skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Finally, I remembered to get my camera ready during Katrina's bath. There are two reasons I have to have the camera ahead of time: one, obviously I can't leave her alone in the bath for a second, but two, the tub I bathe her in is so huge that I have to get in with her! When we move upstairs, it'll be easier to sit aside the tub for her bath.
Tonight she was very calm in the bath, and she always enjoys it now.
When we move upstairs....agh, is this ever going to happen?! The bedrooms are now all ready, though there are still details to finish, such as the electrical trim-out, and knobs on the little storage area doors.
The boys' room is "Breezy Blue," and Katrina's room is "Such a Peach."
I spent some time dusting and mopping the kids' rooms today, and have been thinking about how to decorate those rooms. Yes, decorate! Not just throw random furniture in, but maybe even put something nice and kid-cute on the walls!
Still, here's what the stairwell leading up there looks like: a paint project. The painter has been diligently preparing the stairwell and hall for 3 days now. He does a fantastic job, but I'm not sure we need fantastic. We're not really fantastic people.
This afternoon, I took Katrina and Gabriel to Kohl's, a department store I thought was like Target, but was really more like a Mervyn's. It didn't have any kid storage furniture, but on the way out, I walked by the boy's section, and to my amazement, found one pair of size "4 slim" jeans! And other size 4s!
I had Gabriel stand in the boys' section in his underpants while I madly grabbed jeans off shelves and slipped him into them. In the end, I found four brand-new pairs of jeans that actually fit him (though two will still need taking in) and are long enough. An absolute miracle! It is so hard to find jeans for Gabriel. Julian's are all too short for him too, but now Gabriel can afford some hand-me downs.
I won't be going back there anytime soon though. I was reminded why I hate shopping when I had to wait on a slow line for one of two cashiers for the whole store, watching employees stroll by and glance impassively at the agitated line of customers. Gabriel was very, very good though, and I was actually glad when he piped up in his innocent kid voice, "What are we waiting for, Mom?" That's what I'd like to know, kid!
Tomorrow, I hope to move Katrina's crib and changing table into her room!!
1/6/07
You'd think on such an important day that I'd have photos...I don't! Katrina is 3 months old today. Age agrees with her, she gets cuter and more fun every day.
It was an easy day. Gabriel and Julian were in preschool/preK this morning, and I took Katrina to the Y so I could take an aerobics class. The boys were easy and well-behaved all afternoon, and Julian took a nice nap. No major disasters during dinner either.
I got an email inquiry from a headhunter that got me thinking again about my future return to my career. I've been targeting Fall of this year to return to work full-time, and to work on finding a way to work independently and flexibly by the time Katrina is in 1st grade, so I can spend summers with the kids. But does that make any sense? Will I even want to go back then, when I'll have a 1-year-old toddler? Is it more important to be with her now, or when she's older?Then there's the boys. I'll want to spend fun time with all the kids when they're off in the summers: travelling, camping...but does that mean Gabriel has to wait until Katrina is 5 for this fun adventurous available mom to emerge? He'll be pushing 10 by then.I don't know how to think about this. I want to work. I want to do things with my kids. I want both. I want everything. I want it all.
Well, at least I know what I want. That's a start.
1/5/07
Rain foiled a long-awaited reunion with Rancho San Antonio this morning, where we used to hike regularly. So I invited Betsy, who'd suggested the hike, to be my guest at the Y again, as a good rainy-day alternative. I lasted a whole 20 minutes on the treadmill as a result, with a good 12 minutes of actual running!
While at the Y, I got some baby-face photos, including of Dylan, Betsy's 7-week-old boy. I just loved his big eyes peering around from the big field of yellow blanket.
Plus Katrina in quite the funny face!
But overall I hate carseat photos, since there's always an obnoxious warning label in the background, and the shoulder straps are ugly too. Hence the creative cropping on Dylan's photos. Actually, I like the result. Those eyes...
At home after picking up Gabriel, Julian insisted on riding his bike in the backyard, despite the wet ground and rain.
"No pictures, Mommy!" Julian's very into telling me not to do things. Don't call him "Precious" (OK I can see that), don't call him "Imp," no kisses, no hugs, don't say that, Mommy...!
