Peter's Cross Station

Sleep when the bab...hey, wait a minute!

Twice tonight I had to go into the girls' room and take Nat out of Selina's crib. The first time, she was gently poking her awake, "hey, Seena! Hey, Seena!" and Selina was blinking in surprise.

The second time (about 20 minutes later), I heard Selina from across the house, laughing much louder than she typically cries. I found them sitting there, across from each other in the cramped mini-crib, playing pat-a-cake in the twilight.

It soon got dark enough that presumably, Nat couldn't find her way back across the room to climb into the crib a third time.

Poor Selina. She has a lot more trouble falling asleep than Nat. She's gonna be a grouch tomorrow. Especially if, as I suspect will happen, Nat gets into her crib again in the early morning to wake her up and play some more. (Selina goes down about 45 minutes earlier and usually sleeps at least an hour later than Nat in the mornings.)

Then again, if Nat and Selina would play for a while in the morning, maybe Cole and I could get some sleep...

By the way, Nat has started to correct herself in pronouncing Selina's name. She has said "Selina" instead of "Seena" several times in the past two days.

Bottle Update

I probably get 5-15 hits on this blog per day from people googling for info on nontoxic baby bottles.  We've been quite happy with the evenflo glass bottles while home and the Avent drop-ins while out.  (Yes, googler, the Avent drop-in liners are recyclable if you have access to #1 plastic recycling--same as a spring water bottle--but don't re-USE them.  #1 plastic starts to leach after one use.  Just remember #1=1 use.)

But Selina is coming up on eleven months next week and I remember weaning Nat from a bottle around that age and I'd like to do the same with Selina.  But the 12 oz Kleen Kanteen sippy cups (we have two for Nat to use in the car and for a treat, in front of the t.v. very rarely) are kinda clunky and heavy for Selina.  I considered a hot beverage cup I use that holds only 8 oz, but it's designed for adults and doesn't seem quite right either.  I thought about skipping the sippy stage altogether and Selina has practiced a little bit with juice glasses with about a tablespoon of water in them, but I can't do it cold turkey.  I want to fall back on a sippy for a while after all.

Today I found this product and I am so excited about trying it out!  Anyone ever use a foogo sippy by Thermos?  It holds 7 oz and comes with the handles (you can get these handles for your Kleen Kanteen, too, but it's still 12 oz which is just too heavy for Selina, when full of liquid).  As soon as it's May 1st and my monthly budget is all fresh and clean, I'm gonna order a couple.

I'll let you know how it goes!

ETA: Whew! Upon a closer look at the Thermos website, I saw that the plastic parts of the foogo are "rubberlike" and "soft" which is a red flag for phthalates (long banned in Europe). But a quick search this morning brought me to this page" which says they are BPA- and phthalate-free. So they're still on tomorrow's shopping list!

Sleep When the Baby Sleeps

It's all well and good with that first baby (and assuming you are not working a full-time, paying job), isn't it? But every mother of more than one knows that usually, when the baby sleeps, someone else (or multiple someone else's) are in desperate need of constant service and attention.

I have achieved that magical goal of overlapping naps, folks! Selina has lately decided that one nap per day is just fine for her, thanks, and believe it or not, this is a great relief to me. Now I can put her down at 11:30, put Nat down at 12 and they both sleep until 1 or 1:30.

This has been going on for three days now.

That means I have had a nap myself (even if it was only ten minutes on the couch) for two days in a row! It's amazing the difference ten minutes makes for an insomniac such as myself. All the difference in the world.

I don't know how long this will last. Nat is well over three now and is bound to give up napping at some point sooner rather than later. But I will enjoy it while I can.

Not To Be Outdone

Selina did the following things for the first time:

1. waved bye-bye
2. clapped
3. crawled

all today!

Hands

These are Nat's hands.

But I was noticing Selina this morning and thinking that I really love the stage of babyhood when they are still quite little, but their hands start working properly. Selina is getting increasingly dextrous these days. If she reaches for it, she tends to get it. If she aims for her mouth, she makes it. If she grabs for a crumb fallen from her rice cake, she can pick it up with a perfect "pincer" grasp.

I think it melts my heart to watch because the hands seem so ahead of the rest of the child. She's still more or less a helpless, completely dependent being but her hands are a little window into her future as a competent, independent person.

It's a reminder of the fleeting nature of this time when they so easily love me. Who knows what those hands will get up to when they're attached to a 17-year old?

Number Four

Technically, #1 came in second, but #4 was a close third and I am too tired to think hard enough to write #1 for you tonight.

So here are some cute girlie vignettes:

Selina still thinks Nat hung the moon. Nat has figured out just how easy it is to please her sister and just how fun it is to get her laughing really hard. Selina is such a little Buddha baby, her giggles are to die for. Nat can get her really worked up, just by playing peek-a-boo. Selina will laugh so hard, she'll fall over and laugh even harder as a result.

Nat also likes to get Selina "talking" by asking her to say "Big Sister Nat!" and coaxing "gagaga" and "dadada" and "bwahbwahbwah" out of her. (By the way Selina has started saying "mamama" but we aren't sure if she really means it yet.)

About half the time when Selina cries (which isn't very often), Nat will come running, kneel down by Selina and wrap her arms around her, cooing "it's okay, baby Seena! Don't cry!" and lo and behold, Selina will stop crying and start grinning. Big sister is a magic pill.

When we meet people, they will ask Nat her name and how old she is, and Nat will sometimes tell them these things, but she will always wave her arm in Selina's direction and announce "that's baby sister, Seena Babeena!" which always puzzles people. They catch the baby sister part, but after that, they're stumped.

Speaking of "Seena Babeena," Nat has started singing the "Name Game" song to Selina thusly: "Seena, Seena, Babeena, Nanna-Fanna Feena, Fee-Fi, Meena, Seena!" It's very cute.

Nat has her jealous moments, to be sure. When we are all supposed to be sitting down playing with cars or blocks or puzzles, Nat has a tendency to insert herself, bodily, between Selina and me--usually by sitting on me, whether there's room or not--sometimes, by sitting on Selina. She's also been known to "pat" Selina less than gently and claim to be helpfully burping her, or to deliver a board book to her sister by dumping it on her head.

But overall, there's still a lot of love.

So Many Posts, So Little Time...

I am strapped for blogging time this month. If I had time, here's what I'd be telling you about:

1. Stuff White People Think is Funny (or not) and Why (or not). (Topic requested by reader and jewelry patron, Martha.)

2. Lazy Home-Made Baby Food Shortcuts Discovered by Shannon the Second Time Around

3. Interesting Ways in which Nat is Beginning to Express Growing Understandings of Her Adoption

4. Cute Things the Sisters Are up to These Days

5. Pics of Nat's Birthday (more than a month later!)

6. More about the Big Freelance Writing Job and Why I am Asking for Your Help and Whose Help I'd Like Next

7. A Roundup of Books I've Been Reading Lately on the Topics of Race and Homeschooling (but not both together in one book)

8. Other (specify)

Please vote for your favorite! I'll try to get them out in order of popularity within the next month.

Air kisses!

It's Sunday Morning

Nat and I slept in instead of going to church today. I am hoping to use the time change to bump bedtime back by half an hour and thus hopefully, bump waking time up in turn.

Selina and Nat have been sharing a room for about two weeks now and it's mostly going swell. The careful placement of a screen and the judicious use of white noise have worked to cover each others' comings and goings during incompatible naps. I might be able to slip them onto a same-time nap routine when Selina decides to shift from two to one nap per day, but for now, I am just grateful that at three, Nat still willingly takes an hour+ nap every day. She certainly needs it. She's always been an easy and deep sleeper on a very regular schedule. Selina is a little less so, but not by too much. So hopefully the "sister room" as I'm calling it, will work well for them.

