1 month old!!

our little nora is 1 month old!!! who knew that one month could be so long and so short at the same time? (yes, it can be both things at once. i don't care if it doesn't make sense.)

our little lady has grown up so much in a month... okay, maybe not so much "up" as she's grown "out". out of her newbie clothes and diapers- by her 4 week check up she weighed in at 10lbs 7oz... that's a full 2 pounds of gain since she was born! she also grew about 2 inches in that amount of time as well... i guess that explains why baby-girl's two favorite things are chowing down and sleeping.

we've definitely learned a lot during our first month as parents. i've listed some of the more pertinent things below:

• a "blow out" does not only refer to having a tire-crisis on the freeway
• desitin has magical properties
• chocolate, as far as baby is concerned, is the devil.
• dairy, as far as baby is concerned, runs a close second to the devil.
• cranky baby > cranky mommy. therefore, cranky baby wins, and mommy has to forego milk and chocolate.
• babies create a LOT of waste output, and therefore use a TON of diapers. like, way way more than we EVER expected.
• cars were invented for the sole purpose of putting fussy babies to sleep.
• according to many sources, babies are only newborns for 28 days (and that's just about how long they fit into newborn sized clothes and diapers).
• 4 hours of sleep in a row is a rare, amazing occurance.
• having bloodshot eyes and being incoherant is not necessarily an indication that one is under the influence of an illegal substance. it could also just possibly be a sign of a very sleep deprived new mother.
• spit up is non-discriminatory. it does not care if you're wearing silk or cotton, or if it's headed for your hair or your lap. it is coming up anyway.

as demanding as taking care of a new little baby is, nothing beats the payoff of watching her grow and learn. :) we're just starting to get smiles out of her. seeing one of those grins is worth all those sleepless nights and hours of fussing. :)

newborn nora

1 month old nora. complete with essence of squirm (hence the blurry left arm).

notice the diapers are the same size in both pictures- you can see how much she's grown! :)

vacation?

so i'm not going to do a "march" review because most of it would be a lot of "noel goes to the doctor again for a progress check" and "chris wants a vacation from work still" and "noel walked around a lot," and none of that stuff is very interesting. since we all know when the baby was born, i'm just going to sum up the last week of march, because that's when the interesting stuff happened.

so the couple days following nora's birthday, both of us were in the hospital. i wanted to go home THE DAY after she was born, but instead i was detained for 2 days, because my little girl couldn't figure out how to eat (you'd think that was innate, right? apparently NOT, and that's why lactation consultants have jobs). my doctor wanted to make sure that my baby wasn't going to starve to death when she got home, and so i stayed the extra day even though i SO did not want to. i didn't sleep very much at the hospital- maybe a grand total of 2 hours the whole time i was there- and by the time i was discharged i was so sleep-deprived i was delerious. chris was ok though, because he went home at night. as jealous as i was of his nightly reprieve, it made no sense to have both of us strung out to our wit's end when that was only requisite of one of us. and so, when i got home i passed out for a few hours while chris took care of the baby.

the following few days were a blur for me because i was still so low on sleep. i was so so happy to have chris with me at home- he did a good job of dealing with his wreck of a wife for that time. it was a week of learning for all of us: nora was still learning how to feed, chris was learning how to change diapers, and i was learning how to relax with an infant in the house, which is apparently something that i generally fail at (it's a lot harder to do than one would think, for reals).

chris's goal for his vacation was for us to successfully watch all of the lord of the ring's trilogy, from start to finish. he'd been planning on that for months. therefore, every night from around 9 to 11 we sat in front of the TV while nora slept right next to us. funny thing about those movies- the ring wraiths sound just like nora. once she woke up during a scene with screeching nazgul, and i didn't recognize that my own daughter was screeching along with them until after the scene changed (yes, our daughter is a loud screamer. the nurses at the hospital said she had "personality"). in any case, chris's goal was met, and we now have that epic series freshly emblazoned into the forefront of our memories.

by the end of chris's 9 day vacation he was ready to return to work. chris's coworkers had prompted him to take a full 2 to 3 weeks of vacation with the baby, but i know my husband better than to think that he would remain sane without working for that long. therefore, i urged him to take a shorter amount of time off, although i would have loved to have him at home longer. i suppose taking off from work to take care of a newborn isn't really a vacation at all. chris jokingly said: "man, i'm going to have to go back to work in order to get a vacation from this baby!" and so we affectionately refer to nora as our "new boss". which is actually pretty accurate, all things considered.

boss lady. 6 days into it.

also: this was taken in the middle of the night, because what better of a time to be completely wide awake?