Skipping Town

I’m excited for Christmas this year. Of course, I look forward to it every year—the chance to travel home to see our families, pulling out the Christmas ornaments I’ve collected from all over the world—but this year it will be particularly fun since Lucia is now part of the family. We’ll be going to Jacksonville for Christmas Day and Connellsville for post-Christmas, and everyone is immensely excited to see the little one. Right now, of course, Lucia’s too little to understand Christmas, and she’ll likely spend the holiday as she spends other days—eating, sleeping, crying, playing on her back, and gazing around at various things. But I can’t help imagining the years ahead, when she’ll be fully cognizant of what’s happening, when she’ll be as excited as any other kid counting down to Christmas morning. On the one hand, I dread some of the complications that will come along with this awareness. I’ve been reading reports of this year’s hottest toy—the Zhu Zhu Pet—and how it’s nearly impos...

We celebrated our first Thanksgiving with Lucia this year with Beth and Nate in Napa. Beth made an elaborate and delicious Thanksgiving feast, with all the traditional trimmings—including corn casserole, which is a Clark tradition but new to me and Andrew. Because it is NorCal, Andrew and I sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic for three hours trying to make our way to their house. But also because it is NorCal, the day was so sunny and beautiful that we were able to eat outside in the Clarks’ backyard, where they’d set up a lovely dining table. Lucia handled the long trip and the small crowd at dinner splendidly, with only a little fussing. Lucia will surely not remember her first Thanksgiving, but we will, and we were very glad to get to spend it with the Clarks. It’s impossible not to feel immensely thankful this year—for Andrew, for our beautiful little baby, for the chance to spend these days at home with her, for the quiet evenings spent with just the three of us. We still wish we were...

This weekend, it was wonderful to anticipate the week ahead and know we’d have a visitor: Aunt Molly. She arrived late Sunday night, and we’ve spent the past couple of days indulging in true baby-time: holding the baby, feeding the baby, changing the baby, calming the baby. Reading on the couch. Taking walks. Taking lots of pictures. Molly is holding Lucia right now as I type this post. She is suitably smitten with her little niece. A few updates: Lucia has started to smile. She’ll give little grins now and then when she’s in the right mood, usually when she’s sitting in her blue bouncy chair with one of us hovering over her. It’s incredibly cute. She also set a new record last night—she slept for five straight hours. She’s been doing really well for a few nights now, with stretches of three and a half to four hours, but this was a new level. She's been such a little angel this week that I think she's convinced Molly that having a baby is pretty easy. I'm tempted to eat a g...

Why won’t Lucia just do what I want her to do? That’s what I thought this afternoon when Lucia refused the fabulous nap plans I had for us. Two nights ago, I convinced Andrew it was finally cold enough to put on our microplush bed sheets—the softest sheets I’ve ever felt. Mom and Dad bought them for us last winter, and they’ve been unopened in our closet ever since. Andrew had been dreading the day when I wanted to put them on, believing he’d roast, but he acquiesced. Anyway, today was damp and windy and cold, and I thought napping together in the cozy sheets would be a perfect way for Lucia and me to spend an hour or two this afternoon. Unfortunately, when I settled Lucia onto the bed and cozied her up with a microplush sheet, then cozied myself up beside her, she began screaming unhappily. She seemed to prefer the cold, regular sheet of her bassinet to the luxurious toastiness of the microplush. I would have suspected that Andrew had been turning her against the microplush, but he ad...

Lucia seems to love listening to us sing. However, in the past few days I’ve realized that she does not like key changes. A few days ago, I was walking around the house with her in my arms, singing various songs to her as she gazed up at me raptly. Emboldened by such a captive—and receptive!—audience, I began singing “Memory” from Cats, gaining gusto with the big key change (there may be more than one; I need to brush up on my repertoire). Lucia instantly began crying. Not long after this, I was singing “Climb Every Mountain,” and, again, didn’t hold back with the key change. Again, Lucia began crying. So many things to learn about this little baby.

Today is my first day—my first whole day—alone with Lucia. Andrew left for a business trip this morning at 5am and won’t be back until around 10pm tonight. So it’s just me and the baby, all day. I was alone with her on Friday for most of the day—but Andrew came home for lunch and was home for good at 5:30pm, so this is an entirely new experience. I wouldn’t be so stressed about it had yesterday not been so horrendous. For some reason—likely a perfect storm of tomatoes and grapefruit in my diet on Sunday—Lucia cried the entire day. Not just whimpers or plaintive wails; this was full-throated, best-birth-control-ever crying, the kind that seems to be best delivered directly into mama’s ear. If I put her down, she cried. If I picked her up, she cried. If we moved and danced, she cried. If we gently rocked, she cried. By the time Andrew came home at 3:30pm so I could go to a doctor’s appointment, I wasn’t sure how much more I could take. The appointment itself was upsetting in a way I hadn...