Big Home School post TBA. Watch this space!

Selina is a Rock Star

I got home from teaching today and the baby sitter was holding Selina, just up from her nap. Selina saw me, grinned ear-to-ear and began pumping her fist up and down in a very specific way.

"Are you signing milk?" I asked her.

Big grin, big fist pump.

Hmmm...

Maybe. Milk is the only sign I've really been giving her consistently. I sign and say milk two or three times right before each bottle.

I sat her in her high chair and fixed her lunch (it wasn't bottle time).

She started gobbling lunch happily and hungrily.

At one point, I fumbled around some between bites and it took a bit longer than the others.

Up goes her fist in the air again, "milk, milk, milk!!!" she signs.

I am sure of it.

She was using the only sign she knew that addressed her desire to eat to let me know I was spooning the food too slowly.

So we started on a new sign. I made the eat/food sign before each spoon bite after that and said either "eat" or "food" each time too.

Go Selina! It's her first word/sign.

Kid Updates

Nat has finally become more interested in putting art materials to paper than she is in eating them. She is still interested in eating them, but can be dissuaded fairly easily. Here is this morning's painting:

Rothko-esque, no?

Yesterday, Nat and I were writing with a pen. I made an "N" and took Nat's hand to show her how she could copy over what I wrote. I figured, I'd slowly start teaching her to write her name. She took the "N" and promptly shocked me by adding an "A" and a "T" completely unbidden. Who knew? Not me!

Here it is, Nat's first signature:

Nat's very verbal these days. If she has a time out (which probably happens once a day), she will despair, "this is just terrible! I am so, so sad! I'm really sad!" But her melodramatic verbosity pleases me to no end, because it means she hardly has tantrums. When she has them, they are short-lived and tend to be mostly verbal too. A lot of "this is terrible!" "Terrible" seems to be a favorite word. Hmmm... wonder where she got it?

Selina turned eight months old yesterday. She is completely unlike Nat at her age in the tummy department. She loves to wriggle and scoot on her tummy and can make it forward by an inch or two to grab a toy. (Nat used to reach for a toy and upon discovering she couldn't get it, would redirect her attention to some carpet fuzz well within reach and forget all about the toy.)

Selina is also a champion sitter-upper and will bounce herself up and down on her bottom and scoot herself forward that way too. Sort of a Tigger move. It's very cute, especially since she is grinning ear-to-ear, squealing and chuckling as she bounces.

She is now up to eating bananas, avocados, mangoes, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, carrots, broccoli, oats, rice, millet, tofu, yoghurt and self-fed rice cakes. I'm also putting spices in her food such as ginger, cinnamon, thyme and dill. So far, she loves it all.

She is about the happiest baby ever. She is totally content and cheerful about 95% of the time. The other 5% is right before a bottle is due or right after nap time has passed. She hated baths up until her last two baths, which she loved. She is now splashy and delighted with bath time. I'm relieved. I was starting to worry she would hate water forever.

She is still totally enamored of Nat and loves absolutely nothing more than any attention from Nat whatsoever. Nat is mostly nice to Selina though occasionally she accidentally-on-purpose steps on her, knocks her over or holds her hands a little too hard. To all this treatment, Selina responds with loving coos and giggles.

Let's just see how long this last!

It Does Get Easier

Selina hit 6 months a week ago, but second child that she is, I am only telling you about it now. Her 6 month check up is tomorrow and I'd wait until I got a weight-height measure, but we just had a blizzard and I don't know if we'll make it to the doctor tomorrow or not. (We probably will, this being the Midwest where they have snow plows and know how to use them, but just in case the car doesn't start, I'm not holding my breath.) I'll update accordingly after the fact.

The stats I do have are:

- sleeping from about 6:30 pm to about 6 am plus two predictable 2 hour naps per day

- one tooth (bottom left) which appeared last week. The bottom right one isn't here yet, but is clearly on its way judging from the past couple of days' sleep disruptions rendering the news above sort of moot. (Let's just call it a base-line.)

- two or three "solid" meals a day (hence the 12 hour nights of sleep THANK GOD). Just avocados, sweet potatoes, rice and oat cereal just now. Oh yes, and we tried yoghurt yesterday. She made faces, but opened her little bird mouth for more.

- lots of screeching. Selina seems to prefer to express both misery and delight through high-pitched squealing rather than the standard crying or giggling, though she does those too. The screeching is ear-piercing and I pity the violinist downstairs. Fortunately, he is out of town a lot. I think he would have been anyway, even if one screeching baby and one "tap-dancing" (read: putting shoes on and stomping loudly on the floor while singing) toddler didn't live upstairs.

- Big Love for Big Sister. Selina thinks Nat hung the moon. End of story.

She is mostly an easy-going baby both by comparison to other babies I've known, to book "norms" and to Nat. I thought Nat was the easiest baby ever born (once she outgrew the colic) but Selina, except for the propensity to spit up (Nat spit up about a half dozen times in her entire baby hood, Selina? Half dozen per day.), is just a little ball of friendly, happy, chilled-out snugglicious baby.

She still loves to be held, but actually loves to play "by herself" too. She is sitting up pretty well, with a little support behind. I can prop her in the curve of a Boppy my mother gave us with a toy bar across the top and she will play for half an hour merrily grabbing and chewing the toys, leaning over and reading a board book, etc.

I can let her sit thusly while cooking dinner and when she gets fussy, odds are a round or two of "Itsy Bitsy Spider" or the ABC song from Her Royal Natness will cheer Selina right up and she'll be grinning her big, whole-face, ear-to-ear, sparkly-eyed baby grin again.

Some people had said the two kid thing would be easier at 3 months, some said 6. Both were right and I hope the curve of ease keeps climbing. But "easier" really just means becoming accustomed to living in constant, utterly hopeless chaos. I have tried and tried to get together and system to no avail. We do have something of a schedule, revolving around babies' needs, but not so much for keeping life feeling smooth and tidy for the adults. The laundry alone--here I trail off, speechless to explain it. I used to enjoy laundry for its tidy beginning and ending. Ha. Oh the days of only one child.

Yes, that too. I've become one of those "one child is sooo easy" people. It's awful. I hate me. I know that one child is not easy. I had one child. It wasn't easy. But two is harder. I know, I know, you have five and roll with it. I am clearly not as cool as you.

And here I am thinking three again. For a while there, three was only a possibility if Mamas Rose and/or Fern needed us to adopt again. Now I am dipping my tippy toe into the waters of "maybe three" again. Not another newborn though. That's still "only if Mamas Rose and/or Fern..." But I'm back to fantasizing the HIV+ African toddler.

You still have to closet yourself to do that as a queer though and we're not up for that. (No judgement of folks who fudge on this to adopt--if we had to, we would, but lucky for us, we haven't had to.) We'll see.

But I am done with newborns. I know how stupid that probably sounds to the toddler-adopters among you. As if adopting a toddler were somehow not fraught will all its own unique difficulties just as difficult as the newborn 2-hour, round-the-clock feeding schedule. But I think I'd to deal with the toddler adoption learning curve better than another round of newborn feeding and sleeping schedules for 6 months or more. That is the part that just kills me.

but all of this third child thing is completely theoretical. It's really more an indication that I am feeling a little less run-over-by-a-truck these days than I have been lo these past 6 months. Only a little less, mind you. I still feel that way about half the time.

And yet, it is definitely worth it. Yes, they will fight. Yes, they cost money. Yes, the laundry is a beast. But already I see the sister thing happening. Already I see how different Selina is going to be from Nat and how fun it will be to know and love a whole other little person as well as I know and love Nat. Already the chaos is almost (almost! not quite!) fun.

