (most disheartening when she's such a, well, violent nurser, so it's already a major feat for me to get milk into her...and then she barfs it all up all over my shirt), and lately, she's basically been spitting up a fair amount of clear liquid that I can only deduce is stomach acid.  She's gaining weight just fine, sleeping beautifully at night (still just waking only to feed, then going right back down), and is mostly a pretty happy baby.  This means that doctors would qualify her as a "Happy Spitter" who doesn't need treatment. However, it does bother her at certain times every day.  The pressing issue is that it wakes her up from her naps, which then makes her tired AND reflux-y, a lethal combination.  Really, the only solution that we've f...