5 Months!

My Dearest Baby Love, Beatrix;


I can hardly believe it, but you're 5 months old now! You've morphed from one of the most loveable loaves of bread (well you had the skills of one) into a baby! I could gush on for many, many paragraphs about how lucky I feel to have you and what a miracle you are, but I will spare you and the internets from that. Suffice to say that A) I am so lucky and B) you are a miracle and I will never forget that. (but that doesn't mean I'll let you get away with bloody murder....)




As for milestones you have been a busy girl this month! With each milestone you reach more and more of your personality surfaces and I delight to see who you are turning into. It really is one of the most amazing things to watch, or rather try to watch as it's happening so fast!


You've learned to blow raspberries this month and you take delight in this new noise that you can make. To my well trained Mama ear I can tell how you are feeling based on how you are blowing your raspberries. If it's a straight raspberry you are happy and playing, but if you are vocalizing a little with it, you are getting fustrated, either from being in a situation you don't want, or you're getting tired. Generally when you are tred you will combine this with scrubbing your head into my shoulder and head butting me as you flop your head down to my shoulder or chest.



Along with blowing raspberries you find it funny when I blow raspberries at you. You will giggle and act like it's the funniest thing ever, which is so good for your Mama's ego. Just like last month your giggle is the greatest thing I've ever heard, and I will do anything to hear it again! Luckily for me you grant me the giggles really easily. It's not an exaggeration to say that you really are the happiest baby on the block! People are always amazed at how easily you smile and how quick you are to giggle. I always tell people that it's all you, I have nothing to do with your easy going personality and that I am truly blessed that you are such a happy little girl.










Your favorite toy this month is your Sophie the Giraffe which is an old school teething toy, but you will spend a lot of time gnawing on her head, face, bum, legs or what ever part you can cram into your drooly, drooly mouth. I will offically declare Sophie to be the best $20 I've ever spent! I know of other moms who have lost their Sophies and have been quick to replace them, because they are such a great toy! I think with my mom's group we might have a little Sophie army to take over the Bay Area!

The mom's group I belong to is made up of moms and babies who were born in 2008, so you are one of the older babies. It's a great group to belong to because we get a chance to socalize and not get bored of staring at each other every day. You seem to love the other babies and you get so excited to see them. You'll squeal and laugh and if I let you get close enough you will grab at the babies, (they react in the same way and there is much Mama cooing at how cute the babies are.)

You are still a petite little girl. You wear mostly 0-3 month clothing, although you're still in some newborn sizes and you can fit into some 3-6 month clothes (mostly because your cloth diaper bum is bigger than a 'sposie bum.) I am trying to make sure that you wear everything that you have since you have a huge wardrobe because we have some of the best friends and family ever, and you were showered with generous gifts!

You have started to take a pacifier or as we call it a suckie. You do not like the Nuk ones and prefer the straight Gerber ones, and you will only take it when you are tired and about to go to sleep. I will only offer it to you if you are resisting sleep and are clearly sleepy, which seems to be a trend for you. To be fair you aren't hard to put down, you just want to be involved with everything going on; the suckie seems to remind you that you are tired and it settles you down, much like a shot of rum would, I imagine.

When I give you a bottle you have taken to rubbing my arm with your left hand as your right hand stroke my face or touches my hair. You are still so gentle when you do this and my heart swells as we share a little moment, it makes waking up at 4 am to feed you so very worth it. It seems that the middle of the night feedings will continue for a little while. I know that some parents talk about letting a baby your age cry themselves back to sleep, in an effort to "train" the baby to not need a bottle or a feeding in the middle of the night. I promise you that I will not try to train you, I understand that you are waking up because you are hungry, and you prove this to me when you drink your bottle, give me your lovey eyes and go back to sleep right away. The way I see it, you'll stop waking in the middle of the night when you're ready to sleep through the night, and I'm okay with you taking your time.

love, Mama.

5 Months ago today

I went into the hospital because I had a bit of a headache....

Back on the wagon...