Post-Doctor Update
Selina is 16 pounds, 14 ounces and 25.5 inches long. That's about 45th %ile for weight, 38th %ile for height--so her height is gaining on her weight after all. The doctor said she's not a preemie anymore, and all caught up!

But I could've told you that.

Thanks! Binkie Update, and Another Question

Wow, thanks for all your great suggestions. Keep 'em coming. This is going to be a really fun class.

Selina is peacefully binkie-free now and has discovered the joy of sucking her two first fingers and drooling like a fire hydrant. I can't tell you how great it is to put her down, sleepy, but awake, without worrying about how well she's swaddled or if I have enough pacifiers clean for the night. I don't know exactly what Nat was up to at this age, but I think I gave her another month more with the binkie before I got to this point. Since then, Nat has been a great sleeper, so here's hoping Selina follows in her footsteps.

And now, anohter question for you:

You know how there are a zillion charts and books and pamphlets from the doctor's office with lists of developmental milestones to watch for? You know, they have language ones and number ones and gross and fine motor skill ones. And they are always giving you tips on how to encourage or facilitate this or that. Well, is there such a thing somewhere, as a chart of musical skill development milestones?

I ask you because with my little babies, I have started singing the scale to them ("do, re, mi, etc.) and dancing to music and trying to draw attention to the difference between a 3/4 count and a 4/4 count in whatever music we're listening to, but I don't know if there might be other ways to encourage music skills or what such skills properly are at different ages.

For months, Nat's "singing" has been pretty much just monotone rhythmic speaking, with occasional volume changes at points of significant pitch change. That is, for Nat, volume was standing in for pitch, until recently. Recently, she's been much more tuneful and making actual pitch changes that come pretty close to correct for whatever song she's singing. So she's learned to hear pitch better and copy it better.

Is this just a natural process like going from cooing to babbling to imitating speech to speaking with sense? I know people can be taught to hear and mimic pitch when they are older, but I am curious about the naturalness of this as a developmental issue and wondering if any of you out there can point me to a site that might discuss this.

Mostly, I'm just curious. But I'd also like to encourage my children's musical skill development just like I encourage their gross motor, or speech development (or, with the help of this book, like I've been encouraging Nat's visual art development even before she can really control a writing instrument well). We plan to start Suzuki method violin for Nat next year and I know that follows a "mother tongue" type of learning style. But I wonder if there's anything less intense that I could do with them on a day-to-day basis.

Cold Turkey!

No I'm not talking about Thanksgiving leftover recipes.

For about the past six weeks, Selina has not been eating between about 10 pm and 7 or 8 am. But she has been waking me up every twenty to thirty minutes beginning around 2 am pretty much every single night. I don't really sleep at all until 6ish, when I hand her off to Cole.

Why is Selina waking and demanding I get up too?

Binkie replacement.

She wants to move her hands freely now and fights the swaddle. But then she swipes her binkie out of her own mouth and even if she gets it back in again, she can't let it go yet and out it comes again. For obvious reasons, this frustrates the heck out of her. She'll put up with swaddling for the first part of the night sucking happily on the binkie, but by 1 or 2 or 3 in the morning, she has squirmed her way out of the blanket and lost the binkie. And at this point, she's done with the swaddling and hates that as much as losing her binkie. This means I am up and down for the rest of the night. I tried kicking Cole out of bed and co-sleeping, but that just amounted to rolling over and replacing the binkie with her next to me in bed all night.

So I did it again, folks. In the middle of last night, I just decided Selina is done with binkies. She cried in my arms for an hour (between 3 and 4 am) while I rocked her and sang. She finally found her fingers, wore herself completely out and went to sleep in her hammock until 6. By naptime, she was down to half an hour of crying, rocking and singing and by bedtime tonight--no crying. Just peaceful little baby head against my shoulder and a finger in the mouth, asleep within 15 minutes.

Here's hoping I get some sleep tonight.

Not by Bread Alone!

Selina had her first taste of "solid" food this week. It was just boring old rice cereal, but she loved it. Nat started to get really agitated while I was feeding Selina and finally, after Cole got the camera out to memorialize Selina's first meal, she said, "I feel sad!"

I put the spoon down and told Nat to please let me feed Selina for a minute longer and when I was finished, I'd show her a movie. After Selina was all full and drowsy, I handed her off to Cole, took Nat to the computer, and showed her this.

She was so happy, she hugged and kissed me repeatedly, hollared "Cole Mom, come nook!" hugged and kissed her, and then wanted to hug and kiss Selina too.

I guess the movie worked. Sometimes it's hard to be a big sister.

Bodes Well for a Sibling Bed

Yesterday, we all drove up to Chicago to see Aunts Nancy and Laurel (of the beautiful wedding) who flew in to visit us and meet Selina for the first time.

On the way home, the girls, both exhausted from all the excitement and being up past bedtime, fell asleep in the backseat, holding hands across their respective carseats.

Awww!

Nice While it Lasted

Everyone said Nat would love Selina until Selina got big enough to steal her toys and crawl around in her space. But Selina isn't that big yet and Nat is already taunting her by putting a toy up for Selina to grab, then, if Selina touches it, grabbing it back and saying "No Selina, it's my turn!"

Tonight we were all cozied up in a chair together, watching the news and Selina's foot brushed Nat's leg. "No Selina, that's my leg!" Nat chided her. Then again in reference to her elbow and her arm. I told Nat that if everyone was going to sit on top of Mama Shannon at the same time, some touching would be inevitable.

sigh

But Nat is still sweet with Selina a lot, too. She calls her "Seena Babeena" and "Baby Sister" and "Sister." The other day, Selina was doing a baby stand-up on Cole's lap and holding her head up quite proudly and Nat applauded, "Good job, sister!" When Selina cries, Nat will say "Aww, what the matter, sister?" A few days ago I left the room for about 45 seconds and when I returned, Nat was trying to spoon-feed Selina some cashew butter left over on a plate from Nat's breakfast. I had to deliver a stern reprimand about only grown-ups feeding the baby after rushing Selina to the kitchen to swab out her mouth with wet paper towels and pray she wasn't allergic to cashews (no reaction--not that time, anyway). But I think Nat meant well. I think. While I was busy swabbing, Nat turned her attentions to a doll whose face was covered with cashew butter when I returned.

When Selina came home, I had a chat with Aunt Nancy about how now I would find out more about what "babies" are like, versus what Nat is like. I realize it's kind more that I'm finding out what Nat and Selina are like, but the similarities and differences are still interesting.

So far, Selina, like Nat, loves to be held, slung, wrapped, Bjorned and otherwise carried. Like Nat, she prefers to sleep with people, but unlike Nat, she is not settling happily into sleeping alone in her hammock on a predictable time schedule. By this time, Nat was on a fairly regular sleeping and eating schedule and by six months (Selina is about 4.5) she was on an unshakable one. Nat would eat exactly 4 oz exactly every four hours. She took a 10 am-12 and a 2 pm-4 pm nap every single day without fail. She did that until well after she started solids, until I forcibly night weaned her by refusing the bottle at 2 am when she was ten months old.

Selina is pretty unpredictable. She sometimes eats 4 oz of formula. Sometimes she polishes off a 6.5 oz. bottle and I wonder how much more she would have wanted. I never know how to fill them for her maximum happiness and the least waste. She sometimes naps and sometimes doesn't. That is, of course she sleeps during the day, but often it's in snatches here and there and almost never in her hammock, though I got lucky a couple of days in a row here. Sometimes she wakes to eat at 11 pm or 1 am and sometimes she eats at 7:30 pm, goes to bed and sleeps soundly until 6 am. (That would be a good habit to get into, of course, but she only does it occasionally.) Basically, she's guaranteed to take a good long nap only if I wrap her on me. And then she'll do the two-hour morning nap or the two-hour afternon nap. But in her bouncy seat or the hammock, it's a crap shoot. Nights, if she does wake up in the middle, she's done sleeping on her own. I can fight it and keep getting up every 15-45 minutes to bounce the hammock and stick her binky in her mouth or I can kick Cole onto the couch and put Selina in bed with me and she's happy until 6 or 6:30.