On Saturday, at the encouragement of Beth and Nate, Lucia, Andrew, and I had our first official outing. Let me clarify: we have left the house before, on walks around our neighborhood. And I have been in two public places since she was born, Safeway and Trader Joe’s, when my parents were here. And we’ve had two appointments with the pediatrician. Otherwise, however, I’ve left the public-place errands to Andrew while Lucia and I have stayed snug and swine-flu-safe at home. When the Clarks came to visit this weekend, however, it was a beautiful, sunny day, and we all went to lunch at a local burger place we like. We’d been there together before, and, besides having great food, it’s a good place for kids—and there’s a large outdoor area where we could sit far apart from the swine-flu masses. We got an outdoor table in a corner, and Lucia did splendidly for almost the entire meal, napping and then sitting peacefully in her stroller. Only at the end of the meal did she begin crying—it was f...

Little Lucia, You’re four weeks old today. It’s hard to believe we’ve had you for such a short amount of time—it feels like you’ve been with us forever. I’m still amazed that it was you in my belly for all those months, that it was your precious little feet I felt kicking me in the side. In the first ultrasound picture we had of you, you were waving—a gesture you still make quite regularly. It’s hard to fully grasp that the nine months I spent pregnant this year were all leading up to you. You’ve changed a lot in just one month. You’ve gained a pound and a half—maybe more by now—and your cheeks, legs, and arms are all getting a little chubbier, a little sturdier. I can see the difference in your feet and hands. You don’t look quite so new and fragile anymore. You had a personality from the moment you were born, but it’s becoming stronger now. You set your lips firmly together when you don’t like something; your whole face crumples heart-breakingly when you’re upset. When you’re relaxed...

It’s been wonderful having Andrew home on paternity leave for the past week, and he’ll be home most of this week too. We are truly on baby time here, and, when Lucia has not descended into fits of screaming—which, fortunately, are rare—we are able to quite enjoy these odd days. On the one hand, we have nothing to do; but on the other, our hands have never been fuller. It’s a strange balance. We’ve been reading a lot; on Friday we watched a movie in the middle of the day; Andrew is watching a lot of college football; Saturday night we watched the votes come in for the House vote on the healthcare bill. We nap and eat and go to bed at 9pm. Then there are the moments when Lucia is inconsolable and we’re both hovering over her frantically, trying to determine the source of her unhappiness. Andrew’s legs are sore from doing so much bouncing and swaying. By the end of the day I generally have milk and/or spit-up on most articles of my clothing. On one recent night, I had to change pj’s twice...

Midnight: A semi-fussy Lucia refuses the pacifier by dramatically gagging herself. 2:00am: A steely-eyed Lucia refuses the pacifier by pressing her lips stubbornly together and giving us a resolute glare. 3:30am: Andrew and I hum “Edelweiss” to a fussy baby, followed by hummed selections of Andrew Lloyd Weber. 4:00am: I try to lull Lucia to sleep with a hypnotic mantra: “Mommy’s tired. Daddy’s tired. Baby must be tired. Mommy’s tired. Daddy’s tired. Baby must be tired. Mommy’s tired. Daddy’s tired. Baby must be tired.” Some readers of this blog will understand what I mean when I say I use the “Garden Surprise” voice for this chant. 4:45am: Andrew and Lucia lay down on the bedroom floor for some ungodly-hour Tummy Time. 7:00am-8:00am: Lucia and I both fall into a desperate, restless sleep with her on my chest. 9:00am-9:30am: Crying and feeding. 9:30am-11:30am: An overtired Lucia continues to cry hysterically, inconsolable. She finally takes the pacifier and falls into a suspicious, sli...

Lucia seems to have brought lovely fall weather with her, and the past couple of weeks have been beautiful. Here are a few pictures from the amazing trees we have in our backyard. We get more fall foliage here than you’d expect.

Two years ago today, Andrew and I got married at the Summit Inn in Farmington, PA. It seems like we’ve been married for so much longer than two years! We celebrated quietly today by taking Lucia on her first walk in the stroller, to Dairy Queen for Blizzards. She screamed for most of the trip, working herself up into a true froth, little arms waving angrily. It’s 6:40pm here right now, but it may as well be midnight. Andrew and I are exhausted, and it’s pitch-black outside—it feels much, much later than it is. We just took a nap and easily could have stayed in bed for the rest of the night. Lucia has been sleeping well today—during the day she can stay asleep for several hours at a time—and yet I have no doubt that tonight will be another night of being up every two hours. Ah, newborns. Good thing she’s pretty cute:

7 lbs. 8 oz.! Our baby has grown! We had a doctor’s appointment this morning and were shocked to learn Lucia has gained a pound and a half in the last two weeks. Such good news—it’s great to know that breastfeeding is giving her what she needs. It’s so hard to know sometimes if I’m giving her enough. Looks like she’s doing just fine. The other good news is that the scary swelling on Lucia’s head is finally gone. About a week and a half ago, Andrew and I noticed a puffiness around the area where the vacuum suction had been—it hadn’t been there in the hospital. We made a late-night phone call to the advice nurse, who consulted with the doctor on call, and our pediatrician contacted us in the morning—the consensus was that it was a hematoma, and nothing to be alarmed about. A word like “hematoma” is pretty terrifying, though, and it was hard to be reassured. I swore off Google searches during my pregnancy, but Andrew bravely Googled it, and even the Google results said it was nothing seri...