Two

Gabe Is Two! from Erin Matzkin on Vimeo.

Sleeping Beauty Update

Nap time this afternoon: five minutes of whining before falling asleep. Not even real crying, just some fussing and complaining and whatnot.

Bedtime this evening: five minutes, thirty seconds of whining before falling asleep. (That last thirty seconds almost broke me, if I'm being honest. Just as I was walking in to get her I realized she'd gone silent.)

To sum up: total freak show easy-going-to-bed-style baby. Let's just see if it lasts.

Oh, oh, and I totally forgot to mention, she rolled over for the first time ever today! I clapped for her, I was so excited! (I am lame.)

In other news, Gabe turns two tomorrow. I will probably cry because my little baby boy is not a baby anymore! He's officially a big guy now! And I will blame the crying on postpartum hormones. So there.

Sleeping Beauty

I think I'm being tricked.

For three nights in a row now the baby has easily, cheerfully gone to sleep at night like it's no big deal. I feed her, wrap her in her swaddle blanket, give her half a dozen or so kisses and tuck her into her cradle.

And then she just...falls asleep.

Tonight she sort of fussed around for under four minutes before dozing off. I put her down at 7:24 and at 7:28 I went back to take this picture:

Amazing! Or a clever trick?

Oh, the acrobatics we went through to get Gabe to go to bed when he was this age! I distinctly remember rocking him for hours and hours, walking him in endless circles across the floor, shushing him gently, singing lullabies, frantically re-reading sections of Happiest Baby On the Block on the off chance that I had missed some important clue in infant sleep... one time I even crawled out of his room on hands and knees after finally getting him to sleep after several previous failed attempts.

And this one just...goes to sleep. Has someone stolen my real baby and replaced her with a fake? Perhaps it is some sort of reality television show of which I am an unwitting participant, Candid Camera-style. I am going to check the bedroom for hidden cameras tonight, just in case.

Status Update

Tessa statistics, three-month check-up:
Height: 23 inches (40th percentile)
Weight: 11 pounds, 6.5 ounces (25th percentile)
Head: 15 centimeters (5th percentile, pea head)
Favorite saying: "Ahh-goo!"
Best new trick: Big, big grins and a noise that might be laughter.
Other notes: Residual cough/congestion from RSV is continuing to abate, thank goodness.



Gabe statistics (no check-up until next month):
Height: Unknown, but growing out of current pants size. Longer pants needed.
Weight: 25 pounds exactly, according to my bathroom scale.
Head: Unknown, but probably pea head.
Favorite saying: This one is a tie between "I want my want." and "I want no jacket, Mommy." (Stated decisively, on his way out the front door on a cold day.)
Best new trick: Singing all of "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed," complete with hand gestures.
Other notes: Refused to eat a vanilla sprinkle cupcake from Susie Cakes the other day. Had I not been there when he came into this world, I would not believe he is actually my genetic child.



To sum up, all is well this week.

Baby Joy

Tess just had a dirty diaper so enormous that it required an outfit change for her, an outfit change for me, and a bath for her including a hair wash. Seriously.

It's a good thing for her that she is so darling. Also, she slept for a full six-hour stretch last night. When I woke up and saw that it was 6:00 a.m., I was so excited I almost cried. I suppose this unprecedented amount of sleep entitles her to a horrifying blowout diaper.

Twelve weeks old today! I can hardly believe it. I am relieved the toughest newborn days are behind us, and yet almost weepy that they are passing by so quickly. How did we get to twelve weeks already??

I have about four seconds to write before the baby wakes up.

True story from this morning:

Tessa is eating, and making her typical little baby grunts and smacks while she eats (very ladylike, my daughter!). Gabe comes and sits beside us on the couch.
"Who's oinking?" he asks in his best sing-song voice. "Who's like a piggy? Baby sister Tessa is like a piggy!"

I would have disagreed with him but the fact is that Tessa gained almost a pound last week. A pound in a week! I didn't even know such a thing was possible for a tiny baby!

What a delicious little piggy. She is sweet like a scone. A scone with a lopsided smile, that is.


This smiling business is a wonderful, fabulous change from a few weeks ago. I still feel a mad rush of panic and fear every time we are out in public and someone coughs, or sneezes, or gets too close when admiring the baby ("Don't breathe on her," I want to hiss). She's looking and sounding better and stronger every single day, and I have high hopes that we will never see the inside of a PICU again, ever, ever, ever. She is such a lovely baby.

In other news, we are in the middle of remodeling the kitchen and one bathroom, and our condo is sort of a disaster at the moment. I hope to be able to blog on a more regular basis when the destruction and rebuilding are complete. We'll see.

Yikes

Well last week was pretty much awful. There is no way to sugarcoat it. When I am feeling fully recovered (if such a thing is even possible), I will write in more detail about what happened. We've been home since Friday night and I still feel pretty damn rattled over the whole thing.

The good news is we had a follow up appointment with the pediatrician this morning, and Tessa basically got a clean bill of health. So apparently I do not need to stay up all night watching her breath. Just in case, you know.

I will close this brief entry with the final picture I took of her in the hospital, looking almost like her usual self. She is so beautiful.