What I like is the "happy until 6 or 6:30" part. I don't like sleeping with her because I just don't sleep well with her in the bed and Cole has to go on the couch because the bed just isn't big enough for me not to lay there all night worrying that we're going to smother her. Fortunately, Selina doesn't insist on sleeping on me. She's happy enough to sleep beside me. But still. I don't sleep so much like this, myself.

But all this is really just to say that as cuddly as Nat was and still is, Selina is, if possible, even cuddlier. I think that's just dumb luck, though. I don't believe all babies are this cuddly. I do think all babies probably prefer to stick as near to people as they can though.

I am starting to think that maybe we will not use a crib for Selina like we did for Nat when she outgrew the hammock. I think I might just get another twin futon and put it on the floor in what will be the girls' shared room. Then they can crawl into bed with each other if they like. As long as Selina is big enough and mobile enough by then to get away from Nat if she wants to, a sibling bed might work well for my cuddly girls. Anyone out there do a sibling bed?

Speaking of crawling, that's another difference. Nat loathed tummy time. She would not tolerate it for 2 seconds and screamed bloody murder the whole time. Selina had 30 minutes (!) of tummy time today, next to me on the floor while I worked on the laptop beside her. She kicks and coos and grins and laughs at the toys hanging just over her head out of reach and tries to move from here to there. Nat never crawled until long after she walked. Until she was eleven months old, I could sit her in the middle of a floor, run to the bathroom and return to find her right where I left her. Selina is going to be a crawler for sure and possibly quite soon. She is itchin' to crawl.

Selina also loves to sing. Nat is just now starting to sing along with me when I do lullabyes at night (or "bedtime songs" as we call them). Selina is already singing along. Her face is all smiles and round little toothless "oh!"s in various musical pitches while I sing "Amazing Grace." It almost doesn't work to put her to sleep because she's so worked up and excited about singing. But I keep doing it anyway, because, duh, how cute!

Last week was the 4 month check up and Selina came in at 13lbs, 14 oz, up to 50th %ile for weight from last month's 12th. She's still low--in the 6th %ile--for height. The doctor told me she would need to catch up in height or we should worry.

"Oh, she's probably just going to be short" I blithely answered.

"Oh no, she can't be this short," the doctor tried again "at this rate, she'd only be about five feet at adulthood." (Mind you, the doctor is only about 5'3" herself.)

"Yes," I said, "her mother told us she was five feet tall, but when I met her I was thinking she was probably closer to 4' 10". And Selina's father is only 5'7".

"Oooooh..." said the doctor making a note (perhaps: "all adopted babies are not completely unknowable biological mysteries from nowhere.").

Ha! My girl is perfectly healthy. If just about perfectly round. She's a little round ball of baby sweet enough to eat up with a spoon!

Summer Sneaks

For more, including Selina's pretty baby smile, head over to the photoblog!

Light at the End of the Tunnel

Selina slept from 8 pm to 6 am last night!

Nat slept from 7:30 to 6:30.

Now that's more like it! May they keep it up!

Selina Might Be Teething + Toddler Sleep Habits: help!

Anyway, Selina is certainly slobbering a lot more than usual lately. She is nearly four months old. How the heck did THAT happen? The month-to-month baby advice book (don't worry, I rarely take its advice) says to start thinking about solid foods (again, don't worry, it ain't gonna happen for another 6 weeks at least) which, however misguided, does make me realize how fast this is going.

I am sort of glad, because this baby stuff is really hard on me. And then when I feel glad, I feel guilty because I don't want to wish away such a sweet period of time that is already fleeting enough as it is.

Selina is such a cutie. She is a lot like Nat was as a baby, in the sense that she is a bit behind the curve on motor development (by her birthdate, not her adjusted date--she's somewhere between them, really) but right on, or ahead of it in social skills. She has only started sort of accidentally-on purpose finding her hands this week. She will bump them into each other, but then kind of go "oh, cool" and play with her fingers a lot. She's more tolerant of tummy time than Nat was, but that's not saying much. She will raise her head, arms and legs off the floor and squirm around with her tummy on the ground, trying to figure out how to get from Here to Somewhere Else (which Nat didn't really do much--Nat was always pretty content to just stay Here).

But she has started scouting rooms of strangers for someone whose eye she can catch for a little back-and-forth flirting. She will talk and coo and smile at the slightest provocation. She sometimes tries to chat with me after a middle-of-the-night bottle and I'm thinking maybe she'll be up with me when she's older, having tea at the kitchen table in the wee smalls.

She is not much of a napper. She definitely needs naps but she is loathe to sleep anywhere but on a human body (aka my body most of the time). Since I can't wear her at the moment, and I have a toddler to chase too, this is trying. (I rememebr Nat being this way, but I'd just read my way through a pile of books while rocking her in the chair. Can't do that with Nat running around).

The only place I can sometimes get her to sleep is in the bouncy seat, outside at the top of the stairs. If I sit her where she is looking through the wrought iron rails and the leaves of the Boston fern David hung there, and there's a slight breeze and some ambient noise--maybe the wind in the trees mixed with a little faint construction sounds from down the block--she will maybe be happy long enough to fall asleep on her own and stay asleep for an hour or almost two. I can take my laptop out there and sit in a lawn chair and give her a bounce with my foot every so often in the late mornings, if Nat is having her nap then, too.

But as for afternoon naps (which Nat doesn't take) we're stuck. I can't get Selina to be happy away from us and Nat is too active around us for Selina to get much lengthy sleeping in. So she dozes on and off in my arms/the bouncy seat. I really hope I can wear the wrap again soon, because she'd sleep through a hurricane in there, and we could use it for afternoons (and mornings when it's too cold to put her outside).

Nights are getting better, though. She's happy in her hammock from around 7 to around 5:30 with two wakeups between that vary in time depending on how late she had her last bottle before bed. She'd probably sleep until closer to 6 or 6:30 but she can't stand a messy diaper and she can't stand to hear Nat cry or sound upset (eg: have a tantrum) so when Nat rises at 5 or 5:30, announces "I'm awake" and then fake-cries when Cole-mom doesn't instantaneously appear at her side, Selina wakes, realizes her diaper is wet, and is completely done for the night.

This is why Cole sometimes goes to bed as early as 8pm and takes three-hour naps on the weekends. I wish I could take a three-hour nap. Cole would be happy to let me, but I can't sleep during the day.

"But hey, wait a minute, why is Nat getting up at 5???" you ask?

Beats me. It's still dark here at 5. I have no idea why she does it. Sometimes, if I'm feeling gracious and am awake anyway, I'll go to Nat at this ridiculous hour and tell her it's still night time. She'll usually go back to bed for another hour if I do that. Cole is her morning person, so if it's me, it must not be morning yet to her mind. I told Cole she needs to convince Nat it's not time to wake up until the sun is up (at least) but she is usually too sleepy to remember her own name, let alone start some complicated parenting task. So 5:00 it is. Maybe 5:30 if she's lucky.

I think Nat could be convinced to sleep until 6 or 6:30 under rpesent circumstances. But I also think she'd sleep until 7 if she was going to bed closer to 8. Right now we're kind of stuck in an early rut because she's wiped out by 10 am and it's all I can do to keep her awake until 11 for a nap. Then she's up from her nap at 12:30 or maybe 1 and wiped out by 6 pm at which point we force her to stay up until 7. But even when we're out or something and she misses her 7 bedtime, she will be up again at 5 the next morning.