Katrina sucks her hands all the time now...she's growing up so fast! One way in which she reminds me more of Julian than Gabriel as a baby is the sounds she makes and the way she interacts. If we'd had Julian first, we'd have assumed that's just the way babies talk, but since we had Gabriel first, we noticed a marked difference in the way Julian made and responded to sounds. I predict no speech delay with Katrina.
I took a little camera-video of Katrina sucking her hands, and ended up getting a few cute baby sounds too. I must remind myself that while this is endlessly fascinating to me, it's really quite dull to anyone who doesn't have a 3-month-old baby, including me when she's older! But for now, I can't get enough of her.
This video, I posted to Google Video instead of YouTube, in the hopes it wouldn't mash the picture, but it does. I just hope it works at all!
Our carpenter installed our bifold doors covering the laundry area today, the last of the big carpentry jobs, yay! But...the doors are the wrong style! We'd ordered style number 6529, but they arrived as 6528, and look completely wrong. I don't need setbacks like this when we're so close! The kids' rooms are ready to put furniture into, finally, though they still need electrical trim-out.
Gabriel...unbelievable. I'm not even sure I saw him this afternoon. After getting Julian down for a nap, I took care of some things in the office, took a short nap myself, then had a snack, back to the office....usually, Gabriel comes and talks to me from time to time, but not today. He found Julian's new coloring book and practically finished it (poor Julian!), then assaulted a Lincoln Log project with his fierce focus. He doesn't even call for me ("I'm DONE!") to wipe him anymore; he takes care of it all himself and always washes his hands.
All he plays with are building-block toys, nothing electronic or battery-powered: trains, lincoln logs, coloring books, puzzles, blocks. I wouldn't have expected so much entertainment from such basic toys even from him, but he continues to surprise me. I wouldn't mind at all playing with him more, but I am glad he so enjoys his quiet afternoons at home. They're short-lived.
1/4/07
This morning Gabriel and Julian went to pre-K and preschool, respectively. Which means I had the morning free with just Katrina...and the cleaners and the painter.
So, I took baby out and went to the Los Gatos hospital to return a breast pump I'd bought there. It was so odd walking through the halls and seeing the doors of the rooms where all my babies were born. It looks so ordinary, so antiseptic; yet it's where lives change and marvelous and amazing things start.
Then I met my friend Sara to borrow her pump instead. We had a nice chat sitting outside in the sun on a crisp day, outside a Starbucks near her workplace. A little dip into the real world.
Katrina was oddly fussy today, crying more than usual. She's still a pretty unsoothable baby -- if she's crying, she means it! Most of the usual tricks to calm a crying baby don't work well with her, though taking her outside can hold her off for a little while. I think she was tired and just couldn't hold on to a nap.
I'm also thinking it's time to start weaning her -- and me -- from the pacifier as a way to get to sleep. Last night she got very squirmy around 5:30am, 20 minutes after nursing, and I ended up giving her the pacifier, but she kept spitting it out. Same thing today when trying to get her to take a nap. I'd rather she learn to fall asleep without the aid of something that can so easily fall out.
Like her hands, perhaps? She's starting to put her hands in her mouth, but that just seems to animate her, and that's the last thing she needs to get to sleep. She's wiggly enough!
Our DSL is installed and working, but falls far short of delivering the 3-6 Mbits/sec promised, as I expected. Plus I've spent hours and hours trying to get Eudora to send a username/password correctly for SMTP authentication, to send mail. I finally got it to work, and posted my solution to a Eudora user forum, but it could be to no avail since we might instead put our efforts back to figuring out why our cable connection keeps hanging up. Internet access is no longer for fun anymore, it's a lifeline!
I forgot to mention that last week when I had no childcare, it actually worked out very well. I really liked not having pickup and dropoff deadlines and having to run the kids around everywhere. I'm sure it'd get old after a few weeks, but it was actually a nice break. I got them all out in the morning, thanks to the Y; and afternoons were relatively peaceful, thanks to Julian being very agreeable about naps. Even the boys together hasn't been as hard as it used to be; I'd say they're up to about 50% of the time playing well together, or not together. The other 50% of the time....grrr.
I also forgot to mention a miracle of miracles: my New Year's Day headache uncharacteristically fizzled! It started as a really serious one, but didn't last longer than a day. What good have I wrought upon this world to deserve such mercy?
AGAIN, no photos today!
1/3/07
Tonight we all went to Tuesday dinner, with success! We'd been nervous about taking all three kids, but tried it and it worked out fine. The boys were very well-behaved and tried all sorts of new food at the Thai restaurant we went to. Chicken satay with peanut sauce was a big hit.
