it's the little things...

I'm eating watermelon. Granted, it's from Honduras. (How big is my carbon footprint today?) Earlier I had some sweet tea. And planted tomatoes and cucumbers. Spring, my friends? Has sprung. It could not be a more lovely day. (And loving the macro lens. Thank, Hubby.)

Dear Daughter, First, I know your one month birthday has come and gone before I could get this written. I'm going to cut myself some slack, though, because (1) I did remember that it was your one month birthday on the actual day, (2), I actually took pictures of you on that day, and (3) I've kept us both alive and doing at least fairly well this past month. I can't believe the time has gone by so quickly. I think about the new moms who go back to work after 6 weeks and have no idea how they do that. I have no idea how I'm going to do it at 12. Whenever that thought pops into my head ("I'm 1/4 of the way through leave," "I'm 1/3 of the way through leave") I try to ignore it. You have really been quite an easy addition to the family. Knock on wood. You've been an eating champ since day one (literally). When you were a few days old, you were diagnosed with jaundice and we had to supplement with formula for a few days. You had no trouble taki...

Finally, right? Still getting the hang of this whole parenting gig but things are going better than I expected. I think we've started the first growth spurt because Little Miss Thang has been Cranky. Pants. And hungry. Often. Good thing she's cute. I was looking at her over the weekend and thinking that it seemed like she was longer and hoped she had at least reached her birth weight since she lost the higher end of normal within the first four days. She had her 2-week pedi follow-up yesterday and it was confirmed. She was up 1 lb 1 oz and over an inch from Day 4. Yea! Ok, so on with the story (which you'll want to avoid if you're squeamish)... On Saturday evening (the 22nd), I started having some random light contractions. It wasn't just that the crappy movie Hubby was watching was making me sick. (Seriously, what's with men and watching bad movies? Like Jean Claude Van Damme bad.) They were just light cramping but I felt good knowing that somethi...

I don't necessarily know why for some of them, but a few things the baby has been called: Her actual name (note, this list is not in order of frequency) The Baby Pterodactyl (because of her short, shrill cry) Baby Bird (same as #3) Chicken (no idea) Stinkpants Miss Petunia Stinkybottom (6 & 7 seem somewhat self-explanatory although I don't know about the "Miss Petunia" part) Munchkin Little One (8 & 9 also self-explanatory) Mama Little Mama (also call the dog #9 & 10) Grunty Gruntypants

The thing about pregnancy is that women only recently started to talk a little candidly about the, um, less desirable parts. Even the books kind of minimized things. You need to find frank authors and friends and pump them for information. Then comes labor and delivery. One of my friends recently mentioned that there's even less information about what comes after the baby. While friends and family coo over the wonderful new addition, mom is often left out in the cold to deal with all sorts of weird things lumped into the category of "recovery." All I have to say is thank God for the blogs and books and friends who were willing to give a realistic picture of what to expect because a lot of this stuff would freak you the heck out if blindsided by it. With that, I figure I'll do one more recap post similar to the pregnancy ones. Total weight gain: I tell ya, I'm glad people said that you appear 6-7 months pregnant even after you've gotten rid of amniotic fluid, ...