Any ideas? Yes, I'm asking. Lay 'em on me.

Bottle Update

By the way...

We used the drop-ins throughout our visit with Grandmom and Granddad. They are Avent brand and use the same nipples as the old, evil bottles. I kind of hate to reward Avent for using bad plastic by buying more of their products, but at least this way I am still using the nipples we already had that Selina likes.

Fortunately, the glass bottles (Evenflo) arrived while we were away and she is okay with those nipples too. She doesn't like them as much as the others, but she doesn't reject them. So we can stick to glass at home and drop-ins on the road.

All is well. I'd recommend either product.

Fourth Trimester Down

Today, Selina is three months old and judging by that book about babycare that we all love to hate, she's about on target for her birth date already. She's small, I suppose. They say gross motor skills are the ones that remain slow for late preemies, and that will probably be true for Selina as it has been somewhat for Nat (who doesn't let it impede the enthusiasm of her dancing, mind you).

Selina's personality has really been emerging lately, though. She still loves to be held and holds onto you right back. She is quiet. Her cries are so quiet I need to use the baby monitor a lot more than I ever did with Nat. That doesn't mean her crying isn't insistent when she has a complaint, though. She's sensitive to dirty diapers and will fuss if you don't change her right away. She has a good appetite and will sleep most nights from 8pm to 2am, though she reverts to wanting to eat every four hours the rest of the night and day.

She is cooing with mixed vowels and consonants, smiling and gurgling and half-laughing. I say she can "chuck" but she can't quite chuckle just yet. I can make her wave her arms and legs with glee and open up a huge smile and sort of squawk (she really, really wants to laugh!) by playing little sound and peekaboo games with her. She watches Nat like a hawk and is completely enthralled by every move or sound she makes.

She's very empathetic with Nat and if Nat cries or otherwise expresses distress, Selina starts to cry. It's amazing to me. She is really sensitive. Nat is still doing well with Selina herself, if not always so well with the attention I give to Selina. Nat likes to say things to Selina, then pitch her voice really high and pretend to be Selina answering her back. I think we did this once and she picked it up. So now it's "hi baby Selina!"--voice change--"hi Nat!" and occasionally the excruciatingly cute, "I love you baby Selina!"--voice change--"I love you Nat!"

I have two daughters. How fabulous is that???

Luddite

Does this baby look like she's lost weight since these pictures were taken?

No, I didn't think so either when the nurse weighed her and told me she was 7 lbs and 2 oz yesterday. That's 8 oz less than 6 weeks ago.

But they weighed her on the Digital Scale. So they were convinced it had to be right.

They are all about this digital scale at my doctor's office. Everytime they weighed Nat they would fret about whether it was accurate because they didn't have a digital scale. Then they got one and ever after I was suspicious they weren't quite getting her weight right, but they seemed so sure of what they were doing, and so excited about their nifty technology I didn't want to say anything to dampen their spirits.

But yesterday I rebelled. Even as the nurse practitioner who saw us mused with me that Selina didn't look that small to her either, but maybe I shouldn't be giving her that ounce of water every couple of days when she's been particularly sweaty, or maybe I should step up the flow on her nipples or maybe I should wake and feed her instead of letting her sleep those six hours through at night (ha, I don't think so!), I was thinking "or maybe the stupid scale is wrong."

I finally suggested that maybe the scale was wrong at the last appointment, because she has certainly gained weight. She's grown out of two sizes of clothes and grown two more chins since they last saw her.

After the nurse suggested I bring her in to weigh again next week, I suggested we just weigh her again right then. So we did. She weighed TEN pounds and two ounces the second time around. The nurse said "was she in a diaper before?" No, I told her, the first time around she was naked. "Oh!" said the nurse, removing what she seemed to believe would be a three-pound diaper. The scale didn't move. Still 10.2.

From now on, I'm just going to insist they dust off the old abandoned, Not-Digital scale when we go in there. I don't trust the new one and never did. I don't trust digital thermometers either. Am I alone here?

Selina got all those crazy shots--something like 7 different things in one form or another--and today she was fussy, overwarm and off her feed, poor baby. But in all other respects, the nurse agreed that she is absolutely thriving.

Last Chance

Selina is now smiling, laughing and cooing regularly. She's like a different person!

This is the last photo of her I'm going to publish here. From now on, she'll join Nat on the password-protected photoblog. As always, just drop me an email introducing yourself for the login info.

Some Highlights

You all knew I was born in Honolulu, right?

Until now, I hadn't been back to Hawaii since age two.

With my babies in tow, it felt a bit like stepping into one of my father's old home movies, in the role of my own mother. There's my toddler, chasing a Hawaiian local child through the park with her tongue hanging out to feel the breeze. There's my baby getting petted and fawned over by local mamas and grandmamas at every turn.

It was a great vacation, but it was also just really cool to stand on the ground of this place that has taken on mythic proportions in my psyche for the past 35 years.

Nat loved the ocean. Loved. She went running headlong into it at every opportunity. We stayed at Anini Beach on the North Shore of Kauai (if you know it). It's a long, long, long reef that makes for really shallow, calm water about a half mile out from the beach. Nat just assumed that the Pacific Ocean was one big wading pool Granddaddy conjured for her benefit. It kinda was.

We stuck Selina's toe in the water but she hated it. She is still a pre-bath-loving newborn and doesn't like getting naked or wet, so she mostly hung out in slings, wraps, bjorns and plain old arms the whole week. Fortunately, 5 adults besides myself were queuing to hold and feed her so I got a nice break from lifting and carrying, etc. (at least while in Hawaii, if not en route).

Cole and my brother and sister-in-law all took a surfing lesson while I sat on the beach with another class member's grandparents and cheered them on. They weren't terrible. Cole especially wasn't terrible given that she just hit that mysterious 0 birthday and has a half-paralyzed left knee from an old lacrosse injury (these aging butches and their sports injuries!). You better believe there will be a photo up here of Cole surfing as soon as I get the disk.

I also dragged Cole along to ride a horse. If you go to Kauai and are planning to ride a horse, go for the worst review in the ultimate guide. The people who wrote that guide don't know beans about horses and I could tell from the bad review that the Princeville Ranch was actually a great place as far as rent-a-horse outfits go and I was right. They did a fabulous job for that sort of thing (ie: letting anybody and everybody ride their horses regardless of experience level) and Cole loved it. I sold her on horse back riding enough that she wants to learn more.

My father dragged us all over the island to look at beautiful stuff and more beautiful stuff. It was chock-full of beautiful stuff, including a waterfall of family legend where my mother allegedly pulled the car over and washed herself off after I allegedly threw up on her. (I should add that Selina carried on the throwing-up-on-mothers-in-Hawaii family tradition commendably.)

We had a noon to 10 pm layover in Honolulu on our way home and we drove around a bit downtown to get a feel for the city, then hung out at Waikiki and watched surfers and chatted with locals. In the evening, we found a ramen place in a mall (even the malls are nice in Hawaii) and Nat had a grand time eating one of her very favorite foods ("noodles"). We liked Honolulu a lot, as we are sort of urban people but also like pretty nature. Honolulu has both things going on at once. Wow.

Now I'm reading Dismembering Lahui to get, as I told my father, the cynical stuff. Really, the real stuff about post-colonial Hawaiian history. Did you have any idea that in the last quater of the 19th century, the Native Hawaiian population declined by 92-95% depending on whose numbers you think are most accurate??? I didn't. Hello genocide.

But Hawaii has this really cool political/cultural feel to it, like the Native Hawaiians don't take increased luxury hotel development sitting down, like gay rights are a big no-brainer to them, like adoption is an obvious way to increase your family, like all the children belong to everyone. I loved the sense I got there.