Katrina needed a little attention; she was tired and I had to walk her around outside in the stroller until she fell asleep. Our friend Steve, who's also a Dad and is expecting #2 in June, held her for awhile, and noted also that she was in nonstop motion. Frankly she's not all that fun to hold when she's like that, which is 80% of the time, it's like trying to cuddle with a prizefighter!
Thanks to seeing someone else hold her, I witnessed two new things. One is clasping her hands together, and two is putting the clasped mass into her mouth, sort of. Gabriel did a lot of that as a baby, putting his hands together in his mouth as he laughed, but Julian did almost none of that. Once again, Katrina takes more after her older older brother, though Gabriel was nowhere near as wiggly. She's also started rubbing her eyes when she's tired. Grabbing things isn't far off! And no wonder, she is almost 3 months old.
Betsy met me at the Y this morning, and I ran on the treadmill briefly next to her. She lasted a lot longer than I did on the treadmill, but my target 6 minutes went by a lot faster having a friend to yak with. We ran into Heike too. The more friends I get going there, the more motivated I'll be to make it!
When I picked Julian up from Childwatch, I came across the most adorable scene. Julian and two little girls, both older than he is I think, were all huddled around a little alphabet puzzle. Julian was pointing to each letter and singing the ABC song, chatting with the girls, and they appeared to all be putting letters into place. It was very sweet. I think Julian wished I would just go away and not cut in on his action -- and it won't be the last time!
No photos today, how did that happen?!
1/2/07
Another holiday ruined by a tremendous headache. Yesterday I thought I had a mild headache from being tired, but now I think I had it backward: I was tired because I was about to get slammed with a mega-migraine. I spent the morning trying to rest every chance I could, and trying not to resent that I couldn't possibly get what I really needed: to sleep ALL morning with no interruptions.
After doing the bare minimum necessary to direct husband and feed children, I did manage a decent nap, until around 3pm, when my day started. Then I got dressed, had some breakfast, went for a short walk with Katrina, and started to feel slightly normal.
Today I decided Katrina was big enough to put on an outfit I've been eyeing for weeks. This was a gift from my friend Lacy, who is wonderfully creative with decorations, kids' entertainment, party ideas, and is a master scrapbooker as well. I never would have thought to get this, showing how limited my imagination is, yet it's perfect: very, very cute without being over-the-top girlie.
I'm glad I got these pictures before spitup forced me to change her clothes.
Dave commented this morning that girl clothes are a lot harder to put on!
Katrina was actually on the grumpy side today. Nowadays that means that her wake-nurse-play-cry-sleep cycles are just a little shorter, but she still has plenty of adorable time. Here's a typical moment with her being all smiley and sweet, and this is on a fussy day.
It's nice to see someone look so happy. It makes me and my nasty headaches feel a little better. I sure hope Katrina hasn't inherited my hormonal migraines.
1/1/2007
Somehow today I managed to convince Dave to try out the Y, using one of my Guest Passes. I got my main goals accomplished: a workout, showing him where I, and the kids, spend time these days, and even got Dave to do a little in the Fitness area. Just a little. He barely got out of breath on the recumbent bike, treadmill and rowing machine, later claiming that he doesn't sweat much unless it's hot. Or unless you don't actually work out!
The boys had a great time in the Childwatch as usual, though as usual they headed straight for the kid computer. I'm not sure if that means they get too much screen time or too little!
The big kids' room is pretty big, and is actually brighter and more cheerful than Gabriel's pre-K room.
Julian helped put Legos away when it was time to go.
I've just discovered that the Y has a photo club and a table tennis club associated with it. I'm not sure I'll be able to make use of these things, but these and numerous other resources make me very glad I joined. It's the closest thing to a community there is in Cupertino that I've found.
We got home around noon and I kicked right into big-breakfast mode. Betsy called and invited Gabriel over for a playdate, which we took her up on. Gabriel was very excited to go play with his pal Gina, and they spent time outdoors playing soccer and digging. Gina asked for, and got, a shovel for Christmas!
