Nugget,
At your two month checkup on the 21st you weighed 10 lbs 5 oz. You’re my 10 pound sack of sugar with a little extra on top! You were 6 lbs 11 oz when you were born so it really is amazing how fast babies grow. You had to get 5 immunizations [read; shots] and that was traumatic for both of us. I was prepared for the crying but I was not prepared for you to turn your little head towards me, crying with tears in your eyes, begging me to make them stop. Even though I know I was doing what’s best for you and it’s to prevent you from getting terribly and even fatally sick, the look in your eyes still broke my heart anyway. When I hugged you to my chest you began to calm down. After we arrived home you slept for the rest of the day. You still have a long way to go in your pain tolerance before you can have your own baby.
You can keep your head level with your body when we do a baby sit-up, and can lift your head 90 degrees when on your tummy. When you bring your hands together and wring them it kills me. You look like you’re devising some evil plan to take over the world! I call you my baby mad scientist. You can hold your plastic keys in your hand if we try to distract you while feeding but otherwise you don’t show much interest in toys at all. You can bear all your own weight on your legs while standing. I’ve been on a quest to find you socks that don’t slip off your feet so at this point you own about a gabillion pairs — most of them sliding off your baby feet within an hour. You don’t fall asleep on my chest much anymore but when you do I am in heaven.
You’re still the quicker spitter upper and we go through lots of burp cloths. You’re momma is always either 1. just changed her clothes for the umpteenth time 2. reeking of a previous spit up that she hasn’t had the chance to change out of or 3. covered in fresh spit up. Your aim is so good. If projectile spitting up were an Olympic sport, you’d be a gold medalist. . . many times over.
You babble all the time. In fact, your daddy and I just figured out certain sounds you make when you’re tired and we know to go ahead and swaddle you for bed. You’re communicating and we’re beginning to understand.
Because of the Thrush I have to pump every meal for you to avoid reinfection and reduce the pain since your Pediatrician doesn’t want to treat you because you’re asymptommatic. So I’m missing out on that special time you get with your infant through nursing. You’re still getting the immunities and all the good stuff for development which is the most important part. We just have to bond in other ways, but I really miss the experience. It was really sweet with you while at the beginning of the month I still could.
You’ve gotten a lot better with your sleeping. You’ll sleep 8 hours once a day and we’ve finally been able to get you to do those hours at night and not from the afternoon till 3 am. That was killing me. I haven’t gotten any postpartum blues but I think that is because 1. I started exercising again at the 2 week mark with my doctor’s approval — physical activity and fitting back into your old clothes can do wonders for a person. 2. I’m a really healthy eater and 3. the Thrush takes up so much of my time that I don’t think I’ve had the chance to feel anything but busy, busy, busy. Merely caring for you will seem like no work at all once this is over.
You watched your first movie the other night — the Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line and were mesmerized! The movie kept your attention nearly the whole time! Your love of music is certainly evident — even at this early age. Your daddy has a work conference in Colorado that’s only 5 miles from Pa’s house and 7 miles from Uncle J so we’re all going and the family will watch you while we ski!
On the 5th we had you Baptized and your grandma’s pack rat tendencies for once came in handy when she unpacked the baptismal gown that I wore and your grandfather wore and his father wore and probably more generations than that but your great, great grandfather is when we first begun to keep track. I’m really glad she kept it but don’t tell her I told you that or she’ll use it to justify keeping everything else because, “you never know . . ..†The gown is a beautiful handmade dress and slip with handmade lace and little pearl buttons and little ribbon trim. I was terrified that the gown had been preserved for generations and you, kiddo, would be the one to mess it up. In the World Olympics of spit-up a direct hit on a handmade, multigenerational baptismal gown would have scored you the automatic gold medal. I bought you a new white dress that you wore to the church and in the beginning of the service and we changed you into the antique gown only for the ceremony itself. Immediately afterwards, while the family was still cooing over you, we whisked you off to change you back at which point you promptly spit up on the new dress. Yep, momma called that one correctly. We practoiced the ‘water pouring on the head’ part in the bathtub a few times so for the actual baptism itself you did great.
It wasn’t till the end of this month that I realized that the CD my friend gave me with “baby soothing tips†was actually a DVD. That’s what sleep deprivation will do to ya. When I popped the disc in my Mac I was introduced to Dr. Karp — the most brilliant man in the universe. I hope this guy is a millionaire because his genius has made our lives easier. We’ve been swaddling you all along because I picked it up somewhere that babies sleep better and are happier when swaddled and have become quite the expert with the help of Baby Gami. The hospital where you were born told us about the side position but now we know the other 3 S’s — shushing, swinging, and sucking. This is great stuff because I was really worried about the plane ride we took out to Crested Butte to see GG, Pa, and Uncle when you were only a few days shy of three months. You were a champ, though. Your Daddy booked us seats in the back of the plane near the engines and the white noise and constant motion was like a ‘giant womb simulator’ that kept you sweet and happy the whole time.
The day we left was St. Patrick’s Day and I’d bought you the cutest little outfit. Unfortunately two terrible things happened that kept us from getting a picture. 1. Your daddy’s camera phone was stolen on the plane and we lost all the photos and video daddy had taken that morning 2. you defiled your whole backside with a brown blowout before we could snap your picture with the regular camera. The blowout thing WAS NOT YOUR FAULT, kiddo. I told your daddy that it was time to change your diaper when I went off to the bathroom to pump your lunch. He claims he didn’t hear me but he’s a smart enough daddy to realize you usually need a new diaper every three hours. Silly, daddy. Good thing mommy always keeps a spare outfit in your diaper bag. It wasn’t nearly as cute as the green ‘lucky charm’ teddy bear outfit, though.
The last few days of this month were spent in Colorado and we have about a million pictures of you sleeping and NOT A SINGLE SHOT of the majestic beauty that is Mt. Crested Butte covered in snow. Your daddy and I obviously have a new definition of beauty, kiddo, and starting December 19, 2005, we always will.
Love,
Momma