Even the Hawaiian Airlines propoganda magazine featured a cover story about traditional Hawaiian kinship adoption (Hanai), which is informal, but strongly rooted in history and culture and is open by definition. There was even a woman in the article, who, having grown up with Hanai values, but without anyone in her circle to give her a baby, adopted an African American boy from Arkansas and now he's some kind of big deal on the Hawaiian traditional music scene. Apparently, in Hanai children are sort of redistributed. If you have lots of them and you know someone who wants one and doesn't have any, you give them a baby. Just like that. Your uber-fertile sister-in-law is no longer an annoyance at holiday dinners, but the birthmother of your baby. Also, hanai was used to maintain strong traditional culture by giving firstborn sons and daughters (one each) to the grandparents or another member of the grandparents' generation to be raised into late childhood/adolescence. Also, it was used to attach families to other families higher up on the social scale by placing children with nobles. But these children were to always be raised exactly the same as biological children in those families and there were heavy formal consequences for failing to do that.

Anyway, that's what the airline magazine said and it made me feel like I was on my way to the Land of Adoption or something. It is worth a look, but their online version isn't current, so the article isn't there yet. Maybe when a new hard issue comes out. I took a copy and am going to put it in Selina's book.

Speaking of babies, my BFF, Karen, of two failed IVF's and brief consideration of donor eggs (from moi) and a decision to adopt from China right before China became Hard To Adopt From, had her baby via scheduled c-section on Tuesday. His name is Carl and he was conceived the old-fashioned way through dumb luck. He's a beauty. My idea of what newborns look like is so skewed by my two low-birthweight preemies that he looks like a 6 weeker to me, but her was only 7 lbs 10 oz (which, I guess is average? a bit above average?). Anyhow, I am ecstatic for Karen, her husband Rob and their whole family.

And on that note, I'll leave you to catch up on blogs I've not been reading for the past two weeks (um, or maybe to grade my papers--maybe).

Tied, Dyed and Ready for the Beach

Courtesy of frog!

Cole Mom and Selina Snuggle

Sundry: Now With Product Review Update!

Selina is arcing slowly towards almost-gonna-be-okay-someday. She is creeping up on drinking 4 oz at a time which correlates to 4 hours of sleep. Come on, 10-2-6 schedule! But last night, she had a bottle at 9:30 and slept until 1:30. Yea! Right? But then she wouldn't go back to sleep until 4:45. Thank god I didn't have to get up at 6, take her to daycare and go to work like a normal person. Instead, I pushed her off on Cole when Nat woke up at 5:45 and told her not to bother me until 11. And she didn't so I went back to sleep.

I have been reading this advanced review copy of a book about teaching your kids a second language. I wasn't sure we were doing enough signing to make Nat truly fluent, but according to the book, we are just on the verge of enough. I'm taking a real course for grownups this fall at the local CC. Meanwhile, as Nat's spontaneous expressive language increases these days, she's often spontaneously signing what she says. "Look, Mama Shannon, a girl on a bicycle!" for example, all spoken and signed simultaneously this afternoon.

I want to hire a French-speaking babysitter for the fall semester (about 3 afternoons per week), not to teach her any formal lessons but just to speak to her in French, while supplementing with books and dvds in French at other times. French because I have studied it forever (without, of course, gaining much fluency) so I can sort of reinforce it and also because French is so stupid hard. If she gets it in her ear now, she can learn easier romance languages later with ease. I can read most basic Spanish at an intermediate level, for example, having only ever studied French. And we'll be doing Latin in home school which will also set her up for Spanish and Italian.

But then I think maybe I should find an ASL-fluent baby sitter instead and just stick to one extra language, done the heck to death. I don't know. Opinions?

We are going on a lo-o-o-o-ong trip in two weeks. 48 hours and three airplanes to Kawaii to celebrate my parents' 40th wedding anniversary. It's times like this the adoptive, happy-to-bottle-feed mom wishes her boobs worked. I am going to lug five bottles of formula, five bottles of water and a zillion little ziplock bags with four oz. of formula powder in a huge carry on bag with all the snacks the other three of us will need to survive the skinflint, don't-feed-you-for-free-even-when-we-strand-you-for-hours new standards of air travel. Then there are the diapers in sizes one and four, the wipies to accompany the diapers and various gear items. I just broke down and bought this and we're snapping the baby car seat into it. I never thought I'd use a stroller by snapping a car seat into it. I would just wear the baby and push Nat. But my back says otherwise. So I'll still take my favorite wrap and snuggle Selina in it on the plane and maybe carry her some, but we'll have the stroller as back up.

Once there, we are sure to have a wonderful time, but getting there is not something we're looking forward to...

UPDATE ON THE JOOVY CABOOSE

I just posted a review of how the new stroller performed at a mom board I frequent. I'm copying it here for your edification:

My Jooy arrived and made it through three round-trip flights from Chicago to Hawaii (via LA and an inter-island hop) and back.

It was great for the airport. I have to admit I wrapped the baby and we used the baby carseat bit on the Joovy to port carry-on luggage (we had tons of that because we had to carry 48-hours worth of bottles, formula, diapers in two sizes and I added snacks that were meal-worthy for the entire trip for my toddler and partner too, having learned the hard way in past flight delays).

But we were able to belt Nat in seated even with the infant seat in place (it helped that we didn't put an infant in it, because I'm not sure it was really in the correct position--but fine for luggage).

It isn't super light, but the wheels are nice and large and smooth so it was manoueverable and easy enough to push along. I found it fairly easy to fold down too--I could manage it at the plane gate with sort of 1.5 hands--that is, with a baby wrap on me too.

I don't know how much I'll end up using it in ordinary life. For getting down to the park three blocks from home, I'll probably just be wrapping the baby and strolling Nat in the umbrella.
It feels sooo big to me, but when I really look at it, it's a fair footprint for two kids and gear. It's about the equivalent of two standing adults, shoulder-to-shoulder. That seems reasonable for subways or whatnot.

All in all, I'd buy it again. Especially for that long airplane trek.

Zero

Tomorrow is Selina's due date! She is definitely more baby than fetus these days. She is sleeping deeper at night and lighter during the day. She's eating between 3.5 and 4 oz. per meal, has a HUGE double chin and rolly-polly baby thighs. She has a predictable alert time in the evenings (a bit too alert sometimes) and loves to look into my eyes. She was 7 lbs 8 oz a tthe doctor's last week, but I bet she's up to 8 lbs now (says my still hurting back). Here's a peek from Donita's brilliant eye:

Sweet things Nat has done with Selina:

- voluntarily offered to share the stickers the doctor gave her, saying, "here's a bear for you baby Seena!"

- tried to offer Selina a bottle when she started to cry last week.

- patted Selina's head gently, saying soothingly, "I know, I know, it's okay" (which is what I say to soothe the baby).

- tried to teach Selina to sign "milk" and "more" and "baby sister."

- opens the gifts Selina has been receiving with utter glee without regard to the contents. And everything is "so cute!"

I am kind of surprised, really, at Nat's response to Selina. She is very nice and gentle with her. When Nat gets frustrated about missing her former unrivaled time with me, she takes it out on me, not on Selina. I am so glad for this, but don't know where it's coming from or if it will last. Any sibling insights you have are very welcome. (I just got Siblings Without Rivalry in the mail, so it's next to the rocker!)

Another First

That would be a stream-of-conciousness post from me. I don't promise that I won't edit it, though.

Two kids means zero time of brain power for blogging, yet lots of thoughts throughout the day that just escape into the ether unappreciated because no one around is of age to discuss them with, or at least to respond intelligently.