It's New Year's Eve. Dave reminded me that we had a bad New Year's Eve streak going for a while. In 1998, we were hit by a van in San Francisco (very minor, but annoying and time-consuming). In 1999, the stupid Y2K thing forced me to go into work. In 2000, I had the first temperature I'd gotten in years, and was then sick for a month. In 2001, we spent New Year's Eve mixing and pouring concrete in our basement, when I was 8 months pregnant. In 2002, I had a miscarriage that started around 8pm on New Year's Eve, and lasted all night and all New Year's Day.
But the streak was broken in 2003, when we had a wonderful new 6-day-old baby, and family visiting. This year, Dave and I will spend the evening finishing opening our Christmas gifts, with our three healthy, happy children tucked safely in bed.
I for one will be very happy to put 2006 behind us, and enter the new year with my physical ability restored, a completed new bedroom, and a beautiful vibrant new baby! May you all enter the new year surrounded by family and friends and good cheer.
12/31/06
I took Katrina to a scrapbook store that's closing and is having a huge sale today, managing to spend more money in one shot than I ever have. She was being very fussy, so I had no time to make decisions -- if something caught my eye, in my basket it went. Besides, everything was on major sale. Total damage: $104. A grumpy baby and 30% off will do that.
Later, I discovered my mistake: I had her in the Baby Bjorn facing inward. Silly me. Don't I know this baby after 12 weeks? Once I faced her out, she was fine, though I kept having to peer in her face to make sure, since as usual she was in constant motion and it was hard to tell if it was fun or fuss.
I'm doing a scrapbook page that will have a short list of adjectives that describe Katrina. I asked Dave to give me a word for her, and without hesitation, he said, "WIGGLY!" Of course, that's the first word I put down too!
Today I caught a piece of a travel show on KCSM (a local public TV station) that talked about a museum in France featuring the work of Matisse. When he was old and sick and in a wheelchair and could no longer paint, he still created art, in a new medium: paper cutting! He took colored paper and scissors and glued cutouts to other paper. Matisse -- an early scrapbooker? We're legit!
Yesterday Gabriel got his bike stuck in some dirt in the backyard, and loved that he could spin the pedals and not go anywhere.
I found him out there happily sitting on his bike and spinning the pedals around, as though he were in a genuine spinning class. You go boy!
I attempted some self-times with Katrina outside yesterday, but she was winding down at the time, and it's especially hard to find a place to set up a camera, even with a tripod, which I didn't use. The recycling bin had to do for these.
We finally opened some more gifts last night -- we're still not done! But we did come across these adorable and very useful Robeez from Aunt Laura and Uncle Ryan, with little mermaids on them. Aww! They don't fit yet, but I couldn't resist trying them on anyway. Thanks guys!
While I was at it, I got some self-times with Katrina, this time just holding the camera facing us. No good shots again, though I think this expression on Katrina's face is pretty funny.
But I'm going to try more like that, this time when she's not, again, tired of being awake for the moment.
Speaking of gifts, Julian is doing great on his bicycle, riding it around our tiny backyard patio for a good half-hour today, turning it carefully, getting off and backing up when need be. He's so cute on it, with his round little helmet, and takes it pretty seriously and applies a fair amount of concentration to it. That's typical Julian; more cautious and reserved than his exuberant, but calculated, brother.
I remember now that I was dismayed that we wouldn't be able to all go bicycling together as a family when I got pregnant, at least not for a while. But then, seeing Julian today reminded me that little boys aren't going to wait around for their sister to ride a bicycle. One way or another, we're going to be doing all those things together. Baby will just have to go along for the ride.
12/30/06
Instead of blogging, I'm backing up my photos onto DVD.
A coworker pointed out years ago that it never makes sense to delete things before backing up, since you often lose things accidentally during the cleanup! Of course, this was in a Unix shell command-line context, in which when you delete something, it's really gone. Before there were Recycle Bins, or Trash, or icons, or windows...even before mice.
But I don't need to be reminded what a dinosaur I am. Still, I should pop a dime (?)in a pay phone (?) and dial (?) my old coworker, he'd be amused to hear that I was still disregarding his always-sound advice.
12/29/06
More 4am Happy Baby Fun Time today. Please, baby, save it for the daytime! It showed; Katrina was tired today and not as jubilant as she usually is.