As I changed my status on facebook today I realized that not everyone will have any clue what I mean when I wrote that I feel like I've been punched in the uterus. Today I went into the hospital for a fallopian tube recanalization, which is why I am a little on the achy side of things.
Just before Trixie was conceived I had another procedure which checked out the fallopian tubes and we found out that one was blocked and we had planned to get it fixed, but then were fortunate enough to get pregnant. So now the baby is here and now is a great time to start thinking about a sibling for Trixie so we're starting all of the fertility treatments and procedures again.
The procedure today was okay. I was given some interesting drugs which really relaxed me and left me awake for the doctors, but I don't remember much. I recall him telling me that my tube was still blocked, then I was told to shift positions, there was talk of some scarring and then it was all done. I went into the room thinking that I would ask a lot of questions, but apparently the drugs were too good! (hmm the doctors might want to drug me up more since I am sure I ask too many questions, hee hee.) After I napped a little in the recovery area the nurse told me that it was successful and they were able to unblock my tube. (I guess that is why they wanted me to tip on one side, they wanted to help the stuff drain into my tube.) I asked Adam later, since the doctor talked to him and he was told that everything went well I have 2 clear tubes. He did mention that I had some scarring in my uterus, which may be from my c-section. Hopefully it isn't anything serious, but this doctor was going to mention it to my regular infertility doctor.
So that's it. We're back on the infertility wagon, hoping to give Trixie a sibling sometime next year. We have talked about this to some people and I've been regaled with stories about "that woman" who conceived naturally after infertility problems. I wonder if she's related to "this woman I know who went on a vacation and got pregnant". Perhaps there are whole gangs of "those women".
I want to kick them in the shins!

Driving Restricitons in China

I just read this, and initially it made me giggle. It seems so drastic to restrict driving in this manner. (Cars with even numbered plates can drive on one day and odd numbered on the next.) However I guess I shouldn't be shocked, this is from the country who've implemented, successfully a system that only allows one child per family....

The Ants Go Marching.

When we lived in the crappy assed house that we were renting before we moved here I envisioned homeownership to be Super Duper Amazing. Super Duper as in no stupid back door ladies to scratch my car with the garbage cans, a bathroom large enough for more than one person to be in it, reliable hot water, sweet, sweet air conditioning and no bugs. But alas apparently mother nature hates me, and although we have this amazing new house we have an ant problem. We learned in the other house to make sure that your counters are really clean and that you have no food out on the counters, and I've kept up these good habits. However I do have pets and they do have food and the evil little ants love dog and cat food apparently.
Today in the span of a couple hours there was a trail of ants across the floor coming from a little divot between the floorboards and where two hardwood boards meet to the container of dog food. The trail was about 3 feet long and 6 inches wide of solid ants. Nasty. Adam and I were able to wrangle them and we sealed the little divot with clear sealant, but there are still a couple rouge little buggers roaming around, just to further piss me off.
A couple days ago they managed to get into the cat food which we keep on top of the drier to keep the dog out of it. There was a line coming from the window (which was closed) down the wall, behind the shelving unit, behind the drier and up the back of it and they swarmed all over the top of my white drier, so they were really obvious. (I didn't sleep well that night) Rather than kill them all, which gives me such glee, I bought some ant poison bait stations and scattered them all over the area in hopes that it would kill the whole colony, or family reunion of the little buggers as it may be. But alas that was $7.99 or so well waisted. Chachi had a great time finding the ant traps and running away from us as we chided him for playing with them.
So here we are at a loss. I hate ants, I hate how they swarm and give me the creeps. I have these horrible dreams that I will wake up and find the baby covered in them.
I've taken to feeding the pets several times a day rather than just in the morning so I can leave them smaller amounts so there is less left out. But I don't see much of a difference in the number of the ants.
The one thing that amuses me about all of this is squirting them with our ant killer which is an organic all purpose cleaner, grapefruit scented. It's probably a good thing that I'm not Buddhist!

No Blogher for me...

Blogher starts in a couple of days and I can't go. Pooh!

I wanted to go, and it kills me that it's in San Francisco, so close, and yet I can't go.

I could have bought tickets, but I'm not ready to be away from the baby for a whole day yet, and I don't think she would appreciate being at a conference for a whole weekend. I will go out on a branch and say that she would behave wonderfully and no one would mind that she was there, but alas I will stay home and play with my little baby instead.

So Regan and Whitney have fun! If you talk to Dooce tell her hi! And if you meet Cecily, tell her she rocks!

And so that no one feels sorry for me, here's who I get to play with all weekend!