Today, Nat was watching Sesame Street and Selina was having a mid-way bottle break (it takes her two or three rounds to finish off a bottle) and I had clean dishes to unload, so I plopped her on a Boppy my mom gave us that has the little toy bar thingys and went to unload the dishes. As expected, Selina liked that for about 45 seconds, after which, she started to cry. I heard Nat move in Selina's direction, so I sneaked a peak through the kitchen door to make sure she didn't smother baby sister, and what did I see? Nat sitting there on her knees, patting Selina gently on the tummy and saying "baby Seena, what wrong? What wrong? What wrong, baba Seena?" very sweetly.

Now that's just darned awesome.

I wasn't slinging Selina, because the chiropractor says I can't for an undetermined period of time. I can't lift Nat at all. And my back is still pretty much in constant pain except for the first hour after David puts this stuff on it called "Bio Freeze" (no link--google it--this is stream-of-consciousness). And now Cole has a cold and David has a cold and Nat's fever is gone, leaving her with a dry cough.

I am using her illness as an excuse to ban the sandbox. Her baby sitters--who do not have to give her baths--just love to let Nat play with other kids in the sandbox at the park. YUCK! And I know Nat. There's no doubt she has been putting random strange children's sandbox tous in her mouth. DOUBLE YUCK. Thence the 104 degree fever (that farenheit folks, just to reassure my European readers that she isn't boiling).

But you know, Nat is almost 2.5 and since her first birthday, she seems to get sick about every six months. This was her first recordable fever, but her thrid illness. If she gets sick every six months for the rest of her life, I figure she's ahead of the game.

Selina has yet to demonstrate her constitution, so we're keeping her out of reach of all contaminated people, which means everyone but me since bad backs aren't communicable. But that's okay, because she gets sweeter and sweeter. She got her first bath today and I am such a parent of a second child, because it went entirely unrecorded except her in print. No cameras still or moving.

But it happened and her cradle cap is now under control. It was threatening to obliterate her eyebrows there for a minute.

If you adopt, pretend you gave birth. In fact, pretend you had a c-section and need to recover and establish nursing and give yourself a break.

I know whereof I speak. I have been trying to comletely keep up the pre-Selina pace of house work, paid work and hobbies all on no sleep. I have tried really hard to just incorporate Selina somehow into the existing routine and guess what? No go.

The house is clean, the laundry is put away and I can't move for the pain in my back. The chiropractor says I injured myself in 3 places. I don't know the moment (or moments) this happened, I just know that after the Chicago court appearance schlepp I woke up the next day and couldn't move. Aunt Nancy who will be an acupuncturist next year says my back is pulled in a zillion directions because I am pulled in a zillion directions and my whole life, not just my back needs adjusting and I need to allow for that to happen.

I guess she's right. I guess I sort of even knew that but I was trying to deny it and now here I am in ouch-land.

Also I have two very big, very exciting secrets and I'm not going to tell you either one of them.

Yet.

Also today I decided we need three daughters. I decided we should adopt a 2-year old when Selina is four. I announced this to Cole after she dragged her sickly self in the door after a day at work and she said, "get back to me when Selina is four."

I think by then maybe lesbians will be able to openly adopt an HIV+ child in South Africa.

What do you all think?

No edits after all.

Enjoy.

Firsts

Selina has officially outgrown her preemie clothes! She is much more like a normal newborn now, at what would be 38 weeks gestation.

Nat has the first fever of her whole, entire, 29-month life. It's 102. She's clearly making up for lost time. No other symptoms, though.

Selina Dislikes Lying Alone on the Big Bed

But she's cute anyway.

See Nat as a blissed-out big sister here.

Monday, Monday

Monday around noon, we went before the judge in Chicago and declared our intent to adopt Selina. It was pretty easy, since there was only one other family there that day and we didn't have to wait at all.

And yet, it was a really hard day. We went up to Chicago on Sunday afternoon and checked into a fabulous hotel across from the courthouse. We had an amazing room with two different views: one of a street full of dazzling lights, including a big theatre sign flashing "CHICAGO", and one a view of the blue lake under a clear sky, full of sailboats. But we slept about 3 hours total. We didn't follow our new rule to always bring the hammock when we travel, thinking, "oh heck, we'll put her in the king-sized bed with us, it's just one night." And Selina didn't sleep unless she was in someone's arms, and that someone had to be sitting upright.

Fortunately, Nat slept well for 11 hours as usual.

After dragging both kids around town all day on no sleep, Selina over my left shoulder in the sling, a bag full of her bottles and other kid-items over my right, a stroller full of toddler and camera and more kid-items... I seem to have done a pretty serious number on my back. Since yesterday morning, I've been in the worst back pain of my life. I did go to the chiropractor yesterday and have another appointment Friday. But I haven't been able to really lift Nat or reach over my head or bend over and empty the bottom rack of the dishwasher or turn my head more than a couple of degrees in either direction for 48 hours+.

But the real news of the week is meeting Mama Fern on Monday evening. We picked her up at home and drove to a restaurant she had chosen to have dinner. She chose to ride in our cramped backseat between the carseats so she could be with Selina. And judging from my occasional rear-view mirror checks, she didn't take her eyes off of her once in spite of my confused and no doubt motion-sickness-inducing driving. She had not been able to see or touch Selina in the hospital. Selina was in NICU and Fern was in her own room and they wouldn't let either other them go to the other. I'm not sure that a mother who had not relinquished her baby to adoption would have been disallowed to see the baby like that, but I don't know the details. Their supposed excuse was infection risk. Maybe.

But it was good to be able to finally put Selina in Fern's arms. We had a nice visit. But Fern is still quite unwell and on so many medications (eight prescriptions!) that it was hard to discern her real personality under all the drugs and exhaustion and perhaps pain (though she wouldn't admit to it). It is going to take us some time to really get to know her. I do think that she will stick around. We talked a little bit about what kind of adoption she had in mind and how and why she came to her decision. She made it clear that she wanted to stay in touch and be in Selina's life.

And we got some lovely photos of Fern and Selina together, too.

Back Briefly

We are back from Grammy and Granddaddy's.

A Selina brief:

Not sure about her actual weight, but she has developed squeezy baby cheeks, thighs and a butt. She is awake and alert for a good while between 8ish and 9ish pm. Her complexion has smoothed out from newborn splotchy to warm and glowing. She is gobbling down three oz every three hours and asking for more. I'm now filling her bottles to four oz. It took us five months to get Nat to four oz! As of today, Selina is 37 weeks gestation. So that's technically not a preemie anymore.

She seems to be a little reflux-y which we didn't notice before we traveled to Grammy's. We have the Amby Baby Hammock here which is great for reflux and Selina had no problems last week at home, but when we tried to put her to sleep flat in a travel bed, she was urpy and cried a lot. So I got no sleep at Grammy's, holding Selina upright against me in a chair most of the night for four nights. Last night, it was back to the hammock and no problems either keeping down the bottle or sleeping comfortably for Selina or Mama Shannon. Yea, baby hammock!

Nat update:

Nat is still doing pretty well. She has been seeking negative attention a lot more than usual, though. Fortunately, she doesn't do this by being mean or endangering the baby (so far!), but by climbing tables, grabbing people's drinks etc. when she sees you are temporarily handicapped by holding Selina. She has now formally been introduced to the concept of time out and so far it seems to work pretty well. We do a lot of "time-in"--a good deal more of it than time-out, since what she really needs is to be reassured that her place in the family is solid.

She loves Selina herself and tells everyone her baby sister is "See-na Babeena!" She likes to gently pet Selina's soft baby head and coo "so cute!" to her. She does "this litttle piggy" to Selina's toes and comments on how tiny all her parts are--ears, fingers, feet. It's hard for her to watch the baby accosted by adoring strangers in ways that she herself is used to. I try to divert their attention to her by asking her to tell them about her tiny baby. And she's a rock star, so it usually works out okay.