It's such a pain being at home with the painters here. I have to keep the family room under control, I don't like to do workout videos with a strange man walking by at any time, I get in his way if I run upstairs to do laundry, Julian has to nap in the living room, it smells...argh! I took on the serious logistical challenge of making it to a noon Pilates class at the Y today, and still having some time before the class, and not going over the 90 minutes free Childwatch time you get. That meant putting kids in Childwatch at 11:35, so I could have 20 minutes before class, then get them out at 1:05 after the class. Getting them all somewhere at an exact time is a logistical tangle of making lunches, feeding baby, boys go pee, wash hands, get shoes and jackets, strap in the car...whew. But I did it!
Begrudgingly, I went on the treadmill, with a doable goal of 5 minutes. A woman running next to me asked how often I run. "Twice a week?" she inquired. I said, "No, twice ever!" She asked how I like it, and I said, "I hate it! I'm only doing 5 minutes!" She laughed and said, "Me too! But it might be easier with someone to talk to!" and I told her, "Well that's not going to be me, 'cause I'm outta here in 3 minutes!" Actually, chatting with her extended it to 9 minutes, with 6 minutes of actual running. She may have something there about having someone to talk to.
Noon Pilates class...OK, but a little slow. As much fun as I'm having working out again, I know that ultimately, it will lead to the same thing: missing dance. At some point, I'll no longer be thrilled to get anything in at all. The tug of dance will increase; everything else is just a substitute.
As I was leaving the Childwatches with my little brood, I passed a woman putting jackets on her two little boys. She saw Katrina and smiled at me and said, "Oh! You got your girl!" I get this comment all the time, word for word: "...your girl." I'm amazed how people assume that we had a third to get a girl, though I shouldn't be, it's not that uncommon. They're usually surprised to hear me say I'd have been happy with another boy.
The woman I was talking to on the treadmill was one of the few who didn't say something about shopping together, but rather: "you'll be closer, you know, the mother-daughter thing," in the blunt honest sort of way that foreign-born people on the edge of English fluency speak. Our next-door neighbor is like that. I appreciate it.
I thought about her comment, the "mother-daughter" thing. I caught a bit of the ultimate mother-daughter movie, "Terms of Endearment" on TV while I was nursing, then playing with, Katrina yesterday afternoon. I loved that movie when I first saw it, ironically with my mother and sister, in New York. They didn't like it much, but I cried through the whole thing! Even though it doesn't seem as great to me now as when I first saw it, it still always makes me cry. And this time, I was seeing it not as a daughter, but as a mother, with my daughter. Just that realization by itself choked me up.
(Just like me, the mom in the movie had two boys and then a surprise girl. But then she gets cancer and dies. Actually, my favorite scenes are the ones between Shirley Maclaine and Jack Nicholson.)
We finally finished our gingerbread house today. After Christmas!
This is how it's supposed to look:
The reality:
I could blame the artistic mess on the boys, but really, I'm not much better! Lining the candies up on the peak of the roof was Gabriel's idea.
Gabriel joined me and Katrina for another experimental photo session today.
The best shots I got, one or both of them was out of focus. There were some real heartbreakers in there! But it was fun, and I'm encouraged. More to come.
I'm really getting fed up with this blogspot. Uploading photos is a real pain, very limited, and so often fails if I try to do more than one at a time. It takes way, way too much time. And the photos are my favorite part.
12/28/06
The morning bode very, very poorly.First, Katrina decided to have some Happy Baby Fun Time at 3:30am, something she hasn't done in weeks. Plus getting me up twice. So I was tired this morning.Next, the painters were here today. Which means, keeping the family room fairly cleaned up, and Julian has to nap in the living room, which at the moment is still filled with toys and gifts. Then we lost power for nearly 2 hours, due to a windstorm. Of course, I didn't know how long the power would be out, so I was glad I had a place to go (the Y). The power came back on at 12:00...12:00...12:00...12:00...just kidding. It came back on just as we were leaving.My survival strategy for this childcare-free week is to go to the Y every morning. I'm gladder I joined now than ever. I put all three kids in the Childwatch today, no charge for the first 90 minutes! And today was a big day, because Julian graduated to the big kids' Childwatch, by virtue of being 3 (and potty-trained).
I took a "yogalates" class, a combination of yoga and pilates, and I really liked it. Then I went to the fitness area and ran on the treadmill for -- get this -- FIVE WHOLE MINUTES. Yes, I'm that pathetic at running. Then a quick runthrough my arm weights, as I was quickly running out of time. I felt great having gotten exercise though. It's impossible to maintain my pregnancy habit of 6 days a week, but I'm sure going to shoot for it. Exercise is the absolute best thing for my mood and outlook, as well as headaches.
After the Y, I tried to go to Trader Joe's in Los Altos, but it was closed due to a power outage! Instead, we managed a grocery trip to PW (we were desperately low on milk), a struggle since the boys were rambunctious and Katrina was hungry and tired. But despite the windy and quasi-rainy conditions outdoors, we pulled it off. Actually, the wind made the boys pay attention and not screw around in the parking lots.
Katrina set a new record today: four outfits due to spitup soaking!
In fact, this interrupted a photo session. We were cranking nicely along with an attempt at photos of her semi-sitting:
Then the inevitable.
A wardrobe adjustment.
Oh never mind, I give up!
Gabriel spent the afternoon making a "tunnel" for his train track, out of Julian's Architectural Blocks. He even cleaned up the family room first, including tucking the couch's slipcover in! You can see how it's sort of pulled up in the photo. Then he excitedly pulled me into the family room to show off his handiwork.
He wanted me to take pictures of him jumping over his train track. The white train is his new Brio "passenger train" that Julian "gave" him for Christmas.
Another crummy camera video of Julian entertaining Katrina yesterday.
I can't wait to see what classes the Y has tomorrow morning!
12/27/06
Julian turned 3 today! We had a great day. I think I had more fun today than on Christmas!
Due to impending rain, we started with his big present: a new bicycle!
He was characteristically reserved when he saw it, but caught on quickly riding it around.
With some "help" from Gabriel, that is!
Then we did the birthday cupcakes, including an attempt at a train cupcake from this wonderful new train cake pan I got for Christmas.
I didn't prepare the pan properly, so the cake came apart somewhat, but that mistake was bludgeoned by my attempt at decorating it with buttercream frosting, and colored icing tubes.
Of course, it all tastes the same! Especially in the new Special Happy Birthday cup.
Then Julian opened all his other birthday presents. What a score!! He loved everything: the tool set from the Engels, the Ryan's Room clubhouse from Bonne Maman and Papa Paul, the fabulous Architectural wooden blocks from Aunt Laura and Uncle Ryan, the car carrier from Uncle Ronan, and the book from the Doudna grandparents.
Gabriel loved everything too, but was very well-behaved and helpful reading the tags. I told him how proud I was of him and made a huge deal of his excellent behavior. Which actually isn't unexpected; jealousy isn't a huge problem with him.
Later in the day, Dave went into the basement to try to detangle our phone lines (to install our new DSL line!), and Gabriel joined him. Dave got out once to check something, and I heard Gabriel calling "DAD! DAD!!" thinking that Dave had left him in there! He wasn't scared though.
Katrina spit up so much today that she went through 3 outfits! And I'm not one to change it for just a little spot; they were soaked.
(Gotta love this cross-eyed look: "is that my hand?!" She's been sucking on her hands lately.)
She also enjoyed being outdoors watching her brother riding his own bicycle for the first time, and she took this observation very seriously.
Dave goes back to work tomorrow, so we're back to a regular schedule. Except for one thing. Preschools are closed, so I have no childcare at all. All three of them, all day, three days in a row. Three for three. Yikes.
12/26/06
Is Christmas really all about getting Stuff?
Pretty much. We might tell kids it's about love and family and the birth of Jesus, but really, what they're excited about is the Stuff. And is that so wrong? For as much as we admonish "it's better to give than to receive" (a platitude I've always thought makes only a useless comparison) and complain about the materialism and commercialism of Christmas, most of the effort goes into giving to other people. I'm reminded of that every time I see a huge line for a highway exit leading to a mall -- a lot of aggravation and effort to find things to give to others. And not just gifts; many people make great efforts to please others with food, drink, decoration, a warm and happy atmosphere. Commercial? Sure. So what if that lovely scented candle came from Williams-Sonoma? Most of the "materialism" of Christmas is in giving. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But kids are allowed the latitude to enjoy just the getting, with little pressure or expectations to please anyone else. That will come later in life.
Or later in the day, if you're a Doudna kid. Our day started off poorly, with a nasty night for me. Katrina woke me up twice, rare these days. That by itself wouldn't have been bad, but Dave was strangely restless in his sleep, keeping me awake. Then I had a bad coughing fit that would not go away until I took some codeine cough syrup. That did knock the cough flat, but wiped me out until the afternoon.