Answering some reader inquiries:

Selina is biracial. Her mother is African American and her mother's ex-boyfriend was white. Selina was very light (pale white and spotchy-red) when we picked her up, with caucasian-baby-blue eyes (the dark blue hazy eyes that are destined to change to brown). She's looking now a bit more like a white baby with a tan or a light-skinned Latina baby, as someone guessed.

We are hoping for as open an adoption as possible at this point. So far, Mama Fern says she wants letters, photos and visits, which is what we want. So we'll see how that goes too. In our first adoption we seemed to want the same thing at first, but it hasn't worked out that way so far. We are also being more cautious with our personal boundaries this time around after learning to take it slowly with Mama Ivy. So for the time being, we are using our obliging agency as an official go-between in communicating and setting up visits. Our first chance to meet Mama Fern will hopefully be Monday, when we're in Chicago for the court date (in Illinois you go to court at the beginning rather than at finalization.).

So wish us luck!

First Doctor's Appointment

I want to reiterate how much I love our family doctor. All the nurses/receptionists/file clerks/etc. just gushed when they saw Nat's baby sister. They already adore Nat and I could hear their "awww!"s before I made it through the second of the double entry doors. Our doctor practices at a small clinic that has mostly geriatric specialists, so they don't see many babies there and they all remember us very well, and there are always lots of grammies and grandads in the waiting area to gush, too.

Dr. Lee said Selina is healthy and great and so "normal" for her gestation that she must have been going to be a very large term baby. In the past 24 hours in fact, Selina has picked up her appetite considerably and her sucking has improved immensely. She was eating 1-1.5 oz over an hour with lots of breaks to rest and lots of dribbling every three hours (for which I had to wake her) when I picked her up last week. Now she's downing 2.5 oz with glee in one sitting every three hours at her own loud insistence.

She has gained 6 oz and half a cm since I picked her up a week ago. So all is well. The doctor said to bring her for well baby visits according to her birth schedule, rather than adjusted age.

And now for some cute Natisms:

Nat calls Selina a lot of things from "Selina" (as in "hey, Selina, where Cole mom go?" hollared at the hammock across the baby gate in our doorway when Nat expected to find Cole napping in our bed), to "little baby" to "baby sister" to "tiiiiiiiiiny baby!" She asks to "see her!" or "hold her!" frequently. She is used to her being in the sling and me pulling it open for a peek when she asks to "see the baby?" so yesterday, she pulled my collar open and looked down my shirt, saying "see baby?" when Selina was not, in fact, in there.

Nat has learned the plural rule, without me noticing. But I realized it when she got the exception wrong and counted a picture of children by saying "one children! two childrens! three childrens!" and so on.

Yesterday, she was feeling a bit jealous I suppose. I was putting Selina in the sling, in preparation of heading out to the backyard for Nat to play and visit the neighbors.

"Mama Shannon, where are you?" Nat hollared across the house.

"I'm getting Selina, where are you?" I responded.

"Table!" she let me know, "climb table!"

And sure enough, there she sat, in the middle of the dining room table, a strictly forbidden place.

When she saw the sling, she said "see baby!" so I told her she couldn't see the baby until she climbed down, then I left the room (and peeked back to watch her climb down promptly, sit in the chair and announce "sit bottom! See baby?"

And off we went to play.

So far, not too bad.

Nice Photo

Also, seeDonita for a romantic B&W.

She has been our official family photographer this week and it's been great!

Parts of the Story in Non-Linear Form

First, can anyone show me a good place (on the web) to read up on A) late preemies (we found out Selina is 6 weeks and one day early) and B) preeclampsia/eclampsia?

No time to do my own googling. Thanks in advance. I know you folks know more about this than I do. Nat was quite early (5 ish weeks) but I didn't realize how much so at the time. So I just took care of her in my benighted ignorance and here she is, thriving the heck away. But all the same, I'd like to know more. Meanwhile, Mama Fern's BP continues to be erratic with no planned hospital release in sight. I need to learn more so I can ask intelligent questions if we see her in the hospital. She really has pretty much no one, in terms of support, more especially so since she hid the pregnancy and doesn't want anyone to know.

So Nat...is doing awfully well, all things considered. We have been very attuned to her every sign of needing reassurance, and for all that I want to bond well with Selina, I hand her off to hug Nat as necessary. (Mind you, I am slinging her for hours every day, doing 90% of the feeding and rocking in the chair and singing a lot. She has overheard many of my interactions with Nat and has already been read to a lot because she's in the sling while I read to Nat, which is kind of interesting and something that never occured to me about second (and later) children. I probably didn't read to Nat much when she was a little baby, because it feels weird. But Selina is getting that via Nat.

When I was throwing things crazily into bags to take up to Chicago on Wednesday, and David was bringing baby stuff up from the basement and reassembling the hammock, etc. I tried to get as much instant sibling-prep as I could by asking for Nat's help and talking her through it all. "David is setting up a bed for the baby to sleep in. Can you put these little diapers in the bag for the baby? These bottles are for the baby's milk, see? I'm making special milk for the baby."

After a while, Nat disappeared, then returned to the kitchen with her doll. She held her aloft towards me, "here baby!" she announced. She thought it was all play. Then again, she didn't, because she was nervous as heck the whole time.

I left her with David, went to get Selina and came home after Nat was asleep. In the morning, David did Nat duty and eventually brought her in to meet the baby. She did very well, held the baby, stroked her head very gently and said, "tiiiiiiiny baby! so cute!" over and over. When I took Selina away to feed her, Nat crashed. She burst into tears and threw herself at me crying, "hold you!" She meant that she wanted to keep holding the baby, but I handed Selina to David for the feeding and held Nat instead. And it's been about like that ever since. She has a bit of a love-hate thing with the baby.

Selina is quite sleepy (well, duh, she's supposed to be on the inside, still!) and that has made things easier so far. I have been able to give Nat a lot of one-on-one time. So hopefully things will continue with relative peace until everyone is adjusted.

Where has Cole been, you ask?

Cole had a job-related trip planned, flying out of Chicago on Wednesday afternoon. So she was going to drive up in her post-accident rental car, park it in long-term and head to NY. We got the call about Selina (I got it. Cole was out and about after work and I couldn't reach her for the most unbearbly long time) on Tuesday night around 6 pm. All they said was that the baby was 6 days old, in the NICU, but fine now and would probably be released on Friday. So after we said yes to her, Cole figured she'd go on her trip and Friday, upon her return, we could meet in Chicago, pick up the baby and sign all the papers. So Wednesday morning, off she went.

An hour later, the social worker called to tell me she was getting the baby that afternoon and would arrange for "interim care" (the social workers take the babies home until the parents can get them) until Friday. I asked if there was any way I could get her right away, with Cole out of town, unavailbale to sign everything with me. The social worker remembered (I was too crazed to think of it) that we are a licensed foster family. You can do her 'interim care'!" she suggested.

Perfect. But no time to shop. Barely time to call David and beg him to cancel his jobs for the day and come take Nat. But I flew up to Chicago like a woman possessed, and in spite of the snarly traffic up there, lately, I made it in record time, just in time to wait 20 minutes in the lobby of the adoption agency's building, sitting on the floor by the mail boxes, while the social worker crawled through snarly traffic herself.

And so there in that lobby, I became a mother again. A couple of pregnant women walked down the sidewalk a moment before the social worker arrived and I wanted to wave and smile knowingly at them, but they would have thought I was a nut (and not in a good way). So I refrained.

One of the most surreal things I've experienced in life is walking into an office, being handed a baby, and walking away a mother. Take two was no less weird than Nat's placement had been. Maybe weirder, what with it being in front of a plate glass door in the lobby. It was really cool. I couldn't help thinking how strange