But that wasn't the real problem. Day 3 of a bad headache, including while I'm asleep. This one, I can hear blood rushing past my ears with every heartbeat. To my surprise and dismay, the codeine cough syrup did nothing for it. I had more respect for codeine than that.
So I slept as much as Katrina would allow this morning, until about 10:30. And that of course meant Dave and the boys allowed it too, sort of. Julian did a lot of screaming this morning. When I got up, I made a big breakfast, and each of the boys got to open a few things while I was cooking.
After breakfast, it still wasn't a good time to open gifts (I forget why now), so I tried to take a nap. Katrina put a stop to that, but then Julian really needed a nap. He was really unbearable today. Then Julian napped until Dave woke him up at **6:30** pm!! Dinnertime, then finally the boys could finish opening gifts. Poor kids! They're supposed to have everything torn open first thing in the morning!
Gabriel liked reading all the tags, and Julian did too though somehow all the tags came up as "To Julian" when Julian read them!
Uncle Ronan gave Julian some classic Lincoln Logs...
...and the very next gift opened was a set of Lincoln Logs for Gabriel from the Doudna grandparents!
That was all the photos I got, but we did manage to open all the presents for the boys tonight, plus a few for the family. I will call everyone individually to thank you, since they got an awful lot of great Stuff! It's hard to top Uncle Ronan's Lionel train set though, WOW. It was quite the challenge holding Gabriel off from setting it up right then! We'll work on that tomorrow. (Or will we? Tomorrow is another big event!)
Julian screamed and cried the whole way through the bedtime process. No wonder I felt so depressed and out of it today, a lot of it was from his relentless screaming on top of a cruel headache.
I went up to check on Julian after he was in bed, because he was still crying. "I love Julius!" he wailed, because his toy monkey is missing. I told him that maybe Julius was hiding because he was screaming so much, and Julian answered, "Julius isn't scared." "Besides," he continued, "I'm not screaming now, I'm crying." I said that maybe Julius doesn't like crying, and he said calmly, "I'm not crying. I'm whining." I couldn't help but to laugh aloud.
Where was Katrina in all this? Either sleeping, or smiling and grinning broadly at everything around her. Often she'll watch the action with interest, sometimes not even wiggling that much, but as soon as there's a face to look at, she's all smiles. She is almost always happy when she's awake now, and if she's not, she's almost certainly tired, poopy, or hungry.
That got me to thinking. There are many things I did with my first two babies that I just never, ever do with Katrina. I remember with the boys, feeling frustrated when they were around 3 months old that I could never just sit and have an uninterrupted meal. With baby#3, I always sit down to meals. I don't nurse her at the table, I don't bounce her around to get her to stop crying, I don't blast music at 1am to rock her to sleep, I don't stand next to the dryer, and I never have to carry her in the sling. Based on the first few weeks with her, I don't think this is because she happens to be a super easy baby (like my friend Betsy's new baby Dylan). I really think now that much of the fussing my first babies did, and much of the angst and work I put into calming them, was simply because they were tired. Katrina gets a lot more sleep, longer, more solidly, and far far more predictably.
I almost feel let down by the alternative crowd. They didn't tell me that I'd have a much happier baby, and that I'd be much happier, if that baby got a lot more regular sleep in a bassinet, rather than getting catnaps dozing off in a sling. In my heart, I still feel like being physically close all the time is the right thing for the baby, but those frustrating back-breaking hours spent bouncing around a miserable baby weren't right for me, or for the baby.
Most of the time I hold Katrina, she's happy and gooey and adorable and positively charming. My favorite times are sitting with her propped up on my knees, so we can look at each other and make big smile faces, and I can play with her arms and legs. How did I get so lucky to have such a charming, rewarding, wonderful baby?
Completely frustrated with indoor point-and-shoot photography, I messed with a few camera settings tonight, and went from this:
To this:
Hard to tell on these Web photos, but the non-smiling photo is brighter and less grainy and a little less out of focus. I gotta learn something about camera settings!
Isn't that red toile outfit gorgeous...I hate that they outgrow these things so fast!
Merry Christmas to all, and thank you for all the great Stuff!
12/25/06
Finally, I remembered to get my camera ready during Katrina's bath. There are two reasons I have to have the camera ahead of time: one, obviously I can't leave her alone in the bath for a second, but two, the tub I bathe her in is so huge that I have to get in with her! When we move upstairs, it'll be easier to sit aside the tub for her bath.
